‘Arigato, thank you, Madoc-san. It is good business here tonight.’
The one who spoke was the youngest of the three, and as Madoc knew from experience, the politest. He was the only one who seemed capable of a smile. All three were lean and narrow-shouldered but looked fit, with smooth, unlined faces and hair cropped short. The oldest, a man a little more than Madoc’s own age judging by the shadowy grey stubble on his head, had cold, implacable eyes that rarely blinked. He spoke little. Madoc wasn’t sure whether it was because his English was poor or because he chose not to communicate his thoughts. He suspected it was the latter. He offered them his cigarettes but they all declined with a precise shake of the head, a small gesture of distaste before taking out their own cigarettes and lighting up. It was a little routine they went through each time, so he should be used to it by now. But still it irked him.
‘You’ve heard, I’d guess?’ he said.
‘Hai. Yes.’ The polite one again.
The third one, a man who had the look of someone eager to get the moment over and done with, said, ‘That’s why we’re here, Madoc-san.’ He nudged his glass nearer the bottle.
Madoc picked up the saké and poured each of them a drink. For the first time they showed a flicker of interest.
‘Down the hatch!’ he said, though he didn’t drink himself.
They knocked back the rice wine, replaced the glasses on the table and regarded him with the faintest shadow of impatience. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the young one did the same.
‘So,’ Madoc began, ‘you’ve heard that our boys in the north are on the move.’
‘It has come to our notice, hai, yes. What would be advantageous to our Command Planning is to know how many battalions and …’
At that point, two sailors pushed open the door to the bar. As Madoc gave them a quick appraisal, he felt his table companions grow tense.
‘Junior ratings,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Relax.’
The pair had probably come upriver by sampan to taste what the jungle had to offer, in search of wilder women and rougher whisky. Word of Morgan’s Bar was whispered in the towns on the coast. You want good girls? Good ganja? Good gambling? I take you. These sailors were big and muscular, but next to the Malays and Chinese, anyone looked big. He was tempted to go over and steer them into the back room with a cold beer in their fists. That was where he made his real money, in the cramped and stuffy back room. On the spin of the roulette wheel or the turn of a card. Men lost everything in the grim little sweatbox where dreams were crushed time and again, yet still they came back for more.
These sailors were still wet behind the ears. He could tell that they were new to Malaya by their pink English skins, fresh reinforcements shipped in as nerves curled tighter in this part of the world. He knew the battlecruiser Repulse and the battleship Prince of Wales were patrolling the seas. The sailors inspected the bar with interest, but stopped in their tracks when they caught sight of the Japs. Most Japanese had the sense to withdraw from Malaya because of the worsening situation, the Europeans uncertain as to whether the Japs would dare risk an attack, and Madoc saw no reason why his saké friends insisted on coming as a trio instead of just one of them alone. One might pass unnoticed. Three jumped down your bloody throat. But there was safety in numbers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said softly, ‘shall we step outside for some air?’
He walked over to the sailors and pointed them in Kitty’s direction. They went like lambs. He opened the door, took a deep breath of the night air, as moist and heavy as the saké, and walked out into the darkness. The jungle and the Sungai Lereh river muttered to him like old friends but he barely noticed the noises, except for the booming call of the frogs, as insistent as toothache.
Morgan’s Bar sat in a muddy patch at the end of a jetty that led passengers straight into the clearing that Madoc had created out of densely packed jungle, with no reference to anyone else. He’d chugged up by boat one humid afternoon, avoiding the mangrove swamps that stretched their grey roots like dead arms reaching out of the jungle, and dynamited himself a space about fifty yards square. He’d slept that night in a stifling tent in the middle of his crater, and next morning set about taming it. That was twelve years ago. Too long, far too long.
As he lit himself another cigarette from the old butt and watched one draw life from the other, the three Japanese joined him. They moved as soundlessly as snakes.
‘Madoc-san,’ the polite spokesman said in low tones. ‘We are waiting.’
Madoc drew them out of the splash of yellow light thrown from the bar’s windows and into the deep shadow of the building on his right. It loomed up with a jagged profile against the starless night sky, only half constructed, a black shapeless shell. But at the sight of its unfinished walls, Madoc’s blood kicked hard in a vein at his temple, almost as sharp as a mosquito bite. Month by month the walls were clawing their way up, but he needed more bricks, more sand, more cement, more lead piping, more wiring, more … More money. He swallowed a sigh in the guise of drawing on his cigarette, flicked its ash on a passing moth and told them what they wanted to know.
‘General Brooke-Popham is holed up in Singapore at the moment, in conference with General Heath. They’re putting out propaganda that we Brits are confident that our defences are strong and our weapons efficient. He scoffs at the Jap Army.’
There was a hiss in the darkness. It came from the oldest of the three.
‘Brooke-Popham is convinced you will not have the nerve to touch Malaya. Maybe Sumatra or Siam, but not the Peninsula itself. He claims you haven’t the guts to march against the British army and that anyway you could never get your tanks through the jungle. He claims our RAF is second to none. You wouldn’t stand a chance.’ Madoc smiled in the secrecy of the black shadows. Part of him was enjoying this. ‘After all, he reminds us that your forces have been battling that rabble of a Chinese army for years in China, and still can’t teach them who’s boss.’
‘Facts, Madoc. I want facts. Not a gin-soaked old general’s lies.’
So. The grey-stubbled Jap did speak English after all. Interesting.
‘Facts you shall have,’ Madoc replied coolly. ‘The Governor has said he believes any attack will be launched from landings at Singora and Patani in Siam. Defences are in place.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Ledge.’
‘Hai. Yes,’ one of them murmured softly.
Solid defence would be essential on the road from Patani. It led across the mountains to the rich and vulnerable west coast. The rice-growing areas of Perlis and Kedah would need protection, of course, but far more important was the aerodrome at Alor Star. If that fell, so would Penang and even Butterworth, God forbid.
‘Alor Star?’ the oldest one asked as if he could pick out Madoc’s thoughts with a pin.
‘Defended.’
‘Where?’
‘North of the aerodrome. At Jitra.’
There was a long silence. They all knew that if the Japanese succeeded in coming down the difficult Patani mountain road, they would hit the Brits on their soft underbelly behind the Jitra defences.
‘How did you learn this?’
‘One of my girls is mistress to an army lieutenant-colonel in Intelligence.’
‘Can we rely on it?’
‘Of course. As always.’
‘How many soldiers defending the Ledge?’
‘That, I’m afraid, I don’t know.’
He did know. General Heath was holding two battalions in reserve for that purpose. But he kept that information to himself. You can make a cat sick if you give it too much cream. The oldest one stepped closer so that Madoc could smell the spices on his breath. The move was meant to be intimidating, but was more irritating than anything else. Madoc didn’t like to be crowded. He stood his ground and exhaled his cigarette smoke directly in the man’s face. The grey head turned away abruptly with a curse in Japanese.
Madoc walked out of the
shadows into the rectangle of light from the bar because he didn’t quite trust one of the slit-eyed bastards not to slide a fine Tokyo blade between his ribs, and that wouldn’t get his casino built, would it? He held out his hand, palm up. There was a murmur between the three men, during which Madoc heard something large drag itself up from the river and slither away into the dense jungle undergrowth, one of the night creatures. The polite Japanese eventually came over and placed a packet in his hand.
‘British pounds?’ Madoc asked.
‘Of course. As you requested.’
Madoc wasn’t going to touch any Mexican dollars, the flimsy currency of much of Malaya. He only trusted notes with the King’s head on them. He flicked open the packet, checked its contents then nodded at the three men, who were watching him in silence. His heart skittered inside his chest. They needed him. That’s what mattered, he told himself.
‘Sayonara, gentlemen,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Goodbye. You know where to find me.’
‘Yes,’ the oldest one said in flat voice. ‘We know exactly where to find you.’
As Madoc stepped away, lightning flickered across the canopy of the jungle like a flash fire in the treetops. The storm was rumbling somewhere close and the first raindrops began to fall, as flat as pennies on the dark banana palms. The men hurried onto the jetty where their boat was tied up, and Madoc stood watching in the rain as they jostled each other to climb inside it. Its engine finally rattled off downriver.
We know exactly where to find you.
That didn’t sound good.
6
‘Oh, Constance, why on earth are you reading that?’ Nigel failed to keep his annoyance out of his voice.
Connie abruptly shut the book and wrapped her hands protectively around it, as though he might snatch it from her. She smiled sheepishly at him. The book was dog-eared from years of handling, and she read its title aloud.
‘The English Country Garden.’
She ruffled its pages, and pictures of lupins and delphiniums flicked past, along with instructions on the best mulch to use for peonies. She heard her husband sigh.
‘Aren’t you tired of all that?’ he queried. ‘Look out there, in front of you.’
She was seated on the west veranda, a refuge from the morning sun. She’d been teaching Teddy how to perform a cartwheel, demonstrating it herself with ease and then tugging his muscular little legs straight when it came to his turn to whirl upside down across the lawn. He was now showing off his new-found skill to his dog, Pippin, who kept hurling himself at Teddy’s middle, bringing them both crashing into a heap of giggles and barks on the grass.
‘Look,’ Nigel said again. Urgent this time.
She looked at the expanse of impossibly green lawn, at the cascades of bougainvillea that spilled like wine from the veranda roof, at the pool of scarlet hibiscus, Malaya’s national flower, at the stately orchids and at the dark, secretive leaves of the nibong palm. Nigel was right; they were glorious. A rich, luscious tapestry for the eye to linger over. When, damn it, would she stop yearning for snowdrops and daffodils and …?
‘How can you not love it here?’ he asked softly.
‘I do, Nigel, you know I do. It’s a kind of paradise.’ She waved her hand at a flock of parrots that was landing in the canopy of the trees, squabbling over the perches. Just not my kind of paradise. But she could hear the pride and contentment in his voice, so she didn’t say it. She would never dream of saying it. ‘It’s just this letter from my mother. It set me thinking about England.’ She tucked the book out of sight down the side of the chair cushion. ‘She says it’s freezing over there.’ Connie rolled her eyes at him dramatically. ‘Hell, Nigel, who in their right mind would want to be stomping through snow in chilly wellingtons?
Me. I would. Christmas shopping, swaddled in gloves and mufflers, chestnuts on the fire. Ice cobwebs on the window pane. Me. Me.
She laughed. ‘Look at Teddy.’
But she was aware that her husband’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, before he perched on the veranda rail and bellowed, ‘You look like a spider-crab, my boy! Get those legs straight.’
It was Sunday, Connie’s favourite day of the week. Sunday was when life became denser, in some strange way. As if it had learned on that one day not to stretch itself so thin. The Hadleys’ Sunday ritual was something she had introduced after Teddy was born and, to her surprise, Nigel had fallen in with it readily.
Days BT – Before Teddy – had been utterly different. Then, Sunday had been a snail-like creature with no shape and no joy to it, a bleak interruption to the busy week. A day of stilted, awkward hours strung together, pretending to read the English papers or writing letters back home, relieved only by curry tiffin at the Club or by having a houseful of friends over to play Halma and billiards, to drown the Hadley silences in gin slings. But after the advent of Teddy into their lives, a giggling, snub-nosed little wriggler, everything changed. Not just because he was the Hadley Estate son and heir, though that definitely counted for something, but because he hooked his father’s heart from his chest the first moment that the tiny tadpole fingers curled around Nigel’s big thumbs.
‘He clings like a damn monkey,’ Nigel had said gruffly.
But she wasn’t fooled. This was a new Nigel, one whose brown eyes suddenly revealed layer after layer within him, parts of him she’d never seen before, never knew existed. It happened each time she placed Teddy in his arms. At last she could give her husband something he wanted, not just a new rifle or a stupid pair of cufflinks; wanted deep down in his soul. Because as sure as hell he didn’t want her, despite having dragged her out to this country of his. Their love for their son built a fragile bridge between them, and she had carefully added more struts and railings to it each Sunday ever since, until now it had turned into a solid ritual.
For a start, Chala, Teddy’s amah, was given the day off. Connie insisted that Nigel sleep late, at least until nine o’clock, as it was the only day he didn’t have to get up at five a.m. to oversee the muster of the plantation’s workforce. Teddy would help Connie saddle up for her morning horse ride around the estate, then on the stroke of nine by the hall clock he would bounce into the master bedroom with Pippin yapping a wake-up call in his arms. On his heels followed Masur, one of the silent-footed house boys in his white tunic, bearing a tray of scrambled eggs, a mountain of toast and plum jam, two peeled mangoes and a huge pot of Earl Grey tea, all of which Nigel and Teddy would have demolished between them by the time Connie returned for her shower.
The rest of the day was spent amusing themselves, which usually meant cricket on the lawn. ‘Only girls are allowed to bowl underarm,’ Nigel would whisper to his son when it was Connie’s turn to bowl. Or sometimes croquet. Pippin, the scruffy little terrier, adored to sink his teeth into the wooden croquet balls and scamper into the shrubbery with one, almost dislocating his jaws, to shouts of glee from Teddy.
The laughter. That’s what made the difference. It undid the tight laces that seemed to bind around her lungs the rest of the week. Nigel felt it too. She could see his limbs grow looser and his shirt abandon its crispness as the collar became damp around his neck. In the heat of the afternoon they would retreat to the delicious shade on the veranda and stretch out on the old bamboo chairs that had taken the shape of their bodies over the years.
Masur would bring them freshly squeezed lemonade and, when Teddy was younger, Connie would read Biggles stories to him, tales of derringdo by a pilot flying a Sopwith Camel in the Great War, till he dozed off. Sometimes Nigel would take what he called ‘forty winks’ at the same time, and she would observe them both closely in the dappled light while their faces lay unguarded. The same shape face, long from jaw to cheekbone, the same wide mouth, but whereas her son’s was curved in a loose half-smile, her husband’s was set tight even in sleep.
But now, at seven years old, Teddy had no interest in wasting an afternoon on something as boring as sleep. He possessed a fearsome energy that at times l
eft Connie trailing in his wake. If she ever suggested slowing down he would look at her, aghast.
‘No, Mummy,’ he’d pipe up with his freckled nose scrunched in dismay, ‘you’re getting old.’
Old? Was it true? Maybe Nigel was right when he called her old thing. Thirty-four, but already knee-deep in a trench that led straight to the grave. She blinked hard and realised Nigel had just spoken to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was miles away. What did you say?’
‘One extra for lunch.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Johnnie Blake.’
‘Johnnie? I didn’t know he was back.’
She was already smiling broadly. It was impossible not to. Flight Lieutenant John Blake was always bursting with vitality, but he tempered it with such charm and good humour that he was always in demand at dinner tables. He and Nigel had been school friends at Eton, lost touch for a while and had bumped into each other a number of years back at a grand dinner at Government House in Singapore.
‘Like two long-lost penguins,’ Connie had laughed when she saw them clasp each other in their dress suits, both the same height, both the same age, thirty then, only Nigel’s brown hair was neatly oiled into submission, whereas Johnnie’s fawn-coloured mop was tossing about, as flyaway as his smile.
‘Watch out for this blighter,’ Nigel had warned with affection as he brought the pilot over to her and introduced him, ‘he’s left a string of broken hearts in his wake.’
But Johnnie had never overstepped the mark with her, not once. Sometimes she found herself half wishing that he would.
‘How wonderful,’ she exclaimed. ‘Teddy will be thrilled.’
Her son hero-worshipped Flight Lieutenant Blake. That worried her a little. When you gave your heart so completely, it was bound to get hit for six one of these days.
Connie checked that the table was well laid with the best china and the finest crystal glasses that had once belonged to Nigel’s mother. His parents had both been killed in a mid-air collision on a local airfield just outside Palur when Nigel was eighteen. He’d watched it happen.
The White Pearl Page 6
