The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Why were you in that backstreet, Nigel?’ Connie asked at last, when they could make out the lights of Hadley House up on the black hillside ahead.

  ‘I’d had enough. Of the speeches and the cigars, and the never-ending arguments. I needed some air, so I went down to the river.’

  Connie had never realised it before. That Nigel felt suffocated too. Slowly, Hadley House – with all its responsibilities and inherent duties – drew closer.

  ‘What was the name again of that Jap who used to hang around here?’ Nigel asked abruptly.

  Her heart jumped to her throat. ‘Shohei Takehashi.’

  ‘That’s the one. Do you know what he told me?’

  ‘No.’ It came out as a whisper.

  ‘He told me that we Brits couldn’t keep Malaya for ever. He claimed that we’d milked the country dry, had made ourselves rich and now it was someone else’s turn. He boasted that the someone else would be the Japanese.’

  Her tongue licked her dry lips. ‘Did he?’

  The conversation seemed to stop as abruptly as if it had run out of petrol, and she heard Nigel release a long sigh. ‘Constance,’ he said dully, ‘if the war comes to Malaya, it will wreck everything.’

  12

  It was two days later that Maya turned up at Hadley House. Connie watched the young girl trudging up the long white gravel drive at ten o’clock in the morning, her limbs dusty, her turquoise kebaya top and sarong skirt as bright as a peacock’s tail. This was a country where people may sometimes run short of food, but they never failed to feast on colour. It was obvious that she had walked the eight miles from Palur.

  Connie was pleased to see her. She surprised herself with the strength of her pleasure at seeing the small, lonely figure. She was concerned for Maya, even more than for Razak. He arrived at five o’clock each morning in the big open-backed lorry that trundled into the workyard every day, bringing a portion of the labour force from town. Most of the labourers lived in the work-village that existed on the Hadley Estate – it provided large, airy barracks for the hundreds of single men and individual shacks for the married ones.

  Nigel kept a well-equipped infirmary for his labour force, and had them all checked over once a month by Dr Rossiter from Palur. Nigel always claimed that a healthy workforce was a happy workforce. Connie wasn’t so sure. She suspected that it was more likely that a well-paid workforce was a happy workforce, but she didn’t argue. The rubber estate was Nigel’s business, and he didn’t like her to interfere. Her job was to ensure that the women were not maltreated by the menfolk, and she had arranged for a full-time midwife to live in a special hut of her own with a clean delivery room, so that she was always on call when needed.

  It never failed to astound Connie how many babies were born on the estate every year – dozens of them peering out at her with huge bushbaby eyes from the folds of their mother’s colourful shawl. She had set up a school of sorts, but attendance was poor and Nigel told her she didn’t understand the Malay native mentality. They were a people that used their hands, not their heads. Connie pointed out the number of Malay lawyers and doctors and businessmen flourishing in the cities, but he just laughed at her and reminded her that you give the average Malay a good curry, a pipe to smoke and a hammock to lie in and he would be content to dream the day away, telling stories of the monster fish he’d wrestled to the riverbank with his bare hands, or of the jungle spirit who came and danced for him naked while he slept.

  She knew Nigel to be right, but she didn’t admit it. Any more than she admitted she had betrayed him with his best friend. Strings of guilt and shame knotted around her throat and silenced her tongue. She and Nigel had barely spoken to each other since that night, Nigel working long after suppertime in the evenings and rising hours before dawn. This morning when he drew aside the mosquito net to switch on his lamp and climb out of bed, she had slid out her hand into the warm patch where his body had lain.

  ‘Connie.’

  She looked up, startled by the force of it. On the other side of the net he was standing like one of the hazy figures from her dreams, observing her stray hand. For a moment she thought he might be angry, that she was trespassing – which in a way she was – but in his striped pyjamas with his hair awry and his face still heavy with the residue of sleep, he looked anything but angry. He looked like Teddy would look in thirty years’ time.

  ‘Nigel,’ she murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Still his gaze remained fixed on her hand, not on her face. ‘I know,’ he said sadly, and walked away.

  Throughout the morning, Connie had been sitting at her desk and thinking about that moment, frightened by its solidity, knowing that it was something too heavy to push out of their bed. And that was when she noticed Maya on her front drive. The strange thing was that the girl was carrying a dead chicken in her hand, gripped by its scrawny neck and swinging at her side as she walked. Connie rose from her desk and went down the front steps to meet her.

  ‘Hello, Maya!’

  The girl approached warily. The chicken advanced first, held out in front of her, humming with flies. Above them the sky was a sheet of blue, as vivid as Maya’s sarong but with several scraps of ragged white clouds, as though it had been torn in places.

  ‘For you, mem,’ Maya said, and pushed the dead creature at Connie. ‘I lost sweet sticks.’

  Lost? More likely gobbled them down with Razak till they were sick. But Connie knew better than to reject the gift of the chicken, a generous offering even if it was probably stolen from someone’s backyard.

  ‘Thank you, terimah kasih, Maya.’ Connie bowed her thanks with her hands pressed together in front of her, then took hold of the chicken by the neck.

  Connie knew she had made a mistake. As soon as she sat the twins down in her study, she realised that she’d got it wrong. It was too formal, too intimidating an environment. They were perched like a pair of nervous, black-eyed finches on the edge of their chairs in front of her maple desk. Oil paintings of her parents in evening dress stared down at them, as well as one of herself as a young girl on a swing. It was a world which must look like an alien planet to them. She should have sat them on the veranda outside; at least there they could run if they wanted.

  Nevertheless, she pressed ahead. She sat at her desk. ‘I want to discuss with you what I can do to help you, now that your mother is …’ before she could say the word she heard Razak’s fierce intake of breath through flared nostrils, ‘is . . . gone,’ she continued lamely. ‘I was thinking that you might like to attend school.’

  In unison the twins shook their heads.

  ‘I think it’s what your mother would have wanted for you,’ Connie urged.

  To her surprise, Razak curled forward until his forehead was touching his knees and he uttered a high-pitched keening note. It went on and on, filling the room, scraping against the ceiling and banging into the windows. A shrill, grating sound that felt to Connie as if it were inhabiting her own body, in her bones and in her blood.

  ‘Razak,’ Connie whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  As suddenly as it started, it ceased and the air stood still in the room.

  Connie pushed herself to her feet. ‘Whatever I can do to make up for what I did to your mother, I will do.’

  ‘Tadak. No,’ Razak insisted, sitting upright again. ‘Only job. Nothing more. Not from you.’

  The girl hissed something at her brother in Malay, too fast for Connie to catch. He shuddered and clutched his chest as though wounded, but then rose, and on silent feet he moved to the door. ‘We work,’ he said, and left.

  The girl sat immobile in the chair, her young face creased with fury.

  ‘Maya,’ Connie said with care, ‘Razak has made his decision. It needn’t be yours.’

  Maya glared at her. ‘We twins,’ she said.

  ‘It’s your choice, Maya. You can work here and live in one of the houses we have for employees, if that’s what you want. It would save you the journey from Palur every day.’


  The creases vanished from the girl’s skin and she grew calmer. ‘I talk to Razak.’ But her head was nodding agreement already, and Connie felt a sense of minor achievement. She was making progress in helping them.

  ‘Good, I’ll take you to the kitchen now to …’

  The soft knock at the study door interrupted her. She opened it and found Teddy on the other side, his brown hair tousled and windblown, his cheeks gleaming like polished apples, and she knew he had been running.

  ‘Mummy, look what I caught.’

  He held out his hand. On its palm sat a bright orange lizard. Connie laughed and took it from him, cupped gently between her hands. Only then did Teddy notice Maya standing behind her, and he gave the girl his sweet shy smile.

  ‘Maya is coming to work for us,’ Connie said. ‘Maya, this is my son, Teddy.’

  Maya’s eyes were huge. Black pools of envy.

  Connie and Teddy sat on the veranda doing their jigsaw. It was the Victory one of the farmyard with wooden pieces and beautiful soft English colours. No bright kingfisher blues or garish sun-bird yellows. Even the peacock – why on earth was there a peacock in a farmyard? – was painted in muted tints. It was their favourite. For Connie, the sight of the old shire horse always brought with it a rush of smells and sounds from home – no, not home, Hadley House was home now – from England, she meant, but it bemused her why Teddy should like this jigsaw so much.

  But then he enjoyed Kipling’s story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in India, and W. E. Johns’ tales of Biggles over Germany, even though he’d never been to either place. He was a child with a vivid imagination and a desire to explore the world around him with a courage that sometimes frightened the life out of her. It was a lizard he had brought home this time. But it could as easily have been one of the giant millipedes, or a horned beetle, or a hapless scarlet tree frog. Worse were the spiders.

  Jigsaws were safer. Maya watched, fascinated. She was perched cross-legged on a stool, making indecipherable mutterings, attention firmly fixed on the strange wooden shapes. When Teddy gave a squeal of pleasure each time he fitted in a new piece, her gaze would leap to his face before swivelling to Connie’s and back to the jigsaw. In the corner, Chala, Teddy’s amah, sat humming dissonant sounds to herself and sewing, her fingers nimble, and all the time she ignored Maya the way she would ignore a stray cat.

  A door banged in the house, and a moment later Nigel strolled onto the veranda. He brought with him an aroma of the outside world, and immediately Connie looked up to see if he had news of Johnnie, but knew by his face that he did not.

  ‘You’re home early,’ she said, surprised. It was only midday.

  ‘Bit of an emergency with the Export Permissions. I had to come home to fetch some forms from my desk.’ His white shirt lay open at the neck, revealing the triangle of skin there that was weathered by the sun.

  ‘Look, Daddy, look what I caught.’ Teddy flicked open the lid of the precious cigar box next to him on the table and revealed the lizard. It darted its eyes at Nigel but otherwise didn’t move.

  ‘Well done, young man. That’s a fine catch you have there. You should try pushing a stick through it and roasting it over a fire to learn what lizard meat tastes like. That’s what I did at your age.’

  Teddy regarded his father with severe rebuke. ‘No, Daddy, I have to look after it. To feed it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Crickets.’

  Nigel chuckled and said, ‘Over to you, Constance.’

  She groaned with mock dismay while he bent over, still chuckling, and dropped a kiss on his son’s head. She wished he’d do the same to her. Only then did he take note of the native girl perched on the stool, and at once his smile fell away, his limbs stiff and angular as he straightened up.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Maya Jumat.’

  ‘Jumat? Isn’t that the name of the woman you …?’

  ‘Yes. Maya is her daughter.’

  ‘Get her out of here.’

  ‘What? Nigel, don’t …’

  ‘Get her out of here, Constance,’ he said adamantly. He turned his back on the girl. ‘I do not want her in my house.’

  Connie rose to her feet, bemused by what could have prompted this sudden wave of dislike. ‘I’ve taken her on to work in the house,’ she explained.

  ‘No, I forbid it.’ The veins in his cheeks had darkened.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’

  He swung around and faced the girl, who was gazing impassively at her sandaled feet. On her face there was no reaction to his outburst.

  ‘Get out, girl.’ Nigel did not raise his voice, but hostility sharpened each word.

  ‘Why, Nigel?’ Connie demanded. ‘I want her to stay.’

  But it was too late. The girl slid off her stool, down the veranda steps and disappeared round the corner of the house, her shadow stretching behind her as though eager to remain. There was a long, unmanageable silence. Connie was aware of Teddy staring at his parents, his cheeks blotchy and flushed.

  ‘Chala,’ Connie said, ‘take Teddy out for a ride on his bicycle, will you, please?’

  ‘Yes, mem.’

  Chala wrapped Teddy’s small fist in hers and led him towards the garage block where his bicycle was kept. Normally he would jump at the offer, but today he hung back, dragging his feet in the dust and looking over his shoulder at the veranda in a way that pulled at Connie’s heart. His lizard crouched forgotten in its box on the table.

  Connie sat down heavily in her chair. ‘What was that about, Nigel?’

  ‘I don’t want the girl here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know nothing at all about her.’ He was striding up and down the length of the veranda. ‘For heaven’s sake, Constance, you kill a woman and then invite her daughter into our home, where you have a vulnerable young child. It’s too much of a risk. Isn’t it enough that you already have her brother working in the garden?’

  ‘I’m trying to help them.’

  His footsteps ceased as he came to stand opposite her. He was breathing hard. She could hear it stirring the air, and in an odd sort of way she felt the confrontation stirring their relationship, drawing up some emotions that were buried deep. It was a long time since she and Nigel had had a row. But why over this slip of a girl? Why now? She wiped her hand across her damp forehead. The shade of the veranda provided only slight protection from the heat, and an ink trail of red ants was beginning to explore the wooden pieces of the farmyard. Dear God, was nothing in this country safe from them?

  ‘Nigel,’ she said in a calm voice, ‘I mean to help this girl.’

  ‘Just give her some money, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I tried. Her brother refuses to accept our money. It would offend his mother’s spirit, it seems.’

  I curse you, white lady. The words whispered through her mind, and there was the taste of ash in her mouth. She desperately needed a cigarette. She pushed back her chair and headed towards the veranda steps.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To find Maya.’

  ‘I won’t have her here, Constance. Not on my estate.’

  Connie froze. Her foot hung suspended above the step down to the gravel path that ran like a white ribbon around the house, and her heart missed a beat as it tumbled to the bottom of her chest. In four words Nigel had robbed her of everything. Everything that she had put into the last nine years of being a rubber-planter’s wife. All the suffocating heat she had endured in silence, all the servants she had organised, the dinner parties she had given, all the tennis bashes she had attended, all the smiles she had pasted on her face. Even the son she had borne him. In four simple, effortless words he had destroyed it all.

  Not on my estate.

  He didn’t say on the Hadley estate.

  Or on this estate.

  Or on our estate.

  No. It was his estate. His alone. Not theirs. She didn’t count for anything out here in
Malaya. With a jerky movement of her hand, she brushed aside the air in front of her as if she couldn’t bear to inhale it a moment more, then she turned and walked past Nigel, entered the house and ran upstairs, taking them two at a time. She reached the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. The room was dim, the shutters closed, so that blue shadows drifted across the floor. An exhausted bee, heavy with laden pollen sacs, was buzzing frantically against the glass. The sound of its wings seemed to batter at her ears.

  She hurried into her dressing room and yanked open the drawer. The cigarette case was still there. Each time she expected it to have vanished. She took out a cigarette, leaving only one remaining in the silver case, then sat down on the bed and lit it. With slow, ragged breaths she inhaled, drawing the scent of Shohei Takehashi into her lungs, into the dark recesses of her mind.

  ‘You are beautiful, Connie.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘You have no idea how perfectly exquisite you are.’

  ‘Sho, stop it! Listen to me.’

  He kissed her throat, raising a ripple of delight along her skin; he nibbled her earlobe and caressed her breast. It was always like this. He knew how to distract her, to detach her mind from her body so that her thoughts floated loose and unfocused.

  Don’t, Sho. Don’t dismantle me. Don’t unpick the person I have so carefully sewn together.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she insisted again. ‘You must stop coming for visits to Hadley House. I know you think that in a social group no one will be suspicious of us because you’re a respectable trader in town, and speak English better than most Englishmen because you went to Cambridge University, but …’

  He laughed and kissed her naked stomach.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean,’ she finished, ‘that you can pass unnoticed.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Nigel likes my visits.’

  ‘Because it’s too dangerous.’

  ‘No, my sweet Connie. There’s no danger.’

  ‘He will suspect.’