‘Hah! You overestimate his awareness. I talk to him by the hour about the rubber business.’
‘What on earth do you find to discuss?’
‘He tells me about the new varieties that will produce twice as much latex per tree, and about how much the Americans are shipping out of here. He moans about the Excess Profits Tax that the British government has imposed, and worries about his rubber stocks in the godowns. He is only too pleased to have an ear into which he can pour his passion.’ He brushed his lips along the top of each of her breasts, and she could not stop her hand stroking his sleek black hair. ‘Because rubber is your husband’s passion, my love.’
A flush rose from her neck to her cheeks. ‘I know. It’s true. Rubber is his passion, not me.’
She sat up in bed and drew herself away from him. The bedroom was stuffy and hot, a tiny room in a scruffy little hut built of attap that Sho had discovered abandoned in the jungle. It was only a few miles from the Hadley Estate down an overgrown track where no one ventured. She could just about squeeze her car between the dense foliage most of the way there and she walked the rest, the perfect hideaway, guarded on one side by a brown, turbulent river that murmured to them while they made love. Sho had brought clean sheets and a teapot to it, and she had laughed at him. She had filled the room with flowers, large, luscious blooms that made the air languorous with their scent.
‘Anyway,’ he said edging closer, trailing a finger over her thigh, ‘I like seeing you at home. You are different there.’
‘Different? How?’
‘You are the perfect English hostess at home, elegant and charming.’ He lifted her foot in his hand and started to massage the underside of its big toe. It felt as though his fingers were caressing a nerve that connected in a direct line straight up to her heart. ‘So untouchable,’ he continued. ‘So serene. So … in control.’ He squeezed the tip of her toe till she gave a high-pitched yip of pain and snatched her foot away.
‘Sho, we can always meet here. Don’t come to my house any more. I mean it.’
The moment hung between them. They both heard the jungle exhale its dank breath over the crumpled confines of their bed and, despite the heat, Connie shivered.
‘I mean it, Sho.’ She drew her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins, reclaiming her feet.
He leaned forward, his chin sharp, his eyes black and impenetrable. ‘Do you know what is happening inside Japan right now? Do you?’
‘I know your armies are marching all over Korea and China, and that …’
‘No, I said inside Japan.’
She stared at him. ‘No. Tell me.’
‘We are creating a new nationalist breed of men. From their earliest days in school, their minds and bodies have been prepared for war. They train rigorously day after day from the age of five; they wear military clothes and chant military songs. They are being indoctrinated with the code of the samurai warrior. To die in battle is to fall in the moment of perfection, just like the cherry blossom when it falls from the tree. They are convinced that Emperor Hirohito is divine, that Japan is invincible and that the Japanese are the chosen race, which means they cannot wait to hurl themselves into war.’
Connie put her hand to her mouth. ‘Is that what you believe too, Shohei Takehashi-san?’
His hand shot out and seized hers from her mouth. He dragged her close and placed a harsh kiss on her lips. ‘I want you to know what is coming,’ he said in an urgent whisper. ‘The old textile and trading firms of Japan like Mitsubishi and Yasuda have moved into munitions and armaments, as well as new firms like Mori and Nissan. Each day the workforce of these factories bows down three times in the direction of the palace in Tokyo. They are ready to die for their Emperor.’ Sho’s eyes glittered in the gloom. ‘I want you to know this, because you have to understand that all you British and your Empire will be wiped off the face of Asia. You will fall to the samurai sword in thousands upon thousands. The weak will always kneel to the strong, and my people are the strongest here in Asia.’
She tried to twist her wrist from his grip but it was the grip of the warrior, not the silk merchant. The sun had leaked through the mesh that she had pinned over the window to keep out insects and it painted a grid of dusky lines over his face, as if it were a samurai face mask.
‘But I will protect you, my Connie. I will stand by you when the time comes.’
She stared at him. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because you are mine.’ His rigid features softened, and he bowed his head to kiss the back of her hand.
‘Sho, don’t be foolish. You are teasing me.’
He laughed easily. ‘Of course I am.’
So why did she shudder? Why did she feel a sliver of something in her stomach, something cold and wretched?
13
After the unpleasant scene with her husband on the veranda, Connie stubbed out her cigarette in an angry gesture as if she could stub out the memory of it. It was a whole year ago, twelve long months since the hut in the jungle, yet the pictures were still so pin-sharp. Wasn’t it time they started to blur round the edges, like old photographs?
She pushed back the shutters of the bedroom, letting in a tidal wave of heat and looked out over the lawns and garden. There were the beginnings of the jungle on one side, as thick and solid as a wall, and the Hadley Rubber Estate on the other, stretching for miles across the distant hills and valleys. Shimmering shades of dense green, great lakes of it in which you could drown. A pair of green parrots swept across her vision, screeching at her as they landed in the flame-of-the-forest tree, setting Pippin barking somewhere out of sight. Most probably with Teddy and his bicycle on the strip of concrete behind the garage. Connie’s throat was dry, and an ache was making itself felt somewhere deep within her head. She turned, tempted by the final cigarette in the silver case, but at that moment a quiet tap sounded on her door.
‘Come in.’
It was Chala, the amah, who opened the door and poked her chubby face tentatively around it. ‘You need me?’ she asked.
Chala had been with the family for the last five years, a cheerful woman of forty who liked her chapattis somewhat more than was wise. Her dark eyes looked at Connie now with concern. Her wrist jangled with bracelets as she shook them and asked again, ‘You need me?’
‘Not now, Chala, no.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. Thank you.’
But the bracelets remained at the door, Chala shuffling her feet until Connie sighed and walked over to her.
‘What is it, Chala? What’s the matter?’
‘She say mem not happy. She say you need me. Need my help.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Chala, I’m perfectly happy, and am just taking a breather up here away from …’ She stopped as Chala’s words sank into her head. ‘What do you mean, Chala? Who is this she? Who told you that I need you?’
‘The alley cat.’
For a moment Connie didn’t understand. ‘Alley cat? Oh, you mean Maya.’
‘Yes, mem.’
‘She said I’d asked for you to come to me?’
‘No, mem.’ Chala proffered a small smile to bridge the misunderstanding. ‘She say you need me. I ask what for, and she say you unhappy.’ Her feet started shuffling once more. ‘You unhappy, mem?’
‘Thank you for your concern, Chala. I appreciate it, but no, I’m fine.’ Connie frowned. ‘Chala, where is Teddy?’
‘On the cycle.’ The woman’s amiable face broke into a grin and she started to chuckle. ‘He learn to turn in rings,’ she twirled her fingers to demonstrate, ‘but the black pest …’ she always labelled Pippin the black pest, ‘he …’
‘Chala!’
The amah stopped. Checked the laughter rising in her throat. ‘What, mem?’
‘Where is Maya?’
‘She watch Teddy.’
A cold sensation spread from Connie’s feet up through her limbs. She rushed from the room, flew down the stai
rs, and burst out through the front door into the blinding sunlight.
‘Teddy!’ she screamed. ‘Teddy!’
She couldn’t find him. Her chest hurt. She couldn’t find her son. Or his dog. His scarlet Raleigh bicycle lay abandoned on its side on the concrete behind the garage, its chrome handlebars glinting like a thousand eyes in the rays of the sun.
Maya, don’t hurt him. I beg you, don’t do this. Don’t do to my child what I did to your mother. He’s only a little boy, he’s not to blame.
She pinned her hopes on Pippin. If the dog was with him, then maybe he was just playing somewhere – in the bushes and under the long fingers of the casuarina tree, or in the stables, tumbling around in the hay, or crawling under the shed in search of one of his beloved frogs.
‘Ajib,’ she shouted to one of the gardeners, ‘have you seen Tuan Teddy?’
He shook his head. ‘He play,’ he smiled, and started to say something about the state of the lawn, but she cut him off.
‘Find him, Ajib. Find him quickly.’
She ran from one end of the garden to the other, calling her son’s name, searching the vegetable patch, the orchard, the hen houses behind the stables. Her breath grew ragged.
‘Keep searching!’ she shouted to Ajib. ‘Get all the gardeners to search thoroughly.’
In the garage she found that Nigel’s Jaguar had gone. He had driven back to town, but Ho Bah, their chauffeur, was there.
‘Did Tuan take his son?’ she demanded.
The wiry little figure was polishing the glass of her Chrysler. ‘No, mem. He go alone.’
‘Ho Bah, my son has gone missing.’
His old eyes popped wide, and the lines of his face drooped in sympathy. ‘Bad boy,’ he said. ‘I find him.’
‘I want you to take my car and search the road.’
She could picture her son, his legs thin and dusty under his shorts, trudging down the eight miles to town, his small hand in Maya’s. What had the girl promised him? What would tempt him to break the strict rule about never leaving the garden? Ho Bah jumped into the driving seat and backed the car out of the garage but as he vanished down the drive, a thought hit her: Razak. Where is Razak? An image fluttered into Connie’s head of the butterfly caught between Razak’s fingers in his house, its wings crushed, its beauty destroyed. Darkness settled in her mind.
‘Razak!’ she shouted at the top of her voice, startling the parrots, but no answer came.
She raced back to the house, hurrying from room to room, Chala behind her now, close on her heels. All the time she called his name.
‘Teddy!’
Chala’s high-pitched ‘Teddy!’ followed like an echo.
Connie ordered the houseboys to hunt through every cupboard, under every bed, in every wardrobe. She stripped Teddy’s bed, as if he might be hiding under a pillow. She tore down the wigwam in the playroom and the igloo made of white sheets under the billiard table. She marched into the kitchen where she dragged the heavy rice sacks from the back of the larder, in case he had squeezed in behind them.
What kind of mother loses her son?
A car’s engine sounded in her ears, wheels on the gravel. Ho Bah? Nigel? She hurried from the house and found a yellow Ford taxi parked on the drive. Out of it stepped the broad figure of Fitzpayne in khaki shirt and twill trousers.
‘Mr Fitzpayne, now is not a good moment to come visiting.’
‘I’ve come on business. To speak with your husband. I was told he was here.’
‘No. He has gone.’
He stood stiffly for a moment, inspecting her. She knew she must look a mess, but she didn’t care. She felt a gust of annoyance at his reluctance to leave.
‘Mr Fitzpayne, I am busy,’ she said curtly. ‘Too busy for chatter about boats. Good day to you.’
She turned away. Where next, where next? Where hadn’t she searched? Why wasn’t Pippin barking? Why had Maya …?
‘Mrs Hadley? What is wrong, Mrs Hadley?’
Go away. Go away.
She speeded up her steps. The orchard, she’d search it again. She hurried past the vegetable garden with its high, protective hedge and ran into the orchard, all the time her eyes shredding the trees and shrubs for a glimpse of white shirt or tangled brown curls. To her surprise, she found Fitzpayne right behind her.
‘What is the problem, Mrs Hadley?’
‘I’ve lost my son.’ The enormity of the words nearly choked her.
‘Have you searched everywhere in the house and garden?’
‘Yes, of course I’ve searched everywhere.’
‘Then he must be elsewhere.’
‘Teddy knows he is never allowed to leave the garden.’
He snorted dismissively. ‘He’s a boy – and boys are built to break rules.’
‘My chauffeur is searching the road,’ she told him.
‘I didn’t spot a child anywhere along the route coming here.’
A small sliver of hope died.
‘So,’ he said, glancing beyond the garden confines, ‘he is either in the rubber plantation or in the jungle.’ He spoke about it as casually as he might about a mislaid shoe. ‘My money’s on the jungle.’
‘No.’ Please, no.
‘Is there an easy way through the fence?’
She didn’t reply, but led him behind the rhododendron bushes to a narrow gate in the perimeter fence. It was used by the servants to gather wood for fuel, or to hunt monkeys for their supper.
‘Shall we?’ Fitzpayne stepped back and waited for her to make the decision.
She seized the latch and threw it open.
The jungle air was suffocating, as though someone had clamped a damp cloth over her nose. It smelled of rotting vegetation and musky animals. Huge rattan trees closed in on her, green tendrils looping down from their branches as if eager to throttle her, and the whoops of gibbons in the canopy sounded eerie down on the ground. The intense heat hit her the moment she stepped onto the tiny trail that wriggled through the foliage. Somewhere far above her she knew there was a sky but she couldn’t see it, just a lid of green, as solid as a croquet lawn.
She tried to move fast, but it was hopeless. Giant ferns barricaded her route. She had to scramble around them, her feet sucked into sodden earth, the scent of her skin attracting a thousand winged insects. Within two minutes her blouse was sticking to her back; within six, the green barrier all around her deadened her senses. It absorbed all sound. Eighty feet up in the tree canopy she could hear hornbills calling, but here on the ground every rustle and murmur was immediately swallowed by the dripping ranks of leaves. It felt like being wrapped up in a wet carpet.
The curse of Sai-ru Jumat was real. And it was destroying her life.
‘Listen!’
Connie listened. Nothing. She shook her head.
‘I hear a dog.’
Fitzpayne had sharp ears. She couldn’t hear a dog. Her heart pricked in her chest.
‘Where?’ she asked quickly.
He veered off the narrow path and barged aside the curtain of foliage. Instantly Connie heard a bark.
‘Teddy! Teddy!’ she shouted, but the sound died the moment it left her mouth. Dark green leaves shimmered, wrapping themselves around her words.
She pushed on, striking out at the forest, breaking her way through it, hating it, resenting its power to seize her son. To her astonishment, the figure of Teddy swung abruptly into view. Swung into view. Literally. He was up in the air, suspended ten feet above a narrow gulley, sitting astride a length of wood. It dangled on the end of a rope which ran up to a hefty branch twenty feet above him. He was swinging back and forth like a pendulum. His hands clutched tightly to the rope but he was leaning back, a look of intense happiness on his young face. His lips were moving, sound bubbling out of them, and it took Connie a moment to recognise it as the noise of an engine. Teddy was flying, swooping his imaginary aircraft through the skies.
On the edge of the gulley, Pippin saw her and barked with delight.
> ‘Mummy!’ Teddy called, released one hand and waved, grinning wildly. ‘Mummy, look, I’m …’ he swung so close she reached out to seize him, but the rope snatched him away at the last second and swept him back to the other side. ‘… I’m flying.’
Sweat froze on Connie’s cheeks as she stared across the gulley straight into the eyes of Maya and Razak Jumat. Their brown hands were holding onto Teddy’s white shirt, preventing him from swinging back to her.
I curse you, white lady. The words lay unspoken between them, crawling in the gulley, rustling in the dead undergrowth.
‘Give me my son,’ Connie ordered.
Beside her, she was aware of sudden movement. She caught sight of Fitzpayne’s khaki shirt disappearing down into the gulley. Previously he had struck her as bullish in his movements, solid and heavy, but now he streaked forward with the smooth speed of a leopard. The twins’ hands instantly released their grip on Teddy’s shirt.
As her son swung towards her, she snatched him off the rope and landed him firmly at her side. His face was dirty, his shirt was covered in green smears, his feet were thick with mud almost up to his knees, but his eyes were shining and out of his mouth tumbled a torrent of excitement. He pointed to the spot where the rope was tied to the tree high above.
‘Razak climbed all the way up there.’
Connie didn’t hear any of his words. Her eyes fed on him, drank him in, imprinted again into her head the soft texture of his skin, the curl of his eyelashes, the tilt of his chin. Her hand clasped his small fingers tightly against her side as if she could sew him to her, the way Chala sewed bright strips of beads around her ankles. Dimly she became aware of other things. That the ache had stopped. That Razak and Maya were standing right in front of her, Fitzpayne behind them. That Teddy wanted his hand back.
‘Right,’ she said firmly, ‘back to the house.’
Teddy opened his mouth to moan, but before he could begin to object Fitzpayne swept him up under his arm like a roll of old tarpaulin and strode back the way they had come. Teddy kicked and squealed with delight, his muddy legs flailing against leaves and branches. It occurred to Connie that Nigel would never treat him so roughly – but then, neither would she.
The White Pearl Page 14
