The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Madoc, tell me I’m right and you’re wrong,’ Kitty whispered.

  But as she spoke, a sprinkling of what looked like tiny black eggs dropped out of the bottom of the aircraft and plummeted towards the clearing where Morgan’s Bar stood. Madoc couldn’t bear to look. He drew his wife deeper into the dark heart of the jungle, indifferent to the spiders’ webs that clung to their cheeks and the leeches that buried their blunt little heads into their flesh as they passed.

  When daylight came, they returned, in no hurry now. Not that Madoc doubted what they would find. Rage burned in his lungs, cramping them so badly that he had to stop as he hacked out a trail with the knife and lower his head to allow him to drag in air. Neither talked. Neither mentioned the explosions they had heard or the roar, like a volcano blasting off, which Madoc knew was the fuel tank for his generator blowing up.

  The sight that met their eyes tore something from Madoc’s soul that he knew he would never regain. Everything was gone. The bar, the casino, the outhouses, the jetty and the boat had all vanished, as though a giant hand had reached down and snatched them up. Scorched earth and blackened rubble was all that remained. He had started up afresh and created a new life for himself time after time in his past, a new place, a new name. But this was different: this was a home, the only real one he and Kitty had ever had. At forty-four he was too old for this.

  After one brief glance at it, he walked down to the river and stood on its bank. Even the water smelled of smoke. He turned his back on the clearing and remained stubbornly like that, his chin on his chest and his eyes closed, though he could hear Kitty rummaging among the burned ruins behind him. Yet again he had failed her, and yet again she wouldn’t ever blame him for it. If he had steered clear of the Japs, if he hadn’t been so bloody greedy, this would never have happened.

  He turned his head and saw her broad bottom bend over as she tugged at something in the blackened mess on the ground. At her feet she had piled a few oddments from her search: the steel blade of a parang but with no haft to hold it by, a scorched tin of corned beef, a shard of cracked mirror, a zinc bowl and, miraculously, an undamaged toothbrush.

  She lifted her head and saw him watching. The look on her face told him more than he needed to know about what was going on in her head. He walked quickly over to her, but she backed away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘It wasn’t you.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I knocked the ladder down on him.’

  ‘No, they did this to stop me telling the authorities about the bicycles I supplied to them.’

  ‘Bicycles! Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Madoc,’ she snapped. ‘They know you’d end up in prison if you told the authorities anything at all about your business with them.’

  ‘No, if it wasn’t the bicycles, it was the other stuff I’ve done with the Japs.’ He wanted her to believe the lie. ‘I’m so sorry, Kitty. I should have known it would end badly.’

  She wiped her filthy palms on her skirt and looked at him with a wonky attempt at a smile. ‘It always ends like this,’ she said.

  He nodded slowly. ‘So much the better. Just you and me against the rest of the bastards.’

  Connie held Teddy’s hand tight. She had picked him up from school after depositing the kerosene on the boat and was now heading for the library.

  Teddy loved the library. It was an imposing building with thick stone walls and a small clock tower above its studded front doors. Teddy loved it for the abundance of books to choose from, but Connie loved it because it was the coolest building in the whole of Palur. The heat and flies scarcely penetrated, which meant the books didn’t develop mould on their spines or curl the corners of their pages the way they did in the humid atmosphere at Hadley House. Over much of the town hung the perpetual smell of bad drains, even in the smart Windsor Hotel, but here in the library it was ousted by the distinctive aroma of leather and paper and ink. It reminded Connie of England.

  They took their time choosing, enjoying the quiet moment of togetherness, their heads bent over the pages as they assessed a book’s attraction. Their final selection after half an hour was Jack London’s White Fang for Teddy with one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories as a back-up, while for herself Connie took out the latest Agatha Christie and a biography of Ernest Shackleton. Just the thought of all that ice and snow made her feel better.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Hadley. You’re looking well. Hello, Teddy.’

  ‘Mr Fitzpayne. We meet again.’

  His handshake was firm but brief. He had emerged from the swing doors of the library’s reading room where the newspapers were spread out on long tables, but Connie couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that he wasn’t here by accident, that this was no coincidence. He was wearing a canvas cap and loose trousers that made him look as if he’d been working on one of the fishing boats.

  ‘I thought you might have left Palur,’ he said, ‘with all this excitement going on.’

  ‘Excitement? Is that what you call it?’

  ‘I noticed you at The White Pearl today.’

  Is there anything I do that you don’t notice?

  They stepped out into the street and she donned her sunglasses. After the soft grey silence of the library, the noise of the town struck Connie as harsh and brittle, busy with traffic and the chatter of people gathered in huddles on the pavement, eager to share and dissect every rumour or scrap of news.

  ‘No more adventures in the jungle to report?’ Fitzpayne asked her son.

  Teddy grinned. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So what are you reading?’

  Teddy held out the book. ‘It’s about a sled dog.’

  ‘Good choice. I read it when I was a boy.’

  There was a pause as they stood on the pavement, and Fitzpayne lifted his gaze from the boy to Connie. ‘I’m sorry to hear your husband is unwell.’

  ‘Is there anything about my family you don’t hear?’ It came out sharper than she intended.

  He looked at her keenly as he raised his canvas cap to her. ‘I hope he recovers quickly,’ he said, as if in farewell. But he didn’t stride off, just stood in front of her as if there were unfinished business between them.

  What was it he wanted from her?

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fitzpayne,’ she said. ‘Good afternoon to you.’

  She walked away, Teddy at her side.

  Connie headed quickly in the direction of her car, which was parked in the shade of a row of palm trees with the syce at the wheel. The encounter with Fitzpayne had unsettled her. He was constantly intruding, but she had no idea what it was he wanted. Were there business dealings with Nigel that he thought she could help with? Was it The White Pearl? Is that what he was after?

  As they skirted the edge of the crowded market with its colourful stalls and its aroma of spices, a hand touched her arm.

  ‘Connie, have you heard anything?’

  It was Elspeth Saunders, the mother of Teddy’s friend, Jack. She looked pale, her eyes sunk in shadows and her hair lank. Connie suspected she was pregnant again.

  ‘Elspeth, you should be at home, resting. Not out in this damned heat.’

  ‘I’m so frightened, Connie,’ she said in an undertone, so that the children wouldn’t hear. ‘What will happen if the Japs come south? We’ve all heard the terrible tales of what they do to their prisoners.’

  ‘Don’t worry so much. That’s what General Percival’s army is for, to drive them back. And we have the Prince of Wales and the Repulse to defend our coastline. We’ll be all right. Churchill will make certain we are well protected.’

  She pressed her friend’s hand reassuringly, but looked away because the lie lay uneasily on her tongue. She rather thought Churchill had a lot on his plate right now. A familiar noise caught her attention and she heard someone shout, ‘Go get ’em, boys! Give the bastards hell!’

  It was the drone of an aircraft overhead. This was the noise that everyone in Palur had grown accustomed to as the RAF pat
rolled the skies over Malaya, a welcome sound that made them feel safe. She glanced up and saw five planes silhouetted against the fierce blue sky, their fuselages glinting in the sun, a fighter and four heavy bombers. She waved. The drone grew louder.

  ‘Mummy!’ It was Teddy, his mouth wide open in alarm. ‘Mummy, they’re not ours! They have twin tails. They’re Japanese.’

  Connie seized his hand and started to run.

  *

  The first bomb hit the market square. A great wall of sound that blasted Teddy right off his feet, slamming him into the kerb, tearing at their eardrums and scrambling their minds. Connie picked him up in her arms and hurried forward. More bombs hurtled down, their impact shaking the earth beneath her feet.

  Screams ripped through the street as explosions roared from the direction of the harbour, and the bang and crump of falling bombs seemed to go on for ever. The air shuddered, turned grey. Filled Connie’s lungs with dust and dirt and smoke as buildings collapsed and fires started to rage from one shop to another.

  The library, I have to get us to the library. The library had a basement that would be safe. She held Teddy tight, his arms entwined around her neck, his legs locked around her waist, but she was sickeningly aware that his eyes were open wide, dazed and disbelieving. Bodies lay torn to pieces on the road in front of him. A man screamed at them, his beard on fire. Connie slapped out the flames with her bare hands and ran on. A telegraph pole crashed down inches ahead of her, its wires sending up sparks and writhing like scorched snakes across her path. She dodged them, her heart thumping. Hell was erupting around them.

  ‘Mummy!’ Teddy screamed a warning in her ear. ‘A Japanese fighter. A Zero!’

  Over the roar of burning buildings she heard the new sound, the spit and crack of machine-gun fire. She swung around, clasping her son, and the sight that faced her stopped her heart. At the far end of the street a single-engine fighter was flying very low, coming towards her as though it had smelled her blood. Its guns were slowly strafing the injured and shattering the windows, kicking up chunks of rubble from the buildings, killing a horse, ripping open the plump cheeks of a native woman who was shaking her fists at the monster in the sky. The library lay just ahead. Connie felt a shudder of relief and urged her legs to move faster, but as she raced for its front steps a man in a safari jacket, his trousers blasted into rags, stumbled across the street. He collapsed onto his knees in front of her.

  ‘Help me!’ he gasped. Where his left ear should be lay a dark, bubbling hole. Blood dribbled down his neck and pumped from his legs.

  Not now, she wanted to scream at him. Not now.

  Instead, she released her hold on her son. She stood him on the ground, seized the man’s arm and tried to yank him to his feet, but his legs were broken. The roar of the aircraft engine bombarded her senses, vibrating the air in her lungs as it grew closer. Chuck-chuck-chuck, the guns rattled, deadening all other sounds. Teddy’s mouth was opening and shutting, shouting something as he struggled to help raise the injured man by pushing his shoulder under the limp arm. But she couldn’t hear his voice.

  ‘Run, Teddy!’ she screamed at him. ‘Into the library!’

  She hauled the man up but he slid to his knees once more, his face full of anguish and his hands clawing at her. She pushed Teddy away.

  ‘Run!’

  The Zero was almost upon them. Teddy wrenched her sleeve, breaking her grip on the man. He yelled something at her. In desperation she bent double, lifted the man on her back and started to stagger as fast as she could towards the library. Teddy’s young face crumpled in horror but he made an effort to help her, slowing his scampering steps to hers and trying to take some of the weight.

  ‘No, Teddy. Run!’

  The blow of someone crashing into her back should have knocked her off her feet. The only reason it didn’t was because a strong hand held her upright. Someone had charged into her, yanking the man off her back so that he slumped to the ground where bullets were already hissing and spitting, and chips of paving stone were dancing in the sunlight. Connie and Teddy were propelled at speed into the stone wall of the library, jammed hard against it and held there. The cry of the wounded man fluttered in the air somewhere behind her.

  The plane ripped past overhead. Connie twisted her head and saw panicked people fleeing and falling in the street. More bodies lay on the shimmering tarmac. Connie’s ears throbbed and her hand was twisted firmly into Teddy’s hair.

  ‘Now, move!’

  The person crushing them against the wall stood back, releasing them and at once she spun round to see who had saved them. She was met by Fitzpayne’s urgent grey eyes.

  ‘Inside. Quick,’ he ordered. ‘The plane will make a return run.’

  ‘Now, Teddy!’

  Connie ran, hauling her son along with her, but she paused to stare at the man on the ground who had asked for their help. He was lying in a pool of blood, bullet holes dotted over the front of his safari jacket like scarlet buttons. His glazed eyes were opened to the sun and a fly was sipping moisture from the corner of one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘You are a fool,’ Fitzpayne said savagely behind her. ‘You and your son would have died.’

  She shook her head at him in anger. ‘But how many people do I have to kill here in Palur before this country is satisfied and spits me out?’

  Blood and books: the smells mingled in the basement room of the library. It was stiflingly hot and airless, so that sweat soaked Connie’s clothes, making them cling to her body. But at least she still had a body and limbs for them to cling to. The image of the safari jacket with its crimson holes haunted her, and rage burned the back of her throat. She wanted to tear that Jap plane out of the skies and shake it to pieces.

  Other people came. Some brought the injured and wounded with them, some tumbled down the steps into the basement, sobbing. A few crawled, leaving a trail of scarlet slime in their wake. She bandaged them using petticoats and shirts cut into strips, she murmured soft words of comfort to soothe their fears and rocked in her arms the ones who needed to cry and hold onto someone. When a bomb landed close by and made them flinch, she covered their ears. She wiped their tears. And all the time she swore under her breath.

  ‘Talking to yourself?’

  It was Fitzpayne again. She had not seen him for the couple of hours she had been inside the basement.

  ‘No,’ Connie muttered, straightening her back, ‘just telling the Japs what I would do to people who wage war on innocent civilians.’ She pushed away her hair and it felt slick against her skin. ‘What’s it like outside?’

  ‘Not good. The planes keep coming, waves of them.’

  ‘What have you been doing out there?’

  ‘Not much. Digging out survivors from the rubble of buildings.’

  She looked at him properly. He was covered in dirt, his hair almost white with dust, his shirt was torn and blood on his arm had dried in a crust. Was it his, or someone else’s? His face looked utterly exhausted.

  ‘Mr Fitzpayne, I …’

  ‘Call me Fitz.’

  ‘Fitz, I think you need a rest.’

  He shrugged and gave her a crooked smile. ‘So do you, Mrs Hadley.’ He looked around and frowned. ‘Where’s the boy?’

  ‘Teddy?’ She pointed to the far corner of the room where her son was sitting on the floor surrounded by a group of young children. He was reading to them. ‘He’s been helping me. Very brave.’

  ‘Like his mother.’

  Her eyes flicked up to his face, but he wasn’t laughing at her. He took her elbow and steered her away from the woman whose head she had just bandaged, to a quiet patch where he leaned against a wall and for a moment closed his eyes.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’ Connie asked.

  He nodded, and drew a cigarette pack and matches from his pocket. She lit one, and handed it to him, then lit one for herself. She breathed out a coil of smoke and felt some of the tension trickle away with i
t. ‘I was rude earlier, I’m sorry. I am very grateful for your help in the street. It’s just that I was …’

  ‘Forget it. You wanted to save that man but,’ he looked at her through shrewd, intelligent eyes, ‘you can’t save everyone.’

  Her gaze roamed around the room of wounded people. ‘I can save some,’ she said softly. ‘Tell me, do you believe in curses?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

  She looked at him with surprise. She hadn’t expected that from him. With a grimace she drew on her cigarette. ‘Death seems to follow me. As faithful as a dog.’

  The amusement slid from his eyes. ‘Do you invite it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She shrugged and gave Fitzpayne a self-conscious smile. ‘Do you know what one little girl called me today when I bandaged her arm? She said I must be an angel.’

  ‘Angels bring happiness.’

  ‘Except for the Angel of Death.’

  Instantly an edge of coldness crept into his eyes and his voice as he asked, ‘Is that what you are cursed to be?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, Mrs Hadley, you’re not thinking straight. It’s the shock of rubbing shoulders with death in the street today.’

  Then he did something else that she wouldn’t have expected of him. He took her chin in his hand and shook it hard, as if to rattle the thoughts out of her head. At the same time, his gaze fixed fiercely on hers and she was conscious of the feel of his calloused fingers against her skin, an intimate touch from a man she barely knew. His strange, questing look searched her eyes.

  ‘Why are you so angry with yourself?’ he asked with concern.

  She jerked her head away. ‘I’m worried about my husband. He’ll have heard about the attack on Palur by now.’

  ‘Don’t fret over it. I sent a boy out to Hadley House to say that you and your son were unhurt.’