The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Madoc! Back off. We’re in enough trouble.’

  He kissed her dirty cheek and smelled the stale odour of her sweat as he stared out at the sleek yacht, rolling and yawing as the waves churned beneath her. A male figure that Madoc hadn’t seen before was standing at the rail, and the native kid was rowing out to him in a small boat.

  ‘Luscious, ripe and ours for the taking.’

  ‘Watch yourself, Madoc! Don’t be a bloody fool. We’re not even going to be invited on board.’

  He leaned forward, picked up the butt of the cigarette that had been discarded in the sand and lit it from the fire. ‘You underestimate Mrs Hadley.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  Madoc was always careful of what he said about other women to Kitty. Her tongue could be sharp.

  ‘Just that she is …’ he hesitated, seeking out the right word, ‘… unfettered.’

  ‘Rot! All women of her class are in chains. They wear them as naturally as they wear their hats.’

  ‘Not this one.’ He took a last drag on the cigarette butt and flicked it into the fire. ‘It seems to me that she’s dumped her chains in the sea. That’s why her husband looks at her as if he’s chewing on a porcupine.’

  For a long while Kitty said nothing, just stared into the flames while the wind snatched at her hair and threw small whirlwinds of sand at her. The growl of the breakers masked the voices of the group at the water’s edge, and Madoc felt the familiar sensation of a bubble expanding in his chest until it was almost painful. The nerves of his fingertips and the soles of his feet started to dance and prickle. A sure sign: the game was on. Winner takes all. His hand slid down to his pack and fingered the Russian pistol inside it.

  Suddenly Kitty started to laugh, and the tense hunch of her shoulders vanished. She sat up straight and skimmed Mrs Hadley’s china plate across the sand in a gesture of abandon, then she gave him the sideways look that always stirred his loins.

  ‘Go for it, Madoc.’

  ‘Mr Madoc.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hadley?’

  ‘I am worried about your wife.’

  ‘So am I. She’s not well.’ Madoc cast a look of concern at Kitty, who had slumped on the sand in a passable imitation of someone struggling against total collapse. ‘She doesn’t have a fever,’ he assured the woman as she bent over and felt Kitty’s forehead. He couldn’t have her thinking there was any risk of infection.

  She crouched down and rested a hand on Kitty’s shoulder. ‘It’ll be the shock,’ she said quietly. ‘Losing everything.’

  ‘And starvation. She hadn’t eaten in days until the meal you gave her.’

  Her face under the wind-tossed hair was mobile, her full mouth was wide and expressive. As a rule, Madoc didn’t take to blondes. Their skin was always far too pallid for his taste, but there was something about this woman. Something that drew his interest. Beneath her gentle hands and her soft voice, he was aware of a strength that made him cautious. He recognised it at once because it was the same quiet quality that Kitty had, a kind of taut steel mesh under the pliant skin. The woman’s blue eyes possessed a single-mindedness that her long golden lashes couldn’t hide, however hard she tried.

  Madoc had survived where others perished because he was good at picking out what made people tick, and it was as plain as day to him that this was the kind of woman who would shoot you through the head without drawing breath if you so much as touched the things she cared for in life. Watch yourself, Madoc, he heard Kitty’s voice in his head. He glanced across the beach at the boy called Teddy, digging a hole in the sand on all fours with his dog, both with pink tongues hanging out. His face had the structure of his father’s, but there was an awareness and a carefulness in the kid’s brown eyes that spoke of his mother. Is that her weak spot? The boy?

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  Nigel Hadley had rejoined them, and was staring uncomfortably down at his wife’s head bent over Kitty. Behind him stood the other couple – the Courts, was that their name? – the wife clutching a cracker in her hand. For one surprised moment he thought she was going to offer it to Kitty, but no, she sank her teeth into it and licked the crumbs from her lips.

  ‘If your wife is exhausted, Mr Madoc,’ Hadley said, ‘maybe she would prefer to stay on shore and rest, rather than take the risk of rough seas on the boat. Don’t you think so, Constance?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Still crouched beside Kitty, Constance Hadley gave her husband an uneasy stare. ‘I think it would be inhuman to leave her here.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Connie,’ Henry Court pushed the cushion of his stomach forward, the way Madoc had seen lawyers do when making a point against him in the dock, ‘have you thought this through and considered what might happen?’

  ‘What is it you are frightened might happen, Henry?’

  ‘The food,’ her husband interrupted. ‘We have to watch out for our rations, otherwise …’

  ‘Otherwise Harriet might eat them all,’ Connie finished, and watched the colour rise in Harriet’s cheeks.

  ‘Now listen to me,’ Henry Court started, ‘I demand an apology for …’

  ‘I can cook for you on your boat.’ It was Kitty’s voice, a sad, bleating sound. But she had lifted her head from her hands and was giving Nigel Hadley her most convincingly docile smile. ‘I’m a good cook. Ask Madoc.’

  Oh Kitty, I love you.

  Instantly there was a murmuring between the two men, and their hostility slithered away.

  ‘Perhaps we should find room for them after all, Nigel,’ Court said, unconsciously resting his hand on his stomach. ‘Can’t just leave them here for the Japs.’

  Madoc had to bite his tongue to stop a laugh.

  ‘Well, well, damn me if it isn’t Madoc Morgan, the wharf rat!’

  Madoc swung around to see who had spoken behind him. The rowing boat was lying like a tired turtle on the sand, and deep footprints led from it to the man who addressed him. Broad-shouldered, dark-haired, eyes the colour of a freshly sharpened blade, the kind of man Madoc had spent a lifetime avoiding. In his hand he swung a parang that glistened in the morning air.

  ‘Fitzpayne!’

  Oh, shit.

  22

  ‘Happy Christmas!’

  ‘Don’t, Connie. This is not a happy Christmas,’ Harriet pointed out morosely.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Connie insisted. ‘Come on, Harriet, don’t be so gloomy. Yes, there’s a war on but we’re all safely together and still alive. We’re stuck here for at least another day – which is not what any of us hoped for, I know, but let’s enjoy it.’

  She beamed at the three other females, seated in the rough shelter in which they had spent the night. ‘It’s Christmas 1941. A Christmas none of us will ever forget.’

  She reached into the cardboard box that she had ferried from the boat with Fitzpayne at the oars the previous day, and brought out three small packages that were wrapped in silky green leaves. She presented one to Harriet, one to Kitty and one to Maya.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said again and added, ‘Let’s wish for peace to all men.’

  They looked at the presents, astonished, but a ripple of self-conscious pleasure spread from one to the other.

  ‘Thanks,’ Harriet said. She sat up straighter and unwrapped the leaves.

  Inside lay a tablet of verbena-scented soap, a lace-edged handkerchief tied around six sugared almonds and a tortoiseshell comb with a narrow silver backbone, one of a set of four that Connie’s grandmother had sent her for her thirtieth birthday. Harriet lifted the soap to her nostrils, closed her eyes and inhaled its scent. ‘Now I remember what real life smells like,’ she said, and uttered one of her old laughs.

  The gifts were the same for Kitty and Maya. Kitty opened hers and nodded quietly to herself. She lifted her head and looked steadily at Connie. ‘You are a generous woman,’ she said, which embarrassed Connie.

  Maya tore off the leaves and stared at the soap, ha
ndkerchief and comb with round, baffled eyes. ‘Terimah kasih,’ she muttered, ‘thank you, mem.’ She stroked a finger over the smooth, pastel-pink coating of a sugared almond before popping it into her mouth, then ran the comb through a strand of her black hair, flicking it neatly over her shoulder as she finished. She grinned at Connie, showing small white teeth. It was the first time Connie had ever seen her smile.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, Maya.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Kitty?’ Madoc demanded in a low voice.

  ‘I’m making a Christmas pudding for her.’ Her plump arms were elbow-deep in raisins and flour and God only knows what else, trying to avoid the drips from the tarpaulin roof.

  ‘You’re supposed to be ill.’

  ‘Go away.’

  Her mosquito-bitten face looked suddenly deflated, and it dawned on him that she had been enjoying herself and he had spoiled it.

  ‘Be careful,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t appear so bloody happy.’

  She gave him a look that could have curdled milk, so he decided to risk the rain rather than her tongue. It was sheeting down outside, as only tropical rain knows how, drenching him to the skin in seconds and battering his scalp with the force of a thousand tiny hammers. He ducked into the men’s shelter and shook himself, smelling at once the aromatic smoke of a fine cigar. It made his lungs ache for one.

  Constance Hadley had presented each of the men, including himself, with a gift of a Havana cigar and a handful of sugared almonds. The almonds he passed on to the Hadleys’ kid immediately. Madoc didn’t even want them in his pocket, but the cigar he appreciated. He would enjoy it like a toff after his Christmas dinner – or luncheon as they insisted on calling it. It was dinner to him and Kitty, and always would be.

  Yesterday the men had built two ramshackle shelters to wait out the storm, using tarpaulins from the boat with branches and fronds from the forest. They were tucked in close to the jungle’s edge to escape the worst of the wind. The larger one was for the four women to sleep in, and the smaller one was for the six men and the boy. It seemed cockeyed to Madoc, but he was told in no uncertain terms by Nigel Hadley that ‘the ladies need space’. He didn’t ask what for.

  He glanced around the shelter now. The boy was off with his mother, but on a blanket on the ground Hadley and the native lad were bent over a snakes and ladders board, while the pilot played poker with Henry Court. The cigar smoke was issuing from the round mouth of Razak, who was trying to blow smoke rings, much to the amusement of Hadley, who let out a great guffaw each time the Malay boy spluttered and coughed. The wind swirled the smoke through the shelter, chasing away the insects, and buffeted the tarpaulin roof.

  ‘Where’s Fitzpayne?’ Madoc asked.

  ‘Checking on The White Pearl,’ Hadley replied without lifting his head. ‘Working the bilge pump.’

  Madoc itched to take a closer look at the yacht, and had offered to row Mrs Hadley out yesterday when she wanted to fetch some blankets, but Fitzpayne had stepped in and put a stop to it. He had rowed her out himself. Madoc had been left on the shore to stare disconsolately after them as the turbulent seas threatened to swamp the rowing boat in the rain. Damn Fitzpayne. He wouldn’t mind seeing the man’s dark curls vanish under those waves.

  The shock of finding him here had been a blow to his plans. He would have to tread warily. Fitzpayne was no fool. They had first run into each other on the wharves of Kuala Terengganu on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula when Madoc was doing a spot of opium-running down from Shanghai, at the same time as getting well paid for smuggling a cabin-load of refugee Russian girls to the Philippines. He and Fitzpayne ended up on opposite sides of a knife fight, and Madoc still bore the scars. Why the hell did he have to turn up here?

  He found a corner of the blanket to sit on, keeping a respectful distance from Hadley with his long, disdainful face, but close enough to snatch up the cigar that the native lad decided to discard. He stamped his heel on a battalion of foraging ants and let his thoughts climb aboard The White Pearl.

  Connie felt good about welcoming Kitty into the group. There was something about this woman she liked, despite her excessive amount of soft bare flesh and her bush of wild grey hair that made her look like one of the crazy fire-walkers that Connie had seen when she and Nigel stayed in the Station Hotel in Kuala Lumpur last year, en route to the Batu Caves. Kitty, she felt instinctively, was a person worth having in your corner, which was more than she could say for Harriet. She worried about her friend. Harriet seemed to be transforming into a different person from the one she knew in Palur.

  Fear does strange things to people. The carefully constructed defences can collapse and the creature beneath emerges, wild-eyed, claws sharpened. She thought about the way Nigel looked at her now – almost as though she were a stranger. Was she the one who had changed? Or was it him? He studiously avoided her company, and spent most of his time with Johnnie, Teddy and Razak. Less time with Henry, who was becoming more obnoxious with each passing day, as fear and hunger tightened his belt.

  It pleased Connie immensely that Nigel and Teddy both enjoyed Razak’s company. They were teaching him all kinds of things – maybe too many card and board games for her liking, but it made her laugh when the native boy shouted ‘Snap!’ at the top of his voice and whooped with delight at winning. But she could see Maya withdrawing, becoming more and more isolated and that worried her. She had tried to include the girl in her own activities, but Maya would just gaze up at her from under her thick black eyelashes and shake her head.

  But today was Christmas Day. So while Kitty hovered over her pans bubbling on the fire, and Harriet sat with glazed eyes as Teddy explained to her the inner workings of a combustion engine from his new The Wonder Book of Motors that Connie had given him for Christmas, she asked Maya to chop a couple of onions. A simple task.

  Connie held out a small knife to her. ‘Come and help.’

  The girl stopped combing her hair and staring out at the ceaseless rain. She rose from her knees, eyes jumping from the knife to Connie. ‘Yes, mem,’ she said.

  As they worked side by side chopping the onions and peeling a head of garlic, the sounds of the storm raged outside their makeshift home and made the interior feel oddly intimate. Smoke from the fire swirled around them, and they had to lean their heads closer to make themselves heard above the snapping and cracking of the tarpaulin.

  ‘Do you like cooking, Maya?’

  The girl shook her head and concentrated on slicing the onion.

  ‘I’m useless at it,’ Connie laughed.

  Still mute.

  ‘I think we’re lucky to have Mrs Madoc today, don’t you, Maya? The men will be pleased to have a good hot meal.’

  The girl shrugged. She wasn’t making it easy.

  ‘Maya, I went looking for you among the shacks in Palur after the fire.’

  Maya’s sharp little knife paused. ‘Why you do that, mem?’

  ‘Because I was worried about you. I wanted to know that you and Razak had escaped the flames and were safe.’

  ‘I all right.’

  ‘Yes.’ Connie watched the girl’s blade resume its staccato movements. ‘But a man told me you were dead.’

  ‘I not dead.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘Who silly bugger tell you I dead?’

  ‘A blind man.’

  ‘Oh, him. He big liar. I run from flames, run, run, run. They not bite me.’

  ‘I’m very relieved that you did. Did most of the others run with you?’

  ‘Yes, many, many. Like rats.’

  Connie nodded, put down her own knife and turned to face the girl. ‘The blind man had a child that died in the fire. He said it was yours.’

  Maya’s eyes widened with shock. ‘Aiyee! I tell you, he big liar.’

  ‘So it’s not true?’

  ‘No.’ She stabbed the point of the knife into the next onion. ‘I never have child.’ She shook her head vehemently, sending long black strands of ha
ir leaping across her face in protest at such a thought.

  Either she was telling the truth. Or she was a damn good liar.

  Christmas luncheon was an odd affair. Nigel took control, just as though he was seated at the head of the table at home instead of hunkered down on palm fronds spread out over wet sand. He always delivered a speech and today was to be no exception, though he had to raise his voice to compete with the howling of the wind and the slapping of leaves and branches against their shelter tucked under the trees. He thanked Kitty graciously for the splendid curry and rice she had created out of tinned beef and spices.

  ‘Not our usual roast turkey, I admit,’ he conceded, ‘but a fine repast, Mrs Madoc, given the circumstances. And a magnificent pudding.’

  Fitzpayne had come and extinguished the fire the moment the cooking was done, stamping it to ash, so the air was at least free of smoke. They were all decked out in Christmas hats. Not the usual paper crowns that were the traditional headgear at an English table on Christmas Day, but intricate garlands of greenery woven by Teddy. Connie could see a small spider spinning its web in Harriet’s hair, but she made no mention of it. They all sat in a circle and sang Christmas carols when the meal was finished, which brought emotions roaring to the surface.

  ‘Silent night, holy night,’ they chorused together. ‘All is calm, all is bright …’

  It isn’t silent. It isn’t calm. Connie could not bring herself to mouth the words when it was so patently untrue. All was anything but calm and bright. Life was stormy. Dislocated. Perilous. Teetering on the edge of … of what? A tremor shook her, and she saw Harriet lower her face into her hands and moan, ‘My home, my sweet home is gone for ever.’

  ‘It’s the end,’ Henry muttered, and he didn’t mean the end of the song.

  To Connie’s surprise, Fitzpayne shook the moment out of its downward spiral by immediately starting up with ‘O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant …’ in a rich booming voice, and the others joined in eagerly, banishing the rank breath of the forest and the yearning for past Christmases.