The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and nodded towards her son. ‘Your kid likes to watch things, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He’s very observant.’

  For a second Madoc felt unsettled. Exactly how observant was this boy? What had he noticed? Madoc had never had much to do with children, and they made him uneasy. More footsteps announced the appearance of the good-looking flight lieutenant on deck. Madoc had noticed before that the pilot liked to pop up unexpectedly around Constance Hadley, under the pretence of exercising his damaged shoulder and of getting her to rebind it. But she kept him at arm’s length. She was fond of the pilot, though, that much was obvious, but keen to draw a line in the sand between them.

  It was the husband who was entertained by Johnnie Blake most evenings, laughing over cards together, or arguing over the toss of dice while the native lad grinned and learned the tricks of gambling. That was the trouble with Englishmen of their class: they were always more at ease in male company than female. In their book, women were for the bedroom and the ballroom. The fools had no idea what they were missing. It wasn’t just the curves of Kitty’s body that Madoc relished, it was also the curves of her mind.

  ‘Spotted anything interesting?’ Constance Hadley had moved forward and was talking to her son.

  She balanced herself well with the movement of the deck. Her skirt and blouse were dark today, a black ribbon tying back her fair hair, the nearest she could get to mourning weeds. It occurred to Madoc as he watched her lean over Teddy that there was something of the ballet dancer about her, that same elegance of feet and hands. He and Kitty had once shared digs with a troupe of dancers – the memory made him laugh. Thieving little bitches, they turned out to be.

  ‘Aircraft!’

  The boy’s young voice rang out clearly and his hand pointed east. Madoc flinched. He couldn’t help it. Aeroplanes did that to him ever since the attack on his bar – it made no difference whether they were British planes or Jap ones. The crippling roar of an aircraft engine was branded into his brain.

  He peered hard into the glare of blue sky. ‘Can’t see any.’

  ‘Six of them.’

  The boy had the advantage of the binoculars.

  ‘Ours or theirs?’ Flight Lieutenant Blake asked.

  There was a pause while the kid studied them. Why the hell didn’t Blake snatch the binoculars from him and look himself? Too bloody polite for his own good.

  ‘Ours. Bristol Blenheim bombers,’ Teddy answered.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Twin engines. Single tail.’

  Madoc held the bow steady to help the identification, and had to admit the kid seemed to know his stuff.

  ‘Good man,’ Blake said.

  The boy gave a self-conscious little nod, pleased, and Constance Hadley shot Blake a grateful look. So that was the way to get to her – through her son. Madoc stored the information away and was turning it over in his mind, debating how to use it, when Fitzpayne suddenly materialised at his elbow, silent as a bloody snake. Madoc yielded the helm without a word, and at that moment the planes roared overhead, making his teeth shudder, and every eye watched the formation’s progress south.

  ‘They’ll be heading for Tengah Air Base,’ Blake surmised. ‘Or maybe Seletar, if it hasn’t been too badly bombed for them to land.’ He spoke casually, but no one on deck was fooled. The man was aching to be up there.

  ‘Probably on the run from the Japs,’ Madoc muttered.

  The blow to his stomach knocked him sprawling flat on the deck, and drove the air from his lungs. Heads turned to stare in bafflement. He glared up at his attacker but Fitzpayne was back at the helm, gaze fixed straight ahead as though he hadn’t stepped away from it for a second. Faster than a cobra strike.

  ‘I wonder if they have the sense to observe an efficient blackout in Singapore,’ Fitzpayne commented. ‘What do you think, Madoc?’

  Madoc picked himself up and raked the man with a filthy look but Fitzpayne gave no acknowledgement, his mouth pursed in a silent whistle.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Madoc?’ Constance Hadley asked, bemused. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He tripped,’ Fitzpayne answered for him. ‘Over his big mouth.’

  Blake stepped forward from the bows to confront Madoc. ‘They’re not on the run, Madoc. They are British pilots defending Malaya and risking their young lives to save people like you.’

  Madoc muttered something inaudible. These people with their high-and-mighty manners sickened him.

  ‘Just scum.’ The words were dropped into the silence like a hand grenade. Thrown by Fitzpayne.

  Anywhere else, and Madoc would have gone for him, but with an effort he swallowed his anger, gave the bastard a hard stare and turned to go below. Fuck the lot of them. He would roll Kitty on her back in the bed Henry Court had been stupid enough to give up, and if they could all hear on deck what was going on below, to hell with them. Let their bloody ears burn to cinders. Now was not the time to lash out at Fitzpayne, nor was it the place.

  As he jumped down the stairs he heard the bastard call out to everyone, ‘We’ll be in Singapore tonight. Let’s get more canvas aloft.’

  Too soon. They were approaching their destination too soon. Madoc wasn’t ready for it yet. As he seized Kitty’s wrist in the galley and kicked open the cabin door, he heard the Hadley kid yell out with a note of panic in his voice.

  ‘There’s the native pinisiq again. It’s chasing us.’

  Fitzpayne’s voice rumbled, ‘It’s just a local trading boat, Teddy. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  But Madoc had sharp ears. They had no trouble detecting a lie.

  Nightfall descended like a blackout curtain. Yet Singapore was flickering in the distance, drawing moths to its flame. Pinpricks of light sparkled across the waters of the Malacca Straits from the bow lights of boats bound for the city’s protective harbour. It seemed that others had also chosen to flee by sea during the hours of darkness, before the fist of war closed around them. But the moon was already rising and pointed them out with a silvery finger, turning them into milky ghosts.

  Connie felt The White Pearl shiver under her feet, as though the boat sensed they were approaching their journey’s end. The night was hot and clammy, bats flitting through the rigging like lost souls, the slap of the waves against the hull marking a steady rhythm that should have calmed her thoughts but didn’t. She took the helm and smoked too many cigarettes.

  ‘Nervous?’ Fitzpayne asked.

  She had been aware of his presence, leaning against the mast. Moonlight etched his strong features into the solid darkness but she had chosen not to disturb his silence. At times there was an air about him of someone who closed himself away to chase his own demons, and this was one of them. As though their journey together were already over, and he was done with them. The thought disturbed Connie so much that her tone was sharper than she intended when she responded.

  ‘No, not nervous. Thinking about what lies ahead.’

  He turned to her, his face pitted with shadows. ‘Singapore lies ahead.’

  There was a moment when the fungal smell of the verdant jungle wafted on the breeze, bringing with it a sense of wildness and freedom, and a part of Connie choked at the thought of being trapped in Singapore.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly.

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘I’ve booked rooms at Raffles Hotel. I don’t even know if it’s still standing, or whether it has been bombed in one of the air raids.’ She paused. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I won’t be lingering in Singapore. Just long enough for a bath and a drink, and then I’ll move on.’

  ‘Oh?’ Connie tried to make it casual. ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘To one of the islands I know.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘There are thousands of islands here, many small and secretive, and even the Japanese won’t bother to capture them all.’

  The way he said it – as though it were a certainty – made her
skin crawl. ‘You think their troops will definitely get this far?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Before she could answer, the wind jumped and gusted down from the ancient hills of Sumatra to the west of them, so that the yacht heeled hard to port. When The White Pearl abruptly righted herself Fitzpayne had stepped closer, offering a hand to steady her at the helm. She didn’t take it.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Fitzpayne, where do you come from?’

  He laughed, a warm, easy sound in the darkness. ‘We are soon to say goodbye. Why ask now?’

  ‘Because I want to know.’

  There was a hiatus while he lit two cigarettes, the flame highlighting the thoughtful lines of his mouth, and when he handed one to her she was aware that he had used the moment to decide how much to say. Or not to say.

  ‘I was born on a beach by the ocean’s edge here in East Asia,’ he said as he exhaled smoke into the wind. ‘My parents were …’ he smiled at her almost shyly, ‘adventurous. They came from Hull in England, but together they trawled all over Asia.’

  ‘People who like to push the limits.’

  Again he uttered a soft laugh. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you like to push the limits, Mr Fitzpayne?’

  He let himself sway backwards, leaning away from her so that he could examine her face by the lacy light of the moon. The deck rolled gently under their feet.

  ‘I like,’ he said, ‘to push others to their limits.’

  It was so unexpected an admission that Connie felt the honesty of it resonate in the night air. ‘But why?’

  ‘That’s when you learn the truth about people.’ He drew on his cigarette, the tip dancing in the darkness. ‘When they are stripped of their pretences, their defences down, you learn exactly what a person is capable of.’

  Connie felt the air leave her lungs. Did he suspect? What she was capable of? Was that why he had given her the gun? ‘And what do you do then?’ she asked. ‘When you know the truth about someone.’

  ‘The truth is always cleaner than a lie.’ He touched the back of her hand on the helm, his fingers warm against her skin, and added in a quiet voice, ‘Lies weaken a person. They are the bedfellows of fear.’

  A cold sensation spread from somewhere under Connie’s breastbone and rose up into her throat until she felt an overwhelming need to vomit it out, to rid her mouth of the rotting taste of fear and lies. She turned her face to him and opened her lips to say the words that were embedded in her tongue like barbed wire: I killed a man.

  But that was when the drone of aeroplane engines shattered the tropical night. Before the words could emerge, the first bombs started to fall on Singapore.

  A tidal wave of sound hit The White Pearl. Connie felt the boat quiver as plane after plane roared overhead. Tracers streaked across the night sky like fiery veins, criss-crossing the darkness as RAF fighter aircraft tried to shoot the Imperial Japanese bombers out of the sky.

  Connie stood at the rail, clutching her son’s hand. Is this what war is? So much noise and terror jammed into such a narrow space of time that people forget who they are, and become someone else? Ordinary young men become heroes in uniform and civilians learn to say, ‘Shockingly bad show last night, eh?’ when what they mean is, ‘I was terrified out of my skin.’ Around her on deck the others stood rigid with shock. They watched helplessly as the city was pounded again and again, as bombs hit their targets, fires flared into life and the boom of explosions ripped through the night.

  ‘They are giving the Keppel docks a hammering,’ Johnnie said. His voice was tight.

  ‘The godowns will be packed,’ Nigel rumbled. ‘Tin, rubber and rice all stacked to transport for the war effort. Troops ready for shipment.’

  Connie’s mind filled with images. Of ordinary people. People going about their business along the Tanglin and Orchard Roads. Sitting in the Alhambra cinema or the Roxy, watching Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and eating ice cream. Where was the Governor, Sir Shenton Thomas? Where were the air-raid shelters? Ack-ack guns started to roar defiance.

  ‘Mummy, look!’

  A plane exploded in the sky, falling like a shower of shooting stars, and beside her Johnnie flinched. Flames leaped up from the ground, and she could feel her son’s excitement radiating heat from his skin. Fitzpayne was sailing The White Pearl as hard and as fast as he could, catching every scrap of wind in the sails. He had doused the bowlight, and around them other boats were doing the same, so that the chances of collision in the narrow sleeve of water suddenly grew high. Only the moonlight saved them.

  ‘That is the end,’ Connie said solemnly.

  ‘End of what?’ Teddy asked.

  ‘The end of Singapore for us.’

  He twisted his face up to look at her, his brown eyes searching her face. ‘Why?’

  It was the newcomer, Madoc, who answered. ‘Because there’s no point us going there any more, sonny,’ he said. ‘The Japs will pour their troops and their guns and their tanks into the city in no time. We’re done for in Malaya.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Connie said sharply.

  ‘But it’s true,’ Madoc’s wife said in a sorrowful murmur. ‘We’re finished.’

  Teddy’s head swivelled to face Johnnie Blake as a gigantic explosion somewhere in the docks slammed against their eardrums. ‘I thought we would beat them,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Johnnie is not to blame, Teddy,’ Connie reminded him. She put her hand on Johnnie’s arm in the darkness.

  ‘We didn’t stand a chance.’ He looked down at her son. ‘Not a chance.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘The defence of Malaya was a low priority among the decision-makers in London who allocate military forces and equipment to this whole damn war zone. They assumed that we – the RAF – would deal with enemy forces before they even got near Malaya’s shores.’

  Teddy’s eyes shone in the moonlight, desperate for more.

  ‘But how could we?’ Johnnie demanded, his words raw. ‘No decent planes …’

  ‘But the Brewster Buffalo is …’

  ‘No, Teddy. It’s a heavy, awkward beast. No manoeuvrability. No match for …’

  ‘Johnnie,’ Nigel interrupted, ‘no need for this.’

  But Connie knew there was a need. They all had to face the truth now – even her son. It was the only way they could make sense of what was happening and see a way through to the future. The sea around them was littered with the lies of the past.

  ‘But what about General Percival and our army?’ Teddy whispered, eyes fixed on the fireworks in the sky. ‘Couldn’t they . . .?’

  ‘No,’ Johnnie said savagely. ‘Percival was given a ragbag of ill-trained divisions from India and Australia to back up our boys in the 11th Division in action at Jitra and Slim River. Look at Singapore now! I can imagine General Percival in his Operations Room in the hut in Sime Road listening to those bombs falling and cursing his ill luck. He should have been given naval support, damn it.’

  ‘He was,’ Connie pointed out. ‘The warships Prince of Wales and the Repulse.’

  ‘But they needed air cover,’ Johnnie explained, gentler now. ‘The aircraft carrier that was coming to give them protection from air attack ran aground in Jamaica, so the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were just sitting ducks, waiting for the Japanese bombers to take potshots at them.’ He released a dispirited sigh. ‘We’re all sitting ducks now. I wish to God I was up there tonight in one of those creaky old Buffaloes.’

  ‘I’m very glad you’re not,’ Connie said clearly. She stroked her son’s hair, latched her fingers into its curls, and turned away from the sight of British colonial power on its knees. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘What now?’ Tuan Hadley demanded.

  He sat at the head of the small table in the saloon, his fists large and tight in front of him. Maya observed him closely. How could a man’s face grow so old so fast? Like the Tamils who worked in the quarries
and trudged home covered in a second skin of grey dust. That’s what Tuan Hadley looked like now.

  ‘I know an island.’ It was Iron-eyes who spoke.

  Maya listened with sharp ears. He was leaning his big shoulder against the shiny wall, his hair rumpled, his eyes half hooded like a tiger’s when it hunts.

  No, no, Iron-eyes. You don’t eat me. I run fast.

  ‘I know an island,’ he told them again, ‘that should be safe.’

  ‘There are thousands of islands here,’ the tuan with the fat belly and the dead wife pointed out. ‘Which one?’

  Iron-eyes gave a slow smile.

  You no fool me. You smile like a tiger smile.

  ‘It’s not far – away from the mainland, east of here towards Borneo. Many of the islands are uninhabited, but this one has a small number of people on it. We could fix up The White Pearl’s damage there, get her properly repaired and take on supplies. It would give you time to decide what you want to do from here.’

  His eyes skimmed each person in the shiny belly of the boat, touched on Razak, then on herself with the smallest of nods. Why nod at me, tiger man? Because you know I not trust you? Last and longest he looked at Mem Hadley. Into his eyes tumbled a dark blue sadness. Sadness as heavy as the weight on Maya’s heart because now not only her mother was gone, but her country was gone too. Mem Hadley was the only one who understood this. ‘I’m so sorry, Maya,’ she’d whispered as they sailed south of Singapore.

  Sweat and fear had started to stamp their feet in the room. Maya could smell them. Next to her stood the tuan with the dead wife. Her eyes picked out a trickle of moisture in front of his ear, and his hand left a damp patch on the map when he placed his palm on it.