But now, below deck, Madoc couldn’t stop his hands from touching the inlays in the varnished wood, the gleaming brass fittings, the inviting curves of the table and benches. They drew him to them.
‘Madoc!’ Kitty hissed at him. ‘Stop it. It’s not yours yet.’
Her eyes were shining, but he knew her well and he’d seen the sweat glistening just behind her ears where her hair was tied back with a length of Mrs Hadley’s black ribbon. She only sweated in such an odd place when she was nervous.
‘Do you have it ready?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
Lodged in the deep pocket of her voluminous skirt was the Tokarev pistol. It was too bulky for him to carry, even in his waistband, without someone spotting it as he worked at hauling the sails.
He stepped close to her and stroked her throat with his palm. ‘Watch out for yourself, Kitty.’
She roared with laughter. ‘You’re throwing my own words back at me, you wretch.’
But he meant them. He shifted his palm over her mouth to quieten her. ‘I’ll watch out for you, Kitty,’ he whispered.
The lone aircraft came streaming down out of nowhere. In the west, the sky was growing darker but in the east it still clung to its peacock blue, despite the approach of evening. It was from the east that the ear-splitting note arose.
‘It’s a Hurricane,’ Teddy yelled.
All on deck watched the battle rip across the heavens. A Japanese Zero had latched onto the British plane’s tail and its guns spat out repeated flashes of fire. The Hurricane slipped and slithered through the air, turned on a wing tip dropping height, spinning and twisting to shake off its attacker.
‘Hell, look at that!’ Nigel roared. ‘The Jap plane is faster, more agile.’
The Hurricane’s tail was hit. Johnnie stood in grim silence, a look of agony on his face.
‘Here, use these.’ Teddy thrust the binoculars at him.
But the pilot gave a tight shake of his head. ‘No.’
‘You’ll see better.’
‘I’ve seen enough.’ Yet his eyes clung to the plane.
Connie could not imagine what kind of terror must be stalking the Hurricane pilot’s heart but he continued to duck and weave out of the line of the Jap’s fire.
‘Higher,’ Madoc bellowed up at the sky. It was streaked with a tangle of white trails like a giant spider’s web. ‘Get higher, man, for Christ’s sake.’
‘He’s trying,’ Johnnie muttered, his lips bloodless.
‘He’s crashing,’ Connie gasped as the British plane abruptly plunged into a downward spiral.
‘No,’ Fitzpayne said. ‘He’s playing dead. What do you think, Blake?’
‘Please God!’
The small group stood transfixed. They watched the British pilot hurtle towards the waves and certain death, but they released a great whoop of joy when the nose of the Hurricane suddenly popped up, dragging its frame back into the sky on shuddering wings. With one elegant switchback manoeuvre, it came swooping down behind the Zero and opened up its guns.
Before their eyes, the delicate metal ribs of the Japanese aircraft burst open and half its tail rocketed away in a thousand pieces. Nigel and Henry, Madoc and Kitty sent up a gigantic cheer that made the hairs on Connie’s arms stand on end. Even the quieter voice of Razak echoed it, and he waved his hands above his head in victory. Johnnie didn’t utter a sound, and Teddy looked stricken. Maya sat on the deck with her head in her hands and refused to look.
It was Fitzpayne, gripping the helm, who shouted the warning. ‘He’s coming for us!’
‘What?’ Henry was still grinning, his hair flat with sweat.
‘The Jap.’
‘But he’s dead in the sky.’
‘Come about!’ Fitzpayne shouted. ‘Double quick!’
Connie and Morgan leaped to the ropes. Their hands worked fast as Fitzpayne gybed quickly, changing course. Connie’s fingers did what she told them. But at some deep level her mind sank into despair because she remembered how Sho had told her about this – about the way a Japanese warrior would rather die in glory, taking his enemy with him, than live with the shame of defeat. Defeat, he had assured her, was the ultimate degradation and Japanese troops were drilled in the belief that honour lies in committing hara-kiri, the taking of one’s own life, rather than be captured. Shohei Takehasi, did I dishonour you? Such a shameful, paltry death. She wanted to sink to her knees, to accept this ultimate revenge that Sho’s people would inflict on her for what she had done to him.
But instead she seized Teddy, who was standing open-mouthed. He was staring up at the aircraft that seemed to fill the sky with its pale grey shattered body and its scarlet nose that made it look as if it had already tasted blood. For a moment, the shriek of its engine seemed to fracture her thoughts. She wrapped her arms around her son and raced to the rail, poised ready to jump. She looked around quickly for her husband. ‘Nigel!’
But he was a lone figure standing in the bow of the boat, his fists raised in defiance. The plane’s scarlet roundels loomed towards him. Even with her heart thundering and her son’s arms tight around her neck, she registered that magnificent and foolish image of her husband. It astounded her.
A flash of blue dashed past her, and she reached out a hand to grasp it.
‘Maya,’ she said urgently. ‘Jump. Now.’
But the girl squirmed in her grip and whimpered.
‘She can’t swim,’ Teddy yelled.
‘We’ll hold her up.’ Connie swung up on the rail.
‘Now! Everyone off ! Jump!’ Connie shouted to all on board.
Below her, the ocean lay as blue and silky as Maya’s sarong, the dark outline of a massive fish flickering down in the depths, and she prepared to jump. At that moment the boat suddenly leaped forward. There was no wind. How in hell’s name did Fitzpayne manage to find just enough to fill a sail; how in hell’s name did he steer her in that split second to safety? With an ear-splitting roar, the Zero smacked down onto the ocean in the exact spot that they had occupied and a wall of water rocketed up into the air before crashing down on the deck. The tip of one wing scraped the hull, and Connie felt the vibration of the impact through her feet.
She clung to her son, drenched to the skin, and saw his dog washed from one side of the boat to the other, its feet scrabbling, its ears plastered to its skull. For one second Connie thought they were going to capsize, as the clear blue water came rushing up towards her. But no. The White Pearl proved the strength of her keel. She rocked back the other way but continued to pitch and roll violently as the waves surged. Everyone fought to hold onto something.
Then Connie saw it: the plane, wallowing alongside the boat like a pale grey gutted shark. One wing had snapped off, but the other wing stretched out on the surface, keeping it afloat, and the hoops of the Zero’s metal formers were revealed like skinned ribs along its frame. Its cockpit cover had vanished. Inside sat the inert figure of its pilot, pinned to his seat by the webbing of his safety harness, his shoulders slumped against the straps. Flying goggles obscured his eyes, and one of the lenses was cracked. Seawater was swilling around his knees as waves flooded into the cockpit.
Connie knew he was dead. Blood had drenched the front of his flying suit across his chest, and as the level of the water rose, it stained pink the white scarf that hung from his neck. Death had come stalking her once more. She could hear its dry cackle whispering in each fold of the waves. There was a burble from the ocean’s depths as the weight of the aircraft’s engine started to drag it down, nose first.
It was then that one of the pilot’s gloved hands rose slowly from the water and dragged his goggles down to his neck. A pair of almond-shaped eyes glared up at her. They were black and accusing. Without a moment’s hesitation, she released Teddy and Maya and leaped over the rail, plunging into the water. As it closed over her head she heard Fitzpayne’s voice roar, ‘Connie! Don’t!’
The ocean flooded Connie’s senses. She was swept down into a
blurred world, where sparkling columns of blue light fell as tall and straight as church pillars into the shadowy depths far below her. Creatures moved down there, but they paid her no heed. It was a silent world, where all sound ceased. She had an intense feeling of dislocation, as though the world above had fractured and she had slipped through a crack.
Her hair and her skirt floated around her in the warm blue waters, drifting like weeds. She stretched out her hands to the sides to slow her descent, and as the water spilled through them she knew that this was her moment: her moment of redemption. To redeem a life for a life. She could let herself drift down for ever, down to those shadowy depths and those creatures with sharp dorsal fins and even sharper teeth that would strip flesh from bone with one bite. Her moment to repay.
With a series of quick, decisive kicks she drove herself up towards the dazzling ceiling of light that beckoned her back into the world above.
*
She swam with determined strokes to reach the plane. It had drifted away from the boat. Its damaged tail was rising up out of the water as its engine dragged the nose deeper, and Connie could see the pilot’s white face. His lips were moving in silent prayer, yet his hands made no attempt to release his safety harness as the seas rose around him. Connie gripped the edge of the cockpit and felt it lurch, threatening to roll on top of her.
‘Quickly,’ she said. She grasped the strap of the harness.
‘Iie! No!’
His gloved hand knocked hers away.
‘You must get out,’ she shouted.
‘I die.’ His lips spoke the words calmly, but his dark eyes were anything but dead. They spat fury at her.
She wasted no more time on words. The flimsy lightweight aircraft was on its way down. The scarlet cowling over the engine started to dive deeper, releasing great gusts of air bubbles as it sank. Connie fought with the harness fixings, leaning in towards the pilot as the water rose to his neck. He made no sound. Her struggles must have been excruciating for his wounded chest, but he uttered no cry of pain or even a grunt of anger. The water covered his chin and lapped up over his bottom lip, but his gaze was fixed rigidly ahead, seeing only what was inside his own warrior head.
‘Help me,’ she screamed at him.
But he didn’t seem to hear her. The ocean rushed at him, sensing victory, and engulfed his mouth. He closed his eyes. Frantically Connie pulled and tugged at the harness under water until finally she felt it pop open, and she managed to drag the straps from his limp shoulders just as the plane nosedived straight down. It wrenched Connie with it.
Fear tore a precious ripple of air from her lungs. She clamped her mouth shut and pulled with all her strength at the pilot’s body, but he was trapped. His legs were pinned. She kicked and yanked again, felt his uniform split, but she could not dislodge him. The brilliant kingfisher blue of the water was abruptly replaced by a sombre grey murkiness where the columns of light didn’t reach. Her lungs started to burn.
Give up.
Her mind spoke to her.
Give up, or you’ll die with him.
Her fingers gripped harder. She jammed her feet on the bulkhead behind the cockpit, her hands locked under his armpits, and fought to lift him clear.
He’s dead already, her mind insisted.
She didn’t listen. Strange lights began to flash and loop in front of her eyes, and she knew her brain was starved of oxygen as the plane drifted deeper. She hauled harder. Suddenly one of his legs was released. She felt it give. With a great flood of relief she fought for the other one but it was jammed firmly in the crushed space. Black trickles of something like tar bubbled inside her brain, and she felt her muscles grow weak.
Give up. Or die.
Her lungs were on fire. But floating into the narrow tunnel of her vision Connie suddenly saw another pair of hands appear, yet her sluggish brain did not dare trust her eyes. The dark bulk of someone’s shoulder. Where had that come from? As she yanked one last time, draining her limbs of effort, the other hands – square hands that she recognised – reached in and dislodged the second leg.
It felt like flying. As though she had shot upwards, when in reality it was only that she had stopped descending. Her hands clutched the limp body of the Japanese pilot and, even now, even with her brain shutting down and her legs barely moving through the water, she knew that this was the moment to grasp her redemption. But she had to breathe. To open her mouth and suck in … something. Her lips parted; she couldn’t stop them. Every instinct told her to keep them shut, that water would flood in, but still they opened in their desperation to find air.
The hands seized her. A strong grip took hold of her head. For one panicked second she tried to shake them off, but they were clamped on each side of her skull like a bulldog’s jaws. Fitzpayne’s face blurred in front of her. His lips pressed hard against hers, sealing the water out while ripples of air trickled into her lungs. She breathed.
25
‘Madoc,’ Kitty said, ‘get down there.’
They were on deck, and an early-morning mist was keeping the salt air cool. She nodded towards the open hatch through which the rumble of male voices drifted, along with threads of cigarette smoke.
‘For God’s sake, find out what they’re deciding,’ she told him.
Kitty had been bad-tempered ever since Mrs Hadley and Fitzpayne had dragged the Japanese pilot on board last night. A Jonah, she called him. Why didn’t they let the bastard drown? Madoc wondered that himself.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘Where do you think? Hadley is furious.’
‘So would you be if I dumped your enemy in your bed,’ he pointed out. ‘And then spent the night nursing him, so that you had to kip on a bench in the saloon.’
‘It’s not just that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you noticed?’ She lowered her voice to keep it from Fitzpayne at the wheel. ‘The way he hates her to pay attention to other men, especially the Flight Lieutenant. But Fitzpayne and Henry Court as well. Even you, for Christ’s sake!’ She shook her head and glanced up at a booby wheeling freely up above them, its wings outstretched on a warm current of air. ‘She’s very careful to concentrate on her son, or even on the surly little native chit when Hadley is on deck as well.’
No, he hadn’t noticed that.
*
The men were arguing in the saloon. Madoc slid in quietly, but he needn’t have worried: they didn’t take a blind bit of notice of him. They were seated around the table with faces as solemn and self-important as a war cabinet, and you would think they were trying to hammer out a bloody international peace treaty rather than just decide the fate of one murdering little Jap prisoner.
‘Get rid of him!’ Henry Court thumped the table with his fist. ‘I wouldn’t have let him on board at all if this were my yacht.’
Hadley looked at him coldly. ‘Well, it’s not.’
‘He could be the same pilot who killed my wife.’
‘Henry,’ Johnnie responded with a tight expression on his face, ‘a pilot fights for his country. When we are at war it means we drop bombs and fire bullets so that the enemy dies. It isn’t personal. This pilot tried to crash his plane on us because it was his duty to do so. Don’t take it personally.’
‘My wife is dead, damn you. Are you telling me I shouldn’t take that personally?’
‘I’m deeply sorry about Harriet, you know I am. But …’
‘We will get rid of him,’ Hadley interrupted, but it was obvious to Madoc that he was acutely uncomfortable dealing with the situation his wife had put him in. ‘Just as soon as we can.’
‘She should have let the yellow bastard drown,’ Court insisted.
Madoc noticed Court had grown even fatter in the face, as if he was eating for his wife as well as for himself.
‘Maybe he can be of use to us,’ Madoc said casually.
All eyes shifted to him. ‘How?’
‘Maybe he possesses information that w
e could extract from him about where the enemy troops are, how far they have invaded – in Malaya and in this bloody maze of islands. Even where they have cached weapons and fuel.’ He shrugged as he leaned against a support pillar and lit himself a cigarette. ‘Just a thought.’
Flight Lieutenant Blake frowned, creasing his fine features. ‘He won’t talk. We must hand him over to the proper authorities.’
‘We could persuade him,’ Madoc suggested.
Blake looked sick. But Hadley and Court both brightened.
‘He is the enemy,’ Hadley reminded them all. Below them rumbled the sound of the native boy working the bilge pump.
*
Connie heard the anchor being lowered, condemning them to another day of inactivity. Fitzpayne was right to keep them hidden during daylight hours, as the Japanese planes seemed to have relentless mastery of the sky now, but the waiting and the delays stretched her nerves taut. Her mind was unable to travel beyond the figure on the bed.
She watched him breathe, her eyes focused on his narrow chest. Such slight bones; he was scarcely more than a youth. His chin was hairless, his skin as smooth as ivory, yet his hands were broad and capable, his fingers large-knuckled like a farm boy’s. Is that what he is? A farm boy torn off his land and thrown up into the sky by his glorious Emperor Hirohito?
She had bandaged his chest, a large dressing pressed down on the wound. Blood had flowed onto the bedsheets, but the damage to him was less severe than she had feared. A large flap of skin had been gouged from his chest, hanging on by a narrow thread, crinkled and slippery. She had to flatten it out and douse it with antiseptic, and as she did so she could make out the white bones of his ribs, gleaming with the scarlet gore. But they seemed intact, and though his lungs were choked with sea-water, they had recovered quickly when she breathed into them. His right collar bone was broken, rising at an odd angle, and his forehead had been scraped and bruised under his flying helmet.
The White Pearl Page 31
