But he was alive. And she intended to keep him that way. So she watched him breathe, hour after hour.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door. It jerked her mind back to the present, to the stultifying little cabin that stank of antiseptic and sweat. Through the porthole she could see a blazing blue sky.
‘Come in,’ she said.
The door opened and Teddy scampered in, his eyes darting from her to the Japanese pilot and back. There was something wistful in the turn of his mouth, a quiver of loneliness, and she wrapped an arm around him, drawing him to her side. Behind him in the doorway stood Fitzpayne. His quick eyes examined her more closely than she would have wished.
‘It’s too hot in here,’ he announced.
He was right. She was drenched in sweat.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
The question surprised her. She’d expected him to ask after the pilot.
‘I’m fine.’
Fitzpayne smiled. ‘So a bit of drowning does the intrepid Mrs Hadley no harm.’
‘Apparently not.’
Teddy patted her arm. ‘You’re well, aren’t you, Mummy?’
‘Yes, I am. I am also grateful to you, Mr Fitzpayne, for …’
‘It was nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘I couldn’t resist the chance of seeing Henry Court’s face when you dragged a Japanese pilot on board.’ He chuckled. ‘So, is he awake?’
All three stared at the inert figure on the bed.
‘I think so,’ she said, ‘though his eyes are shut.’
‘Has he spoken?’ Teddy whispered.
‘Yes, several times. He suddenly flicks open his eyes, gives me a black stare without blinking for minutes on end and then hisses something at me.’
‘What does he say?’ Teddy asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t speak Japanese. But it’s not good, that much I can recognise. He hates me.’
Teddy kissed her cheek. ‘Shall I bring you a drink?’ he offered.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Fitzpayne said, and pulled a length of rope from his pocket. ‘Let’s all go up on deck where there’s a breeze. Your mother needs some fresh air.’
Connie reluctantly shook her head. ‘I have to watch over …’
‘Your patient is coming with us. That’s what the rope is for.’
She looked at Fitzpayne, astonished. The eyes of the Japanese on the bed opened a narrow slit and Fitzpayne barked out instructions in an unfamiliar language.
‘Is that Japanese you’re speaking?’ Teddy asked, impressed.
‘Hai.’ Fitzpayne bowed politely over his hands, exactly as Sho used to do. ‘Yes, it is.’
He dangled the rope in front of Connie and raised one of his thick eyebrows questioningly. She turned to regard the pilot.
‘Hai,’ she said at last. ‘Yes.’
Throughout the afternoon, waves of aircraft droned overhead. Teddy stayed glued to the binoculars and his high, excited voice called out at regular intervals.
‘Six Brewster Buffaloes. Two Hurricanes.’
‘Eighteen bombers. Japanese.’
‘Ten Zero fighters. Japanese.’
‘Four Bristol Blenheim bombers. One C-type flying boat.’
The sight of them glinting like shoals of fish in the arc of blue beyond the trees induced a sombre mood on deck. The White Pearl was yet again tucked out of sight. She had nosed her way into a tunnel, where a silt-laden river was overhung by the jungle canopy with long sword-shaped leaves rustling and birds whistling. A set of leopard prints stood out clear and fresh in the mud on the bank. Again Fitzpayne had been patching up the damage to the hull with oakum and pitch, caused this time by the Zero’s impact. Connie had watched him work, sweating in the heat. She thanked all the gods of Malaya that this resourceful man had chosen to sail The White Pearl from Palur. Whatever his reasons.
‘I say we should dump the bastard here. He’d be picked up soon enough. The Jap troops are swarming all over these bloody islands.’
Henry and Nigel were arguing. Henry wanted to get rid of the Japanese pilot immediately, but to Connie’s surprise Nigel declined to do so.
‘We hand him over to the proper authorities when we reach somewhere suitable,’ Nigel insisted.
‘And in the meantime, he eats our food and we have to watch out that he doesn’t murder us in our beds. You know how sly Japs are.’
‘Henry,’ Connie pointed out, ‘he’s tied up. There is no danger. He is injured, and Fitzpayne says this island is uninhabited. He would die here.’
‘So? One less to worry about.’
‘Henry,’ Nigel said curtly, ‘the man will be dealt with according to British prisoner-of-war standards. We all know the inhumane things the Japanese troops did when they invaded China, but I will not stoop to their level.’
Henry stalked off across the deck, but Connie walked over to the bench to sit beside her husband and lightly touched his shoulder.
‘Thank you, Nigel,’ she said.
He looked up at her for a moment, squinting against the sunlight, the lines on his face growing deeper as he did so. ‘I want you to be happy, Constance.’ He didn’t smile as he said it, and she felt the unexpected sincerity of his words.
‘And you, Nigel? Are you happy?’
His lips came together in a fixed line. ‘Of course. Except for this damned war.’
*
‘Bushido – it is the code of the samurai warrior.’
Connie was bandaging Fitzpayne’s hand, listening to his explanation of the Japanese pilot’s behaviour. A chisel that Madoc was using had slipped and gouged a chunk of flesh from the base of Fitzpayne’s thumb, forcing him to come up on deck. Kitty had apologised on her husband’s behalf, but Fitzpayne had given her a black look and suggested she save her apologies for something accidental rather than intentional. And Kitty, instead of protesting her husband’s innocence, burst out laughing, shaking her full bosom and wiping sweat from under her arms.
‘I’ll smack his bottom,’ she chuckled, and ambled below.
To Connie’s surprise, Fitzpayne had watched her broad hips squeeze down the stairway and grinned. ‘She’s too good for that no-good drifter,’ he laughed.
Connie experienced a moment of surprise and she regarded him with amusement. ‘She’s a great help,’ she said, ‘to him and to us.’
He nodded. ‘She can cook, and she knows how to haul a rope. Under all that flesh there are muscles a man would be proud of.’
The Japanese pilot was sitting in his patch of shade next to the mast, staring at her with implacable hatred. His hands were lashed together in front of him, and his ankle was tethered like a goat to the main-mast.
‘Bushido,’ she echoed. ‘The Way of the Warrior. Tell me about it.’
‘It’s the ancient code of the samurai warrior, and is still taught to Japanese children from an early age,’ Fitz explained. ‘It emphasises loyalty, honour and obedience.’
When he spoke about such things, Connie liked the way his face became more expressive, more mobile.
She continued to wind a bandage around the bones of his wrist, aware of the weight of it in her hand. ‘Those are qualities we all wish for in our children.’
‘Yes, the Japanese place great worth on filial piety and self-sacrifice.’
‘Ah, self-sacrifice.’ She glanced at the dark head beside the mast.
‘Even now they believe that their Emperor Hirohito is a god in human form. They worship him and feel honoured to die for him. For them, life is a constant preparation for death, and to die a good death with one’s honour intact is the ultimate aim of life.’
Connie thought of Sho, heard the thud of his head on the steps. A bad death. And now this pilot, desperate to die.
‘No wonder he hates me. I have robbed him of his glory,’ she murmured, and tied the ends of the bandage together. For a moment he left his hand lying in hers.
‘Don’t think of that. It is a young man’s empty-headed idealism. When he is old and grey he will bo
w down and kiss your feet with gratitude.’
‘You speak Japanese fluently.’
He reacted as if she had accused him of something unpleasant.
‘I lived there for a time,’ he said. ‘Not long. My Japanese is poor.’
It didn’t sound poor to her when he shouted orders at the pilot.
‘I see,’ she said.
But she didn’t see. Didn’t understand why the warmth had gone.
‘The monsoon rain is coming,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’d better get below. We’ll sail before dark.’
He was right about the rain. Vast, merciless sheets of it pounded the river into a swirling torrent, stirring up the mud and hammering The White Pearl until her masts rattled in their sockets. But Connie liked monsoon rain. She welcomed its total commitment, no half measures. It was all or nothing. She pulled on her yellow oilskins once more and climbed back up on deck to check on the Japanese pilot, who was huddled under a stretch of canvas. She offered him a cigarette but he refused, saying nothing, his black eyes full of hatred of her.
‘A life, whether good or bad,’ she told him, ‘is better than death of any kind. You are a prisoner-of-war. There is no dishonour in that.’
But his hatred crawled all over her like lice. She turned her back on him.
‘They don’t think the way we do,’ Fitzpayne called out to her from the boat’s rail. He was encased in his own oilskins, but without the ugly hood. His head was bare, his hair flattened to his skull, glossy as a seal.
‘Don’t let Madoc throw him overboard, will you?’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at him. He hates the Japs for what they did to his home.’
‘Your friend Henry is the one to watch. He lost his wife to a Jap bullet. He’d feed that pilot to the sharks piece by piece if he could.’ His gaze studied her through the veil of rain. ‘I can’t say I blame him.’
‘A life for a life, is that what you think? That it’s a fair exchange?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That’s harsh.’
‘So, what do you believe? That a person should turn the other cheek and embrace the enemy?’
‘No.’ She had to shout above the barrage of noise from the rain. ‘I believe everyone has their own path to walk. No one knows what goes on inside someone else’s head.’ She paused and stared out across the churning river mouth. In the dark swathes of jungle that climbed all over the island, birds called boisterously to each other, cocooned in a million different shifting greens, the foliage so thick it looked solid. Connie found herself seeking faces within it. Japanese faces. Japanese guns. ‘I don’t know what goes on inside your head,’ she finished.
He laughed, a great roar of sound that startled a gibbon that was hanging by one skinny arm from a branch in the pouring rain. It startled her too. ‘You wouldn’t want to know, I assure you,’ he told her. When he was amused his face changed shape, realigning its bones. The hard edges of his jaw and even the deep sockets of his eyes softened as he looked at her. ‘It’s as dark and misshapen in there as that patch of jungle you’re staring at. Too muddy for your pretty white hands.’
She looked down at her fingers. At the newly formed pads of muscle and the roughness of their skin from handling the ropes.
‘Is that what you think? Pretty and white?’ She said the last words with scorn. ‘I see them differently.’
She saw them covered in scarlet. Ugly hands.
‘What I think is that you should be kinder to yourself.’
Such unexpectedly gentle words from him. When she looked up again, his smile had transformed his eyes from their usual slate grey to a pale silvery shade she had never seen before, the colour of the rain itself, and she forced herself to look away. She didn’t want to make a fool of her-self. She didn’t want to cry. She had a question to ask him.
‘Why are they doing it?’ she queried. ‘You know this part of the world. Why did the Japanese launch into this war? I know they are winning at the moment, and are seizing oilfields and other resources, but …’ She shook her head. ‘It’s suicidal. How can they possibly expect to defeat the might of the British Empire and the United States in the long term?’
He accepted the change of subject with a shrug of his bright yellow shoulders. ‘It’s exactly the long term that they are aiming for.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They want to launch a savage blow against white feudalism. To demonstrate to the Western world who is the natural leader of the Asian races in the future.’ He glanced northward through the drenched green hills, as though drawn by the force of Japan’s will. ‘They will win in the end, the Japanese. Whoever is victorious in this war, it marks the end of Western dominance in the east.’
‘Good riddance to us, I say.’
He laughed again, an edge to it this time. ‘Your husband may not agree with you there.’
Connie said nothing. Because there was nothing to say.
I HATE RAZAK.
Below deck, the words jumped out at Connie from the page in big thick capital letters, black and spiky. Her hackles rose. What had Razak done to warrant such an outburst in her son’s diary?
She knew she shouldn’t be reading it at all. It was private, and she was acutely aware of that fact. She had promised him she wouldn’t do so when she gave the notebook to him, but he had left it on deck when Fitzpayne summoned him down below to study the charts. He had scuttled at Fitzpayne’s heels, forgetting his diary. The rain had seeped into its pages. Connie held it between two fingers, dripping, and knew that Teddy would be mortified, so she had slipped down to her cabin to dry it off.
She took a towel and mopped the covers that were already beginning to crinkle. Poor Teddy, he would be so cross with himself and the rain. She undid the strap that held it closed and dabbed at the worst of the damage. On some pages, the pencilled words were already fading into illegibility. She had flicked through quickly and smiled to herself. So many pages covered in small, careful handwriting. How industrious her young son had been.
I saw a school of jellyfish. White like milk.
Had he? He didn’t mention it.
I like it when the wind roars like a tiger in the sails. And later: Maya is scared but I told her The White Pearl will not capsize because it has a giant keel. The mast would brake first. That’s what Daddy told me but Maya started to cry and that made me feel bad.
Oh, Teddy, my sweet boy. Connie blotted the towel on several more pages, trying not to read their content. The best Chritmas ever. In a kind of tent. She laughed out loud, and made herself move on. I spotted a dolfin. That was when she saw it.
I HATE RAZAK.
They were the last words he’d written. She experienced a confused pulse of anger towards the native boy. What had he done? Hurt Teddy? With no qualms now about breaking her promise, she examined the previous page. The writing had grown tiny and cramped as though the words could barely breathe, and she had to peer closely.
I love Mummy. Connie caught her breath. But I don’t love Daddy any more. He has forgoten me. He plays Snakes & Ladders and Drafts and Hangman with Razak. Not with me. He gave Razak his speshal penknife for Christmas.
He what? Nigel would never allow anyone to touch the mother-of-pearl penknife that he had been given as a child by his grandfather. He carried it like a talisman in his pocket at all times.
He laughs with Razak.
It was true. Connie realised abruptly that Nigel had taken to laughing recently. She would hear his delighted chuckle ripple out while she was occupied reading her book or unfurling a sail.
He strokes Razak’s hair.
Connie’s cheeks flushed crimson.
I saw Daddy kiss Razak today. On the lips again. A long kiss. It’s not fair. He wants him to be his son. I HATE RAZAK.
Connie’s grief for her marriage was like mourning a death. The terrible pain of loss. Great waves of sorrow were suffocating her. Her heart slowed to a sluggish, ill-focused beat and it ached as though someone had stamped on
it.
She wanted to shout. To scream. To let everyone hear the wails of despair that were tearing through her, but instead she sat in the saloon, barely able to touch the excellent fish and rice meal cooked by Kitty. When it was over she said quietly, ‘I feel unwell,’ and vanished into her cabin. She sat and stared out through her porthole at the turbulent waves and when the sky flared scarlet, painting the clouds as the sun shimmied down towards the horizon, she didn’t light the lamp. She lay in the dark, arms curled around herself in a tight ball on the bed.
Nigel had never wanted her. Their marriage was a sham. He’d wanted a son, that was all, and a wife-figure to mask his true desires. Her husband had used her and cheated her. All the years that she had tried so hard to win his love, to gain his favour, he had been repulsed by her. How he must have loathed her, hated sharing a bed with her night after night – far, far worse than she ever realised. A deep animal moan escaped into her pillow, as a wave of humiliation swamped her. She buried her face. Burned into her brain was the look on his face each night when they were vainly trying for a second child, the effort he had to make.
She had heard about men whose taste was for boys, but she had never known one. There were always whispers in the Club, discreet finger-pointing on the tennis courts. See the good-looking chap knocking hell out of the ball, well … Or even, Don’t look now but the fellow at the bar is giving young Macauley the eye. Right under his wife’s nose.
She had paid little attention. But she was vaguely aware of the collective cold shoulder that British society out here turned on such men. Deviant, Harriet had giggled and rolled her eyes. The careers of those men ended abruptly when the whispers started.
She didn’t cry. The pain was far too deep for tears. Instead, she forced herself to picture Razak, how beautiful he was, and how she was the one who had dragged him into their life. Was this the mother’s curse? Was this what Sai-Ru Jumat intended when she said, I curse you, white lady? That her son would be her implement of vengeance?
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