The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  When she looked down, Teddy’s concerned eyes were staring up at her, and she wondered how long she had been silent. She cupped his chin in her hand.

  ‘Teddy, there is no second chance in life. We have to get this right.’

  *

  On deck, nothing was happening. The White Pearl’s sails lay furled, and the boat rolled like a drunk on the great swell of the waves that barrelled in from the Pacific Ocean. The sun broke free of the horizon and began to haul itself up inch by inch. Today it seemed a huge effort.

  Fitzpayne was pacing the deck of the pinisiq in deep discussion with Nurul, the man with the gold teeth who had come on board. The other boat’s hull was longer than The White Pearl’s, with raw, salt-stained timbers and a patched mainsail. The expanse of its deck was divided up by two large hatch covers, and Connie wondered what lay beneath them in the hold – something heavy enough to make the pinisiq ride low in the water. Maybe Fitzpayne is telling the truth when he maintained it was a trading vessel, sailing out of sight of Japanese attack planes, dodging between islands as they were doing themselves. Maybe.

  Or maybe not.

  She approached Johnnie and Henry Court, aware of the Japanese pilot eyeing her warily from his usual position at the base of the mast. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She had put Pippin on a lead and placed the end of it firmly in Teddy’s hand.

  ‘Johnnie, what’s going on?’

  ‘We think Fitzpayne must be making some kind of deal with them.’

  ‘What kind of deal?’

  ‘We don’t know. But we’re guessing it’s to his advantage, not ours. These men mean trouble for us, that’s obvious.’

  Henry leaned forward, his forehead moist, and in a low voice suggested, ‘Let’s make a run for it. While this Fitzpayne chap is on their boat, let’s hoist The White Pearl’s sails and make …’

  ‘No,’ Connie said sharply. ‘I hired him because he knows these waters. We don’t know them at all. I trust him.’

  ‘Nigel didn’t,’ Johnnie pointed out gently.

  ‘That’s not fair, Johnnie. Nigel is not here.’

  ‘I know.’ He shook his head, his lips tight. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  She nodded. Sorry was a slender word.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Henry insisted, ‘we have charts. We can navigate ourselves away from here.’

  ‘Henry, talk sense. The White Pearl is taking on water. She’s unstable and slow and in serious need of repair. The other boat would overhaul us easily.’

  ‘So what the hell is your Fitzpayne talking about to men of that kind? I don’t like it.’

  Connie didn’t like it either, but she didn’t rise to the provocation. ‘We shall have to ask him,’ she said sourly. ‘I’m sure he has a good reason.’

  But when Fitzpayne leaped back over the rail, she had her doubts. She had a strange sense of losing the man with whom she had shared cigarettes and sat up drinking whisky after the storm, a feeling that the figure standing before her now – with his dark hair turning to copper in the rising sun and a new, unfamiliar energy to his limbs – was a stranger. Someone who had been hiding inside the man she thought was her friend. Was this the real Fitzpayne? Wilder and more unpredictable, someone she didn’t know? I trust him, she’d said, but now …

  He stood on the deck, legs astride, balancing effortlessly on the balls of his feet as each wave swept under the boat, thumbs tucked into his belt, and waited for the barrage of questions.

  ‘Who are these men?’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘For God’s sake, are they really your friends?’

  ‘Can’t you get rid of them?’

  But Connie said nothing. She saw the exhilaration in his face, the desire to push ahead with whatever plan he had hatched with his gold-toothed friend, and she knew that whatever they said – Johnnie or Henry or Madoc – he was set on a course.

  ‘So what next?’ she asked quietly when the others had finished. It wasn’t the past that mattered to her now, it was the future.

  He smiled at her. ‘Next, we change boats.’

  ‘No,’ Henry said vehemently. ‘I’m not leaving The White Pearl.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  ‘Well, you were damn right,’ Johnnie jumped in. ‘We’re not leaving this boat.’

  Fitzpayne plucked a cigarette from his lips. ‘Just calm down.’

  ‘Have you betrayed us?’ Connie asked flatly.

  ‘Of course I haven’t.’ His words were stiff and angry, but his expression was oddly gentle as he looked at her. ‘The skies will be packed with Jap bombers today, heading for Singapore. Every inhabitant who possesses a boat will be taking to the water to flee the attacks. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel for the Japs. No chance of escape.’ He lit himself another cigarette, and she picked up the tension in his hands as he struck the match. ‘Boats like yours,’ he chose his words carefully, ‘sleek, elegant craft that shout of white ownership, will be first in the gunners’ sights.’

  ‘We could hide. Like we did before, in an inlet somewhere.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t you realise?’ Fitzpayne looked with exasperation at the faces around him. ‘This boat of yours is sinking. I have done the best repairs I can but it’s not enough. So I have come to an agreement with Nurul that we will exchange boats. We board the Burung Camar and sail at speed with a following westerly straight to the island where there is protection for you, while Nurul and part of his crew take The White Pearl into hiding. From the island I will send a vessel under cover of darkness carrying sufficient equipment for more repairs to The White Pearl, so that she can creep to us one night when she’s patched up.’

  ‘Why would Nurul help us?’ Connie asked.

  He laughed, with no attempt at making it convincing. ‘I’ve promised him you’ll pay him well for his services.’

  She shook her head. ‘How do we know we will ever see The White Pearl again?’

  The question hung between them in the overheated air. His expression of impatience barely altered, except for a shift of focus in his eyes as he stepped closer to her on deck. He said quietly, ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Henry blustered, ‘but can we trust it?’

  Connie ignored him. ‘What is the real reason?’ she asked. ‘If it is so dangerous to be in a white man’s boat in these seas, why would Nurul take such a risk?’

  The slate-grey eyes grew paler as his eyelids lowered and his lips parted in the beginning of a smile that he refused to let out. ‘Nurul does it because he is my friend, and because I ask him to.’ He shrugged his shoulders in mock disdain. ‘And the money helps!’

  They argued in private, Connie as the official owner of The White Pearl and Fitzpayne as official navigator, both enclosed in the confines of the master cabin. Words were spoken in undertones, fierce and hostile. For Connie, Nigel seemed to rise up in the bed, observing them with his lips pulled into a disapproving line.

  ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ Connie accused Fitzpayne. ‘One of the pirates, part of their thieving band. I must have been mad not to suspect earlier.’

  ‘I work with boats, as do they. They are traders.’

  ‘Buying and selling boats, you told me.’ She flicked her head aside, strands of hair clinging to her damp neck. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘No, it’s true.’

  She wanted to shake him, to place her hands on him and shake him till the truth rattled through his teeth. She wanted him to say that he hadn’t deceived her, that she could trust him with her life and with her son’s life, and that he wasn’t just an opportunist making money out of her. She wanted him to make her believe him. But instead, he nodded and offered no explanation for his association with Nurul and his thieving band.

  ‘Connie, you and your son have suffered a terrible blow, and it seems to me that it would help if you …’ He stopped, his mouth tightening over the unspoken words, and sh
e realised he was conscious of a line between them that he was wary of crossing.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘If I what?’

  ‘If you get yourself and your son off this cursed boat just as fast as you can.’

  He turned away from her, and ducked his head to gaze out of one of the portholes. He scanned the sky for several moments while she stared dumbly at the flat wall of his back in his black shirt, her mind spinning. Was that it? Was The White Pearl carrying Sai-Ru Jumat’s curse? Connie touched a finger to the gleaming timber wall and felt the heat of it slither under her skin. She snatched it away. What did he mean? Cursed by bad luck, or cursed by this relentless war, or cursed by her own ill-chosen actions? She was suffocating in the silence. With a quick stride he came towards her and the room seemed suddenly too small, too intimate. Neither of them let their eyes stray towards the bed where she had lain with Nigel. Fitzpayne stood close, so close she thought he was going to hold her, but he kept his arms at his sides.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll go with Teddy. And you? You’ll come on the other boat?’

  ‘I assure you, I have no intention of leaving you.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  He lifted her hand, turned it palm upwards and dropped her gold Cartier watch onto it.

  29

  ‘They’re from Sumatra,’ Fitzpayne informed Connie, as if that explained everything.

  He was referring to the three members of the crew who were sailing the pinisiq. He took her by the arm and gave her a quick trawl of the deck, showing her the small hut in the stern where the crew ate and rested. Its roof was low and rounded, made of attap fronds.

  ‘No cabins, I’m afraid. When it rains hard they sleep in the hold with the cargo. You have to rough it here.’

  He looked at her as if expecting an objection, but she made none. She peered into the shadowy interior of the hut. A hummingbird, bright as a rainbow, fluttered in a bamboo cage that hung from a beam and she lowered her head intending to enter, but three millipedes, the length of her hand, were crawling along the wall towards her hair. She stepped back. Fitzpayne laughed but didn’t release her arm.

  ‘What’s in the boat’s hold?’ she asked.

  ‘Trade goods.’

  ‘What kind of goods?’

  He gave her a look, but she didn’t realise what was coming.

  ‘Rubber.’

  ‘Rubber? Hadley rubber?’

  ‘Could be.’ He laughed again, softly to himself.

  She pictured one of the commercial boats carrying Hadley rubber to the port of Singapore for shipment for the war effort, for tyres and cables. Boarded by grappling hooks and nets, the cargo stolen and the boat sunk. It had happened before, and driven Nigel to bouts of fury.

  ‘I see,’ she said, teeth clamped together. ‘What does the name of their boat, the Burung Camar, mean?’

  ‘The Seagull.’

  ‘She nodded. ‘The robber bird.’

  He turned her by her elbow to face him. His expression was amused, but there was a tentativeness at the back of his eyes and she realised he was unsure of her reactions, as though she too had changed.

  ‘Learn not to ask questions,’ he said firmly. ‘That way you’ll stay alive longer.’

  ‘Is that what you do? No questions, no lies?’

  ‘It’s safer.’

  ‘Safer? Nothing at all about this godforsaken patch of the world with its man-eating mosquitoes and its bombs is safe!’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said with a casual shrug.

  But she wasn’t fooled. She’d watched him on the boat. There was nothing remotely casual about the way he had the men jumping to do his bidding, loading on full sail, snatching every scrap of wind from the sky. Or in the way he let his eyes take a break from scouring the clouds for any sign of aircraft, and gazed out over the stern. When she asked him what he was looking for he seemed to withdraw within himself, and she felt a distance open up between them.

  ‘Is it Nurul?’ she asked. ‘Are you worried?’

  ‘He is my friend. Of course I worry for him.’

  That scrawny scrap of a pirate with a gaping mouth like a frog’s, flaunting his gold teeth in the sunshine. The one who took her watch, the one who climbed onto her boat with a rifle on his back. He was this man’s friend. How did that happen? He was stuck on a white man’s yacht that it seemed the Japs would just love to shoot out of the water because Fitzpayne had asked it of him.

  ‘He looks to me like someone who knows how to deal with trouble,’ she said, and touched his arm. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

  He looked down at her hand. ‘To be responsible for someone’s death kills a part of your heart. If you do it enough times, there is nothing left of you. Just the outer shell that eats and breathes and fools people into thinking you’re still there.’

  The sadness in his voice seemed to swell up like the waves beneath them, pitching him into a trough that carried him away from her, and for a lonely moment she saw the faces of Sai-Ru Jumat, Shohei Takehashi and Nigel bobbing in front of her instead. She swept a hand through the moist air, slapping them away. But the Japanese pilot was the face that still floated in and out of the sea spray, laughing at her.

  ‘Fitz,’ she said sternly, ‘I’m trusting you.’ She banged the flat of her hand against his chest, conscious of the sun’s warmth on his skin. ‘There’s still a heart in there, I can feel it beating like a damn bilge pump.’

  She waited for his deep laugh, but it didn’t come. Instead, he lifted his hand and placed it over hers on his chest.

  ‘Connie, I’m sorry I couldn’t save him for you.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘It will always be there with us, that failure.’

  ‘It was the shark. Not your fault.’

  His full lips curled into a slow smile. ‘You’re not a very good liar, are you?’

  She exhaled heavily to rid her lungs of the shakes, and took her hand from under his. ‘Just give me a cigarette.’

  The native boat moved differently through the water, more like a lean, long-distance runner than the showy sprinter that was The White Pearl. Despite the cargo in her hold she scythed through the sea, the westerly wind full in her triangular sails, her rigging muttering with a high-pitched whine of impatience. Connie stood on deck watching the bow wave as it curled away with a flash of white lace across the deep blue water, like a woman showing off her petticoats.

  She knew Nigel would be angry if he were at her side.

  She had allowed these men, these thieves, these pirates from Sumatra onto the boat, and then abandoned The White Pearl to their greedy clutches. Why? She could hear Nigel’s voice demanding an answer. Why have you allowed such madness?

  ‘Because you’re not here,’ she whispered to the waves, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not here. Now I have to make the decisions. This is what I believe is best for Teddy and … She stopped, because she didn’t want Nigel to hear any more.

  She tapped a finger against her forehead. What did it matter now, what she said? Nigel wouldn’t hear. He couldn’t raise his head from his newspaper and deliver the crushing, Do you think that is wise, old thing? Something inside her was uncoiling, she could feel it, and she lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun as she stared hard, past the attap hut on deck to the gleaming stretch of endless blue water that lay behind them. Somewhere back there lay The White Pearl. She had abandoned it and everything it stood for, after a fierce argument with the others on board.

  ‘You can remain on her if you wish,’ she had declared, ‘but I’m leaving with my son. I trust Mr Fitzpayne when he says a showy Western yacht is far more of a target to a Japanese Zero or a Mitsubishi than a native trading vessel – or even a pirate vessel.’ Eventually she had lost patience. ‘Surely even you can see that it makes sense.’

  Yet she was actually surprised when Henry Court and Johnnie followed her over the side onto the Burung Camar, Henry with sullen, barbed r
emarks but Johnnie in silence. He didn’t meet her eyes. She knew he was as acutely aware as she was of their mutual treachery. He had removed the sling from his shoulder but carried his arm awkwardly, and his lips had gained a permanent grey tinge as though his suffering were squeezing the blood out of him.

  ‘I’m glad you decided to come,’ she told him.

  ‘Nigel would never forgive me if I let you go off alone.’

  ‘Johnnie,’ Connie said gently, ‘he’s not here any more.’

  He leaned forward, kissed her forehead and sat down on one of the hatches as suddenly as if the strings in his legs had been cut. She lowered herself beside him, the wood uncomfortably hot against the backs of her legs.

  ‘He would forgive you anything,’ she told him. ‘You know how fond he was of you, how proud he was of everything you did. He would pick up that photograph of you both that he kept on the piano, smile and say, “What’s old Johnnie up to now, I wonder?” Then he’d raise his glass to you.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘And whenever you wrote a letter, he kept it in his shirt pocket until the writing blurred with sweat.’

  ‘He never told me that.’

  ‘He would forgive you anything,’ she said again. ‘Even kissing his wife.’

  She felt Johnnie’s arm tremble, and when he turned his face to hers, tears were running down his cheeks.

  ‘You only kissed me that night because I belonged to him, didn’t you?’ she spoke carefully. ‘I understand, Johnnie, how much you loved each other and …’ she stroked his fingers on the hatch, ‘I’m grateful that he had you to care for him.’

  Johnnie’s blue eyes stared at her, self-conscious and awkward.

  ‘Really I am,’ she said. ‘You loved him more than I did.’

  Maya saw Mem Hadley make Golden-hair cry. It hurt, stinging like a wasp inside her chest. How did mem have such power over him? Maya studied her keenly to spy out her secret, but all she saw was tenderness. In the way her fingers touched his hand, in the turn of her eyes when she looked at him and in the lilting sound of her soft words. Maya felt herself being drawn into the circle of their warmth, but she forced herself to look away. This white woman was an intruder, an interloper, a killer of mothers. Yet what was this power she possessed to climb right inside a person’s heart?