The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  Madoc’s gaze swung around the noisy chamber, and he noticed numerous men staring openly at their children’s white teacher, as they fingered their beards and watched the wisps of golden hair escape her headcloth and dance in the lamplight.

  ‘She’d better be careful,’ he said under his breath to his wife, ‘or she will stir up trouble for herself.’

  Kitty slipped her arm through his, letting the side of her breast bump against him, reminding him to whom he belonged. ‘No fear of that,’ she said. ‘She has her protector.’

  ‘Who?’

  She cast her eyes at the man standing in the shadows.

  ‘Fitzpayne?’ Madoc said, surprised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, Madoc, how can men be so dense?’ She laughed, puffed out her cheeks and walked over to Fitzpayne. ‘What have you done to her?’

  Fitzpayne didn’t take his eyes from Constance Hadley, but his face seemed to loosen and he almost smiled. ‘What has she done to herself?’ he asked softly.

  Madoc cursed the moon. It was too bright. It shone like a torch down through the darkness onto the riverbanks, its slippery light penetrating the netting and foliage overhead. He stood tight against a trunk and listened.

  Nothing. Only the slap of the water and the usual wild clicks and cries and whirrs from the jungle’s night chorus. A wind rattled the leaves and tugged at the rigging of the boats. At least half of them had weighed anchor and gone, presumably moving on or maybe just out hunting for prey, but The White Pearl lay at anchor downriver from the Burung Camar. Beauty and the beast. For an hour he remained in the dark shadows of his tree and waited. Finally a sentry grew bored and showed himself. Madoc smiled with satisfaction as the man lit a cigarette – which clearly had to be against camp rules – but now that Madoc knew exactly where the watchful eyes were positioned, high up on one of the platforms, he moved upriver, forging a path through a thick stand of bamboo. He chose a section of the bank that was overhung by branches and slid himself silently into the water.

  It was colder than he expected, and squeezed his lungs until he almost coughed. He set out with a strong stroke that carried him quickly into midstream. He hated the water. It was muddy and foul in his mouth, but worse was his certainty that it was packed with other creatures, and not ones he cared to meet. When the current hit, he went under. The river was tidal. Panic seized him for a fleeting moment, as fear of being swept out to sea flared in his head, but he kicked strongly against the rushing flow. He bobbed back up to the surface, the moonlight as white as ice on his face, and let himself be carried a few yards before striking out once more and finding an anchor chain to grasp hold of.

  He clung there in the shadow of the boat, drew breath and took his bearings. The White Pearl was directly ahead, the Burung Camar hiding just behind her like a shy bridesmaid, her mast as sharp and silver as a needle. He turned in the water to check the platform back on shore. The cigarette had vanished in the darkness. Shit. He felt his heart kick at his ribs, but convinced himself that he was invisible to any watching eyes, nothing more than a dark ripple in the river.

  He spat filth from his mouth as a wave broke over his face, and he swam with a sudden surge of energy in his limbs. He could taste greed along with the filth, and this time he was determined to make Fitzpayne pay. The thought of his short-wave radio tucked away in its hiding place was too enticing to resist. When he reached the rope ladder that hung down the side of the Burung Camar’s timber hold, he hauled himself up out of the water.

  33

  Connie crouched in the shade of a crooked mangrove tree and poked a stick into a small pool of seawater trapped among its roots.

  ‘Having fun?’

  She looked up, startled, shielding her eyes from the early-morning sun. ‘Hello, Fitz.’ She smiled a welcome and then frowned at the end of her stick. ‘It’s not working.’

  ‘What’s not working?’

  ‘My stick.’

  He laughed and squatted down beside her to inspect her pool. ‘What have you got in there?’

  ‘A crab. A big one. He’s hiding under that tangle of roots at the side.’ She prodded the stick into the hole, stirring the green water into life, forcing a sea snail to the surface but no crab.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh? What for?’

  He removed the stick from her grasp, and she was conscious of his fingers on hers. ‘You’re not bold enough,’ he said.

  Not bold enough.

  ‘With the crab?’ she asked.

  Their eyes held for a moment. His irises appeared almost blue today, warm and interested. She was aware of his shoulder only inches from her arm, a sliver of heat-laden air between them, and the way his legs folded up under him like a grasshopper’s with long muscular thighs. His knuckles were thick and tanned by the sun as he held her stick.

  ‘You should do it like this,’ he said, and gave three hefty jabs at the crab’s hideout.

  Instantly there was movement and a blur of scarlet shell as he yanked out the stick with the crab attached to the end. It was holding on for grim death with its one huge, overdeveloped claw, too angry to let go.

  ‘A soldier crab,’ Fitzpayne declared. ‘They are fighters.’

  Connie heard the respect in his voice. ‘Is that what you are, Fitz, under all the veneer of good manners? A fighter? Is that why you’re here?’

  He placed his hands on either side of the crab’s shell, cupping it delicately so that it couldn’t attack his unprotected fingers with its massive claw. ‘You and I are both fighters at heart, Connie,’ he said, but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he raised the soldier crab aloft for her to examine its underside. Behind him, between the trees, the sea was a dazzle of peacock blue, and a stiff wind cast strings of white lace over the surface of the waves like fishermen’s nets. ‘We fight for what we want, each in our own way.’

  She reached out and touched the crab’s hard shell, scratching her nail across it and into a crack where its leg was jointed. ‘But everyone has a weak spot.’ She smiled at him again because she didn’t want to argue. ‘And some of us are better than others at hiding it.’

  ‘So, what’s your weak spot?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so hard to guess.’

  ‘Your son, Teddy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He seems to like it here. In no hurry to leave.’

  ‘I know. He’s enjoying himself, finding out what he’s capable of.’

  ‘He’s not the only one.’ She felt his gaze on her face. ‘But you know it can’t go on for ever, don’t you?’

  Connie flushed. She leaned back into deeper shadow. Since she’d been here, so many things had come undone, and clips and fastenings within her – which used to be as tight and orderly as those on The White Pearl – were now prised loose. Here she was, dressed in appalling clothes, poking at a crab and talking to a pirate about her weak spot. While Japanese planes cruised overhead at will.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she told him, ‘I feel as if I have fallen down Alice in Wonderland’s burrow into a new and disjointed world.’

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t live in England.’

  She lifted her head. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a dying world,’ he said, and she could hear the sadness in his voice. ‘A society built on fear and contempt. I found it stifling.’ He examined her face, her chopped hair buffeted by the tropical wind, her clothes, the dirt under her fingernails. ‘I believe you will too, now.’

  At the thought of returning, Connie felt a lurch in her stomach. Or was it at the thought of not returning? She shook her head to dislodge the images.

  ‘Even here on this island of yours there are rules,’ she pointed out. ‘And certainly no shortage of fear and contempt.’ On impulse, she removed the miserable crab from his grasp and tumbled it back into the water. ‘But I like it here, the way my crab likes his pool. I fish for food, I sleep on a rough mat alongside the ants and wash in a muddy river. At the moment it’s enough.’<
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  ‘And teach English to the kids, don’t forget.’

  ‘Yes, that too.’ She nodded at him with a smile. ‘I enjoy that.’

  ‘And watch your son turning into a fine soldier crab,’ he laughed.

  Something warm and solid pressed tight against her heart. She reached for his hand and held it firmly between her own.

  ‘Fitz, I cannot thank you enough for what you’ve done.’

  Her words seemed to float between them before the wind snatched them away and she became aware of the silence, except for the pounding of the waves. She saw his expression change. Saw him retreat from her. Saw the tightening of the muscles in his face. Nevertheless, she raised his hand to her lips and softly kissed the back of it. It tasted salty and smelled of crab shell.

  Fitzpayne withdrew his hand at once, creating a distance between them, and rose to his feet. His movements, normally so agile, were stiff and awkward. ‘I came to tell you something,’ he said in a formal tone.

  Connie stood. She looked him straight in the eye. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Japanese pilot is dead.’

  It was brutal the way he said it. She felt the edges of the world grow dim and sensed his hand at her waist, steadying her.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she breathed.

  ‘His throat was cut. In the hold of the Burung Camar. We don’t know who, most probably someone who got wind of his presence and decided the only good Jap is a dead Jap.’

  He gave her time, let her gather herself, waited patiently till the rhythm of her breathing grew calmer. ‘I’m so sorry, Connie.’

  She shook her head mutely. Neither spoke, but she leaned forward and let her forehead fall against his collar bone. She rested it there. His arm encircled her shoulders and held her tightly as if he feared she might fall.

  ‘Why should I care so much?’ she murmured against him. ‘I tried to kill him myself, but …’ she hesitated, ‘… there were too many voices from the past.’

  He touched her hair. ‘Tell me what happened in the past.’

  So she told him. Not about Sho; no, not about her dead lover. But she told him about the car accident. It all came spilling out about killing Sai-Ru Jumat, about wanting to make up for it by taking care of the woman’s two children, Maya and Razak. She struggled to explain that saving the Japanese pilot was supposed to repay a life for a life. To appease, to placate. To display her penitence.

  ‘It was meant to make everything right,’ she whispered, ‘but instead it made everything wrong.’

  His breath trickled over her skin at her temple and she could feel the heat of it. His arm still encircled her and held her against him, not close enough to hear the beat of his heart but close enough for something to be drawn out of her by the stillness of him. The turmoil of her anger and the intensity of her sorrow at the murder of the Japanese pilot drained away as she listened to his soft murmuring.

  He talked quietly. About taking what she needed from the past and leaving the rest behind, about knowing her own weaknesses and, even more importantly, her own strengths. About making choices for her son and for her boat. Yet not once did Nigel’s name pass his lips, or the concept of a tomorrow. Instead, his words brushed against her mind as he brought her to focus on this moment, this place where they stood together beside a murky pool among the mangroves. Connected in some vital way she didn’t understand.

  He lifted her face from his chest and kissed her forehead, wrapping her in his arms without a word for so long that the shadows grew shorter and she forgot that another bad death had come stalking her.

  It’s not what your eyes see that matters. It’s what your brain sees. Connie pushed her way through the jungle and it struck her that its light no longer seemed gloomy to her. It felt soft and shaded. The beetles on the bark were no longer ugly and black, but iridescent creatures capturing a rainbow on their backs, and the branches no longer crawled with the menace of snakes and spiders but flourished with life.

  It’s what your brain sees that matters.

  Sweat still ran down Connie’s skin, cicadas still sounded incessantly in her ears and a troupe of monkeys still squabbled unseen in the trees, as irritating as children fighting in a playground. But she smiled as she clambered over fallen trunks, her limbs full of new energy, and her brain opened up to the immense beauty of the island. For the first time she looked properly at the long, succulent leaves and the rich red soil under her feet. She inspected strange, finger-like creepers that twisted up a hundred feet towards the light, and gazed at the butterflies that spun through the air in bright confetti.

  Her brain changed what her eyes saw. Somewhere at the core of her a heavy coffin lid had lifted. It was the lid she had slammed shut on her hopes and dreams, condemning them to the grave that was her marriage. But now it creaked open, and light flooded into those dark recesses. How could she not have known? So blinded by death that she could no longer see life, could no longer see love.

  She still felt the weight of his arm against her shoulder blade where he’d held her, and the rush of awareness through her bones when his lips touched her skin. She’d breathed him in, held the fineness of him in her heart, carried it close. Yet a stern part of her mind made certain she did not forget who and what he was – a thief who stole boats and drank with cut-throats who hanged people for fun.

  She kicked at the nub of a tree root in her path, angry at him. Angry at herself, because she could not reconcile the Fitz in the Kennel with the Fitz on The White Pearl where he was true and generous and dependable. For a moment she stood absolutely still. She let herself picture in her head the constantly changing colour of his eyes, as mutable as the sea itself, and the way the muscles along his jaw flickered when he was trying not to smile.

  During the storm at sea, his hand on her arm had lashed them together in a bond that she had not understood until now. Abruptly a twig snapped nearby, barely audible, but it made her open her eyes with a smile because she was convinced that Fitz had come back to find her. But directly in front of her on the trail stood Nurul. Pinpoints of sunlight sneaked through the tree canopy and speckled his mahogany face, glinting off the gold tombstones that beamed in his mouth as he grinned broadly at her.

  ‘Good morning, mem. You lost?’

  ‘No. I’m heading back to the camp now.’

  Nurul had been the one who broke up her moment with Fitz. He had approached them with a loud whistle among the mangroves and told Fitz something in Malay, something that sounded urgent. Fitz released her reluctantly and she’d stepped back, feeling the loss of him.

  ‘What is it?’ Connie had asked.

  ‘I’m needed in the workshop.’ He stroked her cheek briefly, a soft caress. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You go,’ she’d said. ‘Go and fix whatever you have to fix.’

  ‘You’ll wait here?’

  ‘In my hut. It’s more private.’

  He’d nodded, his hair tossed across his eyes by the wind. But it was clear he didn’t want to leave her, and he lingered for a moment more among the mangroves, his eyes unable to abandon her face. ‘This is a greedy and savage war,’ he said. ‘Promise me, Connie, that you will take good care of yourself. Promise me now.’

  ‘I promise.’ She wanted to touch him again but didn’t, not with Nurul listening to every word and watching every gesture. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Fitz,’ Nurul interrupted, flapping his hands in the air, ‘you need hurry.’

  Fitz vanished. In seconds his outline merged with the trunks as he strode away, but first he had stepped right up close to her and brushed her lips with his own. That was when she finally understood.

  Nurul was standing in her way now, blocking the narrow trail, still grinning at her and Connie was reluctant to go around him. It would mean forcing her way through the undergrowth on either side with its leeches and vicious thorns.

  ‘Has Mr Fitzpayne finished already?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he work on Pearl.’

  Still
the grin. Still the path blocked.

  ‘Thank you for sailing my yacht safely to this island, Nurul.’

  ‘I happy sail.’

  Still the path blocked.

  ‘May I pass, please?’ she asked politely.

  The teeth vanished back inside his head, and the lines on his face that a moment ago had seemed so friendly suddenly rearranged themselves and became arrogant. He swelled out his chest.

  ‘I like you,’ he said in a solemn voice.

  A blade of fear slid under her ribs.

  ‘I am honoured.’ She bowed her head to him.

  ‘I like you much.’

  His hand darted out and seized a lock of her hair. She recoiled, snatching it away, and wanted to run back the way she had come, but she was wary of turning her back on him.

  ‘Nurul, you are a good friend to Fitz.’

  He nodded. ‘He owe me.’

  ‘I don’t think he would be pleased that you are …’

  He pulled a narrow box from somewhere inside his trousers and his eyes shone with pride. He held the box out to her. ‘You like,’ he said.

  It was a midnight-blue velvet case for a piece of jewellery, green mould freckling its surface. She started to shake her head.

  ‘No. Thank you, Nurul, but definitely no.’

  His face creased like old leather and he jerked the box open. It was the most lavish necklace Connie had ever laid eyes on, a set of shimmering diamonds the size of birds’ eggs held in a filigree of white gold. Her eyes widened in horror.

  ‘From a Russian princess,’ Nurul boasted. ‘Now for you.’ He pushed it at her.

  ‘A dead Russian princess?’

  He shrugged, removed the necklace from its satin nest and lifted it to her neck.

  ‘No, Nurul. Thank you, but no. I am not interested.’ This time she took several steps backwards and continued to retreat down the trail, still facing the man who wanted to buy her with looted Romanov jewels. Did all these pirates believe women were for sale?

  ‘No!’ This time she shouted it at him.