The White Pearl

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Yes, I admit that. The pilot got in the way. I told you that we could get good money for passing on information to the British authorities in Singapore about what the set-up was on that island. So I …’

  ‘They traced it. Your transmission was traced. That’s how the Japs knew where to come. It all happened because of you, all those lives slaughtered, so many children killed. So much death. All that destruction was caused because you would not be satisfied with just taking a boat to sail. You had to have more. It was just greed. Oh, Madoc, Madoc …’

  Never before, not ever, had she spoken like that to him. It wasn’t the words – sometimes they had shouted worse at each other – it was the desperate sadness in her voice, that look of finality in her eyes. It sent terror darting through his bowels. He gripped her wrist.

  ‘Kitty, I didn’t mean to. You know I hate the Japanese as much as you do, especially now.’ He stopped. She was shaking her head.

  ‘Madoc, we have to let Nurul go back to try to find Fitzpayne and Mrs Hadley.’

  ‘No, I won’t allow it. We agreed, Kitty.’

  ‘I know it’s risky, but enough is enough, Madoc.’ She touched his chest, just over his heart, and gave him an odd smile. ‘Let’s salvage what we can from this. The kid needs his mother.’

  ‘I tell you, we’re not going back there.’

  She stepped away from him into the velvet darkness that was creeping along the deck. ‘Nurul might have something to say about that. But,’ she shrugged, ‘he might reconsider if I ask him nicely to …’

  ‘No,’ Madoc said sharply. ‘I don’t want you near Nurul any more.’

  He didn’t mean it to happen this way. He didn’t want to do it without her by his side, watching his back. But without a word he walked over to where Nurul was busy coiling rope and listening to the Hadley kid who was speaking to him in low, urgent tones. Madoc drew out the Tokarev pistol and pointed it straight at the pirate’s chest.

  ‘Nurul, hoist those bloody wings of yours. I want us to set sail.’

  Nurul’s sharp eyes shifted from Madoc to the gun and back again. His gold teeth flashed warily. ‘To where?’

  ‘To India.’

  They climbed higher to cross the centre of the island, and deep mist hung over everything like the breath of the earth itself, deadening the clamour of the jungle. It painted the leaves with a metallic sheen and muted the vibrant colours of the huge butterflies, turning them into ghosts that wheeled through the air. Connie adapted a branch into a crutch to aid Fitz, but she saw each step take its toll. It was time to rest again.

  ‘Will the Japanese come this far?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fitz said, ‘I’m afraid they will. I’m sorry Connie,’ he turned his head to study her face, ‘but nowhere is going to be safe on this island now. The Japanese are very thorough. They are experts at jungle warfare.’

  Connie could hear the respect in his voice. She had seated them side by side on a rock at the base of a stubby waterfall, their feet in a pool of green water. She had bathed his wounds again, her fingernails stained pink, and rinsed out the bandages that were soaked with blood.

  ‘Your whole world has changed,’ he said softly, and drew her against him.

  Her arms slid around his back, holding him safe, feeling the heat of his skin seep into her own, becoming a part of her.

  ‘Not just my world, Fitz. We all know it’s the end of Western domination of the Far East. The whole Empire is starting to crumble, so we are all going to have to change, whether we like it or not.’

  He kissed the side of her head and she heard him inhale the scent of her, the sweat, the dirt and the fear.

  ‘And do you like it, the idea of change?’

  The question was not asked as if it mattered, just tossed out as though it were no more than a passing curiosity. But Connie knew just what it meant, and how much it mattered. She entwined her fingers with his.

  ‘I hate the deaths,’ she said fervently. ‘All the pain and the cruelty put me in a rage that makes me want to …’ With an effort she stopped herself from giving voice to what the rage did to her soul. Instead, she rested her head on his bare shoulder and said more calmly, ‘Time is striding on relentlessly, Fitz. We can’t halt it. We can’t pull it back and scream for it to stop. Everything is moving forward so fast, and there’s no point in saying, How dare you leave me behind? We have to move forward too.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing? Moving forward?’

  She blushed, her cheeks burning. ‘I have to. I love my son,’ she said flatly as if it answered his question.

  ‘I know.’ The lines of his face softened, losing their rigidity, and she saw what he must have looked like as a boy. He attempted to rise on his good leg, but she held him down. She could feel the exhaustion emanating from him, and, whatever he said, she refused to believe the Japanese troops could have reached this far yet.

  ‘Were you as rebellious when you were a boy?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What were you like?’

  He was amused by her question. She could see the beginnings of a grin. ‘I was trouble,’ he laughed.

  ‘I can believe that,’ she smiled. ‘I know you said you were born on a beach, but where?’

  ‘Out here in the Philippines. My parents owned a touring circus.’

  ‘A circus?’ She laughed, delighted, and dipped her hand in the water and splashed it over him. ‘So you were the star trapeze act, I presume.’

  ‘Something like that.’ His grey eyes briefly flashed blue. ‘I used to dive from a high platform into a teacup of water.’ But his face abruptly closed and he spoke quickly. ‘My parents were both killed in a motor accident in Shanghai when I was twelve years old, and I was shipped back to England to my uncle who educated me at Harrow. He tried, really tried, to turn me from a Malayan monkey, as he called me, into a civilised English gent.’

  ‘Not with much success, I see,’ she smiled.

  He raised one black eyebrow at her, but the resonant boom of a naval gun out at sea knocked the smile from his face. She shivered, despite the stultifying heat.

  ‘They’re here in force,’ Fitz warned. He closed his eyes, and for a moment she feared he would tumble forward into the green pool at their feet and she wrapped herself around him, merging her slender bones with his.

  ‘Hold onto me,’ she whispered.

  His hand tightened on hers. ‘I learned yesterday that Singapore has surrended. General Wavell ordered a scorched-earth policy to be adopted, destroying all factory machinery and burning the warehouses on the wharves to leave nothing for the Japanese invaders. They bombed the hell out of the city.’

  ‘Oh, God, poor Singapore.’

  ‘The Japanese Chrysanthemum Division – their crack troops – crossed the Straits of Johore and took the island of Singapore. At six o’clock in the evening yesterday General Yamashita accepted the surrender in the Ford factory.’ His voice grew hard, the words seemed to scrape against his teeth. ‘One hundred and thirty thousand British and Commonwealth troops surrendered. The worst military surrender in British history.’

  Connie felt a rush of shame. They both knew that the impossible had happened. A shudder of sorrow shook her, and Fitz held her head gently against his chest until it had passed. She helped him to his feet. She tucked herself under his arm, fitting perfectly inside the curve of his shoulder, and together they continued to fight a path through the jungle. But all the time the hum of his heartbeat reverberated in her ears along with his words.

  The rain came, great drenching sheets of it that made the ground slippery underfoot and turned any slope into a treacherous mudslide. The only relief was that it drove the biting flies into hiding and silenced the gibbons in the trees. But it didn’t silence the Japanese troops, whose rifle shots punctuated the drumming of the rain.

  ‘Connie, listen to me.’ Fitz rested his shoulder against a trunk. He was breathing hard. She tightened her grip on his wet skin and it felt hot. ‘Nurul won’t risk setting sail until after dark.’
r />   ‘How far from here is the promontory?’

  ‘An hour.’ He glanced down at his leg. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘That’s good. It means we have time to shelter somewhere. You must rest your leg and get out of the rain, or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  They were speaking in whispers, though there was scarcely any need as the clatter of the rain was deafening.

  ‘Or …’ she rested her wet cheek against his, ‘… or I shall have to strip your wet clothes off you.’

  He laughed, a small, intimate sound that warmed them both. She didn’t ask why he was so sure of Nurul. She had to make herself believe what he believed – because her son was on board that boat, and it was the only way she could get back to him. So she sat Fitz down under a tree – overriding his protests – and using his knife, she hacked off an armful of giant fern fronds and attap leaves, which she proceeded to weave around him until he was enveloped in a cocoon of greenery. She wriggled her way in beside him, pulling the big glossy leaves over their heads, and for the first time felt safe. It was an illusion, she knew. But it was an illusion she clung to.

  The warmth and solidity of Fitz’s body next to hers made her thoughts less ragged. She could consider her son without icy panic. Nurul, I swear I would never have stabbed you if I had known. Fitz sensed her despair and wrapped an arm around her, pressing her tight against him, as though he could keep her safer inside his own skin. But neither spoke. They rested, their heads touching and her hand protective on his wounded leg.

  ‘Fitz,’ she murmured eventually, inside their enclosure, the rain dripping on her knees, ‘if you get back to the Burung Camar and I don’t make it, will you make certain Teddy gets safely back to my parents in England? They live in Compton Bassett in Wiltshire. Their name is Harrington.’

  She felt a ripple of shock run through him. For a long moment he didn’t reply, and she wondered if she’d asked too much, but he took her hand and pressed it flat over his own heart.

  ‘I won’t let you die,’ he promised. ‘Tell that to your son.’

  ‘But if I do?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘Remember,’ she told him. ‘Harrington in Compton Bassett.’

  He made a sound of disgust, and she said no more.

  Connie kept track of time. She counted out the heartbeats in her head. Fitz’s eyes were closed and his breath was shallow, but she knew he wasn’t asleep because she could feel the alertness of his brain as though it were connected to the workings of her own. Curled up in the green cocoon she kept watch on the jungle through a spyhole in the vegetation, listening for signs of soldiers through the rain. Oddly, in spite of the dread of what lay ahead, and her desperate need for her son, an astounding thing happened. Happiness came raging in, and she fell asleep nursing it to her, her head on Fitz’s shoulder.

  She woke with Fitz’s fingers on her lips, his soft hiss in her ear. Through the spyhole she glimpsed uniforms, grey and menacing. Her heart jumped and her first instinct was to run, but Fitz held her firm. She saw the knife in his hand, and in her head she cursed this grey-uniformed enemy who took no heed of rain or jungle, but marched with such relentless efficiency. The soldiers moved away but Fitz remained seated a long time before he dismantled their cocoon and limped deeper into the jungle, his face set, his arm gripping Connie.

  37

  A rifle was jammed into the back of Connie’s neck. She didn’t scream. Didn’t move. A guttural shout behind her told her what she already knew – that it was a Japanese rifle.

  Fitz, don’t come back for me. Stay safe.

  Terror darted up her spine, jarring the base of her brain. But she spoke calmly.

  ‘Hello, konnichiwa. I am Connie. I …’ Slowly, with infinite caution, she turned around.

  The rain had stopped, and she had been hiding behind an outcrop of rock that loomed over the shoreline below, overlooking the promontory of land that stretched like a finger into the sea. The vivid colours and sounds of the breakers as they rolled up onto the dazzling white beach made Connie cry when it had first burst into sight, when she and Fitz emerged from the gloom of the jungle. Because it held the route to freedom, to her son.

  ‘They’ve been here,’ Fitz murmured as they lay on their stomachs in the undergrowth. He pointed to a neat line of footprints etched in the sand below them.

  ‘Nurul?’

  He shook his head. He watched the desolation she couldn’t hide creep into her eyes, and his hand abruptly reached out and seized a hank of her dirty hair. He shook it vigorously, jerking her head back and forth as if he could shake the despair from inside it. It shocked her, the intensity of his action. As though the sight of her pain was suddenly more than he could bear. Then he pulled her to him and kissed her mouth with a ferocity that made her ache for him.

  ‘He’ll come,’ he promised. ‘Nurul will come.’

  They had remained hidden until it was almost dark. He would not let her rebind his wounds but held her in his arms, her head on his bare chest, talking quietly until she knew the thoughts in his head the way she knew the thoughts in her own. And she realised now that he regarded her present position of danger as his fault.

  ‘It was my decision,’ she’d whispered, ‘to swim back to the island.’ Her tongue flicked out and licked the salt from his skin. ‘Not yours.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought you to this island. I believed you and your son would be safe here, but I should have left you behind in Palur.’

  ‘I would be dead if you had. Not just because of the Japs.’

  He pulled her closer, kissing her hair. ‘Sometimes dead is better than hell.’

  She lifted her head and looked up at his face. It lay in shadow, but she could feel his heart thundering in his chest. ‘Are you in hell, Fitz?’ she asked gently.

  He grinned at her. ‘No, Connie. This,’ he squeezed her body hard, ‘is the closest to heaven I’m likely to get.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  She had pushed him down onto his back with soft whispers, the sandy soil steaming around them in the heat of the day, and she had kissed his mouth, then the hard tendons of his throat and the broad expanse of his chest. It tasted of salt and strength and something stubborn. She slid her blouse from her shoulders and saw his pupils grow huge with desire as his hands caressed her breasts with tenderness, exploring their creamy skin, touching the hollows and curves of her body. Teasing the secret and intimate sounds of pleasure from deep in her throat.

  ‘Connie.’ His voice was thick and heavy as he held her away from him and made her listen. ‘Connie, this is not how I want it to be for us, snatched and desperate and …’ he stopped.

  At first she thought he was in pain, and she quickly lifted her weight off him, but he still didn’t move. He was listening, grey eyes alert and wary. She ducked lower to the earth as he rolled onto his front beside her. She could hear nothing but the roll of the waves on the beach and the birds’ raucous calls after the rain.

  ‘They’re here,’ Fitz whispered.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Behind us. In the jungle.’

  Connie’s skin tightened. ‘We have to move.’ She pulled on her blouse, rose to a crouch and took hold of his arm. ‘Hold on to me.’

  For a split second he didn’t react. She was scanning the undergrowth and tree trunks with sharp scrutiny, so it took a moment for her to turn to him and see his face. His expression astonished her. His eyes were a strange, muted grey, the shade of a dove’s wing, and he was gazing at her with open admiration. She felt colour rush to her cheeks.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed and yanked at his arm.

  In silence, they threaded a path through the trees that lined the beach and down to the base of the promontory, where an ancient rockfall from the cliff had created a fortress of sorts. They dodged in among the boulders and buried themselves in the deep shade they found there. For a long time they waited, shoulders touching, but all was quiet.

  ‘Do you think they’ve
gone?’ Connie murmured.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out. I’ll have to take a look.’

  ‘No, Fitz.’ She gripped his wrist. ‘No.’

  ‘Stay here. Don’t move.’

  He kissed her, nothing more than a tender brush of her lips this time, and then he was gone. She almost stormed after him to drag him back, but she knew that she could end up getting them both killed that way if there really were enemy troops out there. She stood immobile, cheek wedged against the warm rock, peering through a tiny slit that gave her a partial view of the beach as she begged God to guard Fitz, offering to deal, her soul for his life. Please, please. Minutes dragged past while shadows shifted.

  That was when the Japanese rifle jammed into the back of her neck and she didn’t scream.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Konnichiwa.’

  But this wasn’t a young raw recruit like last time, terrified of the rifle in his hand. This one was a battle-hardened soldier with sharp features and a desire to kill her in his black eyes. He shouted something at her in Japanese, and gestured with the tip of his rifle, forcing her to emerge from her hiding place. She did exactly as she was told, hands in the air, but as she walked in front of him across the white sand her eyes darted among the trees.

  Fitz, don’t come back for me. Stay safe. Take care of my son.

  She was going to die. Now. Here. On this foreign beach. Alone and unburied. Food for the fish on the next high tide – or maybe the black ants would get her first. But instead of the terrified scramble of emotions she expected to find in herself, her mind was oddly calm. She saw everything around her with precise, cut-glass clarity: the long, glossy leaves of the nipa palms waving goodbye in the wind, a lizard with its crest raised in final greeting, the sea bright and glittering as it sighed its farewell, and on her hand a fingerprint of blood that belonged to Fitz. All were outlined in vivid colours, as if her eyes knew it was their last chance to view the world.