The White Pearl (24 page)

They’d had fun together in those early years. She never asked where his money came from when he had pockets bulging with the
stuff, or where it had gone when he had none. He took her dancing at the Ritz and punting on Oxford’s river Isis, but when
he had no money for food for a month Kitty fed him her lunchtime sandwiches under the trees in Hyde Park. He lived on his
wits. Never had a proper job. He dealt in anything he could get his hands on – cars, cigarettes, greyhounds, girls, and when
he couldn’t lay hold of something legit, he knew where to find it in the back alleyways of London’s docklands.

The day he came to Kitty with blood on his hands and his shoulders shaking, she didn’t hesitate. She bound his wounds, hid
him in a shed on her father’s allotment while she arranged for a wedding licence and passports. There was no ring, no church
bells and not even a posy of flowers, but the day after the brief marriage ceremony they were on a ship to Australia. Where
the money came from for the tickets he didn’t ask, but she never mentioned her parents again, and certainly they hadn’t come
to the wedding.

Madoc didn’t take to Australia. Too full of dust and dingoes. So after knocking around there for a year or two, they’d shipped
out first to the Philippines and then to Singapore. After a spot of bother over a forged signature, they shifted upcountry
to Kuala Lumpur and eventually to Tampang, and for the first time they put down roots. Long, stringy ones that bound him to
this patch of earth and to Morgan’s Bar. He loved Malaya, adored the smell of it, the hot and greasy sweat of it. He was fond
of the natives, a warm and easygoing people, but hated the English toffs who had stolen the country for themselves from a
handful of sultans
and carved it up between them. Stamford Raffles had one hell of a lot to answer for when he rammed the Union Jack into the
rich and fertile soil of Malaya.

The main sticking point for Madoc was the Chinese. Men like Bull Chan and his triads were determined men, devious and ruthless
men who … A sound stopped his thoughts. With a start he realised that the pitch darkness of the jungle night had given
way to the first murmurs of daylight, just a smattering of golden shimmers sliding along the wall like shooting stars. The
sound was faint at first, but coming closer fast. A deep growl. The sound of an engine in the sky.

‘Kitty!’ Madoc shook his wife’s shoulder. ‘Kitty, wake up.’

‘Down, tiger, I’m asleep,’ she murmured somnolently. ‘Try me again in an hour.’

She pulled the sheet over her head.

‘Kitty, listen!’

With a muffled groan of protest, she raised her head and listened.

‘An aeroplane,’ Madoc hissed in her ear.

‘One of ours.’

‘Maybe not.’

The drone of the engine was changing to a roar.

He moved fast, leaped out from under the mosquito net and into his clothes, thrown over a chair last night. He shook his shoes
for spiders. ‘Get up! No lights. Be quick!’

‘For God’s sake, Madoc, leave me alone.’ She burrowed into her pillow once more.

He yanked the sheet off her. ‘Up! Now!’ He picked up her clothes from the floor and threw them on top of her.

She sat up and yawned. ‘You know you’re overreacting, don’t you?’

‘Get dressed,’ he said urgently. ‘We need to get out of here.’

She chucked a shoe at him and he vanished into the kitchen. Less than two minutes later when she walked in, only just visible
in the semi-darkness and stretching her limbs like a sleepy cat, Madoc had tossed a carving knife, matches, candles, a torch
and a hunk of cheese into a hessian bag. The Russian pistol was tucked under his belt.

‘Christ, Madoc! I tell you, it will be the bloody RAF.’

He didn’t stop to argue. He seized her arm, propelled her out of the front door and without releasing her, raced for the line
of darkness that was the jungle. He didn’t look up, but he could hear the aircraft and not
for one minute did he think it would bear the RAF roundels. The moment they reached the trees, they halted. Madoc’s pulse
pounded in his ears, and he could feel the sweat snaking down Kitty’s arm. They didn’t move, hidden in the fringe of the jungle,
staring up at the sky that was fast turning gold in the east. The black silhouette of a twin-engine bomber was clearly visible,
still small enough to look like a brooch pinned on a lapel.

‘Madoc, tell me I’m right and you’re wrong,’ Kitty whispered.

But as she spoke, a sprinkling of what looked like tiny black eggs dropped out of the bottom of the aircraft and plummeted
towards the clearing where Morgan’s Bar stood. Madoc couldn’t bear to look. He drew his wife deeper into the dark heart of
the jungle, indifferent to the spiders’ webs that clung to their cheeks and the leeches that buried their blunt little heads
into their flesh as they passed.

When daylight came, they returned, in no hurry now. Not that Madoc doubted what they would find. Rage burned in his lungs,
cramping them so badly that he had to stop as he hacked out a trail with the knife and lower his head to allow him to drag
in air. Neither talked. Neither mentioned the explosions they had heard or the roar, like a volcano blasting off, which Madoc
knew was the fuel tank for his generator blowing up.

The sight that met their eyes tore something from Madoc’s soul that he knew he would never regain. Everything was gone. The
bar, the casino, the outhouses, the jetty and the boat had all vanished, as though a giant hand had reached down and snatched
them up. Scorched earth and blackened rubble was all that remained. He had started up afresh and created a new life for himself
time after time in his past, a new place, a new name. But this was different: this was a home, the only real one he and Kitty
had ever had. At forty-four he was too old for this.

After one brief glance at it, he walked down to the river and stood on its bank. Even the water smelled of smoke. He turned
his back on the clearing and remained stubbornly like that, his chin on his chest and his eyes closed, though he could hear
Kitty rummaging among the burned ruins behind him. Yet again he had failed her, and yet again she wouldn’t ever blame him
for it. If he had steered clear of the Japs, if he hadn’t been so bloody greedy, this would never have happened.

He turned his head and saw her broad bottom bend over as she tugged at something in the blackened mess on the ground. At her
feet she had piled a few oddments from her search: the steel blade of a
parang
but with no haft to hold it by, a scorched tin of corned beef, a shard of cracked mirror, a zinc bowl and, miraculously,
an undamaged toothbrush.

She lifted her head and saw him watching. The look on her face told him more than he needed to know about what was going on
in her head. He walked quickly over to her, but she backed away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘It wasn’t you.’

‘Yes, it was. I knocked the ladder down on him.’

‘No, they did this to stop me telling the authorities about the bicycles I supplied to them.’

‘Bicycles! Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Madoc,’ she snapped. ‘They know you’d end up in prison if you told the authorities
anything at all about your business with them.’

‘No, if it wasn’t the bicycles, it was the other stuff I’ve done with the Japs.’ He wanted her to believe the lie. ‘I’m so
sorry, Kitty. I should have known it would end badly.’

She wiped her filthy palms on her skirt and looked at him with a wonky attempt at a smile. ‘It always ends like this,’ she
said.

He nodded slowly. ‘So much the better. Just you and me against the rest of the bastards.’

Connie held Teddy’s hand tight. She had picked him up from school after depositing the kerosene on the boat and was now heading
for the library.

Teddy loved the library. It was an imposing building with thick stone walls and a small clock tower above its studded front
doors. Teddy loved it for the abundance of books to choose from, but Connie loved it because it was the coolest building in
the whole of Palur. The heat and flies scarcely penetrated, which meant the books didn’t develop mould on their spines or
curl the corners of their pages the way they did in the humid atmosphere at Hadley House. Over much of the town hung the perpetual
smell of bad drains, even in the smart Windsor Hotel, but here in the library it was ousted by the distinctive aroma of leather
and paper and ink. It reminded Connie of England.

They took their time choosing, enjoying the quiet moment of togetherness, their heads bent over the pages as they assessed
a book’s attraction. Their final selection after half an hour was Jack London’s
White Fang
for Teddy with one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories as a back-up, while for herself Connie took out the latest Agatha
Christie and a biography of Ernest Shackleton. Just the thought of all that ice and snow made her feel better.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Hadley. You’re looking well. Hello, Teddy.’

‘Mr Fitzpayne. We meet again.’

His handshake was firm but brief. He had emerged from the swing doors of the library’s reading room where the newspapers were
spread out on long tables, but Connie couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that he wasn’t here by accident, that this was no
coincidence. He was wearing a canvas cap and loose trousers that made him look as if he’d been working on one of the fishing
boats.

‘I thought you might have left Palur,’ he said, ‘with all this excitement going on.’

‘Excitement? Is that what you call it?’

‘I noticed you at
The White Pearl
today.’

Is there anything I do that you don’t notice?

They stepped out into the street and she donned her sunglasses. After the soft grey silence of the library, the noise of the
town struck Connie as harsh and brittle, busy with traffic and the chatter of people gathered in huddles on the pavement,
eager to share and dissect every rumour or scrap of news.

‘No more adventures in the jungle to report?’ Fitzpayne asked her son.

Teddy grinned. ‘No, sir.’

‘So what are you reading?’

Teddy held out the book. ‘It’s about a sled dog.’

‘Good choice. I read it when I was a boy.’

There was a pause as they stood on the pavement, and Fitzpayne lifted his gaze from the boy to Connie. ‘I’m sorry to hear
your husband is unwell.’

‘Is there anything about my family you don’t hear?’ It came out sharper than she intended.

He looked at her keenly as he raised his canvas cap to her. ‘I hope he recovers quickly,’ he said, as if in farewell. But
he didn’t stride off, just stood in front of her as if there were unfinished business between them.

What was it he wanted from her?

‘Thank you, Mr Fitzpayne,’ she said. ‘Good afternoon to you.’

She walked away, Teddy at her side.

Connie headed quickly in the direction of her car, which was parked in the shade of a row of palm trees with the
syce
at the wheel. The encounter with Fitzpayne had unsettled her. He was constantly intruding, but she had no idea what it was
he wanted. Were there business dealings with Nigel that he thought she could help with? Was it
The White Pearl
? Is that what he was after?

As they skirted the edge of the crowded market with its colourful stalls and its aroma of spices, a hand touched her arm.

‘Connie, have you heard anything?’

It was Elspeth Saunders, the mother of Teddy’s friend, Jack. She looked pale, her eyes sunk in shadows and her hair lank.
Connie suspected she was pregnant again.

‘Elspeth, you should be at home, resting. Not out in this damned heat.’

‘I’m so frightened, Connie,’ she said in an undertone, so that the children wouldn’t hear. ‘What will happen if the Japs come
south? We’ve all heard the terrible tales of what they do to their prisoners.’

‘Don’t worry so much. That’s what General Percival’s army is for, to drive them back. And we have the
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
to defend our coastline. We’ll be all right. Churchill will make certain we are well protected.’

She pressed her friend’s hand reassuringly, but looked away because the lie lay uneasily on her tongue. She rather thought
Churchill had a lot on his plate right now. A familiar noise caught her attention and she heard someone shout, ‘Go get ’em,
boys! Give the bastards hell!’

It was the drone of an aircraft overhead. This was the noise that everyone in Palur had grown accustomed to as the RAF patrolled
the skies over Malaya, a welcome sound that made them feel safe. She glanced up and saw five planes silhouetted against the
fierce blue sky, their fuselages glinting in the sun, a fighter and four heavy bombers. She waved. The drone grew louder.

‘Mummy!’ It was Teddy, his mouth wide open in alarm. ‘Mummy, they’re not ours! They have twin tails. They’re Japanese.’

Connie seized his hand and started to run.

*

The first bomb hit the market square. A great wall of sound that blasted Teddy right off his feet, slamming him into the kerb,
tearing at their eardrums and scrambling their minds. Connie picked him up in her arms and hurried forward. More bombs hurtled
down, their impact shaking the earth beneath her feet.

Screams ripped through the street as explosions roared from the direction of the harbour, and the bang and crump of falling
bombs seemed to go on for ever. The air shuddered, turned grey. Filled Connie’s lungs with dust and dirt and smoke as buildings
collapsed and fires started to rage from one shop to another.

The library, I have to get us to the library
. The library had a basement that would be safe. She held Teddy tight, his arms entwined around her neck, his legs locked
around her waist, but she was sickeningly aware that his eyes were open wide, dazed and disbelieving. Bodies lay torn to pieces
on the road in front of him. A man screamed at them, his beard on fire. Connie slapped out the flames with her bare hands
and ran on. A telegraph pole crashed down inches ahead of her, its wires sending up sparks and writhing like scorched snakes
across her path. She dodged them, her heart thumping. Hell was erupting around them.