The White Pearl (47 page)

‘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 remarks 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?

With a hiss of anger and a shake of her head, as though she could tip
mem
right out of it, she scampered into the cockroach-ridden hut and put a pan of water to boil on the rickety oil stove. Tea.
That’s what cured a white man’s ills, that’s what Golden-hair needed.

The boy,
Tuan
Teddy, was seated inside the hut on the stained mat playing with the pirate boat’s monkey, a tiny scrap of a thing with huge,
dung-coloured eyes in a naked pink face with ferocious teeth. It wore a leather belt round its middle and a miniature silver
bracelet on each wrist. The boy’s dog was regarding it with nervous eyes. Maya had been astonished that
Mem
Hadley had let her son keep the dog after it caused the death of her husband. Sure as hell Maya would have tossed it to the
sharks, but white minds were strange countries with tangled, baffling pathways.

Japs as well. She didn’t know why the prisoner pilot had not told anyone that she was the reason he’d chucked the dog overboard.
Did he really want
mem
to hate him that much? Still Maya sweated over it. She didn’t want them to feed her to the sharks, or put a bullet in her
brain instead of in his. She could have kissed Iron-eyes’ feet when he insisted that the Jap remain on
The White Pearl
until it was repaired. If that Sumatran bastard with the mouthful of gold had any sense, he’d stick a knife down his enemy’s
throat and finish the job
Mem
Hadley had started – one less to feed.

It struck Maya as odd that the no-good, weasel-faced Madoc and his fat wife chose to stay with the yacht as well, instead
of coming on the
Burung Camar
.
Mem
Hadley had thanked him, and said she was grateful
to have someone to keep on eye on it. Aiyee. Weasel-face was getting ready to bite off her fingers. Maybe the Japs would blast
his skinny bones out of the water when the yacht set sail again.

‘You need milk.’

Maya was pouring the hot water into a tin mug. She sprinkled black tea leaves on top and looked over at the boy. ‘What?’

‘You need milk in the tea,’ he explained kindly.

‘No milk here.’

‘Any sugar?’

She inspected their tin box of provisions. ‘No sugar.’ She rummaged through it, and held up a squat jar. ‘Honey?’

‘That will do.’

She stirred four spoonfuls into the hot water. It didn’t look quite right. The tea leaves were floating on top like ants.

‘It’s for
Tuan
Pilot Jo-nee,’ she told him.

The boy laughed, came over and stuck his finger in the honey jar. He took turns licking it with the dog and the monkey.

‘Lucky Jo-nee,’ he said.

The island looked like a crab, except it was green. It was covered so densely with jungle that it formed a carapace that it
was impossible to penetrate. Maya viewed it with apprehension. It had a high hunched back that rose in the centre, and outcrops
of land stretching off to the side like claws, ready to clamp onto intruders.

‘What is so special about this island that makes it different from all the others?’ Razak asked in her ear. His voice sounded
sad, and she knew he was missing
Tuan
Hadley.

She took his hands in hers. ‘I don’t know. I am sick of new things, my brother. Every day they come at me like arrows, and
I hurt all over. I want to sit in a hut on dry land and eat fish and pawpaw stew and speak to no one.’

‘Except Golden-hair.’

Her cheeks flushed, and she glared across the waves at the island. An army of black clouds was marching towards them. It would
rain soon.

‘Maya,’ Razak whispered, ‘he is not meant for you, any more than
Tuan
Hadley was meant for me.’

Tears stung Maya’s eyes, and the wasps stirred in her chest again. ‘Who says?’

Her brother’s arm curled around her shoulder and drew her to him. ‘I say.’

The ache in her head was comforted by his protection, knowing that he would guard her from the arrows of newness. But the
ache in her heart was too big to mention, in case words gave it the power it needed to eat her alive.

*

A solid wall of trees barricaded the island. No white sandy beaches laced its shoreline, and there appeared to be no inlets
or inviting creeks where wildlife came to search for turtle eggs. Darkness moved like a living thing behind the tree trunks
as Fitzpayne expertly steered a course through the waves that crashed against the mangroves. The long bowsprit heeled to starboard,
and the deck trembled and creaked as the rising wind tussled with the rigging.

The air was thick and oppressively heavy, so that when the rain started it came as a relief. Connie didn’t mind the soaking.
She felt a restless energy that matched the rain’s, and preferred to stand out on deck rather than in the hut as it pitched
and rolled in the grip of a fierce current. Her eyes strained to make out the features of the island but the curtain of rain
obscured it. Everything grew grey and greasy, except for the veins of lightning that flared out of the sudden gloom.

Abruptly, Fitzpayne swung the wheel hard to starboard and for a moment Connie was convinced they would be thrown against the
grey trunks and pitched into the ocean. She seized the rail and shouted out to Teddy in the hut, but suddenly the boom of
the waves ceased. The air around her changed colour: it became green and shimmering as though they were under water. Astonished,
because she had seen no gap, she realised that Fitzpayne had unerringly found a hidden narrow inlet, and they were gliding
under an arc of dark green foliage high overhead.

‘What is this place?’

‘It has many names in many tongues.’ His eyes scanned the riverbanks, where nothing seemed to move except the rain.Yet she
could sense his pleasure, as though this place meant something to him.

‘What do
you
call it?’ she urged. And when he didn’t answer she added, ‘Home?’

He laughed, and there was a certain contentment in the sound. ‘It’s as good a name as any.’

*

The place wasn’t at all like Maya expected. She stood nervously on the jetty with the waters snarling at her below the planking,
and she wanted to throw herself onto the muddy path, cling to its solid earth and swear she would never set foot on anything
that moved ever again.

‘Look up there,’ Razak said, his eyes bright with excitement.

‘No!’

‘It’s good, sister.’

‘No!’

‘We will be as free as monkeys up there.’

‘I don’t want to be a monkey.’

She stamped her foot on the jetty to remind him she was made to be on the ground, but he laughed, entranced by the network
of ropes and walkways that was strung through the trees like spiders’ webs.

‘Come along, Maya.’ A hand took her wrist. It was
Mem
Hadley. ‘Let’s take a look at this new home of ours.’

The rain was easing back to a sullen drizzle, and
mem
gently coaxed her across the planks to solid land. Maya sank gratefully to her knees in the mud, patting its sodden surface
with her palms as if it were a dear friend.
Mem
didn’t laugh at her, but stood quietly inspecting this strange green world they found themselves in.

‘Teddy will love it here,’ she smiled.

‘Yes,
mem
.’

‘Razak too, I think.’

‘Yes,
mem
. They foolish men.’

Mem
Hadley gave a soft, bird-size laugh and there was a sound in it that Maya had not heard before, a clear, ringing sound like
a bell that has been cut free of its rope. How could a face look so sad but a voice sing so happy in the same person? Inside
Maya, a tight fist that was lodged somewhere below her throat – that had been jammed there ever since
Tuan
Hadley was gobbled by the shark – relaxed its grip a fraction at the sound of it. She swallowed her fear, and this time it
didn’t hurt.