The White Pearl (17 page)

‘Hello, Maya!’

The girl approached warily. The chicken advanced first, held out in front of her, humming with flies. Above them the sky was
a sheet of blue, as vivid as Maya’s sarong but with several scraps of ragged white clouds, as though it had been torn in places.

‘For you,
mem
,’ Maya said, and pushed the dead creature at Connie. ‘I lost sweet sticks.’

Lost?
More likely gobbled them down with Razak till they were sick. But Connie knew better than to reject the gift of the chicken,
a generous offering even if it was probably stolen from someone’s backyard.

‘Thank you,
terimah kasih
, Maya.’ Connie bowed her thanks with her hands pressed together in front of her, then took hold of the chicken by the neck.

Connie knew she had made a mistake. As soon as she sat the twins down in her study, she realised that she’d got it wrong.
It was too formal, too intimidating an environment. They were perched like a pair of nervous, black-eyed finches on the edge
of their chairs in front of her maple desk. Oil paintings of her parents in evening dress stared down at them, as well as
one of herself as a young girl on a swing. It was a world which must look like an alien planet to them. She should have sat
them on the veranda outside; at least there they could run if they wanted.

Nevertheless, she pressed ahead. She sat at her desk. ‘I want to discuss with you what I can do to help you, now that your
mother is …’ before she could say the word she heard Razak’s fierce intake of breath through flared nostrils, ‘is . .
. gone,’ she continued lamely. ‘I was thinking that you might like to attend school.’

In unison the twins shook their heads.

‘I think it’s what your mother would have wanted for you,’ Connie urged.

To her surprise, Razak curled forward until his forehead was touching his knees and he uttered a high-pitched keening note.
It went on and on, filling the room, scraping against the ceiling and banging into the windows. A shrill, grating sound that
felt to Connie as if it were inhabiting her own body, in her bones and in her blood.

‘Razak,’ Connie whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

As suddenly as it started, it ceased and the air stood still in the room.

Connie pushed herself to her feet. ‘Whatever I can do to make up for what I did to your mother, I will do.’

‘
Tadak.
No,’ Razak insisted, sitting upright again. ‘Only job. Nothing more. Not from you.’

The girl hissed something at her brother in Malay, too fast for Connie to catch. He shuddered and clutched his chest as though
wounded, but then rose, and on silent feet he moved to the door. ‘We work,’ he said, and left.

The girl sat immobile in the chair, her young face creased with fury.

‘Maya,’ Connie said with care, ‘Razak has made his decision. It needn’t be yours.’

Maya glared at her. ‘We twins,’ she said.

‘It’s your choice, Maya. You can work here and live in one of the houses we have for employees, if that’s what you want. It
would save you the journey from Palur every day.’

The creases vanished from the girl’s skin and she grew calmer. ‘I talk to Razak.’ But her head was nodding agreement already,
and Connie felt a sense of minor achievement. She was making progress in helping them.

‘Good, I’ll take you to the kitchen now to …’

The soft knock at the study door interrupted her. She opened it and found Teddy on the other side, his brown hair tousled
and windblown, his cheeks gleaming like polished apples, and she knew he had been running.

‘Mummy, look what I caught.’

He held out his hand. On its palm sat a bright orange lizard. Connie laughed and took it from him, cupped gently between her
hands. Only then did Teddy notice Maya standing behind her, and he gave the girl his sweet shy smile.

‘Maya is coming to work for us,’ Connie said. ‘Maya, this is my son, Teddy.’

Maya’s eyes were huge. Black pools of envy.

Connie and Teddy sat on the veranda doing their jigsaw. It was the Victory one of the farmyard with wooden pieces and beautiful
soft English colours. No bright kingfisher blues or garish sun-bird yellows. Even the peacock – why on earth was there a peacock
in a farmyard? – was painted in muted tints. It was their favourite. For Connie, the sight
of the old shire horse always brought with it a rush of smells and sounds from home – no, not home, Hadley House was home
now – from England, she meant, but it bemused her why Teddy should like this jigsaw so much.

But then he enjoyed Kipling’s story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in India, and W. E. Johns’ tales of Biggles over Germany, even though
he’d never been to either place. He was a child with a vivid imagination and a desire to explore the world around him with
a courage that sometimes frightened the life out of her. It was a lizard he had brought home this time. But it could as easily
have been one of the giant millipedes, or a horned beetle, or a hapless scarlet tree frog. Worse were the spiders.

Jigsaws were safer. Maya watched, fascinated. She was perched cross-legged on a stool, making indecipherable mutterings, attention
firmly fixed on the strange wooden shapes. When Teddy gave a squeal of pleasure each time he fitted in a new piece, her gaze
would leap to his face before swivelling to Connie’s and back to the jigsaw. In the corner, Chala, Teddy’s
amah
, sat humming dissonant sounds to herself and sewing, her fingers nimble, and all the time she ignored Maya the way she would
ignore a stray cat.

A door banged in the house, and a moment later Nigel strolled onto the veranda. He brought with him an aroma of the outside
world, and immediately Connie looked up to see if he had news of Johnnie, but knew by his face that he did not.

‘You’re home early,’ she said, surprised. It was only midday.

‘Bit of an emergency with the Export Permissions. I had to come home to fetch some forms from my desk.’ His white shirt lay
open at the neck, revealing the triangle of skin there that was weathered by the sun.

‘Look, Daddy, look what I caught.’ Teddy flicked open the lid of the precious cigar box next to him on the table and revealed
the lizard. It darted its eyes at Nigel but otherwise didn’t move.

‘Well done, young man. That’s a fine catch you have there. You should try pushing a stick through it and roasting it over
a fire to learn what lizard meat tastes like. That’s what I did at your age.’

Teddy regarded his father with severe rebuke. ‘No, Daddy, I have to look after it. To feed it.’

‘With what?’

‘Crickets.’

Nigel chuckled and said, ‘Over to you, Constance.’

She groaned with mock dismay while he bent over, still chuckling, and dropped a kiss on his son’s head. She wished he’d do
the same to her. Only then did he take note of the native girl perched on the stool, and at once his smile fell away, his
limbs stiff and angular as he straightened up.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘This is Maya Jumat.’

‘Jumat? Isn’t that the name of the woman you …?’

‘Yes. Maya is her daughter.’

‘Get her out of here.’

‘What? Nigel, don’t …’

‘Get her out of here, Constance,’ he said adamantly. He turned his back on the girl. ‘I do not want her in my house.’

Connie rose to her feet, bemused by what could have prompted this sudden wave of dislike. ‘I’ve taken her on to work in the
house,’ she explained.

‘No, I forbid it.’ The veins in his cheeks had darkened.

‘What on earth is the matter?’

He swung around and faced the girl, who was gazing impassively at her sandaled feet. On her face there was no reaction to
his outburst.

‘Get out, girl.’ Nigel did not raise his voice, but hostility sharpened each word.

‘Why, Nigel?’ Connie demanded. ‘I want her to stay.’

But it was too late. The girl slid off her stool, down the veranda steps and disappeared round the corner of the house, her
shadow stretching behind her as though eager to remain. There was a long, unmanageable silence. Connie was aware of Teddy
staring at his parents, his cheeks blotchy and flushed.

‘Chala,’ Connie said, ‘take Teddy out for a ride on his bicycle, will you, please?’

‘Yes,
mem
.’

Chala wrapped Teddy’s small fist in hers and led him towards the garage block where his bicycle was kept. Normally he would
jump at the offer, but today he hung back, dragging his feet in the dust and looking over his shoulder at the veranda in a
way that pulled at Connie’s heart. His lizard crouched forgotten in its box on the table.

Connie sat down heavily in her chair. ‘What was that about, Nigel?’

‘I don’t want the girl here.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know nothing at all about her.’ He was striding up and down the length of the veranda. ‘For heaven’s sake, Constance,
you kill a woman and then invite her daughter into our home, where you have a vulnerable young child. It’s too much of a risk.
Isn’t it enough that you already have her brother working in the garden?’

‘I’m trying to help them.’

His footsteps ceased as he came to stand opposite her. He was breathing hard. She could hear it stirring the air, and in an
odd sort of way she felt the confrontation stirring their relationship, drawing up some emotions that were buried deep. It
was a long time since she and Nigel had had a row. But why over this slip of a girl? Why now? She wiped her hand across her
damp forehead. The shade of the veranda provided only slight protection from the heat, and an ink trail of red ants was beginning
to explore the wooden pieces of the farmyard. Dear God, was nothing in this country safe from them?

‘Nigel,’ she said in a calm voice, ‘I mean to help this girl.’

‘Just give her some money, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I tried. Her brother refuses to accept our money. It would offend his mother’s spirit, it seems.’

I curse you, white lady.
The words whispered through her mind, and there was the taste of ash in her mouth. She desperately needed a cigarette. She
pushed back her chair and headed towards the veranda steps.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find Maya.’

‘I won’t have her here, Constance. Not on my estate.’

Connie froze. Her foot hung suspended above the step down to the gravel path that ran like a white ribbon around the house,
and her heart missed a beat as it tumbled to the bottom of her chest. In four words Nigel had robbed her of everything. Everything
that she had put into the last nine years of being a rubber-planter’s wife. All the suffocating heat she had endured in silence,
all the servants she had organised, the dinner parties she had given, all the tennis bashes she had attended, all the smiles
she had pasted on her face. Even the son she had borne him. In four simple, effortless words he had destroyed it all.

Not on
my
estate.

He didn’t say on
the Hadley
estate.

Or on
this
estate.

Or on
our
estate.

No. It was
his
estate.
His
alone
.
Not
theirs.
She didn’t count for anything out here in Malaya. With a jerky movement of her hand, she brushed aside the air in front of
her as if she couldn’t bear to inhale it a moment more, then she turned and walked past Nigel, entered the house and ran upstairs,
taking them two at a time. She reached the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. The room was dim, the shutters closed,
so that blue shadows drifted across the floor. An exhausted bee, heavy with laden pollen sacs, was buzzing frantically against
the glass. The sound of its wings seemed to batter at her ears.

She hurried into her dressing room and yanked open the drawer. The cigarette case was still there. Each time she expected
it to have vanished. She took out a cigarette, leaving only one remaining in the silver case, then sat down on the bed and
lit it. With slow, ragged breaths she inhaled, drawing the scent of Shohei Takehashi into her lungs, into the dark recesses
of her mind.

‘You are beautiful, Connie.’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘You have no idea how perfectly exquisite you are.’

‘Sho, stop it! Listen to me.’

He kissed her throat, raising a ripple of delight along her skin; he nibbled her earlobe and caressed her breast. It was always
like this. He knew how to distract her, to detach her mind from her body so that her thoughts floated loose and unfocused.

Don’t, Sho. Don’t dismantle me. Don’t unpick the person I have so carefully sewn together.

‘Listen to me,’ she insisted again. ‘You must stop coming for visits to Hadley House. I know you think that in a social group
no one will be suspicious of us because you’re a respectable trader in town, and speak English better than most Englishmen
because you went to Cambridge University, but …’

He laughed and kissed her naked stomach.

‘But that doesn’t mean,’ she finished, ‘that you can pass unnoticed.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Nigel likes my visits.’

‘Because it’s too dangerous.’

‘No, my sweet Connie. There’s no danger.’

‘He will suspect.’

‘Hah! You overestimate his awareness. I talk to him by the hour about the rubber business.’

‘What on earth do you find to discuss?’

‘He tells me about the new varieties that will produce twice as much latex per tree, and about how much the Americans are
shipping out of here. He moans about the Excess Profits Tax that the British government has imposed, and worries about his
rubber stocks in the
godowns.
He is only too pleased to have an ear into which he can pour his passion.’ He brushed his lips along the top of each of her
breasts, and she could not stop her hand stroking his sleek black hair. ‘Because rubber is your husband’s passion, my love.’

A flush rose from her neck to her cheeks. ‘I know. It’s true. Rubber is his passion, not me.’

She sat up in bed and drew herself away from him. The bedroom was stuffy and hot, a tiny room in a scruffy little hut built
of
attap
that Sho had discovered abandoned in the jungle. It was only a few miles from the Hadley Estate down an overgrown track where
no one ventured. She could just about squeeze her car between the dense foliage most of the way there and she walked the rest,
the perfect hideaway, guarded on one side by a brown, turbulent river that murmured to them while they made love. Sho had
brought clean sheets and a teapot to it, and she had laughed at him. She had filled the room with flowers, large, luscious
blooms that made the air languorous with their scent.