The White Pearl (28 page)

With a loud laugh Fitzpayne kicked the chair from under the bearded one. ‘Out! This lady needs a seat.’

The two men vanished, and one of the painted Malay girls brought a fresh glass to the table when Fitzpayne snapped his fingers
at her. He held out a chair for Connie.

‘Do sit down, Mrs Hadley.’

She hesitated.

‘You’ve hunted me down this far,’ he said in a low voice, ‘so you might as well spit out whatever you’ve come to say.’

‘I didn’t expect to find you drunk.’

He treated her to a broad grin. ‘We all have our moments of weakness.’ He sat down. ‘Even you, Mrs Hadley.’

Connie was sorely tempted to walk out. ‘I have a proposition for you.’

He raised one of his heavy eyebrows. He was mocking her again.

‘A business proposition,’ she added quickly and sat down.

‘I see.’ He poured a shot of whisky into the fresh glass and pushed it towards her. It didn’t look very clean. ‘Go on,’ he
urged. ‘Tell me what this proposition is.’

‘I would like to employ you to skipper
The White Pearl
. My husband is injured and cannot sail her.’

The eyebrows descended into a thick black line of aggression across his face. ‘Then why the hell isn’t he the one sitting
here in a lowlife bar asking for my help, instead of you?’

Connie flushed. ‘I told you. He’s injured.’

He leaned forward, elbows on the table and carefully scrutinised her face, feature by feature. She felt the colour in her
cheeks deepen.

‘What about you?’ he asked in a voice she barely recognised as his. ‘Are you injured?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I think you are mistaken,’ he continued in the same voice. ‘Yesterday when the bombs rained death down on Palur, everyone
was injured. Including you.’ He sat back in his chair and folded his muscular arms across his chest. ‘Including your son.’

Connie rapped a knuckle on the table. ‘I am not here to discuss my son.’

He studied her for a long moment until she became impatient with him.

‘So?’ she said sharply. ‘Will you accept my proposition?’

‘Where are you intending to sail to?’

‘Singapore.’

He nodded slowly. ‘There may be problems.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war on.’

She had expected so much more of Fitzpayne. With an effort, she kept her expression polite. ‘Goodbye, Mr Fitzpayne. Thank
you for your time.’ She started to rise from her chair.

‘Whoa, now,’ he said as smoothly as if she were a skittish foal, and he pressed her down into her seat. ‘No need to be in
such an almighty rush.’

‘You are drunk. No use to me. This has been a wasted journey.’

He laughed under his breath, picked up her drink and held it out to her. She shook her head. ‘I haven’t said,’ he continued,
‘that I won’t skipper your precious yacht for you. Here, drink my drink, and smoke one of my cigarettes,’ he threw a pack
of Players on the table, ‘while I consider your proposition.’

His eyes were not grey today, but a misty purplish colour that reminded her of a winter morning at home in England, the air
so chill it could make your bones ache. She looked at the glass of whisky still in his outstretched hand. She hated whisky.
Nevertheless, in one swift
movement she took the drink, swallowed it down in a single shot and felt it take her insides apart. With steady hands she
extracted a cigarette and lit it with one of his matches. He smiled and refilled his own glass, but passed no comment.

For five minutes they sat there in silence. She smoked her cigarette, and when any of the other drinkers gawped at her too
long, she scowled at them. But she grew mildly alarmed whenever she moved her head too fast because the edges of the table
blurred, as though they too had been burned in the fires that had raged through Palur. It was the damn whisky. She avoided
looking at Fitzpayne, but as each minute limped past she could taste the foolishness and feel the heat of anger crawling up
from the soles of her feet. There were others she could ask; she didn’t need this man, she told herself. For heaven’s sake,
people would jump at the chance to escape from Palur on
The White Pearl
. So why was she putting herself through this?

But the unaccustomed alcohol had dulled the ache that was as much a part of her daily life as eating and smiling and cleaning
her teeth. The usual throb of it was hiding under the whisky. Instead, a whole new section of her brain had yawned open, startling
her. She blinked at its dazzling clarity, like crystal glass. Bright as a newly polished room. And it was this core section
of her brain that brought the truth leaping to the front of her mind: she trusted this man.

The realisation jolted her, and she ground out her cigarette stub in the tin ashtray.
She trusted Fitzpayne.
She certainly didn’t always like the man or his strange moods, and there was something odd, something distinctly wrong about
the way he seemed to pop up in her life repeatedly. But if she and her family were going to be sailing into danger, she was
convinced that this was the man to have on deck beside them.

‘Well?’ she said sharply. ‘Your five minutes are up, Mr Fitzpayne.’

He put down his drink and his full lips spread into a slow smile. ‘I just wondered how long you’d last.’

‘Does that mean you’ll sail the boat?’

‘Of course. You and I both knew the moment you put your proposition, Mrs Hadley, that the answer was yes.’

‘Damn you,’ Connie said and poured herself another shot of whisky.

A dam had burst somewhere inside Connie’s head. Life came flooding back. She hadn’t even known she was dead before, dead and
buried deep in the red soil of the Hadley Estate. She stood now at the rail in the bow of
The White Pearl
, watching sunlight dart and skim off the water like drunken fireflies, and breathed in great lungfuls of life. Not the usual
niggardly sips that left her wanting more, but an uncontrolled rush of it that swept her head free of debris and loosened
a tight knot at the base of her skull.

She had brought her son this far, away from the reminders of the bombs. The next step was to open up a future for him that
would widen his horizons beyond the mind-numbing rows of rubber trees,
Hevea brasiliensis
. That day when the bombs came to Palur, Teddy saw far more than a child’s eyes should ever see, but despite that, Nigel had
made his own position abundantly clear before he would set one foot on deck.

‘This is short-term, old thing. We’re not running away, we’re just keeping our son safe until the bombing ceases and the enemy
is defeated.’

Not running away.
Sometimes in the night Connie lay awake wondering who exactly the enemy was. It was the sinking of the great warships, the
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
, by Japanese torpedoes, followed by the abandonment of Penang by the British, that had finally tipped the balance. It galvanised
Nigel into action. She had manoeuvred him into leaving, but even now she clutched at the yacht’s rail in case he tried to
snatch it from her at the last moment. The sails swelled in the wind like elegant wings as
The White Pearl
flew west towards the sea, carving a crisp channel through the muddy waters of the river. The jib and bowsprit pointed the
way, as if they knew exactly
where it was heading and how many hopes were carried in the fragile curve of the hull.

Connie remained motionless at the rail, one of Johnnie’s cigarettes between her fingers. She was wearing a straw hat that
fastened under her chin to prevent it flying off in the wind, and she was grateful for its generous brim. Not just against
the harsh sun, but against Nigel’s watchful eyes. He was seated on one of the benches on deck, his injured leg propped up,
one mistrustful eye on Fitzpayne at the helm, but all the time she felt him watching her. As though he didn’t trust what his
wife would do next.

At her side, a small shoulder nudged against her ribs.

‘Teddy,’ she smiled down at her son and draped an arm around him. ‘Look, there’s a hawk fishing over there.’ Low over the
water drifted a bird, its grey wings outstretched, as lazy in its movements as an old man.

Teddy’s eyes followed the hawk, and for a moment they gleamed bright as two new copper coins and Connie’s heart lifted. The
day they were caught in the bombing of Palur, her son’s eyes had turned the colour of mud and not even the blunt-nosed terrapin
she brought home for him had rinsed away their wretchedness. But now
The White Pearl
was working her magic.

He leaned his head against her as he continued to watch the bird’s flight. ‘Mummy, why didn’t Jack come?’

‘Because his parents decided to stay a bit longer.’

Elspeth Saunders and her children had taken refuge in the police station during the bombing and escaped unscathed, but still
– foolishly, to Connie’s mind – had no intention of leaving. Teddy gave a small sad sigh.

‘But they will die,’ he said.

‘No, of course they won’t, darling. Don’t worry, they’ll leave when they think it’s right.

‘But now is right.’ He looked up at her, searching her face. ‘That’s what you said.’

‘It’s true. Now is right for us. If we waited any longer
The White Pearl
might be damaged in one of the air raids.’

He nodded solemnly.

How can a child begin to understand what even adults like herself were bemused by? How had this war come about and suddenly
snatched
away their world? Teddy loved Malaya. He’d lived his whole young life here, it was his home, just as Nigel said. They were
both determined to return to Hadley House, father and son, to continue growing rubber trees in endless straight lines for
generations to come.

‘And Chala,’ Teddy muttered. ‘She didn’t come either.’

‘Oh, Teddy, don’t blame her. She loves you dearly, but it was too big a step for her to leave Palur. Don’t forget that many
Malayans never travel beyond their town or their
kampong
all their lives.’

He nodded again, like a wise old sage. She bent down and tickled him until he giggled like the child he was, and somewhere
below deck Pippin barked at the sound of it.

‘Only four days to Christmas,’ she reminded him.

‘Will Father Christmas come to our boat? There’s no chimney.’

‘Of course he will. Don’t frown like that. He has a special sleigh fitted with floats for children who live on boats.’

‘And reindeer are good swimmers.’

‘But we’ll be in Singapore by then, anyway. It should only take us three or four days, depending on the winds.’

‘Where will we live in Singapore?’

‘I’ve arranged rooms at an hotel for us.’ She changed the subject. ‘Would you like me to ask Daddy if you can borrow his binoculars
to watch the riverbanks?’

‘Yes! Yes, please.’

As she walked over to where Nigel was sitting, her son started to sing
Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream
behind her. She smiled to herself.

Nigel was pretending to read a book,
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley, and for a moment said nothing when she leaned against the rail beside him, her face offered to the breeze.
Under Fitzpayne’s instructions, Henry Court was making a decent job of learning to hoist sail, hauling the halyard while Razak
made the line fast around a belaying pin –
sweating and tailing
as Fitzpayne termed it. But Connie was amused by the way Henry made great show of his newly acquired abilities, while Johnnie
Blake, using his one good arm, went about his tasks quietly and with far greater skill.

Connie loved the movement of the waves, and the tremor of excitement that rose up from the soles of her feet as she let herself
sway with
the roll of the deck. Her exhilaration at being on the move – not static any more, not chained up in a cage – with the wind
tugging at her hair and the air no longer stuck to her skin with sweat, made her more generous to her husband’s ill humour.
His frustration at being on
The White Pearl
but unable to sail her was making him sullen.

He lifted his head from his book and looked at her from under the canvas peak of his hat. ‘Boy all right?’ he asked.

‘Improving, yes.’

‘Good.’ He scowled up at the empty sky, wary of what may come out of it.

‘May he borrow your binoculars? He’ll take good care of them.’

Nigel was a man who hated to lend his personal possessions, even to his son, but one glance at Teddy’s hopeful expression
as he watched from the bow and he relented.

‘They’re in my locker in our cabin.’

‘Thank you, Nigel,’ Connie said happily. ‘Maybe we should buy him a pair of his own for Christmas when we reach Singapore.’

‘Maybe.’ He turned his attention back to his book.

‘It’s hot down here,’ Connie commented.

She had ducked through the hatchway and climbed down the companionway stairs which led into the saloon. Harriet Court was
sitting at the central table playing cards. She had changed, her boisterous laugh had vanished and her mood, though not exactly
unfriendly, was definitely private. Connie had the feeling she was regretting her decision to come on the boat and suspected
she might be hiding a bout of seasickness, but no amount of urging could shift her from the table to venture up on deck. She
just sat in the saloon playing patience, doling out the cards hour after hour, and eating her way relentlessly through the
small supply of biscuits.

‘How can you eat so much and stay so thin?’ Connie laughed.

Connie sat down on the padded bench opposite, beside the through-deck mast at the front of the saloon. She liked this spot.
It felt to her as if it was where the boat’s heart was beating, in the glow of the richly varnished timber walls and the gleam
of the brass fittings. The seats were covered in a dark red material that the sunlight from the coach roof picked out and
turned to the colour of blood. She nudged the pack of Bourbon biscuits further from her friend’s reach.

Harriet dealt a card and snorted with irritation. ‘To hell with it. Nothing is going right.’