The White Pearl (35 page)

‘Fitzpayne!’

Oh, shit.

‘Happy Christmas!’

‘Don’t, Connie. This is not a happy Christmas,’ Harriet pointed out morosely.

‘Of course it is,’ Connie insisted. ‘Come on, Harriet, don’t be so gloomy. Yes, there’s a war on but we’re all safely together
and still alive. We’re stuck here for at least another day – which is not what any of us hoped for, I know, but let’s enjoy
it.’

She beamed at the three other females, seated in the rough shelter in which they had spent the night. ‘It’s Christmas 1941.
A Christmas none of us will ever forget.’

She reached into the cardboard box that she had ferried from the boat with Fitzpayne at the oars the previous day, and brought
out three small packages that were wrapped in silky green leaves. She presented one to Harriet, one to Kitty and one to Maya.

‘Happy Christmas,’ she said again and added, ‘Let’s wish for peace to all men.’

They looked at the presents, astonished, but a ripple of self-conscious pleasure spread from one to the other.

‘Thanks,’ Harriet said. She sat up straighter and unwrapped the leaves.

Inside lay a tablet of verbena-scented soap, a lace-edged handkerchief tied around six sugared almonds and a tortoiseshell
comb with a narrow silver backbone, one of a set of four that Connie’s grandmother had sent her for her thirtieth birthday.
Harriet lifted the soap to her nostrils, closed her eyes and inhaled its scent. ‘Now I remember what real life smells like,’
she said, and uttered one of her old laughs.

The gifts were the same for Kitty and Maya. Kitty opened hers and nodded quietly to herself. She lifted her head and looked
steadily at Connie. ‘You are a generous woman,’ she said, which embarrassed Connie.

Maya tore off the leaves and stared at the soap, handkerchief and comb with round, baffled eyes. ‘
Terimah kasih
,’ she muttered, ‘thank you,
mem
.’ She stroked a finger over the smooth, pastel-pink coating of a sugared almond before popping it into her mouth, then
ran the comb through a strand of her black hair, flicking it neatly over her shoulder as she finished. She grinned at Connie,
showing small white teeth. It was the first time Connie had ever seen her smile.

‘Happy Christmas to you, Maya.’

‘What the hell are you doing, Kitty?’ Madoc demanded in a low voice.

‘I’m making a Christmas pudding for her.’ Her plump arms were elbow-deep in raisins and flour and God only knows what else,
trying to avoid the drips from the tarpaulin roof.

‘You’re supposed to be ill.’

‘Go away.’

Her mosquito-bitten face looked suddenly deflated, and it dawned on him that she had been enjoying herself and he had spoiled
it.

‘Be careful,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t appear so bloody happy.’

She gave him a look that could have curdled milk, so he decided to risk the rain rather than her tongue. It was sheeting down
outside, as only tropical rain knows how, drenching him to the skin in seconds and battering his scalp with the force of a
thousand tiny hammers. He ducked into the men’s shelter and shook himself, smelling at once the aromatic smoke of a fine cigar.
It made his lungs ache for one.

Constance Hadley had presented each of the men, including himself, with a gift of a Havana cigar and a handful of sugared
almonds. The almonds he passed on to the Hadleys’ kid immediately. Madoc didn’t even want them in his pocket, but the cigar
he appreciated. He would enjoy it like a toff after his Christmas dinner – or
luncheon
as they insisted on calling it. It was dinner to him and Kitty, and always would be.

Yesterday the men had built two ramshackle shelters to wait out the storm, using tarpaulins from the boat with branches and
fronds from the forest. They were tucked in close to the jungle’s edge to escape the worst
of the wind. The larger one was for the four women to sleep in, and the smaller one was for the six men and the boy. It seemed
cockeyed to Madoc, but he was told in no uncertain terms by Nigel Hadley that ‘the ladies need space’. He didn’t ask what
for.

He glanced around the shelter now. The boy was off with his mother, but on a blanket on the ground Hadley and the native lad
were bent over a snakes and ladders board, while the pilot played poker with Henry Court. The cigar smoke was issuing from
the round mouth of Razak, who was trying to blow smoke rings, much to the amusement of Hadley, who let out a great guffaw
each time the Malay boy spluttered and coughed. The wind swirled the smoke through the shelter, chasing away the insects,
and buffeted the tarpaulin roof.

‘Where’s Fitzpayne?’ Madoc asked.

‘Checking on
The White Pearl
,’ Hadley replied without lifting his head. ‘Working the bilge pump.’

Madoc itched to take a closer look at the yacht, and had offered to row Mrs Hadley out yesterday when she wanted to fetch
some blankets, but Fitzpayne had stepped in and put a stop to it. He had rowed her out himself. Madoc had been left on the
shore to stare disconsolately after them as the turbulent seas threatened to swamp the rowing boat in the rain. Damn Fitzpayne.
He wouldn’t mind seeing the man’s dark curls vanish under those waves.

The shock of finding him here had been a blow to his plans. He would have to tread warily. Fitzpayne was no fool. They had
first run into each other on the wharves of Kuala Terengganu on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula when Madoc was doing
a spot of opium-running down from Shanghai, at the same time as getting well paid for smuggling a cabin-load of refugee Russian
girls to the Philippines. He and Fitzpayne ended up on opposite sides of a knife fight, and Madoc still bore the scars. Why
the hell did he have to turn up here?

He found a corner of the blanket to sit on, keeping a respectful distance from Hadley with his long, disdainful face, but
close enough to snatch up the cigar that the native lad decided to discard. He stamped his heel on a battalion of foraging
ants and let his thoughts climb aboard
The White Pearl.

Connie felt good about welcoming Kitty into the group. There was something about this woman she liked, despite her excessive
amount of
soft bare flesh and her bush of wild grey hair that made her look like one of the crazy fire-walkers that Connie had seen
when she and Nigel stayed in the Station Hotel in Kuala Lumpur last year, en route to the Batu Caves. Kitty, she felt instinctively,
was a person worth having in your corner, which was more than she could say for Harriet. She worried about her friend. Harriet
seemed to be transforming into a different person from the one she knew in Palur.

Fear does strange things to people. The carefully constructed defences can collapse and the creature beneath emerges, wild-eyed,
claws sharpened. She thought about the way Nigel looked at her now – almost as though she were a stranger. Was she the one
who had changed? Or was it him? He studiously avoided her company, and spent most of his time with Johnnie, Teddy and Razak.
Less time with Henry, who was becoming more obnoxious with each passing day, as fear and hunger tightened his belt.

It pleased Connie immensely that Nigel and Teddy both enjoyed Razak’s company. They were teaching him all kinds of things
– maybe too many card and board games for her liking, but it made her laugh when the native boy shouted ‘Snap!’ at the top
of his voice and whooped with delight at winning. But she could see Maya withdrawing, becoming more and more isolated and
that worried her. She had tried to include the girl in her own activities, but Maya would just gaze up at her from under her
thick black eyelashes and shake her head.

But today was Christmas Day. So while Kitty hovered over her pans bubbling on the fire, and Harriet sat with glazed eyes as
Teddy explained to her the inner workings of a combustion engine from his new
The Wonder Book of Motors
that Connie had given him for Christmas, she asked Maya to chop a couple of onions. A simple task.

Connie held out a small knife to her. ‘Come and help.’

The girl stopped combing her hair and staring out at the ceaseless rain. She rose from her knees, eyes jumping from the knife
to Connie. ‘Yes,
mem
,’ she said.

As they worked side by side chopping the onions and peeling a head of garlic, the sounds of the storm raged outside their
makeshift home and made the interior feel oddly intimate. Smoke from the fire swirled around them, and they had to lean their
heads closer to make themselves heard above the snapping and cracking of the tarpaulin.

‘Do you like cooking, Maya?’

The girl shook her head and concentrated on slicing the onion.

‘I’m useless at it,’ Connie laughed.

Still mute.

‘I think we’re lucky to have Mrs Madoc today, don’t you, Maya? The men will be pleased to have a good hot meal.’

The girl shrugged. She wasn’t making it easy.

‘Maya, I went looking for you among the shacks in Palur after the fire.’

Maya’s sharp little knife paused. ‘Why you do that,
mem
?’

‘Because I was worried about you. I wanted to know that you and Razak had escaped the flames and were safe.’

‘I all right.’

‘Yes.’ Connie watched the girl’s blade resume its staccato movements. ‘But a man told me you were dead.’

‘I not dead.’

‘So I see.’

‘Who silly bugger tell you I dead?’

‘A blind man.’

‘Oh, him. He big liar. I run from flames, run, run, run. They not bite me.’

‘I’m very relieved that you did. Did most of the others run with you?’

‘Yes, many, many. Like rats.’

Connie nodded, put down her own knife and turned to face the girl. ‘The blind man had a child that died in the fire. He said
it was yours.’

Maya’s eyes widened with shock. ‘Aiyee! I tell you, he big liar.’

‘So it’s not true?’

‘No.’ She stabbed the point of the knife into the next onion. ‘I never have child.’ She shook her head vehemently, sending
long black strands of hair leaping across her face in protest at such a thought.

Either she was telling the truth. Or she was a damn good liar.

Christmas luncheon was an odd affair. Nigel took control, just as though he was seated at the head of the table at home instead
of hunkered down on palm fronds spread out over wet sand. He always delivered a speech and today was to be no exception, though
he had to raise his voice to compete with the howling of the wind and the slapping of leaves and branches against their shelter
tucked under the trees. He thanked Kitty graciously for the splendid curry and rice she had created out of tinned beef and
spices.

‘Not our usual roast turkey, I admit,’ he conceded, ‘but a fine repast, Mrs Madoc, given the circumstances. And a magnificent
pudding.’

Fitzpayne had come and extinguished the fire the moment the cooking was done, stamping it to ash, so the air was at least
free of smoke. They were all decked out in Christmas hats. Not the usual paper crowns that were the traditional headgear at
an English table on Christmas Day, but intricate garlands of greenery woven by Teddy. Connie could see a small spider spinning
its web in Harriet’s hair, but she made no mention of it. They all sat in a circle and sang Christmas carols when the meal
was finished, which brought emotions roaring to the surface.

‘
Silent night, holy night
,’ they chorused together. ‘
All is calm, all is bright
…’

It isn’t silent. It isn’t calm.
Connie could not bring herself to mouth the words when it was so patently untrue. All was anything but calm and bright. Life
was stormy. Dislocated. Perilous. Teetering on the edge of … of what? A tremor shook her, and she saw Harriet lower her
face into her hands and moan, ‘My home, my sweet home is gone for ever.’

‘It’s the end,’ Henry muttered, and he didn’t mean the end of the song.

To Connie’s surprise, Fitzpayne shook the moment out of its downward spiral by immediately starting up with ‘
O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant
…’ in a rich booming voice, and the others joined in eagerly, banishing the rank breath of the forest and the yearning
for past Christmases.

‘
Joyful and triumphant.
’ Connie sang the words and heard them reverberate in her head. The irony of them made her laugh.

As the light began to fade Connie grew restless. The festive bonhomie petered out over half-hearted games of I Spy and Ludo,
so a bottle of brandy came out in an effort to raise the spirits of the group. But Connie had no wish to drink. She stood
by the flap of tarpaulin that acted as a door, feeling the shelter shudder and tremble as the wind battled to bring it to
its knees. The urge to run down the sand, row out to
The White Pearl
and hoist her sails even in the storm-force gale was so overwhelming that Connie had to hold on to one of the supports to
keep her feet from taking off.

The sky was a surly grey, the clouds bruised and menacing. At least no pilot in his right mind would choose to fly in such
conditions. The rain was starting to ease, but the force of the wind was enough to knock her
teeth out. A world of green darkness loomed behind them, and already jungle trees were uprooted and collapsing on the narrow
beach like dead soldiers.

Connie longed to be on the move. She had learned that much about herself on the boat – the joy of outrunning her past. A hop
or a skip forward, a jink to one side, a sudden burst of speed. All the debris of her mind was left in a squirming heap behind
her. If she set off on
The White Pearl
and never stopped sailing she was convinced the nightmares would vanish. The constant sounds in her head, the thud-thud-thud
of Sho’s skull on the steps of the hut and the crump of a car bumper into warm flesh would cease. The slow, soothing rhythm
of the sea would enter her soul, the smell of salt and seaweed would erase the stench of blood in her nostrils.

‘You’re getting wet.’

Connie blinked, startled, and found Fitzpayne at her side.