The White Pearl (62 page)

‘Come here, Maya.’

Jo-nee held out his hand to her and when she took it, he drew her to stand in front of him on the deck. She was glad it was
night-dark. So he didn’t see her cheeks turn to fire.

‘What has my little blackbird been up to now?’

‘Listening.’

Blackbird? Black and ugly. Pecking at crumbs.

He laughed. ‘What did you pick up this time?’

She saw the way Razak looked at Jo-nee, and the way that Jo-nee looked at Razak.

‘Nurul think
Mem
Hadley is dead,’ she said cruelly, to see Jo-nee’s face turn as white as milk in the moonlight.

Yet when he stroked her hand, she wanted to snatch back her words. ‘But Kitty Madoc says
mem
too tough to die. She want to wait here long time for
mem
.’

‘Mrs Madoc is a strong woman. Despite her grief, she has her head screwed on right.’

Head screwed on?

‘She say she sorry crazy Madoc use radio.’

Jo-nee’s grip tightened, and his blue eyes ate her up as if she had hit him with one of his cricket bats.

‘Radio?’ he demanded. ‘What radio?’

‘On boat.’

‘What? There’s a short-wave radio on this boat?’

Maya nodded, pleased that he was squeezing her hand.

‘Do you know where it is?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Of course she knew. She had sniffed around the boat after Nurul.

‘For heaven’s sake, Maya, why didn’t you tell me earlier? Take me to it at once.’

‘Crazy Madoc used it and Japs came. You no use it, Jo-nee. More Japs come.’

He dropped her hand. ‘Good God, girl, don’t be foolish. It’s our only way out of this unholy mess.’

The moon surprised them. It slipped away from the grip of the clouds and trickled a thin, luminous sheen across the waves.From
the back of the canoe came Fitz’s grunt of disapproval, but Connie welcomed it. The darkness had been claustrophobic, jamming
her thoughts in a perpetual circle.

‘Fitz,’ she asked suddenly, not breaking the rhythm of her stroke, though her arms ached. ‘What did you think? When you came
to my house. Did you hate me?’

She heard his breath stop. After a long moment, it started again.

‘Yes, I hated the concept of Mrs Constance Hadley, the woman I was certain had destroyed my brother. But,’ his voice altered,
softened, ‘I never hated you, Connie.’ He gave a strange, low laugh. ‘God knows, I tried. I tried so damn hard to hate you
that I nearly wrenched my guts out. But I didn’t stand a chance. I tried staying away from you, and then I tried hanging around
so much that I could discover all your weaknesses and dislike you.’

‘And did you?’

‘Learn to dislike you?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

His hand lay on her back once more. The canoe veered off line as both paddles lost speed.

‘I grew to love you so much it nearly killed me. Seeing you with your husband each day was torture. Sometimes I even imagined
that it was Shohei’s revenge on me for not avenging his memory.’

She swung around to face him, sending the canoe into a dance that both ignored. ‘Yet you betrayed me to General Takehashi.
And you betrayed my son. How can that be love?’

He shipped his paddle in a brisk, angry movement, but his voice was gentle when he spoke. ‘Connie, when the Japanese troops
captured you, I could have stayed hidden, I could have waited for Nurul and sailed away that night. I didn’t. Because a life
without you would be no life.’

She laid a hand on his as a wave splashed over the side, leaving their fingers fused together in the wet and the dark.

‘The only way I could save you, Connie, was by summoning up the name of the great General Takehashi. It scared the pants off
the local troops, and they sent a message to him in Okinawa. He flew down immediately. The rest you know.’

The canoe was drifting, a dark speck on a faceless sea. Connie tightened her hold on his hand.

‘And that scene in the tent? Was that real?’

‘Oh, Connie, my love, how can you ask?’

‘It felt real.’

He leaned forward in the dugout until his face was only a hand’s width from hers, a slow deliberate movement that felt to
Connie as if the lines between them were blurring. There was no longer an end of her or a beginning of him. Something important
was changing.

‘You were breathtaking,’ he whispered. ‘I never loved you more than when you knelt before my adoptive father. Your courage
was beautiful.’

She could hear the smile in his voice, smell the sea in his hair.

‘You were cruel,’ she told him.

‘I know.’

‘Why should I forgive you?’ She meant her words to sound angry, but her smile crept into them as he drew her forward and kissed
her salty lips.

The canoe rolled dangerously, and Fitz snatched up his paddle.

‘Now,’ Connie said, ‘now find me my son.’

*

Don’t leave me.
Maya shouted the words so loud in her head that she thought Jo-nee would hear her.
Don’t leave me.

He was arguing with Nurul. In the broad back end of the boat, Nurul kept pointing to the thin ribbon of gold on the eastern
horizon and shaking his head. He wanted to leave. The wind was tugging sharply at the rigging, adding its voice to his, eager
for the
Burung Camar
to be off. Nurul was angry that Jo-nee had used the radio. He had smacked Maya for showing it to Jo-nee, but she didn’t care
because Jo-nee had kissed her cheek and told her she was
a godsend
.

‘What would I do without you?’ he had asked.

She was about to tell him that he didn’t ever have to do without her, when he called out to Teddy on deck that an aircraft
was coming to pick them up. Maya almost laughed out loud. An aircraft? Where could it land? But Teddy believed him.

‘No,’ Teddy said. Very stern. Very sad. ‘I won’t go. I’m waiting here for my mother.’

‘Teddy, Nurul is taking the
Burung Camar
and leaving,’ Jo-nee explained so gently. ‘We’ve been here for four nights. I’m sorry, old chap, but the best we can hope
for now is that she will turn up in one of the Jap prisoner-of-war camps.’

Teddy looked sick.

‘We need to be back home to hear news of her,’ Jo-nee urged.

‘I have no home,’ Teddy blurted out.

‘There’s always England, Teddy,’ Jo-nee reassured him and put an arm around his shoulders. ‘England will always be your home.’

Jo-nee is good man. But we
must
stay here for
mem.

They all stared out across the waves at the island, hunched in the darkness like a black crab. The shifting moonlight made
it look as though it were crawling closer.

‘What kind of plane?’ Teddy asked. He couldn’t resist it.

‘Thank God, there’s a Short Sunderland on reconnaissance patrol on the lookout for Japanese submarines in this area. To drop
depth-charges on them. It should be here within half an hour – before the Japs can pinpoint my radio signal.’ Jo-nee hugged
the Hadley boy. ‘Then we’ll be gone.’

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Don’t leave me.

Maya edged closer. ‘What is Short Sunderland?’

‘It’s a flying boat.’

For one delicious moment she thought the whole thing was Jo-nee joking. He did that sometimes
.
‘How can a boat fly?’ She imagined
The White Pearl
with wings, and laughed.

Jo-nee frowned at her. ‘It’s a plane designed to land and take off on water. The Sunderland is the military version of the
C-type flying boat, which flies passengers long distances all over the world.’

He didn’t like her to laugh at his planes. He gazed up at the night sky, a blur of black clouds and stars. ‘Listen for it
– as well as for Japanese aircraft,’ he warned, and went over to argue with Nurul, who was preparing to hoist sail.

How could she listen for it when all she could hear was her heart crying?

‘Fitz, will General Takehashi come after you when he knows you tricked him?’

‘I have no doubt of it.’

A noise had made them stop paddling. They listened intently to the darkness. It was the sound of an airplane somewhere in
the distance. Connie had swivelled round, her knees touching his, and she looked down at his bandaged leg but could see no
fresh blood.

‘Connie, I didn’t betray Teddy.’

Fitz’s voice sounded sad. That she could think that of him.

‘I always knew that I could reach him first,’ he said. ‘That he would be safe from General Takehashi’s vengeance. I would
make sure of that.’

He stroked her hair. Touched her lips.

‘I couldn’t let him shoot you, Connie. To offer him Teddy was all I had, but it was never a real offer.’

He raised her chin so that he could look into her eyes. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Fitz. I know that.’

The noise of the aircraft approaching shattered the night’s silence, stirring the waves so that the canoe rocked and rolled,
eager to turn turtle. Fitz reached for Connie, and drew her back against him in the cradle of his arms.

‘General Takehashi is here sooner than I thought,’ he whispered into her wet hair.

The moon had dodged behind a cloud once more, and in the complete darkness they couldn’t see the plane or the island – or
any sign of the
Burung Camar
. They were isolated in a non-world. They paddled hard together, aware of how fragile this moment was, how it could be snatched
from their grasp.

‘Fitz, what will we do?’

‘Don’t think of it, Connie.’ He ran a hand up her arm, caressing its exhausted muscles. ‘Think of now. Of this time.’ His
head rested its weight against hers.

‘I didn’t mean what will we do when General Takehashi captures us.’

‘What then?’

‘I meant, what will we do when we get away from here? Where shall we go?’

The soft, joyous sound of Fitz’s laugh echoed through the night. ‘My precious Connie, I love you. More than you’ll ever know.’

It was a monster plane, big and fat like a whale, its body dark brown and green. The roar of its four engines was enough to
wake up the world and it buzzed in Maya’s brain, but she remained huddled in the
attap
hut, unable to bring herself to say goodbye.

Jo-nee was excited, she could see him through the open end of the hut. Excited to be leaving her. The rowing boat was lowered
to carry them across the water to the monster flying boat-without-sails and everything was rush-rush.

Kitty Madoc seized Jo-nee’s arm to anchor him in one place, right next to the hut. ‘I’m not going with you,’ she said. Her
voice was still as dead as her husband. ‘I’ve decided to remain on this boat instead. I’ll take my chances here.’

‘Mrs Madoc,’ Jo-nee said quickly, ‘we can’t delay, but please reconsider. It’s not safe in these waters. Come with us, at
least as far as …’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. I would rather sail than fly.’

‘With Nurul?’

‘Yes. With Nurul.’

Nurul was shouting for them to be quick.

‘Goodbye then, Mrs Madoc,’ Jo-nee said kindly. ‘I wish you luck. I’m sorry our acquaintance was so …’

‘Goodbye, Flight Lieutenant,’ Kitty Madoc interrupted with her dead voice. ‘Tell that little chit of a girl who shot my husband
that I hope she drowns.’ Her footsteps marched away across the deck.

Jo-nee ducked his head into the hut, and Maya put her hands over her ears because she didn’t want to hear him say she should
drown. But instead he reached in and pulled her hands away with a big hello-smile.

‘Coming, little blackbird? Are you ready to fly?’

Connie and Fitz heard the plane hit the water.

‘A bomber down,’ Fitz muttered.

‘Let it be one of theirs,’ Connie said with sudden anger, ‘not one of ours.’

But as she spoke, a boisterous tidal wave surged from the impact, spreading wide and swamping the bow of the canoe. Fitz was
a man with boats and seawater in his veins, so he kept his balance and steadied Connie, who was in danger of tipping into
the sea. She turned in the canoe to thank him and as she did so her heart suddenly thumped against her ribs.

‘Look!’ she cried.

Moonlight had spilled over the sea, and not far away they could make out the huge bulk of an aircraft.

Fitz waved a paddle in the air. ‘It’s not a Jap bomber that’s crashed into the sea, Connie,’ he shouted. ‘It’s a damn RAF
flying boat.’

At some distance off to the east, tugging at its anchor in the turbulent waves, bobbed the long-nosed silhouette of the
Burung Camar
. It was waiting for them.

They paddled hard, shouting with any spare breath. But the plane’s engines drowned out their voices and the wind was against
them. As they struggled to close the gap, throwing their weight into each stroke, cursing their flimsy paddles and willing
both the boat and the aircraft to wait, their hopes died. They watched the mainsail being hoisted on the
pinisiq
, followed immediately by the mizzen and the foresails. Like a night bird, the native boat spread her wings and flew westward
into the secretive banks of darkness where she could not be traced.

‘They can’t see us,’ Fitz said. ‘We’re too low in the water.’

Connie brandished her paddle and shouted, but knew it was in vain. Instead, they set off in pursuit of the plane, but as they
did so Connie had
to thrust away from her a sense of the curse of Sai-Ru Jumat that seemed to rise from the sea with the salt spray. She felt
its cold fingers, its sharp teeth. She concentrated on dragging the paddle through the water, in and pull, in and pull, concentrate,
concentrate.

But it wasn’t enough. Sai-Ru Jumat had won. The engines of the flying boat developed more power, and the moon vanished as
if frightened by the noise. Darkness descended on them. Connie quivered as they both heard the plane start to taxi away from
them, thundering across the water.

‘Connie.’ Fitz’s hand came to rest on the back of her neck, the warmth of it sinking deep into her bones. ‘Teddy will be on
that plane. He will be safe. You needn’t worry about him.’