The White Pearl (43 page)

She stared at him, the dull heat spreading tentacles through her chest. She recalled
Mem
’s words of concern for the child. Why was it that the only person who cared was the woman she had sworn to hate?

‘Twenty-seven Mitsubishi bombers,’ Teddy shouted.

Maya looked up from her perch on the hatch. Like black bees strung out across the sky, Japanese planes were flying in formation
overhead. In the far distance somewhere they could hear the growling and pounding of big guns. Lines of angry fire spat through
the gloom as evening cast its grey net over the restless ocean.

The White Pearl
murmured to herself and spread her sails like a fine lady fluttering her fan, and Maya felt the familiar rocking motion start
up under her feet as the waters took hold of the hull. It still made her nervous, but no longer sick. Once the planes had
vanished in the direction of Singapore, she watched Fitzpayne ease the yacht from under the canopy of trees. Despite the boat’s
wounds, tonight she would reach his island of safety. That’s what he promised.

Maya didn’t know why, but she trusted Iron-eyes’ promises.

‘Here, Maya. Drink this.’

Golden-hair had brought her a cup of tea.She thought theBritish stupid to drink it all day. It tasted of dog’s piss. But she
looked up at him gratefully, tossed her dark hair over one shoulder and put her lips to the cup.

‘Why you kind to Jap?’ she asked. Earlier he had taken a cup of tea to the prisoner.

‘Because he’s a pilot, like me. He was just doing his job, flying his plane.’

‘He bad. He try kill us.’

‘That’s part of his job.’

‘His job to die. Good thing.’

‘No, Maya. He’s young, and has his heart set on serving his emperor with glory. Dying for him, if necessary. It’s a concept
we have all but abandoned in the Western world.’

She didn’t know the meaning of all his words, but she heard the edge of sorrow in his voice and saw the way his golden lashes
seemed to grow heavier, masking the ocean blue of his eyes.

‘You good man,’ she told him, nodding vigorously. ‘He bad man.’

He didn’t laugh at her the way Iron-eyes would have done. Or turn away from her the way
Tuan
Hadley always did, as if she hurt his eyes. Golden-hair regarded her solemnly and then took her hand in his, the one not
in the sling. It looked like a small, ugly brown leaf on his broad white palm, but he folded his fingers around it. He spoke.
But her ears didn’t hear. They were listening to the happiness singing in her heart, and all her mind could think of was that
this strong, plane-flying hand of his wanted hers. She gazed at the bony rise of each of his knuckles and the veins pulsing
with blood under the freckled skin.

‘Maya?’ He was waiting for a reply, but she had no idea what he had asked her.

She risked a smile at him. ‘You crazy,’ she said.

The White Pearl
swept out into the open sea as if she owned it. Maya had seen white ladies enter a room like that, with head high and a spine
as straight as a ship’s mast, taking possession of the space around them instead of just passing through it the way Maya did.
She admired those women, even though they had stolen her country.

‘Maya!’

She lifted her head. Young
Tuan
Teddy was in the back – no, think, what is it? … the stern – of the boat, beckoning to her. His hair was stirred by the
wind and his brown eyes were wide and round as a bush-baby’s. She hurried over.

‘Look!’ he said. He pointed out to sea.

As though on command, the evening clouds that had lain stubbornly over the water picked up their grubby skirts and sneaked
away below the horizon. Vivid red streaks from the setting sun tiptoed across the tops of the waves, and Teddy’s cheeks turned
crimson. When Maya’s gaze followed the line of his finger, she didn’t know if his flushed cheeks were the work of the sun
or the fear that leaped into her own heart.

‘It’s back,’ he whispered.

It was the native boat, the
pinisiq
, the one the boy had spotted before. This time near enough to be clearly visible to the naked eye, its long pointed nose
sniffing them out.

‘Is same one?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ He looked at her as if she were simple. ‘It has the same patched sail.’

‘Tell
Tuan
Fitzpayne.’

‘Last time, he said it was just a trader ship going about its business.’

‘Maybe he right.’

‘Maybe he’s wrong.’

They stood side by side, staring at the craft in the distance. It reminded Maya of a mosquito, spindly and fragile but with
a long point at the front and a nasty bite.

‘Tell
Mem
Hadley.’

The boy glanced across at his mother and shook his head. ‘Today she’s not … concentrating.’

Maya had no idea what
concentrating
was, but even so, she knew what he meant.
Mem
Hadley was different today. The skin of her face was dull and colourless. She kept looking at her husband and when she spoke
to him, her voice was gentle. She had played Snap with her son in a slow, distracted manner like someone who had only just
learned the game. Now, aware of Maya’s scrutiny, she picked up the rope she had been knotting and headed for the stairs, but
just at that moment Razak came bounding up them.
Mem
Hadley jumped back the way she would if she’d seen a scorpion. Then she vanished below in a hurry.

Razak slumped against the rail next to Maya, his mouth sulky. ‘A white person’s mind is like a lazy bird’s nest,’ he muttered.
‘It falls apart when the wind blows hard.’

Teddy was listening. He understood Malay. Maya saw him frown as he tried to shape the insult in a way that made sense to his
young mind.

‘What devil is in your tongue now?’ she asked her brother.

‘
Tuan
Hadley is …’ he stopped.

‘Is what?’

‘He doesn’t see me today. He turns his eyes away. Today I don’t exist for him.’

She pressed her hand flat on his chest, fingers splayed over his heart. She felt it beating wildly. ‘You are a fool, Razak.
You will destroy everything for us.’

She walked away. Sometimes her brother needed a slap.

*

A hand touched the calf of Maya’s leg. She was scurrying past the prisoner when his fingers reached for her. She kicked out
at the hand.

‘Maya.’

The Japanese pilot’s voice was soft and nasal. She looked down at him propped in a sitting position on the deck, his back
to the hefty mast, his legs in uniform stretched out straight above fur-lined boots. He had cast off the tarpaulin to reveal
the dressing on his chest. It was big and square and stained with dried blood. His black hair stood up on his skull like the
bristles of a brush.

‘What?’ she said rudely.

‘I speak you.’

‘
Tidak
. No.’

‘Help me.’

‘
Tidak.
No.’

‘Please.
Onegai shimasu
.’

His narrow face was tipped up towards her – a boy, she told herself, he’s only a boy – and she saw clearly the shame that
swirled in his fierce eyes, shame at having to beg help from a girl. His chest heaved with each laboured breath, and his forehead
was scuffed. Smudge marks sat in the hollows under his eyes like bruises. She didn’t like looking at him.

‘No.’ Her feet started to move away.

‘I help you,’ he said quickly.

When she swivelled back to him, he was staring at her brother in the stern. She crouched. ‘How?’

Maya tried to find her mother’s face in the darkening waters, but it wasn’t there. She listened for her voice when the waves
fingered the bottom of the boat, but all she heard was the low hissing as the sea drew breath. Maya longed to know that her
mother’s spirit was pleased. She had made a deal with Jap man.

‘What you want?’ she had asked him.

He had smiled at her, but it was an empty smile. ‘I want help.’

‘You are bloody Jap fool.’ She shook her head at him. ‘No help.’

He nodded, as though he had expected her bad words. ‘You help me. I help you. I see you and brother look at white lady. Daggers
in eyes.’

‘So?’

‘I want her dead. You want her dead.’

‘Dead?’ She said the word quietly. To see how it tasted in her mouth.

‘When she gone,’ he finished, ‘we go from ship.’

‘Hah! Escape? You mad.’

His face was smooth, as though he hadn’t yet used it much. He knew nothing. The boat was a boiling cauldron, and he was stupid
enough to think he could climb out without scalding his pretty pale skin. Just at that moment, the boy’s dog had come trotting
around the corner from the hatchway, a fistful of flies crawling over one of its ears, its tongue falling out the side of
its mouth as though seeking somewhere cool. Maya tried to shove the horrible creature away with her bare foot but it danced
back, claws scratching at the deck timbers, then jumped forward again, eyes bright in its shaggy face. It wanted to play.

‘I here to avenge my mother,’ Maya hissed at the Jap. ‘The white woman kill her.’

‘So,’ he nodded, ‘we deal?’

Maya hesitated, and hated herself for it. It should be piss-easy to say
yes
, to say let us harm the white woman, let us make her suffer. Yet her tongue was slow with the word, reluctant to let it go.
Her eyes scanned the deck but there was no sign of
Mem
Hadley, she must be busy down below.
Tuan
Teddy and his father were reading their books in uneasy silence on a bench.

‘Yes.’ She forced the word out. ‘We deal.’

That was when she sought her mother’s smile of approval in the waters, and listened in vain for her voice in the waves.

‘But how you help me?’ she asked.

His mouth stretched in to the empty smile again. ‘Like this.’

Fast as a snake, his hand whipped out and caught the small dog by the scruff of its neck. It whimpered. Suddenly he was standing
and swinging his fettered arms back over his head. He paused a second, then sent them hurtling forward. At the last moment
he opened his fingers. The dog sailed through the air in a long arc over the sea like a blackbird that had forgotten to spread
its wings. Maya saw its pink tongue open, its white teeth flash in protest and heard a spine-chilling howl leap from its jaws,
a sound too monstrous for its tiny lungs. She rushed to the rail to see it splash down into the sea, but instantly it bobbed
to the surface like a cork.

‘No, Pippin, no!’ Teddy’s voice screamed. ‘No! Daddy, it’s Pippin!’

Maya could see the dog’s front paws scrabbling on the water, its eyes wide with panic as the boat started to recede. The black
head was
vanishing in the vast rolling sheet of the sea and as a wave broke over it, she heard a bark of desperation.

‘Pippin!’ Teddy screamed again. ‘Daddy, help him!’

The sight of the boy’s face twisted in terror did something painful to Maya’s insides, and acid rushed into her mouth. She
leaped to her feet and in that fleeting moment, three things happened.

The boy clambered up onto the rail and was preparing to leap down into the waves for his dog.

Tuan
Hadley kicked off his shoes.

Mem
Hadley raced up from below through the hatchway, Iron-eyes roaring behind her.

Connie’s chest hurt with relief. Her son’s scream had chilled her soul, but when she burst up on deck she saw that he was
alive. His limbs were intact. No blood. The boom had not slammed into his skull, cracking it wide open. But he was balanced
on the edge of the boat, about to jump.

‘Teddy! Don’t!’

She rushed forward, but Nigel was already there. He pulled the boy back down onto the deck, and with a curse dived off the
side of the boat.

Why? Why was her husband plunging into the waves?

Yet, oddly, she carried in her head the image of his dive. She’d had no idea he could dive like that in a perfect, graceful
arc, slicing into the sea with scarcely a ripple. Why had she never seen him do it before?

Her hand gripped her son’s shoulder. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Pippin!’

He pointed. The sun had sunk below the horizon, the sky fading towards night, so that the troughs within the waves were daubed
with shadows. She couldn’t see the dog. She raced for the lifebelt that hung on the side of the hatch and skimmed it out towards
her husband, but already the boat was carrying them away from him. He raised a hand in thanks and struck out towards the canvas
ring, but the brutal reality of the ocean’s power was all around him and it lifted the hairs on the nape of her neck. Only
then was she aware that Fitzpayne had seized control of the helm from Henry and was shouting, ‘Come about!’ Henry and Razak
leaped to the ropes as he spun the wheel, drawing the mainsail across the boat so that the bow swung gracefully round, circling
back towards the lifebelt.

‘We’re coming, Nigel,’ she called out, her heart pounding.
I’m coming, Nigel, I’m coming.
She glanced down at Teddy. His anxious gaze was fixed on his father.

‘Don’t let Daddy drown.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Scout’s honour?’

It was their phrase. When something really mattered.

‘Scout’s honour,’ she echoed.

She spotted the dog then. The damn dog. It was swimming frantically towards Nigel, and when it reached him it lavished kisses
all over his salty cheeks, making Nigel laugh and take on board a mouthful of water. Connie drew a deep breath. It was going
to be all right. She was impressed by Nigel’s calm. No panic. Easy in the water. A steady leg-kick – despite his injury –
to keep him treading water as he held onto Pippin and waited for the yacht to reach him.

Had he swum towards the boat, had he not waited with an Englishman’s certainty for it to come to him, the outcome might have
been different.

Madoc pulled on his trousers and hurried up on deck to see what the hell all the commotion was about. He hated abandoning
Kitty, warm and willing in the cabin, but it sounded like trouble. One man’s trouble was another man’s open door, so Madoc’s
feet stepped right in.