‘Tell all, dearest Connie,’ Harriet declared when Connie finally joined her in the shade on the veranda. A tall glass of iced lime juice awaited her but Connie waved a hand at one of the boys to bring two coffees as well. ‘A little bird with a handlebar moustache,’ Harriet continued, ‘informed me that the gorgeous Flight Lieutenant John Blake blew into town and headed straight for the Hadley Estate without so much as a nod to anyone else.’ She grinned at Connie. ‘Now I wonder why that was.’
‘Tell your Uncle Jasper that he’s got it all wrong. Johnnie arrived here with a friend from KL and Nigel invited them over.’
‘Honest truth?’
‘Cross my heart.’
‘Very well, I’ll believe you.’ Harriet leaned forward, eyes curious. ‘Is he still as handsome as ever?’
‘Handsomer!’
They both laughed and fell into discussing arrangements for the next charity event they were organising, a dance to raise more money for the Buy-a-Bomber-for-Britain fund. All the colonial wives were engaged in similar activities. It made them feel they were doing their bit for the war effort back home, while their husbands beavered away shipping out rubber, tin and rice for the troops. Patriotism was worn like a badge, despite being so many thousands of miles away from their homeland.
‘Elspeth Saunders is organising the raffle,’ Connie reminded Harriet, and they both rolled their eyes at each other.
Elspeth was a dainty elfin woman who had more children than she knew what to do with. She was mother to Teddy’s best friend, Jack, and to his six other siblings. She always insisted on taking control of the raffle at these functions, but she had a tendency to roll up on the day while the prizes were left at home on the kitchen table where they were demolished by the family’s Labradors.
They both groaned, and Connie took the moment to slip in a question. ‘Harriet, what does Henry say about the war?’ Henry Court, Harriet’s husband, was a top-level accountant, constantly closeted in smoky offices with the colonial ruling echelon. ‘He must have some inside knowledge, surely.’
‘The war in Europe, you mean?’
‘No. Here in Malaya. Does he believe it will happen?’
‘Good heavens, no.’ Harriet’s broad nose flared, reminding Connie of her horse when it baulked at a fence. ‘That’s an absurd idea.’
‘Is it?’
‘Why? Did Johnnie Blake say anything?’
‘No. Quite the opposite. He says we have a force of three hundred and thirty-five first-class aircraft defending Malaya. He thinks the Japanese won’t attempt it.’
‘Well, he should know. He’s the one who sits in on the High Command pow-wows. Henry says it would be impossible. Singapore is too well guarded, and the rest of the Peninsula’s coast is constantly patrolled by the RAF.’
‘So they say.’
‘Oh, come on, Connie. General Brooke-Popham and General Percival know what they’re doing. Don’t look so gloomy. The Japanese will never get through that jungle.’
‘Johnnie brought a friend with him who seemed to think it was possible.’
‘Well, tell him he’s bloody wrong,’ Harriet snorted.
Connie wanted to believe her. Perhaps Henry had told Harriet more than she was letting on. Their coffee arrived and she sipped it thoughtfully in silence, eyes focused on the small Malay figure at the other end of the veranda. The figure was small and female, polishing the brass fittings on a sea chest that was used to hoard costumes for fancy-dress parties. It was all too easy for the eye not even to notice the army of native workers who kept the Club running smoothly.
‘Harriet, everyone here claims that the Japanese have no discipline and no backbone. But I don’t think that’s true.’
‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘Their army has already taken Korea, Manchuria and most of China. Of course it must be disciplined and well equipped to do that.’
Harriet stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘Are you out of your mind? The Japanese will turn and run with their tails between their legs at the first shot, I assure you.’
‘Harriet, they have a huge air force.’
‘Who says so?’
‘Someone told me.’
‘Well, your someone has got his facts wrong. Anyway, everyone knows the Japs make terrible pilots. They have no sense of balance because they’re carried about on their mothers’ backs as children. Dreadful habit.’
Connie picked up her sunglasses that were lying on the table beside her and put them on, despite the fact that they were sitting in the shade. She didn’t want Harriet to see her eyes. Because she was remembering. Sho jumping from rock to rock as he crossed a river at the bottom of a wooded valley. In the green moist air his bare limbs looked golden, flashing in and out of the dappled sunlight, his leaps as free and effortless as a flying fish. There was nothing wrong with his balance. Nothing at all. When he reached the far side he plucked a durian fruit from high up in the tree and came bounding back with it for her. He presented the thorny husk to her on his knees and bowed his head to her feet as if the foul-smelling fruit were the keys of his kingdom. She recalled now the feel of his breath on her toes and the warmth of his hair as she crouched and ran her fingers through it.
In some strange way, he was a man that belonged to the ground, not in the air. She wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it had something to do with the way he would pull her down onto the red earth or the hard tiled floor or the tatami mat in the shack in the forest. The skin of her back became a mosaic of scrapes and scratches and insect bites. Not that it mattered, Nigel never saw them.
‘I think,’ she said to Harriet, ‘we are the ones who are in for a shock.’
Connie rose to her feet and crossed the veranda to where the servant girl was on her knees polishing a brass table. Her dark limbs glistened with sweat with the effort she was putting into it. Her back was towards the two women.
‘Maya? It is you, isn’t it?’
The girl looked up. Black fringed eyes, alert and guarded. No surprise in them. So she’d known it was Connie sitting there.
‘Yes, mem,’ the girl said. She looked older than she had before, less of a child in her bland white uniform and with her hair pinned up in a knot with a flower at the back of her head. The tone was polite, no hint of the fury Connie had feared.
‘You got the job then?’
‘Yes, mem. Thank you.’ The girl remained on her knees.
Connie had pulled strings to arrange for Maya to be offered a position working two half-days a week at the Club. A silence, as thick as river slime, slid between them and the girl lowered her eyes submissively to the table once more. A fat glossy fly settled on the flower in her hair and Connie flicked it away. This was the first time she had seen or spoken to the girl since the day of the accident, and she felt the weight of it pressing into her chest. Razak had been their go-between but she realised now that she should have faced Su-Rai Jumat’s daughter earlier.
‘Maya, I’m so sorry. Maaf.’
The girl murmured something inaudible in Malay, but didn’t look up. Her hand curled tight round the polishing cloth she was holding. They remained there like that, neither moving. Connie was aware of Harriet watching them, mystified, and of the rattle of the fan like dead bones in a can.
‘Maya, I could do with your help this afternoon, if you’re free.’
At last. The black eyes flicked up to her face. Cautious.
‘I’ll pay you for your time,’ Connie added.
The small mouth curved up at its corners, but there was no trace of a smile in the eyes. ‘Yes. I help you.’
‘Thank you.’ Connie rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder and felt the heat of her skin under the thin white cotton.
Maya was on edge. She skulked two steps behind Constance Hadley as they walked into the dry-goods store on Marlborough Street. Walked? No, this white lady with the pale hair and the ivory skin didn’t walk. Maya watched every step, the way she took possession of each scrap of ground her foot touc
hed, as though it had been put there just for her. The air seemed to part for her like a pair of damp curtains and close behind her again, shutting others out. So private. Maya narrowed her eyes. So secretive.
‘Wait here.’
Maya obeyed. She tucked herself against some shelves and tugged the pins from her hair, shaking it into a black veil around her face. The last time she was in this store she’d been thrown out into the muddy gutter for pocketing a handful of rice. She ducked behind a tower of canned fruit and stared at the illustration on the labels: peaches. What white-skinned fool would eat pretend peaches when they could be had fresh in the market every day?
She watched the white lady. Studied her gestures. The way she held her back straight and her neck long. Her smile at the whiskery man behind the counter. He was in a brown overall with buttons like black eyes down his front. The lady’s easy confidence. It came to her as natur-ally as a fish to water. She was pointing to a sack of flour and a sack of rice.
‘Shall I arrange to have them delivered, Mrs Hadley?’
‘No, thank you, Mr Endicott. I’ll take them with me in the car. And these.’ She handed him a list.
The man’s cheeks swelled with pleasure as if he’d stuffed his peaches into them. ‘Certainly, Mrs Hadley. Would you care to take a seat for a moment? A cup of tea, Mrs Hadley, while you wait? My boy could easily drive everything over in the van if …’
But she dismissed it with a shake of her head. With a pleasant but firm smile she sent him scuttling to his shelves. He glanced at Maya as he passed but barely saw her, his head was so full of dollar signs. He hustled together packets and cartons, stacked up on the counter, puffing when he had to climb a ladder to reach for boxes of candles.
Maya couldn’t read words, but she could read pictures. Pictures of cows on the square cans, of pigs on the round ones. They were tins of meat. Pictures of tea leaves, coffee beans and spoonfuls of sugar on the packets, and biscuits inside big colourful boxes. She watched jars and bottles and matches being added to the pile, as well as a sack of dried beans and a large block of salt. The white lady nodded, satisfied, whenever something more arrived.
What was she doing? Was this like the veg patch? Far more than she needed because she was too stupid to know better?
‘Maya, come here.’
Maya moved closer.
‘Choose one for yourself.’
Maya looked at her blankly. What did she mean?
‘I’m picking a green one for Teddy. They are his favourite,’ the lady continued with a light laugh.
She was holding a fat glass jar tucked under her arm and it was packed full of brightly coloured sticks. Maya stood motionless, uncertain what to do.
The lady put her hand into the mouth of the jar and pulled out a green one, wrapped in a sort of shiny paper. ‘See?’ she said. ‘This one is peppermint. The others are different flavours. Which one would you like?’
She was smiling encouragement, waiting for a response. And suddenly Maya understood. This lady was expecting to exchange her mother’s death for a coloured stick. It pained Maya’s heart not to spit on her pretty white feet in her pretty white shoes.
She thrust her fingers into the jar and yanked out a stick. It was a red one. ‘Terimah kasih. Thank you, mem,’ she muttered.
‘That’s a blackcurrant one.’
Maya peered at the stick. What was she meant to do with it? Push it down the lady’s throat?
‘It’s a stick of rock.’
Rock?
‘A kind of sweet,’ the mem’s words were gentle. ‘I think you’ll like it.’ She rattled the jar, startling Maya. ‘The yellow ones are banana, the orange ones are peach, the striped one is watermelon and …’ she stopped, her eyes fixed on Maya’s face. ‘It’s nothing, Maya. Just a sweet.’
Maya nodded. Then she hid behind her hair and slid her hand into the jar’s jaws once more, snatching out a striped one. ‘For Razak.’
‘Of course.’
The man in the overall and the buttons planted himself in front of them and preened his whiskers like a brown mouse. ‘Is that all, Mrs Hadley?’
Greedy, greedy, greedy.
‘Yes, thank you. Put it on my account, please.’
‘Is your car outside?’
‘Yes.’
‘Boy!’ he shouted.
A native youth appeared from a backroom holding a broom. He ignored Maya but smiled shyly at the mem.
‘Load up, boy,’ the whiskers ordered.
‘I carry rock, mem,’ Maya volunteered.
With the jar gripped like a baby under her arm, she followed the white lady out of the store.
Maya sat up front next to the syce in the car. He was Chinese, Ho Bah, a thin bony face with grey hair like a bird’s nest under his chauffeur’s cap. His dark green uniform hung loose on him, as if he hoped one day to grow fatter. He didn’t speak to her. Didn’t look at her. She wiped her dusty sandals noisily on the nice clean mat under her feet, but still he didn’t glance in her direction. Just a muscle beside his eye tweaked with the effort of keeping his mouth shut.
The car was American. Big and gaudy, like all Americans. Shiny chrome handles and a long purposeful nose. But she knew its secret. That it killed people. However well it hid its claws, she could hear its tiger growl, just as her mother had heard it. Quietly she dropped her hand between her seat and the door, and sank her nails into its fawn-coloured flank, raking its flesh, hurting it.
She’d ridden in a car before, in the days when her mother used to sell her again and again. Sometimes white men’s cars, sometimes black men’s cars. It made no difference to her. With their clothes off in the dark, all men are the same. All men want the same. Some even did it to her in the car, some with their syce watching in the mirror. In a moment of panic she stared now at this silent Chinese driver, but no, she didn’t recognise him. She was good with faces.
The car swung through the streets of Palur and she enjoyed seeing people turn to stare at the sleek black motor as it purred past. But instead of taking the road north, up towards the Hadley plantation where Maya thought they were heading, she was surprised when it left the broad avenues of brick buildings and threaded its way through narrow lanes towards the wharves. She peered over her shoulder into the back of the car. The white mem was sitting on the rear seat surrounded by sacks and boxes, ticking off items on her list. Her thoughtful blue eyes glanced out of the side window briefly and she paused, pen poised in the air. Maya checked what she was looking at. A ribbon of shifting brown water was just visible behind the godowns. It was the river. Why were they heading down there? To the quays and the shanty town where she and Razak lived?
Abruptly it dawned on her. It was obvious that this mem, this white lady, this killer of her mother, was going to help Maya. By giving her all this. She pictured the mountains of boxes of canned meat in the boot, the sacks of flour and rice in the back, the candles and the biscuits on the seat. She grinned, she couldn’t help it. She and Razak would be set up for months. But she would have to get one of the local urchins to guard it while they were out. She’d pay him with sweet sticks. Once word got round what was in their shack …
A bicycle rickshaw swerved in front of their path and wharf coolies carrying rattan baskets on their backs blocked the narrow route that led to the railway track and the shanty town. She wanted to yell at them. To tell bony-face to blast his horn at them. The wharf was seething with activity and she could see a lumbering merchant ship with red funnels, busy unloading its cargo on hoists. Sweat and heat shimmered in the air, heavy with the stink of the river. She grew impatient and leaned forward as if she could force the car to move faster. Just then, a gap appeared on the left and she was about to urge the syce through it, but he slipped neatly down a side road to the right.
‘No! Tak!’ she breathed. ‘No!’
The syce looked at her for the first time, his eyes dark slits of dislike. ‘Quiet, gutter-trash,’ he muttered.
She swivelled around on the se
at ‘Mem,’ she cried out, ‘where we go?’
The white lady lifted her eyes from the notes in her hand and gazed at Maya as though she’d forgotten she was there. ‘To our boat, of course. To The White Pearl.’
9
‘Fuck!’
The teeth of the saw had slipped.
‘Fuck!’ Madoc swore again when he saw the blood flowing from his knuckles. It stained the timber and dripped onto the ground.
Instantly a shiny bootlace of black flies swarmed all over it. Out here in the jungle cuts didn’t heal, infection set in no matter how fast you threw iodine over them. Madoc was making window frames for the new casino that he was building alongside Morgan’s Bar, sawing lengths of timber on the open square of beaten earth that lay between the bar and the jetty. The smell of sawdust spiced the air and reminded him of his father sawing logs in the backyard when he was a nipper. Beside him, Kitty was wielding a strip of sandpaper, smoothing the edges of the wood when he had finished with them. As she straightened up to look at the damage, a pool of sweat sat like a creamy saucer of milk in the hollow of her ample breasts.
‘Oh, Christ!’ she moaned. ‘Come here.’ She seized his wrist and pressed down hard with her fist on the jagged edges of his flesh. ‘Inside.’
Kitty frogmarched him into their kitchen, leaving him dripping into the sink while she dug out antiseptic and bandage. By the time she’d finished with him, his hand was clad in white gauze and his empty stomach burned from the quantity of brandy she’d chucked down him.
‘Better?’ she asked, inspecting him, her hands perched on her broad hips.
‘Much.’
‘No more sawing today.’
‘I have to finish those windows before …’
‘No more sawing.’ She wasn’t smiling.
‘Fuck!’ he swore again.
She stepped close, so close he could smell the tang of her sweat. She patted his cheek and grinned. ‘Not now, tiger.’
The White Pearl Page 9