‘Pippin,’ he whispered once, but nothing more.
Mute and tearless. No longer a boy. Maya saw something die in him, and her chest hurt for its loss. Angrily she shook herself free from Razak’s grip and was about to go to the boy, when her brother spoke sharply with a nod towards the door.
‘Tuan Teddy, it’s your mother out there.’
The boy’s face crumpled for a moment and then he gathered himself together, the way a newborn calf gathers its gawky legs under itself, and ran from the room. Razak followed. Maya was left alone with just the dead dog and her shame.
They believed her. Connie had feared they would think she was lying – to frighten them. But they didn’t. They believed her when she stumbled into camp, scratched, torn and frantic, drenched in sweat, and swore that assault boats had landed Japanese troops on the island. Immediately chaos broke out around her, people shouting and running in all directions, the dank green world bursting with sudden energy, and it took a while for her to recognise that there was order within the chaos.
A chain of men passed boxes containing god-knows-what down to the jetty in a disciplined line of hand-over-hand conveyance. Tea chests vanished on board boats, and sails were hoisted at a speed that spoke of the whole manoeuvre being well rehearsed. A brigade of men carrying rifles took up prepared positions around the camp, and machine guns appeared from under green canvas on specially reinforced platforms up in the trees. Through the heart of all the noise and activity strode Fitz, a quiet, controlling presence. He ordered men to remove the covers from the stake pits, to raise the tree ladders, to set the spring mechanism of the capture nets. He sent some boats further upriver and others out to sea to make a run for it.
‘How long?’ he asked Connie. ‘How long have we got? How far away are they?’
‘An hour at most. I ran back as fast as I could but … not always on the right trail.’
She didn’t tell him. About slashing out a path with the bayonet, about her panic when she found the sun behind her instead of ahead of her. Or about falling down a gulley and fighting her way out through giant ferns, red earth sucking like quicksand at her feet. Now when he gripped her shoulders tight and held her close, her body moulded to his.
‘Connie, you’re exhausted.’
‘I’m fine. Go and do whatever you have to do.’
‘First I’ll take you down to the workshops. You and Teddy will be safer underground.’ He kept one arm in a protective loop around her, and headed towards Teddy.
When she arrived at camp, her son had run to her and flung himself into her arms, his face buried in her filthy shirt before withdrawing abruptly and without explanation. He stood silent and uncommunicative in the shade of a rambutan, while others hauled on a rope to raise a box of hand grenades to one of the platforms. He didn’t offer to help. Something in his young face had changed. She had only been gone a few hours, yet she felt a lurch of sorrow at the disappearance of something precious from her son’s face. She would talk to him when the time was right.
‘Come quickly,’ she said to him. ‘Bring Pippin.’
But he shook his head, and she assumed the dog was up in the safety of the tree hut. In single file they ran behind Fitz along the trail that skirted the river, and that was when they heard the sound. Fitz reacted first. He swung around to her.
‘Hide! Keep out of sight!’
‘Planes,’ Teddy shouted. He scanned the sky.
Connie felt the air vibrate as the roar of engines enveloped the forest, swooping down on them, tearing at the treetops. Then the rattling noise of machine guns started up.
‘Stay here,’ Fitz shouted, and thrust her with Teddy down behind a broad tree trunk. ‘Don’t move from here.’
‘Fitz!’
He kissed her mouth. Quick and urgent.
‘Fitz, don’t …’ She wanted to say Don’t go. Don’t die, but she forced the words down and instead she took his face in her hands and smiled into his eyes. ‘Don’t forget … I love you.’
She saw something open inside him, some dark secret place that had been hidden away, and he leaned his forehead against hers. A rawness seemed to ache within him.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
He held her close. For one brief moment she stroked the long tendons at the back of his neck and soothed the jagged nerves of his skin. She did not know what demon her words had let loose within him, but she knew he needed her.
‘Fitz,’ she said, ‘take me with you.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I won’t get in your way.’
From somewhere he found a smile, but it lay crookedly across his face. ‘I can think of nothing better than having you in my way all the time.’ He took her hand in his and touched his lips to her palm, then gave it back to her. ‘I am a greedy man, Connie, but I can’t let you take that risk. You have your son to think of.’ He turned to Teddy. ‘Stay with your mother, Teddy, look after her until I …’
His final words were swallowed by an explosion that blasted the forest, tearing limbs from the trees.
‘Bombs!’ Fitz shouted.
More explosions. A tidal wave of sound. Screams erupted around them in all directions, and Fitz pushed Connie and Teddy to the ground at the base of the tree.
‘Don’t move!’ he yelled.
Connie hooked an arm around his neck and placed a kiss, full of heat and fury, on his lips. A smile flickered, and then he was gone.
The Japanese planes came one after another, a flock of great black birds whose wings spread the shadow of death. Connie dodged between trees, Teddy at her heels, his small hand gripped firmly in hers. She couldn’t remain where she was, however much Fitz had asked her to, because to remain there would be to wait to die.
Around her the destruction was relentless. Trees were ripped from the ground, broken walkways dangled like cobwebs and bullets tore great holes in the forest. Each time a bomb exploded Connie felt cold with fear for Fitz, but she had to get Teddy to safety. She raced for the underground workshop, but a direct hit had blasted the chamber wide open and its contents of timber and workmen were strewn in a tangled mess over the forest floor.
‘Teddy, hide here.’
Connie pushed him into a tangle of bamboo, but as she checked each body, searching for a flicker of life, the small figure of Teddy bobbed up at her side, his need to be with his mother overwhelming all else. So she didn’t shut him out. This was his world even more than it was hers. He helped her shift lengths of wood and seize hold of hands that were already turning cold. Not until every chance of finding someone alive was exhausted did they stop. Only then did Teddy start to cry, a shuddering release of grief as he told her that Pippin was dead too. She took him in her arms and tried to hide her rage.
How can I teach my son to deal with death when I can’t deal with it myself?
She soothed his quivering back and spoke to him quietly about his father and about how much his father loved him, told him how proud he would be of his son today. And when the tears finally stopped, she kissed his sweet damp forehead.
‘Teddy, my love, we have to leave now. We have to escape from here. We need to find Fitz.’
They retraced their steps, but as they emerged from the trees she felt her son’s hand tremble in hers. Ahead of them the river was on fire. The wingtip of an aircraft reached up out of the water like a plea for help.
‘It’s a Zero,’ Teddy whispered. ‘Shot down by the machine guns in the trees.’
Its fuel had spilled onto the surface of the river and caught fire, sending flames streaking across the narrow inlet, so that several boats now burned. Smoke wreathed the air and a grey shroud had dimmed the sun. The acrid stench of it scoured their nostrils and their gaze turned immediately to The White Pearl. Miraculously she was still riding at anchor, unharmed, but on deck Connie could make out movement, and when a gust of wind stripped the smoke from the yacht for a moment she saw at least twenty people crammed on deck – among them the bespectacled face of Badan.
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‘Look, Mummy!’
Teddy pointed to the stern, where someone was preparing to weigh anchor. It was Henry Court – he was running out on them.
‘Wait!’ Connie shouted across the water, but it was lost in all the noise. ‘Wait for Fitzpayne!’
But she knew it was too late. The yacht would glide downriver without her. She was no longer Mrs Nigel Hadley, owner of The White Pearl; no longer the woman who had set out from Palur.
‘Teddy,’ she said urgently, ‘where do you think Fitzpayne could be?’
His brown eyes glittered. ‘He’ll be with the rifles.’
‘Where?’
‘In the gun pit.’
‘Show me.’
Together they started to run through the smoke, but were stopped by the sudden sight of Maya. She was darting in panic back and forth along the riverbank in full view, her long hair loose and tangled, and she was screeching her brother’s name. ‘Razak! Razak!’
‘Oh, Maya, no,’ Connie cried, and quickly pushed her son to the ground. ‘Wait here, Teddy,’ she ordered, and started to run towards the girl, just as a Japanese plane swept down into the narrow river valley and opened up with its guns.
35
Kitty couldn’t swim. Madoc cursed her foolishness. He had told her a thousand times that it was dangerous to live in this land of infinite waterways without learning how to swim.
‘Only people who can swim end up drowning,’ she used to laugh. ‘People who can’t swim – like me – never go in the water. Anyway, you can always rescue me. Don’t let me drown.’
Now, at the water’s edge, it had come to that. She looked at him with steady eyes and said again, ‘Don’t let me drown.’ Then she wrapped her arms around the plank of wood he had thrust at her and threw herself into the river. She flailed like a newborn kitten, let go of the timber and promptly went under, scaring the bloody life out of him. He grabbed a hank of her thick hair and yanked her back to the surface, his heart beating again only when he saw her gulp in air.
‘Hold on!’ he ordered as he jammed the baulk of timber under her arms and started to kick out for the central channel, towing Kitty with one hand.
Her eyes were panicked.
‘Kick!’ he shouted.
She kicked, feebly at first, then harder. They began to move against the tidal current. Oil and debris littered the surface of the river, and Madoc steered her clear of the floating remains of contraband that had been blasted from the burning boats: hundreds of brandy bottles and long bolts of silk that drifted like bright blue tentacles and tangled around their legs.
‘Madoc.’
‘What is it?’
She was swallowing water and shaking her head like a dog. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘Kitty, my love,’ he lifted her chin higher, treading water at her side, frightened sick for her, ‘it’s a bloody stink hole for all of us.’
‘No, I mean …’ she spat out a mouthful of slime, ‘… this.’ She nodded at the yacht just ahead of them. The wind had shifted, and The White Pearl was half hidden once more in the pall of black smoke billowing from the junk anchored alongside her, so that her gleaming white hull was masked from sight. But Madoc had spotted the men on board who were eager to make off with her, and now that he and Kitty were this close, he could hear raised voices on deck.
‘I can handle them, Kitty.’
‘No.’ She had stopped kicking. One hand clung to his shoulder, holding him back.
‘It’s ours,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘The White Pearl is meant for us.’
‘Not this time, Madoc.’
‘I tell you, I can …’
‘It’s a death ship.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
A wave hit him in the face. Kitty deliberately released her hold on the timber and grabbed at his neck, her full weight dragging him down. For fifteen seconds they were drowning, but he fought back to the surface, hauling her with him, and they both gasped air into their lungs. The timber was gone. His fear turned to anger.
‘Stop it, Kitty! You’ll bloody kill us both.’
She shut her eyes, shivering, and he couldn’t tell whether the moisture on her face was river water or tears. ‘A death ship,’ she repeated, and he felt her words chill his blood so fast that he could barely keep afloat.
‘Shit, you’re spooking me.’
He glanced back at the shore and saw the panic there. He caught a glimpse of Fitzpayne charging out of the forest with a horde of native kids behind him. All carried rifles. Above the trees, another plane was beginning its run. With a curse he wrenched Kitty’s arm from his neck and, keeping a firm grip on her, he veered away from The White Pearl. Instead, he swam a course straight for the Burung Camar.
*
Connie was knocked off her feet. She didn’t know why or how. Her ears hurt as she staggered upright again. Another explosion. She coughed as a rush of smoke swept into her lungs and her head jerked round to see The White Pearl disintegrate into ten thousand silvery pieces that hung in the air, suspended briefly in a limbo between life and death, before descending into the water. It was a direct hit.
The White Pearl no longer existed, nor the people on her. Connie stopped breathing, appalled at the capacity of human beings to hurt one another. She thought of Henry on deck, and was unaware of the tears on her face as she raced towards Maya. The girl was still screaming, still out in the open while above her, the roar of an engine sent waves of sound rolling through the trees. Connie clamped her hand on the girl’s tiny wrist and dragged Maya off the sunlit bank of sand into the safer gloom of the forest.
Maya’s scream went on and on and on, battering Connie’s ears, but when she finally halted and they looked behind them, the girl’s mouth had shut and instead a faint moan escaped. Across the sand where her footprints had churned it up, a neat line of bullet holes traced a path. Abruptly Maya dropped to her knees on the dank earth and wrapped her arms around Connie’s ankles. She kissed Connie’s muddy feet, wiping her shins with her hair.
‘Terimah kasih, terimah kasih, terimah kasih, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ she sobbed.
‘Maya, don’t.’
‘I be dead.’
‘No, you’re alive, thank goodness.’
‘You save me.’
‘Please, don’t, Maya. I must …’
‘You an angel.’
‘No.’ Connie jerked the girl to her feet. ‘I am definitely no angel. Now let’s move. We’ll find Razak if he’s still here,’ she promised.
Fear robs you of self. Connie could feel her fear untying the knots that held her together. She stared out at the devastation in the river valley, and mourned the wanton loss of life. Fear and sorrow: they were two sides of the same coin. Fear for Fitz; sorrow for Henry. Together they untied the fastening that shaped her into a civilised being and the rage that lurked inside, deep and primal, came roaring to the surface. She craved one of Fitz’s rifles to defend her son.
Her son had remained exactly where she’d left him, tucked inside a fold of mangrove – for the simple reason that beside him, one hand firmly on his shoulder, stood Fitz.
‘Connie!’ Fitz’s face was dark and set hard. ‘You almost got yourself killed.’
She heard the raw anger in his voice. As he placed his free hand on her shoulder, she saw the look in his eyes and knew his self-control cost him dear. She wanted to wrap herself around him and tell him she was still here, still alive – still his.
‘I need to find Razak,’ she said.
‘Razak?’
‘Yes. I promised Maya.’
He released his grip on her and her son. ‘You’re too ready to make promises.’ He scowled at her and took a deep breath, clearing his mind. ‘But I have him safe.’ He was about to stride off without another word, expecting her to follow, but at the last moment he hesitated and stared at her. He looked a mess, his thick hair dishevelled and wet, his shirt torn and bloodied.
‘Come with me. Please, Connie.’
Nurul sat in the middle of the rowing boat, pulling strongly on the oars and bringing them closer to the Burung Camar. His hand was bandaged and he did not look at Connie. The aircraft attacks had briefly subsided, and in the lull Nurul had launched a flimsy boat that Fitz had hidden among the roots of a mangrove tree. Johnnie Blake was waiting there already with Razak, and as soon as he saw Connie arrive, he hoisted Razak onto his back and stepped down into the rowing boat. It swayed precariously, and Maya uttered a soft wail. Razak had a gash on his back but he made no sound, just rolled his head to look at his sister as he took his seat in the bow.
‘He’s all right,’ Johnnie called out to her.
‘He not right.’ Maya jumped into the boat, making it rock with a violence that meant Johnnie had to cling onto her to stop her toppling overboard.
‘In you go, Teddy,’ Fitz urged the boy. ‘Take care of your mother.’
‘Aren’t you coming out to the Burung Camar?’ Teddy asked at once.
‘No.’ Fitz looked at Connie. ‘Not yet.’ His eyes registered her shock.
Connie didn’t move. He took her hand and she interlaced her fingers with his, fastening them together.
‘Fitz,’ she said quietly, her chest tight and empty, ‘you must leave with us. It’s too dangerous here. The troops are coming, I saw them, they will …’
Kill you. They will kill you.
She wanted to say things to him, but not that. ‘They will be here soon.’ She wanted to beat her fists on his stubborn chest and rip apart his iron will with her bare hands.
‘Connie, I have to remain for the moment,’ he said. His voice was calm but his unblinking eyes made great holes in her thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, I will join you shortly. There are people here who need me.’
None of his words filled the dark spaces in her chest. But when he stopped speaking, she didn’t say I need you, and was careful to banish all jealousy from her voice as she asked, ‘How long? I will wait here.’
The White Pearl Page 43