Other uniforms gathered around her, grey as lice. Ten, twelve, twenty of them, she lost count. They jabbed at her with rifle butts and herded her into the shade of trees like a calf into a slaughterhouse. They argued with each other in Japanese, their faces full of rage and exhaustion and lust, and as she listened to them the numbness of shock began to wear off. She felt a rush of nausea. She vomited over one man’s boot and he kicked her, but not hard.
The soldier who had found her seemed to be claiming the right to shoot her. He kept lifting his rifle and squinting along its barrel at her, until the others eventually backed off and shrugged agreement. Her heart stopped beating. She shut her eyes and found Fitz’s face there in her mind’s eye, waiting for her. Fitz and Teddy, hand in hand together. A wave of intense sorrow pulsed through her veins because she would never see her son grow into a man or …
More shouting. A sudden outburst of voices rose around her that sent her mind into chaos – because the one shouting the loudest, the one making the most noise, belonged to Fitz. But the words were all Japanese. Her eyes shot open and he was there, in front of her. Not in her mind’s eye. He was real flesh and blood, and if she stepped forwards she could touch him. She didn’t understand why the soldiers didn’t shoot him.
His words spilled out into the jungle, harsh and angry, his face rigid, and when he looked at her his eyes were indifferent, his mouth scornful. She could make no sense of the stream of Japanese that poured out, but over and over from his mouth she heard the words that turned the sweat on her skin to ice: Constance Hadley. Takehashi. And then again, Constance Hadley. Takehashi.
Shohei Takehashi had come back to haunt her.
38
Three days.
Three days of sweat and swearing.
Three nights of mosquitoes and raking the earth with her fingernails to try to dislodge the metal post to which her wrists were tied.
Once in every hour, day and night, the sentry outside marched in to ensure she was still tied up and that the metal stake was secure. The first time he walked in with a sledgehammer that dwarfed his fragile physique, she thought he had come to kill her, to pound her brains out in the dirt. But the blows were for the stake, not her head, driving it firmly back into place while he shouted at her in Japanese for loosening it.
They had put her in a green tent erected in the clearing where the Kennel used to stand before it was bombed. It was stifling and airless, with barely enough room for a person to stand. Not that she could rise from her knees. Her wrists were tethered to the stake at ground level, looped through holes bored in it with no more than an arm’s length of free rope. Enough to allow her to reach the bucket that was emptied at the end of each day, or to lift to her mouth the single mug of fish broth that she was given at dawn every morning. A tin mug of water arrived at midday, and another at sunset. That was it.
Three days.
Of sweat. Of tears. Of rage.
The fear was always there, so solid and real that it became a companion to her, one she loathed and taunted and derided to see how much punishment it could take before it slapped her in the face and brought her weeping to her knees. And all the time she pictured Fitzpayne’s indifferent face swirling through her mind.
You betrayed me. You betrayed my son.
Her lips formed the words, but she put her hand over her mouth to keep them in. She rested her forehead on the ground and replayed each scene through her mind: Fitz laughing with her on the boat, Fitz teaching Teddy to fish and tie knots, Fitz asking Do you know what it is to die of loneliness? His lips warm and demanding on her breasts. She scoured each scene, seeking clues until her thoughts grew weary and wavering.
Captive inside the tent, Connie began to think of Sho; to question why Fitz would utter his name. Sleepless and hungry, her mind started to play tricks, and after three days of isolation she heard his voice. She was lying on the earthen floor in a pool of sweat, picking scabs from the insect bites on her arm, when she heard him say quite distinctly in English, ‘Constance Hadley is a dangerous woman. Beware of her. She is like that spider that kills its chosen lover after mating.’
Connie sat up. She wanted to rip off her ears, to banish the sound of his voice from her head.
‘Sho,’ she shouted at the dripping walls of the tent, ‘if you are here, this must be hell.’
She tried to gnaw the rope from her wrists. Only when she tasted blood did she think to stop and wonder what demon had entered her soul.
They came for her, two smooth-faced soldiers no taller than herself. When one cut the rope that bound her to the metal stake in the ground, she didn’t beg or cry or grovel at their feet, pleading for her life the way a part of her wanted to. She stood up straight and walked quietly between them, drawing into her lungs for the last time the wild scent of the jungle after the stale fog of the tent.
They gripped her arms, but instead of taking her to a killing ground, they marched her towards a large khaki tent set up near the riverbank, its flaps wide open to pick up any breeze off the water. The afternoon sun cast shadows from the trees across its surface, so that its shape seemed to move and shift as she approached. Inside she stopped dead.
‘Sho?’
Her escort jerked her forward.
‘Sho?’ she whispered again.
She blinked hard. On one side of the tent stood a table covered with maps and papers, alongside two folding chairs, one with binoculars on its canvas seat, the other with a pair of wooden crutches propped against it. But Connie registered it all only dimly because her mind was fragmented as it fought to make sense of what she saw directly in front of her. A large square of pristine white silk lay on the ground like a spill of milk. On it were arranged an ancient black clay teapot, two tiny handleless porcelain cups so fine they were almost transparent, and a small bamboo vase containing one bright orange flower of a kind Connie had never seen before. Two men were seated around it as though at a table. One was Fitz. The other was Shohei Takehashi.
Sho’s voice spoke to her, a harsh order in Japanese. When she didn’t respond immediately, one of her escorts jammed his rifle into the back of her leg. She stumbled forward and buckled to her knees. She heard a hiss of breath, but she didn’t know which man it came from. She looked at them again now that she was closer and at eye level with them, and a pain roared into life in her chest. Fitz, who are you? His expression was grim and cold, his thoughts hidden behind eyes as dark as the clean black shirt on his back.
She clutched at reality. Dragged it into her head.
It wasn’t Sho. It couldn’t be. In the dim light of the tent she saw that it was almost Sho – but not quite. The man seated cross-legged on the ground in front of her possessed the exact shape of Sho’s head and jaw, the arch of his brow, the same almond eyes and full, prominent lips. But now that she was close she could see that this man was older, his hair threaded with silver. A pair of deep lines scored the skin between his nose and mouth. The set of his shoulders was stiff inside his military uniform, the swell of his chest full of self-regard. This was a proud man, the man Sho might have become. Had he lived.
‘This is Constance Hadley,’ Fitz announced in a flat voice.
Fitz, don’t. Connie couldn’t look at him. ‘This is General Takehashi,’ he continued. ‘Father of Shohei Takehashi.’
There was a pause, so slight it was barely perceptible, but Connie knew Fitz. It was the pause he made when he was angry.
‘It is a great honour to me,’ he said, ‘that General Takehashi is my adoptive father, as Shohei Takehashi was my beloved adoptive brother.’
A black pit opened up in front of Connie. She tumbled into it head first. My adoptive brother. She had killed someone Fitz loved.
She gazed straight at him. ‘You knew,’ she said. ‘All the time you knew.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He turned abruptly to General Takehashi and spoke to him in Japanese before addressing her again.
‘The General wishes to
know exactly what happened to his son.’
Connie studied the features that were Shohei’s, yet not Shohei’s. She was still on her knees, and slowly she bowed forward until her forehead rested on the damp earth. At this moment her heart ached for the father she had robbed.
‘A thousand apologies, General Takehashi,’ she said solemnly. ‘My heart is full because of the wrong I did to you and to your son, Shohei Takehashi.’ She raised her head a fraction but kept it bowed. ‘I have suffered ten thousand regrets, but none of them can bring him back. Shohei’s death was an accident – on my life, I tell you the truth.’ She touched her bound hands to her heart.
‘What kind of accident?’ Fitz demanded harshly.
‘We had an argument and there was a struggle. I pushed Shohei away from me. Tragically, he fell on his knife.’
The words climbed out of her mouth, as heavy as stone, and a silence filled the air between them.
‘I apologise humbly,’ she said.
Nothing more. But she knew she had signed her death warrant.
Fitz murmured in Japanese, and she heard the General growl a reply. There was a clink of porcelain and the scent of jasmine in the air. Minutes ticked past, and finally Connie rose once more, upright on her knees. Shohei’s father was gazing sorrowfully into the bottom of his cup, the muscles of his cheeks bunched and hard, but Fitz was staring at her. For one fleeting moment she saw something in his eyes that stopped her heartbeat. It was a look of such despair that she longed to leap to her feet and run to him.To find the truth of him. But it vanished before she could draw breath to speak, and an expression of guarded disdain returned. Did I imagine it? Does my mind no longer see straight?
‘Mr Fitzpayne,’ she said softly.
‘Yes, Mrs Hadley?’
‘Tell me how you know. I would like to be told that much before …’ Before I am shot. Before I forsake my son.
The General leaned forward, both hands placed flat on the silk square and he said in perfect English, ‘Tell the whore. Tell her how you smelled out her trail like a hound smells out a bitch.’
Fitz looked down at his own strong hands. His chest expanded, drawing in air urgently as if there could never be enough air for him inside this khaki tent. Then he raised his eyes to hers.
‘I once saved Shohei’s life,’ he said in a voice that was quiet and unemotional. ‘It’s not important how. What is important is that at the time I was drifting aimlessly around Eastern Asia, and General Take hashi took me in. Adopted me. It was a great honour.’
He faced his adoptive father and bowed low over his hands. Connie saw something pass between them, a flicker of affection, and for the first time the hard line of the General’s mouth relaxed a fraction and he murmured something in Japanese, as he placed a caring hand on the knee of Fitz’s damaged leg.
‘Shohei and I became blood-brothers,’ Fitz said simply. ‘When he travelled to Malaya… ’
‘Spying for Japan,’ Connie interrupted.
‘He was serving his Emperor,’ Fitz corrected sternly. He studied her face. ‘Is that what you quarrelled about?’
‘Yes. I found out.’
He poured himself a tiny cup of tea, but didn’t sip it. ‘Shohei wrote a letter to his father every day. Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Telling him all that he saw and did.’
Connie shuddered. Not everything. Please, not everything.
Fitz drew another long breath and continued. ‘He told his father about you, about your house and your husband’s rubber estate. He described …’ He stopped, as though the words had run dry.
General Takehashi waited, his fist clenched.
‘Shohei described your hut beside the river,’ Fitz continued, his tone flat and dry, ‘the love nest you used for your trysts. He wrote that he intended to bring you back to Tokyo to be his wife. He told us he was going to meet you that day. But we never heard from him again. He said that he intended to ask you …’
Connie shook her head. She remembered the silk square on the floor of the hut, the shock of Sho’s request. The belated realisation that he wanted so much more from her. How could she have been so blind? But in those days back in Palur, her eyes were half closed and her mind paralysed by the loneliness of a loveless marriage.
‘… to marry him. Did he do that?’ ‘Yes.’
General Takehashi spat on the dirt floor. ‘Why did my son want the whore? Look at her.’
Connie felt the weight of their slow inspection of her. Her face was covered in bites and scratches, her hair plastered to her head by filth and sweat, her clothes in rags, and when she looked down at her body she was shocked to see how wretchedly thin it had become. The General was right. Why would anyone want her?
‘She’s not a whore,’ Fitz stated quietly. He sipped his tea.
‘Did you say yes to my son?’ General Takehashi demanded. ‘Did you agree to marry him?’
Connie felt suddenly cold. Any sliver of hope died. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. I was aware of the great honour he was paying me, but I couldn’t leave Malaya because of my son.’
‘You have left it now.’
‘Of course. What do you expect, General? You have decided to take Malaya for yourselves.’
‘To liberate it from the tyranny of Western Imperial domination.’ She didn’t argue. Not now. Not with so much at stake. Instead, she said, ‘General Takehashi, your son was a good man. I would never have wished him harm.’
‘Too good for a whore like you.’
She turned away. ‘How did you track me down?’ she asked Fitz.
He stood up abruptly, ignoring his adoptive father’s hiss of disapproval, and started to limp back and forth along the length of the tent on one of the crutches. He must have been in pain but he hid it well. ‘It wasn’t exactly hard,’ he said. ‘I travelled to Malaya, made enquiries about the Hadleys and on the train from KL had no trouble hitching up with Flight Lieutenant Johnnie Blake, whom I already knew was the Hadleys’ dearest friend.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. You used us. Abused Nigel’s hospitality.’ She spoke angrily. Lashed out. ‘It was despicable.’
‘I went to the hut,’ he said coldly.
Shame flushed up into her cheeks.
‘There was nothing there,’ he said.
‘I burned everything.’
From the pocket of his clean trousers, Fitz drew a cigarette case and flipped it open. A gasp escaped Connie’s lips and he swung around. He followed the direction of her gaze to the silver case in his hand.
‘You recognise it?’ he asked.
‘It’s identical to the one that belonged to Sho,’ she whispered.
‘Yes. Except for the initials. My father,’ he gestured towards General Takehashi, ‘generously gave us a gift of a cigarette case each.’ After a moment’s thought, while he lit a cigarette, he added, ‘Do you have it?’
‘It’s in Palur.’
‘Where?’ the General leaned forward hungrily.
A father wanting the last piece of his son. Ask the monitor lizard. Ask the voracious ants.
‘Will it make any difference if I tell you?’
The General swatted her question aside the way a houseboy swats flies. ‘Where?’ he asked again, as persistent as his son.
‘It was in a drawer in my dressing room when I left. At Hadley House.’
A smile, so like Sho’s it sent a shiver through Connie, flashed across General Takehashi’s face. ‘We will find it,’ he said to Fitz, his lips taut and grey.
But Fitz’s eyes were on Connie. She could read the question in them. Why did you keep it? Did it mean so much to you?
No, it meant nothing, I swear. I only kept it to stop myself wiping him from my memory, erasing him out of existence.
Abruptly the General barked an order to the guards, and she was yanked back onto her feet. She heard the breath escape like a train from Fitz’s lungs, as everything came at h
er, bright and clear and fast, her brain aware that this was the end. It clamoured to fill its final moments.
‘Fitz,’ she said urgently. ‘Were you the same as Sho, a spy for Japan? Is that what you were doing all the time? Was it all a pretence, while you betrayed your country?’
‘I have no country.’
His words struck chill in Connie’s heart. He spoke in low tones to the General, and although she couldn’t understand what he was saying, it was clear he had cut himself off from her. No sign of despair, no sign of love for her. She longed to speak to him again one last time, but she was frightened the wrong words would come out. Everything inside her started to hurt.
The older man was growing impatient, eager to be rid of her, and he waved a dismissive hand as a signal to the guards. She saw Fitz’s mouth tighten slightly as he exhaled a string of smoke that coiled like a grey curse from inside him. His eyes searched hers, then lingered on her cheekbones, on the throat he had caressed so tenderly, but he said nothing, raised no objection to what was about to happen. He did not lift a hand to save her.
As the guards marched her back to the doorway, her feet managed to move. She didn’t know how. How could they walk her to her death when her life lay in this dark khaki tent exhaling grey curses? She thanked God her son was with Johnnie.
‘Constance Hadley.’
It was Fitz’s voice. When she turned, she saw tension hiding in the flare of his nostrils and in the fingers that held the cigarette. The guards halted. Her eyes feasted on him whether she wanted them to or not.
‘What is it?’ she asked quietly.
‘Did you love him?’
‘Shohei?’
‘Yes. Did you love my brother?’
Say yes. Say yes. Say you adored him so much you had decided to abandon your son for him. To desert your husband for him. Surrender your whole life to him. That you yearned to spend the rest of your years at his side in Japan, to grow old with him. Say that he was the sun and moon and stars to you.
Say it. Say it.
Then maybe his father will relent and grant you a life.
‘No, Fitz, I never loved Shohei Takehashi.’
The White Pearl Page 46