The White Pearl Read Free Page B

with relentless monotony. She closed her eyes and thought about the woman who wouldn’t
     hear the cicadas any more, about her daughter kneeling on the pavement, about her son with the black, angry eyes and the long
     lashes. Voices in her head echoed the ones in Palur that had assured her so positively, ‘You are not to blame’, and ‘It was
     the other car’s fault. A reckless driver.’
    How on earth could it not be your fault when you run a woman down on the pavement? Were they blind?
    I curse you.
    The words pinned her to the guilt.
    I …
the woman’s hot breath smelled of cardamom.
    Curse …
her broad nostrils had flared, scenting death.
    You …
the blood in her eyes was drowning the fury in the dark pupils.
    Connie didn’t even know her name. She shivered, her hands shaking on her lap. Was this what Malaya had done to her? Turned
     her into a person who went around killing others, who took lives as carelessly as the houseboys stamped on cockroaches? Another
     memory surged forward into her mind, one that she had fought to bury under a daily avalanche of committee meetings and tennis
     matches, of estate concerns and childish laughter over model plane construction. Anything to drown out the sound of a human
     head bumping down wooden steps. Thump, thump, thump. A soft, insidious noise that woke her up night after night, thumping
     through her dreams when her sheets were drenched with sweat and the song of mosquitoes was whining on the other side of the
     mosquito net.
    ‘What on earth are you doing, sitting here in the dark?’
    The overhead light flashed on, blinding Connie and she blinked. She hadn’t heard Nigel arrive home.
    ‘Didn’t the good-for-nothing houseboy switch the lamps on for you?’ he demanded in a disgruntled tone.
    ‘Yes, he came but I sent him away.’
    ‘Whatever for, old thing?’
    ‘I felt like …’ she paused.
Seeing what it was like to exist in the darkness of a grave.
She smiled up at her husband. It never failed to amaze her that even after a long, hot day that started in the dark at five-thirty
     in the morning when he set out for the daily muster of field coolies, Nigel could still look crisp and fresh in his white
     shirt with rolled-up sleeves and khaki shorts.
    How did he do it? Others wilted and their clothes looked like wet rags hanging on them. She experienced a ripple of pride
     in him. He wasn’t exactly good-looking, with cropped brown hair and rather long features, but he possessed a certain presence.
     It was the kind of self-assurance of an Englishman who believed he had a right to own and civilise other countries, without
     questioning whether they wanted to be civilised.
    ‘I felt like,’ she said, ‘enjoying some peace and quiet.’
    ‘Bad day?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Mine too. Absolutely bloody.’ He walked over to the cocktail cabinet, a stylish piece of modern furniture made from sycamore
     and shipped over from Maple & Co. of London. He opened its curved front to revealshelves of pale green glass and a row of bottles. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he suggested. ‘Gin sling?’
    ‘Why not?’
    Why not? Why not drown in gin slings? Why not pour them down her throat until the noises in her head blurred into a dull,
     unrecognisable murmur that had no meaning? Why not? Well, for one thing she didn’t have much of a taste for alcohol, and for
     another she had a son to watch over. She had to make certain Malaya didn’t get the chance to choke him the way it was choking
     her.
    ‘Thank you, Nigel,’ she said as she accepted her glass. ‘So tell me, why was your day so bad?’
    ‘It’s the damned Restriction Committee.’
    ‘Oh? What are they up to now?’
    The Restriction Committee was an international organisation set up to restrict the supply of rubber onto the market to prevent
     the price dropping through overproduction. The scheme allotted each country – Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Indo-China – a specific
     tonnage, declaring that they could