The White Pearl by Kate Furnivall Page B

advances from her. That was when the chasm spread down the centre of the sheet and Connie hadwatched it widen. Night by night, year by year. Bed became a place that she dreaded because it was a place of … Her throat
     hurt. Of failure. Of frustration. Of loneliness. Take your pick. Some nights she would sit outside on the veranda braving
     the mosquitoes, reading her book until the early hours of the morning. Nigel never mentioned that she was missing from his
     bed. Sometimes she wondered if he noticed.
    She rolled onto her side, facing her husband’s back, listening to his steady breathing and the murmur of the wind ruffling
     the leaves of the coral tree outside. For a long time she lay like that, eyes wide open. Then she moved forward and gently
     wrapped herself around his body, moulding her curves to his, her arm draped across his waist. He didn’t move. Didn’t break
     the rhythm of his breath. But she was certain he was awake and, what was worse, that he was aware that she knew he was awake.
    She remained like that, unmoving, for what must have been half an hour, breathing quietly against the back of his neck, inhaling
     the scent of him again. When she finally rolled away onto her own side of the bed, he made no sound. The silence in the room
     belonged to a grave.

8
    Swimming is like crying. It flushes everything out into the water. The water wasn’t cold in the Victoria Club’s outdoor pool,
     but nonetheless it was cooling to Connie’s skin and when her skin was cool, she could think better. She needed to think. To
     work out how best to protect her son from the war that was coming to Malaya. If her husband was too damn stubborn, too stiff-necked
     to admit that the country was about to have a gun thrust in its face, then she would have to do it on her own.
    She flipped onto her back and did another ten lengths of crawl.
    ‘Connie, aren’t you
ever
coming out of the pool?’ Harriet Court called.
    Above her, the sky arched in a white colourless sheet. It looked as though it had been burned by the sun and healed in a shiny
     bleached scar. Connie closed her eyes to shut it out, and did another fast twenty lengths.
    ‘Connie! If you don’t get out of that water right now, you’ll be all shrivelled.’
    Didn’t Harriet realise that it was when she was out of the water that she shrivelled?
    Connie loved Harriet because of her laugh. It was a raucous, witch-like cackle that had a tendency to silence a room, but
     it always gave Connie the giggles. Harriet wore her dark hair in a sharp bob at jaw level and possessed strong, almost masculine
     features in total contrast to her dreamy brown eyes and soft little chin which she often propped in her hand, as if her head
     and all it contained were too heavy for the narrow stem of her neck.
    ‘Tell all, dearest Connie,’ Harriet declared when Connie finally joinedher 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,