The White Pearl Read Online Free PDF Page B

spoiled the illusion.
     Too vivid, too ebullient, altogether too promiscuous. Too damn full of the life force of Malaya, that produced ferns that
     drilled through paving stones and creeper that dismantled buildings if you turned your back on it for even a moment.
    Nine years ago when Nigel had dropped on one knee, his face as red as one of his favourite hibiscus flowers, clasped her hands
     in his and invited her to be his wife and join him in Malaya, Connie’s heart had leaped. A streak of pure joy had ripped through
     her. She couldn’t say yes fast enough. She closed her eyes now and tried to recapture that urgent desire, but it was as elusive
     as the mist that slunk out of the jungle at dawn and crept across the lawns of Hadley House. She had scoured maps and atlases
     to learn more about this wild and wonderful place that was to become her home, and relished the exotic sounds of it in her
     mouth – Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
    Oh yes, she’d learned the facts and the names of the towns. She’d discovered that Malaya consisted of a long shapely finger
     of land that stretched for over four hundred miles from Siam in the north right down to the steamy island of Singapore in
     the south. It was one of the principal rubber and tin exporters in the world, crowded by dense jungle with a backbone of mountains
     running down the centre.
    She had found out that its population of Malays, Chinese and Indians possessed hereditary rulers called sultans who elected
     from their number a
Yang di-Pertuan Agong
, the glorious title – it made her laugh – of the Kings of Malaya. On the map she explored with excitement regions with exotic
     names like Selangor, Terengganu and Johore, and in the history books she discovered that the Dutch had colonised the country
     before surrendering it to the British under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. SirThomas Stamford Raffles had run up the flag for England and turned Singapore into the greatest trading port in the Far East.
    ‘It’s almost on the equator,’ Nigel warned her. ‘That means it’s hot.’
    She’d laughed. She recalled that careless, girlish, ignorant laugh when she had said, ‘How exotic! I shall love it. There
     will be parrots.’
    There were parrots, she’d been right about that. Gaudy clouds of them. Parrots and weird hornbills and the screeching
pekaka
, all flashing their strident colours in her face. Worst was the brainfever bird, the
burong mati anak,
which uttered its tuneless dirge hour after hour. Teddy told her that
burong mati anak
meant
dead child bird
, which made her want to cry each time she heard its call.
    But no one had warned her that it was a country of sweltering nights and fierce smells – of the stink of bad drains and of
     fish frying in coconut oil in the streets, of sandalwood and hair oils. A country of ferocious insects that would devour you
     alive, and of jungle sounds that haunted your dreams. A country where towns boasted wide avenues and monolithic government
     buildings set back to back with tawdry dance halls and wretched slums.
    When Connie emerged from the police station, she squinted at the sun and turned left, adjusting the wide brim of her sunhat
     to shield her eyes. She set off in the direction of the town’s busy harbour. It was not somewhere she normally cared to venture.
     As the familiar streets with their shops and restaurants slid away behind her, she felt her certainty slide away with them.
    Was she making a mistake? Inspector Stoner was convinced she was. But she couldn’t leave it there.
    She couldn’t.
    Underfoot was unpleasant, slippery and slimy. Connie picked her way carefully over the remains of rotting fruit and vegetables,
     and God knows what else. The air down here by the quays tasted of fish and clung to her hair and her skirts, as hawkers shouted
     to her, pushing slabs of meaty-looking raw fish, lobster claws and live octopus under her nose.
    ‘
Tidak.
No, thank you.’
    She kept moving, but