Coconut Chaos

by Diana Souhami

  I phoned mother and told her I was going on a journey. Good, she said, would I bring her back some smoked salmon. It was a long journey, I said, to the other side of the world, to a remote island in the middle of the Pacific and the nearest large land mass was New Zealand. Why did I want to do that? she asked. I said it was to do with my work. Her rejoinder was that I didn’t know the meaning of work and how was she supposed to manage if I went off to New Zealand?

  I said a good thing about her having several children was that we shared the load, the others would look after her while I was gone, but it was a worry to us all that she shooed away professional carers and lived alone under siege in a house she could no longer manage. She replied that no agent of the devil would drive her from her home. Did I remember her Georgian glass tankard, her Lalique vase, her Cobra green claret jug, art nouveau decanter, perfume bottles, case of stuffed birds, Millefiori paperweight, blue enamelled carriage clock, Chinese ivory snuff bottle, her Liberty sideboard? All were now chipped, smeared, marked and vandalised.

  I tried colluding with her paranoia. When did this person call? I asked. She didn’t know, she hadn’t been out, the doors were locked, the windows too. I began to think that no island was remote enough for the journey I hoped to make, that my quest was for departure and not to reach a destination, that I could not leave the frozen heart of my relationship with Verity and that my mother’s madness was a strait through which no ship could pass.

  II

  TAURANGA TO BOUNTY BAY

  Anywhere can be a destination. Usually we arrive where we choose to go

  11

  The Pitcairn Commissioner’s office was on the tenth floor with views of Auckland’s Bay of Plenty and wharves. Trevor Murray wore a blue shirt of wifely creaselessness. He’d just returned on a supply ship via Panama from two months on Pitcairn. On his new flat-screened computer were 351 unanswered email.

  He didn’t question why I wanted to visit the island and I again volunteered my interest in the flightless rail. He said I should remember I was going to an entirely isolated community. The impending trials had divided family against family and everyone on Pitcairn was, or was related to, a victim or defendant. Lawyers, judges and journalists were about to swarm there, ferried from Mangareva on the Braveheart. I thought of the newspaper reports of abusive sex with underage girls. I’d not dwelt on the details which seemed squalid.

  Murray told me to buy wellington boots and take no valued clothes, because when it rained, red volcanic mud splashed everywhere. Pitcairners went barefoot but visitors needed shoes. I should observe the island’s customs and go to church. Rosie and her husband were very devout. They preached the sermon in church for there was now no pastor on the island. They didn’t drink alcohol, tea or coffee, or smoke or trade on the Sabbath and they said grace before all meals. It would be acceptable, though, if I bought a liquor licence and took wine with me to have with my food.

  I thought of Rosie’s blouse and feared I’d chosen unwisely. I wondered why I was going to a place inhabited by sex offenders where I’d not be wanted and I’d confound some notion of God if I had a drink. I said I liked swimming. Murray spoke of a natural pool formed by seawater at St Paul’s Point – beautiful, but too cold in August, which was winter in these Pacific islands. Waves might break with great force over the rocks. Many of the place names of Pitcairn were in memory of accidents: Nellie Fall, Robert Fall, Dan Fall, McCoy’s Drop. ‘Have no illusion,’ he said, ‘you’re going to a very primitive place.’

  He talked of projects to improve shipping, extend the jetty, lay a concrete road, generate electricity by the wind, encourage ecological tourism and provide a boat for tourist trips to Henderson Island. I liked his practical cast of mind. He said theft was unknown on the island. There was barter, kindness and no hunger. Pitcairners liked fried food and a lot of it and there was a problem with obesity and diabetes. A locum from New Zealand was there for three months giving dietary advice, but Rosie’s food was good and I’d eat avocados and mangoes, pawpaw, passion fruit, salads and fish.

  Shirley, his personal assistant, sprucely dressed and with a no-nonsense air, checked my papers and payments. I signed a disclaimer for Seatrade in case anything disastrous happened to me on the Tundra Princess, an assurance that I was not carrying anything to do with bee-keeping, and I paid twenty-five dollars for my liquor licence. I was to carry flu vaccines, in an envelope padded with ice slabs, for two of the island’s elderly, and a new watch for Rosie because hers had broken. I was to instruct the captain of the Tundra Princess to store these vaccines in the ship’s fridge, and give him a letter thanking him for carrying me, one other passenger, the vaccines, mail, supplies and other items. These included gas cylinders, and the perimeter fence for the prison the island’s men were themselves building and where they’d be incarcerated if found guilty of the offences for which they’d been charged.

  Shirley warned me not to take sides over the islanders’ claims and counterclaims concerning the trials. I should be non-committal, have no opinions and say only ‘Oh really’ or ‘Oh yes’. She, too, warned against wearing anything but shorts and T-shirts because of the dreaded mud. It would never wash out – not from trainers, jeans, not from anything. I should forget about make-up and appearance. I’d get up in the morning, pull on yesterday’s clothes and run my hands through my hair.

  The Tundra Princess was to leave on 2 July. The dangerous part of the voyage was getting off the ship into the Pitcairn longboat down a rope ladder, two or three miles offshore from the island. In twelve years they’d not lost anyone, but there’d been near misses in bad weather. She warned yet again that leaving the island would be difficult and special arrangements costly. I should contact her by email two months before I wanted to leave, but she couldn’t say how long it would then take to find a ship.

  In Tauranga she’d reserved a room for me in the Pacific Motor Inn. She gave me the mobile number of the shipping agent who’d issue my embarkation instructions and take me through customs formalities. There would, she said with a grimace and a laugh, be another passenger on board. ‘An admiral’s wife. A most unusual woman. She’ll be company for you. The crew’s all men.’

  In the lobby of the Domain Lodge in Auckland I downloaded email from my brothers about mother. She’d overdosed on diazepam and was in hospital. She was conscious, but thought my brother was the milkman. A neighbour, woken in the night by her smoke alarm, had broken a window, crawled through it and found her on the hall floor, a burnt-out milk saucepan on the lit gas ring and a scorch mark on the kitchen ceiling. Social Services said she’d be at risk if she returned to her house and a place was reserved for her at Sunset View. The fees were £600 a week and her house and possessions were to be sold to finance this. Was there anything I wanted before it all went to the auction rooms?

  Beyond the hotel window I observed the high blue sky and unfamiliar vegetation: palm ferns and mango trees, bougainvillea and frangipani, hibiscus and bromeliads. I didn’t want any of my mother’s possessions. Possessions were a poor substitute for something I’d wanted but failed to find.

  12

  The ordeal of the nineteen men forced into an open boat by Fletcher Christian lasted seven weeks, from 28 April until 14 June 1789. When they stopped at one of the Friendly Islands, the quartermaster John Norton was beaten to death with stones by tribesmen as he ran down the beach to cast off the stern of the boat. After that, unarmed, starving, dependent, bearing no gifts and like spectres of death, the surviving men didn’t dare land on any inhabited island.

  For sixteen days in continual rain they were squashed together, soaking wet and numb with cold, with swollen legs, violent gut pains, aching bones and little use of their limbs. They bailed night and day as great waves broke over the boat. Sleep ‘in the midst of water’ was no comfort. Dinner was a bit of coconut or a morsel of pork or bread. On a morning when to their great joy they hooked a fish, the creature writhed and returned to the sea. When the sun rose fiery and red,
wind storms followed. If it shone at noon, they were scorched by its heat. There were nights so dark they couldn’t see each other, days when they were equally blinded by rain and seawater. When the weather raged, they could do no more than run with the tide. The least error at the helm might in a second cause their destruction.

  Even on this terrible voyage Bligh took confident, galling command, convinced of ‘God’s gracious support’ and his own superiority. As ever he had a goal. He would get himself and these men to the Dutch colony of Timor. From there they could get passage to England. He calculated the voyage would take eight weeks, so he rationed such provisions as they had, to last for ten. He meted out equal starvation rations in scales made of coconut shells. Bullets – ‘pistol balls’ found by chance in the boat – were his weights. When they caught a booby bird he divided it into eighteen portions and gave its blood to the three men nearest death. With each measured portion of beak, entrails or claws he called, ‘Who shall have this?’ in a display of fairness. He called the torrential rain a blessing, for constant sun would have scorched them and killed them from thirst. He contrived a canvas weather cloth round the boat, threw inessential stuff overboard for balance and speed and supervised men to watch and bail. He made them all wring their clothes in seawater each morning because he thought this refreshing, and he stored the bread in the carpenter’s tool chest.

  He described the mutineers as ‘a tribe of armed ruffians … unfeeling wretches’. He’d account to his king and country and bring them to the gallows:

  A few hours before, my situation had been peculiarly flattering. I had a ship in the most perfect order and well stored with every necessary both for service and health: by early attention to particulars I had, as much as lay in my power, provided against any accident in case I could not get through Endeavour Straits, as well as what might befall me in them; add to this the plants had been successfully preserved in the most flourishing state, so that, upon the whole, the voyage was two-thirds completed, and the remaining part in a very promising way; every person on board being in perfect health, to establish which was ever among the principal objects of my attention.

  In his journal he wrote that these ruffians turned against him because of the ‘allurement of dissipation’ on Tahiti, where sex was freely available and they need never work, where the chiefs protected them and gave them land, where the sun shone and the food was good. They were ‘void of connections’ in their own country whereas he, a family man, understood responsibility. They were scheming villains who’d deceived their trusting leader. ‘The possibility of such a conspiracy was ever the farthest from my thoughts,’ he wrote.

  Anger and vengeance would get him the 3600 miles to Timor. His testimony would be believed. The mutineers had committed a great crime for which the ultimate punishment awaited them. He’d see Christian dead.

  13

  Sitting on a box by the quayside at Tauranga port on 2 July 2004 was a woman in her fifties with bright blonde hair and sunglasses on a beaded chain round her neck. She wore a padded gold jacket and white snow boots. I’d seen her before on the coach from Auckland to Tauranga. She was hard to overlook. As we drove past orange, lemon and olive groves and fields of sheep she’d sung in a clear soprano ‘Soave sia il vento’ from Così Fan Tutte and ‘Evil Deeds’ by Eminem. I supposed her to be accompanying what was on her iPod. At the comfort stop at Thames she ordered vegetable soup and a caramel milk shake then missed the coach. We waited for her two miles on, at the Rendezvous Motel.

  ‘Thank you, drivah,’ she said as she reboarded, without a hint of contrition for causing inconvenience. After ten minutes she called, ‘Drivah, you’re going too fast. And in England you’d be fined on the spot for using a mobile phone.’ The driver, a young energetic-looking man, muttered in Maori. I and another woman exchanged a grimace.

  In Tauranga from high on Mount Maungani I’d watched the Tundra Princess towed by pilot boats into the harbour, a white, silent ship on blue water. Walking the path at the foot of the mountain, where yellow-beaked birds nested in pohutukawa trees, I heard again that penetrating voice. ‘You don’t get many shags in Knightsbridge.’ She was addressing a passer-by. Later in the day, walking round residential streets, I saw her feeding grain into the mailboxes by the garden gates.

  It didn’t occur to me she’d be travelling to Pitcairn. In his office, the shipping agent, Keith Thompson, had told me about the voyage. He had bright eyes and a ginger moustache and didn’t himself travel by sea because he was always sick. He said the Tundra Princess had an all-Indian crew of twenty-two men. Seatrade used Indian or Filipino labour because it was cheapest. He hoped I liked curry. If I wanted less spicy food I should buy it before I boarded. The other passenger, Lady Myre, was taking a large quantity of pot noodles with her.

  He told me the ship’s cargo of kiwi fruit, bound for Europe, had been picked in May and was packed in containers kept at 0.8 degrees and checked by a full-time refrigeration engineer. It would take at least seven days and nights for the ship to reach Pitcairn and about seven hours to unload the islanders’ supplies into their longboats. In heavy seas the captain wouldn’t stop. He’d go on to Panama then Zeebrugge. There was a third woman on board besides Lady Myre and me, an officer’s wife. Probably I’d have my own cabin, but it was up to the captain.

  I supposed that the bedizened figure alone on the quayside was Lady Myre. I was curious why she was there, and about the incident of the grain in the mailboxes. As if she’d read my thoughts, or perhaps because of the terns that swooped overhead and dived low in curiosity, she told me she loved birds and how sweet the New Zealanders were to put little houses for them at the entrance to their gardens. I didn’t tell her she’d been filling their mailboxes with seed. Her eyes were translucent blue. ‘Lady Maar,’ she said with no apparent appraisal of me. ‘Pot noodles,’ she said, indicating the box on which she sat. ‘Enough for a fortnight. Just add boiling water.’ She asked me if I’d been to India. I said I hadn’t. ‘You should,’ she told me. ‘It’s wunderbar, but all they eat is curry. Makes your eyes water and gives you the runs.’

  I sat with her on her noodles. ‘It’s a heck of a large ship for Picton,’ she said. ‘I was only expecting a ferry.’ I agreed it was indeed a large ship – of 17,000 tons – and, as I understood it, Picton was on New Zealand’s South Island, but the Tundra Princess was bound for Zeebrugge, with a change of crew at Panama, and it was only calling at Pitcairn for the islanders to come out in their boats to collect their supplies. I didn’t doubt others must have given her the same information. She seemed incurious about facts. She said she supposed none of it mattered and that she and Garth would meet up if this was meant to be.

  There followed a confusing story about Garth Dutton, a half-brother, who a decade previously had gone to New Zealand to escape an unsatisfactory marriage and a failed business. She’d tried to trace him through the internet, but now destiny would intervene. She asked me my star sign and told me she was Pisces and drawn to all things watery.

  I feared she’d be an exigent co-passenger. She said her husband Sir Roland, a retired admiral, would always get her out of any fix. They’d first met in New York on Riis Beach in bay six. She’d known he was her man when he’d rescued her swimming hat from a frenzied Pekinese. ‘Très galant,’ she said. ‘Quite fearless.’ They’d been married twenty-seven years and shared a love of the sea. When single she’d worked on a cruise ship, the Southern Star, as entertainment staff. She was vague as to where she’d cruised. ‘Round the world,’ she said, with a wide, circling motion. ‘Round and round.’ They did six shows over and over and her special numbers were ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ and ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’. ‘Encores galore.’

  She asked if I’d acquired a liquor licence and I pointed to my carton of wine and two litres of Glenfiddich. She’d been accorded the owner’s cabin, and her crate of rum and cans of peach juice were already in it with the rest of her luggage. ‘I could do with a snort now,’ she said.


  I had no sense of common ground. I told her how Bligh, in his open-boat navigation to Timor, rationed the men to a teaspoon of rum at daybreak when their limbs were numb with cold. I said how uncertain shipping was off Pitcairn and how the desperate paid four thousand dollars to divert a ship to collect them. ‘I know all that,’ she said. ‘I’m not bothered. If there are any problems, Roley will sort them.’

  She asked why I was travelling to Picton. I warmed again to my interest in chaos theory and the mutiny on the Bounty – how the theft of a coconut by Fletcher Christian and the intense relationship between him and William Bligh had as one of its tangential ramifications the fact that I was now to sail on the Tundra Princess to Pitcairn Island with her. I spoke of how tectonic plates move beneath the earth’s surface and in time spew up islands that become worlds in microcosm, how islands sink and coral grows and atolls form, and reefs.

  Her glazed look made me suppose she was as uncertain of me as a travelling companion as I of her. She asked what tectonic meant and I said in a knowing way that it was a Greek word meaning carpenter and that geologically it referred to processes that affect the earth’s crust. She said I was cute and reminded her of a marmoset. She told me how she’d stayed as a guest on Marlon Brando’s island of Tetiaroa, how pathetically inappropriate his accent had been when he played Fletcher Christian, how he’d weighed over twenty stone when he died in an oxygen tent at the age of eighty, how Jack Nicholson then bought his house in Beverly Hills for five and a half million dollars and that it wasn’t true that Brando got through all those millions of royalties, he’d stashed it all away – that was what men did – and if she ever divorced Roley, which she wouldn’t because he was such a dear even though he did have a roving eye and a liking for a tot or two, she’d make quite sure she got the Manor House at Little Nevish because to lose that would be like losing her right arm, her soul, she said, and fear suffused her translucent eyes. Nor could she lose her Knightsbridge flat. She had her personal dresser in Harrods – Martina – who filled a rail with possibles every month. But, like most men, Roley had to have control of the money. It was power.