The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest

by Graeme Lay

  The Stevensons arrived in Apia nine months after a terrible cyclone had destroyed several German and United States warships anchored in the town’s harbour. One hundred and forty-six men had perished. Only the British battleship Calliope was saved. While the Germans and Americans didn’t want to lose face by weighing anchor, the British captain did what every capable skipper knows must be done when a cyclone strikes: he got back out to the open sea. The carcasses of the less fortunate vessels, Olger, Adier, Vandalia, Trenton and Nipsic, still littered the reef and beach when Stevenson and his family sailed into Apia harbour.

  The family took accommodation in a two-storeyed harbourside hotel. It’s still there. Today the upstairs area is occupied by Sails, a high-quality restaurant and bar; while downstairs is a rough bar, Bad Billy’s, one of the last in the South Seas’ tradition of such dives.

  The balcony of Sails restaurant is a great place to have breakfast. I sit and look out over the sea wall, the row of big pulu trees that have withstood a dozen cyclones, and Apia harbour, where a few overseas yachts are bobbing at anchor, their prows turning into the trade wind. That the building is truly historic can be judged from its colonial architecture and wildly undulating wooden floors. A young, handsome Samoan lays a huge plate before me: eggs, hash browns, sausages, tomatoes, bacon and pawpaw. ‘Enjoy your prekfast, sir,’ he says shyly. There’s enough here to feed a family, and it takes me a good while to make any impression on it at all. But I’m in no hurry, and while I eat and look out over the town harbour, I’m thinking of Robert and Fanny, who must have enjoyed this view too, and of the political crisis which had then engulfed this part of the South Pacific.

  When they arrived the whole Samoan archipelago was in political turmoil. The world’s three great powers, the United States, Germany and Britain, were desperate to gain ascendancy, then annex the islands for their own purposes. They have been described by one historian as being, ‘like three large dogs snarling over a very large bone’. The analogy is only half apt. The dogs were indeed large and certainly snarling, but the Samoa islands could more suitably have been likened to chunks of prime fillet steak. There were thirteen of them altogether, and three – Tutuila, Upolu and Savai’i – were large. All were fertile and ripe for plantation purposes. Copra and palm oil, present in large quantities, were in great demand in Europe. Apia on Upolu, and especially Pago Pago on Tutuila, had fine harbours, and the latter was the perfect site for a coaling station to refuel naval battleships in mid-ocean.

  Robert Louis Stevenson was quickly apprised of this tense situation by a man who was to become his soul mate. H. J. Moors was a roguish American who had jumped ship in 1875 with a bag of onions and a chest of cloth. With these minimal commodities he had set up a trading store on Savai’i before moving to Apia, where he married a local beauty and became a gunrunner for one of the pretenders to the non-existent throne of all Samoa. Moors had read all of Stevenson’s books and was something of a writer himself, so he was on the beach when the Scots novelist and poet stepped ashore.

  Moors made the arrangements for Stevenson’s purchase of 300 acres on the eastern flanks of Mt Vaea, a few hundred feet above the sea, where it was cooler. The whole area was covered in tropical rain forest filled with lupe – wild pigeons – and other birds, including the lovely scarlet-headed cardinal honey-eater, called by the Samoans segasegamauu. At Mt Vaea the writer had indeed found the ‘parrot islands’ of his youthful fantasies. And it was here that he and Fanny had built, from cedar imported from Canada, the grandest house in the South Pacific islands. In one downstairs room they even had a brick fireplace, to remind them of northern winters, but in Samoa’s sweltering climate it was said never to have been lit. The kitchen was a small detached building, kept a distance away from the main house to minimise the risk of fire.

  The Samoans, many of whom could now read and write through the zealous efforts of the missionaries, were fully aware of Stevenson’s stature and proud of the fact that he had chosen to live among them. Resilient, and adaptable in the way of most transplanted Scots, Stevenson not only had an engaging and generous disposition towards the local people but also read the Samoan political situation cannily.

  In the early 1890s the Samoans as well as the Europeans became engaged in a bitter power struggle. Although there had never been a single ruler of all the islands, the United States, Germany and Britain were determined that there should be one – and one of their preference, so that they could pull the puppet’s strings and get their own way. The two contenders for Samoan kingship were Mata’afa and Laupepa. Moors supplied Mata’afa with firearms to fight Laupepa, who was elderly and dispirited. Stevenson, too, recognised that the locally popular Mata’afa was more up to the job and rallied behind him. This was appreciated by the Samoans, but not by the European pooh-bahs in Apia, who were doing all they could to aid Laupepa.

  In 1893, on the eve of a battle between Mata’afa and Laupepa, Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne rode down from Vailima to view the preparations, which Stevenson would later describe in vivid detail in his work Footnote To History. It is an unsentimental account: for example, although he greatly respected the Samoans, he abhorred their custom of degrading their foes by decapitating the vanquished and presenting the heads to their leader.

  Despite the troubles, back up on the hill at Vailima life continued contentedly enough. Stevenson’s health had improved markedly. He was still frail but did not let this prevent him from horse-riding, dancing, beachcombing, kava drinking or smoking. The family enjoyed musical soirées in the dining hall, where there was a roller organ; Stevenson himself played the flageolet, a small flute. They also entertained lavishly. Stevenson had a large Samoan household staff whom he dressed in kilts of Royal Stuart tartan. (After all, a kilt is just a tartan lavalava.)

  There was another very Samoan aspect to the Stevenson household which the locals were not slow to appreciate. Robert and Fanny had brought their extended family to live with them – Fanny’s two children and, later, Stevenson’s Scots cousin Graham Balfour and pious old Presbyterian mother. It was a clan gathering, a Scots aiga (Samoan for the extended family), and the civil war being waged in Samoa may well have put Stevenson in mind of the highland clans he romantically admired.

  In the evenings the household sang, dined, partied and welcomed everyone except the sour consuls from Germany, America and Britain. Stevenson had it made known publicly that he disapproved of the actions of these men, being both shrewd and imaginative enough to understand that they were acting entirely out of self-interest. In the meantime, Samoan war parties, faces blackened, would ride up and drop into Vailima for kava, food and political discussion. Stevenson led an unashamedly seigneurial existence, but everyone liked him. He was hospitable, generous and courageous. He wrote in the mornings, sitting up in bed, fearing that another haemorrhage would strike before he completed his magnum opus, the novel Weir of Hermiston. Later in the day, he would walk in the nearby forest, listen to bird songs and no doubt contemplate his life, work and mortality.

  The Samoans were not so sure about Fanny. She had a dark complexion and an enigmatic half-smile. They called her Aolele, or Flying Cloud, because of her changeable expression, but she was a formidable presence who ran the large household efficiently and nursed her husband with great tenderness.

  Mata’afa lost the war of 1893 and was banished to Micronesia. The chiefs who were his supporters were jailed. Stevenson took them food, kava and tobacco. When they were released, they greatly improved the muddy track leading to Vailima, in appreciation of his patronage. It was named the Road of Loving Hearts. When it was opened, Stevenson made a moving speech (oratory was another of his skills) in which he entreated the Samoans to use their country wisely, and to care for its lands and forests, otherwise ‘others will’. It was a prophetic warning.

  Less than a year later, on 3 December 1894, Stevenson died suddenly from an aneurism. He was forty-four, and Weir of Hermiston was unfinished. The same chiefs who had built th
e Road of Loving Hearts cut a path up Mt Vaea, and young warriors carried his body to a clearing, where he was buried. The ashes of Fanny were later buried beside him, following her death in California in 1914.

  Six years after Stevenson’s death the trio of great powers got their way when, in an arrangement of breathtaking brazenness, Germany annexed the western islands, the United States took control of the eastern group, and Britain cried off in exchange for taking over the external affairs of Tonga. Vailima became the official residence of Dr Solf, the governor of German Samoa. The Western Samoans were not to rule themselves again for sixty-two years.

  In 1991 and 1992 two vicious cyclones, Ofa and Val, assaulted Samoa. Vailima, by then the official residence of the Samoan head of state, was badly knocked about. Enter, in 1993, a group of Mormon businessmen from Utah. They bought the house from the government for a token sum and planned its refurbishment as a literary museum. They also planned to build a cable-car to whisk tourists from Apia up the slopes of Mt Vaea to Stevenson’s tomb. Vailima was to be turned into a Robert Louis Stevenson theme park.

  Protests at such tackiness were aired, and the cable-car scheme was dropped, but radical renovations to Vailima went ahead and were completed by December 1994, the centenary of Stevenson’s death and the occasion of much memory-raising. Professional Scotspersons from all over the world made the climb up Mt Vaea and heard Stevenson’s poem and epitaph, Requiem, read in highland cadences by the Scottish actors John Shedden and John Cairney.

  Today there is definitely no need for a cable-car; every second car in Apia is a beaten-up taxi. Breakfast over, I hail one and it takes me up the Cross Island Road to Vailima. Just weeks ago another cyclone – this one called Heta – whipped the north coast of Samoa, and I am anxious to see what effects it might have had on the foliage and the house. But the driveway is pure beauty: long, straight, and with luxuriant tropical shrubs, flowers and trees crowding in upon it. At the end the road curves, and there, set amid a vast expanse of lawn, is Vailima: cream painted, two-storeyed, red roofed, balconied, its verandah bracketed. It is a hot morning, and too early for Mt Vaea to cast shadow across the treeless lawn, on which brown birds called vea peck happily. The Samoan flag hangs limply above the roof in the mid-morning sun. Above the front door is a large sign: VILLA VAILIMA. Why villa? I wonder. For the Mormons to ensure that it wasn’t mistaken for a lager advertisement?

  As I approach, a young and very pregnant Samoan woman greets me, speaking with an American accent. Explaining to her that I will climb the mountain first, then see over the house, I ask if Cyclone Heta has damaged the tracks. ‘Oh no,’ she replies, ‘they’re fine. I suggest you take the short track up, and the long track down. Then it’s about forty-five minutes up and about thirty-five minutes down.’

  Crossing one of the crystal-clear streams that flow down the mountain, I begin the climb. It might be short, but it’s zigzagging, very steep, studded with volcanic stones and strewn with leaf litter. In minutes I am saturated in sweat, and have to stop every five minutes or so to catch my burning breath. I am surrounded by forest giants – great buttress-rooted trees whose canopies block out the sky – while sleek, iridescent black skinks like komodo dragons freeze at my footfall, then dash up the nearest tree-trunk. In the smothering heat, the going is extremely tough, and for a time I think I won’t make it. But I must. After one last gruelling zig, followed by one final exhausting zag, I emerge on to a cleared promontory, and the tomb is before me.

  It’s well worth it. No one else has made the pilgrimage today, so I have the sanctuary to myself. A cooling breeze sweeps over the clearing, from where there are views of Upolu’s northern coast, the horizon gauzy with mist, the lagoon and reef, Apia town and, by swivelling to the south, Vailima and its expansive grounds. Stevenson must have been able to look up from his bedroom and see this place where he would be taken and buried. The only sounds up here are the soft calls made by the unseen lupe, the pigeon which makes its home in the forest. Now I can see, across the face of the distant mountains, the destruction that Heta has caused. Striations in the forest show where the trees have been swept aside and turned to matchsticks by the winds howling inland, then being forced up with intensifying fury. Turning my back on the view, I walk over to the whitewashed concrete tomb. Regrettably, its sides have been defaced with graffiti which no one has made any effort to cover. I try to ignore it and I concentrate instead on the bronze inscriptions. First, the immortal Requiem:

  Under the wide and starry sky,

  Dig the grave and let me lie.

  Glad did I live and gladly die,

  And I laid me down with a will.

  This be the verse you grave for me:

  Here he lies where he longed to be;

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

  And the hunter home from the hill.

  The definite article in the second to last line shouldn’t be there: Stevenson wrote ‘home from sea’. But it would have been a costly business fixing a typo cast in bronze, so if you insist on the correct version you have to see the one by the gate, at the entrance to the Road of Loving Hearts.

  On one end of the tomb, too, is Stevenson’s somewhat uxorious tribute to Fanny:

  Teacher, tender comrade, wife,

  A fellow-farer true through life

  Heart-whole and soul-free,

  The August Father gave to me.

  The slow track down Mt Vaea follows the back side of the mountain, and has long reaches doubling back on each other. As I make my way down, I realise that the pregnant woman at Vailima hasn’t climbed the mountain for a while, for obvious reasons, because the track down has been damaged. In fact for some reason Cyclone Heta has done more damage to this side of the mountain. Many great trees have been torn out by the roots, leaving huge sockets in the earth. Where their trunks have fallen across the track, someone has sliced them up into rounds with a chainsaw, but the rest of them lie prostrate, already being overtaken by regenerating undergrowth. The track is muddy, and in one place has been washed away completely, leaving a huge diarrhoea-like streak through the forest. I have to make my way across it by swinging from tree root to tree root like a nervous Tarzan. It’s a relief when I at last reach the bottom, cross the stream and walk back up to the house, unsteady with fatigue and smeared with ginger mud. A young Samoan man shows me through Villa Vailima, starting with the living room. Its walls are lined with tapa cloth, and there is an enormous lioness skin on the floor. In one corner is the virgin fireplace. Upstairs are the bedrooms and Stevenson’s library, which also contains a bed. Beside this bed is a special stand on castors, which enabled him to write while he was confined to his bed. Here too, in glass cases, are the many editions of his works, translated into several languages, and first editions of the four books he wrote while living at Vailima. Tastefully restored, the rooms contain period furniture, sketches done by Isobel and others, and many photographs.

  Downstairs, linked to the upper level by a grand twisting staircase, is the great dining hall. A huge room, it has wainscoted walls, bare polished floorboards and, at one end, a long dining table. There is a bronze of Stevenson on another table, and his portrait in oils hangs from the wall beside his big iron safe, which the Samoans used to eye apprehensively because they believed that therein lived Stevenson’s fictional demon, the Bottle Imp. Hanging from the walls are more photographs: of Stevenson lighthouses; of the author with prominent local matai (Samoan chiefs); with his good mate, Moors; with another friend, King Kalakaua of Hawaii; with Fanny, Lloyd, Isobel and Stevenson’s mother, Maggie. In all the photos it is Stevenson my eyes are drawn to. His frame is wasted but he is elegantly dressed and his gaze is fresh, youthful, penetrating. And between his fingers, always, there is a cigarette burning, just as his lungs must have been.

  Stevenson wrote a second stanza to Requiem, which for years was missing. It reads:

  Here may the winds about me blow;

  Here the clouds may come and go;

  Here
shall be rest for evermo,

  And the heart for aye shall be still.

  At the end of the strenuous day, I pour myself a glass of cold Vailima, look up from my hotel balcony and watch the rays of the sinking sun lighting up the forest trees across the face of Mt Vaea. I raise my glass in the direction of the mountain. Thank you, Robert Louis Stevenson, for Jim Hawkins, Blind Pew and Long John Silver, David Balfour, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Bottle Imp, and all your other characters who will live in our minds forever.

  Ia manuia, Tusitala!

  SIX

  SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY

  TONGA

  IT’S ELEVEN O’CLOCK at night and I’m waiting for a taxi outside Fua’amotu Airport in Tonga. I’m here to write a book about this, the only kingdom in the South Pacific, starting on the main island, Tongatapu. A sagging Toyota taxi emerges out of the warm, still darkness and I hail it. I don’t know anyone here, and one of the few pieces of information I have is the name of a Nuku’alofa guest-house, given to me by the Canadian engineer I sat next to on the plane.

  All I can see of Tongatapu is that it’s flat, has many palm trees, and the roads are long, straight and potholed. The driver and I make desultory conversation, then his car radio begins to crackle. Voices come on, then are replaced by others. Many of the callers – it’s obviously some kind of talk-back programme – seem very excited. One word is repeated by every caller. Pa’anga.