by John Boyne
‘But why then is Yay-Ko here on this ship?’ she asked me. ‘Do you not want to stay in England and count your money?’
‘It’s my old papa,’ I told her with a terrible sigh. ‘He made his money in shipping, you see, and before handing the business over to me he insisted that I learn something about the sea. Terribly old-fashioned, but what can you do? One must humour the old pater. And so he arranged for me to have this posting. He’s a game old thing, but he might not have long left in him and he wanted to be sure that he was handing over to someone who knew the ropes. I am Captain Bligh’s closest adviser, though,’ I assured her. ‘The Bounty would practically sink if I wasn’t on board.’
‘The captain, he scares me,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I see him look at me and I think he wants to kill me.’
‘His bark is worse than his bite,’ I reassured her. ‘I will tell him what a wonderful girl you are and then he will treat you differently. He listens to me more than anyone else.’
‘And those two at the gardens,’ she added, shaking her head and curling her lip. ‘I do not like them at all.’
‘That’s Mr Christian and Mr Heywood,’ said I. ‘One’s a popinjay and the other’s a scut, but you don’t need to worry about them. I’m above them and they must do as they are bid. If they attempt anything unpleasant with you, then you must tell me at once.’ This is what I lived in fear of the most, hearing that Mr Christian had pursued an advantage with Kaikala. Or – worse still – that Mr Heywood had.
‘They are bad men,’ she hissed under her breath. ‘The men from your ship are kind, mostly, but not them. They treat us badly. They treat all the girls badly. We are afraid of them.’
There was something in her tone that made me want to know more and yet at the same time made me not want to listen. I had never got along with the scut or the dandy but, still, they were Englishmen and I didn’t like to hear that they were behaving in an upsetting fashion towards the natives.
‘And the king,’ she asked afterwards. ‘King George. You are acquainted with him?’
‘Acquainted?’ said I with a laugh and sitting up on my elbows. ‘Acquainted, you ask? Why, me oh my, I have been good friends with His Majesty since I was a bairn. Many’s the time he’s had me up to the palace and we sit around and play cheroot together or maybe a hand of Ruff and Trump and stay up late into the night, talking affairs of state while drinking the finest wine.’
Kaikala looked thrilled by this idea. ‘And ladies?’ she asked. ‘There are ladies at his court?’
‘Many ladies,’ said I. ‘The most beautiful ladies in England.’
She looked away from me then and turned her lip. ‘Yay-Ko has a lady he loves at the court,’ she said sadly.
I jumped to my own defence. ‘Never!’ I cried. ‘Not in this world! I held out against them, waiting for the right one. The most beautiful woman, not in England, but in the whole world. That is what I came to Otaheite for. And that is what I discovered here.’
I took her hand at that, acting like such a nance that I’m ashamed to recall the moment now, and moved closer towards her, wishing that we could be left alone in that place together for ever.
‘I make you happy,’ she said, moving around so that I was lying on my back and she was seated atop me. ‘You want Kaikala to give you pleasure?’
‘Yes,’ I squeaked, but even as she undid my britches I could feel the motions, which had hitherto been full of purpose, leaving me until I was naught but a shrivelled wreck beneath her. She looked down at me in disappointment, for it happened every day, and then looked directly into my eyes.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked. ‘Yay-Ko doesn’t like me?’
‘I do,’ I replied defensively, willing myself into action. I reached up and cupped her titties in my hands and, much pleasure as I got from the touch, I could not transfer that into action. My head became filled with pictures of the past, the time before, Mr Lewis’s establishment and all that he had made me do there. If I closed my eyes I could hear the sound of gentlemen’s boots on the step and the clod-clod-clod as they ascended the stairs towards us boys. And so our afternoons together always ended the same way; with me running back through the jungle, pulling my pants up as I went, returning close to the camp, only to find that what had failed me before was full of life now, and hiding in the hedges to find a little pained relief before returning to the captain’s side and my duties.
I hated Mr Lewis and all he had done to me. And I sought a cure.
32
CAPTAIN BLIGH’S DECISION TO LEAVE Mr Fryer in charge of all the trade between the islanders and the crewmen had seemed to be a sensible one at first and for a time there were no serious incidents of theft or illegal bartering taking place, at least none that were brought to the captain’s attention. However, I was attending on Mr Bligh one morning at the home of King Tynah, when a report was made to him that set about another turn in our fortunes.
The king and the captain got along very well; in fact there were even days when I believed that the captain appeared to have more respect for Tynah than he did for the majority of his own officers any more. Almost every morning, he would visit His Majesty at his home and inform him how well their mission was coming along and how grateful both Captain Cook and King George would be when they learned how accommodating their Pacific brother had been to their plans. It was patronizing, certainly, and I would have been keen to slap any man who’d spoken down to me with as much condescension as the captain did towards our host, but the native king was susceptible to such flattery, that was for sure, and everyone was happy, and so it continued and in this way the mission moved towards its conclusion.
‘The men,’ the king asked one morning as they sat over cups of the mucous liquid that the king’s servants prepared for him on a regular basis and which contained some mixture of banana, mango, water and a flavour with which I was unfamiliar, ‘they eat well on the island, yes?’
‘Very well, Your Majesty, thank you,’ said Captain Bligh, sampling some of the lighter refreshments that the servants had left out on the trays before him. ‘Let me see now . . . our stores have been well stocked at all our stops along the way and the fruit and vegetables of Otaheite make a most pleasant variation from our standard fare.’
The king nodded his head very slowly, as if the matter of movement was a great inconvenience to such a man as he, but his mouth was pursed, as if he had just discovered a taste in his mouth that he did not care for. ‘You know that I think of you with friendship, William,’ he said, and he is the only man in these pages who I ever heard address the captain with that level of familiarity.
‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ replied Mr Bligh, looking up cautiously, for he knew as I did that only bad sentences began with phrases such as that. ‘As I do of you.’
‘And you and your men are welcome to the fruit and vegetables of the island, as you say. They are God’s gift to all who are here. But the pigs . . .’ He shook his head and wagged his thick old brute of a finger in the captain’s face. ‘No more of the pigs.’
Captain Bligh stared at him and then across at me for a moment as if he had not fully understood the statement. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, smiling quizzically. ‘I don’t understand, Your Majesty. What of the pigs?’
‘You must not eat our pigs,’ replied the king forcefully, looking ahead as if his pronouncement was enough and there need be no further conversation on the matter.
‘But, Your Majesty,’ continued the captain, ‘we do not eat your livestock. You made that clear when we arrived and we have honoured that commitment.’
The king looked at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘You do not, perhaps, William, but your men? They are a different tale. You must tell them to stop. You must tell them now. There will be unhappiness between us if this continues.’
Captain Bligh said nothing for a moment, merely looked at his host as he considered this before bowing his head and breathing heavily through his nose. I could see that he was angered by
what had been said. His orders – I remembered his issuing them myself – had been quite explicit on this subject. The conversation between the two men dried up considerably after this and we left the tent in a state of some humiliation.
An hour later, Mr Fryer was summoned to the captain’s tent, where he was quizzed on the matter in such a way that you would have thought the master was going around the island all day chewing on a side of bacon.
‘Did I not make it clear to all when we got here that the men were disbarred from eating the livestock of the island unless it was served to us by the islanders themselves?’
‘Of course, sir,’ replied Mr Fryer. ‘And to the best of my knowledge, we have all adhered to that rule.’
‘To the best of your knowledge,’ replied the captain with a sneer that was beneath him. ‘Well, let us see how far that gets us, shall we? Are you telling me that you have heard no rumours of pigs being illegally slaughtered and roasted?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Then, I must take you at your word. But the king believes it to be the case and I imagine he has cause for it. He is not the type to create a fancy. And it will not do, Mr Fryer. I won’t stand to be disobeyed. Let me put a notion to you.’ He sat down behind his desk and invited Mr Fryer to sit opposite him; it was another of those rare occasions when the two men seemed to have more in common than their differences. ‘Your duties take you around a large portion of this island, do they not?’
‘They do, sir,’ he replied.
‘If a man were to steal a pig and bring it somewhere to kill and gut it, roast it and eat it, a place where the smell of burning bacon would not be detected by his fellows or by the officers, where do you suppose he might go?’
Mr Fryer considered it for a moment and I could see his eyes darting back and forth a little nervously as he mentally scanned the terrain with which he had become so familiar. ‘It’s difficult to say, sir,’ he said finally, a half-hearted answer and not worthy of him.
‘Then, think, man,’ replied the captain, keeping his temper at bay. ‘You’re a resourceful fellow, Mr Fryer. If it was you, where would you go?’
‘Captain, I hope you’re not suggesting—’
‘Oh, I’m not suggesting anything of the sort, man,’ snapped the captain. ‘Keep your wig atop your head, for pity’s sake. I’m asking that if you were to do such a thing, and let us all be assured that you never would,’ he added in a sarcastic tone, ‘but if you were to, then where would you go?’
‘It’s a conundrum, Captain,’ he replied finally. ‘The breadfruit are scattered widely, so Mr Christian and Mr Heywood’s men are about various parts of the island collecting the specimens throughout the day. They would be distracted by the scent of the meat if it were as you suggest. However . . .’ He tapped his nose for a moment and considered it.
‘What is it, Mr Fryer?’
‘Sir, there’s an area of thicket-land, tall trees and undergrowth too heavy for the breadfruit to grow in on the north-east shore. Not a great distance from here actually, no more than a twenty-minute walk in all. The exposure traps the winds that are sweeping in towards it and holds them there, so, in theory, a man who wanted to cover the smell of meat could do worse than commit his crime in such a place.’
The captain nodded. ‘You think it’s likely?’ he asked. ‘I hope it is not,’ replied Mr Fryer. ‘But, to my mind, it is the only possible place where such a thing could take place.’
‘Then, let us go there together,’ said the captain. ‘You and I, sir.’
‘Now?’
‘Of course now,’ he said, standing up with a cheerful look on his face, no doubt pleased to have something constructive to do at last, an opportunity to exert his authority once again. ‘Tynah has expressed his displeasure with our crew. Should the matter continue he may decide that we are no longer friends and become indisposed towards us. In which case all our work here would have come to naught. Would you have that, Mr Fryer?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then, let us go. Turnstile, fetch my cane.’
And with that they were out of the cabin for their walk together. I knew not what they would find, whether they would discover anything at all indeed, but I felt pity for the miscreant there should Mr Fryer be proved to be right.
The captain, after all, was just waiting for an opportunity such as this.
Evening times on the island were generally quiet affairs. The men had finished their work, they were ready to enjoy their victuals and then to take their pleasures with the ladies. The natives were happy to stay on the beach, lighting fires, performing dances, making us all feel like gods among men. When the beach was filled with crewmen and natives it was typically a night of laughter and debauchery. And that same night, the night of the day when the captain and Mr Fryer went a-walking, the beach was as full as it ever was, but there was no laughter in the air and no potential for licentiousness or dissipation of any kind.
The crew were gathered together in their lines, the officers standing by their sides, and every man jack of them had the startled look of a fellow who has forgotten what his role in life is and has just descended back down to the earth with a bang. Running around the beach, becoming increasingly distraught, were many dozens of natives, mostly women, screaming and crying in despair.
And at the centre of this throng stood Captain Bligh, alongside Mr Fryer and James Morrison, the boatswain’s mate; facing them, tied to a stump, stripped to the waist, his bare back on display, was the cooper, Henry Hilbrant.
‘Men,’ announced the captain, taking a step forward and addressing us, ‘I have spoken to you before regarding discipline and its breakdown while we are on this island. It goes too far when we discover a thief among our number. I made clear to all of you the rules regarding trade, barter and theft; this morning, our island host, His Majesty King Tynah, had cause to reprimand me over the continual loss of his piglets by one of our number. Later in the day I discovered Mr Hilbrant alone with one of his ill-gotten gains, enjoying the bacon. Shamelessly enjoying the bacon, I say! And I tell you now, it will not stand. Mr Morrison, step forward, sir, and comb the cat.’
The bo’sun took a few steps away from Mr Fryer and revealed the cat-o’-nine-tails which he had been holding behind his back and lifted it into the air, giving it a shake to loosen the tendrils. At its appearance the native women let up an almighty cry of pain that put the heart half-crossways in me.
‘Go ahead,’ said the captain.
Mr Morrison stepped forward and began the flogging and we counted the numbers off in our heads. As they increased past the first dozen I found myself unable to remove my eyes from the face of Hilbrant, who let out a great scream of agony every time the tool made contact with his ripped skin. The only thing more disturbing than the sound of this was the screams of the women who encircled us, some of whom had lifted stones from the beach shore and were dragging them across their foreheads, ripping their own skin and allowing the blood to pour dramatically down their faces. The men watched them and I could see the pain they felt, for they had all formed terrible close bonds with these women and hated to see them hurting themselves so. I searched in vain for Kaikala, but was pleased to see that she had not joined in the self-mutilation and had, I supposed, remained behind in her own tent.
Finally, the lashing stopped, at three dozen, which seemed an awful high price to pay for the theft of such an ignorant animal as a pig, and Hilbrant was cut down.
‘There will be no more thievery,’ shouted the captain, marching around before us, his face filled with fury, and I swear that I scarcely recognized him at a moment like that. He caught my eye at one point and it seemed to me that he didn’t know me at all. This was not the man who had taken care of me when I had been ill at the start of my Bounty voyage; nor the man who had come close to being moved when he had discovered the truth of my past exploits at Mr Lewis’s establishment. Nor was it the kind and affectionate father who had brought me to the mountain trees to show me his
name carved there many years before and allowed me to add my own name to his. This was someone else entirely. Someone who was breaking down before our eyes.
He stopped shouting then for a moment and looked out to where the Bounty sat in the water, bathed in the glow of a full moon. I watched his face and saw it crumble when his eyes lit on it; by heaven, he might as well have been entering his bedchamber in London for the first time in two years to discover his beloved Betsey sitting by her dressing table in her shift, as she turned to lay eyes on him again and smile at his return, so tender was the glance. He swallowed, he gasped and his eyes filled with tears, before he reluctantly dragged them away and looked at all of us again.
‘We are here to work, men,’ he roared. ‘Not steal, not dally, not satisfy our carnal pleasures. But to work. For the glory of King George! Let tonight’s proceedings be a lesson to you all and a warning of what will happen to the next man who dares to disobey me. This will seem light in comparison, I promise you that.’
And then, exhausted by his own anger, he turned and walked hesitantly back towards his quarters, his head slightly bowed in grief. The men watched him in despair as the women continued to cry and rend at their features.
It occurred to me that it would be a good thing if we finished our work here and returned to the Bounty, to the sea, to our voyage, as soon as possible. There was a demon in the air between us, set there not by the men or by the captain, but by those twin creatures that glared at each other constantly – the boat and the island, the one calling its captain home, the other dragging its new captives ever deeper in.
33
WHEN KAIKALA AND I FIRST made love, I’m not ashamed to admit that I let a scream of delight out of me that echoed any of the cries that I had ever heard on the island before. We were in our usual place, by the stream near the waterfall, and she had helped and guided me until my nerves were finally overtaken by my desires and I was able to be one with her. Afterwards, lying side by side as naked as a couple of new-born babes, she quizzed me once again on life in England.
