by H. E. Bates
At that moment it crossed my mind that she was exactly the sort of girl men dream of being wrecked on desert islands with; at the same time I was unaware of how near the truth I was until suddenly I looked towards the stern end of the boat and saw there a quite remarkable flag.
It was of bright scarlet, with a brilliant canary yellow coconut palm worked across the middle. The colours so resembled those of the Captain’s shirt and trousers that the flag might well have been made from bits of the same material left over.
‘Ah! I see you’re admiring our flag,’ the Captain said.
‘It’s very unusual. Why the palm tree?’
‘It’s the flag of our expedition.’
‘Expedition?’
‘We sail for tropic waters as soon as we’re ship-shape. Didn’t you read about it in the press a couple of weeks ago? Splendid write-up.’
With the deftness of a life-long conjurer Poop-Deck whipped from his shirt pocket a long press-cutting in which a picture of himself dominated everything like that of an uncrowned king.
‘Peruse that. Sit yourself down. The bosun’ll be here any moment now with the grog.’
I had hardly time to catch a glimpse of the words ‘South Sea Adventure. Former Naval Officer Promises Other Eden’, before the Captain squatted down on the deck and said:
‘Brought me over a hundred replies in no time. People clamouring, fighting to join us. True, Number One? Without the word of a lie? Sit yourself down,’ he said again. ‘Sit yourself down.’
With trepidation I sat on an empty beer-barrel. I had the sudden feeling that the deck of the boat was rather like an old ship’s biscuit; at any moment it might crumble away.
‘And still they come. Every day. How many today, Number One?’
‘Nine.’
‘Nine more today, sir. And seven, I think, yesterday.’
By now a few doubts had begun to enter my mind. Once again I stared Captain Poop-Deck straight in the eye and once again there was no hint of flinching. The blandness of his eyes even succeeded in making me feel slightly embarrassed at having had the presumption to doubt him and I almost wished I hadn’t started to say:
‘But this boat would never take a hundred people.’
‘Naturally not. Naturally not. But they can all participate equally as bond-holders in the scheme.’
I didn’t much care for the word ‘participate’ or for ‘bond-holders’ either and I was glad to look up and see the bo’sun coming up from below decks with the grog: four handsome rum punches in long glasses each richly topped with nuts, mint-sprigs and straws.
As I took my glass I started to say something about the drinks reminding me of Jamaica but the Captain cut me short with the friendliest enthusiasm:
‘Ah! then, you know the tropics, sir?’
‘Slightly. Where exactly are you bound for?’
The Captain looked secretive, in a way almost coy. By now the two girls were squatting on the deck too, looking rather like two worshipful hand-maidens awaiting the pleasure of their master.
‘Sealed orders,’ the Captain said. ‘Daren’t say a word. Place would be swarming with tricksters in no time. No: all I can say is that I’ve had the great good fortune to come into possession of this island. And not being a selfish man I want to share it with others.’
‘Desert island of course?’
‘Not precisely. Not precisely. There is habitation. There used to be a sugar factory but that’s gone now. Bags of water. Wild donkeys – which we shall tame and use of course – and plenty of bird-life, game and so forth.’
‘And palms,’ the bo’sun said, taking the straw from her mouth, almost coyly too. ‘Don’t forget the palms.’
‘Clever girl, the bo’sun. Always remembers the important things. Palms, of course, palms. The emblem of the expedition. As witness our flag.’
‘The palms are important, are they?’ I said.
‘Nothing more so. The coconut palm is man’s best friend. Forget about the dog. It’s the coconut palm. Where the coconut palm grows man can never starve. The meat and milk of the coconut will feed him. The tree will build his house and give him a roof for his head. How do you think the Polynesians survived on those long world-voyages of theirs? On floating coconuts. Nuts drifting on the great South Pacific currents gave them their milk and meat. For months. For years.’
‘You’ve been there, of course?’
The Captain, after silently sipping at his straw for some moments, eyes down, at last looked up at me with an expression almost pained.
‘Everyone asks that question. I wonder why. The fact that you’ve never been to a place doesn’t mean it’s not there. You’ve never been to the South Pole but it’s there. Nobody has yet been to the moon but it’s there. I haven’t yet been to my island but it’s there.’
As the Captain expounded this beautiful piece of logic the bo’sun and the first mate sat looking at him with complete entrancement, almost rapture, and the bosom of Lola, the bigger girl, several times gave a great expanding heave.
After a silence in which I too sipped at my glass – the punch was really excellent, prepared with skill and care – I suddenly remembered the Captain’s words about the scheme.
‘How does the scheme work?’ I said.
‘You mean you’re thinking perhaps of participating? I don’t know about that, I’m sure. We’re pretty chock-a-block already. Almost embarrassing. The thing’s gone like stink, I mean. Like wildfire. That’s why we’re working like blacks to get ship-shape. Got to sail by October.’
‘Tell me about the scheme, anyway.’
Well, it worked like this, the Captain went on to say. The island was roughly twenty-five miles long and ten wide. Two hundred and fifty square miles. Ample room for two hundred and fifty people and no treading on toes. For units of twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, one hundred or two hundred pounds – two hundred was the statutory limit, he said, and I liked very much the word statutory – a bond-holder would get a parcel of land, each parcel of land with shore frontage or access to it, of one acre, two acres, three acres and so on.
‘To be his or hers,’ the Captain said, ‘without strings, in perpetuity, for ever. It’s as simple as that. Another punch?’
I was about to decline the offer of a second punch when suddenly I changed my mind.
‘Splendid,’ the Captain said. ‘The bo’sun will get it. And one for me too.’
I thought the bo’sun went below decks with a certain reluctance, a little unwilling to surrender her seat as handmaiden in the sun, and after she had gone I said:
‘Tell me, what about money?’
‘On the island you mean?’ The Captain actually laughed, his voice quite honied. ‘My dear fellow, there will be no money. It isn’t necessary. That’s the marvellous, simple beauty of the scheme. Nothing to be bought, nothing to be sold – so why money? The palm, as I say, will house us. There’s water everywhere. The place teems with grub. Yams, bread-fruit, guavas, limes, sweet potatoes, game, fish, wild pig – Good grief, my friend, we’re fleeing from money, not seeking it.’
‘It’s an ideal that man has always pursued, of course.’
‘Of course. Exactly. For centuries. For thousands of years. And what has stopped him? Greed, man, greed.’
‘Exactly. By the way, how would we get there?’
‘Did you say “we”?’ The Captain’s eyes shone not merely with ebullience now but with a benevolence of truly engaging charm. ‘You mean you want to be in? I had really made up my mind “No”, but I rather like you. You talk sense. You’re in.’
‘You still haven’t told me how we get there.’
‘As the advance party, in this, the boat.’ The Captain rapped his knuckles hard on the deck and I almost seemed to hear it splinter. ‘The Other Eden. That’s her name. The first mate thought of that, didn’t you, Tina? Shakespeare.’
The first mate gave the Captain a smile of pure enslavement, tossing her pig-tail rather nervously, I thought, from one shoul
der to another.
‘As for those who come later, they travel either by air or sea to the Cook Islands, from which we shall run a weekly ferry service by the Eden to the island at a purely nominal charge. By the way, it takes quite a few days to get these bonds through. They have to be very carefully drawn up and vetted and then registered in London of course.’
‘Of course. No hurry.’
‘Made up your mind which unit you might take up?’
‘Not yet. I’ll give it careful thought, though.’
The Captain seemed pleased and said he would tell me something else I might have forgotten. This was no ordinary paradise. It was the perfect refuge from that evil thing, the Bomb.
‘We might, in the event, be the only people left alive on earth.’
‘We might indeed.’
‘That’s the part that really attracts people. They’re all fed to the teeth with this mad, modern set-up. They loathe the ruddy bomb, the ruddy rat-race, the ruddy rush, the ruddy noise, the ruddy everything. They want peace. They want to get back to Mother Earth.’
Thinking perhaps a little dreamily on the subject of Mother Earth, so poetically presented by the Captain, I suddenly thought of something else.
‘How large a crew would The Other Eden need?’
‘I’m hoping to sign on one more hand. Another good strong lass.’
Here I suggested that an all-girl crew might, even in the very best of circumstances, find a voyage of some ten thousand miles a little beyond its powers but Captain Poop-Deck laughed with a most refreshing and persuasive charm.
‘Not a bit of it. These girls make damn fine crews. Prefer ’em to men any day. Got more stamina and don’t drink so much. In any case we’ve got Skilly.’
‘Who’s Skilly?’
‘He’s the galley boy. Naval man to the core. Cooks like an angel and knows what’s best, as naval chaps always do. Worth his weight in gold. Ah! here comes the second round of punches.’
I looked up in the expectation of seeing the blonde bo’sun. Instead, to my great surprise, there appeared at the top of the companion-way a pale, beer-soaked bag of bones in crumpled white shirt and ducks, a torn white pork-pie hat and a slightly blood-stained apron. He looked something like a cross between a galley slave who hadn’t seen the light of day for six months and an old lag who had just done a longish stretch in a cellar somewhere. The hand carrying the tray of drinks quivered so much that the glasses tinkled and he stared at me with a trembling, beery eye.
‘Ah! good man, Skilly. Got the drinks. Good.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘This gentleman here is probably going to join the expedition.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Soon won’t have room for ’em all, will we, sir?’
‘We damn well won’t. It’ll probably have to come to a ballot in the end. By the way, what’s for supper?’
At this moment I was in the act of picking up my second rum punch from the tray but I could have sworn I saw in the Captain’s eye the merest shadow of a wink and an even swifter reflection of it in Skilly’s eye.
‘Melon, cold salmon mayonnaise, baby new taters, green peas, salads, fresh pineapple and cream, four sorts of cheese and Other Eden coffee.’
The Captain, after explaining that Other Eden coffee was a speciality laced with rum, said:
‘And I daresay a noggin of something too?’
‘Aye, aye, sir. I got the ’ock on ice already.’
‘Splendid show. Good man. Lay another place for our friend here.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Here I was on the point of protesting that I must be on my way when the beery, trembling eyes of Skilly started trembling even more.
‘Oh! I pretty near forgot, sir. While you was all having your kip after lunch another young lady called.’
‘Good God, man, why didn’t you come and wake me? Does she want to join?’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Dead keen. Can’t wait to get aboard. I told her to come back about seven.’
‘Good man, Skilly. Did she say who she was?’
‘Lady Sarah somebody, sir, but I can’t remember the other bit. She lives in that big house about a couple o’ miles up the river.’
Briefly, in silence, I recalled something of the beauties of Lady Sarah. Merely to see her ride past in jodhpurs was to recreate for yourself some of the excitements of Lady Godiva’s ride. She sat on horses like a dark goddess. She rode tempestuous races at point-to-points. She was a seductress of other women’s husbands. She had once got religion and run away with a rural dean. When she was bored, as she nearly always was, she amused herself by jumping on fresh band-wagons, such as those for nuclear disarmament, banning the bomb or better deals for unmarried mothers. She was sensationally lovely, hopelessly irrepressible, maddeningly dominating and so rich in her own right that she could have shod her hunters with gold.
‘I know her,’ I said. ‘Her father’s in whisky.’
The eyes of the Captain positively flamed with vitriolic fire.
‘Great guns. Whisky?’ He crooked his arm smartly and looked at his watch. ‘Blow me down, it’s a quarter to seven already. She’ll be here any moment now.’
‘It rather looks,’ I said, ‘as if you might complete your crew.’
‘Eh? What? Oh! yes.’
Suddenly it seemed to me that the Captain had lost a very great deal of interest in my presence aboard.
‘Well, we shall be seeing something of you, I expect. Sorry you can’t stay.’ Without any other attempt at farewell the Captain turned smartly from me, giving sudden crisp orders. ‘Skilly, find the bo’sun. Number One, let’s have this deck looking a bit more ship-shape and less like a knacker’s yard. At the double.’
I finished my rum punch, climbed unaided down the rope-ladder and started to walk home. About thirty yards down the river bank I turned and looked back at The Other Eden. She looked, half-painted, more than a bit ghostly in the declining evening sun, but in imagination I worked on her a momentary transformation.
I seemed to see Lady Sarah, sensational and dominant, as her new figure-head.
A week later I walked back to the boat on a cool, showery afternoon on the chance of having another word with Poop-Deck.
Under the late cloudy August skies the leaves of the poplars above the river banks were full of fretful chatter and beneath them The Other Eden presented a sad and surprising sight. She was lying half-submerged, slightly keeled over, in the middle of the river.
While I stared at this melancholy sight, still unable quite to realise that my chance of sharing Captain Poop-Deck’s paradise had gone for ever, a dinghy appeared from behind the half-sunken stern. In it was Skilly.
He rowed ashore.
‘Hullo, there, Skilly. Salvaging the wreck?’
‘Oh! it’s you, sir.’ He picked up from the bottom of the dinghy a very tired-looking bundle of clothing wrapped in newspaper. He looked more than ever like an old lag starting out on a new life, though not very enthusiastically, after a long stretch. ‘Just saving a few duds. All I got in the world.’
‘What happened?’
Skilly, dropping the lid of one beery eye, answered with sublime simplicity.
‘We was launching her, sir, and she just went down.’
‘Somebody pull the plug?’
‘Not saying about that, sir.’
‘Not the bo’sun by any chance?’
‘Not saying about that, sir.’
I stared across at the wreck, thinking once again of my dream of her figure-head.
‘Was Lady Sarah aboard at the time?’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Very much so, sir. Her and the Captain got as thick as thieves in no time.’
Musing briefly on the appropriateness of this expression I asked if the Captain was about today?
‘No, sir. Not about.’
‘Any idea where I could get in touch with him?’
‘No, sir. No idea. Rather fancy he’s gone on a little holiday with Lady Sarah somewhere.’
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‘And the bo’sun?’
‘Couldn’t say about her, sir.’
‘And Number One?’
‘Couldn’t say about her either, sir.’
After a short silence Skilly hitched up his drooping bag of bones and looked at me with eyes moist with infinite pleading. I looked back at him with a fairly solemn compassion.
‘Haven’t got the price of a pint, I suppose, sir?’
I gave him the price of a pint and he touched his cap and said:
‘Bless your ’eart, sir. Thanks a lot. May you always have jolly good ’ealth and jolly good luck, sir, and all that.’
‘And plenty of melon and salmon mayonnaise and all that.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘And fresh pineapple and cream and guavas and bread-fruit and the milk of the coconut.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. I know what you mean.’
After that I didn’t hear of Captain Poop-Deck again for about a year. Then an advertisement in a Sunday paper caught my eye.
It invited you to become a bond-holder in The Elysian Vineyards Trust. ‘Own your own vines on the very slopes where the Romans grew theirs. Drink your own delicious vintage wine in your own home.’
The scheme, I discovered, was not only one of entrancing simplicity. It also bore the unmistakable imprint of Poop-Deck. You merely invested in units of twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five or a hundred pounds and in return were allotted an appropriate area of vines. There was no work to do. The staff of trained viticulturalists on the Elysian Vineyards Trust did all the work. They bought, planted, pruned and sprayed the vines. They picked, harvested and pressed the grapes. They saw to the fermenting, bottling and dispatching of the wine. A unit of twenty-five pounds would provide you with a bottle of wine every day of the year, a unit of fifty pounds with two bottles per day per year, and all you had to do was stay at home and drink them.
And not only did you sup as the Romans did, on the wines of the Elysian fields. The vines and the good earth on which they grew were yours, without strings, in perpetuity, for ever.
Coconut Radio
Across plates of raw fish, steaming dishes of sucking pig, crabs and liver, fried plantain, curries of prawn and fresh-water shrimp, bowls of bread-fruit, sweet-potatoes and rice, Mr Pilgrim raised his gin glass to me and looked over the edge of it with his pink, under-cooked eyes.
