Coconut Chaos by Diana Souhami (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📗

18

For four days on the Tundra Princess bad weather precluded parties or much progress through the sea. Cooking pots flew across the galley, chairs slid across the mess room and Pandal couldn’t lay the table. Low pressure pursued the ship and there was a constant PAN PAN warning. In the vast, empty Pacific the swell of the waves set in, created momentum and was more of a problem than the wind.

Captain Dutt couldn’t work at the desk in his cabin because of the roll of the ship. He sat on the floor with a laptop, maps and faxes spread around him, playing Hindi music loud. Like a mantra he repeated that if the sea continued to be as wild as this he’d go straight to Panama. He was unfamiliar with Pitcairn’s coast and dangers and had been told by his bosses not to anchor there.

In those stormy days I languished in my cabin or staggered to the galley for cups of sweet tea. Lady Myre flourished. She abandoned her pot noodles as bland, decided curry was a cure for queasiness, and ate her way through spicy mackerel, kedgeree and chicken vindaloo. Chilli made her eyes water and her cheeks flush. Around the ship she sang along with a medley of songs on her iPod: ‘High on a Hill Lived a Lonely Goatherd’ and ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow’. The crew loved her and treated her like a trophy. She spent long hours in the officers’ lounge watching videos: Primal Fear, The Ghost Ship, and Death Wish 1, 2, 3 and 4. She remained intractably on Greenwich Mean Time and carped at dinner being served in the middle of the night. I’d hear her imperious voice calling, ‘Raja, you haven’t replaced the towels in my cabin.’ Raja would explain that he was the second officer, that towels were her responsibility, and that this was a cargo not a cruise ship.

Uninvited, she’d drift into my cabin and lie on my bed with her rum-and-peach-juice. She asked what I was scribbling. I told her I was making notes on the metaphor of the journey and the interconnection of voyages. She said if I wanted to know about voyages, I should look at the photos of her whitewater rafting in Ecuador and kayaking in Costa Rica. She’d been three inches away from a crocodile’s jaws and found a scorpion under her pillow. She travelled with a company called Explore.

Twice she voiced surprise at the time the journey was taking. On the map, she said, Picton seemed close to Christchurch. I gave up trying to disabuse her about her destination. But I forcefully reiterated that Pitcairn was a rough place, the hideaway of the Bounty mutineers, that the population numbered only forty-nine, that many of the men were sex offenders and that nothing there would be easy. She laughed, said God had a purpose for her which she was yet to find, and asked me if I shaved my legs or used a depilatory.

I just couldn’t fathom her. Because she so frequently swigged, I told her this might be an offence on Pitcairn, though I doubted she’d be gaoled if the prison was full. She scrabbled in her bag for her liquor licence, waved it at me and said she’d passed her drinking test. I explained that Pitcairners were Seventh Day Adventists who believed in the second coming of the Messiah. She said she found the idea sweet and wondered if they’d view her as their saviour. Roley often told her she was no ordinary mortal. I again told her it might be months before a ship called that would take her off the island. She said she didn’t care if she stayed until kingdom come.

In all I said I tried to discourage her from disembarking with me. I hoped she’d stay with the Tundra Princess until Panama. I feared she’d be a distraction, though I was fast losing focus as to what this distraction was from. I advised her she could fly from Panama to Christchurch, then get a ferry to Picton. She said she couldn’t countenance an extra twenty-one days on the ship alone with so many sailors. Her presence would inflame them.

19

The Bounty with forty people on board reached Tubuai again on 23 June 1789. This time Christian anchored on the western side. Tribesmen paddled out to the ship without blowing conch shells or waving lances. The chief of this area, Tummotoa, went on board, accepted presents of red feathers, hatchets, nails and matting, pledged friendship to Christian and invited him to settle in his territory. He explained that the previous hostility came from a rival tribe governed by Chief Tinnarow.

Christian reconnoitred, looking for the best place for his proposed settlement. He favoured a site on the north-east coast, at Taahuaia, where there was a river, good vegetation, grazing land, a clear view of the lagoon and reef, and the chance to hide in the mountains. There was an abundance of breadfruit, coconuts, yams, bananas, fish and turtles. And the women, the sailors said, were the most beautiful they’d seen in the South Seas. This was where Christian hoped to build his new community, his colony, beyond the reach of English law.

The territory he chose was governed by a third chief, Taroatehoa. He, too, fêted Christian and, like Tummotoa, was pleased to receive red feathers and nails and keen for the mutineers to settle in his region. But Tummotoa viewed Christian’s choice as an insulting rejection of his own hospitality. He told him and his crew never again to show themselves in his or Tinnarow’s territory. Two-thirds of the Tubuaians now viewed these settlers as invaders. None the less Christian went ahead with plans for a wooden fort, fifty yards square, with a moat and a drawbridge facing the sea. It was to be guarded by swivel guns and cannons and called Fort George, in honour of the king whose laws he’d so flouted.

He instructed his crew and