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

Raja said people might think of life at sea as exotic, but it was very demanding. The work was hard, mistakes must not be made, trust and interdependence were essential and no one worked in a vacuum. A good sailor must think laterally, be competent in many areas and able to cope with tensions, gossip and discomfort.

As a cadet, Raja said, he’d endured kicks but they’d made him a man and taught him self-discipline. In the days before he left home, tension set in. When he said goodbye to his family, it was for months or years at a time. Once it was for three years. When he returned, his son called him Uncle. His wife said, ‘That’s not Uncle that’s Daddy.’

I liked his soft quick voice, his thoughtfulness and swanky, capable frame. I was surprised he was only twenty-six, for he seemed so wise. He came from Vellore. I asked what Salman’s punishment would be. He said there’d be some loss of privileges and an obstacle to promotion, but that he was an immature young man who had much to learn. ‘You mustn’t make such mistakes on a ship,’ he said. But Captain Dutt had said losing the keys was punishment enough.

I thought how punishing Bligh was to Christian at Nomuka when islanders stole the anchor of his boat and how he humiliated him over the coconut affair. And then, on Sunday Island, when Robert Lamb was starving, Bligh beat him for eating the birds he’d caught.

That evening, though the officers had fish curry, Agnelo Dias, the cook from Goa, prepared Chicken Maryland with chips, a frizzed spring onion and sculpted carrot for Lady Myre and me. But he must have thought his efforts bland, for he poured curry sauce over it all. Pandal brought us each a glass of sweet white wine, and at our appreciation of so much kindness Dutt, Da Silva, Harminder, Raja and Soni all beamed.

Da Silva showed how he could cut an apple into flowery shapes. A restored Lady Myre made them all laugh when, with her rather beautiful hands, she cut orange peel into protruding teeth. She wore a silver leather miniskirt, a bust-bursting crimson top and a plastic daffodil in her hair. There was no coherence about her attire beyond it always looking odd. She never wore the same thing twice. One afternoon I saw her come from the engine room in combat gear and a deerstalker, and after Da Silva passingly remarked, one lunchtime, that as chief engineer he checked the air-conditioning to safeguard against legionnaires’ disease, at dinner Lady Myre wore a mask with a carbon filter. She lifted it to speak and pop morsels of highly spiced food into her mouth. Da Silva appeared a little in love with her blondeness and insanity. Sometimes she’d wear large diamond earrings that looked like trinkets, or flash a white sapphire ring, or she’d be festooned in sparkling beads from a Cairo street market.

Officers and crew all called her ma’am. I avoided calling her by any name, though in my mind I thought of her as Lady Myre. From her passport I’d seen that her first name was Hortense and that she was fifty-five. She told Captain Dutt she was forty but, as he had care of her passport, I wondered why she attempted this deception.

I thought of the defining details of name, date of birth, country of origin, and of the negating of the Polynesian women abducted by the mutineers. The men gave them English names: Isabella, Mary, Sarah, Jenny, Susannah, Nancy. Even their names were controlled by the sailors who abducted them, had sex with them, made them pregnant and whom they were obliged to serve. Bligh’s descriptions of the mutineers made it hard to see them as romantic or attractive, with their sweaty hands, rotten teeth and scars. I tried to remember the girls’ Polynesian names: Mauatua, Vahineatua, Teatuahitea … Their views on losing their homes, families, friends, and customs were not recorded. Caught in a crude adventure of crime and evasion, chance changed their lives beyond their control.

A rhythm of habits defined shipboard life: times to eat, the time when the water was hot enough for a bath, when the sun rose, when it set. I felt the persuasiveness of living for months and years on a ship, close to the circling of the world, the pull of the moon on the tide, the movement of the ocean bed. The ship was an island with only the sea in view. Some nights I went alone to the bridgehead deck to look at the stars and the moon’s reflection in the ocean. I didn’t want my voyage to end.

The crew seemed glad to have women on board, even women as odd as Lady Myre and me. Soni scolded them in Hindi when they flirted with Lady Myre.

For Saturday lunch Pandal served vegetarian curry, because of Soni’s gods. Harminder told him it was horrible, Da Silva asked for luncheon meat to eat with it and Lady Myre spilled a forkful of hers down her shalwar-kameez, then dabbed the bright stain with a lemon. The talk was of marriage. Soni’s had been arranged and she said how happy she was with her parents’ choice of Jaswinder from Jamshedpur. She commended their wisdom and care. They asked for more from relationship than the frailty of falling in love. They wanted the good father, the good provider, and relatives they liked. Jaswinder sat beside her and looked inscrutable.

Da Silva said his was a love marriage and he’d want his children to choose for themselves in the same way he had. He’d tell them if he thought they were choosing unwisely, but he wouldn’t deny them their freedom. Lady Myre expounded on meeting Sir Roland on Riis Beach and how it had been love at first sight. She said that love conquered all, then snapped her fingers for Pandal