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

Panama. This is not a civilised place to leave a lady such as yourself. Your husband would be most disconcerted. He should not allow it.’

Perhaps aware that he had crossed a cultural barrier of opinion, his scalp jiggled and he said no more. Other officers, in uniform, assembled to wish us luck and say goodbye. Another longboat came into view, it roller-coasted with each wave. The men in both boats stood tall, spray burst over them, they disappeared then appeared again. As they manoeuvred alongside the ship, the boats looked like specks against this huge vessel of 17,000 tons. I thought of the nineteen men, cast adrift from the Bounty in a cutter. Ropes were thrown and caught and the Jacob’s ladder lowered. Several Pitcairners effortlessly climbed up it. I observed how strong they were, how physical. I did not see how I or Lady Myre could find our descent easy.

Steve Christian was first on deck. Barefoot and wearing shorts, with a knife at his belt and a T-shirt with a Pitcairn logo, he was drenched with seawater and rain. He walked with a limp. One of his legs, broken when he was a boy, was shorter than the other. He was thick-built, dark-haired, dark-skinned. I thought of Bligh’s description of Fletcher Christian: ‘5 feet 9 inches high, blackish or very dark complexion, dark brown hair, strong made’.

He took no notice of Lady Myre or me. He asked Captain Dutt if he had alcohol or cigarettes to sell. His voice was singsong, polite. Dutt said that he did not. I thought of the prohibitions of Adventism. Steve then asked Dutt if he’d use the ship’s cranes to unload the island’s supplies from the containers. Most of these supplies were building materials for the new prison and there was no way they could be shifted by hand. I thought how Steve was the main defendant in the sex-abuse trials and that the prison was for him. Dutt said to raise the cranes in this weather would jeopardise the stability of the ship and he wasn’t prepared to risk it.

Bea Christian joined Steve. She was a cousin of sorts and looked like him. She too was barefoot, dressed in shorts and T-shirt and drenched with rain and spray. She too had a knife at her belt. They shook hands with Lady Myre and me and said, ‘Welcome to Pitcairn,’ but there was reserve in their eyes. I thought of the far-back mother from whom they’d once come, Mauatua, Fletcher Christian’s Isabella, lured from Tahiti, caught in his crime.

They went to the container deck to unload what they could by hand. I waited on the bridgehead with Lady Myre. ‘Gosh,’ she said, her eyes bewildered, her smile white and wide, ‘I didn’t think it would be quite like this.’

As the morning lightened, we more clearly saw the outline of the island and the fierceness of the sea. ‘It’s crazy,’ Da Silva said. ‘We won’t see you again. They have knives and no shoes. She is not a woman. Look at her muscles.’ But then he said, as if to belie the words he’d just spoken, ‘What an adventure. Imagine the mutineers arriving here. I wish I was going with you.’

‘You must come to Panama,’ said Captain Dutt with terrible consistency. I knew little about Panama. It was not my choice of destination, least of all with Lady Myre. I’d heard it was a centre for money-laundering and cocaine shipment, and that forty per cent of its population lived in poverty, which led to opportunistic crime.

We moved to the container deck. It was awash. Islanders struggled to lower supplies into the longboats: sodden and disintegrating cardboard boxes of onions, potatoes, meat and eggs, a bag of mail, building planks, cylinders of gas and drums of petrol. They covered this muddle of saturated goods with green tarpaulin.

They seemed dejected, inured. Bea was the only woman among them. They spoke only occasionally in sing-song pidgin and didn’t look at Lady Myre or me. I asked a large man with a protruding lower lip, his eyes lost in fat, how we’d get into the boat.

‘I’ll catch you with one hand,’ he said, and laughed. ‘But when I say “Now”, let go the rope. If you don’t, you’ll be caught between the ship and the boat. There’s only a moment before the next wave.’

Lady Myre was sober. ‘I can’t swing from that trapeze,’ she said. ‘I’m not a stunt artiste. I am –’ She slid across the deck and shrieked.

I tried to console her. ‘Think of it as a live performance,’ I said. ‘You must get it right. Imagine the whole world’s watching you and do as you’re told.’

I doubted she had a history of doing as she was told.

The first boat lurched away with its sodden cargo. I said my last goodbyes to our Indian friends who seemed quiet and dignified.

The Pitcairners exclaimed as Lady Myre’s luggage was lowered. It filled much of the second boat. She then braved the ladder, gripped it hard and froze.

‘Now!’ the fat man called.

She clung on tight, a wave washed over her, he pushed the boat clear of her legs.

‘Now!’ he called again.

Another wave hit her.

‘This is not right,’ Captain Dutt said. ‘This is very wrong.’

‘Now!’ the fat man called. ‘Now, now, now!’

She spread to horizontal, her legs and arms splayed. A Pitcairn man caught and righted her. She whooped and smiled and dripped with wet. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she called up to me. ‘Like bungee jumping.’

I made my leap of faith. The fat man caught me like a leaf. The side of the Tundra Princess looked unscalable from the boat. The sea was deafening. Steve fired the outboard motor. The prow thwacked against the waves, surf broke over us. ‘Yes!’ exclaimed Lady Myre at every impact. I clung to a rowlock to keep my balance and waved to the Indian crew. The ship looked like a land mass, a destination. I thought of the astonished eighteenth-century Polynesians when