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

There was a pink net curtain at the window and a chair with yellow stuffing coming out of it. I fixed a hook in the ceiling above the bed, hung my mosquito net, sprayed the room and myself with mosquito repellent, sprinkled bug powder in the bed and in my silk sleeping bag, put purifying tablets into my water bottle and arranged my neat possessions: a black notebook, my Pelikan pencil, Swiss army knife, compass, camera, travel clock. I opened the window and looked out on a tangle of fallen branches and terns that swirled and swooped. There was the hum of insects and the sound of sawing timber, perhaps from the building of the prison.

I explored the house. Lady Myre had assumed a jacuzzi and room service. I’d anticipated tranquil simplicity: crude wood structures and vernal beauty. I’d overlooked a basic Pitcairn rule: discard nothing. All the grunge of human life was stored. Everything might have a lateral use: broken freezers, boxes that once contained soap powder, tins that once contained beans, empty sacks, bottles and plastic tubs, bubble-wrap, flex, cardboard, sticks, broken chairs, carpet remnants, glass, magazines, building boards – all of it might come in handy one day. And then there were all the provisions because the ship of plenty might never arrive: sacks of flour, cartons of everlasting milk, freezers filled with food that froze and thawed and froze and thawed. Sell-by dates were a foible of another place. Self-sufficiency meant anticipating every eventuality.

The house was unfinished, though its basic structure was intact. Doors, banisters, dowelling, railing for an upper terrace might all perhaps one day arrive. There was a bucket to catch the rainwater that came through the roof, flexes that trailed to ham radios, fans, fires. There were stacks of Pitcairn T-shirts, woven baskets, and carved wooden curios of dolphins and the Bounty to sell to passengers if and when the cruise ship came.

Everything was a habitat for some creature. Cats and kittens shot through. Cockroaches paraded in dark corners. Small retiring beasts scuffled in the storage and left their marks. Black, noiseless, indigenous mosquitoes sucked new blood undeterred by Deet. There was an oppressive humidity even in what passed as winter, a wet, fusty-smelling heat, loved by insects and rodents and which made mould grow.

Back in my room I felt dejected. The mutineers and Polynesian settlers had gone from my mind. I thought how buildings insulate us and how I wanted to impose my own marks and style and usurp all other occupants of this space.

Lady Myre came in with the hypodermics and flu vaccines Captain Dutt had entrusted to her. She asked if I’d ever been a user and if I thought whatever it was would get her through this. I took the vaccines from her and told her to have courage. She was all in white except for a scarlet headband. She eyed my mosquito net and asked if she might share my bed because she was afraid of murder. I said I didn’t think that was a good idea and we must try to adjust to the customs of the island. She said she was in a real pickle and did I think God had a reason for sending her to the end of nowhere. I said I thought not, but that she should’ve done her research better if she’d really wanted to go to Picton. ‘You must’ve known,’ I said. ‘Enough people must’ve told you.’ She made a strange sort of noise as if blowing little kisses at me, and vowed she wasn’t going to let me out of her sight. Fate had sent her not to Garth but to me.

Lady Myre was not the same person as had shimmered as she danced with Captain Dutt. Her eyes took on a vague look and she gazed towards the ocean in perhaps the way the abductees had gazed. ‘You must tell Roley to send a ship,’ she said.

I suggested she send an email, but it seemed he couldn’t even configure the channels on a television, so there was scant hope of digital communication. I wondered about his navigational skills. I probed. He might not be staying in Little Nevish or Knightsbridge but in The Rookery, a hotel somewhere in London. I offered, while the electricity generator was still going and if Rosie agreed, to log on via her laptop to see if I could find such a place. I asked Lady Myre what message she’d like me to send.

‘Say,’ she said – and she became engrossed in the theatre of her predicament – ‘say that Hortense has been deceived, taken captive to a terrible place, marooned on a barren Pacific island. Worse than Alcatraz.’ Her blue eyes burned with the performance, her voice trembled. ‘Worse than Rock or Robben Island. Worse than Spandau. In primitive quarters, denied all ordinary comfort and surrounded by child-molesters. Say he must send a ship for her.’

Rosie’s laptop, an ancient Toshiba, was kept wrapped in a piece of blanket on a rickety table beneath a pile of papers. ‘That’s fine,’ Rosie said about using it. ‘Whenever you feel like it. There’s no charge.’

I first emailed a message of safe arrival to Verity and my brothers and invited them to contact me if they wished, but to be circumspect because mail could be read. Prompted by Lady Myre, I then tried to communicate with the elusive Sir Roland. I found email addresses for six London Rookeries but she was unsure in which of them he might reside and said he could be on the Isle of Wight. I sent the same message to all six unlikely abodes:

To Whom It May Concern:

Would you please advise Sir Roland Myre that his wife Hortense has arrived on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. She is distressed and feels marooned. There is no shipping off the island and it has no airstrip. She wishes to be transported to more congenial territory and would appreciate it if, given his