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

ankles and ate a breadfruit patty. Lady Myre devoured a large quantity of the hallucinogenic fish. It seemed that Verity, my mother and all ambition were of the past and that there was no other world than here.

Though I was covered by the mosquito net and smothered in Deet, creatures from their home in the mattress still rose to eat me. I’d read that with a sticky bar of soap in hand, in a rapid movement one should throw back the covers, flash a light and zap these bugs. I did this and found not recognisable bed bugs but tiny creatures with lots of legs, dead on their backs.

A hand gripped my shoulder as I flashed and zapped. I screeched. She was an apparition in black satin, her face a white lanolin mask, her hair in a net. She’d fixed a sort of miner’s lamp to her forehead. ‘Help me,’ she croaked. She said there was a puma in her room, that she was terrified and must share my bed. I told her it was too small and that there were bugs in it. She asked me to escort her to the lavatory. She’d looked in and there was a family of cockroaches around it – would I do something about them and wait with her while she spent a penny?

A car battery provided low-voltage orange light in the bathroom during the hours without electricity. I shooed away the roaches and waited with Lady Myre. She grizzled and keened. I offered to swap beds if that would make things better. She said she’d prefer my bed because of the net and the sprays. I wondered with all her luggage that she’d omitted a commonsense thing like a mosquito net. She wanted me to sleep in the bed with her because she said she’d never needed a cuddle more. I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea. Then she wanted me to go with her, high up to Garnet’s Ridge, to light a fire to attract some non-existent passing ship. I told her an islander might shoot us, for they all had guns. I chivalrously waited while she washed her hands, guided her to my room, sprayed her legs with repellent, arranged her under the net and promised to help her all I could.

Lying in Lady Myre’s bed in the moonless dark, surrounded by all her boxes and cases, deprived of my neat possessions or hope of sleep, I tried to get some hold on my life. I thought of Verity, our cool Egyptian-cotton sheets, the firm mattress, the wall of books, the cleanness of surfaces. Perhaps tomorrow I’d send her a message, ‘The weather’s changeable and humid. Had wild beans and green-banana pancakes for tea.’

I thought of my mother and the world she’d contrived because of some malevolent function of the cells in her brain, her constant search for possessions she believed stolen.

The sea, so often a consolation, was now a worry. It stretched for ever like an enclosing moat. I reminded myself that the remains of the Bounty were out there in the bay, ten feet under water. I could dive to see it. I tried to imagine that first haul up the Hill of Difficulty, through thick vegetation, the relief of surviving animals as they headed for the valleys and the hills, the urgency to build shelter, get water, cook food, the fear of discovery by some, the longing for it by others.

By an accident of circumstance I now inhabited the world of Lady Myre. New Zealand was three thousand miles away. I feared no ship would ever come. I wondered what would happen if she or I became ill or had a fall. She seemed a more pressing problem than rapists and child abusers. I worried about her being bitten under my net, what would be best for her and how to find a ship to take her to a congenial place.

Dispiritedly I thought of Rosie’s blouse and my searching in all those shops. Endless choice and I’d bought the wrong thing. Something rustled under the bed. It was not, of course, a puma. It was probably a mouse or cat. The room had a warm, musty smell. And so the night wore on. Circles of thinking. The scuffling of creatures. A stretch of mental chaos before the sky was white.

29

Within three years of arriving on the island all but four of the Pitcairn men were apparently murdered in a bewildering saga of sex, hatred, drunkenness and revenge. It all started when Faahotu, the Tahitian woman partnered with John Williams, a seaman from Guernsey, died in 1790 from throat cancer. Williams said he wasn’t going to live on the island without a woman and attempted forcibly to take one of the three who lived with the six Polynesian men. The Polynesians fought him off. He then tried to leave the island, and to foil him Christian set fire to all the boats.

The following year another woman, Puarei, fell over a cliff while searching for hens’ eggs. She’d been partnered with Alexander Smith who’d changed his name to John Adams. He was the man who’d stood sentry over Bligh with a loaded musket while the ‘loyalists’ were forced off the Bounty into the open boat. He and Williams paired up and seized Vahineatua and Toofaiti from the Polynesian men. Mareva, who was already expected to serve three of the Polynesian men, was then the only woman left to be used by all six of them.

The Polynesian men then resolved to murder all the mutineers except Edward Young, who was marginally kinder to them than the others. They hated these ‘whites’. They’d been cheated by them, shanghaied, and beaten if they took yams or a pig. In a coded verse chanted by his partner Mauatua, Christian learned of their plot. He decided to shoot them. Three of the Polynesian men then hid in woodland, taking one of the fought-after women with them. Christian forced