Three days a week she ate only vegetarian food in deference to the gods that appreciated this. She offered to show me the devotional paintings she’d done on this voyage. She seemed happy with her husband and respectful of him, though he shared none of her religious interests. The polite reserve between them was like liberation from the test of intimacy.
Captain Dutt sat at the head of the table and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. He ate only orange segments, so I wondered why he was overweight. He explained that on Wednesday 7 July the ship would cross the International Date Line, which meant we’d have two Wednesdays. This news discombobulated Soni, who would like to have consulted her guru as to whether she should eat only vegetables two days running in deference to Wednesday’s god.
After supper Lady Myre went to the officers’ mess to watch a video of Ben Hur. She asked me to join her, but I said I was going to my cabin to work. What work was that? she asked, and the question discomfited me. Two A4 sheets of email, marked for my attention, had been slipped under the door. One was from my brother. Mother was now in Sunset View on the Aurora floor. Her room was pleasant, though small, and the staff were sensible, but her delusional state had worsened. She wouldn’t take her medication or eat any food because she thought she was being poisoned. She’d thrown her washing things out of the window then accused the staff of stealing them. They felt they couldn’t cope with her. She kept phoning 999 to say she’d been beaten up. With guilt I felt it ought be in my power to put things right, though I knew that wasn’t true.
Verity emailed that she was pleased I was safe at sea. She was taking a research job in Wivenhoe and would move there within a month. Our stuff would be stored and she was glad I had Mill Cottage to go to in the interim.
Work seemed a refuge. I made a chronological list of important dates:
1754
9 September. William Bligh born in Plymouth.
1764
25 September. Fletcher Christian born in Cumbria.
1767
2 July. Captain Philip Carteret, in HMS Swallow discovers Pitcairn Island.
1779
14 February. Bligh sees Captain Cook hacked to pieces by islanders in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii.
1780
May. Fletcher Christian’s mother declared bankrupt. She moves her family to Douglas on the Isle of Man.
June. Bligh returns home to Douglas after the fateful journey with Cook.
1781
4 February. Bligh marries Betsy Betham.
1785
July. Christian writes to Bligh and asks for a place as midshipman.
1786–7
Bligh and Christian voyage together.
1787
23 December. The Bounty sails from Spithead for Tahiti.
1788
2 March. Bligh makes Christian his acting lieutenant and executive officer.
28 March. Terrible storms at Cape Horn.
22 April. Bligh gives up trying to round the Horn. He turns the Bounty and heads for Tahiti via Africa and the Cape of Good Hope.
26 October. The Bounty arrives at Matavai Bay, Tahiti.
November. Breadfruit potting begins.
9 December. Dr Huggan the surgeon dies of alcohol poisoning.
1789
January. The Bounty nearly wrecked as it runs aground when shifting harbour in Tahiti. Anchor cable cut, probably by a Tahitian.
5 January. Charles Churchill, William Muspratt and John Millward desert, but are recaptured.
February. Stored sails are found to be rotten. Discipline erodes. Resentment at Bligh’s contempt and floggings.
4 April. The Bounty sails from Tahiti for the West Indies.
22 April. The Bounty anchors at Nomuka Island for supplies. The islanders are hostile to Christian and steal the anchor of his boat.
27 April. Coconut Day. Christian makes raft. Plans to jump ship.
28 April. Mutiny. Bligh and eighteen others set adrift in an open boat.
I doodled little boxes on my chronology. In my smart cabin I couldn’t see the ocean, though I heard the boom from the engine room and felt the ship juddering against the waves. I pondered that it was a misapprehension to think the past could be discarded. Christian consigned his captain to the ocean, murdered Tubuaians, then supposed he could move away and start again. But he took mutiny and murder with him. He was not in a state of grace, though he might have hoped to find his new world pure.
And I … Historically daughters cared for their deranged ancient mothers. And it wasn’t unreasonable of Verity to want a settled relationship, a partner to depend on and to wake up beside.
Wanting company, I braved Ben Hur and Lady Myre. She was sprawled alone on a leather sofa, had turned down the video’s sound and was listening to her iPod. ‘Don’t you love Charlton Heston’s legs?’ she shouted. ‘I’d die for legs like his.’ I tried to watch soundless images of chariots and men in togas, but they enhanced my sense of confusion. ‘The only line I like is “Your whole life is a miracle”,’ Lady Myre yelled. ‘It makes me cry. I don’t listen to the rest of it.’
Up on the bridge Captain Dutt worried about the weather. He’d received a shipping-forecast fax that warned of imminent gales and violent turbulence. He took off his baseball cap and his hair jiggled. He showed me the
