They talked of their fears for the future if the jetty wasn’t built and shipping improved. The island was being turned into a prison. They felt they missed out on the benefits of British citizenship but were penalised by the disadvantages, and they wondered what other charges might be levelled against them. They’d no knowledge of the intricacies of British law. Only in 1970 had they been given British passports and citizenship. Before that their passports, issued in Fiji, stipulated their right to reside on Pitcairn.
They were worried by a piecemeal approach to the island, with no rounded vision for reform. All the problems intertwined: erosion, a non-existent infrastructure, a small, ageing population, lack of money. A government official had been sent to eradicate the rose apple that choked indigenous plants. When it was ripped out there was further erosion of the soil. The tradition of barter had worked in the past but now there were too few islanders, and resources were depleted. Money couldn’t be made out of selling honey, dried bananas and curios if no ships called. Nor could they compete on prices. The cost of drying bananas was high. The generator was driven by diesel transported at prohibitive cost. It would be cheaper to give them money and save the electricity.
Hank said, like Rosie, that he’d missed out on his daughters’ childhood. After they’d gone away to school in New Zealand they’d never really come home to Pitcairn in spirit. And Rosie now missed out on her role as a grandmother. But over and above everything was the trouble of these trials. The cost was so high. And what would it buy them but grief?
IV
LEAVING PITCAIRN
Chaos imposes limitation upon our ability to forecast
38
We grouped by the jetty. The wind was a light west-northwesterly. ‘Perfect,’ Kurt said. ‘We’ll be in Mangareva in thirty-six hours. Two hundred and sixty nautical miles. Seven knots an hour.’ To me the sea looked wintry and rough. ‘The sea’s sweet,’ Hank said. ‘The wind will catch your sails.’
Rosie’d taken me to the shore on her quad bike and I was spattered with mud. A clutch of Pitcairners was there to say goodbye: all four of the island’s schoolchildren, Nola with a bag of pineapple buns, Hank with a crate of cabbages, bananas, grapefruit, Clementines, pawpaws, yams and passion fruit – ‘for the journey,’ he said and would take no money. Bea rested a spear with a crab wriggling on its spike against the jetty wall and stamped my passport. ‘Welcome to the Pitcairn Islands, Police and Immigration’. It seemed a contrary stamp, as I was leaving, but everything Pitcairn seemed contrary. ‘B. Christian Police Officer,’ she wrote beneath it in curly writing.
Lady Myre had been there since dawn. She was dressed for the sea, the logo FIRST MATE on her T-shirt, her visor white, her mascara blue, her shorts patterned with anchors. Her elegant legs were peppered with bug bites and mud. Round her neck were a spyglass and compass, clipped to her belt was her flask of rum and pawpaw juice. Her fourteen pieces of luggage stacked by the jetty all bore what I supposed was the Myre crest – a dragon at odds with a pitchfork. ‘My man,’ she called to Kurt. He gave an embarrassed smirk. ‘Ship ahoy,’ she called, and waved at the catamaran as it bounced on the waves in Bounty Bay.
Kurt took her luggage and my small rucksack ahead in the dinghy. I hovered, waiting for his return, anticipating separation from the islanders. The visiting officials were arrayed, pleased I was leaving with my views unpenned. Mary, orchestrator of the Truth Game, gave me a triumphant peck. ‘Back to Hampstead, eh?’ She looked, as ever, pleased with what she said. Les, the locum, talked of seasickness remedies, his nice wife smiled. The social workers stood about looking like social workers, the two policemen looked bored.
I hugged Rosie and told her I’d miss her. ‘How well we hit it off,’ I said, ‘two women from such different backgrounds.’ She said she’d miss me too. I thanked her for all her many kindnesses. She thanked me for the blouse and gave me a letter she’d written to her Chinese friend Charles Mo in Mangareva. Perhaps he’d help me find accommodation there, she said.
Lady Myre tripped from the jetty to the dinghy and Kurt’s arms with a whoop and an ooh-la-la. I stepped down decorously with merely a steadying hand. We sped out to sea and I waved: at the small group on the jetty, at the Hill of Difficulty and Bang Iron Valley, at this isolated, troubled island to which I’d never return, at some inner melancholy, at a half-imagined image of that bedraggled group of fugitives who’d arrived there in January 1790, desperate for fresh water and the peaceful cover of trees. Most of all I waved at Rosie, though I soon could not see her wide, smiling face. Those abducted Polynesian women, Mauatua, Faahotu, Mareva, Teatuahitea, were with her, in her work, in her cooking, in her dark skin and hair, in her knowledge of the island and the Pitcairn dialect. I hadn’t intended to leave when I did, or in this hurried way, I regretted I’d not been to Henderson Island or seen the flightless rail, but it had seemed serendipitous when I heard Kurt’s voice on the intercom and saw his yacht on the ocean.
‘Bye-bye, Bounty Bay,’ Lady Myre called. She flicked extravagant kisses from her fingertips then turned to the virgin territory of Kurt, her ascent from the dinghy to his boat, and her journey into the blue.
There were three cabins. Kurt had the largest with a control panel by his bed. The second was taken up with yellow oilskins and all Lady Myre’s luggage.
