We ate pineapple buns and cornflakes and tried to stop the powdered-milk mix slopping out of our bowls. Kurt asked about the sex crimes on Pitcairn and, because we seemed again to be heading in that direction, I tried to voice my views about the island and citizenship and the current trials and to what law of what land or conscience a man was answerable when it came to the rape of a girl.
Lady Myre said she thought mandatory castration was the only thing to stop rapists re-offending. She said she doubted there was such a thing as good sex on Pitcairn and, as far as she was concerned, good sex was defined by the intensity of her orgasm. ‘If on the Richter scale’, she said, ‘it’s of magnitude nine, and ricochets through me, whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh, then I call that good sex whatever the technique.’ She’d found her chocolate brazils and was sharing them with Kurt. She was wearing an emerald-green visor and matching shorts and a purple T-shirt with the slogan DIESEL printed across it. With a wink she told me these were the colours of women’s emancipation.
Kurt wanted to pursue this line of conversation but I did not. I told him how the estimated cost of the Pitcairn trials was more than five million pounds but very little money was spent on this remote island’s infrastructure. How they depended on rain for the water supply and hadn’t a proper jetty or café or mainland phone. How they were all related to each other and that with few visitors they were suspicious of the outside world and how these troubles divided families and humiliated them all.
Lady Myre said, ‘We know all this, darling,’ but I wanted to tell them more. I described my last late-night conversation with Rosie and Hank and Michael Young, when they’d said they thought they lived under Pitcairn not British law. I said how the accused men had been encouraged to plead not guilty by the defence lawyers. I agreed with the islanders that some sort of truth-and-reconciliation process would’ve been better for them all. They were fearful of who’d look after them if it was decided they weren’t British. They couldn’t make money from selling curios because where were the cruise ships now? And what use were Pitcairn stamps when there was no way of sending post.
It wasn’t, I said, that I wanted in any way to defend the abusive men – far from it, it was that I didn’t think this was the best route to reform. Because what was their idea of wrongdoing? I told them how Steve Christian had boasted of killing a hundred and forty fish in an hour. These men needed macho strength to survive the rigours of their crude and difficult life. What was sex for them but violence under a banyan tree? ‘You can’t be a girl on Pitcairn and not have sex,’ Rosie’d told me. And though it was like that for the Polynesian women abducted by Fletcher Christian and Edward Young and William Brown, whose fault was it that customs hadn’t changed? Who policed the place, or taught that sex should be consensual, or was concerned about what was of benefit to the islanders? The teachings of Adventism were so repressive and it was hardly possible to have candlelit dinners or to woo with flowers. ‘Pitcairn men don’t do wooing and flowers,’ I said, ‘though they like to tease … like with a fish on a hook.’
Outside there was a thunderous crack. Kurt staggered to the deck. I swigged whisky from my flask. Through my oration Lady Myre had been sorting the counters for Dingo and Murder on the Orient Express. ‘It’s a pity you’re such a trendy lefty, with not an iota of a sense of humour,’ she said, ‘because you do look so cute.’ She put her hand on my thigh. ‘Will you be my fish on a hook?’ she said. ‘I’ll woo you with flowers and candlelit dinners. Though I’d quite like to have my way with you under a banyan tree.’
I wondered if death, when it came, would seem as surreal. ‘We’re talking about the rape of girls’, I said, ‘by very rough men.’
‘I know, darling,’ she said. ‘But what can I do about it? It’s an arsehole of an island. It would be better if it sank into the sea.’
I marvelled at how at ease she seemed in this dangerous situation. On Pitcairn she’d been depressed and scared of cockroaches and bed bugs. Now she seemed blithe and sublimely optimistic, as if safeguarded and in her element, whereas I was afraid.
Kurt came back and shouted, ‘Yippeeee, yippeeee, the rudder’s free!’ He circled round and punched the air.
‘You see,’ said Lady Myre. ‘That’s what happens if you believe in Horoscopy and God.’
Apparently a counter-wave of similar force had dashed against the rudder and knocked it back into position. Kurt became so happy. He kept shouting yippee, and he sort of yodelled and said he was in love again. He raised a sail, fired the engine, and said now we’d blast towards Mangareva in no time. He put Jimi Hendrix on his CD player, cooked eggs and bacon, and sang along to ‘Rainy Day, Dream Away’. I asked him how dangerous it had been, losing the rudder, and he said it was the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to him, ameliorated only because there was no land mass near.
The sea turned calm and so did the mood between Kurt and me. We opened a
