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Lady Myre asked if I thought the wings of the plane wide enough to get us all the way to Dubai. And she was surprised to be served no more than a beaker of banana juice, which she fortified with rum. She wore clothes acquired in the Tahiti market: a trouser suit printed with unlikely animals living under coconut palms and a panama hat adorned with shells. Once again I told her that Tubuai was a small island in the Austral Group where Fletcher Christian and his wayward crew had made unsuccessful attempts to settle. She told me to hold her hand and try to keep my thoughts about Fletcher Christian to myself.
She must have known we weren’t heading for Dubai in this small twin-engined plane. I suspected she wasn’t confused at all. I never knew when she was teasing or telling the truth. It wasn’t that I thought she lied, it was just that the truth was an uncertain concept. I put it down to her time as entertainment staff with the Shaw Savill Line, and all those years in provincial rep – shooting herself every night for three months in Hedda Gabler.
We landed to a view of a perfect South Sea island, so other than Pitcairn: white sand ringed with palms, a clear, still lagoon and surf breaking over the encircling reef. Melinde greeted us with garlands of flowers, took us to her house, showed us our bedroom and place to wash and where to hire bicycles. From the window was a view of the bay and swaying palms.
Lady Myre wanted to rest and listen to her iPod, so I walked to the shore. At my feet were big, curled oyster shells. A chicken rooted for ants in the sand. There was a crude carved notice nailed to a post: Baie Sanglante La Bounty 30 Mai 1789. It wasn’t hard to imagine the anchored ship, the Tubuaians grouped to watch, the pirogues paddling out, the persuasion of nails and feathers, the astonishment and fear of the chief who went on board and for the first time ever saw pigs, goats, dogs and even a cow. It was unsurprising that a young man stole the azimuth compass when he heard of its magical use. And then the panic: the Tubuaians throwing stones, Christian ordering fire, a dozen islanders killed, the clear water of the bay stained red. Baie Sanglante – the Bay of Blood.
Now fishes weaved around in bright, translucent water. I walked along the shore to the site of Fort George. There was little to see of Christian’s settlement – only a field one hundred feet square, a wire enclosure, a few ditches, a notice board. The site was idyllic, near the river, by the sea. The climate was gentle, the soil fertile. Here was all that was needed for survival except trust, safety and fairness. It was hard to imagine how Christian thought a fort with a drawbridge and moat feasible in such a place, in the name of an English king. It seemed as anomalous and bizarre as Laval’s cathedral on Mangareva. But the Tubuaians weren’t going to help build Christian’s folly. They were united in hostility, they’d destroy it when they could. This field was a testimony to a desperate venture by men on the run, cornered by wrongdoing and with no place to go.
I walked for a while along a mountain path, on a carpet of pine needles, past pale-green firs, breadfruit trees and unfurling ferns. I saw butterflies, iguanas and feral cats. Time and the sea eroded all things. Change happened in so many ways: by riding roughshod over the lives of others, by the perversion of gunfire and by the volcano’s answer to the might of arms.
Lady Myre seemed content that the island had all the features of a South Sea brochure: coconut palms and silver sand. She sang as she cycled on her hired bike ‘I am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung’ by John Adams, ‘When All is Said and Done’ by ABBA. When she complained of thirst, we stopped by the shore to get liquid from a fallen coconut. She stabbed inconsequentially at its husk with scissors from her manicure set. Waist-high in the green water of the lagoon was a figure from Polynesia’s past. Above his head he held a five-pronged spear. He stood as motionless as a heron waiting for a fish. ‘Monsieur,’ called Lady Myre. He turned, the spear still shoulder high, his body glistening in the sun, his hair tied into a ponytail, his shoulders rippling. She beckoned him and he waded towards her. His wet thin shorts clung to him. His arms, chest and calves were all symmetrically tattooed.
‘Monsieur. Pouvez-vous me dire how on earth I get into this coconut? Là?’ asked Lady Myre gesticulating with her scissors. ‘Or là?’ The fisherman took the green drupe from her, pounded it against a protruding spike, tore at its husk then handed it back.
‘What now?’ she asked and looked at him helplessly.
He pointed to the growing end of the seed: ‘Les yeux et la bouche’ – he pointed to his eyes and mouth, then made a stabbing motion at these soft parts of the seed. Lady Myre pierced a hole in the bouche with her scissors and to her surprise could then drink from it.
I thought of Bligh and Fletcher Christian. ‘Damn your blood you have stolen my coconuts,’ Bligh was supposed to have said. ‘I was dry. I thought it of no consequence. I took one only,’ was Christian’s answer.
The fisherman waded back into the green lagoon. Beyond him was the white fringe of the reef. Again he held his spear at shoulder level. He drove it into the sea then turned with a fish the size of a small canoe. It glinted silver – as silver as his spear and as the sunlight on the
