by Graeme Lay
He did so, and she smiled. She’s not unused to compliments, Fletcher thought.
He wanted to be with her, alone.
‘Ask her, if she would like to walk with me.’
As Peckover did so he watched anxiously for her reaction. She blushed slightly, then posed a question. Peckover said, ‘She wants to know when.’
‘Now.’
Peckover asked her and she responded unhesitatingly. ‘Ae.’
Then she reached out and put her hand on Fletcher’s sweaty brow. She held it there for a moment, frowned, then said, ‘Mahanahana.’
‘She says you’re very hot,’ Peckover said.
Fletcher nodded, only too aware of that fact.
When she stood up, Fletcher was taken aback. She was very tall, only a little less so than he was. And slender-limbed. She glanced around. People were watching. She gestured for him to follow.
Peckover returned to his interpreting duties. When Fletcher looked across at William, he saw that he was deep in mimed conversation with Tu and Itia.
Fletcher and Mauatua passed through the crowd of spectators, she leading. The people murmured to one another and nodded approvingly at the handsome pair.
She walked tall and perfectly upright, her head held high. She didn’t follow the path that he had come by, instead turning off to the right and along another, steeper trail. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked. She stopped, looked at him quizzically. ‘Where are we going?’ he repeated, pointing ahead. She nodded, understanding, then made sweeping gestures with her arms. He frowned, then said, ‘Swimming?’ Without replying she resumed walking, her bare feet pressing into the mud of the track. He followed, admiring her slim figure and the mane of coal-black hair.
He heard the sound of gushing water before he saw the cascade. Brushing aside some ferns, she led him into a clearing. Above it was a waterfall, pouring into a pool several yards across. The water streamed through a chasm between two boulders, then crashed into the pool. Around it were grasses with bright yellow and red flowers and a little further back, forest giants with enormous boughs, epiphytes entwined around them. The water streamed out through a channel on the lower side of the pool.
Sheltered from any breeze, the clearing was searingly hot. Overhead the sky was as blue and bright as a stained-glass window.
Mauatua pointed at the waterfall. ‘Vaiharuru,’ she said.
‘Vay-ha-roo-roo,’ he repeated, and she smiled at his clumsy inflections.
‘Aita. No. Vai-ha-ru-ru.’
She sat on the sedge at the edge of the pool and slipped her feet into the water, indicating that Fletcher should do the same. He tugged off his muddy boots, then removed his hat and jacket. Rolling up his hose, he put his feet into the water. In spite of the sweltering air, it was icy cold, and he gasped at the contrast. Laughing, Mauatua flicked back her hair.
Fletcher rubbed his bare feet. Becoming accustomed to the cold, he sighed with pleasure at the water’s freshness. Beside him, Mauatua cupped some in her hands and splashed it over her face. Noticing again the tattoos on her right hand, he took it in his. Tracing the intricate, blue-black lines, which resembled a glove of blue lace, he asked, ‘Was it painful? To have this done?’ He thought for a moment, then screwed up his face and flinched hard, miming pain.
Understanding, she nodded, and mimicked his pained expression. ‘Ae. Tah-tau.’
‘Tattoo.’
She shook her head. ‘Aita. Tah-tau.’
They both laughed.
Then, without warning, she stood up and removed her cape and skirt. Fletcher gasped. Her skin was pale, and shone with monoi oil. He stared, spellbound.
Then she turned, took a few steps forward, raised her arms and dived neatly into the pool. She vanished for several seconds. The red hibiscus flower bobbed to the surface and floated there. She surfaced, her face towards him, her mouth wide open. She swept her hair back, then beckoned him forward. Seconds later he was beside her in the cool, translucent water.
‘I am Fletcher Christian,’ he said, standing on the sandy floor of the pool and touching his chest.
She shook her head. The surname was unpronounceable to her. She reached out and touched his shoulder. ‘Tee-ter-ree-ah-naw.’
He was newly christened. Titereano.
He took her in his arms. They were both cool now, and dripping. He put his face to hers, his mouth seeking her lips. But she pulled away, saying ‘Nei, nei,’ and instead put her nose against his, and blew a breath through it. It was warm, and smelled of something sweet. Some sort of fruit, perhaps. They touched noses again, then he held her, and they went to the grass at the side of the pool.
Minutes later they came together.
And from that moment on, the lives of both of them were changed forever.
TAHITI, OCTOBER 1788–APRIL 1789
Later, he would recall those weeks as the happiest of his life. His role as commander of the shore camp, never demanding, became less so as the weeks went by. It required him only to oversee the breadfruit collecting of the gardeners and ensure that the duty seamen maintained security at the nursery. This was not difficult, as there was no thieving by the local Tahitians. In fact they seemed pleased to help, willingly transferring the cut shoots to the camp, and assisting to pot them.
Mauatua’s family fare was a fifteen-minute walk east of Point Venus, on an elevated headland. From now on Fletcher stayed there, calling at the plant nursery every other day to check on the potting. When he realised his presence was largely superfluous — Nelson and Brown were preoccupied with their horticultural duties — he paid fewer visits to the point.
Consequently he saw less and less of William. So did the rest of the crew. The captain either entertained Tu, Itia and their feti’i — the extended family — aboard Bounty, or was a guest ashore, at the fare nui at Pare or at one of the marae along Tahiti’s northern coast. It became obvious to the crew that William preferred the company of the Tahitian chiefs to them.
That suited the crew, too. Once the essential maintenance on Bounty had been carried out — the sails dried and repaired, the seams recaulked, the rigging checked — they idled their time away, both on the ship and ashore. They fished with lines from the decks, then brought aboard and cooked their catches. If rostered for shore leave by Fryer, they roamed the coastal plain with their taios. Many brought women back to the ship. There the vahines stayed, had sex and helped prepare meals in the galley, cooking the fish and the pork they brought aboard. Bounty had become a comfortable hub, lacking authority. The very antithesis of a Royal Navy ship.
Late in October William paid a visit to Point Venus when Fletcher was there. After glancing at the rows of potted plants, he told Fletcher, ‘I am to be the honoured guest at another heiva today. At Papy-noo. I will be paddled along the lagoon to the marae there. I will probably stay three days.’
In the tropical heat he still wore his formal uniform. Adjusting his wig, he added, ‘These people continue to treat me royally. Two days ago, at Aru-aye, I was carried across a river by four warriors, then borne onto the marae on their shoulders.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘Fryer remains in charge of Bounty.’
He strode off, clerk Samuel following with a canvas pack filled with gifts for his hosts. McCoy, one of the guards on greenhouse duty, had overheard William’s little speech. He sniggered, and remarked to his friend Quintal, ‘Thinks hisself the fuckin’ king of Tahiti now.’
Although Fletcher ignored the comment, he had come to much the same conclusion. William’s sense of his own importance was being inflated through the hospitality of the natives towards him. But this munificence, Fletcher believed, derived principally from William’s gift-giving, and his ongoing dissemination of the fiction that he was the son of Captain Tute.
Fletcher’s days were now filled with love-making, swimming and exploring the forest with Mauatua. They swam at the waterfall pool, Vaiharuru, and at Matavai Bay’s beach. Never in his life had Fletcher felt so clean and fit and healthy. Leaving his
uniform at the encampment, most days he wore just his sailor’s trousers. His skin was becoming deeply tanned. He not only looked like a native, he felt like one.
And Mauatua’s lithe body continued to enchant him.
Once, while kissing her bare armpit, he asked, ‘Why is there no hair here?’ He stroked her bare mons Veneris. ‘Or here?’
She laughed. ‘We take away hair. Like this.’ She reached for one of his pubic hairs, and plucked it between her fingers. Wincing, he said, ‘I will leave my hair there. But I shall take on the responsibility of plucking yours.’
A natural linguist, Fletcher picked up her language quickly, appreciating the vowel-rich Tahitian. The names of trees, plants, flowers and places he absorbed and memorised, while at the same time teaching her English words and phrases. The Tahitian phrase ‘Aita papu’ — ‘I don’t understand’ — and its English equivalent, they used less and less.
There were other words they taught one another. ‘What is your name for this?’ he asked, caressing her. ‘Raho,’ she said, gasping. ‘You call?’
‘Cunny.’
She reached down and took him in hand, tenderly. ‘We call this one ure.’
‘Ah,’ said Fletcher. ‘Ure and raho. Nice names. They go well together.’
She told him of her lineage. Her family were high-born: her now-deceased father had been an important ari’i. She had been brought up mainly by her grandmother, Tetua. It was she who had rolled Mauatua’s fingers between hers when she was a baby, and stretched them, every day, so that they grew long and slender. Grandmother Tetua had also pressed Mauatua’s baby nose with her forefinger for a few minutes each day, so that it became slightly flattened. Long fingers and a flattened nose, Mauatua explained, signified beauty. Her mother, Maoiti, encouraged her to weave and plait and make bark cloth, activities which, unlike working the soil, would protect her fine fingers. ‘Only teu teu put their hands in the earth,’ her mother told her.
‘Your hands are beautiful,’ Fletcher said, tracing the outline of her tattoos. ‘And your nose.’ He brought his gently onto hers. She laughed with delight.
She was eager to learn about his family and how they lived. When he told her they had once owned a fare nui and fenua — a big house and land — but had lost both, she was mystified. ‘How can land be lost?’ she asked, waving her fingers towards the horizon to suggest infinity. ‘Land is owned by a feti’i forever.’
Fletcher shook his head. ‘Not in Peretane,’ he said. ‘My family’s land has gone from us forever.’
Mauatua looked horrified: to her, such a loss was inconceivable. Then, when he told her about the Isle of Man, she asked what trees grew on Fletcher’s island. Breadfruit? Coconuts? Bananas?
‘No,’ he replied each time, at the same time loving her for the questions.
She remembered the visits that Captain Tute had made to her island, even though she had been only a little girl during his first one. Her grandmother had been a taio of Tute’s and took her to see the sacred Webber portrait at Tu’s fare. Everyone had loved the great Captain Tute.
One morning she took Fletcher a little way inland and showed him a garden plot and English vegetables whose seeds had been planted by Tute’s gardener during his second visit to Tahiti. Although the plot had been invaded by weeds, the plants were still growing vigorously, and seeding. Her people collected the seeds, to grow the English plants in their own gardens. He told her the names of the vegetables in the plot and she repeated them carefully: ‘Pum-kin. Pee. Pean. Pars-nip. Car-rot. Ca-bage.’
Peter Heywood had also made a special taio, a cheery girl with almond eyes called Maire. Also a member of Mauatua’s chiefly extended family, Maire had the habit of breaking into song whenever she felt happy, a state which she seemed constantly in when with Peter. And as she sang, her hands traced patterns in the air and she swayed her hips languidly.
Peter had moved into Maire’s family’s fare at Arue, where he was made very welcome. He too was learning Tahitian, under Maire’s tutelage. ‘Her name means Fern of the Gods,’ he told Fletcher. ‘Tahitian’s an uncomplicated language. There are no genders, no declensions, no conjugations. Although the vowels are pronounced more like they are in Spanish, there are just five of them, as in English.’ He showed Fletcher a notebook. ‘I’m compiling a dictionary.’ In it he had listed common words and phrases in Tahitian, and their English equivalents.
He recited one entry to Fletcher, speaking like a schoolmaster to his pupil: ‘O vai to oe i’oa? Meaning, “What is your name?” O Peter to’u i’oa. My name is Peter.’ He said challengingly, ‘Get it, Fletcher?’
‘Yes. Mauatua has already taught me how to say that. O Titereano to’u i ’oa.’
‘Impressive. Now, can you say “I love you”?’ Peter was grinning.
‘Ae. Ua here vauia oe.’ He smiled. ‘It is a statement I have had much cause to use, recently.’
‘Indeed, I have used it much myself.’ Peter laughed. ‘It’s a most common statement to make, on this island.’ He brandished the notebook. ‘When we return to England I shall get this published.’
Fletcher nodded, but the words ‘return to England’ were chilling. Although he often thought of his family, he thought less and less of England or the Isle of Man. What he had discovered on this island, especially the love of Mauatua, was precious. When she lay in his arms on the fare mat, their love-making complete, his thoughts began to border on the subversive. Why should he return to England? For the sake of a few hundred sodding breadfruit plants? Which were destined to sustain a system he despised — slavery.
He lay on his back staring up at the underside of the palm fronds. Mauatua was asleep now beside him. The scent of their bodies, combined with that of the tipani blooms and monoi oil, clung about them both. Closing his eyes, he thought, this island could be where the rest of my life could lie.
One morning he and Mauatua walked through the forest so she could show him her people’s special marae, Tarahoi. It was forbidden for her to go onto the marae because it was only for men, she told him. ‘For vahine it is ra’a. Forbidden. But you can go.’
They emerged from the forest, hand-in-hand, and entered a large clearing. Mauatua stood well back while Fletcher walked over to the marae.
It consisted of a series of tiered stone slab platforms, rising in steps and culminating in what looked like an altar, also of stone. Surrounding the complex were coconut palms, flowering tipani trees and pandanus shrubs. To one side of the marae was a squat statue carved from pitted red stone, about six feet high and five feet wide.
Fletcher walked up to the highest tier. On it was a wooden frame, and dangling from it were strips of bark cloth and dozens of bleached human jawbones. Heaps of other bones lay beneath the frame. There were several rotting pig carcasses there too, putrid and swarming with flies.
Although the marae setting was bucolic, the sight of the bones and the stench of the rotting flesh made Fletcher blench. There was a sinister atmosphere about this place: it reeked of violent death. How many gruesome ceremonies, he wondered, had it witnessed?
Mauatua had earlier told him something of the terrible war that had occurred between her people and those who lived at Tahiti-Iti, at the other end of the island, when she was a little girl. There had been many, many deaths, she said.
Fletcher’s misgivings about the marae’s purpose were confirmed after he rejoined her at the edge of the forest. He asked her, ‘Whose bones are those on the marae? Enemies of your people?’
She hesitated, searching for the words. ‘Not enemies.’ She mimed someone being struck on the back of the head. ‘Men killed for atua. For gods.’
He understood. ‘Sacrifice. Human sacrifice.’
‘Suck-ree-fice.’ She rolled the word around in her mouth.
‘Who were they? The people sacrificed?’
‘Teu teu man. Always teu teu man killed for atua.’ They weren’t killed on the marae, she explained, they were killed elsewhere, then their bodies were brought here.
She explained this matter-of-factly.
‘And that statue?’ He pointed at the stone image.
‘Tee-kee. Atua.’
‘A god?’
‘Ae. Teekee atua. Tapu.’ She pointed towards the serrated peaks that loomed above the clearing. Bunches of dark clouds were roiling over their summits. Mauatua waved her hand in that direction. ‘In mountains, many, many marae.’
On their return to Matavai, the clouds broke and rain fell in torrents. As they sheltered under a huge banyan tree, Mauatua looked out at the rain. ‘Matari’i’i’ni’a. Te tau miti rahi,’ she announced. ‘Season of plenty, season of rain and storms, has started.’
On the last day of November Fletcher put on trousers, shirt and boots and returned to Bounty. He needed to collect a notebook, quill and ink from his cabin. He had decided it was time he started a journal recording his experiences on Tahiti, a decision inspired by his reading of the vivid journal Banks had kept back in 1769.
While searching for the writing materials among his belongings, Fletcher was struck by how constricted the cabin was, compared to his accommodation ashore. Being back here was like being a prisoner in a cell, or a cock in a coop. The air was fetid, still stinking of the body odours which had been washed away in Matavai Bay and at the waterfall pool. In confirmation of the cabin’s cramped nature, as he stood up he cracked his head on the ceiling. Leaving the cabin, rubbing his scalp, he saw William entering his. The captain stopped, and looked surprised.
‘Fletcher, good day. We have seen so little of each other of late.’ He held open his cabin door. ‘Come and chat.’
They sat facing each other over the table. William was wigless, and wore just his blouse and breeches. Fletcher noticed he had put on weight: the blouse now strained to cope with his bulging belly. His parsnip-pale face contrasted with the crescents of darkness under his eyes. Fame is obviously an exhausting business, Fletcher thought.
They chatted. William was affable and relaxed. Yes, Nelson and Brown were doing a grand job. They had already collected several hundred breadfruit plants. No, there had been hardly any thefts by the Tahitians. But yes, the time was dragging on. What was supposed to take eight weeks had already taken ten. But no, it was not his fault: that was caused by their delay in leaving England. And yes, the Admiralty officials were to blame for the lateness, for they had caused Bounty’s much-delayed departure and subsequent loss of time. If they had sailed when they were supposed to, the work would have been finished by now.