by John Boyne
A silence hung in the air between us for quite some time after that. I could tell that he was torn between anger and injured feelings and knew that to say anything too soon would only precipitate more drama from him, and so I waited a spell before offering my apology.
‘I misspoke earlier, sir,’ said I finally, conjuring up as regretful a tone as I could find within myself. ‘I meant no harm.’
‘Perhaps you should think before you speak in future, then,’ said he, refusing to turn his head to look at me.
I swear that I felt we were an old, married couple, lost between the twin passions of love and resentment. ‘Aye, I should,’ said I. ‘I knew little of ship life before stepping on board the Bounty, but I do know from the salts I met back in Portsmouth that whippings and beatings are the norms on other boats, not the exceptions, as they have been on ours.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, mollified a little at last. ‘I wonder, do the other men realize that? I feel no gratitude coming my way from them on that score. Not that I expect it. A captain can never expect to be loved by the men who work beneath him, but I have tried hard to create a harmonious atmosphere on board. I have worked at it day and night. But you had a question, Turnstile, before this whole sorry business began.’
‘Aye,’ said I, recalling it now. ‘I only wondered why you told the island king that Captain Cook sent his greetings to him and that he was alive and well and living the fine life back in London, when you of all people must know that he is—’
‘Dead?’ he said, interrupting me. ‘Of course I know it, lad, for was I not with him at the terrible moment?’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘You consider me a liar, perhaps, but there’s more to this than you realize. Tynah and Captain Cook had established a successful friendship on the last occasion that Englishmen visited these islands, a cordiality that brought us all the things we needed from that voyage and allowed our mission to end successfully. It seemed to me that if he knew that Captain Cook had been killed on another island, our friendship might suffer, as he might consider me suspicious of him. He might think that we were here to avenge the loss. He might consider striking first. And in turn we would very likely fail to acquire the breadfruit, which is, of course, our only reason to be here among these savages in the first place. These are delicate negotiations, lad, and I must play our hosts carefully if I am to be successful.’
I confess I was surprised by his use of the word savages; I thought he had more respect for the islanders than that. But then he spoke it with little regard for insult but rather with the natural disdain for other forms of life that only an English gentleman can have.
‘Ah,’ he said, stopping for a moment and looking at a clearing before us that in turn led to a crag overlooking a valley. ‘Step this way, Turnstile. I have something to show you here if I am where I think I am. I think you will find it rather interesting.’
I followed him carefully, for the ground was becoming uncertain beneath our feet and a false step could have meant an unhappy slide into the valley below, but in a moment we were standing beside a set of tall, green trees, trees that to my eye looked as if they might have stood there since the dawn of time. I wondered why the captain had brought me there and watched as he examined the bark of each tree in turn. He went from one to another, touching them, narrowing his eyes and staring at them, but then finally he appeared to find what he had been searching for, for a wide smile crossed his face and he beckoned me over excitedly.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing out a carving in the wood before me. ‘Read it.’
I narrowed my eyes and peered closer. The writing was difficult to make out, but a close examination revealed the words: Wm Bligh, w/Cook, April 1769.
‘It’s you, sir,’ said I, astonished, and turning to face him.
‘It is,’ he replied, delighted. ‘I came up here with the captain one morning to look out at the valley below and he allowed me to carve my name in the tree. As I did so, he said that I would be a captain myself one day, perhaps a great captain, and that when I was I should return here some day on the king’s business.’
Feeling astonished that I was standing in the very spot where Captain Cook had stood before me, I reached a hand out to touch the bark of the tree. I thought that if my brothers at Mr Lewis’s establishment could see me now, why, they would turn green with envy at the shock of it.
‘We must keep moving, lad, anyway,’ he said a moment later. ‘There is much to see at Point Venus. But I thought this might interest you.’
‘It does, sir,’ I said. ‘I wonder . . .’ I hesitated, unsure whether I should say such a thing or not.
‘Wonder what, Turnstile?’
‘Whether I should be a great captain someday,’ I said in an almost embarrassed tone, as if the very idea was outrageous even to me.
His reply, however, both shocked and disappointed me, for he burst into a laugh, the like of which I had never observed on him before. ‘You, Turnstile?’ he asked. ‘Why, you’re just a servant-lad!’
‘I shall grow older,’ I protested.
‘The captaincy of His Majesty’s naval ships is for . . . how shall I put this?’ he mused. ‘Well, there are those of good stock, do you see, and who have a fine education. Whose characters are of a higher calibre than the men off the street. If England is to remain the great power that it is, then these traditions must be maintained.’
I raised an eyebrow but tried not to display my contempt for his words; he seemed ignorant of how insulting they were. But then I suspected that a man of his class did not realize that it was even possible to insult a member of mine.
‘So I could never improve myself?’ I asked.
‘Why, you are improving yourself,’ he replied. ‘You have improved yourself every day on board the Bounty. Surely you recognize that you have a better understanding of the ship than you had when you boarded?’
I conceded that this was true, that despite myself I knew almost as much about the day-to-day duties of an AB as any of them ABs themselves.
‘Then, let that be enough for you,’ he said. ‘Now, come along,’ he added, turning away from me and stepping over some rocks that were in his way and that refused to move for him, despite his exalted status. ‘I wanted to see the valley again and I have done so. Let us keep on.’
‘One moment, sir, if you will,’ said I, removing my own knife from my belt and setting about the tree carefully but still with a lesser hand than his had been. I cursed at the fact that my name was such a long one and reduced it to a mere Turnstile, w/Bligh, 1789.
‘Ready, sir,’ said I then, turning and following him up the mountain, all the time wondering whether he was right, that a lad of my station must stay with what he knows for ever or whether there was a way out of drudgery and obedience.
28
THE FIRST TIME I LAID eyes on Kaikala I was wearing naught but my britches and was lying on the beach, roasting in the noonday sun, tracing a journey up and down my chest with the tip of my finger. It had been more than a week since the crew of the Bounty had arrived on Otaheite and the days were rolling by in what I considered to be a very pleasant fashion indeed. It was at moments like this that I realized how fortunate I was to be the captain’s servant-lad, rather than a regular sailor, as they had all manner of tasks to do both day and night, whereas I had a little more independence and nothing more was expected of me other than that I would be available as and when the captain had need of me.
On this particular afternoon, however, the captain was away with Mr Christian and Mr Elphinstone, making a chart of a part of the island that he hadn’t seen before where even more generous supplies of breadfruit were supposedly located and I was taking advantage of his absence to enjoy a little well-earned rest in the sun. Lying on my back, looking up at the sky, I felt that I would be more than happy to spend the rest of my life on this island paradise; despite the fact that we had only been here a short time, there was already a palpable sense among the men, and one that I shared too, that none of us was
relishing the moment that we would be summoned back to the Bounty and the long return voyage to England. Of course I had already decided that that was a country I would never lay eyes on again – the thought of what Mr Lewis would do to me when he caught up with me was enough to secure that fact in my head; I had little doubt by now that a few discrete enquiries on his part would have led him to hear of my arrest, my brief trial, incarceration and then the offer that had been made to me – and if I hadn’t been forced to pay for my crimes back in Spithead there was little doubt that I would have to make up for my absence upon my return. But that did leave me with the devil of a dilemma: how to escape? Otaheite was a relatively large-sized island compared with some that we had passed, but it was an island nonetheless. There was precious little chance that I could disappear some day and not be discovered. And what would happen if I did? A flogging? A hanging? There was only one legal punishment for desertion and I couldn’t risk that. There had to be another way. I just had to wait for my chance.
However, lying there as I was, thoughts of escape were far from my mind and I was engaged instead in a pleasant fantasy in which I was a boy of monkey-like tendencies, able to swing from tree to tree with ne’er a care for my safety. This was a happy enough daydream to allow me to enjoy the peace and serenity and I would have gladly stayed flat on my back until the captain reappeared later in the day were it not for a footful of sand being kicked crudely into my face, landing in my eyes and mouth, which was open at the time, engaged in the act of a yawn. I spluttered and tried to open my eyes to name and massacre the miscreant who had disturbed me, but before I could scrape the grains from the sockets I heard the scut’s voice barking above me.
‘Turnip, you lazy jackanapes, what in blazes do you think you’re doing?’
I looked up at Mr Heywood and frowned. ‘I am engaged in a contemplation,’ I told him, maintaining my horizontal position on the ground, which was as flagrant an act of disrespect that I could manage, for we were supposed to leap to our feet in deference to their sanctified state whenever an officer approached us. Nevertheless, I shifted slightly in the sands so that I was not so obviously beneath him; the memory of him standing above me and taking his shrivelled cock from his pants to piss on me during my outbound trial lingered unpleasantly in my memory.
‘Engaged in what?’ he asked, for his schooling was such as a nine-year-old girl might have vied with him in a competition of wits and not disgraced herself. ‘Contem-what?’
‘Contemplation, Mr Heywood,’ said I. ‘It refers to the moment when a chap is lost in thought and considering his past, present and future and their relative worths. The concept might be a new one to you.’
‘Past, present and future?’ he asked with a sarcastic laugh. ‘Your past was as an urchin on the slimy streets of Portsmouth; your present is as the lowest of the low on board His Majesty’s frigates; and your future will be determined by one singular fact: that you will end your days as a drunkard under the king’s pleasures at one of his gaols.’
‘Not a bad life, all told,’ I remarked. ‘Now, Mr Heywood, if you please, sir,’ I added, shifting further left again, ‘you’re blocking the sun.’
‘Less of your sauce,’ he replied, not so sure in tone now. He let out a sigh, as if the heat and the conditions were enough to distract him from any further attempts to assert his authority. ‘Stand up, will you at least, and let the king look at the cat.’
I rose to my feet slowly and brushed myself down, for a direct order was a direct order and I knew well that I could get away with a certain amount of banter but that he’d see me swing if I disobeyed him. I considered for a moment which was the more unusual, the fact that he considered me to be a feline creature or his own regal pretensions, but it was neither here nor there for the moment, so I held my tongue on it. He was looking at me with that mixture of contempt and revulsion that he always pierced me with. For my part I could only consider why the heat of the Otaheite sun had burned his skin so bad. It made his pimples look like dormant volcanoes.
‘You’re a lazy good-for-nothing, do you know that, Turnip?’ asked he, and for once my composure around him dropped.
‘Turnstile,’ said I. ‘My name is Turnstile, Mr Heywood. John Jacob Turnstile. Is it so difficult for a fellow like you to remember that? And you supposedly of intellect.’
‘Your name could be Margaret Delacroix for all I care, Turnip,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘You’re just a servant-lad and I’m an officer, which means—’
‘You’re above me, I know,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘I’m familiar with the ladder by now.’
‘What were you doing anyway?’ he asked then.
‘I should have thought it was plain to see,’ said I. ‘The captain is away for the afternoon with the senior officers’ – I threw that in for a farce even though it was beneath me – ‘which meant that I had a little time to myself.’
Mr Heywood laughed and shook his head. ‘My God, Turnip . . . Turnstile,’ he said then dramatically, ‘you really don’t have a whisper of a clue, do you? There is no free time for His Majesty’s men. Just because the captain has decided that you’re of little use to him today does not give you cause for idleness. You seek out work! You come and find me and ask what needs doing!’
‘Ah,’ said I, considering it. ‘I was unfamiliar with the rules. I’ll bear it in mind for future occasions although, I must confess, the captain gives me very little free time indeed. He can’t bear to be parted from those he considers most worthy of his attentions.’ Even as I spoke, I concluded that this exchange, which was spoiling my afternoon, was entirely my own fault anyway. I should have been hiding out of sight, not lying around where any old scut could find me. I would not make such an error of judgement again.
‘I need you over by the gardens,’ said Mr Heywood then, dismissing our badinage suddenly. ‘Pull yourself together and follow me, if you please.’
Over the course of the weeks since our arrival many of the crew members had been engaged in the occupation of digging a garden at a nearby part of the island. The task involved cutting the soil, then turning it, then laying out neat rows side by side that stretched on for quite some distance. I had gone to visit it a day or two earlier, having little else to do, and been impressed by the level of activity taking place, but had made sure to keep myself out of sight lest I be offered the chance to take part in it. The captain had sat down with King Tynah and explained the reason for his mission – the collection of the breadfruit – and after a little appropriate flattery the king had happily agreed that we might take all we liked. The island was littered with them after all and there was no risk of our making the item extinct. However, the plan was not, as I had imagined, to take the breadfruit themselves and transport them back to the ship; on the contrary, we were going to grow as many fresh samples as we could from original shoots, then plant those saplings in the earthenware pots near the captain’s cabin, before transporting them onwards to our next destination, the West Indies, before returning home.
‘I had better not, if it’s all the same to you, sir,’ said I, resolving to be polite if it would mean that he would leave me in peace. ‘The captain might return at any minute and if he wants me for something I have to be available.’
‘The captain,’ stated Mr Heywood in a firm voice, ‘will be away until sunset. He will have no need of you in the meantime. He didn’t take you with him, did he?’
‘No, sir,’ I admitted. ‘He left us both behind.’
‘In which case you are free to help with the gardens.’
I opened my mouth, attempting to locate a further piece of sauce that might serve the twin pleasures of excusing me from the work while also irritating him to the point that his head might explode, but I could discover none and before I knew what day of the week it was I was being led back in the direction of that area of the island where hard work was undertaken.
An hour later and there I was, tilling soil with nine or ten other crew members, my arms protesting th
e strange weight of the hoes, so uncomfortable in the heat that I had stripped down as far as decency would allow, but the sweat off my body could have greased up a cog-wheel nonetheless. If I was to grow flabby, as Captain Bligh had suggested, I could scarcely imagine when it might happen. I had been a skinny lad to begin with but a twelvemonth on board had taken all the fat from my body and I swear that I could run a finger along my rib-cage and feel the bumpity-bumpity-bump as I passed each one along the way. I had muscle though, newly acquired since my Portsmouth days, and a level of energy that sometimes surprised me. Near to me was midshipman George Stewart, whose pale skin was burning up and would, I knew, present him with a pretty pain later in the day, and he looked as if he might pass out at any moment. Fortunately, the native girls had a strange concoction of medicines, which they trampled together in bowls into a fine paste and which they then massaged into the bare skin of the burnt men at the end of each day. I suspected that the men were happy for the scorching if it meant they got the familiar attentions as a result of it.
‘Here, George Stewart,’ said I, and perhaps the heat had given me the head-hysterics to make the following suggestion, even in jest. ‘What say you we take our hoes and bash Mr Heywood’s brains in so that we might make our escape?’
I meant the whole thing as a terrific farce, but the look on Stewart’s face instantly told me that I had erred badly. He stared at me with the contempt that only the most junior of the crewmen ever displayed towards me – as the captain’s servant I had no official ranking on the boat and so that meant that the lowest of the low had someone to look down their noses at – and shook his head before returning to his work.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ I said quickly. ‘It was just a joke.’
Something inside me made me regret my casual comments and I was about to go over and explain that I meant nothing by them, when all the men stood up and dropped their hoes and I followed their gaze westward to where a chain of four young girls were walking in our directions, carrying large urns on their heads. They walked with ease and seemed not to notice the great weight they were transporting; I suspected that they could have broken into a running chase and still they would not have spilled a drop. They wore naught but a strip of fabric around their waists to cover their shame, but after a week here the tendency of the men to whistle and leer at their titties had waned somewhat. We still looked, of course, and they gave me the motions so much that I was at tug more times during the day than I considered healthy, but for the moment the thing that interested us the most was the jars on their heads, for they contained something far more special to us now than the feminine form; they were filled with icy water from a nearby cold stream.