THE MORNING THAT WE WERE DUE to leave Otaheite was one of the strangest of all the days I spent at sea. The captain was up before five bells and insisted on my being up to join him.
‘What a beautiful morning, Turnstile,’ he said cheerfully as I prepared his breakfast. ‘A good day to up-anchor.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said I, betraying the fact that I did not feel quite as good about this prospect as he did.
‘What’s the matter, boy? Aren’t you glad to be starting the home stretch?’
I thought about it for a moment. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s not as if we’ll be back in time for our dinner, now, is it? It will be many months before we are home. We have the West Indies to get to first before we start for England.’
‘True, but the return journey will be nothing like as difficult as the crossing was. Trust me on this, Turnstile. We shall make it wonderfully well.’
I had scarcely seen the captain in better humour than he was now that we were about to leave the island and return to the seas. It was true that his temper had improved considerably since he had bound the men back to the boat, but this was in a directly inverse proportion to the tempers of the men, who did not want to leave. This was a clear fact. Given the chance, the majority of them would have stayed on Otaheite for ever, but that chance was not afforded them. We had a mission to complete and no man had the freedom to make his own choices, not I, not the sailors, not even the captain himself.
‘You will accompany me to bid farewell to King Tynah?’ he asked me. ‘One last visit to the shores for you? It’s been some time since you’ve been there, I imagine.’
‘As you wish, sir,’ I replied, for I was unsure whether or not I wanted to cross paths with Kaikala. My mind was still obsessing over what I had seen that night and the manner in which she had played me for a fool – aye, and Mr Heywood too. Although the last laugh, I suspected, would be on her, for while I might have found some clever way to smuggle her on board and home with me had I still been well disposed towards her, I did not think that Mr Heywood, the scut, had any similar intention.
‘I do so wish, Turnstile. What’s the matter with you, boy? Why are you so downhearted? The men are the same. Every one of them looking glum, as if they didn’t want to see their homes again.’
There was no talking to him when he was in a mood like this; it was as if he simply did not want to acknowledge that the way he felt about things was not necessarily the way the rest of us felt. For my part, I was starting to think about how I would avoid returning to England. We had only one stop to make en route and that was at the West Indies, and it was quite a simple equation: I had to make my escape there or find my way back into the clutches of Mr Lewis. The penalties I would face at home would be too terrible to ignore.
‘How long will we be docked?’ I asked him. ‘At the West Indies, I mean.’
‘Not long, I shouldn’t think,’ replied the captain. ‘A couple of weeks. We have more than a thousand breadfruit plants to transplant and I dare say by the time we get there we shall need to make some repairs to the ship and take on fresh supplies. Three weeks at most. Then it’s homeward bound.’
Three weeks. More than enough time to make my move. And at least when I did so it would not be from an island, so I would not be caught as easily as Muspratt, Millward and Churchill. They wouldn’t see me for dust.
The king was seated on his throne with Queen Ideeah by his side, just as he had been on the day, some three and a half months earlier, when we had first arrived to pay our respects. A servant was standing behind him, feeding him chunks of mango, for it was against protocol for the regal hand to feed the regal mouth itself. Our party consisted of the captain, all the officers with the exception of Mr Elphinstone, who remained on board the Bounty, and myself.
Although the captain had presented Tynah with many gifts over the course of our stay, there were some final tokens to be presented and he did this with a flourish. Tynah accepted them gratefully and it seemed as if most of the islanders had come out to say goodbye to us. There was a terrible crying and wailing emerging from them as usual – I wondered whether it might not be in their interest for us to leave so that they might finally be cheered – and the women ran to the seashore, waving their arms hysterically at the sailors in the boat beyond.
After the formalities were over, Tynah stood and took Captain Bligh aside to speak to him privately and the officers and natives milled around, speaking to one another. Stepping out of the forest at this time, who should I see but Kaikala, waving at me to come forward. I stood my ground for a moment or two but was finally led by another part of my anatomy and went towards her and was quickly dragged into the thickets out of sight of the rest of our party.
‘Yay-Ko,’ she said, kissing me again and again about the lips and cheeks as if her very life depended on it. ‘Where have you been? I have not seen you.’
‘The captain insisted we all stay on board,’ I explained. ‘I’m sure you know this.’
‘Yes, but couldn’t you find a way to escape? To come see your Kaikala?’
‘I suppose I could have,’ I said, stepping away from her and removing her arms from my body, despite the fact that every part of me wanted to throw her to the ground and take her there and then. ‘I suppose I could have swum ashore one night at great risk to my person and come to see you, but, had I done so, who knows what I might have discovered? I might have come to our special place and found you there, playing with Mr Heywood’s whistle in my place!’
She looked at me as I said this and frowned. ‘Peet-a, you mean,’ she asked.
‘Yes, Peter,’ I said. ‘Peter Heywood, who is the lowest scut that the Saviour has ever put on hind legs. I find it astonishing that any Christian woman could lay a finger on him, so deformed is he.’
‘But Yay-Ko,’ she said with a smile, ‘I am not a Christian woman.’
I opened my mouth to respond, but answer had I none to that. ‘How could you do it, Kaikala?’ I asked her, pleading with her now. ‘How could you betray me like that?’
She shook her head and appeared genuinely mystified by what I was saying. ‘I have not betrayed you, Yay-Ko,’ she said.
‘I saw you with him,’ I insisted. ‘You took him as a lover.’
‘And that is a betrayal? Why?’
I stared at her. At first I believed this was little more than further proof that we were from different cultures, but then I recalled my own idea that the men of the Bounty did not see relations with the women of the island as an infidelity, but merely as a need satisfied. Could it be that the women of the island felt the same way?
‘You asked him to take you back to England with him,’ I said.
‘He has denied me,’ she replied. ‘He came to see me last night. He told me there would be no more between us and that I could not come with him.’
‘Then, you are as badly deceived as I.’
‘So I told him that you would take me instead. I said that Yay-Ko would never leave Otaheite without me, that you would bring me to England and make me your wife and I would live in your palace and ride your horses and meet the king with you.’
‘Ah,’ I said, shrinking back a little. ‘That.’
‘And you know what Peet-a did? He laughed at me. He said that you were talking lies to me. That you have no palace, no horses. That you are not a rich man at all. And you talk to me of betrayal?’
‘Kaikala,’ I said, feeling suitably ashamed of myself, ‘I’m sorry. It seemed harmless at the time. I just thought that—’
‘Oh, Yay-Ko, it doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t care. I just want to leave. Will you take me with you?’
‘Turnstile!’ I heard a voice calling me from the beach; Captain Bligh’s.
‘It’s the captain,’ I said, turning away from her. ‘I must leave.’
‘No, wait,’ she shrieked, grabbing me by the arm. ‘Take me with you.’
‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘I have other plans. And as much as I care for you, after Mr Heywood …? Never! Not in this world!’
I made my way through the clearing and back to the beach, where the officers were standing by the launch, looking in all directions for me.
‘There you are, Turnstile,’ shouted the captain. ‘For a moment there I worried you had deserted us yourself. Get a move on, boy. We return to the ship.’
‘Sorry, Captain,’ said I. ‘I didn’t hear—’
No further did I get in my sentence, for I heard the sound of running and screaming behind me and saw the eyes of the officers open wide. I thought for a moment I had been murdered, for something landed on my back and knocked me off my feet to the sand below. It was Kaikala.
‘Take me with you, Yay-Ko,’ she cried. ‘Please. I will be good wife to you.’
I sat up and scrambled back, shocked by the look of madness in her eyes, and looked towards the officers and captain, each of whom was laughing wildly at my situation, except for Mr Heywood, who looked furious that Kaikala was beseeching me to marry her, and not begging him instead.
‘I can’t,’ I said, rushing for the launch. ‘Captain, tell her!’
‘Oh, Turnstile, I think you have made a pretty bed here!’
‘Captain, please!’
‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he replied then, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. ‘It’s quite impossible. A ship is no place for a lady.’
We jumped in and the launch sailed out into the water, but it did not stop her yet, for she came swimming after us and almost received a bang on her head from the oars for her trouble.
‘Good God, Turnip,’ said Mr Christian. ‘You must have hidden talents of which we were unaware.’
I frowned and didn’t dare look at Mr Heywood. Within minutes she was tiring and we were getting closer to the Bounty. I watched as the men still laughed and saw her turn for the shore, her head bobbing up and down in the surf as she disappeared out of my life for ever.
She had hurt me, it was true.
She had betrayed me, although she did not see it as a betrayal.
And she had certainly behaved in a fashion at the end that made me glad that I had chosen to leave her behind.
But still, I had loved her for a time. My first love. And she had taught me things about myself. I was sorry to see her go. There, that’s the truth of it. And if it makes me sound a nance, then so be it.