Mutiny: A Novel of the Bounty Read online

  ‘Oh, no?’

  ‘Not just that, no. There are other . . . delights of my home town that I would like to revisit.’

  I nodded, ran a finger round my bowl and licked it clean, for no matter how poor our food on board the Bounty it was a foolish cove who didn’t finish it entirely. It was tasteless, certainly. And it rarely satisfied the appetite, that was for sure. But it was well cooked and healthy and didn’t give you the squits, and that counted for something even if nothing else did.

  ‘Right enough,’ said I after a moment, for this was one of those times when I knew he wanted to tell me something but I wasn’t sure I wanted to listen. Either way, I wasn’t going to encourage him by asking questions that he would answer whether I asked them or not.

  ‘I mean more personal delights, of course,’ he added then.

  ‘You get some good fruit trees down your way?’ I asked him. ‘Is it the season for them now? When the fellows are out on the crease? Strawberries, maybe, or gooseberries?’

  Ellison looked around then and, seeing no one nearby, leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. I pulled back but he took me by the shoulder and pulled me closer to him; for a moment I was worried I was giving him the motions.

  ‘There’s a particular young lady,’ he told me then. ‘A Miss Flora-Jane Richardson. Daughter of Alfred Richardson, the victualler. You’ve doubtless heard of him? He’s very well known in Kent.’

  ‘I know him very well,’ said I, who had never heard the name in my life and didn’t give a tuppence for it. ‘And a more decent fellow never squeezed a sausage or sliced a chop from Land’s End to John O’Groats.’

  ‘You’re not wrong there. He’s an excellent fellow. But his daughter, Flora-Jane, and I have an understanding,’ he told me then, giggling like a schoolgirl and taking the reddenings a little. ‘She says she’ll wait for me to return and the night before I left for Portsmouth, which I didn’t want to do but my father forced it upon me, she gave me her hand for a kiss and, do you know what, I did it too.’

  ‘You saucy creature,’ said I, leaning back and opening my mouth as if he had just told me the most astonishing secret, a detail of the most salacious scandal as had ever been heard by man or beast. ‘You nimble thief! You pressed your lips to her hand, did you? My, oh my, you’re practically married to her, then. Have you thought of names for the little ’uns yet?’

  I could tell immediately that he was unhappy with my response, for he leaned back and took the reddenings even more and pursed his lips in irritation.

  ‘You’re poking fun,’ said he, wagging a finger at me.

  ‘Not in this world!’ I cried, appalled by the calumny.

  ‘You’re jealous, Turnip, that’s all it is. I bet you’ve never known a Miss Flora-Jane Richardson in your life. You’ve probably never even been kissed.’

  Now it was my turn to lose my sense of humour. The smile faded from my lips and the laughter from my heart as I opened my mouth to reply, but the words were lost to me and I found myself stuttering a response that made him mock me then. It was true, I had never known a Flora-Jane Richardson, or any young girl like her: that was not where my life had led me to date. That was not something I had been allowed. My heart started to beat a little faster inside my chest and I closed my eyes for a moment; the images that I had tried to keep out of my head began to return. The nights in Mr Lewis’s establishment. My brothers and I, lined up against a wall, ready to be of service, upon a determination. The gentlemen who came in and looked us up and down, putting a finger under our chins to lift our faces to them while they called us pretty things. I was naught but a lad when he took me in; I couldn’t be blamed for it, could I?

  ‘You know what they say about Otaheite?’ asked Ellison then, and I looked up at him, barely hearing his words.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked, blinking a little in the bright sunlight.

  ‘About the women there? You know what they say?’

  I shook my head. I knew nothing about Otaheite at all and hadn’t thought to ask much about it either. For me it was just a land at the end of our voyage, where the breadfruits were to be collected, and from where I might escape this servitude if I hadn’t found freedom before then.

  ‘Every one of them goes around naked as the day she was born,’ said Ellison, with a big happy head on him.

  ‘Go along!’ said I, amazed.

  ‘It’s true. The men all talk of it on board. That’s one of the reasons they wanted to get there as soon as possible. To have at them. They don’t live like us there, you see. Not like decent people. They’ve no civilization there like what we ‘ave in England, which means we can do what we want to them and take them whenever we want. They love it, you see, on account of the fact that we’re a civilized people. They think there’s no shame in their nakedness either; that’s why they don’t cover themselves.’

  ‘If they’re handsome ladies, there ain’t, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘And not only that, but they are willing,’ said he, giggling again, and I swear I wanted to palm his cheek to make him act like a fellow with a whistle between his legs and not like a lass.

  ‘They’re willing?’ I asked him, confused.

  ‘More than willing,’ he said.

  I waited for a moment or two, to see whether he would offer anything more, but words came there none.

  ‘Willing to what?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re willing,’ he repeated then, as if saying the words again and again would explain things better. ‘With anyone at all. With all of us if we want. It’s their way. They don’t care.’

  I nodded. I knew what he meant now, for I had been described in just such terms myself on many an occasion in my life and I knew just how ‘willing’ I had been.

  ‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Right you are.’

  ‘And all I know is that I’m willing if they are,’ said he then, clapping his hands together in delight.

  ‘And what of Miss Flora-Jane Richardson?’ asked I, growling at him. ‘Has she been forgotten already?’

  ‘That’s different,’ said he, turning away. ‘A man must have a wife, of course, a decent woman to bear his children and keep his house.’

  ‘You’re marrying her now?’ I asked with a snort. ‘You’re naught but a lad.’

  ‘I’m older than you are,’ he snapped, for we had established already that although we were of an age, his month was three before mine. ‘And, yes, I intend to marry Miss Richardson, but in the meantime, if the ladies of Otaheite are willing, then so am—’

  A rough slap on the shoulder made me spin round. Another of our age, the scut Mr Heywood, was standing over me, squeezing his spots.

  ‘There you are, Turnip,’ said he. ‘You deserve a flogging for your indolence. Didn’t you heard your name being roared?’

  ‘No,’ I snapped, standing up and almost falling over again as my legs had gone unnatural under me, for I had been sitting cross-legged and the blood had gone astray in them. ‘Who wants me, then?’

  ‘The captain does,’ he said with a sigh, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders and it was all he could do to keep us afloat. ‘Wants his tea, don’t he?’

  I nodded and walked away from them, heading downstairs to the cabin, all the time thinking of the willing women of Otaheite. And I’ll say it as it was: I hoped it weren’t true. I hoped that they were decent, Christian women who would keep their stays on and their hands to themselves, because I didn’t want any part of that nastiness. I’d never known a woman in my life and didn’t want to. My experience of matters of a physical nature had been dark and painful and all of it was behind me, I was determined on that. For several years I had thought little of it, though. In a way, I was grateful to Mr Lewis. Why, he fed me after all. And he clothed me. And he gave me a bed with a clean sheet on the first of every month. And had he never picked me from the streets when I was a boy, what might have become of me?

  I had a brother once, a lad a year or two older than I, by the name of Olly Mus
ter, and he was one of the most popular fellows at Mr Lewis’s establishment on account of his little snub nose and rosy lips that made grown women turn and wink at him in the street. Now Olly and I, we were more than just brothers at Mr Lewis’s establishment, we were more like brothers, if you follow my meaning. Olly was already living there when I arrived and, as it was Mr Lewis’s particular way to place a new lad in the company of an older one while he settled in, I ended up having great fortune on my side as it was Olly who was given the job of looking after me. Most of the older lads bullied the new boys – it was expected of them – but Olly wasn’t like that. A more decent soul never lived on this earth. A gentler, kinder lad never breathed air, and I’ll fight the man who says otherwise of him.

  In those early days, Olly and I would lie in our bunk together as the sun went down and he’d ask me whether there wasn’t some family somewhere who could take me in.

  ‘Why would I want that?’ I asked him. ‘Don’t I have a home here?’

  ‘If a home you can call it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There’s nothing here for you, Johnny. You should leave while you can. I wish I had.’

  I didn’t like to hear him talk that way, as I feared the morning I would wake up and not find him snoring in the bed beside me, but I couldn’t say anything in contradiction. He’d been there years longer than I and knew it better. At that time, I was still an innocent. Mr Lewis hadn’t yet revealed my true job to me. I had yet to partake in Evening Selection. In the meantime, as I was too young for anything else, I was trained in the art of pickpocketing by Olly, which was the day job of my brothers and me and a better teacher I could not have found, for he could have picked the crown off the king’s head at the coronation and been out of the Abbey and on his way back to Portsmouth with it perched atop his bonce before anyone was any the wiser.

  But things were not right between him and Mr Lewis, I knew that, and as the months passed they grew worse and worse. They argued regularly and sometimes Mr Lewis would threaten to expel him from his establishment, and for all his bravado, Olly was afraid to leave and would always back down when this happened. There was one particular gentleman, a gentleman whose name you would know, so I dare not mention it here; I will call him Sir Charles ——. (And if you think you know him from the newspapers, particularly when matters of politics are raised, you would not be barking up the wrong tree.) Sir Charles was a regular visitor and when he would arrive he was almost always in his cups and then he would cry out for Olly, who was his particular favourite, and Mr Lewis would instruct him to follow Sir Charles into the gentleman’s room.

  One evening, there was a great commotion from in there and the door was flung open to reveal Sir Charles running towards us all with blood pouring down his head, a hand to the side of his face, his trousers tripping him up as he ran. ‘He bit me!’ he was screaming. ‘The lad clean bit my ear off! I am maimed! Help me, Mr Lewis, sir, I am maimed!’

  Mr Lewis jumped out of his seat in fright and ran towards him; he tried to pull the hand away to inspect the damage and, when he did, all of us boys gathered there let out a terrific scream, for where his ear should have been there was naught but a bloody great mess of blood. And then we looked down the corridor and there was Olly Muster standing in the altogether, blood on his face too, spitting the ear from his mouth, and it bounced off the floor and landed in a corner. ‘No more,’ he was shouting in a voice that wasn’t his own. ‘Not once more, do you hear me? Not one more time!’

  And, oh, the trouble there was then! A doctor had to be called to treat the wounded man and Sir Charles picked up a poker to beat the life from Olly and he would have succeeded too if Mr Lewis hadn’t been determined that there would be no murders on his premises, for that would have been the ruination of us all. Of course, Sir Charles didn’t go to the police, for to have done so would have caused trouble for him too. But Olly was taken away by Mr Lewis and I never saw him after that. I would wander the streets hoping to find him, hoping he would find me too, for if he was to leave then maybe I could go with him and we would be brothers somewhere else, but my eyes never rested on him again and no one I asked could offer any help as to his whereabouts. The last words he said to me before he left were words of warning; he took me into a corner and told me that I should get away, that I was better than all of this, that I should go before it became a part of me. But I was too young to understand and saw only my dinner at the end of the day and the mattress I slept on. Once he was gone, however, it was my turn to take his place. It shames me to say that I got to know Sir Charles —— better then. He was a man of unusual tastes.

  Mr Lewis told him that I was willing. And now there were to be equally willing women on Otaheite? I wanted no part of it.

  ‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?’ I heard a voice saying as I stepped towards the cabin below. ‘Mr Fryer has thirty-five years on him and yet holds the same position on board the Bounty as you did on the Resolution at a mere twenty-one.’

  ‘But you hold that position now, Fletcher,’ came the reply. ‘Although I have a year on you yet, do I not?’

  ‘You do, sir. I am twenty-two. I grow ancient.’

  I knocked on the door and the two men spun round. ‘There you are, Turnstile, at last,’ roared the captain in a hearty voice. ‘I began to fear we had a man overboard.’

  ‘My apologies, sir,’ said I. ‘I was eating my lunch with Mr Ellison and we got into a conversation about—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly, interrupting me, for he didn’t give a flying fig about the events of my day. ‘It matters not. Tea for Mr Christian and me if you please. The thirst is too much.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said I, stepping over to fetch his teapot and cups.

  ‘Twenty-two,’ he continued then to Mr Christian. ‘A fine age. And who knows, perhaps when you are my age, thirty-three, would you believe, you will captain a ship yourself. A ship like the Bounty.’

  Mr Christian smiled and I left the room, shuddering. A ship with him as its captain? Why, we’d spend the day picking lint from our uniforms and combing our hair before mirrors and never get more than a mile away from land. The idea was a farce but, still, it gave me something amusing to consider while I made the tea, dismissing the memories of Mr Lewis’s establishment from my head, not to mention the prospect of the willing ladies of Otaheite. A double bonus.

  20

  NO ONE CAN GO THROUGH life without getting a little luck on their side from time to time and I’ll be damned if my little bit of luck didn’t come around when we reached False Bay, an inlet where the Bounty docked after rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. For weeks I had been hoping that the chance would come for me to get off the ship and make my escape and, finally, without warning, it was upon me and I saw my opportunity.

  I had been following our progress daily on the charts in Captain Bligh’s cabin and could tell that we had made good time through the waters that brought us from stormy South America to sunny South Africa and there was great relief and cheer among the men when land finally appeared in our sightlines. We anchored the ship while Mr Christian and Mr Fryer – together – went ashore to see whether this was a friendly environment, and when they returned we were informed that we might stay there for a week to replenish the ship and make repairs for the remainder of our outward journey towards Australia and Otaheite. They also brought with them an invitation from Commander Gordon, who was in charge of the Dutch settlement at False Bay, for Captain Bligh to dine with him. On the chosen evening I laid out his finest uniform for him in his cabin and was busy examining the local terrain on the wall charts when he came in to change.

  ‘Turnstile, what’s the matter with you, lad?’ he asked me, blustering into the room, full of good cheer. ‘Have you nothing better to do than stand around idly? Look lively, there’s a good fellow. There’s plenty of work to be done on deck if you can’t find something to occupy your time down here.’

  ‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir,’ said I, wishing to stu
dy the map for a little longer as I was examining the area around the Bay for potential escape routes.

  ‘What were you looking at there anyway?’

  ‘Where, sir?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘You were looking at my maps,’ said the captain, coming over now and looking at them suspiciously. ‘Why would you be doing that? Finally taking an interest in the nautical life, are you?’

  I felt my face take on the reddenings and a moment, an hour, a lifetime, seemed to pass as I sought an answer before, finally, a memory of how my story had begun came to me and I blurted it out, not caring how ridiculous I sounded.

  ‘China, sir,’ said I. ‘I was looking for China.’

  ‘China?’ asked Captain Bligh, frowning and staring at me as if I was lying there in my cups and making no sense at all. ‘Why on earth would you be looking for China on a map of Africa?’

  ‘It’s only that I wasn’t sure where it was,’ I replied. ‘I happen to have read two books on China, as it goes, and they caused me a great deal of interest.’

  ‘Did they indeed?’ he asked, more willing to believe me now before turning round and examining the freshly laid-out suit for creases. ‘And what were they about, these books of yours?’

  ‘The first dealt with an adventure,’ I told him, ‘And a series of tasks, followed by a marriage. The second . . .’ I hesitated now, remembering that the second was a saucy book, with pictures of an immoral nature contained within. ‘The second was much the same,’ I said then. ‘Another adventure. Of a sort.’

  ‘I see,’ said he. ‘And where did you get these books, might I ask? I don’t recall there being much in the way of leisure reading on board the Bounty.’

  ‘Mr Lewis gave them to me,’ I explained. ‘Him as looked after me when I was a lad.’

  ‘Mr Lewis?’ he asked. ‘I don’t recall you mentioning his name before.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘You’ve never asked me where I came from before I ended up here.’

  He turned round slowly then and stared at me, narrowing his eyes, wondering whether I was cheeking him, I dare say, although I wasn’t. It was merely a statement of fact. A silence hung in the air between us for a few moments, but finally he just sighed and turned back to his vestments.