The Trespass (43 page)

‘Only one of you!’ shouted William, who stood as helmsman.

Ralph did not even wait to consider: he was the elder. He ran forwards into the sea up to his waist, heaved himself aboard, took an extra oar at the stern as ordered, did not hear himself yelling at the top of his lungs
Hurry!
did not hear William’s words:
thank God it is daylight.
The others were left, impotent and transfixed, on the black shore.

The whaling boat made slow, wild, dangerous progress towards the rocks, guided by the young man William who used a long oar to steer from the high prow; taking the waves in a way only the most experienced of seamen would have dared, even so the wild water whipped and smashed the bodies of his crew; sometimes they thought they heard terrible screams above the crashing of the sea and the roaring of the gale; sometimes only a few hundred yards away the
Cloudlight
– the wrecked
Cloudlight
– could be seen, sideways, smashing against the rocks again and again with the force of the water, breaking into pieces. And then the crashing waves would take her from view again. The first thing that came careering past them was a ship’s lifeboat. It was empty. Somehow William managed to catch it as it passed, lashed it somehow to the whaleboat; even in his terror, rowing wildly, then stopping as he was directed, Ralph saw the skill.

And then, among the spars and the timber hurtling dangerously towards them, they saw bodies in the water, they could not tell if they were dead or alive as they were thrown upwards and sideways by the sea: just crowded black shapes at first, sinking, rising; then the shapes began to take form, a woman trying desperately to hold a child above her, a sailor pulling a man behind him, an old man sinking, dead bodies floating, catching on masts, on torn pieces of timber, all of the bodies and the bits of wreck smashed forwards by the waves, some towards the shore, some against the rocks. All the time William, shouting to his men above the sea, manoeuvred the boat as near as he dared, somehow keeping it far enough away from the rocks and the wreck and their own almost certain death. Ralph suddenly saw red staining the foaming water, looked frantically, wildly for the people he knew, the Reverend Boothby whom they had laughed at unkindly so often, the boy George who had sworn to be his friend. He managed to pull a man aboard the whaleboat, who then, unbelievably, was still strong enough to help him pull in the woman with the child: they pulled another and another, a fat woman whom they could hardly heave aboard, then the surveyor who had been Ralph’s chess opponent from the cabin passengers: spewing, screaming, silent. Then several of the shapes caught at the empty, ricocheting lifeboat, tried to pull themselves aboard it, some helped others, some pushed others away, some were caught on pieces of wood: indelibly etched on Ralph’s mind was a young woman, drowning before he could reach her hand, hit by a lunging foot through the thrashing water: he saw her eyes before she was gone. And all the time the wind roaring in their ears like thunder mixed with the crashing sound of the waves and the screaming picked up by the wind and thrown away again. Again and again the remains of the ship crashed and smashed against the reef, thrown by the crazed, violent waves until the
Cloudlight
was no longer a ship but a thousand pieces of splintered timber, and at moments fantastical shapes of twisted iron reached upwards towards the heavens in manic supplication. And still the whaleboat somehow stayed upright, guided by the islanders. Ralph saw William pulling at something that seemed to be caught on their boat: it was a woman’s skirt; William shouted something to his companion and then leant far overboard wielding a knife. Ralph saw that William was tied to the whaleboat by a rope, that he was half over the side slashing at the front of the whaleboat; a woman’s body careered past and then Ralph saw that something white and small was being half-thrown on board and almost in slow motion he saw that the thing being thrown was the boy George. Ralph lunged forward, fell, could not get nearer, someone shouted to him to mind his oar, Ralph caught a glimpse of the boy’s still, white face. William half-disappeared again, trying again to cut something loose, the whaleboat lurched dangerously; William fell backwards on to the bottom of the boat, vomiting sea water.

‘Go back,’ he shouted hoarsely, ‘we can take no more on this trip, we will lose them if we don’t go back now.’

Ralph did not feel his shoulders or his back: rowed as the others rowed, caught now dangerously on the swell, then crashing forwards at terrible speed, seemingly out of control, towards the shore, Ralph soaked through to his bones and further though he felt nothing at all, all the time guided by William with infinite, infinite knowledge and skill, calling to the men, guiding and manoeuvring while two of them, leaving the others to row, held on to the lifeboat that battled behind them to try to keep it afloat, the desperate survivors clinging to the sides for their lives, knowing even now they could be lost. And all the time Ralph was aware of the little white body lying with all the others they had rescued at the bottom of the whaling boat, and the eyes closed in the small white face.

Others were waiting on the sand to pull them in, the rope tying the lifeboat was cut; as the survivors were dragged ashore the whaleboat was already turning to go back again. Ralph thought he saw island women as he called hoarsely to Benjamin: that he had not seen the Reverend Boothby, that George was here in the boat. Kind hands began to drag the wild, shocked people as far from the raging sea as was possible: the ones who were alive. Ralph tried to reach the boy: as Benjamin, struggling in deep water, lifted him from the whaling boat, Ralph saw the boy’s head fall forward. He seemed to be dead.
I swear,
Ralph had said to George. He saw Benjamin turn for the shore, holding the boy in his arms, he seemed to be talking to him. The whaleboat shot back out to sea, turning to the rocks at once; Quintus stood quite still by the shore: he hardly looked at the boats, pointed his nose to the wrecked
Cloudlight,
waiting.

Ralph hardly knew any longer what he was doing, only that he kept on rowing to the call of the voices, on and on. Once again they approached the wreck under William’s orders, once again the whaleboat pitched and heaved.

But now there were no heads bobbing.

Dead bodies were whirled past them among spars and hats and broken planks and pots and boxes and chairs and shoes. Then something else rushed past Ralph, a larger body that he thought he recognised that seemed to be caught in a piece of sail; Ralph reached for the body then a wave dashed it away again. When the sea fell back for that split second before the next wave, Ralph saw quite clearly that the stout body belonged to the bald head of the Reverend Boothby. He had lost his clerical garments, his very large underclothes were so full of water that the body seemed to float as it lay face down, not struggling at all, as if, before the next wave dashed his worldly form against the rocks, the Lord had finally heard his prayers and whisked his spirit away to the rose-covered vicarage down an English country lane in the sunshine.

A faint cry reached them: all the men heard it and turned: there clinging desperately to the rocks were Lucy and Annie, who had hidden in a lifeboat when the hatches to steerage were battened down and so had not been locked below. William turned the boat sideways to the rocks but could not approach nearer.

‘You must leap!’ called William.

They saw that one of the girls was too frightened to move, that the other tried to persuade her even as waves washed over their heads. Then using all her last strength to haul herself upwards Lucy called, above the wind and the sea the men heard her call,
do what I do, Annie,
and Lucy leapt outwards, a leap of wild faith, hit the churning water slightly away from the rocks, struggled frenziedly out towards the boat, a sudden swell threw her nearer and miraculously William was able to lean out from the whaleboat, the rope again holding him, and catch at her hair that tangled in pieces of the wrecked ship.

Leaning on the side of the boat, vomiting, hardly able to breathe, Lucy nevertheless somehow called:
jump, Annie, jump now.

Annie jumped but she did not jump far enough. They saw, all of them, how her body hit another rock below and then disappeared almost at once into the wild waves.

*   *   *

Of the one hundred and sixty-two passengers and crew who were travelling to New Zealand on the sailing ship
Cloudlight
to make a new life, one hundred and twenty-five lost their lives in the treacherous waters of Tristan da Cunha, the loneliest place on earth. Most of them were trapped in the steerage area where the Captain had ordered the hatches to be battened as the ship under his command took in wave after wild wave as it was swept by the wind, sail-less and anchorless, towards the fatal shore.

TWENTY-FIVE

The
Lord Fyne,
having had to call in at the port of Lisbon for repairs, then delayed for many weeks in the tropics, made good time in the South Atlantic Ocean.

On the deck of the
Lord Fyne
the lowering, impatient figure of the Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP, was often to be seen. Whatever the weather he walked the decks over and over, like a caged animal. He seldom spoke. He drank heavily. He had forgotten Harriet’s terrible last look; even his unconscious seemed to forget, for his unconscious fed his dreams with such visions of his daughter that he would cry out in the night. His obsession grew until it almost overpowered him.

Perhaps he became mad, there in the South Atlantic Ocean as the
Lord Fyne
sailed past the islands of Tristan da Cunha in the far distance.

The islanders saw the ship, lit fires, raised flags.

Perhaps the Captain of the
Lord Fyne
saw the smoke from the island, perhaps he did not, but the
Lord Fyne
did not stop, sailed onwards to the end of the world.

TWENTY-SIX

On the
Amaryllis,
on the one hundred and fourteenth day, in the late afternoon while Harriet was reading Mary’s copy of ‘Vanity Fair’ in her cabin, a woman who had been wringing out a large cloth over the side of the deck suddenly dropped the cloth into the sea and screamed.

‘Land!’ she cried. ‘I can see land!’ and she burst into tears.

The cry was taken up by everybody on board. Not one person was left below, they crowded the rail, pointing, crying out, weeping in relief, straining forwards for the sight of land that would mean the ordeal was over. And there, at last, like a long low cloud on the horizon, hazy at first and then darker and darker, more and more substantial as they approached, was New Zealand.

*   *   *

Land. At dawn next morning most people were still on deck, their eyes never moving from the dark shadow. Who would have thought that land, the very land itself, the long coastline of the southern island, could inspire so many feelings of relief and nervousness and wonderment and anxiety and joy. They were making for Wellington, at the bottom of the northern island: this meant, the Captain informed them, negotiating the narrow and treacherous passage between the two main islands of New Zealand. It was autumn here now, he told them, and the winds were often wild.

‘Let the winds be wild!’ cried Mrs Burlington Brown. ‘I have lived to see land again, nothing else matters in this world,’ and Mr Burlington Brown looked at his wife a trifle worriedly: she had been behaving strangely lately, he hoped the journey had not done her any permanent damage.

All day the passengers stared at the coastline as it came nearer. They could not yet see details as the winds took them northwards. But they imagined trees and rivers and mountains and Englishmen.

On the second day of traversing the coast the land suddenly came much nearer: first snow-capped mountain tops could be discerned, then swathes of dark green bush reaching right down to the sea. And then a canoe suddenly appeared. Nothing could have been more strange to the passengers hanging over the rail of the
Amaryllis
than the sight – their first sight of other human beings apart from the Portuguese stick figures – of scantily clad natives paddling towards them shouting and laughing, some of them women. As it got nearer the passengers of the
Amaryllis
could see that the canoe was laden down with vegetables and fruit, and then they saw there were pigs in the canoe as well as people. An apparent leader and several others climbed aboard with great agility and said good morning. Many of the ladies turned away, deeply shocked by the sight of so much flesh (brown flesh at that) while the crew negotiated to buy the fresh food. Harriet observed that some of the sailors seemed to know a few words of the native language, and that the price of all the produce brought on board was a roll of brightly coloured fabric, which had obviously been carried from England for this purpose.

When the natives – the Maoris as they were properly called – paddled away back to land they began to sing in a strange language and their voices echoed back to the
Amaryllis.
To the passengers’ enormous surprise, for of course they did not understand the words, the tune was very familiar. The Maoris were, quite clearly, singing ‘Home, Sweet Home’.

And Harriet Cooper began to laugh. On the long days on the
Amaryllis
no-one had ever seen Harriet laugh. They had seen the smile that lit up her face in such an extraordinary manner, Mr Nicholas Tennyson knew he would never forget that smile. But Harriet was leaning on the ship’s rail and laughing. It crossed Mr Burlington Brown’s mind that ladies should not really laugh – there was something (he could hardly articulate the word even to himself)
abandoned
in laughter – but he could not stop himself from watching. Her head was back and her hair was caught by the wind and her long, slim hand lay at her throat as ‘Home, Sweet Home’ still drifted across the water. And then, infected, other passengers began to laugh too: laughter rippled from the poop deck and down on to the main deck; small boys ran joyously over the ship’s ropes, thin weary women felt the journey dropping from their shoulders and men smiled. The sound rippled away at last and the fresh food was taken below and people moved, still smiling, from one part of the ship to another, and the timbers of the
Amaryllis
sighed and settled and the ship moved onwards, nearer and nearer to its destination.