Isabella, p.29
Isabella, page 29
‘You must not think like that.’ He paused, glanced away, as if looking to the lake and the night-veiled mountains for inspiration. ‘Be grateful that we had the chance to know one another. Think of what we had as a gift, Isabella. Something our lives would have been so much poorer without. Do not believe that loving me has made your life unhappy. Promise me you will not.’
His tone was so solemn and the sincerity and wisdom and poignant beauty of his words caught at my heart. I found that I could not speak. I looked at his eyes and I saw that he was waiting for my reply. ‘I promise.’ My voice faltered. ‘I promise.’
I wanted to say more but I knew that if I did I should cry. Remember me, I wanted to say. Please remember me and think of me often.
As I will you. Because, unlike you, I will live the rest of my life surrounded by things that remind me of you, places where something of you remains.
I will go back to the house soon and there I might find, in the lantern room, the mark of your breath upon the misted window-pane. In the drawing room there is a cup from which you drank. There is a room where I will for ever see us dancing, in the blood-red glow of the dying sun. In the cottage at the edge of the lake the earth still bears the imprint of our bodies. In the summerhouse at Moorland Close you left your footprint in the heat-softened lead of the roof. On the stable door you made an etching of the head of your pony. In the meadows and fields you rode at sunset. We sat upon rocks in the sunshine, lay upon a bed of wild flowers and long grass, climbed trees, fished for pike and trout in the streams and collected baskets of fallen apples in the orchard. In these places I will always find you.
‘Fletcher,’ I said, ‘when she told me that you did not love me, I did not believe her, not in my heart. In my head I did, but never in my heart. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes. If I had seen your face when she said it I would probably have known that. But all I had was silence. And silence is difficult to interpret. It becomes an acceptance, or denial, depending on the circumstances.’
The things you do not say are as important as those you do. Why had it taken me so long to realise that?
He climbed into the boat and I had to let go of his hand. His fingers slipped through mine but I grasped them again, just the tips. The warmth of them lingered for a while, though the warmth of his kiss had long grown cold upon my lips. For a moment I thought he was going to say something but he must have decided against it. He did not say goodbye.
I felt tears spring up behind my eyes, blinding me, revealing stars in the darkness. How selfish grief is, I thought. The most selfish of all emotions. Even more so than love. The tears were because I could not bear him to leave me. When it was he that I should cry for, he who would not see the dawn break over the water, pale and beautiful, or the snows melt and spring come to the vale, or the summer and autumn return.
He took up the oars, struck off from the shore. I must not cry, I thought. There will be plenty of time for tears later, when he is gone. The rain will hide him from me soon. I will not see the little boat reach the other side of the lake.
‘I love you,’ I heard him say.
If only you had not. For if you had not loved me, none of this would have happened.
‘And I love you,’ I called back, across the dark water.
The waves slapped against the boat. Some nocturnal bird, some creature of the night, a hunter, rose from the woods with clamorous wings and a low, mournful cry.
‘Loving you is the one thing in my life about which I have no regrets.’
Already he was so far away that I could barely see his face. Those, then, were to be the last words he ever spoke to me. Those words in which there was comfort and understanding and forgiveness and a rare generosity of spirit. He could say that even after all that had happened because of our love. That is something, is it not? A love that is triumphant, that survives all that is put in its path to destroy it, that has no conditions, no limits?
I cannot be certain what made me turn round then. What it was that I heard. Or if, indeed, I heard any sound at all. Maybe I sensed something, some presence. Or maybe even in the darkness I felt his shadow fall across me. Some benevolent spirit, some guardian angel warned me. And if it had not … if it had not … I cannot bear to think of that. What might have happened if I had not seen him then.
William Bligh.
With a pistol in his hand. A pistol, which he held high, his arm straight, pointing out across the water. His coat, his hat dripping with the rain that fell all around him, glistening on the barrel of the gun.
He did not even glance at me when I turned. I did not panic. I did not feel fear, only a wild and blinding anger.
For how had he found us? Why had he not gone to the house first? Why had John not detained him, as he promised he would? The answers came to me instantly. She had betrayed us. Again she had betrayed us.
He was still rowing but the boat seemed to me to be moving very slowly. Too slowly.
‘I order you to halt, Christian, or I will shoot. By God, I will.’ His voice was shrill, very loud. It echoed in the darkness.
Still I heard the slap of the oars against the water. I wanted to call out to him. But whether I should tell him to stop or to row for his life I did not know.
Courage is not required to take the only course of action that is open to one. And anger or desperation can be fine substitutes for courage. It was anger and desperation that made me stand in front of him. In front of the pistol, so that the barrel of it was aimed right at my heart.
‘Let him go, Mr Bligh.’
Nothing happened. There was just the sound of the rain in the trees, the oars dipping into the water, the lapping of the waves against the shore, my heart thundering inside my head.
‘Mrs Curwen. I must ask you to stand out of my way.’
I did not.
He fired into the air. I felt the shot rip past me, like a sudden vicious wind. It split the darkness with a shuddering crack and the mountains threw it back as it resounded round the vale in repeated echoes. A little puff of smoke lingered in the air. I caught the smell of sulphur. He reloaded the pistol, cocked it again, aimed it once more, out across the water.
‘Christian, did you hear me? Damn your eyes. Stop. I order you.’
No. Do not stop. Please, God, do not let him stop.
‘Please, Mr Bligh,’ I said, ‘let him go now.’
He looked at me then. ‘Mrs Curwen,’ he said sternly, ‘please go to the house, to your husband. This is no business of yours now.’
‘It is more my business than yours, sir.’
Why did Fletcher not draw his pistol? Why did he not shoot while he had the chance? Then I realised that he had had that chance before. And there had been enough blood and death and suffering since then. I remembered, too, something he had said to me. He did not care what happened to him after he had seen me. He did not care.
‘Have you no compassion, Mr Bligh? He risked his life to come back here. To see me. If anything happens to him, it is I who must live with that.’
‘He is a mutineer. He must hang, ma’am. It is the law. It is my duty. I have no choice.’
‘That is not true. You always have a choice. He had a choice, too. He could have killed you, Mr Bligh. But he gave you a chance. Can you not now do the same for him?’
He glanced at me. Even in the darkness I could see his hand trembling.
The sound of the oars grew fainter. I did not allow myself a last glance at him. A moment more. If I could give him just a moment more he would be safe. ‘I know now the reasons why you took him on board your ship, Mr Bligh. You once spoke to me of how hard it is to be betrayed by one whom you thought to be your friend. He believed you were his friend. And you betrayed him, sir, by what you did. As much as ever he betrayed you. You spoke of honour. Where was your honour then?’
I wondered if I had said too much. For a brief second I almost believed he would shoot me too. A sudden flicker of lightning cast everything in a light as bright as day, but without the colours. There was only a ghostly, pallid white.
‘And you were wrong about something, Mr Bligh. It is I who exchanged and sacrificed love for riches. Not Fletcher. He knew nothing. Do you understand? It was I who was foolish and dishonourable.’
I saw him falter and in that instant I reached for the hand in which he held the pistol. I grabbed it, held it firm. He did not struggle.
His face looked strange, contorted. He glanced behind him. The soldiers must be on their way. I looked out quickly towards the lake. The boat was barely visible, nothing more than a vague shadow in the darkness and the rain.
‘I have tried to understand why you acted as you did, sir. Can you not understand Fletcher? Can you honestly blame him? Perhaps we should judge people not by their actions but by their reasons for them.’
He looked at me and then he turned his head away.
Beneath my grasp I felt his hand waver, lower, just a little.
He turned back to me and I returned his stare, attempting with the strength of my gaze to detain him from further action. This man I should despise, yet I cannot, I thought. Even now. Neither can I believe that Fletcher hated him, nor he Fletcher. Not really. This tragedy was born of something greater, the unquenchable desire in life for something more, something better. And the fear of hardship and poverty that haunts all those who have no experience of it. Edward, Bridget, Ann Christian, Fletcher and I. In that moment I actually felt sympathy for William Bligh and for Bridget. And despair for the futility of it all, for what we are prepared to sacrifice because of that desire and that fear.
He lowered the pistol and cast his eyes to the dark vault of the sky. He glanced briefly once more at the weapon in his hand then back at me. I stood very still. ‘I give you until dawn, Christian,’ he shouted. ‘Until dawn. Do you hear?’
The wind had died. There was just the sound of the rain. Falling, falling upon the water.
It was hours still before dawn. By then he could be far, far away. He would be safe.
As I walked back towards the house I saw that candles were still burning in the library. John had not gone up to bed. A warmth filled my heart such as I had not felt towards him before. I was fortunate and honoured to be loved by someone like him. The cloud of doubt and resentment that had always hung between us, though sometimes almost unacknowledged, had lifted and I had the sensation of something beginning anew. I thought of our children, John’s and mine, asleep upstairs and felt a rush of almost blissful joy at their closeness when, for a moment, I contemplated the years ahead, watching them grow up. It was a simple, uncomplicated feeling of pleasure and relief, and I realised I could never have been happy had I left them. I looked again at the candlelight through the library window and I felt tired beyond belief, beyond the capability of speech. Later I would go to John. We would talk as we never had before. There was plenty of time.
I entered the house, its safe, encircling walls. I climbed the stairs and went to sit by the window in the lantern room. Fletcher would see the lantern burning for a long time. A bright light, a beacon, in the darkness. For some reason I could not bring myself to leave that room. I wanted to be there when morning came.
I must have slept upon the little oval table, my head upon my folded arms, for when I woke it was dawn and a deep-blue light flooded the vale. The rain had ceased. All was calm and fresh and sparkling. The branches of trees and thin beams of sunlight wove dark patterns on the snow that lingered still in the woods and the low clouds cast wandering lights and violet shadows on the mountains and the clear water. I remembered with astonishment that it was Christmas.
I opened the window and leant out and breathed the fresh, crisp air.
How lovely it was. The loveliest place on earth. By now he would be far away. I imagined him already upon the ocean, the great white sails unfurled above him, bellied out in the wind that would carry him far from his homeland.
Here there was no wind to stir the trees. No birds sang. I could not even hear the lapping of the water. So calm it was, like a magnificent, glittering mirror.
And then the silence was suddenly broken. My heart gave a strange leap inside me. The sound echoed around the mountains, seemed to encircle me and lift me up, release my spirit to soar free. It filled me with an intense feeling of elation. Like joy, like madness, almost like pain. The solemn, beautiful voice. Low and solitary.
The echoes that sounded like the ringing not of one but of a hundred bells.
Epilogue
So this, Isabella, my granddaughter, I trust answers your questions. How often I thought of telling you about him, but the time never seemed quite right.
Perhaps one day you will meet your relations who live upon that other island, with rugged cliffs, around which flutter the most exquisite white birds that always fly in pairs and frolic together on the currents of the air. The people of that island, I have been told, do not like to shoot the white birds.
The people of Pitcairn, his children, are your mother’s half-brothers and -sisters. You have a right to know that. It is your mother’s right, too, but I have kept my silence with her, for she loves John as her father and since the day she was born she has been the joy of his life.
This I have written only for you, Isabella, and your children. If others read it they would perhaps wonder why I had written it at all for it is a strange testimony, a dubious legacy. People would think, perhaps, that much of it would have been better left unsaid. That the past is sometimes best forgotten.
But my reason for writing is quite simple. And it is this. My granddaughter asked me to tell her about Fletcher Christian. And there comes a time when we can no longer be silent. When silence becomes a denial.
And it pleases me to think that perhaps, one day, when the world has changed, public opinion will change too. People are always searching for heroes. Perhaps Fletcher Christian will become one. A fighter for freedom and man’s right to dignity. The founder of a people, half savage, half civilised, who have learnt to live their lives in perfect harmony and in God’s honour.
Then will be the time for others to read this. I leave it to your children and your children’s children to judge when that time has come.
Perhaps, until then, his life will remain shrouded in mystery. The rumours will not die for a long time, I think. There are sure to be those of future generations who tell how an ancestor was one of those who saw him, in the district where he grew up, after his secret return to England, and of how he is buried somewhere very close to here, beneath the soil of Cumberland. And so he will live on, when we are all forgotten, granted an immortality that is denied to the rest of us.
I believe he deserves no less.
Author’s Note
The idea that the mutiny on the Bounty and the life of Fletcher Christian were an inspiration for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was first proposed in The Wake of the Bounty. The author, C. S. Wilkinson, used as the foundation for this notion, the fact that a notebook which belonged to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Wordsworth’s coauthor of The Lyrical Ballads), and which was compiled between 1789 and 1795 – the time during which the Ancient Mariner was written – contained the entry for a possible subject for a poem: ‘Adventures of Christian, the Mutineer’.
William Wordsworth was one of those who helped Edward Christian to compile a document defending Fletcher Christian and, when a pamphlet was published supposing to contain letters written by Christian after the mutiny, he wrote to the Edinburgh Examiner with the cryptic comment that he ‘had the best authority’ for saying that these were false.
John Adams gave the first visitors to Pitcairn several differing accounts of Fletcher Christian’s death. The Bounty’s cutter and the ducats carried aboard her have never been accounted for, though the ship’s remains have been recovered from Pitcairn’s Bounty Bay.
Peter Heywood’s sighting of Fletcher Christian was reported in a footnote in Sir John Barrow’s book The Mutiny on the Bounty, which was published in 1831. Heywood only let it be known that he had been given a message by Christian to take home to his family – a message that exonerated him from the crime of mutiny – after he had retired from a successful naval career. However, he never made public the contents of this message.
Rumours abounded in the early nineteenth century that Fletcher Christian had been seen around the Lake District. Despite his profession and the fact that he had family, Edward Christian died leaving no will. It has been suggested that this was because he wished his money and possessions to go to someone he could not name in a will – his brother, Fletcher.
William Bligh was reported as saying he ‘cursed the day he ever met a Christian; and he did reside on The Isle of Man where he was the guest of John Curwen’s sister, Dorothy.’ He eventually transported the breadfruit tree successfully from Tahiti to the plantations of the West Indies but the slaves refused to eat the fruit. He went on to become Governor General of New South Wales where he was the victim of another mutiny.
Fletcher Christian did name his Tahitian wife Isabella, and their descendants live on Pitcairn Island to this day.
The descendants of Isabella and John Christian Curwen lived in the round house on Belle Isle, Windermere, until 1993. Their granddaughter, also called Isabella, married the grandson of William Wordsworth.
The fate of Fletcher Christian has remained a mystery.
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