to drive with her in the carriage to Brigham Church on a Sunday and then go back, for family dinner, to the farmhouse at Moorland Close, aware of the admiration that would come from his brothers for having captured such a beauty.
‘I was thinking how much I loved you,’ he said. It would be good to have other words, he thought, rather than those she must be bored at hearing.
‘I laugh when I love. I am not angry,’ she said, frowning.
She would never manage the confusing nuances of the language, thought Christian. He was beginning to prefer the simple directness of Tahitian himself.
‘It was an angry thought,’ he tried. ‘I was imagining how it would be to lose you.’
There was never a moment, he thought, when that concern was far from his mind.
‘Lose me?’
Again she frowned, head lodged to one side in misunderstanding.
‘But how could you lose me? I am yours …’
The worry deepened as the doubt occurred to her.
‘… unless you are not happy and don’t want me …’
He went to her, urgently, cupping her face between his hands and staring down into her wet-black eyes.
‘Oh my darling,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever think that. No matter what happens, there will never be a moment when I don’t want you …’
He paused, recalling his earlier thoughts.
‘… if you were to die. Or be taken from me in a way I couldn’t prevent, then I would kill myself. I’ve lost everything. Except you.’
She smiled, still uncertain.
‘Are you sure … I would understand …’
He brought his hands around, so that she could not speak.
‘So sure,’ he said. ‘So very sure. I’ll always be there, when you turn to look for me.’
‘The constant lovers.’
Christian recognised the voice, without turning to face Quintal.
‘The sort of tenderness that Sarah might appreciate,’ retorted Christian. It was no secret that Quintal beat the girl who had happily followed him from Tahiti and to whom he had given an English name, as they all had to their women.
‘She’s happy enough,’ blurred Quintal. He was drunk, Christian saw, as he was by mid-afternoon most days. William Mickoy had brought with him to Pitcairn the ability to make a still that he had learned as a distillery worker in Scotland and once the rum had been exhausted, they had both adapted to the native drink made from the root of the taro plant.
‘What do you want?’ demanded Christian, hostilely.
‘Want? Why should I want anything?’
‘Social visits aren’t a practice on Pitcairn,’ rejected Christian.
Quintal nodded, despite his drunkenness.
‘Aye,’ he said, sadly. ‘That’s right enough. I never thought that on a South Sea island, where it is always summer, with food waiting on the trees to be picked and a woman content with me, I should be so unhappy.’
The attitude of them all, thought Christian. Boredom was eating into them as destructively as the worms that had devoured the boat in which he had wanted to set Bligh adrift.
‘He’s a fine child,’ tried Quintal, gesturing after Thursday.
The mutineer nodded, pleased with the admiration despite his dislike of the man.
‘That’s hardly surprising, though,’ continued Quintal, smiling down at Isabella. ‘With such a lovely mother.’
Christian frowned at the crude compliment. He wished her breasts had been covered. She sat quite unashamed, smiling up innocently at the man’s remark.
‘What are the others doing?’ asked Christian, to regain the man’s attention.
He knew by now he should have adjusted to the fact, but it always distressed him that so little happened to them on the island that there was virtually nothing to talk about. They were atrophying, he thought, like the fossils they sometimes found in the rocks on the seashore, among the relics of the Polynesians who had long ago abandoned the island.
‘Tending their plots,’ said Quintal, uninterested. ‘Some of the women are egg-collecting, up on the cliffs.’
‘I think we should be careful of that,’ said Christian. ‘Those rocks are dangerous.’
Quintal looked up sharply at the thought that Christian was attempting to issue an order, even now. There’d been enough of that immediately after the mutiny, when the damned man had behaved as if he were a reincarnation of Bligh. Quintal relaxed. Christian was staring into the ground, hardly aware of what he was saying. The time when Christian could issue orders had long passed and everyone accepted it.
‘They’re safe enough,’ Quintal said. ‘They’re as sure-footed as goats.’
‘I was thinking of Tahiti today,’ said Christian, almost to himself.