Trouble in Paradise: Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Britain’s Most Remote Island. Kathy Marks
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rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_886df091-e6b7-54c3-8cdd-20d4ab079d74">CHAPTER 5 The fiefdom and its leader
It was Tuesday morning, which meant that Pitcairn’s one shop, situated on the main road, a couple of banana groves down from the square, was open for business. But you had to be quick, for it would be closed by 9 a.m.—and if you missed it, you had to wait until Thursday, when it opened for another solitary hour of trading.
The small shop was crowded, although probably no more than a dozen people were browsing the dusty shelves, stacked with tins of lambs’ tongues and condensed milk. Olive Christian, a grandson on her hip, was inspecting bottles of bleach, while her mother-in-law, Dobrey, chatted animatedly in Pitkern to another elderly islander. Olive’s son, Randy, and several other men who were about to go on trial stood around, laughing loudly at some private joke. They were mostly barefoot, and carried fishing knives in their belts. As Claire and I roamed the aisles, a figure in a baggy grey T-shirt leant over a freezer of meat. ‘We don’t like reporters here,’ said Dave Brown, with a half-smile.
Short and stocky, with a bushy moustache, Dave was charged with 16 offences, including indecent assault and gross indecency with a child. But, like the other defendants, he was free on bail, and for now he was just gassing with his mates.
Behind the till, entering purchases in tattered account books labelled simply ‘Dobrey’ or ‘Olive’, was Darralyn Griffiths, née Warren. Darralyn had withdrawn from the case, claiming that she had been coerced into giving a statement; it was common knowledge, however, that she and Dave had had an ‘affair’ that began when he was 34 and she was 13. It had prompted many a sly wink at the time, although not from Dave’s wife, Lea, or Darralyn’s mother, Carol, whose main objection had been that Dave was married.
Also open that morning, again for the blink of an eye, was the minuscule post office, presided over by Dennis Christian. Dennis, the postmaster, was charged with three sexual assaults. Considerably more forthcoming than Dave, he explained to us politely that Pitcairn’s once booming stamp business was in decline. ‘Hardly anyone mails any more,’ he said. ‘Everyone jumps on the internet nowadays.’
The library, too, had unlocked its door for an hour, revealing a closet-sized space and shelves piled haphazardly with Bounty-related books, airport novels and travel guides. All could be borrowed indefinitely, without risk of a fine. Next door, the island secretary, Betty Christian, was sweeping out her office, which had another picture of the Queen on the wall. Outside, a few of the older women were swapping gossip on the wooden bench, which was known as the ‘bus shelter’.
I had now met, or at least laid eyes on, all seven of the Pitcairn-based defendants: Randy Christian and Jay Warren on the longboat; Steve Christian in the pink bulldozer; Dave Brown at the shop; Dennis Christian at the post office; and Len Brown, our next-door neighbour, in his garden. The seventh man was Terry Young, who lived near the store with his mother, Vula. I had passed him in the main road, a large, lumbering figure. Terry was charged with one rape and seven indecent assaults.
Within two or three days of landing, we knew who was who among the 40 or so Pitcairn residents. (Half a dozen were away.) And they, of course, knew who we were: six despised reporters tramping around their island. We could not have avoided the locals if we had tried. Every time we stepped out, we bumped into them; often as we walked along the dirt tracks, they would overtake us on the quad bikes that they hopped on even for short trips. I was never sure whether to wave: it seemed rude not to, but sometimes the only response was an icy stare.
Not everyone was unfriendly. Outside the medical centre, I met a chatty, baby-faced Englishman: Mike Lupton-Christian, who is married to Brenda Christian, Steve’s sister. Mike and Brenda had met in England, and had moved to the island in 1999 with her son from a previous marriage, Andrew. Mike, who had added Brenda’s surname to his, appeared to be well suited to Pitcairn life. A former manager of retail and leisure services for the British military, he had a practical nature and was not afraid to get his hands dirty. But his attempts to muck in had so far been frustrated.
Mike, who was qualified to drive heavy machinery, was keen to use Pitcairn’s big red tractor. He needed a local licence, but when he applied to the council’s internal committee, chaired by Randy Christian, nothing happened. He made inquiries. Still nothing happened. ‘They kept saying things like “After the next ship’s been”,’ said Mike.
Vaine Peu, an amiable Cook Islander and the partner of Charlene Warren, told a similar story; Turi Griffiths, Darralyn’s husband, also from the Cooks, could not get a licence either. As for Simon Young, an Englishman who had settled on Pitcairn with his American – Filipina wife, Shirley, he had managed to secure a licence—but only for an old blue tractor, and only for collecting rubbish, which was his job. Mike, Vaine, Turi and Simon had one thing in common: they were all outsiders. Meanwhile, two local teenagers were being trained to drive the big red tractor.
Those who could not drive the tractor, which was used in countless chores, most notably to plough the islanders’ gardens, were dependent on those who could. And those who could were men who had been born on Pitcairn and spent their lives there: the ‘Big Fence gang’, as they were called.
If the big red tractor was a symbol of power from which outsiders were excluded, it was eclipsed by the longboat—Pitcairn’s umbilical cord, and the sole preserve of Steve Christian and his followers.
Such is the aura surrounding the longboat that it was an anticlimax to discover that it is just a large open boat with an outboard engine and an aluminium hull. The boat’s mystique dates from the days when it was made of wood, powered by oars, and hauled up the slipway by hand. But while less muscle may be required now, its significance has not diminished: without it, Pitcairn could not function. The boat—or boats, for there are two of them—collect people and supplies from the ships in all weather. Cargo, including fuel drums and timber, is lowered in a net; for those standing underneath, it can be dangerous work. The heavily laden vessel is then guided back into shallow, surf-lashed Bounty Bay, and it is their skill in accomplishing that task in the wildest conditions that gives Pitcairn’s men their intrepid reputation.
The longboat slows down as it approaches the cove and pauses, with its motor idling. The engineer turns round to face the open sea; when he spots a suitable wave, he opens the engine up at full throttle. The boat is swept forward and surfs into the bay through a slender, rock-studded channel, skidding to a halt by the jetty—which, for passengers, is like landing at the bottom of a helter-skelter. There is little room for error, though, and islanders have been killed or seriously injured on occasions when the swell has seized the boat and dashed it against rocks.
For the local boys, joining the crew is a rite of passage, and they long to be skipper or coxswain, just like other boys dream of driving a train. The coxswain has the most kudos of anyone on the island. In an exceptionally macho society, he is the most macho figure of all.
Steve has been a coxswain since the age of 17. Randy—the only one of Steve’s sons living on the island, and thus seen as the heir apparent to his political power—is a coxswain. So is Dave Brown. So is Jay Warren. Those men were always at the back of the boat, in charge of the tiller or engine. Len Brown, who in his day headed one of Pitcairn’s leading families, was among the island’s most capable engineers and coxswains.
Vaine Peu, Simon Young and Mike Lupton-Christian had all asked to be trained for the key roles. But the locals were unenthusiastic, for according to them, you had to have grown up on Pitcairn. So ‘the boys’, as they were known, continued to control the longboat—and, with it, the community’s access to resources, its economy, its very survival.
As of 2004, Steve and Randy occupied the highest-ranking official positions on Pitcairn. As mayor, Steve was the community leader and chairman of the local council, which administers the island day to day. (The Governor wields overall authority.) Randy was chairman of the influential internal committee, which, among other things, allocated jobs. The pair also headed the unofficial hierarchy, for the real power base on the island was not the public hall, where the council met monthly, but Big Fence, Steve’s family home, where important decisions were made by his ‘inner circle’, and the same men gathered on Friday nights