Codes of Survival -Scripts - a series of short factionalized stories based on historical events in the Subantarctic Islands written by Lloyd Godman to accompany the exhibition and installation - 1993 - © Lloyd Godman

Codes of Survival - Scripts

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1851 - THE THROW OF A FRUSTRATED WOMAN

It had been an unpleasantly, troublesome year. The weather I have never seen the like of it. The men are always venting their anger about the appalling conditions to us, and the woman  among us seem to always end up with this as a topic of conversation, no matter how we try to avoid it. We can't say too much to them because then the men defend the decision to come hereto settle, and tell us, 'the weather is'nt as bad as we make it out to be. Things will only get betterif we will give it a chance'. If we could see  some small sign, we might begin to believethis may be true, but alas we see no suchchange, only much of the same.

It pains many of us to see them pretend they are comfortable, as we know they are not well feed, and their clothes are rarely clean and dry, when we know none of us would tolerate this back in England. If the climate is hard, the work they undertake is harder as we see them  each day at their labours. Building a settlementthe like of this, with roads, barracks, store houses and our cottages, is hard in the least, while the clearance of thickets for farm and plantings takes much of their time.

We would not mind it if we could see some resolve, but the companies venture is not at  all successful. The whales  we have seen are never caught while the many plantings and crops will not grow well even with the  thatched shelters to break the winds. The  natural plants of the island grow so well with  leaves as large as one could need from any vegetable , but our best efforts to grow  familiar vegetables, become little more than stunted remains of those we knew and enjoyed back in the old lands.It is all quite frustrating.

The food we all endure is not good, with the rancid flour is bad to the taste even when  cooked while the salted meat grows mould with ease in this misty weather. If it were not for the experience, knowledge and the good will of the Maori people  here, it would be a worse cross  to shoulder. We all know they are far more equipped to endure the wilds this land posesses, than the meagre attempts of us poor souls. Sometimes, even with their  friendship and knowledge, I feel we are two groups of people in a frigid  zone at the end of the world,forgotten.

There can be months without even the single sighting of a sail on the forlorn lineof the horizon. Our leader, Enderby, the Lieutenant Governor of the settlement  is no example to behold, and is known to all as both the lawmaker and law breaker.  But worse, he has an unfortunate air of pious and arrogance that is of little comfort or reassurance to any but himself. We women, avoid his arrogant, struts as he surveys the work each day. The men despise him even more, and scorn his every move. The single men behave so boorishly, mostly when they are in a state of grogginess from  their perpetual drinking, and they frighten  us badly with their uncalled for manner. At  times we feel they are little more than a  group of lazy boose bousers, at odds with our true endeavours and we find their  scurrilous behaviour is no less than deplorable. They will oft make crude gestures and rude remarks as we go about our normal way.  While more than frightened we may be, they have troubled the Maori women terribly with untimely visits and would try the same on any of us I have no doubt if we were without the protection of a spouse.

We have heard there have been several Maori men and these pranksters out to molest their women. In one incident, one chief accused his poor wife of leading them on, and so upset was the flustered women, that she tried to hang herself with a scarf before they could rescue her from the tree and begin to calm her anguish. Still she was upset and in another desperate attempt, she tried to drown herself in the cold waters of the ocean. The poor  woman was eventually saved, but it is the 
feeling of us women, and most of the decent men that it was the fault and cause of the uncontrolled drunk single men, not this Maori woman. Such is the shame those fools can  bring to the courteous English race, we dread to acknowledge them as one of us.

Last week  I felt so depressed with the whole situation, that one evening I just had to allow myself a time of aloneness. It was
one of the few calm nights when it was light enough by the moon to walk a beaten way, even though the sky was not clear, being mottled with thin wisps of curling cloud. There was a thin pale half ring of rainbow across the sky in the opposite direction  from the moon that hung in the sky as a halo. The sky was also filled with the pulsing colours of the southern lights rippling in the darkness above.  In all, it was a sight to behold. But there had also been so few times that I could take the occasion to sneakingly take leave unnoticed from the others to walk at night also. For many reasons, not the  least of which was the single men, we had been constantly warned against walking alone and never at night. Should we be lost or become injured there may be no saviour among the tangle of knarly trees  that make  up the forest or the harshness of the climate. We may never be found in life or death.  And if one was caught unawares by a singleman, it hardly bears the thought of their actions. It was hardly a place for a man and no place for a womenin the dark of the night.

Despite my countless fears, and the excitement of adventure, that beat my heart faster, I  aimlessly wandered up the path with little  sense of direction or purpose. I passed the plots of vegetables, with the  wicker weave of shelter breaks to cut the wind, upright and pagan like in the night. And then further, past the cleared land further up the sloping hill, till there I stood, dernly amongst the few lonely graves  on the hill side at the cemetery, with a feeling of utter despair and nearly in
tears. I prayed for each and every one of those lost souls, as God they seem so alone and far from their home in the forgotten mists of this woebegone place. Had the almighty deserted them in life and death? 

As we sit in our huts, with a fire's glowing warmth at night, they must lie here cold and  wet in the winds of the darkness. I cast an eye across each and at the sight of the child's  maker I felt the full pathos and could restrain no longer. A passage of tears I could hold no  more at the sight of Janet's young one, as I had helped with the difficult birth and the fact of its death in but a few days, was hard on us all. I wept openly over her daughter as if it were my own; for God I know at times it could have been.  Then the hushed air of the night was broken.  For across the still night, from below, came a disturbance of yelling and abuse. As a knife it cut through the stillness. For quite sometime it carried my way. I guessed it had come from the single mens hut in the village and sounded like the usual drunkenness and disobedience  again, they never learn nor want for to stop. It made me so mad to hear their antics. I shook  in despair and desperation, my body no more than a tremble of tears at the unavailing failure of life here.

Then there in my tearful eyes, a glint, a  discarded empty liquor bottle lay , beside one of the wooden grave markers  where it must have been left by some impertinent buffoon. Further infuriated by the object and the act,  in utter disgust I reached down to grasp the bottle and with streams of distressed tears but in
absolute rage, I threw it with all my might and passion into the gnarly woodlot of trees  in  the hope all my troubles would disappear  with it, be gone with the night.

My troubles remained, but it did feel better for the effort and hence the finding of a knife in my apron brought a similar response as it too was thrown as hard as I could into the thickets I had used it in the preparation of the evening  meal and had thought it handy to keep at my side, if afflicted upon my walk by beast or buffoon. In fact, by surprise, many items I found in my possession that were all thrown into the trees with this same frustrated disgust . There may have been a comb, a hair clasp a candle end. I'm not sure, my anger was such that my thoughts  unclear.

Upon daylight I felt so awful about it, I tried unseen by the others, to find and regain their possession from the envelopment of tangled forrest. But I could only find the broken glass of too many green junk bottles cast aside by more drunken oafs among the thicketty woods and the other items were never seen.