TAHITI - BEFORE THE BOMB
As the English poet, Rupert Brooke, sailed away from the Tahiti he had lost his heart to, he wrote in his diary:"I looked for the Southern Cross as usual, and the moon; and looked for it in vain. It had gone down below the horizon. It is still shining and wheeling for those good brown people in the islands and they're laughing and kissing and swimming and dancing beneath it.
"I reflected that there was surely nothing else like them in this world, and very probably nothing in the next, and that I was going far away from gentleness and beauty and kindliness, and the smell of the lagoons, and the thrill of that dancing, and the scarlet of the flamboyants, and the white and gold of other flowers; and I was going to America, which is full of harshness and hideous sights, and ugly people. So I wept a little, and very sensibly went to bed..."
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My photo album falls open at a picture of me arriving in Papeete 40 years later, being kissed by a long-haired vahine wearing a grass skirt, gently placing a lei of frangipani over my head.
It was 1957 and I was on my way to England, the sun sparkling on the sea as we slid into port, razor mountains soaring as a backdrop to a little town half-hidden by palms.
I can still feel the rat-tat of drumsticks on coconut husks coming from the wharf as we draw closer; hear the guitars; and see the shimmer of grass skirts on swaying vahine hips. And smell the overpowering scent of frangipani leis.
And there, on the dock, stood The Englishman, a thin, distinguished figure, among the welcoming smiles from huge brown eyes and feminine childish laughter as crew and passengers attempt the frantic, hip-swinging, pelvis-grinding tamure in front of the band.
Peter Brooke, the poet's cousin, had, I was told, departed the City of London to do what so many had dreamed about, but never had the courage to execute.
The Tahiti he introduced to me on his moped that day , was an island of music, dancing and uncomplicated fun; laughing the night away with a Hinano beer in your hand; jig jig, (if you got lucky), in the shadow of the palms; getting sunburned as you rode out to the Gauguin Museum on the coast road. No talk of bombs. No worries about radiation. Putt-putting back to his village one night, feeling no pain, our moped suddenly stalled in a great pool of water from an evening thunderstorm. Soaked to the skin, the flower behind his ear dropping off, Peter shouted to me: "Thank God we're British!" It seemed extraordinarily funny after five Hinanos.
We'd been drinking at Quinn's Tahitian Hut with its democratic 'mixed' toilet ('we are all here together, M'sieu', a vahine laughed from the next cubicle), Bar Lia, with its din of throbbing electric guitars; and the more sophisticated Zi-Zou's where French officials danced.
Peter Brooke, sober and sipping coffee, told me next day how he had suddenly given up a City stockbroker's job and "caught the 8.40 from Guildford to the City one morning, for the last time." Greying, thin, face deely tanned, he sat in faded flowered shirt, a frangipani petal behind his ear, explaining the impetuous decision that would change his life forever....
'I was just fed up with commercialism and modern industrial life; I had a good job, made good money and knew I could plan my life until I was 80."
He rolled a cigarette and contemplated a table nearby of giggling vahines laughing behind their hands at his drawling accents.
He went on: 'Everything was laid out for me. I knew I could be rich. But, you know, riches to me are riches of the mind; riches of a way of living; riches of personality and genuineness. And more and more in England, genuineness was giving way to hypocrisy. Business morality and private morality had for its motto the 11th. Commandment: Thou shalt not get found out.
'I had read about Tahiti in Cook, Bougainville, Pierre Loti, Gauguin and my cousin, Rupert Brooke. They all said it was unique. They hadn't said that about Tonga, or Honolulu or Samoa. I came to my decision on the abdication of the Prince of Wales. My father, who was sitting in an armchair when I told him, said: "My boy you are an escapist." Now,' he said, laughing across to the girls who lived in his village, ‘I have been here 12 years. And from the moment one of those charming Tahitians put a lei around my neck as I stepped on the wharf, I knew they were right...'
Papeete, he said, waving his cigarette at it, was "a dirty little town where Chinese restaurants served awful food"; where women squatted on the dockside plaiting leis of yellow and white frangipani; and small hotels, like the one still standing, where his poet cousin had become ill. ("I haven't enough money to get out," Rupert Brooke had written to a friend. "And I've found the most ideal place in the world to live and work in.") Papeete, he said, was "like a Renaissance Italy, with the venom taken out."
Forty years later Peter, now 60, brewed up tea from a bunch of lime leaves he tugged from a tree outside his village hut window and asked: 'Could there be anything better than this?'
Very nicely written Tim, you sound a bit like my son, a complete escapist! he lives aboard a wooden ketch which was hand built in 1949 by an old guy (now 98) called Punch Svenson (have a look at the map of Great kepple Island) off the QLD coast and you will see Svensens beach so that's how long the family must have been there.
Punch saw in my son the dreamer within himself and sold him this boat 8 years ago. My son has dotted around the QLD islands and seems to live the life that a lot of would love.
We are going out soon under our 143 visa to knock it all out of him!!! (Just kidding).
What would the world be without such people?
Alan.
