Diary of a Shipwreck
A diary for the year 1926, damp and rotting at the edges found on the uninhabited island of Moto-Uo. The owner was Lady Fiona Ffolkstone – Fitch, who disappeared from a yacht in the Pacific with her family, crew and servants in that year. Many pages are too firmly stuck together to read, but the part relating to what happened to some of the yacht’s occupants can still be deciphered.
24th. July We’re having a fair stab at surviving actually. The situation is pretty hellish, but we’re all doing our bit. Richards, who is, or rather was, our chauffeur fetches the wood for the fire, and Mrs. Davies is doing jolly well making broths and so forth out of the most unlikely ingredients. Eye of newt and toe of bat, so to speak. The chaps haven’t become terribly adept at hunting the wild things yet, though they do their utmost.
26th. July None of the maids survived that dredful night, which is too awful. My hair hasn’t been touched for days, no make up and my nails are disgusting. I’m positively a native woman. ‘You have natural beauty my lady, don’t worry’ said Brooks, our butler. He still uses that formal way of speaking, here, at the end of the bloody world, but it does maintain the social distinctions, so to speak, which is important.
I can’t say the same for Richards. He is sometimes a bit on the coarse side I have to say. We found this letter, still in tact, in the pocket of an oilskin. Just one, with Papa’s Coat of Arms on it and everything, and Richards said that as it might be the last quality piece of paper in the world we should draw lots to see who should wipe their arse on it. A bit broad, you must admit, but it made us all laugh.
We don’t have much to laugh at.
28th. July We talk about escape, but it’s positively loony to contemplate going out on that sea with some scary homemade raft. I don’t think so. Brooks suggested making a clearing and keeping a fire going in case aeroplanes came to search for us, so they did that. I don’t think Mrs. Davies should be doing manual work at her age. She looked quite peaky when they came back …
1st. Aug. We found a fragment of comb and Brooks has started doing my hair for me. He has had to cut out the most hideous of the tangles, but I have to say I feel much better. And he has a nice touch, quite gentle for a chap. Mrs. Davies hasn’t been exactly hunky dory since the other day, not hunky dory at all. Brooks is rallying round and doing the cooking and asked me, very respectfully, if I would be so kind as to take care of Mrs. D. Well of course I complied, though the Florence Nightingale thing isn’t really my style. But I can give her water, we have plenty of that thank God, and bathe her face and hands. She’s awfully grateful, poor old bird…
5th. Aug. Mrs. Davies died yesterday. She held my hand and kept asking me to give Annette her love. Who the hell is Annette? Brooks says it’s her married daughter. How was I supposed to know she had a daughter? We thought it might be a good use for the back of that letter, pen a cheery farewell missive, mother to daughter, so to speak. Maybe we will, but we’re all too glum at the moment. One down three to go – I think that’s what’s on all our minds. Too grim …
10th. Aug. The three of us all go out for the firewood now. Richards saw a jolly big snake the other day, which shook him positively rigid, so we stick together and make lots of noise in case there are more of the bally things about. We also decided that we should take turns with the cooking, but the other two had the nerve to say that my cooking was just too putrid, and I am in charge of the washing now. Unfair. My finishing school actually never covered a hundred different things to do with a rat, or lizards en croute. I have to say I feel a bit miffed. Hurt even …
16th. Aug. Now Richards is Hors de Combat so to speak. Stood on something and his foot has become a very strange colour and pongs to high heaven …
17th. Aug. Richards is delirious. Brooks and I take it in turns to nurse him. We’re both pretty exhausted I have to say. We sit together, quite matey now and chat about old times. Neither of us expects to live, I suspect, but we still do our bit of daydreaming. Maybe one of the crew survived and was rescued by a boat that is even now winging its way toward us. Ha! …
21st.. Aug. So, Richards has gone. Brooks buried him this morning. We sat together afterwards talking almost in whispers, our voices seemed so enormous in the emptiness. Richards was such a noisome sort of chap, always thrashing about in the undergrowth. And laughing. He did make us laugh, I have to say …
25th. Aug. Brooks’s mother, he was telling me, was my Grandmamma’s ladies maid. We had quite a giggle over that. Good job Grandpapa wasn’t the type, or we might be sort of related, on the wrong side of the blanket so to speak. A good deal of that sort of thing went on. Grandpapa, as far as I can gather, just did his bit to begat Papa, the son and heir, and then went back to the hunting field. Preferred horse to man I fear …
31st. Aug. Last night we said goodnight and Brooks walked towards his bed, and suddenly sort of crumpled, folded up so to speak. Not a sound, just crumpled. He must have been dead before he hit the ground, as they say.
He’s dead.
It took me a long time to take it in. I mean, dead. How can he be dead? How dare he leave me in this bloody place? I screamed a bit in that awful silence, and cried, I have to say …
1st. Sept. I’ve done what I could and dug a hole for him. No trouble to move him. He is, was, just skin and bone. We both are, were – whatever! I couldn’t make it very deep, but that was OK because the sand was still a bit warm. Better than a cold grave is what I thought. And I am going to use the back of that ridiculous letter and put it in his grave. What do you say? ‘Here Lies …’ – God I don’t even know his bloody Christian name. I could put Mr. Brooks, but would that be quite the thing? Here goes then. Wish I could remember some of the stuff I read at school, poems and so forth.
‘Here lies Brooks, a good and kind man’ is what I decided on. I put it with him then I grabbed it back before I covered him up and put ‘MY BROTHER’, big in Capitals. Felt a bit embarrassed, but I signed it, and left it with him.
So now it’s just me, and it won’t be long. And I’ve used that last precious letter. How frightfully symbolic.
Well, no, I have to say, I did tear off a bit before I wrote on it. The top bit with Papa’s Coat of Arms on it. And later on I intend to go into the bushes and bloody well use it!