HARRY IN WONDERLAND
Prince Harry escapes to the South Pacific for some serious me time. But the best-laid plans…
CHILLING ON TANNA WAS EPIC, ruminated Harry as he gazed out at the South Pacific sky streaked by startling bands of yellow and red as the sun rapidly set. He heard giggling, and glancing over his bronzed back, saw two native girls hold their hands to their mouths and run laughing into the grove of banyan trees, their lavalava skirts trailing like shredded paper through the tall grass, their pert breasts scarcely wobbling. He had to agree he was hench, his pecs awesome, his skin a deep, enticing mahogany. Coming here for some badly needed me time was one of the best decisions he had ever made.
He sprang to his feet from the beach and strolled to the edge of the sea. The sand was sucking in the swishing foam before it could ebb back. A crab scuttled under a rock. He considered snorkelling more, but soon it would be dusk, too dim to observe the flying gurnard with their wing-like pectoral fins or the red striped falco hawkfish seeking prey. The absence of light could be dangerous, too. There were stonefish hidden under rocks with venomous spines, and moray eels that could take your fingers off. Instead, Harry opted to make for the village bar – the nakamal – as he did most evenings, for some serious chilling.
The bountiful Yaohnanen tribe that inhabited Tanna had showered him with gifts. After adjusting one of them, his penis sheath, he crossed the banyan grove and began following the dirt track to the village. To his left, Mount Yasur brooded over the landscape like a belligerent landlord. It was one of the most active volcanoes in the world. In Captain Cook’s time, the summit of the cone had been out of bounds, but in time the taboo was lifted. Harry had scaled the ash-coated slopes and peered down at the lava exploding from the crater’s vents, launching gobs of fire and plumes of flaming killer gas into the sky. Crouching next to him, Prophet Isaac had translated what the volcano was saying, each roar, gush and blast, a noun or verb in the tongue of fire that Yasur spoke. The volcano was heartbroken for the sons who had gone to the other side of the world and yearned for their return. Harry wondered if his father felt the same.
Soon the prince was alongside the runway, with its bamboo control tower bristling with brittle aerials. Natives in light blue cotton trousers, with USA daubed in red paint on their bare chests, stood guard at the perimeter, stiffly holding bamboo poles carved to mimic rifles. Though the runway had been there for 70 years, no plane had landed on its scrub-bordered surface, nor ever would. But its builders, awaiting the return of John Frum, an American sailor who had landed on Tanna in the late 1930s and introduced himself as “John from America”, were patient. As they pointed out, Christians had waited 2,000 years for their Messiah to return.
The John Frummers of Tanna were one of several cargo cults that proliferated throughout Vanuatu, the South Pacific nation composed of more than 80 islands. So mystifying had been the flood of American goods during the Second World War that the natives, desperate to take back control, had explained the jeeps, fridges, cartons of Lucky Strike, and crates of Coca-Cola as gifts from both the gods and their spirit ancestors. Which came first, the runway or the planes? The runway, they concluded. Consequently, they had built this facsimile of one, expecting aircraft to land at any minute and liberally dole out cargo.
Alongside the runway was a long bamboo shack with a tin roof. This was the dining room, stocked with no provisions and fitted with no cooking implements, as the munificent gods would provide the feasts for the communal tables. Dotted along the coast were bamboo piers that were too unsteady for a ship to moor alongside. In the rainforest, men poked uselessly at tree trunks with replica wooden chainsaws, dreaming of factories they would erect in the clearings. Such magical thinking was not unique to Vanuatu. On the other side of the globe, another cult had gleefully shoved aside their biggest trading partner, certain that a throng of cap-doffing states would swamp England with goods — an embarrassment of riches that had as little chance of materialising as cargo-laden planes in the spectacular skies above Tanna.
Harry felt gratitude for the blessings of an island he had taken to like a seal pup to the sea. There were plump pigs and tasty fruit bats to take down and smoothies to die for. There were blue lagoons to dive in with wrecks to explore. There were reporters on his trail who stayed in the swanky hotel in Port Vila: Olivia from Oggi, Claudette from Paris Match, and the sassy blonde New Yorker Carrie-Ann from the New Yorker. In interviews, he bewailed his sorry state, the family rift and the soulless life he had been leading, which had given him no alternative but to take this break. There were hunting expeditions in the rainforest, and fishing trips to catch barracuda and marlin, and this June, the second month of the dry winter season, was the best of all times. The life he had abandoned so long ago, the wet summers at Sandringham and snowed-in Christmases at Balmoral, seemed dismal in comparison.
When the prince reached the nakamal, Ezekiel was lighting the kerosene lamps. Possessors of dreamy eyes, toothless smiles and scabby skin, the natives greeted Harry with disorderly salutes and bows, some on bended knee. Ezekiel, whose expression was unusually solemn, went to the bar and returned with a half coconut shell brimming with kava. Making the traditional toast of “mburla”, which the natives echoed, Harry steeled himself and drained the bitter liquid to the lees. Then he handed it back to Ezekiel for a refill. Experience had taught him you needed several cups to bring on the full effect. Chewing the root was even better, but time-consuming and less sociable.
His mouth grew dry as a feeling of total relaxation suffused his body and mind. Anxiety had been abolished; it was difficult to believe it had ever existed. This was not like a spliff: there was no dispersion; no paranoid edge. If anything, his thought patterns were sharper than usual, as were the buzz of voices around him and the thud of coconut shells colliding in the sink as Ezekiel did the washing up. He felt an urge to share the euphoria in exchanges that would plumb the deep and the eternal. Bislami, the native pidgin, was relatively easy. Most of the words were English, so all you had to do was jumble up the syntax, throw in a “blong”, which meant “belong”, and attach an “im” to verb endings. The words did not seem to matter. The natives understood him perfectly. And he understood them.
Occasionally, the kava experience deviated from the norm. The drinker entered a profound dream-like state, in which there were visions and revelations. This was not related to the quality of the plant, which on Tanna was the best in Vanuatu and always of the noble strain, or how much had been drunk or chewed. The natives believed that kava opened a portal to the gods. Harry could only agree. The drink made it easy to share their conviction that his grandfather, Prince Philip, was John Frum’s brother, the other Son of the Mountain God, who would return loaded with bounty and the gift of eternal life.
The revelation had come to an elder in a kava trance during Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Tanna in 1974. The deference shown to her by officials made it obvious her consort must be the mightiest of beings. Philip’s eagle-like profile confirmed this as he stood on the prow of the royal yacht Britannia moored off Lénakel, attired like John Frum in a white uniform, just as the prophecies had foretold. The nakamel was festooned with union jacks and photos of Philip, including one of him holding a traditional pig-killing club called a nal-nal, which he had sent the Yaohnanen after they had airmailed him the useful implement as a gift. Harry, of course, was the great-grandson of Yasur, the Mountain God.
There was a sudden lull in the hum of conversation. Prophet Isaac had entered. Gliding up in a lavalava skirt and cracked Ray-Bans, with a coral chain dangling from his neck and a face streaked with war paint, he struck Harry as the epitome of cool. Not only was Prophet Isaac totally on the bonnet, his chilled-out pedigree was reinforced by the jawless skull affixed to the top of the cane he was carrying. The skull was all that was left of Prophet Elijah, Isaac’s grandfather, the first to be hit by the revelation that Prince Philip was the other Son of God. Harry conceded with a wistful pang that it was highly unlikely he would ever come into such an heirloom. In a kava trance, “Crazy” Martha had foretold that Elijah would save Prince Philip’s life. After the Prophet’s demise, provoked by him being stung by a tiny jellyfish whose venom was 350 times stronger than cyanide, there had been much head-scratching among the elders as to how the prophecy would be fulfilled.
‘Mi heardim radio nambawan bigfela blong missus kwin goim long wota,’ Prophet Isaac said.
‘Yu heardim radio nambawan bigfela blong missus kwin goim long wota,’ said Harry.
It was polite to repeat things when addressed by an elder. It added weight to the news that number one big fella, the Queen’s consort, aka Prince Philip, was preparing to wage war against the usurpers who had seized England.
‘Joinim sip blong mi long solwata faetem?’
The suggestion they rally to his grandfather’s aid struck Harry as eminently sensible.
‘Mi goim wetem yu,’ he said.
‘Mi glad tumas,’ responded Isaac. ‘Yu lidim.’
Having appointed Harry leader, Prophet Isaac exited the nakamel, with the prince and the rest of the natives, including Ezekiel, in tow.
They loped across the dirt track, scrambled through a banyan grove, and emerged on the brow of the sloping beach. The drums were already speaking, the conches bellowing. There was a great buzz of movement as natives poured down the beach wielding spears, axes and bows and arrows, while lavalava-clad women toiled in the light of firebrands,loading the war canoes and catamarans drawn up on the sand with dried meats, kava, yams, and pineapples.
A cheer went up as Harry descended the slope at a half-run with Prophet Isaac alongside. They made for the longest canoe and, with the help of the rest of the crew, slid it into the sea. Just for a second, the thought struck Harry that they were venturing halfway around the world, half-naked and armed with Stone Age weapons, to make war on a sophisticated Western army. But his state of bliss put paid to such misgivings. Had he not, after all, trekked to the North Pole with disabled servicemen and almost made it to the South Pole, hacked his way through jungles, and scaled cloud-capped mountains? He vaulted into the canoe. The crew, in their fierce war paint, began paddling immediately. Soon, the boat was at the head of the fleet that fanned out like a crescent, voyaging west beneath the winter stars.
Chapter 8 (adapted) of The Dream of Boris: Deceived Kingdom