Kitty

by Challinor, Deborah

She frowned. ‘I can’t prance about in these.’

  ‘Pull the shirt out, hang it over,’ Wai suggested.

  Kitty did, then helped herself to a belt hanging in the cupboard. ‘That’s better,’ she said, the shirt now covering her more modestly.

  There were also two pea coats in the pile, and although they smelled a little mouldy they each put one on.

  ‘Comfortable?’ Kitty asked.

  Wai nodded. Kitty was surprisingly comfortable herself. The trousers felt strange against her backside as she was used to the looseness of her drawers, and her breasts jiggled slightly as she moved without the restraint of her chemise and stays, but the jacket would conceal them.

  ‘Now for my hair,’ she said, pulling it right out of its failing chignon. She combed her fingers through it, grimacing as she encountered knots, then sat down on the bed and started to plait it.

  ‘I might as well,’ she said in answer to Wai’s raised eyebrows. ‘Everyone else on this ship wears it like this.’

  ‘No, only Hawk and Pierre.’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ Kitty grumbled. Now that she had successfully implemented the first part of her scheme, she found she wasn’t quite so confident about how the second half would be received.

  She finished the plait and sat holding the ends so it wouldn’t unravel. Wai handed her a piece of red ribbon from a bundle of papers on Rian’s desk.

  ‘Perfect,’ Kitty said, and tied it around the end of her plait. Picking up their discarded clothes from the floor she put them aside to clean later. ‘Are we ready then?’

  Wai nodded and out they went.

  Kitty was only halfway across the deck when a voice roared, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  She stood her ground as Rian strode over to her, his mouth set in an angry line. ‘Get back below, and take those ridiculous clothes off!’

  ‘Our dresses are filthy,’ she said. ‘And if I’m to work on this ship I need to be suitably attired.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you won’t take me back to New Zealand, then I’m not sitting around for a fortnight doing nothing while I could be paying my way.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid!’ Rian was really angry now. ‘Sailing isn’t woman’s work! It’s dangerous, it’s dirty and, well, women just don’t do it. And you don’t know the first thing about sailing a ship.’

  ‘Then it’s time I learned, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  Kitty was unable to think of a suitably acerbic reply, so she told the truth. ‘Because I’m sick of you treating me as though I’m completely useless, that’s why! And I want to learn to sail. I like it.’

  ‘By Christ, Kitty Carlisle, you try a man’s patience.’ Rian shook his head in frustration. ‘All right, then, I’ll call your bluff. You can start by coiling those,’ he said, pointing at a pile of heavy ropes on the deck. ‘And mind you coil them inwards, not against the twist, or they’ll start to fray. Wai, you go below, I’m not having you working in your condition.’

  Wai nodded meekly and scuttled off.

  Rian looked across the deck at Hawk, who was watching them bemusedly. ‘Don’t say a word,’ he said, and stalked off.

  Kitty regarded the heap of rope: the hemp was very coarse and easily the thickness of her thumb.

  ‘Like this,’ Hawk said, coming over. He picked up a spliced end in his left hand and began to twist the length of rope with his right so that it settled into a coil in a cleanly curved loop. ‘See?’

  Kitty nodded and selected another loose end. When she had looped it all, her left arm felt as if it might drop off from the weight and her right hand was becoming raw from the coarseness of the fibre. For the next one she changed hands, so that by the time Pierre rang the ship’s bell for the midday meal, both hands were sore and missing skin.

  In the mess-room she kept them in her lap out of view until she had to serve herself from the pot of delicious, spicy-smelling stew in the centre of the table. Rian didn’t seem to notice her raw, reddened palms, but Hawk raised an eyebrow. She looked away, refusing to admit that anything was amiss. There was an uncomfortable silence around the table, as though everyone were waiting for something to happen. Rian ploughed his way steadily through two bowls of stew and three slabs of fresh bread and butter, but said nothing. Kitty felt like crying; the idea of working her passage had seemed such a good one this morning, but she hadn’t really thought Rian would hold her to it quite so literally. She was damned, though, if she was going to back down.

  In the afternoon she was put to helping the men haul the sails as the Katipo changed direction slightly to cross the Tasman. Mick silently handed her a pair of leather gloves, which were too big for her but protected her hands from the harsh ropes. She got in the way, fell over several times and wasn’t quick enough to secure the lines when told to, but still she refused to give up and go below. After that Gideon gave her a hammer, a set of pliers, several nails, and a piece of wire, and asked her in an apologetic tone to go and make a lock for the door to the head.

  ‘There is only one privy,’ he explained. ‘There should be a lock if you and Miss Wai will be using it.’

  Kitty nodded and trudged forwards to the bow to the privy. It was a tiny cubicle formed by a solid partition with a door in it, just under the base of the bowsprit. She wondered how Gideon managed to squeeze himself into it. The actual privy was a wooden bench above a hole which, when she looked down, revealed the foaming bow wave below. There was no roof, and Kitty didn’t fancy sitting there on cold wet mornings or when the seas were high, but it was better than using a chamber pot and having to creep about the ship trying to empty it without anyone seeing her.

  It didn’t take her long to work out how to fashion a hook out of the wire and fasten it to the door, which gave her a small amount of satisfaction—at least that was something she had done successfully. She gave the hammer and pliers back to Gideon, then looked about for anything else she could do. Her hands were very sore, her back ached and she could feel an ominous dragging sensation at the base of her belly that meant her courses weren’t far away, but she had no intention of stopping until she was told to.

  Her next job was to swab the decks, although she had a very strong suspicion that the decks didn’t need it: they looked clean enough to her. But the most galling thing of all was that the horrid little cat Boadicea insisted on following her around constantly, crouching a few feet away, hissing at her and dashing across her path as if to trip her. At one point, just as Kitty finished swabbing a section of the deck, the cat squatted on it, lifted her tail and peed.

  Incensed, Kitty flicked the mop at her, yelling, ‘Go away, you dirty little troll!’

  Pierre, sitting on the edge of the skylight above the mess-room and enjoying a smoke before he started the supper, chuckled.

  ‘Bodie don’t like you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to her,’ Kitty grumbled, sloshing the mop again over the bit the cat had soiled. ‘It is, however, mutual, I can assure you.’

  ‘She the captain’s cat,’ Pierre said.

  ‘I don’t care if she’s Queen Victoria’s cat,’ Kitty snapped. ‘I just wish she’d keep out of my way.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  Kitty set the mop in the bucket. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘’Cause she jealous. She don’t like wimmin on the ship. And you sleepin’ in the captain’s bunk.’

  ‘Oh, what a lot of rubbish!’ Kitty exclaimed. ‘She’s a cat, for God’s sake!’

  Pierre shrugged. ‘She Rian’s cat,’ he said again. ‘She only want his attention for her.’

  ‘Well, she can have it. I certainly don’t want it,’ Kitty said angrily. And she meant it: she was beginning to wish she’d never met Captain Rian Farrell.

  Pierre chuckled again, tapped the contents of his pipe over the rail and walked off.

  By the end of the afternoon Kitty was finding it a challenge just to set one foot
in front of the other. At supper she could barely stay awake long enough to eat. Waiting for Pierre to bring out a pot of tea, she nodded off with her head in her hands, slumping slowly forwards until her face was on the table. No one laughed.

  Haunui got to his feet, went around to where she was sitting and scooped her up.

  ‘Put her in my cabin,’ Rian said. ‘She can have it until we get to Sydney.’ Wai started to rise also, but Rian stayed her with his hand. ‘No, let her sleep,’ he added gruffly.

  After supper Sharkey and Ropata went on watch. The rest of the men went up on deck to smoke, except for Hawk, who started to move his things out of his cabin, which he’d offered to Wai. When he’d finished, he sat down again with Rian, who had remained at the table and was moodily pushing the salt shaker around.

  ‘I think you are being too hard on her,’ Hawk said.

  Rian said, ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She said she wanted to work.’

  ‘That is no reason to treat her this way,’ Hawk reasoned. ‘You could have put her to something easy like cleaning the cabin. It is absurd, a soft English lady doing the sort of heavy work she did today. Did you see her hands?’

  ‘Yes, I saw them,’ Rian said. ‘Could you give her some of that salve of yours to use in the morning?’

  ‘Yes. But you did not answer my question, Rian.’

  Rian glanced at his friend. They had sailed together for the past six years and there was little they didn’t know about each other. ‘I’m worried that when she gets to Sydney she won’t be able to look after herself. I couldn’t take her back—Tupehu would have had her, and that daughter of his. You know what a belligerent bastard he is. And I can’t look out for them in Sydney every hour of the day, we’ve too much business to see to. I’m worried she isn’t tough enough. Sydney’s a mean place for a single woman, especially a decent one—you know that. I thought if she toughened up and it got her mettle up, it might help.’

  ‘Rian,’ Hawk said gently, ‘she is not Meagan.’

  At the mention of his first wife’s name, Rian became very still. ‘I know she’s not Meagan. I never said she was.’

  Hawk waited but when Rian remained silent, he said, ‘Meagan was a good woman, Rian, but she was never tough.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Rian snapped.

  Hawk was unperturbed; Meagan had hardly been mentioned between them for almost a year now, but every time she was, the response from Rian was the same—a mix of anger, sadness and guilt. But mostly guilt.

  Rian had married Meagan O’Neil five years ago. She had been a beautiful little thing, pretty, gentle and sweet, and she thought the sun rose and set on Rian. She’d wanted to sail with him but he’d forbidden it, convincing her she would be safer at home in Dublin. But she’d pined, and after a year Rian had finally agreed to take her with them. She’d soon fallen pregnant, but after the baby had been born she had developed some sort of strange mania. Rian had wanted to take her back to Ireland but, even though it was clear to all that she wasn’t suited to life at sea, she’d refused and flown into hysterics every time the idea was mentioned. One night, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, her insanity must have overcome her, and the next morning they’d discovered that she and the infant had vanished, presumably drowned overboard. Rian had almost gone insane himself. It had been a very bad time for him, and indeed the crew, and he’d vowed never to let a woman sail on any ship he captained again. But far more worryingly, in Hawk’s opinion, he’d not allowed himself to become involved with a woman since, except for the occasional visit to a whore while ashore.

  But now here they were, with not one but two women on board. Hawk had been surprised that Rian had agreed to his old friend Haunui’s request to take his niece to Sydney, and even more when another girl had scrambled aboard just as they were setting sail. But when he’d seen who she was, he’d understood—she was the girl who’d been turning Rian’s head for the past year, if only the man would admit it. Rian Farrell was one of the most stubborn men Hawk had ever known, but he was also the most decent, and Hawk knew he would have turned the girls away only if there had been some other way of keeping them from harm. Now, though, his decency had become misdirected and he was making Kitty Carlisle’s life a misery because of his concern, and whatever else it was he felt for her. Judging by Rian’s current irascibility, Hawk suspected that the ‘whatever’ was considerable. He thought, however, that Rian had little need to worry. The girl was not making things easy for herself, prancing about getting in the way and insisting she be allowed to work during the voyage, but it was clear to him that she had spirit and guts. Perhaps the only thing she lacked was a bit of common sense.

  Hawk put his elbows on the table. ‘I think this girl Kitty can look after herself. She just might not know it until she is put to the test. And I do not think it is your place to make that happen.’ He gave Rian a questioning, rather sly, look. ‘Unless you have some sort of interest in her?’

  ‘No, I bloody well do not,’ Rian said, standing up abruptly and indicating that as far he was concerned the conversation had ended.

  The following morning Kitty dragged herself out of bed, washed in cold water, then, to her embarrassment, had to call for Wai to find her something she could use to stem the flow of her courses which had just begun. Wai went off, had a word to Haunui and came back with a wide square of cloth. Kitty ripped it into strips and folded one into the crotch of her trousers, more grateful than she’d ever been that her courses were not normally restrictively heavy. Still, she’d be washing the cloths out at the end of the day for the next five days and festooning Rian’s cabin with them while they dried; she knew the crew were a worldly lot, but suspected they wouldn’t take kindly to menstrual rags flapping from the rat lines.

  She made herself eat a hearty breakfast, silently accepted Hawk’s ministrations to her chafed hands and went to work. By the end of the day she was once again exhausted and went to bed straight after supper.

  But by the end of their first week at sea, the crew’s looks of annoyance had changed to empathy and then finally respect as she began gradually to pull her weight. She didn’t have the physical strength to perform many of the heavier tasks, and wasn’t permitted to do anything really dangerous, but she’d demonstrated that she had a head for heights by climbing the mainmast to secure an errant section of running rigging near the top—earning a very terse reprimand from Rian when he spotted her—and also that she could competently tie a range of knots and mend sails. She was also learning to read the weather, and understand the complicated calls, commands and terms unique to sailors.

  On the Katipo’s eighth day at sea, one of her crew in particular found themselves very grateful for Kitty’s presence.

  Bodie had not been able to reconcile herself to being usurped by another woman in her master’s bed. On this particular morning, one beset by high seas and strong winds even though the sun was shining brightly, she was balanced on the aftmast’s boom, spitting at Kitty swabbing the deck below, when a line snapped with a loud, zinging crack. Bodie tensed to leap off but the boom swung wildly across the deck, launching her little black body up and out.

  Kitty, who had ducked when the line snapped, glanced up and for a fraction of a second was treated to the sight of Bodie in the air, her yellow eyes as big as saucers, her tail as bushy as a fox’s brush, and her clawed toes extended like furry little starfish. Then she was hurtling past, heading over the side of the ship and straight towards the deep, dark sea.

  Without thinking, Kitty thrust up her arm and caught the cat by a back leg. She completed the curve of Bodie’s trajectory to avoid ripping the little limb from its socket, then swung her downwards, narrowly missing bashing her brains out on the deck, then up again, and finally deposited her on top of a nearby hatch cover.

  Bodie staggered, shook herself violently, glanced over her shoulder as though checking to see if anyone else had witnessed such a heinous humiliation, then sta
lked off.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Kitty said to the cat’s backside, and went back to work.

  But the next morning, when Kitty rose to use the head, she discovered a dead rat on the floor outside Rian’s cabin. This caused a lively discussion at the breakfast table, the general consensus being that the rat was a gift from Boadicea to Kitty for saving her life. Then, when Kitty returned to the cabin to wash after she’d finished work for the day, she found the cat curled up on Rian’s bed. She clapped her hands smartly and said ‘Scat!’, but Bodie merely opened one eye, stretched and began to generate a remarkably loud, gravelly purr for such a small animal.

  From then on Bodie continued to follow Kitty everywhere she went, but now without any acrimony whatsoever. The rat delivery became a daily occurrence, except for one morning when the offering was a whole fish clearly filched from Pierre’s galley, and Bodie was soon wriggling onto Kitty’s lap whenever she sat down.

  Wai thought it was terribly sweet, although to her disappointment nothing could coax Bodie to sit on her lap, not even for a minute. Pierre viewed the cat’s change of heart as akin to gris gris, his word for black magic, and crossed himself every time he came near Kitty, until Rian told him to stop being such a superstitious old woman. But when Pierre suggested that Rian should take care not to fall under Kitty’s spell himself, the captain wasn’t at all amused.

  Bodie’s defection did serve to break the tension on the schooner. Even Rian relaxed a little, and with only three days to go before they expected to drop anchor in Sydney Cove, the remainder of the voyage seemed certain to be plain sailing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kitty put her hands on her hips and tilted her head back to watch Sharkey as he climbed the rat lines up the mainmast, on his way to inspect a line in the rigging that had unaccountably jammed somewhere in the sail’s running gear.

  ‘What is it?’ she called as he neared the top.

  ‘There’s a bloody bird stuck in it,’ he yelled back, leaning out as far as he could and jabbing with a stick to dislodge the gory mess caught in the gear.