Able Seacat Simon

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  I hadn’t moved much, not the first time, because it was still excruciatingly painful. Only sufficient to confirm what I already knew instinctively; that I’d been badly burned, and that my hips and back legs had been lacerated by pieces of shrapnel. Beyond that, I didn’t know, and decided I didn’t want to.

  But I was alive, and could hear still – despite the persistent ringing – and my survival had been declared to be a miracle. I wondered if the rest of crew felt the same about it, and doubted it. As Frank had said, I was a ship’s cat, and sailors were superstitious, believing not only in feline powers of survival that went far beyond the credible, but in our ability to keep the crew from harm, too.

  I wished I’d never learned that, because the weight of it felt heavy on my shoulders, suffusing me with difficult, distressing feelings. What if I’d stayed up on the bridge? Would I still be here to ponder it? And what of the protection I was assumed to have conferred on the Amethyst? Where had that gone?

  ‘You’ll bring us luck, little feller!’ I could hear dear George saying it. And that made me feel desperately sad.

  I tried to console myself. George was safe somewhere else. Well, I hoped he was, anyway. I wondered where he was and what he might be doing now. And who knew? Had that luck – however scant, however tenuous – not been with us, perhaps even more would have perished. In any event, I felt humbled and all too aware of my own luck, and for those reasons knew I must bear my pain stoically. For in the time that had now passed since the explosion that had changed everything, I had learned of fates so much worse, so much more final, than mine.

  Captain Skinner – brave Captain Skinner – was dead. I had already heard Petty Officer Griffiths discussing that with Lieutenant Weston in the adjacent wardroom; he’d died ashore, on the way to hospital. I’d also deduced – both from what they’d been saying and the way they’d been saying it – that Lieutenant Weston must be quite badly injured too.

  Worse still, at least twelve of the crew were apparently dead also. Some had died instantly, some had been shot down in the water, one had died of his injuries on the way to the field hospital with Captain Skinner; others were still there now, badly wounded and shaken – some of them still at risk of dying too.

  It was all such shocking news that I had not fully taken it in. Indeed, during the period when I was drifting in and out of consciousness in the cabin, I had hoped that the pictures that kept coming back to torture me were just the product of a fevered imagination. But they were not. They had happened.

  I had managed to piece together some more of what had happened to the Amethyst simply by watching and listening. But it wasn’t enough, and I felt useless and desperate for information, so much so that the previous night, in the eerily silent small hours, the Amethyst still motionless, I had finally dared test the limits of my strength and resolve again, and tried to leave the cabin to find out more.

  I had made it further that time, but still not very far. In fact, dragging my stiffened limbs proved to be a little beyond that limit. By the time I had managed to make it out of Griffiths’ cabin and into the passageway, such plans as I’d had, which were admittedly unformed to start with, became buried under fresh waves of pain.

  Another thought had hit me then. I’d heard nothing of Petty Officer Griffiths since the previous day. Where might he be sleeping? Was he even sleeping? Was he safe? Something jerked inside me then – some primeval tug I had no control over. And I realised that whatever I had expected to achieve it was all cast aside. Instinct took over. A sudden, powerful, overwhelming instinct, as well: to hide away somewhere where nothing and no one could get to me, to find a place where I could retreat – where I could hide away, and curl up and retreat into myself; somewhere I could go and lick my wounds.

  The ship had remained still. Still in the water, clearly anchored. I knew that she must have been still for some time, as well. It had been more than a day, in fact, since I’d last heard the throb of the engines, and, from the spot I’d found – behind a tangle of ropes in the corner of one of the forward gun decks – all I could hear above the whirr of bats and flying insects was the sound of the river lapping gently against the hull.

  Here, gasping but finally on my side again, I was at least cooled a little by the corticene beneath me. Being able to see something other than a blank cabin wall was at least a distrac- tion from the pain.

  And what a distraction it turned out to be. Because the state of the Amethyst stunned me.

  There was evidence of the shelling and machine-gunning everywhere – even the ensign flying at the stern hadn’t escaped it. It flew limply, forlornly, stirred by only the smallest of breezes, half torn off and riddled with bullet holes.

  But it was the Amethyst’s hull which horrified me the most. Always ghostly in the moonlight, she was now all sooty smudges – smudges that resolved themselves into evidence of major damage: scores of ragged scrapes and rents and gaping holes. One – the biggest I could see from my vantage point – gaped high above me, just below the bridge, like a monstrous jaw. A blackened fissure, deep and shock- ing in the middle of the pristine whiteness, it was half-stuffed with what looked like piles of hammocks. It took a few moments for the realisation to sink. I realised with a gulp that I was looking at the captain’s cabin.

  I stayed laid up for the rest of that night and all the next morning, even when, at some time when the moon was high in the sky, wreathed in a yellowy mist, I felt the engines come to life again and the ship begin to move upriver. It wasn’t for long, however, as very soon we were the target of yet more firing from the north bank – though as I lay there, it was without the least inclination to try to move, but simply to await whatever fate was now to befall me. I was done in. And now I was out here, there was nowhere to run to, even if I could. I’d stay put, I decided, and take my chances.

  The gunshots, which had been sporadic, soon stopped altogether. I must have dozed then, despite everything (perhaps the vibration of the engines soothed me) and then slept more deeply, because when I woke up it was to a gradually lightening sky, and the boat was once again soundless and still.

  The next thing I became aware of – again, some hours later – was the sound of an aircraft approaching. I had no idea at that point if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I quickly had my answer. No sooner had it flown past us than I could hear firing from the shore again, and, after another burst of orders, shouts and clattering urgent footfalls, it was gone almost as quickly as it had arrived.

  Fully awake again, I tried to take stock of things more clearly. To try to tease out the facts from the clues. We were motionless, but not docked, so we were obviously just anchored, presumably at some point further up the river. Though there was activity – hostile activity – from the north shore of the river, I could see or hear no other ships or sampans, so we seemed to be alone. And as it seemed that no other boat (or aircraft) was able to get close to us, I could only assume it was either because the Amethyst was physically unable to slip her mooring, or was being prevented from doing so in some other way.

  I didn’t have to think much to reach a single, obvious question. Were we stuck here because we were prisoners?

  The day grew warm by increments, and very soon it was too hot to stay where I was. With the sun rising high in the sky, albeit partly masked by clouds, I knew the heat would shortly become intolerable. But I had another, much greater motivation to try to move. With so much going on that I was unable to see or hear properly, it was curiosity, as well as anxiety, which eventually dragged me from behind the rope coils – not least concerning the identity of a new arrival on the Amethyst an hour or so later. I’d heard a craft come alongside (probably a landing craft, I decided, due to the soft, purring engine) and, as I couldn’t see it, I was anxious to know who or what it contained.

  I made my way haltingly around the snakes of rope – stiff again from the long period of immobility – and tried to forget about my missing whiskers. But all my small trek achieved was to pl
ace me a little further along the gun deck, where I flopped down close to the guard rail, my back legs unable to carry me further, where I could at least pick up a little of what was happening.

  It seemed as though an officer was coming aboard – I couldn’t see him, but could tell from the tone of his voice, and the tone of voice of the man who was receiving him – another that I couldn’t quite place. And as they headed inside – perhaps to the wireless room or the wardroom? – all I could pick up was that there was some sort of dispute going on. I heard the name Weston, and a while later, heard Lieutenant Weston himself, sounding strange and as if he was struggling to get his words out. ‘We’ve destroyed everything,’ he kept saying, over and over. ‘All the papers and the charts . . .’ ‘I know, man. Calm yourself,’ the stranger reassured him. ‘I am calm,’ Weston kept saying. He was anything but.

  Whoever had arrived hadn’t been inside long, for in no time there were men back on the deck below me, their hushed exchanges floating up to me only in part. But then they moved, and I heard someone say very clearly, ‘There’s no choice, man. If you don’t get that shrapnel removed, you’ll die!’

  I lay back again then, trying to makes sense of it. Was that the ‘doc’ I had heard talking? Hard to say, but it was another voice I couldn’t seem to place, and soon after, it was joined by the throb of the landing craft engine, which was presumably leaving us again. It was only when it had travelled some distance that I was able to catch sight of it. Though I couldn’t be sure, I had enough of a glimpse to think it true – the landing craft was taking away Lieutenant Weston.

  My first proper sighting of our new captain, a tall man called Lieutenant Commander Kerans, was when I limped onto one of the gun decks a few hours later, feeling compelled to find my friends again. And I found the ship’s company (such as it was, for by now I knew many of my friends were probably missing, or injured and down in the sick berth) had been mustered to attend what was clearly a very sombre gathering. Judging from the light – a murky charcoal, which the sun struggled to penetrate – it was now late in the afternoon. It was the first time I’d seen most of them in three days.

  It had been a long walk to rejoin my company, every step sending knives of pain shooting through my hindquarters, and I’d had to sink down and catch my breath often. My skin stung – it was now clear that I’d lost quite a lot of fur – and I was so parched that I’d been driven to cast around the deck and try to lick up any beads of moisture I could find. But the sound of voices drove me on, and after I had no idea how long, I was rewarded by the first glimpse of my friends.

  I would make it to the end guardrail above the gun deck, I decided. I kept my eyes on it, as if it were some kind of prize, limping slowly along the hull, keeping close to the bulkhead, feeling my back legs at every step quivering and protesting beneath me, and eventually found myself looking down at a dizzying blur of white.

  I blinked painfully, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with what had happened. To square what I’d heard and learned with what I gazed down upon now. The remaining crew – much reduced – were all decked out in their white uniforms. They looked crisp and impossibly shipshape in their finery, and, to a man, they stood rigid and unsmiling.

  It was impossible not to contrast them with the post-attack Amethyst: wounded, broken, lying up – licking its own wounds. Yet here were so many of my dear friends, gathered upon her battered deck, almost like a flock of beautiful white birds. Yes, they were bent and broken too, but they were also standing tall, managing to find strength and dignity from somewhere.

  All thoughts of my own pain were spirited away then, because it was only now that I realised what I was witnessing. For in his hands, our new captain held what I knew to be the ship’s Bible.

  Seeing that particular book lying open in his hands, I couldn’t help but find my eyes drawn behind him, where a line of low, sheet-covered mounds stretched along the gun deck. My friends’ bodies.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them, not for a long time, struck by the precision with which they had been arranged, by their shape, by their stillness. Which were they? Who was missing from the assembly?

  There were so many men missing – many more than this number, surely? – that, apart from those I knew about, it would be impossible to work out who had died these past three days. I would find out; that wretched information would all too soon be known to me. In the meantime, I must do the same as my friends below me. Pay my respects and wish them peace where they were going.

  Heads were lowering now, and a new solemnity fell upon the gathering. As I watched and listened, the captain speaking in tones mostly too low for me to catch them, the first body was committed to the river by a burial party of four ashen-faced men. Familiar faces, one I recognised as one of the ordnance men, Leighton, whose job today was to lash one of his shells to each sailor, to weigh them down – a bitter irony indeed. By the time they were done, the sun had dipped below the horizon.

  And the sailors laid to rest at the bottom of the Yangtse River had numbered seventeen.

  Chapter 12

  Though it seemed unimaginable for such a thing to happen, in the grim days that followed that terrible funeral service, I found myself grateful for the rats. For it was undoubtedly the rats – now my mortal enemy and my naval duty – that gave me the will to recover. I knew I must recover, at least enough to find the strength to hunt them down and, hopefully, kill enough of them to make it clear to the rest that they were not going to take over the Amethyst.

  We were trapped on the Yangtse. That much had been easy to establish. Time and again, some effort was made to free the ship, and as sure as the sun rose every morning, hazy and ineffectual, we’d be fired on by the communists on the north bank. Even so, there was work to be done on deck – urgent work – so what was left of the crew (less than half the ship’s company, I estimated) were labouring at all hours, courageously, right in the enemy’s sights, doing what was needed to make the ship seaworthy again. They were stuffing sandbags into holes, piling flour sacks around the bridge and wheelhouse, clearing wreckage from the decks, pump- ing out water from the wardroom, and frantically jettisoning whatever could be jettisoned – including oil – to try to get the ship back on an even keel.

  What it seemed we weren’t going to be able to do, though, was actually go anywhere. Which meant the Amethyst had, to all intents, been captured by Mao Tse-tung’s men, even if they hadn’t boarded us, and would remain where she was till they decreed it otherwise.

  Much as I craved their company, I stayed hidden from my friends for several days. Unable to walk properly, and fearful of being touched – even in kindness – I knew the best thing would be to keep myself out of sight and out of the way until I was strong enough to resume my own duties. So in the days and nights that followed I tried to keep to the shadows and secret places – an observer until I was healed enough to be anything else.

  Everyone still on board seemed in shock, just like I was. Bar Peggy, who, being a dog, skipped around with her usual abandon, there wasn’t a crew member on board who didn’t look traumatised and exhausted.

  I’d not seen Jack at the funeral, and I feared for him. I could only hope that he was in the wireless room, as reason told me he would be, busy tap-tapping away, sending his signals to the admiral, relaying whatever messages our new captain required.

  I feared for all my friends, be they injured or able-bodied, on board or otherwise. I felt their pain. Which, having been born a solitary creature, was a strange new sensation for me. And it struck me how particularly wretched it must be for the fifteen young boy sailors who’d joined us just a month back, who, when out on deck, thin as reeds and as pale as the moonlight, looked so wide-eyed and jittery and terrified.

  It was perhaps three or four days after the attack when it hit me why. It was when I watched the usual detail – the mop and bucket men who usually took such pleasure in their good-natured teasing – come out onto the quarterdeck and start scrubbing away at the co
rticene, and in such a fury that at first I thought they must be on a charge over some transgression. Then I noticed something not previously evident from where I was sitting: that what they were scrubbing away at, with their buckets of steaming, frothing water, was not the usual sooty deck grime, but blood.

  If I hadn’t seen that red water run in streams into the scuppers, I imagine I would very soon have worked it out anyway. What I’d misread as fury was actually pain; pain not only evident from the grisly task they were detailed to perform, but from the tears streaming down the young ratings’ cheeks.

  There was nothing in the world short of physical impossibility that would prevent me from doing what I could to help, though I soon realised that I would have my work cut out.

  First of all, I was missing half my whiskers. I was missing half my eyebrows, and a great deal of fur from my hindquar- ters, too, but it was the damage to my whiskers, which had all but been burned off in the explosion, that distressed me the most.

  I had known this from the outset, of course, because it would be impossible not to, but now their loss anguished me anew. It was one thing to move around all the familiar lighted places, but now I was keen to hunt again, I was doubly bereft to be without them as, when night fell – and particularly in the dark places below – I found it so much harder to see.

  But see I must – and as a matter of urgency, too – because the rats, who must have rubbed their nasty little claws together in spiteful glee, had become bolder than at any time since I’d joined the crew of the Amethyst. As I lay up, clean- ing my wounds, trying to will myself stronger, I could hear them moving about the ship, creeping and scuttling and defecating along their rat runs – an advancing horde (much like Mao Tse-tung’s communists, I thought grimly) with just one thing on their minds. The spoiling and purloining of our now doubly precious stores.