Able Seacat Simon

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Something of a miracle, if you ask me, Mrs Kerans,’ came a voice from behind us. The lady turned, me along with her, and agreed that it was.

  It was Lieutenant Hett, my official Cat Officer, and he shook his head slightly. ‘Honestly, you should have seen the state of him,’ he said, coming up and scratching the fur behind my left ear. ‘Captain’s cabin took a direct hit, so it really is a miracle. Not just the whiskers – no eyebrows either, and shrapnel wounds everywhere . . . Never thought he’d last the night, let alone make any sort of recovery. It’s no word of exaggeration that we owe a very great deal to this little fellow. And to Peggy too, of course. The pair of them. But especially this one, what with the rats, and him being so badly injured. Talk about nine lives! Brave as a lion, too, aren’t you, Blackie?’ he added, chucking me under the chin and grinning. ‘I tell you, all this fuss – if that’s what it’s being called, and I’m guessing you’re finding it a fuss, aren’t you, feller? Well, it’s no less then he deserves, it really isn’t.’

  There was a sharp rap on the bulkhead by the open door at that moment.

  ‘Captain’s compliments, sir. Can you come along to the forward deck, sir? The Vice Admiral’s just coming aboard.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lieutenant Hett said. ‘I’ll be there right away.’

  ‘What about this little fellow?’ Mrs Kerans asked, still petting me.

  ‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind popping him in the CO’s cabin and shutting the door, that would be grand. You’ll know where it is . . .’

  She nodded. ‘Indeed I do.’

  And it seemed she did. I was so busy wondering how she knew her way around the Amethyst so well, that she’d done exactly that before I’d even got my bearings (much less crafted some plan to have her indeed take me hostage), her ‘It’s been an honour to meet you finally, Simon,’ still ringing in my ears as she click-clacked her way back along the deck.

  It was cool in the captain’s cabin – perhaps a little too cool for my liking – and with the bunk stripped, the walls bare and the dust cover over his typewriter, the sense that it was no longer Captain Kerans’ cabin but simply a compartment was heightened. It seemed almost inconceivable that I’d been in this very place when a shell had exploded into it. I looked across towards the door, which was still riddled with shrapnel holes to remind me, but now minus the caps that habitually hung from it. I wondered how long it would be before I saw it again.

  Because my memory of that day had never properly returned to me, I could only imagine, rather than relive, the events of that morning, but it occurred to me that Captain Kerans’ wife might have been right. Perhaps it was a miracle that I was still here, even with me being so blessed on the lives front.

  But what now? I was suddenly anxious for the next thing to happen. The sooner the parade was over, the ship repaired, and I had ‘passed muster’ in the thing called quarantine, the sooner we’d be reunited and back at sea again.

  I could hear noises floating up to me; perhaps the crew were being assembled. Perhaps the parade through the streets of Plymouth was about to begin. I hopped up onto the captain’s bunk and across to peer out of the scuttle, from where I had at least a partial view of events down on the quay.

  There were indeed lots of things happening below me. Crowds moving along, opening up a route, the crew beginning to get into position, the cameras still popping, a marching band playing, flags waving everywhere, all of it so good to see. The air of joy and celebration was almost palpable – but at the same time, the sense of leaving, of my friends leaving me, was acute. I could hardly bear to watch as they marched away from me.

  I turned away. I would take refuge in sleep, I decided. Take advantage of the peace and quiet and have forty winks. Since I was shut in here – itself peculiar, but I tried not to think about it – the captain’s bunk, even minus its covers, would do nicely.

  I’m not sure what made me pad back over to the scuttle then. The sound of the parade was growing fainter and fainter, so I’m not sure what instinct led me back for one last look. But it did, and I saw something on the quayside that made my blood run cold.

  It was a man walking towards the Amethyst, carrying a cage.

  Chapter 22

  He was clad in a brown coat, and wore a hat of a type I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t take my eyes off him till he disappeared beneath me, up the gangway.

  I knew I must be brave – hadn’t Jack promised they would all come and visit me? But the cage was such a scary thing – such an unexpected horror – that I stayed where I was, still transfixed by the sight of it, long after I couldn’t see it any more.

  A cage. They were actually going to put me in a cage? It was almost too overwhelming to contemplate. Was this my immediate future? To be trapped in a cage? To become one of those wretched souls I’d seen in the Hong Kong markets, doomed to see out their days trapped behind bamboo bars? Was that what quarantine was going to be? A place where animals were held prisoner? For as long as it took them to pass muster with the powers that be? I wished so much that I could work out what that meant.

  It was soon enough to send me into a flat spin of panic. I jumped down from the captain’s bunk and hid away under it, squeezing into the scant space between the bed base and floor. Here I tried to think. Should I try to keep hidden? Would that be best? There were so many places and spaces to choose from, after all; so many secret nooks where no one bar the rats would be able to find me. But the idea seemed futile, even as I thought it, because what would be the point? The Amethyst was fast becoming a cold, empty vessel, with almost everyone I knew and loved already gone from it, all away down the wet streets, proud and happy. And without my friends, would I really be any better off than in quarantine? No, I wouldn’t. Given that the Amethyst was now to go to a repair dock, which I knew was the plan, it would make it all the harder to be reunited with them. I’d have to scavenge for food again, leave the ship, live off my wits – become a stray again, in fact, which was the last thing I wanted. No. Despite the cage, I must, I must, be brave.

  So when the door opened, revealing the captain’s wife and the man in the brown coat, I squeezed back out again and allowed him to take me. When he put me in the cage – which smelled of something alien and bitter and immediately made me gag – I didn’t even hiss at him. I was an able seacat, and I had to be strong now.

  We left the ship just as the sound of the parade melted away altogether, and the few remaining well-wishers peeled away too. The sky was still dark as if dusk was falling soon, though it wasn’t even close. As the man carried me down the gangway I had to concentrate hard not to panic, putting all my energies into trying to keep my balance as the cage, with me in it, jiggled and swung at his side, and thumped against the side of his leg.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘There’s a good boy,’ he said. I was reassured that he said all this not unkindly. But then he opened the back of his van, filling my nose with foul, confusing odours, placed the cage inside, then shut me in the dark. ‘Go to sleep now, little fellow,’ he said as he shut the door behind me. I knew I wouldn’t.

  The journey was long. Oh, so long. As long as one of Jack’s watches. And with nothing to look at bar a glimpse of darkening sky through the little square scuttle, I could only retreat into my thoughts. I was taken back to my first days aboard the Amethyst immediately: the same wobbly weakness, the same nagging queasiness. I had travelled what must have been thousands of miles across the ocean, and, apart from those first days when I struggled to keep my feet where my brain said the deck was, I hadn’t felt sick like this before.

  It was such a long journey that at one point we stopped. The man came to ‘see’ to me – or so he told me – to give me a small bowl of water and a cuddle, standing on a grassy strip at the side of a busy road.

  He put me back in then. Shut the cage door, which was made of the same wire as the rest of it, then disappeared out of sight, the back doors of the van still hanging open. I stared out
into the half-light, feeling perplexed and morose and unsettled, with the cars thundering past, kicking up spray. I decided I hated roads just as much as I ever had.

  I must have slept then, because I woke with a start, hearing a noise. Light flooded in. A bright light, like a searchlight, which dazzled and confused me. A light not like the moon – too close, too bright, too startling – radiating down from above and making rods of the raindrops which were falling steadily and thickly on the ground.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ said a new voice. Then, ‘Thanks. You must be exhausted. This flipping weather. Cats and dogs, eh?’ This to the man, who’d come back into view again. A high voice. Soft and welcoming. A woman’s. ‘Long old trip. Still, you’re here now. Shall I make you a cuppa? Let’s get him in and then I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

  It was the woman who carried me, cooing in gentle, friendly tones. I tried to feel reassured by it, shaking the sleep from my head, as the cage was borne steadily – carefully, gently – up a path, lined with more grass, to a large wooden door.

  ‘There,’ she said as we reached it, speaking down to me in the cage. ‘Our precious cargo delivered. We’re so excited to have you! Everyone’s so looking forward to meeting you. But first something to eat, yes? Poor mite. You must be hungry. And bewildered too, I’ll bet. You must be wondering what on earth’s going on, eh? But there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ She set the cage down on a table. Then her face loomed. A round face. A pale face. A friendly face. I couldn’t stop shaking, even so.

  I was taken, still in the cage, to another compartment, and the first thing that struck me was the absence of metal. It was a huge compartment. Almost as big as the place in the picture in the paper, from where Peggy had received our awards. Oh, Peggy, I thought, feeling unbearably lonely suddenly. Everything would be so much better if Peggy was with me. I missed the smell of her. I missed her barking. I missed the sound of her sleepy whimpers – chasing rabbits in her dreams, Jack had told me. I missed the thump of her tail when it struck a piece of canvas. I even missed the sudden sprays of water when she’d been horsing around on deck and got herself drenched by the mops and the buckets. Peggy would be fine here, and I missed her so much.

  But I knew I must rally and trust in the woman’s gentle tones. I was welcome. She’d told me. No one wished me any harm here. On the contrary; within minutes half a dozen people had clustered round me, one wondering if they should get me out and ‘take a proper look at me’, or leave me. Or feed me. Or simply transfer me, as it was late, to the ‘cattery’ straight away – which word sent me all into a spin once again.

  In the end it was decided that, since everyone wanted to cuddle me, the best thing would be to take me out and do so. I was passed around, fussed over, and declared to be a hero. That same word again and again, and again, always said so reverentially.

  So I tried hard not to quake. Tried to purr. Tried to please them. And I did rally, even when I was taken to another place – a room (that was their word for it) that was apparently going to be my home. It was almost all white, and at first sight, a more reassuring place to me: angular, functional, and reassuringly metal. It smelled a little like the Amethyst’s sick bay.

  Less reassuringly, I then saw where I was going to be billeted, which was a smaller compartment within it. It was still a cage, I supposed, but a much bigger one than I’d come in. It had a human-sized wire door, beyond which lay a basket – ‘This is your bed, Simon. Isn’t it cosy?’ said the lady – and beyond that, a rectangular tray which was filled with tiny pebbles, and to the side a brace of small shallow bowls, one containing water, the other empty.

  I looked first at the ‘bed’, which was not like any bed I’d ever slept on, then up above it, where, to my immense relief, I saw there was a high place. I scampered up a gangway that seemed there specifically to take me to it, and there I stayed, trying to trick my brain into believing I was not where I was. That I had once again boarded the Amethyst, and we were sailing. And then, remembering that sleep was so often the best refuge, I slept.

  On second inspection, just before sunrise the following morning, quarantine looked less terrifying than I’d first expected. Yes it was a strange place, and, despite the gangway, very different from the Amethyst, but not so different that it felt completely alien. And though the sky was still grey, and seemed to hang so low above me, there was at least a window that enabled me to see it.

  It was odd knowing the world outside the window felt like home for most of my human friends, as, to me, it looked barren and strange. The skeletal trees here were nothing like banyans or tamarinds. They seemed to claw upwards towards the sky, for one thing, though below them there was enough green to cheer me up a bit. Not on the trees, but it did seem to carpet almost everywhere. When we arrived, and I’d finally been freed from the cage, it had felt strangely reminiscent of the garden around the old lady’s house.

  I remembered what the man in the brown coat had said to me when we’d arrived here. ‘You’ll be treated like a king here, me little laddo,’ he’d reassured me. ‘Just you wait – you’ll be the bee’s knees and the bug’s elbows!’

  I had no idea what he meant then, and I still didn’t now. But remembering it, and particularly the way he’d said it, made me resolute. I must remember there was nothing to fear here. So, mindful of Captain Griffiths, who had always led by example, I duly settled in and got on with it.

  And on one level, it was an easy thing to do. The man in the brown coat had been right about my welcome. However strange my new home, I couldn’t have been treated with more kindness, particularly by the lady who’d greeted me when I’d arrived. Her name was Joan, she said, and she’d been given special responsibility for me.

  Every day – twice a day, in fact – post arrived for me. Such a lot of post! Being mindful of how happy post made my shipmates, I decided the post was yet another thing to reassure me. I was thought about. I was missed. I was loved.

  There were sacks and sacks of letters, of the kind I’d first seen in the wardroom, and I wished Lieutenant Hett could be with me to share them. There were more cuddly toys, things to play with, and enticing new things to eat. There were also visitors – though often strangers, who would sometimes overwhelm me. I was used to my shipmates, every last lovely man jack of them, but the seemingly endless procession of new faces (albeit smiling ones, with nothing but praise for me) began to stress me and make me keen, unbelievably, for the sanctuary of my cage. And for my high place, for which I was very grateful.

  I was also visited, to my joy, by a few crew members. Not Jack, because Jack’s home on dry land was several hundred miles away. But I saw Frank and Sid, and Lieutenant Hett, and though I hated that feeling when I watched them leave the building again, it was enough to keep my spirits mostly buoyant.

  Best of all, Captain Kerans and his wife, who was called Stephanie, visited twice, and on his second visit he promised me that, should it work out that way for whatever reason, I had a permanent home in England, with them. Which was a comfort, but at the same time, a worry as well. What about the Amethyst? Would I not be given another roving commission? Would I not be able to rejoin my ship and go to sea again?

  I tried to put it out of my mind and find pleasure in each day – after all, I was being treated exactly as Jack predicted: given nice things to eat, made a great deal of fuss of and, best of all, I had Joan, who had already become a friend, and who spent a lot of time playing with me every day.

  I was especially grateful to Joan. Because one thing did strike me, and it struck me very quickly; I finally understood the word ‘boredom’. Without my friends and my work and the whole ship to roam, days were longer here, passing agonisingly slowly.

  I remembered what Jack had told me the sailors sometimes did at such times. Mark a cross on a calendar as each day was done; create a line, then a block, then another, then another, till the days without crosses were almost none.

  Perhaps I should do that, if only in my head. Mark a cross in my mi
nd for every day that I spent here till the day came – and it would – when I finally passed muster and was allowed to pick up the thread of my seafaring life.

  Because at those times between visitors, and when Joan was busy elsewhere, the time really did seemed to crawl. So I snoozed – I had never done quite so much snoozing – and tried to remember how much I had to look forward to, not least the ceremony that Captain Kerans told me would take place in December, at which I’d formally be presented with a very important medal – the one I was to receive in place of the ribbon I’d been sent when we were back in Hong Kong.

  Though I was grateful, I was privately bemused by it all. I had done nothing more than the job that had been expected of me from the outset; from when Captain Griffiths had given me my commission aboard the Amethyst, to take charge as best I could of the rats. Everything else – all this talk of courage and gallantry, and of comforting my shipmates in troubled times – that was no more than I’d have done willingly without the commission. I had been given a wonderful opportunity, given friends and given hope. I had been reborn, almost – given a life I could never have dreamed of, and though the horror of that April day would stay with me also, I already felt so privileged; I had made friends, who I loved, and would continue to cherish and, most of all, I had escaped with my life and recovered, where many brave, decent men had not.

  In short, more than anything, I had simply been lucky. If I’d seemed to have been in any way heroic, it was the least I could do – the very least I could do – as a mark of my gratitude.

  Perhaps it was exhaustion – so many visitors, so many people, so many comings and goings. Or perhaps it was the fact that I no longer had a ship to wander around and the sea breeze to refresh me that, unaccustomed to the lassitude, I’d grown weary. I didn’t know why or how, but something was wrong. Some sort of malaise seemed to take a grip of me.

  It was late on one crisp, cold November afternoon that I began to feel unwell. Joan had brought me sardines, but I couldn’t face eating, and milk, which I didn’t want to drink.