Most pleasing and surprising was how much I loved my human family, and no less was the revelation of how much they seemed to love me too.
Yes, I’d come on board with George, but he’d laid no particular claim to me, clear from the outset that I (together with the good luck I would apparently confer on their endeavours) was to be there for them all. Though I reported to Captain Griffiths, I was very much there for everyone, and though they couldn’t possibly know just how much I understood of them (that human thing again) it quickly seemed I had another role to play aboard the Amethyst – to be the official recipient of sailors’ secrets.
Whether I was in one of the officers’ cabins, or somewhere in the packed after-mess, every sailor seemed to have things in his head that he kept to himself. So it was that my role began not just as a rat catcher, but as a confidant as well, hearing all about the things they seemed to find it difficult to share with one another – the same sorts of things, in the main, that I would share with the moon when sitting on the end of my jetty. I heard about crushes and sweethearts, fiancées and wives. About their families, about the children and animals whose images danced across various bulkheads; about the babies a few of my friends had apparently fathered, but, heart-breakingly, had yet to even meet. I heard of memories and musings, regrets and resolutions, recriminations, and sometimes, when days at sea became rain-sodden and endless, it was my job to curl up close while one of my friends had a cry, which was sometimes upsetting for them, but at other times, also a blessing. ‘You’re a good listener, Blackie,’ they’d whisper, furiously drying their eyes. ‘And I know you’ll keep mum.’
Keeping ‘mum’, I soon learned, was a very important thing. And having responsibility for keeping it (and the men’s faith that I could be trusted to, of course) always made me feel close to my own mother.
None of this was a part of my mother’s plan for me, however. Far from it. I’d catch myself (as likely when cuddled up in a sleeping sailor’s hammock as when presenting a lifeless rat to the captain) in a state of bemused wonder. Specially at those times when the stars were at their brightest – at three or four or five in the morning, perhaps while I was sitting on some sheltered part of the upper deck, watching flying fish skim the water, perhaps sitting in the humming warmth of the wireless room, perhaps curled up on my favourite spot up on the bridge. I’d be sitting companionably with the captain, or Lieutenant Weston (or even Lieutenant Berger, however much he kept declaring himself not to be ‘a cat person’) and wishing so hard that my mother could see for herself that humans – at least the ones on His Majesty’s Ship Amethyst – were not the monsters she’d supposed.
It was the strangest thing – I had gone from being an outsider, a loner, a scared, scavenging kitten, to being a valued member of a team. No longer hiding in the shadows, for fear of being seen and mistreated, here I was treated daily to titbits and cuddles and strokes. It made no sense, because these were not things a cat should desire, yet at the same time I had never felt so happy. And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, I realised that solitude was not only overrated, it was the least likely thing I’d be now inclined to choose, with a human lap the most likely, any day.
There was a great deal to learn about life in the Navy, and I was eager to learn it. Not least (as it was key to almost everything on board) the many ways my human friends communicated with one another, which was something they seemed to like to do almost all the time, even more so – and this was a revelation too – than the ever barking, ever sniffing, ever tail-wagging Peggy.
Yes, they spoke to each other, of course, and for the most part, that was easy to grasp. Had Captain Griffiths been a cat, the Amethyst would very much be his territory, though, unlike a cat, he didn’t need to defend it alone; he had all his men, who deferred to him at all times and in all things, to assist him in doing it.
Then there were things called flags, of which there seemed to be many; not just the ensign that flew from the top of that masthead to let everyone know who we were. There was a big store of flags below, each in its own designated cubby hole, all of them made of a mix of different coloured cloths, all of them enticing to a cat in want of a nap. Though I learned very quickly that a cat in want of a nap might – no, would – do much better to take it elsewhere, because (as the signals officer was at great pains to relay when he ejected me) no one interfered with his bunting. I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘bunting’ but, as ever, his tone was very clear; that everything to do with flags – hoisting them, flying them and then bringing them down again and refolding them – was taken very seriously indeed.
Closer to home, there were myriad different ways by which everyone communicated on board. As well as everyone being called different things by different people (which was why I’d been gifted two names, I supposed) there was a big noisy bell, which was rung periodically, as well as a bewildering number of different whistles, which were blown in so many ways, and for so many apparent reasons, that I never knew if there was going to be a sudden invasion of mops and buckets or a very important person coming aboard.
Most curious of all, though, were the serpentine devices that wound their way around the Amethyst and, by some magic that I had yet to understand (and perhaps never would), enabled everyone to speak to whoever they wished to speak to, in whichever compartment of the ship they happened to be.
They were strange things – a little too unnervingly snakelike, to my mind – but without doubt, very clever indeed: lidded metal tubes that began in one place – say, the bridge – and ended up somewhere else – say the wireless room or wheelhouse – carrying words wherever words needed to be.
‘That’s called a voice pipe,’ the captain told me, when I was up on the bridge with him one morning, sitting on the ship’s compass (which being glass-topped, was always nice to sit on when the sun happened to be shining, though best avoided if there was a nip in the air). The pipe was adjacent, and I was busy making a closer inspection of it. ‘And, let me tell you, young fellow, if you let your curiosity get the better of you and decide to see where it might take you, you’ll be in for an extremely rude awakening.’ He’d laughed then. ‘And probably get stuck fast then, as well, even being the little tiddler you are.’
I had no idea what a rude awakening might feel like, but I was definitely more than familiar with being ‘stuck’, having never forgotten being stuck up a tree. It was sufficient to deter me from investigating them any further.
Most fascinating of all, though, were the machines that went tap-tap-tap-tap and lived in the wireless room. It was a place that had quickly become a favourite haunt for me anyway – what with all the paper lying around (‘very important bits of paper!’ Jack would huff, every time he shifted me off from them) – it had lots of very cat-friendly features. But the machines were particularly interesting. They didn’t look much, but could apparently send important messages all around the world, just by the operator (of which Jack was one) tapping bits of wood against one another.
There was something mesmeric about the tap-tap machines, so much so that I’d spend long periods dozing beside the telegraphists – Jack in particular. This had initially been because his preferred snack was a herring sandwich, but latterly just because, well, because Jack was Jack, and there was so much with Jack that was tacitly understood. I sometimes wondered if Jack could tell what I was thinking.