I delivered my trophies, one by one, as naval protocol dictated – the first, at dawn, to the captain’s bunk – he being apparently busy inspecting the boilers. I’d yet to properly meet him and was keen to assure him that I was anxious to do my bit. I hoped he’d be pleased, and spent time arranging the rat’s body just so, before padding back to resume my duties below. My second catch, just an hour later, I decided would be for Jack, to cheer him up while he toiled at his post in the wireless room. He was by now wide awake again, looking all the better for his sleep, and munching on one of his ‘herrings in’ sandwiches.
He looked almost bug-eyed, in fact – like one of the black beetles that used to cling to the banyan fronds at dusk – when I padded in with my kill, saying, ‘That is the best thing I’ve seen in days!’ He immediately leaned across to send a message up the voice pipe, shouting, ‘Wireless room to engine room! Guess what. Blackie’s killed a flippin’ monster!’, upon which a message came back, almost immediately. ‘Er, correction, Flags – he’s actually killed two!’
It was the captain’s voice. He’d obviously found it. I couldn’t have felt more proud. Or, indeed, more hungry. When I was presented with the promised plate of sardines shortly afterwards, I ate them so fast that Jack even whistled his admiration up the voice pipe. ‘Gone almost before you could say Jack Robinson, sir!’ he told the captain.
Whoever Jack Robinson was. I felt proud of that, as well.
But, in reality, there was little room for pride on board the Amethyst. Not as things stood. As I patrolled the ship over the next couple of days, full of emotion, full of respect, it was clear that, for all the camaraderie, the crew were not just physically exhausted, they were emotionally exhausted too, grieving for and mourning their dead friends. Most of all, again and again, it confirmed my first impression: that just as the memory of my mother’s brutal death would always haunt me, so the faces of the crew – particularly the youngest, most inexperienced seamen – wore the pain and revulsion of the things they had witnessed, their brows etched not just with lines made of oil and grease and soot, but by the business of remembering, and the distress it must cause them. I felt for them. Grieved with them. Wished I could better help them, but knew I could not.
It was Peggy – dear, silly, muddle-headed Peggy – who first showed me that I was quite wrong about that. Something that should have been as clear as the nose on my face: that I could do so much more than just deal with the rat colony for my friends. I could help them in other ways, too.
It was a few days later, and I was patrolling the rat runs, as focused as ever, as, with no sign of us being allowed to continue on our journey to Nanking, it seemed we could be stuck for some time.
And it hadn’t just been the two kills that had fired me with such ambition. It was the fact that the rats were becoming their own worst enemies. So emboldened had they become since the ship had been marooned that they were often to be seen scuttling along their rat runs in broad daylight, as if – or so they thought – they had nothing to fear!
One of their runs ran through the sick bay, and was becoming increasingly well travelled, doubtless providing some new and devious rodent short cut to the already diminishing stores. There was sufficient food as yet – plenty of preserved food, and a reasonable stock of dry goods – but without fresh food of any kind, bar what could be obtained from the nationalists, the dry goods were an increasingly precious commodity. They had become currency, and could be traded for potatoes, greens, and eggs.
But it was that same store of dry goods – flour and cereals and rice, and so on – that the rats were most intent on stealing from under us, and what they didn’t steal, they spoiled, rendering it useless. Because there was also the health risk, which was not something I knew much about, admittedly, but the new doctor was clear on the dire threat they posed.
Rats spread disease and the rat population was growing. I had never been more needed and my injuries seemed as nothing in the face of it.
Peggy was in the sick bay, on a bunk, sitting squarely on someone’s chest. Which was an arresting enough sight in itself. She barked when she saw me (being entirely without any sort of hunting instinct, she could scatter prey in an instant) and the sailor turned around and grinned at me.
I didn’t know him well – he was one of the young lads that had only joined the Amethyst recently – but the smoothness of his skin under the sweat and grime was telling.
There was a bucket beside the bunk and as he had no visible injuries, I suspected he must have gone down with an infection of some kind – one of those ‘health risks’ our new doctor kept muttering about to the captain, while exhorting the men to wash and clean and scrub.
‘It’s the hero of the hour!’ he said. His face was greyish. Gaunt and angular. ‘Come here, little man,’ he coaxed, ‘come and have a cuddle with me and Peg, eh?’ He hung an arm down at the side of the bunk to coax me, while Peggy licked his face.
I duly trotted across, noticing as I did so how strange the sick bay smelled now. It was a new smell; sharply acid, and oddly sweet, too, and as I inhaled it I remembered something I’d previously forgotten – the frantic panic, the screaming, the desperate cries of ‘Get him in! Get him in!’. It was only a wisp of memory, a snatch of something I’d prefer to bury, but the scene, even though I couldn’t quite see it, became clearer. This same sick bay, not so long ago, would have been full of horribly wounded sailors, with our doctor – I’d now learned he’d been slain, along with his assistant, Thomas – dashing around desperately, trying to do what he could for his men, slipping and sliding on the pools of spilled blood…
Wash, clean and scrub, I thought. Wash, clean and scrub. Once the surviving wounded were taken away and driven to hospital, the sick bay – scene of so much carnage – must have been one of the first priorities. No such care and attention for my mother, whose body had no choice but to stay where it had been flung. I’d had to find a new route across the island from that day.
Today, the sick bay was clean, neat and bright, and almost empty. Bar this one young sailor, and a rating in bed in the far corner, who was snoring, the only other patients were ghosts.
I nudged my head into the sailor’s hand, feeling sadness pressing down on me, and though I braced for the pain as he brushed my still scabby ear, none came. His touch was as light as a cloud.
I managed to jump up onto the bunk, which was happily low, feeling extremely thankful for the growing strength in my back legs. And as I padded up the blanket, Peggy woofed, just a low, gentle snicker. And then stuck her great black wet nose into my face.
‘Look at you two,’ the young sailor said, in his high but rasping voice. ‘Who’d have thought a cat and dog would ever get on like you do?’ Who indeed? I thought, as Peggy hopped down and trotted off to make room for me. ‘Here you go, then,’ said the sailor. ‘Have the warm spot, why don’t you?’
I settled down in the space Peggy had just vacated, and kneaded my claws into the rough grey of the blanket. ‘Aren’t I the lucky one?’ the sailor said, a smile stretching his tired features. ‘I could get used to this, I could. I well could…’ And within what seemed like mere moments, his eyes had fluttered closed, and his breathing had become slow and regular. Every once in a while, the corners of his mouth would twitch a little. Happy dreams? I hoped so. To chase away the nightmares.