Lynne Barrett-Lee - Able Seacat Simon

Sound asleep on Jack’s lap that night, I dreamed of my mother. She was on the Amethyst , alongside me, my protector and friend, and when a machine gun was fired at us from a battery on a shore – the bank flocked with the enemy, all shouting and raging – she sprang up and took the bullets for me, falling lifeless at my feet. A bloom of blood then grew beneath her, till the tug of gravity took it, and it rushed in a stream into the scuppers.

I woke with a start, to the sound of voices again, but this time they were low and conspiratorial. Trying to shake the horrible images from my head, I opened my eyes, to see Lieutenant Hett and the man Frank had called Doc standing over us, the latter with a plate of sandwiches in his hand.

Lieutenant Hett smiled and raised a finger. ‘Shh…’ he mouthed more than said to me. It was then that I realised that Jack was fast asleep. His head was resting on his arm, which was flat across his desk now, and had formed a cosy human tent for me to doze under. I realised the rhythm of his breathing; it was the same one that must have rocked me to sleep.

‘Good to see you again, little fella,’ the one called Doc whispered. Again I wondered. Was he here because Doctor Alderton was injured? And where was Thomas, the sick bay attendant? I’d not seen him either.

The doc turned to Hett and nodded, and they both moved further away. ‘I don’t mind staying in here for a bit,’ he said, keeping his mouth close to the lieutenant’s ear. ‘Let him sleep. He’s done in. He can take more Benzedrine later. I can wake him up soon enough if anything new comes in.’

Hett nodded. ‘Good man. I’ll send a cuppa down for you when it’s brewed then.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘How about you, Simon? Peckish, old son?’ He came back and crouched down so he was on my level. ‘My, boy, you look like you’ve been existing on thin air!’

I doubted anything would have woken Jack, but I took the utmost care in any case, slithering down from his lap as carefully and smoothly as I could. Then, with a wobble of my hindquarters, which I quickly corrected, padded across to say hello to my lieutenant friend. ‘Some sardines, eh?’ he whispered. He looked amused. Pleased to see me. ‘Least the rats can’t get their filthy teeth into the tins, eh? Well –’ he grimaced. ‘Not yet, anyway. Way they’re going, I wouldn’t put it past them.’

I pressed myself around his shin, purring, then wound a slow double figure of eight around the pair of them, to let them know just how pleased I was to see them as well. Then I padded off, over the threshold and back to the dark, infested places. I would love some sardines. My mouth watered at the prospect. It was the first time I’d thought of anything but pain and thirst in all these days.

I would love some sardines. A plate of herrings out, too. Or herrings in , even. The kind in the horrible sauce Jack favoured. That was how hungry I suddenly found myself. I held onto the thought.

Then I tilted my nose, sniffed the air, caught a scent and began to follow. No doubt about it. I would love some sardines. I really would. But not just yet. First I was going to earn them.

Hunger and fury are a potent combination. That and the power of friendship. I was not going to let my friends down.

I killed two rats that night. Though at some cost to myself, admittedly. The second, a big ugly brute of a male, made a swipe that tore open the wound in my ear – again – and made it bleed so much it dripped all down my face.

But such was my delight – and relief – at having dispatched the hated animals that it could have bled all the next day (and might well have, had Petty Officer Frank not managed to staunch it) and I wouldn’t have cared. As it was, I was exhausted, but it was a good kind of weariness. The weariness of a job done to the best of my abilities and more than that, proof that where there is a will, there is, almost always, a way. I had Jack’s devotion to his own duty to thank for that.

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.