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.
‘You’re off colour, aren’t you, pet?’ she declared, looking anxious. Then she went off, at some speed, to fetch the man called the vet, who was like the doc, only he took care of animals.
I tried to stand up when she came back with him. I was always pleased to see him. He had hands as big as shovels, but you’d never have known it, he was always so gentle.
‘Oh!’ Joan said, as I stood, then I wobbled and fell back over. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘He’s not well at all.’
The vet took hold of me and examined me on his big metal table, and even his gentle touch made me tremble. My skin felt all shivery, and my head felt all woozy. Joan was right. I really didn’t feel well at all.
The vet took my temperature, and some blood – which I barely even noticed – then I was put to bed, where I slept for a bit. And when I woke, I heard his voice. He was standing outside my cage now, discussing me with Joan. I tried to look but my eyes kept flickering closed.
‘It looks like a pretty nasty virus,’ the vet was telling her. ‘So he’ll need to go into isolation, just to be on the safe side.’
‘Of course,’ I heard Joan say, in her gentle voice.
‘I’m going to give him some drugs,’ the vet went on. ‘An injection and some tablets. The tablets to help him sleep. That’s the best way.’
He sighed then. ‘There’s little else to be done, I’m afraid. As far as this ruddy virus goes, it’s really up to him now.’
I sensed Joan before I saw her; I felt the vibration in the air as the door opened, and her hand came across to stroke me. Then I heard her sigh as well, and the sound of it shook me to the core. ‘It’s so unfair,’ she said. ‘After all the poor mite’s been through. And him still so young…’ She didn’t say any more.
‘Well, he’s proved the odds wrong once,’ the vet said. ‘Let’s hope he does the same again, eh? Wages the same war on this wretched virus as he seems to have done with all those rats…’
‘I’ll stay with him, tonight,’ Joan said at last, her voice low. ‘At least till he’s gone off to sleep again. Well…’ She paused. ‘Perhaps longer… Can’t have him on his own. Not at a time like this. Oh, the poor little mite,’ she said again.
‘Well,’ the vet said, ‘I commend you for your dedication.’ There was a pause, but again, I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes open. ‘And I’m sure he’ll pull through,’ the vet said eventually. ‘You know what they say about cats and their nine lives…’
Chapter 23
I had no idea what time it was when I woke up. The light spilling across the grass outside lent everything a pale luminescence, so it must be some time in the small hours of the morning, I supposed. I knew I’d slept for several hours – it had been perhaps the longest time I’d slept without waking for three days now; a deep, dreamless sleep, and one apparently untroubled by the fitful, and now feverish, nightmares that had dogged me since I’d left the Amethyst at Plymouth.
I was in a different room now. A smaller one, which was much more dimly lit. From where I lay, I could see though some glass doors to what looked like the quarantine garden. I was lying on my side, my head nestled on a square of folded muslin, and slightly to my right I could see Joan.
I was at first surprised she was still with me, because I’d slept for so long now, but then I realised that she was fast asleep herself, sitting in an armchair, her small hands clasped together loosely in her lap. I liked the vet’s hands but I loved Joan’s hands the best. They always smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine, and were the softest and gentlest I’d ever known.
I lay motionless for some time, taking stock of my surroundings, and making a mental assessment of how I was feeling. Not because I felt anxious about moving, as I had when I’d been injured on the Yangtse, but because, though I felt wide awake now, and seemed free of my fever, I also felt no pressing need to move anywhere. I was comfortable, relaxed, and could think of no particular reason to be anywhere other than I was, happy to let my body rest and leave my mind do the wandering.
I thought back to the events of the last couple of weeks. To the curious nature of being back on what my friends had called ‘dry land’ but which had, for the most part, been anything but. As had often been the case when we’d been stranded on the Yangtse, this place – this patch of land my friends called home, and seemed to love so much – seemed endlessly beset by heavy rain.
It had been raining constantly, beating a tattoo on the window, the sound of it almost as mesmerising as Jack’s Morse code machine. Only here, with no sun to suck it back up to make the clouds again, the rain lingered and seemed to cause everyone trouble. ‘Muddy feet! Muddy boots! Muddy paws! Blooming mud!’ These were the words that had often drifted over to me as I dozed, along with other things that made no sense – and which I would spend hours pondering – such as the business of it being ‘too cold to snow.’ I was, I decided, settling in well.
I thought of the kindnesses shown to me, which had sometimes overwhelmed me, and of the letters and gifts that were being sent to me, still. As if I had done something more than the men and dog I’d served with. Which I hadn’t. I’d just done what I could. Which had always been the most – and least – I could do. It was beginning to become something of an embarrassment.
I thought mostly of my friends, and what they might be doing, and wondering if they might be thinking of me too.
I thought of Jack, and his ‘herrings in’, and the long nights we spent together. Of how glad I was to hear he’d been decorated for his efforts – of how much of a hero and a true friend he had been.
I thought of gentle George Hickinbottom, who’d left the ship so long ago – was he at home with his cat, Sooty? I hoped so.
I thought of Captain Kerans, who’d brought us all to safety. How proud I felt to have him as my friend, and how much I looked forward to seeing him again.
I thought of Captain Griffiths, whom I’d loved and who’d given me my name. It was nice to think, even if our paths never crossed again, that my picture might end up on a bulkhead above his bed, and that I might be another memory in his heart.
Mostly, though, I found myself thinking increasingly of my mother, and of the cat’s life she’d tried to prepare me for but which I’d never quite had. Was she still up there, looking down on me? Was she proud of me? Did she know I was now an able seacat? I realised how much I wanted to be reassured on all those points – perhaps a feeling at the heart of orphaned souls everywhere.