Able Seacat Simon

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘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.

  It was a clear evening, and from where I lay I could see enough of the night sky through the window to view a sprinkling of stars. They felt far away here – further than they’d ever felt before – and it struck me all at once that perhaps being in the middle of this land mass was the problem. I’d begun my life by the sea, and spent the rest of it on it. Perhaps dry land was not a good place for a cat like me to be.

  I thought I might like to go and sit by the window. But, despite feeling so different, and so pain free, I wasn’t sure I dared to – it having also come back to me just how much it had hurt when I’d come round after the shelling back in April. Yet my fever seemed to have dipped now, and my body felt relaxed, and it occurred to me that I might be well enough not only to move to the window, but to consider setting off on another journey.

  You’ll be back on board before you know it, old son. Captain Kerans had been clear on that point.

  Wouldn’t be the same without you, Blackie! Had that been Jack, or was it Frank?

  Couldn’t countenance it, Simon. You’re one of us! Was that Lieutenant Hett? It was all becoming so blurred in my mind.

  But when would I – would we – be back on board my beloved Amethyst? I didn’t know. And neither did they. In the meantime, the feeling was growing ever stronger that I was not meant to stay here on dry land. That I didn’t want to stay here any longer.

  Then come to me.

  I started. It was my mother’s voice.

  Come to me, kitten. Clear and strong now. I want you to tell m
e all your tales.

  I opened my eyes. Strained to look. Strained to see as well as hear her. But the brightness of the moon, making everything gleam, was too strong for me to be able to see beyond it to the furthest stars. It was a full moon, and the light from it spilled across everything, streaming through the glass door, washing whitely over the linoleum, sculpting and painting everything with a luminous creamy brightness. It settled on Joan, on the table, on the cabinets and chair legs, catching fire here and there, wherever it met with something shiny, bathing everything it its warm benevolent glow.

  And on me. I realised I was quite, quite recovered. No longer fearful. No longer parched. No longer pining for what had been, or worrying about what might yet not happen. No longer anxiously struggling against the illness the vet had told Joan in grave terms that I must fight as hard as I had fought the Amethyst’s rats.

  Was that no longer true? Had the virus left my body? I stretched out a paw, tentatively at first, testing ligaments and tendons.

  That’s the way, kitten, I heard my mother say. You’re done with this life. Come to me. Come to me now. Come and tell me all your tales . . .

  I stretched another limb, feeling a new strength begin to flow through my body. Pinged my claws. Flicked my tail. Felt a breeze stir my whiskers. Felt a lightness of spirit I’d not felt in days.

  I rose then. Another day, another journey, another place.

  Another life to be lived, and so many stories to tell. I was ready to begin the next part of my adventure.

  Epilogue

  Simon (or Blackie, as he was known to most of the Amethyst’s crew) died on 28 November 1949, succumbing to enteritis, a complication of the virus he’d probably contracted at the quarantine centre he’d been sent to in Surrey. For a young cat to die of such a virus was very unusual, but it was suggested that perhaps he had been born with a weak heart and that his many injuries from the shelling, not to mention daily battles with large, aggressive rats, might also have taken their toll.

  Members of the Amethyst’s crew, who had been to visit him – including Captain Kerans and his wife – felt very differently. As did Telegraphist Jack French, who maintained that Simon’s death was much more likely to be due to a broken heart, as a result of being separated from, and perhaps believing he had been abandoned by, the shipmates who, since Ordinary Seaman Hickinbottom had plucked him from the docks in Hong Kong’s Stonecutters Island, had been the only family he’d ever known.

  ‘I think Simon died because he lost the company of sailors,’ he is reported as saying. ‘He was quite content to be aboard the ship. They could quite easily have left him aboard the ship and he could have gone on to the next commission. I firmly believe he died of heartbreak. He pined away.’

  No one knew for sure how old Simon was at the time of his death, but it was believed that he was less than four years old, and probably much younger. It was tragically young for a cat to die, particularly one who’d displayed such devotion to his military duty, and who’d captured the hearts of a nation. The nation certainly mourned him; scores of condolence cards were sent to him, and he even had a tribute paid to him in the obituary pages of Time magazine. A few days later, his body wrapped in cotton wool and his tiny coffin draped in the Union Jack, he was laid to rest at plot 281 of the PDSA’s pet cemetery in Ilford, after a funeral service with full Naval Honours.

  Simon’s Dickin medal – the only one ever awarded to a cat – was accepted on his behalf by Lieutenant Commander Kerans on 11 December, in the company of the officers and men of the Amethyst. It stayed on board the frigate till the ship was scrapped in the 1957, when it was moved to the Naval Trophy Store on HMS Nelson, in Portsmouth, before being auctioned off and sold to a collector in Canada.

  The medal resurfaced again as recently as 1993, by which time Simon’s story had become known throughout the world. And his celebrity – something he always shied away from – had obviously not waned; when it was auctioned by Christie’s in 1993 with a guide price of around £3,000 to £5,000, it fetched £23,467 – the highest amount for such a medal ever received.

  Acknowledgements

  No author works in isolation. Yes, we usually write in isolation, probably more than is healthy, but we invariably have company on our novel-writing journeys, in the form of fellow writers, whose work both informs and smooths the way.

  I certainly couldn’t have written this novel without help, and lots of it. From the web pages that visualised Stonecutters Island, to the diagrams of the (often mystifying) interiors of frigates, and with a special mention for the indefatigable Patrick Roberts, whose quest to discover Simon’s full story, on www.purr-n-fur.org.uk, was the spark from which this novel was born. I am similarly grateful to www.maritimequest.com, which provided a wealth of information about the men involved in the Yangtse Incident. All hail the mighty internet, eh?

  But there were two books, in particular, without which I would have floundered, the first being the diary of Coxwain Leslie Frank, which he kept religiously throughout the entire Yangtse Incident. An object lesson in the reality of the British stiff upper lip, it has been both a vital source of facts and figures, and an education.

  I am also indebted to the journalist and author, Brian Izzard, whose new factual account, Yangtse Incident: China and the ordeal of HMS Amethyst, was another invaluable resource, not only because it contained previously undisclosed naval intelligence, but also because it was a cracking good read.

  Yangtse River Incident 1949: The Diary of Coxswain Leslie Frank: HMS Amethyst - Yangtse River 19/4/49 to 31/7/49

  Naval and Military Press 2003

  Yangtse Incident: China and the ordeal of HMS Amethyst

  Seaforth Publishing 2015