Kitty (20 page)

But now here they were, with not one but two women on board. Hawk had been surprised that Rian had agreed to his old friend Haunui’s request to take his niece to Sydney, and even more when another girl had
scrambled aboard just as they were setting sail. But when he’d seen who she was, he’d understood—she was the girl who’d been turning Rian’s head for the past year, if only the man would admit it. Rian Farrell was one of the most stubborn men Hawk had ever known, but he was also the most decent, and Hawk knew he would have turned the girls away only if there had been some other way of keeping them from harm. Now, though, his decency had become misdirected and he was making Kitty Carlisle’s life a misery because of his concern, and whatever else it was he felt for her. Judging by Rian’s current irascibility, Hawk suspected that the ‘whatever’ was considerable. He thought, however, that Rian had little need to worry. The girl was not making things easy for herself, prancing about getting in the way and insisting she be allowed to work during the voyage, but it was clear to him that she had spirit and guts. Perhaps the only thing she lacked was a bit of common sense.

Hawk put his elbows on the table. ‘I think this girl Kitty can look after herself. She just might not know it until she is put to the test. And I do not think it is your place to make that happen.’ He gave Rian a questioning, rather sly, look. ‘Unless you have some sort of interest in her?’

‘No, I bloody well do not,’ Rian said, standing up abruptly and indicating that as far he was concerned the conversation had ended.

The following morning Kitty dragged herself out of bed, washed in cold water, then, to her embarrassment, had to call for Wai to find her something she could use to stem the flow of her courses which had just begun. Wai went off, had a word to Haunui and came back with a wide square of cloth. Kitty ripped it into strips and folded one into the crotch of her trousers, more grateful than she’d ever been that her courses were not normally restrictively heavy. Still, she’d be washing the cloths out at the end of the day for the next five days and festooning Rian’s cabin with them while they dried; she knew the crew were a worldly lot, but suspected they wouldn’t take kindly to menstrual rags flapping from the rat lines.

She made herself eat a hearty breakfast, silently accepted Hawk’s
ministrations to her chafed hands and went to work. By the end of the day she was once again exhausted and went to bed straight after supper.

But by the end of their first week at sea, the crew’s looks of annoyance had changed to empathy and then finally respect as she began gradually to pull her weight. She didn’t have the physical strength to perform many of the heavier tasks, and wasn’t permitted to do anything really dangerous, but she’d demonstrated that she had a head for heights by climbing the mainmast to secure an errant section of running rigging near the top—earning a very terse reprimand from Rian when he spotted her—and also that she could competently tie a range of knots and mend sails. She was also learning to read the weather, and understand the complicated calls, commands and terms unique to sailors.

On the
Katipo’s
eighth day at sea, one of her crew in particular found themselves very grateful for Kitty’s presence.

Bodie had not been able to reconcile herself to being usurped by another woman in her master’s bed. On this particular morning, one beset by high seas and strong winds even though the sun was shining brightly, she was balanced on the aftmast’s boom, spitting at Kitty swabbing the deck below, when a line snapped with a loud, zinging crack. Bodie tensed to leap off but the boom swung wildly across the deck, launching her little black body up and out.

Kitty, who had ducked when the line snapped, glanced up and for a fraction of a second was treated to the sight of Bodie in the air, her yellow eyes as big as saucers, her tail as bushy as a fox’s brush, and her clawed toes extended like furry little starfish. Then she was hurtling past, heading over the side of the ship and straight towards the deep, dark sea.

Without thinking, Kitty thrust up her arm and caught the cat by a back leg. She completed the curve of Bodie’s trajectory to avoid ripping the little limb from its socket, then swung her downwards, narrowly missing bashing her brains out on the deck, then up again, and finally deposited her on top of a nearby hatch cover.

Bodie staggered, shook herself violently, glanced over her shoulder as though checking to see if anyone else had witnessed such a heinous humiliation, then stalked off.

‘My pleasure,’ Kitty said to the cat’s backside, and went back to work.

But the next morning, when Kitty rose to use the head, she discovered a dead rat on the floor outside Rian’s cabin. This caused a lively discussion at the breakfast table, the general consensus being that the rat was a gift from Boadicea to Kitty for saving her life. Then, when Kitty returned to the cabin to wash after she’d finished work for the day, she found the cat curled up on Rian’s bed. She clapped her hands smartly and said ‘Scat!’, but Bodie merely opened one eye, stretched and began to generate a remarkably loud, gravelly purr for such a small animal.

From then on Bodie continued to follow Kitty everywhere she went, but now without any acrimony whatsoever. The rat delivery became a daily occurrence, except for one morning when the offering was a whole fish clearly filched from Pierre’s galley, and Bodie was soon wriggling onto Kitty’s lap whenever she sat down.

Wai thought it was terribly sweet, although to her disappointment nothing could coax Bodie to sit on her lap, not even for a minute. Pierre viewed the cat’s change of heart as akin to gris gris, his word for black magic, and crossed himself every time he came near Kitty, until Rian told him to stop being such a superstitious old woman. But when Pierre suggested that Rian should take care not to fall under Kitty’s spell himself, the captain wasn’t at all amused.

Bodie’s defection did serve to break the tension on the schooner. Even Rian relaxed a little, and with only three days to go before they expected to drop anchor in Sydney Cove, the remainder of the voyage seemed certain to be plain sailing.

K
itty put her hands on her hips and tilted her head back to watch Sharkey as he climbed the rat lines up the mainmast, on his way to inspect a line in the rigging that had unaccountably jammed somewhere in the sail’s running gear.

‘What is it?’ she called as he neared the top.

‘There’s a bloody bird stuck in it,’ he yelled back, leaning out as far as he could and jabbing with a stick to dislodge the gory mess caught in the gear.

A second later it came loose and plummeted to the deck. Kitty stepped smartly out of the way but tripped and went flat on her back, her breath squeaking out of her as she hit the deck. The end of her long plait flicked across the block at the bottom of the jammed line and, freed now, the line began to run, taking her hair with it through the block and up.

She screamed as she was yanked violently a foot across the deck, and clamped her hands to her searing scalp. Then something blurred past her, and suddenly the agony eased slightly and her head thudded onto the deck.

Someone said, ‘Fecking Jesus’, and she opened her eyes to see Mick’s horrified face leaning over her.

Another voice: ‘Don’t let her move.’ Hawk’s, she thought detachedly.

Firm hands pressed her shoulders down against the deck, then the sound and the feel of footsteps running.

She fainted.

Then she was coming to, wanting to be sick. Bile burned her throat; she clenched her jaws until the urge went away.

‘She’s choking!’

She tried to say that she wasn’t, but was rolled onto her side and held there.

‘My hair,’ she whispered. There was a terrible hot ache across the back of her scalp.

‘Kitty?’

It was Rian, crouching in front of her, his face deathly pale.

‘Kitty, can you hear me?’

She wanted to nod but couldn’t, her head hurt so badly.

‘Don’t move,’ Rian urged. ‘You’re all right but don’t move.’

How could she be all right with her scalp missing? She lifted a hand to feel, but Rian pushed it down again.

‘My hair,’ she said again. ‘My head.’

They were all staring down at her now, looking appalled, Wai as well. She reached out her hand and Wai took it, squeezing hard.

‘Is it bad?’ Kitty said, wanting to know the truth but not wanting to know either.

‘It is short,’ Wai replied.

Hawk squatted; in his right hand he held his knife, and in his left Kitty’s plait, complete with the jaunty red ribbon. Kitty couldn’t quite comprehend what she was looking at.

‘I cut it off,’ he said, as gravely as though informing her that she had indeed been scalped. ‘I am very sorry, I could not think what else to do.’

Kitty’s hand flew to the back of her head, and yes, most of her hair was missing. But that was all.

She stared at Hawk as a bubble of hysteria rose in her throat, then she giggled. While the others looked on uneasily, the giggles turned into laughter and then sobs.

Wai helped her to sit up. ‘It will grow back, Kitty, do not worry.’

‘I thought the back of my head was gone,’ Kitty blurted. Shock made her suddenly dizzy and she slumped forwards, still crying.

Unnerved by her distress, Rian ordered, ‘Right, everyone, back to work.’

‘She be all right?’ Pierre asked, gazing worriedly at Kitty. ‘She get a proper fright.’

‘Well, she’s certainly finished work for the day,’ Rian said.

Hawk glared at him; Rian looked away.

‘I make something good for supper, eh?’ Pierre said. ‘Something for the fright.’

‘Cup of tea would help,’ Haunui said. He firmly believed that tea had the power to fix most ailments.

‘Tot of rum’d be better,’ Sharkey said.

‘I have kawakawa,’ Ropata said. ‘That is calming.’

Rian barked, ‘I said back to work!
Now!
’

The men dispersed, relieved now that they knew that Kitty hadn’t been seriously hurt. Rian stayed where he was.

‘Help me get her below,’ he said to Haunui.

Between them they got Kitty to her feet and down to Rian’s cabin. Wai and Hawk followed, Hawk still with Kitty’s plait dangling from his hand like a limp black snake.

Kitty continued to cry, but less hysterically now. It was an immense relief to know that she wasn’t to be hideously disfigured for the rest of her life, but her beautiful long hair! Recognising the incongruity of the thought, she giggled again: she could easily have been killed and here she was fretting about her hairstyle.

Haunui and Rian exchanged looks.

‘I think the rum,’ Haunui said as they sat Kitty down on the bed. Hawk opened Rian’s desk, brought out a decanter of rum and handed it to her.

‘In a glass, man!’ Rian remonstrated.

Kitty ignored him and took a swig. She had never had rum before, only a glass or two of porter allowed by her parents. There had been no liquor with Uncle George and Aunt Sarah. She pulled a face as the alcohol burned its way down her throat, but relaxed a moment later as it began to warm her from her stomach out. She had another.

‘That will do,’ Rian said, taking the decanter from her and setting it on his desk.

Wai eyed it disapprovingly; Kitty needed comforting now, not another bout of silliness. ‘Get hot water, Uncle,’ she said in an uncharacteristically authoritative tone. ‘And soap and scissors and towels. And then go away, all of you.’

Relieved that a woman had now taken control, the men retreated. Haunui came back a few minutes later with a bucket of hot water from the enormous pot Pierre kept constantly on the boil in the galley, and everything else Wai had asked for, including a pair of the shears the men used for mending sails.

Wai sniffed the soap. ‘What is the smell?’

Kitty recognised it from where she was sitting. ‘Lavender.’

‘Pretty,’ Wai said. ‘Who gave it?’

‘It is Pierre’s special go ashore soap,’ Haunui replied as he went out, closing the door behind him.

Wai turned to Kitty. ‘A wash will calm you. Then we will cut your hair, then you will sleep.’

Kitty’s hand strayed to the back of her head. She wasn’t bald there—there was enough hair left to grasp in her fist—but her hair hadn’t been that short since childhood, and she certainly felt bald. ‘Isn’t it short enough?’

Wai said, ‘It looks…pakaru.’

Kitty nodded. That was definitely how she felt—broken, torn and wrecked. But a wash in hot water sounded lovely.

Wai helped her to undress then sponged her down with warm soapy water, washing between her fingers and toes as though she were a small, grubby child. She wrapped Kitty in a ragged but clean towel and gestured for her to kneel on the floor before the bucket. ‘Wash your hair now.’

Kitty did as she was told, dipping her head into the water while Wai worked the soap into a lather and began to massage her sore, bruised scalp. It still throbbed but the pain was easing now. When the soap had been rinsed out Wai sat her down on the wooden chair at Rian’s desk. Kitty suddenly felt overcome by exhaustion; the shock that had flooded
her body slowly draining away, leaving her limbs heavy and useless. Her eyes began to close of their own accord.

‘No, do not sleep yet,’ Wai ordered.

Kitty forced her eyes open again: Wai stood before the cupboard holding out a snowy white shirt, which looked as though it could be Rian’s best. ‘Put this on,’ she said, ‘the other is dirty. Then we will do the cutting.’

Kitty slipped into the shirt, then Wai stood behind her with the shears and began to tidy up what was left of her hair. She took her time, and Kitty was almost asleep again by the time she announced she had finished.

‘Look in the mirror,’ she suggested.

Kitty went to the cupboard, nervous that she might see someone in the mirror who wasn’t her any more. But then she was almost somebody else already, wasn’t she? She certainly wasn’t the Kitty Carlisle who had arrived in New Zealand a little over a year ago—frightened, ineffectual and limply heartbroken because a selfish man had taken advantage of her silliness.

Hesitantly she opened the cupboard door, but it was her after all, albeit with much shorter hair. She had been too frightened to look before Wai had taken to her hair with the shears, but now it only came down to about two inches below her ears. At the back it felt even shorter. She looked like a boy—or rather, a boyish version of Kitty Carlisle.

She turned her head from side to side, watching the way her hair moved. Her neck felt naked. She put her palms against her temples and swept the hair back off her face; it stayed there for a second, then fell forwards again in two shining black waves, too silky clean to do as it was told. There wasn’t even enough left to tie back and, now that it was drying, little tendrils were springing out in all directions, revealing a hint of curl Kitty hadn’t even known she possessed.

She looked ruefully across at Wai, who shrugged and said, ‘Better than having no back of the head.’

It was, too. Kitty yawned.

‘You go to sleep now,’ Wai said. ‘Rest. I will wake you for supper.’

When Kitty awoke it was almost dark and she realised she had slept the entire afternoon away. She could hear someone banging around in the mess-room and guessed it was Pierre setting the table. She stayed where she was, enjoying the soothing rocking motion of the schooner as she hummed towards Australia, low and steady in the water because of her cargo of timber. Kitty wondered whether she would see the black outline of land yet if she went up on deck, but her body didn’t seem to want to move.

Someone tapped on the door. It opened and Wai came in, followed by Pierre carrying a tray.

Kitty sat up. ‘I can eat at the table,’ she said, feeling embarrassed at receiving such special treatment.

‘Non, you must rest,’ Pierre said, settling the tray on her knee. On it was a bowl covered with a lid, which he whipped off, exclaiming ‘Voilà!’ as the most delicious aroma wafted up from it.

‘What is it?’

‘Pierre Babineaux’s famous catfish courtbouillion,’ Pierre said proudly. ‘’Cept no catfish. It is some other fish I catch today.’

Kitty tasted it. ‘Mmm, it’s very good. What else is in it?’

Pierre looked cagey. ‘Onion, tomato sauce, cayenne pepper, bit of this, pinch of that. It is Babineaux family secret.’

Kitty regarded the wiry, exotic-looking little man; it seemed odd to think that somewhere in the world he had something as ordinary as a family.

Pierre turned to go, then paused. ‘Your hair, she is très charmant.’

‘Thank you,’ Kitty said, touched by his attempts to make her feel better.

As he left, Bodie came in, trotting across the cabin and bouncing up onto the bed. She rubbed her face across Kitty’s hand, leaving behind a slick of something watery, sniffed the bowl of soup, then turned around three times and lay down, sighing contentedly.

‘She also does not mind your new hair,’ Wai commented. ‘I will have supper, then come back.’

But when she did, she found that Kitty had gone to sleep again and that the tray and the empty bowl were on the floor beside the bed. She wasn’t entirely sure, however, whether Kitty had actually been responsible for finishing the courtbouillion. She grasped Bodie by the scruff of the neck and smelled her breath: fish.

‘Bad cat,’ Wai said mildly and went out again.

Kitty slept on, only waking much later when the wooden chair near the desk creaked under the weight of a body settling into it.

‘Wai?’ she asked sleepily, rolling over.

‘Rian. Do you mind if I light the lamp?’

‘No, I don’t mind,’ Kitty replied warily, sitting up with her back against the wall of the alcove. A man was in her bedroom, but she couldn’t tell him to go away because it was his cabin. She wondered what he wanted—his papers perhaps, or some personal item. Either that or he had come to tell her off for being so careless up on deck.

There was a scraping noise as he struck a flint and a smell of burning as the tinder ignited. He reached up and touched it to the wick in the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, then stood back, waiting as the tiny glow brightened.

The lamp swung lazily in opposite time to the
Katipo’s
gentle heeling from side to side: Kitty watched as shadows chased themselves from one end of the cabin to the other. In the weak light Rian’s eyes were nothing but dark hollows. The sea whispered and the schooner’s timbers creaked benignly, but otherwise there was silence.

She waited nervously for the scathing force of his criticism, but nothing happened. Perhaps he was saving it until she was feeling stronger, so he could knock her back down again.

Eventually he said, ‘I came to see whether you were awake and, if you were, to ask you how you’re feeling now.’

‘Oh,’ Kitty said, feeling relieved that he hadn’t berated her—yet—and then irritated because she
was
relieved. ‘Well, I was asleep until you came in.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. Then, after a moment, ‘Is that my shirt you’re wearing?’

‘Er, yes.’

Silence again. Rian tapped his tinder box against the arm of his chair. Kitty waited, more curious than wary.

Rian said, ‘Look, I want to apologise for treating you so harshly. The accident this morning was my fault. If you hadn’t been on deck it wouldn’t have happened. I should never have allowed it. My behaviour has been unforgivable.’

He looked so wretched that Kitty found herself trying to alleviate his discomfort for him.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t watching where I was going. Really.’

He shook his head. ‘It isn’t just that, although that was bad enough. No, I mean all the jobs—the ropes and swabbing the decks and everything else I told you to do. You’re a gentlewoman, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘But I asked to do all that,’ Kitty said, feeling her face grow warm at the memory of how demanding and childish she’d been during those first few days of the voyage.

‘So who’s been the most bloody-minded then?’ Rian said, almost smiling but not quite. ‘You or me?’

Kitty thought for a second. ‘Could it be a tie?’

Rian laughed, then his serious face was back. ‘I mean it, Kitty, you could have been killed this morning. And if you had, I don’t think I could have lived with it. It would have been just like…’ He trailed off. ‘It would have been very bad,’ he finished lamely.