Wattle Circus: Chapter Eighteen
Abigail stepped up onto the gangplank, which was bouncing mildly under the weight of those ahead. The feeling in her stomach, the nervous emptiness, could only be partly attributed to this bouncing, ungrounded walkway. The major contributor was the unreality of the situation, the awareness that she would soon be on the other side of this too-vast planet. She had never been out of London in any memory she had, yet here she was travelling further than any of her ancestors could have ever even dreamed was possible. Everything she knew, everyone who was in her life, would simply cease to be. And the same would be the case for them – there would no longer be an Abigail in any real sense to anybody here. Nor did anybody know her where she was going, so in a way she wasn’t real there either.
So where did this leave her? Abigail wondered for a dizzying moment whether she even existed here and now – so powerfully did this thought take her, just as she was halfway up the gangplank, that she was certain she was going to evaporate in a mist that would disperse over the water and join the last of the fog now drifting away, simply cease to be evermore. But just as this despair wrapped its cold hands around her heart, ready to take her away, Abigail heard Finn whistle a little tune she knew his mother used to sing to him. Finn knew her, he at the very least was aware she existed. For now, as little as that might seem to be, it meant everything.
Abigail noticed Finn was squirming a little more as they reached the top of the gangplank. He stood, half-turned as Abigail gave the warder who waited as they stepped onto the ship their names. He grunted gruffly and waved them down the deck to the top of some steps. Abigail peered into the gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust a little then stepping down. All the hammocks seemed to have been taken, but she finally found two at the very furthest end of the hold. Finn followed and they each sat on a hammock, already gently swinging on the light swell that slowly rocked the ship side to side.
“So what’s going on?”
Finn looked around, saw nobody was paying any attention, and reached into his shirt. His hand came out clutching a tiny ball of streaked fur, which on closer inspection was a kitten. It was barely a few weeks old, mewing feebly.
“Finn, what were you thinking!”
“I couldn’t just leave him. He come out from behind some ropes as I crossed to the pier. He was sounding so sad, look how skinny he is.”
“But how on earth do you think you can keep him here?”
“Well he wouldn’t have lasted another day, look at him. This at least gives him a chance.”
Abigail wasn’t so sure, yet she couldn’t stay mad at Finn, she would probably have done the same thing. The practicalities would have to be worked out and it could all end quite badly, but for now all she could think about was how to ensure the kitten was looked after as best it could be.
“We’ll just have to make sure we keep a little of our food for him,” she said, cupping him in her left hand, stroking the down beneath his chin with her right. The look of pleasure on his face as he stretched his chin forward, eyes closing to a slit, passed onto her own face as a real smile, the first in such a long time, not one put there for anybody else’s benefit.
“He shall need a name, of course,” she stated matter-of-factly, superstitiously believing that with a name, as a real entity, he would have a better chance of survival. “Do you have one?”
Finn just shrugged, carefully taking the kitten back as Abigail passed him to his waiting hand, cupped as he had seen her do. Abigail looked into the kitten’s melancholic eyes, noting also a faint light of mischief. Wondering whether the ship’s rules made any reference to bringing a cat on board, she was reminded of a story she had heard about a poet who was most miffed at regulations forbidding the keeping of a dog in university lodgings at Trinity College. He thus bought and kept a bear, pointing out there was no specific rule that disallowed it.
“Hello ‘Lord Byron’,” Abigail said. “Boy do you have an adventure heading your way.”
to be continued…
