The Cat’s Table Read Free Page B

Then, on the third night, while we were still in the Indian Ocean, the lights in the cabin suddenly blazed on, and a man who introduced himself as Mr Hastie entered with a folded-up card table under his arm. He woke me and lifted me onto the top bunk. ‘A few friends are coming over for a game,’ he said. ‘Just go to sleep.’ I waited to see who was coming. Within half an hour there were four men playing bridge quietly and earnestly. There was barely enough room for them to sit around the table. They were keeping the volume down because of me, and I soon fell asleep to the whispers of their bidding.
    The next morning I found myself alone again. The card table was folded and leaning against the wall. Had Hastie slept? Was he a full-time passenger or a member of the crew? He turned out to be in charge of the kennels on the Oronsay , and it must not have been an arduous job, for he spent most of his time reading or half-heartedly exercising the dogs on a small section of deck. As a result, he had energy to burn at the end of the day. So shortly after midnight, his friends joined him. One of them, Mr Invernio, was his assistant at the kennels. The other two worked on the ship as wireless operators. They played for a couple of hours each night and then left quietly.
    I was seldom alone with Mr Hastie. When he turned up at midnight he must have felt I ought to be getting my rest, so he rarely attempted conversation, and there would be only a few minutes before the others arrived. At some stage during his travels in the East, he had picked up the habit of wearing a sarong, and most of the time he wore just that around his waist, even when his friends came by. He’d bring out four shot glasses and some arrack. The bottle and glasses would be placed on the floor, the table cleared of everything except cards. I’d look down from my modest height on the top bunk and see the spread of a dummy hand. I watched the deals, listened to the shuffles and the bidding. Pass … One Spade … Pass … Two Clubs … Pass … Two No Trumps … Pass … Three Diamonds … Pass … Three Spades … Pass … Four Diamonds … Pass … Five Diamonds … Double … Redouble … Pass … Pass … Pass … They rarely had conversations. I remember they used to call each other by their surnames – ‘Mr Tolroy’, ‘Mr Invernio’, ‘Mr Hastie’, ‘Mr Babstock’ – as if they were midshipmen in a nineteenth-century naval academy.
    Later during the journey, when with my friends I would run into Mr Hastie, he behaved very differently. Outside our cabin, he was opinionated, and a constant talker. He told us about his ups and downs in the Merchant Navy, his adventures with an ex-wife who was a great rider of horses, and his strongly held affection for hounds over any other breed of dog. But in the half-glow of our cabin at midnight, Mr Hastie was a whisperer; he had courteously, after the third evening of cards, replaced the bright yellow cabin light with a muted blue one. So as I entered the realm of half-sleep, drinks were poured, rubbers were won, money changed hands, the blue light making the men seem as if they existed in an aquarium. When they finished their game, the four of them went on deck for a smoke, Mr Hastie slipping back into the room silently half an hour later to read for a while before turning out his bunk light.

 
    SLEEP IS A prison for a boy who has friends to meet. We were impatient with the night, up before sunrise surrounded the ship. We could not wait to continue exploring this universe. Lying in my bunk I would hear Ramadhin’s gentle knock on the door, in code. A pointless code, really – who else could it have been at that hour? Two taps, a long pause, another tap. If I did not climb down and open the door I would hear his theatrical cough. And if I still did not respond, I would hear him whisper ‘Mynah,’ which had become my nickname.
    We would meet Cassius by the stairs and soon would be strolling barefoot on the