The Cat's Table

Wendy and I went from Adelaide to Liverpool, England by sea in 1961, and came home from Rotterdam to Adelaide by sea in 1962; then in 1964 we sailed from Sydney across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal to Kingston, Jamaica, Veracruz Mexico, and on up the eastern seaboard of the USA. All three voyages were on freighters that carried 12 passengers. Rebecca and David were both toddlers when we went to England in 1961, David not much more than a toddler when we came home in 1962; Jonathan wasn't even there in 1961 or 1962 and was just over six months old when we left Sydney in 1964. So he has no memory of any of our sea voyages; Rebecca and David have only fragmentary memories. I've been reading with delight Michael Ondaatje's new novel, The Cat's Table, about the sea voyage of a 9-year old boy in 1954 from Columbo to London via Aden, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and on to Tilbury Docks in London. It's a vividly evocative description of the hare-brained fun and adventures that the boy, Michael and two other boys his age, got up to on the 3-week voyage. It made me realize how much our kids missed by making their much longer and potentially more exciting, more adventurous voyages when they were too young to get up to any mischief or engage in any of the sorts of adventures that Michael, Ramadhin and Cassius indulged in during their voyage on the passenger liner Oronsay. Our three had only handfuls of passengers with whom they could interact, but closer relationships with officers and crew. And yet, I dunno... maybe it's as well our kids were too young. I'm not sure Wendy and I would have survived unscathed if our kids had been 9 or 10 years old... The Cat's Table is a delightful book, more accessible than some of Ondaatje's other novels, eminently readable, and with some memorable characters among the passengers and the ship's company.