Lynne Barrett-Lee - Able Seacat Simon

Not that I wished to be anywhere but the Amethyst now, living with the friends who had become so precious to me. As I left the bustle of the harbour, the feeling only intensified, as every new vista pulled me back to some wisp of painful memory that reminded me how lucky I’d been. Not in losing my mother, whose presence I still felt constantly, but to have escaped from the miseries of those last months as a stray, when I’d hunt till my pads were raw, getting drenched and despondent, and sit at the end of the jetty and wonder what kind of better life there might be beyond the bay.

I felt proud that I’d found the courage to go in search of it – well, once the terror had abated, anyway. That I’d allowed myself to be scooped up by dear sweet Ordinary Seaman George Hickinbottom – where was he now, I wondered? – who I missed still. He would never know how grateful I was that he’d given me the opportunity to live a life I could never have imagined. To become the cat I could never have imagined either.

It was a warm morning, the rain that had greeted our arrival having cleared, and as I padded along the familiar tracks and pathways, alternately bright and shady under the tamarinds and banyans, I let the happier memories of that earlier time wash over me.

Memories of the kind old lady who used to live in the big house – which I now hurried past automatically, slightly braced, automatically fearful – the hunting forays (how proud I hoped Mum would now be of me!), the anxious crossings of the murderous road that spilt the island into two, and our little jetty on the far shore. This stood exactly as I’d left it – reaching out from the sand, gnarly plank by gnarly plank, on past the shingle, to hover above the water as if a path to something wonderful, where we’d sit and gaze up at the moon.

There was no moon now. The sky, the same intense butterfly-wing blue I would always remember, was reflected in the gently lapping water, which in turn was sprinkled, as it always was, with shards of dancing sunshine. Almost on an impulse, I jumped down onto the sand and slipped beneath the jetty, aware as I did so how much bigger I’d grown, how much smaller our sometime home seemed. Small and safe, kitten . I could almost hear my mother saying it.

I spent a few moments there, luxuriating in the welcome cool and shade, remembering what I’d left here, idly following the progress of a tiny lizard between the pebbles, but feeling not even the tiniest urge to stretch a paw out and toy with it.

My mother had been right. It had been my safe place and I was glad I’d come back; it felt good to return here and experience it again. But it wasn’t long before I felt the tug of the Amethyst calling me back to her. And, perhaps, floating on the breeze, the sound of Peggy, too – yapping furiously about nothing in particular, as she so often did, and Coxswain Frank, hollering irritably from some corner of the ship or other, ‘Will someone please shut that ruddy dog up!’

I didn’t linger longer. It was time to head back. To my new life, my dear friends, to my quarters – which were admittedly various. And some of them perhaps a little too fine for a working naval seacat. But then, as Jack had pointed out, I was ‘decorated now’, wasn’t I? It still felt slightly unreal, that, and it humbled me to even think about it, but I was reassured that we’d be back at sea soon and all the fuss would die down. (Captain Kerans had reassured me, when all the people had swarmed so alarmingly up the gangway, my ‘fan-club’, whatever that was, definitely couldn’t come with us there .)

As I left the shore, a flock of cockatoos took flight, as if to wish me well. Time to say goodbye to Hong Kong. Time to go home.

My absence had caused something of a commotion. I wasn’t aware of it at first, because the Amethyst looked exactly as she had when I’d left her, bar the one difference I welcomed – that all the well-wishers seemed to have left. The sun was strong on my back now, and the long walk had left me feeling weary. I realised it was the first time I’d travelled such a distance in over a year, and my hind legs were busy reminding me.

But all was not as I’d left it, clearly, because before I’d so much as placed a paw on the gangway, a shout rang out from high above me, and I looked up to see Jack, waving his arms to someone down on the lower deck, shouting, ‘He’s back! Martin! Paddy! Look! No, not that way – that way! Sid, get down there and grab him! Get him back! Take the herrings!’ upon which there was a scramble to locate the fish they’d obviously found for me, in the hopes – or so I assumed – that I might need some enticement to be coaxed back on board again. As if there was a chance that I might decide not to board the ship again. As if they might need (and at this I was confused and confounded) to persuade me that my life and home was with them.

By the time I’d padded up the gangway, feeling grateful that the ship placed it in shadow – a balm for my much-too-hot paws – Sid and Martin were already crouched at the top of it, waiting, the legs of their shorts flapping and their caps pushed right back, a pair of hopeful grins on their faces. There was no sign of Jack, so I assumed he was still shimmying down to us. Somebody must have seen me leave the ship, I realised.

‘C’mon, Blackie. That’s the boy,’ said Martin, gesturing to the saucer on the deck in front of him. ‘Here you go. Fishy fishy! Some lovely herrings for you – look! Orders of the captain. Opened specially, they were. Just for you.’

I duly went up and sniffed the fish, and Martin began to stroke me. ‘Where’ve you been, little fella?’ he wanted to know. ‘Off to find your sweetheart? You’ve had us at sixes and sevens, you have, Blackie. Caused one almighty hulla-ballo, I can tell you. The boss has been beside himself – it was him saw you leave. Can you imagine the to-do if we sailed back to Blighty and the hero of the hour wasn’t with us?’

I was beginning to feel increasingly humbled by all this, not to mention touched that the captain had spotted me leaving and set up a watch for my return. And guilty for having been the cause of yet another hullaballoo. Guilty too, about being called the ‘hero of the hour’ – as if every man and man-boy aboard the Amethyst , not to mention those who’d been taken from us by the communists, were anything less than heroes themselves. Not forgetting Peggy, who, despite the misfortune of having been a dog (or perhaps because of it) didn’t have a bad bone in her body, as Jack had once told me – well, not unless she’d eaten one, that was.

In any event, I was glad to be back amongst my friends again, and without so much as a whisker of regret in my head that we’d be off to sea again and might never be required to come back.

A whistle sounded, and it was only then that I realised that the ship must be weighing anchor sooner than I’d thought. Either that or the time had passed faster than I’d known. In any event, it made more sense of the panic at my arrival, and it also struck me (with only slightly less panic) that had I stayed longer on the beach I could have been too late. An image formed in my head then, of rounding the quay and seeing only sea and sky and sampans where the Amethyst should be. That’s when it really hit me fully: I could have come back – to my home – and found it no longer there.

‘Not hungry? Well, there’s a first.’ It was Jack, who’d come down and joined us. ‘Been scavenging, have you?’ he asked, squatting down and laughing. ‘Stalking a big old gecko, perhaps? Lost track of the time?’

He was right. I wasn’t hungry, but not for the reasons he thought. It’s not in a cat’s nature to be too over-emotional, but how glad I was that it was never necessary to explain. I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to explain.