Lynne Barrett-Lee - Able Seacat Simon

I thought of gentle George Hickinbottom, who’d left the ship so long ago – was he at home with his cat, Sooty? I hoped so.

I thought of Captain Kerans, who’d brought us all to safety. How proud I felt to have him as my friend, and how much I looked forward to seeing him again.

I thought of Captain Griffiths, whom I’d loved and who’d given me my name. It was nice to think, even if our paths never crossed again, that my picture might end up on a bulkhead above his bed, and that I might be another memory in his heart.

Mostly, though, I found myself thinking increasingly of my mother, and of the cat’s life she’d tried to prepare me for but which I’d never quite had. Was she still up there, looking down on me? Was she proud of me? Did she know I was now an able seacat? I realised how much I wanted to be reassured on all those points – perhaps a feeling at the heart of orphaned souls everywhere.

It was a clear evening, and from where I lay I could see enough of the night sky through the window to view a sprinkling of stars. They felt far away here – further than they’d ever felt before – and it struck me all at once that perhaps being in the middle of this land mass was the problem. I’d begun my life by the sea, and spent the rest of it on it. Perhaps dry land was not a good place for a cat like me to be.

I thought I might like to go and sit by the window. But, despite feeling so different, and so pain free, I wasn’t sure I dared to – it having also come back to me just how much it had hurt when I’d come round after the shelling back in April. Yet my fever seemed to have dipped now, and my body felt relaxed, and it occurred to me that I might be well enough not only to move to the window, but to consider setting off on another journey.

You’ll be back on board before you know it, old son . Captain Kerans had been clear on that point.

Wouldn’t be the same without you, Blackie! Had that been Jack, or was it Frank?

Couldn’t countenance it, Simon. You’re one of us! Was that Lieutenant Hett? It was all becoming so blurred in my mind.

But when would I – would we – be back on board my beloved Amethyst ? I didn’t know. And neither did they. In the meantime, the feeling was growing ever stronger that I was not meant to stay here on dry land. That I didn’t want to stay here any longer.

Then come to me.

I started. It was my mother’s voice.

Come to me, kitten. Clear and strong now. I want you to tell me all your tales.

I opened my eyes. Strained to look. Strained to see as well as hear her. But the brightness of the moon, making everything gleam, was too strong for me to be able to see beyond it to the furthest stars. It was a full moon, and the light from it spilled across everything, streaming through the glass door, washing whitely over the linoleum, sculpting and painting everything with a luminous creamy brightness. It settled on Joan, on the table, on the cabinets and chair legs, catching fire here and there, wherever it met with something shiny, bathing everything it its warm benevolent glow.

And on me. I realised I was quite, quite recovered. No longer fearful. No longer parched. No longer pining for what had been, or worrying about what might yet not happen. No longer anxiously struggling against the illness the vet had told Joan in grave terms that I must fight as hard as I had fought the Amethyst’ s rats.

Was that no longer true? Had the virus left my body? I stretched out a paw, tentatively at first, testing ligaments and tendons.

That’s the way, kitten, I heard my mother say. You’re done with this life. Come to me . Come to me now. Come and tell me all your tales…

I stretched another limb, feeling a new strength begin to flow through my body. Pinged my claws. Flicked my tail. Felt a breeze stir my whiskers. Felt a lightness of spirit I’d not felt in days.

I rose then. Another day, another journey, another place.

Another life to be lived, and so many stories to tell. I was ready to begin the next part of my adventure.

Simon (or Blackie, as he was known to most of the Amethyst ’s crew) died on 28 November 1949, succumbing to enteritis, a complication of the virus he’d probably contracted at the quarantine centre he’d been sent to in Surrey. For a young cat to die of such a virus was very unusual, but it was suggested that perhaps he had been born with a weak heart and that his many injuries from the shelling, not to mention daily battles with large, aggressive rats, might also have taken their toll.

Members of the Amethyst’s crew, who had been to visit him – including Captain Kerans and his wife – felt very differently. As did Telegraphist Jack French, who maintained that Simon’s death was much more likely to be due to a broken heart, as a result of being separated from, and perhaps believing he had been abandoned by, the shipmates who, since Ordinary Seaman Hickinbottom had plucked him from the docks in Hong Kong’s Stonecutters Island, had been the only family he’d ever known.

‘I think Simon died because he lost the company of sailors,’ he is reported as saying. ‘He was quite content to be aboard the ship. They could quite easily have left him aboard the ship and he could have gone on to the next commission. I firmly believe he died of heartbreak. He pined away.’

No one knew for sure how old Simon was at the time of his death, but it was believed that he was less than four years old, and probably much younger. It was tragically young for a cat to die, particularly one who’d displayed such devotion to his military duty, and who’d captured the hearts of a nation. The nation certainly mourned him; scores of condolence cards were sent to him, and he even had a tribute paid to him in the obituary pages of Time magazine. A few days later, his body wrapped in cotton wool and his tiny coffin draped in the Union Jack, he was laid to rest at plot 281 of the PDSA’s pet cemetery in Ilford, after a funeral service with full Naval Honours.

Simon’s Dickin medal – the only one ever awarded to a cat – was accepted on his behalf by Lieutenant Commander Kerans on 11 December, in the company of the officers and men of the Amethyst . It stayed on board the frigate till the ship was scrapped in the 1957, when it was moved to the Naval Trophy Store on HMS Nelson , in Portsmouth, before being auctioned off and sold to a collector in Canada.

The medal resurfaced again as recently as 1993, by which time Simon’s story had become known throughout the world. And his celebrity – something he always shied away from – had obviously not waned; when it was auctioned by Christie’s in 1993 with a guide price of around £3,000 to £5,000, it fetched £23,467 – the highest amount for such a medal ever received.

No author works in isolation. Yes, we usually write in isolation, probably more than is healthy, but we invariably have company on our novel-writing journeys, in the form of fellow writers, whose work both informs and smooths the way.

I certainly couldn’t have written this novel without help, and lots of it. From the web pages that visualised Stonecutters Island, to the diagrams of the (often mystifying) interiors of frigates, and with a special mention for the indefatigable Patrick Roberts, whose quest to discover Simon’s full story, on www.purr-n-fur.org.uk, was the spark from which this novel was born. I am similarly grateful to www.maritimequest.com, which provided a wealth of information about the men involved in the Yangtse Incident. All hail the mighty internet, eh?