After a few nights they expanded the routine to include going downstairs again on some errand of their own before they came back and really settled... a procedure instituted by Saphra, who, after I'd got into bed myself would claw at the closed bedroom door and yell till I opened it, whereupon, followed by the handmaiden, he would disappear down the stairs. After half and hour or so of silence – no fights, no crashes, no yells for help, though I waited anxiously to hear them – up they would come and get into bed, Saph first, Tani behind him, and all would be peace, give or take a wriggle or two, until the following morning.
Curious as to what they were up to, I crept down one night to check. Saph, sitting in the two-foot-deep embrasure of one of the windows overlooking the lawn, looked suitably sheepish at my appearance. Just checking on things, he said. Tani, perched high in the long horizontal window that looked out on the hillside at the back of the cottage, turned her head towards me when I went in, then switched it back to the window again. There were more interesting things outside, it seemed.
There certainly were. Badgers, foxes; I'd found their tracks in the garden, back in the winter when it snowed. Deer, too. There were roe deer in the forest, which came out on to the hillside to graze. I'd pulled back the bathroom curtains one morning and there was a doe right outside the window. She'd stared at me for a moment, then turned and leapt into the pine trees that rose like a backcloth behind the cottage. It was like a stage setting for Hansel and Gretel.
Satisfied, after I'd checked on them, that they weren't up to mischief – only watching wildlife, as was natural for them – from then on I left the bedroom and sitting-room doors open at night so they could go down at will and the sitting-room curtains pulled back so they could look out without hindrance, and they delighted in their freedom of choice. When they did come back upstairs, instead of jumping on the bed immediately, Tani would sit in the bedroom window for a while, staring out at the valley from there, while Saphra did a tour of the room itself, opening cupboards to see what they contained.
That was when the trouble started. The bedroom is small – too small to take a bedroom suite, which we'd replaced by built-in fitments. A low, built-in cupboard in one of the fireplace alcoves, topped by a triple mirror, took the place of a dressing-table. Another long, low cupboard along the wall at right angles to the built-in wardrobe substituted for a tallboy. The only drawback was that, as the cupboards were shallow, there was no room in them for sliding drawers: they had to have shelves and doors.
Drawers would have been difficult for a cat to manage, but opening doors was kitten's play to Saphra. Like Saska before him, he had paws which worked like jemmies – one claw-hook and a tug and the ball-catch clicked back immediately, exposing the contents of the cupboard for examination.
Oh, what treasure was there for a pirate cat! Woollen sweaters to be taken out and chewed – always round the cuffs and welt, so they looked as if mice had been at them. Eventually, in desperation, I transferred the bulkier sweaters to zipped, heavy plastic storage bags and kept them in a cupboard above the wardrobe. The few thinner sweaters that remained intact I put in the bedside cabinet, which did have small drawers, but alas these particular ones proved to be non-Saphra-proof.
I had a thin purple polo-necked sweater, one of my favourites, that I wore one day to a Siamese Cat Club meeting in London. Sitting at the top table with the chairman, delegated to be the next speaker, I took off my jacket because the room was hot, raised my wrist to look at my watch and nearly dropped when I saw, there before my eyes, a large semicircle missing from my sweater cuff. Too late to put my jacket on again – it was time for me to speak. I raised my arm in the air. 'The Menace has struck again,' I began. It brought the house down. All the members there had Menaces of their own and we had a grand time swapping tales about them.
How Saph had done it I didn't know, unless the cuff had been protruding from the drawer. How he got hold of my jewellery, kept on a shelf in the dressing-table cupboard, was on the contrary patently obvious. I could hear him hooking it out during the night. The items were mostly in individual boxes and he enjoyed opening boxes, raking them out with his paw so that they fell on the floor and the covers came off.
He was attracted by anything that glittered, as our first boy Solomon had been. Solomon had once put a set of keys down the clock-golf hole in the lawn and they hadn't been found for ages. Saphra likewise carried his trophies round in his mouth, his initial favourites being a long gilt chain and a gilt brooch fashioned like a feather. The chain I would find on the stairs in the morning, carelessly dropped like spilt pirate booty. The brooch he would hide under the bureau in the sitting-room, pulling it out to play with when he fancied it, particularly when visitors were there, when he was in the habit of walking round like a miniature pirate chief, with a gilt feather sticking out of his mouth. I didn't mind the chain or brooch. They were only costume jewellery. It was when he turned his attention to my earrings that I rebelled. Oval jade earrings set in filigree gold, which I kept in their own velvet-lined box.
He would hook out the box, rake it open, extract the earrings with his teeth and bat them around like marbles. I witnessed the whole procedure one night, sitting up in bed yelling at him to stop. He took no notice at all except to flatten his ears in reproof. Ladies didn't Shout, he said.
Annoyed – the earrings were good ones, doubly precious because they'd been given to me by Louisa – I started barricading the cupboard doors against him every night before I went to bed. Shoes against the jewellery cupboard, piled one on top of the other, one wedged under the bottom of the door. A scratching board, faced with carpet in reverse, sloped against the matching door, in the hope of distracting his attention. A large china storage jar marked SUGAR and filled with sand, against one of the doors of the cupboard that substituted for a tallboy. (Don't ask me why. I went berserk at that stage, gathering together anything I thought would deter him.)
It reminded me of the time when his predecessor, Saska, had started wetting on the rug in the hall and I'd had to cover it with a polythene sheet weighted down with heavy fire-irons, a portable heater and a crow-bar, and remove it all at top speed when anybody came up the front path. Only this was worse because Saphra was as skilful with his paws as Chinese juggler. Down would come the scratching board, whoosh would go the edges, open would fly the doors. Down would tumble the shoe pile, too, out would come the earring box and out would fall the earrings, and I'd leap out of bed, replace them, barricade the doors even more heavily and lie listening to the latest cat-burgling techniques being practised until he got tired and came to bed.
Why didn't I banish him downstairs to the sitting-room again? Because he wouldn't let Tani sleep when they were down there. Besides when they did go to sleep they looked such angels, so comforting curled together on the bed... Sometimes I woke in the morning and found that, Christmas-card picture or not, he'd been busy again while I slept. The earrings were out, the chain on the stairs, or a pair of tights lying mangled on the landing... and I'd hug him, forgive him, and put them all away again.
Then came the day when, cleaning the bedroom, I heard something rattle into the vacuum cleaner and decided I must have brought up a piece of gravel on the sole of my shoe. I went on vacuuming, spotted one of my earrings on the rug in front of the dressing-table, had a sudden dark suspicion as to where the other one might be... I bent down, examined the vacuum cleaner and my suspicion was confirmed. Out, when I lifted the cleaner, tumbled an oval jade stone minus its setting – which fell out after it in a jumble of mangled gold. I sat on the floor and wept, attended by two puzzled cats – one pale, paws folded precisely, assuring me as usual that Nothing was anything to do with her, she was a Good Girl; the other dark-masked, his almond eyes shining like sapphires, asking innocently what all the fuss was about. It was only a little green stone and I had another one.