No, she hadn’t seen it again, she said. Then on the third night, she rang us to say her husband had found it. It had been hit by a car and was dead. It was ten o’clock, and dark, but we drove over at once. I couldn’t rest without knowing but when we got there, I couldn’t look at the body. Charles had to do it. And, by dim torchlight in a shed, he thought at first it was Seeley.
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‘If only we’d come over the night she rang us, and I’d called him,’ I said. There are so many ‘if only’s’. If only I had brought Seeley in from the doorstep that morning...
And we had called so much, so futilely, in so many different places. Then I looked at the dead cat, forcing myself to do it. If it was Seeley, I had to wish him goodbye. And hope surged through my heart again, because I knew it wasn’t Seeley. ‘It’s not his face,’ I said. We lifted the cat out of the box and shone the torch more closely on it, and sure enough, its back, too, was too light. I wept for the dead cat, and for the owner who had lost him – and gave thanks that it wasn’t Seeley.
It might as well have been. At least we would have known his end. As it is, we never shall. So many people told us of missing Siamese that had been found as much as a whole year later. The one that walked home from Wales to Sussex, for instance, taking a year to do it. And the one that vanished from its home one day and the owners hunted and advertised futilely... until six months later there was a phone call from a farmer who lived a few miles away. He’d just heard they’d lost a Siamese, he said.
There’d been one living wild in his wood all the winter.
They went over and called and their cat emerged from the trees, glad to see them and fit as a trivet. The only difference in him was the tremendous depth of his coat, which had automatically thickened for his protection.
So many tales we heard to give us hope, but it is over a year now since we lost him. Sometimes we wonder whether he is still alive – and at other times know that he can’t be. If he was killed, we hope it was quick and he knew nothing about it. If someone has him, we hope that they love him as much as we did. It is the worst way 135
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The Coming of Saska to lose a friend... not to know the end, and always to be wondering.
It would never happen again, said Charles. Any cats we had would never again be out of our sight. To which end we bought a collar for Shebalu and fitted a twenty-foot nylon lead to it. Charles took her into the orchard on it in the mornings, and it was surprising how quickly she got used to it. She seemed to think it was some special bond – a sort of token of her and Charles’s togetherness. She purred when it was put on, learned not to pull on it, undoubtedly felt it akin to a Lady Mayoress’s collar... which didn’t alter the fact that at the first opportunity she took off in it, lead and all.
She had been up in the vegetable garden eating grass and Charles had left her for just a moment to open the greenhouse. No more than a second, he panted, racing down to the kitchen to fetch me, and when he turned round she had gone. It was only a fortnight since we’d lost Seeley.
Supposing there was a rogue fox around... or a killer dog, or someone who didn’t like Siamese cats, and now Shebalu in her turn met up with them? Worst of all, she was trailing a 20-foot nylon cord which could get tangled up in anything.
Our minds rocketing from one possibility to another, we tore around like agitated ants.
Fortunately I found her within minutes, having picked the right direction by sheer chance. She must have gone straight up the ten-foot wall at the back of the garden, which was how she’d vanished so quickly, and she was up in Annabel’s field, hiding in a clump of bracken, thoroughly enjoying the search. Her lead rustled in the bracken as she turned her head to watch me and I heard it as I went past. When I stooped to look, there she was, eyes crossed with self-satisfaction.
Nearly missed her, hadn’t I? she said.
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After that there was no letting go of her lead in the mornings. Whoever was with her stayed firmly on the end of it. Only in the afternoons did she ever run free, when she came up with me on the hillside. Now, though, I didn’t sit on a rug as I used to do, waiting for her and Seeley to come back from their undergrowth-inspecting sorties.
When Shebalu went round a corner I was right behind her.
She was never out of my sight. We walked in the woods together. We sat under the oak tree in Annabel’s field –
Shebalu perched on my knee, surveying the valley below.
She would watch the track through the bracken... waiting, it was obvious, for Seeley to come along it; wondering where on earth he could be.
One afternoon in September, walking with her through Annabel’s field, for once I was in the lead. She’d stopped to sniff the moss under a wayfaring bush and I’d gone around it and on along the path. Suddenly realising she wasn’t with me, I went back in a panic. Something I wouldn’t have done in the old days, knowing she’d be bounding after me at any moment, but now I couldn’t take a chance.
It was just as well I did go back because when I rounded the bush Shebalu was experimentally patting at an adder.
A young one, rather sleepy – she must have scented it and scooped it out of the undergrowth – but an adder, potentially lethal, all the same. I remember looking at it disbelievingly, thinking ‘Not this, as well as Seeley’ – and in an instant I had grabbed Shebalu, thrown her away to safety down the hillside, and hit the adder with the golf-club I always carried when out with the cats. I killed it, hating the necessity, but there was nothing else to be done.
It obviously had a hole under the under-growth and, had I left it, Shebalu would have searched it out again. Followed 137
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The Coming of Saska by her, I carried it back to the cottage draped over the golf-club and called Charles to look at it. He confirmed that it was an adder. We might have lost Shebalu. Honestly, we wondered, what on earth was going on?
We guarded her even more carefully after that. Being Shebalu, she enjoyed it. She slept with us at night. She followed me like a shadow during the day – upstairs, downstairs, perched importantly on the kitchen table or the bathroom stool, her small blue face jutting urgently as she nattered at me non-stop. Did she like being the only one? More probably, we decided, she was lonely, and in the absence of Seeley was attaching herself more closely to us. Certainly, even after weeks had passed, there were still times when she sat watching expectantly out of the window
– or, when she was eating, looked round as if another cat should be there.
For ourselves, we missed Seeley as much as ever –
stretched out luxuriously on the hearthrug; yelling for the hall door to be opened... he never learned to open it for himself. Bounding down the stairs ahead of us, his back legs spread wide in exuberance. A dark head, as well as a blue one, thrust enquiringly into the refrigerator. We still hoped we would find him – but now it was November. Four months since he’d vanished, and the hurt hadn’t grown any less. For our sake, as well as Shebalu’s, we decided to get another kitten... and hope that, Siamese being so contrary, that might bring Seeley back.
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Fourteen
WHEN SOLOMON DIED WE were determined to find a successor who’d grow up to look as like him as possible. Armed with his pedigree, and photographs of him as a kitten, it had taken us a month to find Seeley. Now, in turn, we wanted a kitten who’d look like him – and we wanted one as soon as possible.