The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo

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      While I was at the front I’d get letters every week from Lizziebeth, who was away at boarding school by now. I’d look forward to every one of them because I could hear her voice in her writing, see her face as I was reading her words, and that cheered me more than I can say, when all around me in France I saw nothing but horror and death. And with her letters Lizziebeth would sometimes send me little sketches, and once a beautiful drawing of Kaspar sitting there looking at me, willing me to come home it seemed. I kept it with me in my tunic pocket, along with a photograph of her and me by the sea-shore in Maine. Lizziebeth always said afterwards, when the war was over, that it must have been the drawing of Kaspar that had kept me safe and brought me home. I’m not sure she was right about that, but she insisted on having it framed and put up in pride of place in the front hall. When no one’s looking, I do reach out and touch it sometimes. So I suppose that I must be just a little superstitious. But I’m not admitting that to her.

      Right after the war Mitch came to work with me in Robert’s publishing business – he had become quite a family friend by now. We worked together in the packing room in the basement – Robert said we had to learn the business from the bottom upwards. So we did, literally. For me, books became a part of my life. I didn’t just pack them, I read them voraciously, and very soon began to write stories of my own. And while I was writing, Lizziebeth would be up in her attic studio, drawing or painting or sculpting, animals mostly. On our holidays in Maine we wouldn’t climb trees any more, or go diving off the quay, she’d sit on the rocks by the seashore with her sketchbook out, and I’d scribble away nearby, and Kaspar would wander between us to remind us he was there. We would often talk of the old days in London, of Mr Freddie and Skullface, and the great roof rescue. And more than once she said what fun it would be to go back to visit. But I didn’t think she was serious.

      Then just before her seventeenth birthday she announced to us that she was too old now to be given birthday presents. Instead she was going to give us something, providing, she added, that we didn’t mind giving it away. None of us knew quite what to make of this, until she took us out into the front hall. And there it was. Sitting on the table, below the famous sketch she had sent out to me in France during the war, was a magnificent sculpture of Kaspar, his neck arched, his tail curled around him. “I carved it out of ash wood,” she said, “and then I painted it jet black. And do you know what I want? I want to take it back to London, and give it to the hotel where we stayed, where I first saw Kaspar and Johnny. I want it to be there for ever. It’s where Kaspar belongs. Kaspar could come too. He may be old, but he’s fit as a fiddle. Well?” she said, beaming brightly at us. “When do we go?”

      We went six months later, and Little Mitch came with us too. We wanted him to come, to show him where it had all happened, where the whole story had begun, a story he was part of, that had changed all our lives for ever. I won’t pretend that any of us much enjoyed the crossing of the Atlantic. There were too many terrible memories, but we kept them to ourselves, and never once mentioned the Titanic. In fact we had hardly ever mentioned the Titanic in all these years. It was what bound us inseparably, and what distanced us from others who had not been there, but we had rarely spoken of it among ourselves. All together again on the wide Atlantic, we faced our fears, and took strength from one another’s silence.

      Mr Freddie was there to greet us at the front door of the Savoy, and when we went inside, the staff were waiting to welcome us. Kaspar yowled from his basket as they all clapped us in. So I took him out to show everyone. He loved all the attention, and to tell the truth, so did I. Mary O’Connell was still there, head housekeeper now, instead of Skullface. She gave Ann a huge bunch of red roses, and cried on my shoulder as she hugged me. As or the bell-boy who took us up in the lift, he was a cockney lad, just like me, wearing the same uniform, with his cap worn at the same jaunty angle. He showed us into the Countess Kandinsky’s old rooms, with windows looking out over the Thames down towards the Houses of Parliament. Kaspar made himself at home at once, resuming his place on the piano and proceeding to washing himself vigorously. He was as happy as I’d ever seen him.

      He slept on the window ledge in the sun all the rest of that day. He’d been doing a lot of sleeping lately.

      We had an unveiling ceremony outside the American Bar the next morning, and much to Lizziebeth’s delight, everyone seemed to like the sculpture as much as they loved Kaspar himself. He was there at the ceremony, but wandered off during the speeches. I watched him go, waving his tail as he went. It was the last I ever saw of him. He just disappeared. Everyone searched the hotel, over and over again, from the basement to the attic corridor. He was nowhere to be found.

      It’s well enough known that old cats go off to die when they’re good and ready. I think, and Lizziebeth thinks, that’s what he must have done. We were sad, of course we were. He was the cat that had brought us together, had survived with us, and he was gone. But in a way, as I told Lizziebeth, trying to comfort her, he is not gone. He’s sitting there proudly outside the American Bar. You can go and see him for yourself, if you like. He’s still there, looking very pleased with himself, and so he should be. After all, he is Prince Kaspar Kandinsky, Prince of Cats, a Muscovite, a Londoner and a New Yorker, and as far as anyone knows, the only cat to survive the sinking of the Titanic.

       And then…

      …only a year or so after our visit to London, we received a letter from Mr Freddie.

      Dear Johnny and Lizziebeth,

      I’m writing to tell you of a strange happening. Several guests at the hotel have reported sighting a black cat wandering the corridors late at night. I took no notice at first, but it has happened time and again, and I thought you ought to know. And just yesterday, a lady staying in your rooms, the Countess Kandinsky’s rooms, reported seeing a reflection in the mirror of a grand lady in an ostrich-feathered hat, carrying a black cat in her arms. When she was offered the opportunity to be moved to another room, she said she’d rather stay, that they were kindly ghosts, like good companions. Mary and the others send love. Come and see us again one day, before too long.

      Yours, Freddie

       Postscript

      I’m a story detective. I hunt down clues because I need evidence to write my stories. So what was the evidence behind the writing of Kaspar?

      A year ago I was asked to be Writer-in-Residence at the Savoy Hotel in London. This involved putting on some literary events and staying for three months at the Savoy. My wife Clare and I had a bed the size of Ireland, and breakfast every morning looking out over the Thames. Everyone in the hotel was very kind. We were treated like royalty – which was great!

      Then one day, in the corridor next to the American Bar, I met Kaspar, the Savoy Cat. He was sitting there in a glass showcase – a sculpture of a huge black cat – very elegant, very superior. I made enquiries, as detectives do, and found out why СКАЧАТЬ