After that it was a leisurely voyage home, by sea when we could, by coach when we couldn't. We swapped a river-barge for a bouncy junk, a smoky coaster, a dhow (not much room in this), a river-boat, and finally the cross-channel ferry. During the long days and gradually warming nights I washed and mended all our clothes—what there was left of them—bought pen, paper and ink and wrote down an account of all our adventures so that perhaps one day my children might read it.
Once we were in "civilisation" again I had to go back to wearing a skirt, and I found I had enough to refit us all cheaply, and to give the boys a little pocket-money. Danny promptly bought packs of cards and small, smelly cigars, Claude some more handkerchiefs, although his permanent sniffles were now minimal. He had already, with the money he had managed from the little I had given them before, bought a length of purple silk for his mother. Toby saved his money right until the last, when he came across a very good second-hand compass in a shop, just before we joined the cross-channel ferry that would take us on our last lap.
My purchases were books, of course; second-hand copies of Mr. Browning's poems—and a real delight they were: it was almost as if he was talking to you, acting out the part of Fra Lippo Lippi, for instance—and a very tatty copy of Mr. Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, another interesting tale.
During our voyage home, Danny and Claude had become close friends, as though the trials we had been through had done much to smooth over their differences in lifestyles and outlook. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that that they accepted the differences, and tried to assess how they could work to their mutual advantages. So much so, that they ventured to me that they were thinking of combining their talents and opening a detective agency.
"If Danny does the detecting, then I'll do the books and the housekeeping," Claude told me. "He's got lots of good ideas. . . ."
I was sure he had. . . .
Having exchanged the few pearls I had left—apart from the half-dozen most beautiful: a huge pink one and five perfectly formed blacks, guessing that I would probably get a better price in London—we still had enough to telegraph Mrs. Early of our imminent return, the price of a hired coach and two cabins on the ferry. The boys shared one, Beau and I the other, although the captain had looked askance at Beau.
"No wild animals," he had said dismissively.
I could understand his hesitation. Already Beau was the size of a panther, and appeared to be expanding every day. I assured the captain that he was perfectly tame, and that I would pay for any damage he caused.
It was true what Ky-Lin had said: we got along fine without the Ring though of course we couldn't converse the way we used to. I talked to him, though, and he appeared to understand everything I said, so we were a comfortable couple; I was going to say there were no disagreements, but I had learnt enough about cat body-language to understand what a lashing tail meant!
We had dined well, the sea was smooth and it was a warm, early June night, with a thin silver moon curving up from the sea through our open porthole. Although I was excited at the thought of our long journey at last coming to an end and thought I wouldn't sleep, in fact I succumbed within minutes of lying down on my bunk, leaving Beau gazing out of the porthole. It seemed only minutes later that I woke—in fact the moon didn't seem to have moved at all—to find Beau padding back and forth across the cabin from my bunk to the porthole and back again, obviously with something on his mind.
"What's the matter, Beau? Can't you sleep? It won't be long now; when it gets light we should see the White Cliffs, and before you know it we'll be on our way home!"
"Your home . . ." I thought I heard him say.
"And yours to share."
"Not the same . . ."
I sat up. Yes, I was sure he had spoken. Right, so I was dreaming: no wonder I thought I had only been asleep for a few minutes. Well, dreams could be interesting, and it was nice to talk properly to Beau. His head was on my pillow, and the moonlight, thin though it was, showed me a beloved face whose every change of expression I had become used to; the angle of the ears, line of mouth, depth of cheeks, attitude of whiskers, arrangement of fur, the set of the eyes, the dilation of the pupils—the whole look now was one of misery, depression and resignation.
"Of course it won't be the same as your beautiful palace in Siam," I said, pretending to fall in with his absurd stories. "But I will try to make it as comfortable as I can for you—I promise you will eat well and have the run of some lovely countryside. Lots of rats and mice . . ."
"Princes don't eat mice," he said. "All I want is that kiss you promised me, before it is too late."
"I didn't promise you anything of the sort," I said. "I told you, one doesn't kiss cats. The fact that I forgot a couple of times has nothing to do with it!" But I was angry with myself, just for being angry. I paused. "What do you mean: `before it is too late' ?"
"Because my year is nearly up. If I cannot receive that kiss then I am condemned to spend the rest of my life as a cat. And that I could not bear, however kind you would be to me. I am a man, not an animal!"
Because I was still angry with myself I hit out at him.
"You know perfectly well I don't believe that rubbish you told me, don't you? Princes and palaces, witches and spells—a load of rubbish!" I had forgotten I was still dreaming. "And that story of that tatty collar of yours being made of precious stones . . . Pah!"
There was a little silence. "I thought it might come in useful with that orphanage you were planning," he said at last.
How did he know that? I had never discussed it with anyone, even Toby, although it had been much on my mind on the way home.
Somehow that touched me as nothing else had.
I was beginning to realise just how much I valued his comradeship, his company, his constancy. Would it hurt me so much to kiss him once more? Of course it wouldn't! But there was a reason for not doing so, I realised. What would happen if it didn't work? If he had been wrong all along? Supposing that third kiss left him as he was—a cat? What would he feel like? Wouldn't it be better that he blame me, rather than face the humiliation and distress of defeat?
If it meant I could guarantee that he would turn back into the prince he thought he had been, then I would kiss him all over, for as long as it took. . . . But I just couldn't risk it.
"Listen my dear, I just can't do it. I don't want to disappoint you." I patted the bunk. "Don't let's spoil our last night's travel. Come up and have a cuddle!"
Suddenly there was no room to spare; I was surrounded by cat: warm, furry, purring. This latter was a deep-throated rumble, in-out, in-out, on different notes, a semitone in between, and a trifle more forte on the breath out. It was soothing, soporific: I closed my eyes . . .
"Of course it may be that you are afraid of being confronted by a prince," said Beau, as if continuing a conversation we hadn't had, and effectually jerking me out of my doze. "What would you say if I told you I was not the scion of a noble house, but rather the bastard son of a waterfront woman, and a thief as well?"
I sat up. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"I am saying that perhaps I should have told you the truth right from the start, instead of trying to romance it up a bit, but I thought you might accept me more readily as a suitor if you thought—"
"A suitor? How on earth could you have thought—"
"That you would countenance a cat? But I keep telling you—"
"You keep telling me about a witch and a ridiculous spell—"
"But that was the only part that was true! The rest I made up, just to impress you!"
It took me a minute or two to digest all this, but once I realised I was still dreaming I decided it wouldn't interrupt the dream if I heard what he had to say.
"Perhaps you had better tell me the truth then," I said. "Not that I will necessarily believe you, of course. And not that it will make the slightest difference to my decision," I added.
He nodded. "Understood. But I will feel better to have told you. . . . The story begins before I was born. In the country of Siam there lived a rich widower, a merchant, with one child, a beautiful girl with hair the colour of the night, eyes the brown of autumn leaves and a skin like ivory—"
"How do you know she looked like that? You said this was before you were born!"
"Don't interrupt! All will become clear . . . Being a rich merchant and trader her father had several warehouses and a counting-house down by the waterfront, and his daughter, who was also gifted with figures, helped her father in the latter.
"One day her father was attending other business and his daughter had occasion to do business with an English ship which was carrying a cargo of tin. During her supervision of the unloading she noticed a young sailor, a handsome young man with fair hair, blue eyes and a smile to melt one's heart, so she told me later. Apparently over the next couple of days they fell deeply in love, and by the time the sailor had to rejoin his ship some couple of weeks later, she was already pregnant. By the time her condition became obvious, she swore to her father that the sailor had promised to come out on his next voyage to marry her, and that he had already sent a letter ahead to his parents telling them of his decision. But her father was so angry and humiliated that he threw her out of the house.
"She waited in vain for her lover to return, for his ship foundered on the voyage with all hands, but her son was born before the news reached her."
"How cruel! First being thrown out of the house and then losing her lover! How did she survive?"
"Although her father refused to see her again, he gave her a small annual income, enough to keep her and the boy from starvation. He also gave her a necklace that had belonged to her mother, a magnificent example in diamonds and emeralds . . ."
Where had I heard that before? "You were that boy?" In my dream . . .
"Yes, that is how I can remember how beautiful she was. She told me that if she had been on her own she would have cast herself into the sea to die as her lover had, but that I had given her something to live for. She taught me all she knew about book-keeping and mathematics, and managed to save enough to hire me an expatriate Englishman to teach me to speak, read and write in my father's language."
He paused. "And so it went on until I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. . . ."
"Go on . . ."
He sighed. "The next bit I always find difficult to even think about. My grandfather, the merchant, married again, a wicked woman who tried to persuade him to cut off my mother's allowance. When he refused he became ill, and was dead within a year of his marriage. Our allowance was stopped, my mother became ill and my wicked step-grandmother sent round the police for the necklace, saying my mother had stolen it. She had bribed them, of course."
He sighed again. "Those were the hard times. My mother needed medicines, and the care of a doctor. I applied for job after job, but always my applications were turned down—my step-grandmother again."
"So what did you do?"
"The only thing I could do: I turned to thievery." He saw my look of shock. "What else could I do? And I was good at it; it wasn't too difficult, with all the goods passing through the port. I was quick and agile, and I was never caught. I found a couple of fences willing to buy whatever I could not take home—jewellery or clothes—but food and delicacies I bought for my mother every day. I don't know whether she realised what I was doing, for I told her I had a good position, though she must have marvelled at the strange hours I kept—but perhaps she just didn't want to know.
"She was only thirty-five when she died; I believe she was longing to be re-united with her English sailor, reckoning that I was now old enough to take care of myself: her death hit me hard. For a while I had no wish to live myself. I grew neglectful of my appearance, forgot to eat or wash. Eventually though I pulled myself together and, not wanting to continue a thief and waste my life, decided to follow my father's profession and went to sea. This was a big mistake: I'm afraid I hated every minute. Businessman, yes, given the chance: sailor, no.
"I reckoned my mother had left me two things she wished me to do. My father had told her of his parents address in England, and she asked me to visit them some day; the other was my determination to retrieve the necklace. To this end I took to spying on my step-grandmother in her villa, and it wasn't long before I discovered that she was a witch; I watched her cast spells to entrap young men and make up the most subtle poisons and potions.
"I waited one night until I reckoned she was asleep, then used my thieving skills to enter the villa and steal back the necklace. Once found I put it on, and was just leaving the villa when my step-grandmother jumped out at me. Apparently her powers had told her I would come."
He stretched, quivered, and settled back. "The rest you know, more or less; there is no need to go over it again. She used her powers to bewitch me into what you see now, and laid the curse of the three kisses on me. Since then I have spent months of my life trying to escape capture, starvation, degradation, and it was only when you rescued me from that murderous stall-holder that I began to hope once more.
"But now my time is running out. It took a great deal out of me learning to eat and hunt like a cat, and also to avoid capture. A couple of times it was only my tough claws that got me out of trouble. I was trapped a number of times by the enticement of food, but luckily my captors had to sleep and I remembered the ways to open doors and unlatch windows."
I knew I was dreaming, I must be, but why would someone like Beau alter his story, so that the desirable prince became an undesirable thief? Surely if anyone was going to be idiotic enough to believe his story they would rather look forward to a princely suitor than a commoner!
I had one more thing puzzling me. "You said you liked it when I called you Beau, but you never really explained why. Was it a pet-name?"
"Depends on how you spell and say it. My father's name was David Bowe and my mother named me after him—only she called me `Davey.' "
"I see!" I thought for a moment. "Can I go on calling you `Beau'?"
"Of course. Well?"
"Well what?"
"Does it make any difference to your decision? The truth, I mean."
"How can I be sure it is the truth?"
"You can't. Any more than you can tell whether a kiss will turn me back into the man I once was. You'll just have to trust me . . ."
I turned to him, hugged him, stroked him. "Look, I'm quite happy with you as a cat. Why do you want to tempt fate? I love you. . . ."
"I love you too, but I'd rather love you as a man. . . ."
I sat up abruptly. I had never thought that if he really was a man— But I was dreaming, and silly thoughts do come with dreams.
"You aren't, you know," said Beau. "You are as wide awake as I am. Look, if you are so convinced it won't work, I promise to absolve you from all blame if anything goes wrong—but it won't."
So, tired of arguing, and praying against all reason that he was right and I was wrong, and that I wasn't dreaming, I leant forward and kissed him full on his mouth.