The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (2 page)

BALTHAZAR JONES HAD BEEN COLLECTING RAIN
for almost three years, a compulsion that had started shortly after the death of his only child. At first he thought that rain was simply an infuriating part of the job, which, along with the damp from their abominable lodgings, produced in all the Beefeaters a ruthless specimen of fungus that flourished on the backs of their knees. But as the months grated by following the tragedy, he found himself staring at the clouds, frozen in a state of insurmountable grief when he should have been on the lookout for professional pickpockets. As he looked up at the sky, barely able to breathe for the weight of guilt that pressed against his chest, he started to notice a variety in the showers that would invariably soak him during the day. Before long he had identified sixty-four types of rain, all of which he
jotted down in a Moleskine notebook he bought specially for the purpose. It wasn’t long before he purchased a bulk order of coloured Egyptian perfume bottles, chosen not so much for their beauty but for their ability to conserve their contents. In them he started to collect samples, recording the time, date, and precise variety of rain that had fallen. Much to the annoyance of his wife, he had a cabinet made for them, which he mounted with considerable difficulty on the living room’s curved wall. Before long it was full and he ordered two more, which she made him put in the room at the top of the Salt Tower, which she never entered because the chalk graffiti left on the walls by the German U-boat men imprisoned during the Second World War gave her the creeps.

When his collection had swollen to the satisfying figure of one hundred, the Beefeater promised his wife, who now detested wet weather even more than was natural for a Greek who couldn’t swim, he would stop. And for a while it seemed that Balthazar Jones was cured of his habit. But the truth was that England was going through an extraordinary dry patch, and as soon as the rain started to fall again, the Beefeater, who had already been reprimanded by the Chief Yeoman Warder for gazing up at the sky while he should have been answering the tourists’ tiresome questions, returned to his compulsion.

Hebe Jones satisfied herself with the thought that eventually her husband would complete his collection and be done with it. But her hopes evaporated when he was sitting on the edge of the bed one night and, after pulling off his damp left sock, revealed with the demented conviction of a man about to prove the existence of dragons that he had only touched the tip of the iceberg. It was then that he had some official writing
paper printed with matching envelopes, and set up the St. Heribert of Cologne Club, named after the patron saint of rain, hoping to compare notes with fellow wet weather enthusiasts. He placed adverts in various newspapers around the world, but the only correspondence he ever received was a heavily watermarked letter from an anonymous resident of Mawsynram, in northeastern India, which suffered from one of the world’s heaviest rainfalls. “Mr. Balthazar, You must desist from this utter madness at the most soonest. The only thing worse than a lunatic is a wet one” was all that it said.

But the lack of interest only fuelled his obsession. The Beefeater spent all his spare time writing to meteorologists around the world about his discoveries. He received replies from them all, his fingers, as lithe as a watchmaker’s, quivering as he opened them. However, the experts’ politeness was matched by their disinterest. He changed tack and buried himself in dusty parchments and books at the British Library that were as fragile as his sanity. And with eyes magnified by the strength of his reading glasses, he scoured everything ever written about rain.

Eventually, Balthazar Jones discovered a variant that, from what he could make out, hadn’t fallen since 1892 in Colombo, making it the world’s rarest. He read and reread the descriptions of the sudden shower, which, through a catalogue of misfortunes, had resulted in the untimely death of a cow. He became adamant that he would recognise it from its scent even before seeing it. Every day he waited, hoping for it to fall. Obsession eventually loosened his tongue, and one afternoon he heard himself telling his wife of his desperate desire to include it in his collection. With a mixture of incredulity and
pity, she gazed up at the man who had never shed a tear over the death of their son, Milo. And when she looked back down at the daffodil bulbs she was planting in a tub on the Salt Tower roof, she wondered yet again what had happened to her husband.

STANDING WITH HIS BACK
against the Salt Tower’s oak door, the Beefeater glanced around in the darkness to make sure that he wouldn’t be spotted by any of the other inhabitants of the fortress. The only movement came from a pair of flesh-coloured tights swinging on a washing line strung up on the roof of the Casemates. These ancient terraced cottages built against the fortress walls housed many of the thirty-five Beefeaters who lived with their families at the Tower. The rest, like Balthazar Jones, had had the misfortune of being allocated one of the monument’s twenty-one towers as their home or, worse still, a house on Tower Green, the site of seven beheadings, five of them women.

Balthazar Jones listened carefully. The only sound emerging through the darkness was a sentry marking his territory, his footfall as precise as a Swiss clock. He sniffed the night again and for a moment he doubted himself. He hesitated, cursing himself for being so foolish as to believe that the moment had finally come. He imagined his wife emitting an aviary of sounds as she dreamt, and decided to return to the warm familiarity of the bed. But just as he was about to retrace his steps, he smelt it again.

Heading for the battlements, he noticed to his relief that the lights were off at the Rack & Ruin, the Tower’s tavern that
had been serving the tiny community for two hundred and twenty-seven uninterrupted years, despite a direct hit during the Second World War. He did well to check, for there were occasions when the more vociferous arguments between the Beefeaters took until the early hours to be buried. Not, of course, that they remained that way. For they would often be gleefully dug up again in front of the warring parties by those seeking further entertainment.

He started down Water Lane, the cobbles slimy underneath his bare feet from the fallen leaves. As he approached Wakefield Tower, his thoughts turned to the odious ravens, which had been put to bed in their pens in the tower’s shadow. Their luxurious accommodation, with its running water, under-floor heating, and supply of fresh squirrel meat at the taxpayers’ expense, had been a constant source of irritation ever since he had discovered the true depth of their villainy.

His wife had taken an instant dislike to the famous birds when the family first arrived at the Tower. “They taste of shrouds,” announced Hebe Jones, who, with the exception of peacock, which she deemed inauspicious, claimed to have eaten most species of animals.

However, the ravens had been an instant source of curiosity to Balthazar Jones. During his first week, he wandered over to one perched on the wooden staircase leading to the entrance of the White Tower, begun by William the Conqueror to keep out the vile and furious English. As the bird eyed him, he stood admiring the thousands of colours that swam in the oily blackness of its feathers in the sunlight. He was equally impressed when the Ravenmaster, the Beefeater responsible for looking after the birds, called the creature’s name, and it arrived at the
man’s feet following a shambolic flight due to its wings having been clipped to prevent it absconding. And when Balthazar Jones discovered that they had a weakness for blood-soaked biscuits, he went out of his way to provide them with a splendid breakfast comprised of the delicacy.

Several days later, Milo, who was six at the time, shrieked “Daddy!” and pointed to a raven standing on top of Mrs. Cook, the family’s historic tortoise. All affection instantly vanished. It wasn’t just that it was extraordinarily bad manners to hitch a ride—albeit at the most sedate of paces—aloft another creature that infuriated Balthazar Jones. Neither was it the fact that the bird had just left a copious runny deposit on top of his pet. What drove the Beefeater into a state of fury was the raven pecking at Mrs. Cook’s fleshy bits with its satanic beak. And given the tortoise’s age of one hundred and eighty-one, there was a noticeable delay before she was able to draw her head and limbs into her worn shell, away from the vicious assault.

It was by no means an isolated incident. Several days later, Balthazar Jones noticed that the ravens had assembled into what was indisputably an attack formation outside the Salt Tower, once used to store saltpeter. One of the birds squatted on top of the red phone box, three stood on a cannon, another perched on the remains of a Roman wall, and a pair sat on the roof of the New Armouries. The situation continued for several days, as it took considerable time for Mrs. Cook to explore her new lodgings. Eventually, she was ready for a change of scenery. As soon as she set a wizened leg out of the front door, there was a uniform advance of one hop from the massed ravens. The birds displayed remarkable patience, for it took several hours for Mrs. Cook to make sufficient ground
out of the door to warrant a second hop. The Ravenmaster blamed the fact that it was well past their lunchtimes for what happened next. Balthazar Jones, however, vehemently insisted that their scandalous behaviour was not only a result of their allegiance to Beelzebub but how they had been raised, an insult that pierced so deeply it was never forgotten. Whatever the reason, one thing was for certain: by late afternoon Mrs. Cook, the oldest tortoise in the world, no longer had a tail, and one of the Tower ravens was too full for supper.

A
S BALTHAZAR JONES PASSED WAKEFIELD TOWER,
the sound of the Thames lapping through Traitors’ Gate seemed louder than usual in the darkness. He looked to his left and saw the vast wooden watergates that had once opened to let in the boats carrying trembling prisoners accused of treason. But he spared not a thought for such matters, the details of which he had to relate countless times during his working day to the tourists, who were interested only in methods of torture, executions, and the whereabouts of the lavatories. Instead, he pressed on, past the Bloody Tower with its red rambling rose, said to have produced snow-white blossoms before the murder of the two little princes. Neither did he notice the dancing candlelight at one of its windows, where the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh nibbled the end of his quill as he sat at his desk in what had been his prison for thirteen years.

Climbing up the stone steps, the Beefeater quickly reached the battlements. In front of him stretched the Thames, where Henry III’s white bear had once swum for its dinner. But Balthazar Jones kept his pale blue eyes raised as he tried to work
out from which direction the precious rain would come. Touching his white beard with his fingertips as he made his calculations, he scoured the sky, through which the dawn was starting to leak.