The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (26 page)

The Chief Yeoman Warder leant forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “How is everything?” he asked.

“Fine,” the Beefeater replied evenly.

“Splendid. I thought you would like to know that the Palace has been in touch, and they’re very pleased with the way the
menagerie is shaping up. Visitor figures are up considerably compared to this time last year, and press coverage, both national and international, has been largely positive.”

The Beefeater remained silent.

The Chief Yeoman Warder then picked up a pen and started rolling it between his fingertips. “There were, of course, those unfortunate pictures of you and the marmosets at the beginning. Hopefully the papers won’t use them again now that we’ve allowed them to take photographs of the animals at the Tower. What was all that about, by the way?”

The Beefeater swallowed. “They expose themselves when they feel threatened,” he said.

“I see.”

There was a pause.

The Chief Yeoman Warder glanced down at his file. “Now,” he continued, “there have been one or two complaints. And while I’m well aware that people are never happier than when they’re moaning, they need to be addressed. The first one is the penguins. When will they be back from the vet’s?”

Balthazar Jones scratched at his beard. “Any day now,” he replied.

“Good. The sooner the better,” he said, tapping the desk with his pen. “I don’t like the look of that empty enclosure. It gives the impression that they’ve escaped, like that bearded pig from London Zoo. Bunch of amateurs. Now, the second matter is a complaint from the Tower residents with regards to the wandering albatross. Apparently some of the Yeoman Warders can’t sleep because it keeps wailing, which sets off all the other birds, and then the howler monkeys start up.” He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the armrests. “Personally,
I can sleep through mortar fire, but not everyone has my constitution.”

“I’ll sort out the albatross,” said Balthazar Jones.

“Glad to hear it. Now keep up the good work. I don’t want that lot at the Palace on my back if anything goes wrong.”

WHEN BALTHAZAR JONES RETURNED
to the Salt Tower, he stood emptying pocketfuls of apples and sunflower seeds onto the coffee table. He didn’t bother to turn on the light or draw the curtains, and sat on the sofa in the darkness. As he looked at the pale crease of the moon, he wondered again where his wife was. Eventually, he got up to make some toast, brought it back to the living room, and turned on the lamp. As he sat eating, his attention was caught by the front end of the pantomime horse, whose ears he still hadn’t brought himself to sew back on. Looking away, he noticed the photograph taken of Milo holding the precious ammonite he had found while fossil hunting in Dorset. He lowered his eyes, but they fell to his wife’s shoes.

Abandoning his supper, he scuffed his way up the cold spiral staircase, no longer caring that he was retracing the steps of a thirteenth-century Scottish king. He ran himself a bath, but as he lay back in the water he thought of his terrible secret, and what Hebe Jones would say if she ever found out. Too distressed to linger, he got out of the water.

After putting on his pajamas, he looked at the armchair by the window where he had slept since finding his wife’s letter the previous week. Unable to bear another night of crooked slumber, he climbed into his side of the bed and turned off the
light. As sleep continued to evade him, he reached out a hand and felt around in the darkness. Eventually, his fingers found what they were searching for. Pulling the white nightdress towards him, he held it to his face and inhaled. He was still clutching it several hours later when he woke from a dream that Hebe Jones was lying next to him, and the arrows of abandonment rained down on him once more.

He escaped to the bathroom and sat on the side of the tub, putting off his return to bed. As he stared at the floor, he noticed a piece of brown lettuce on the carpet. Suddenly he realised that he hadn’t seen Mrs. Cook for a week, and a hand gripped his heart as he thought of the creature’s exalted heritage.

Mrs. Cook was no ordinary tortoise, but the daughter of a pet once owned by Captain Cook. The explorer had taken one look at her mother’s alluring markings and carried her on board the HMS
Resolution
, where she was given the run of the deck. In 1779, when the ship arrived in Hawaii during a festival of worship for a Polynesian god, a number of the locals mistook the Yorkshireman for a deity. In an effort to distract them from their conviction, he gave them his most treasured possession: the ship’s mascot.

Almost a year later, the reptile, which had a natural propensity for absconding, was noticed on the beach by a seaman from a visiting ship. Convinced that tortoises were good omens at sea, he picked her up, and presented her to the crew with the fanfare of a showman once they had set sail. She became the pride of the vessel, and at night he would recount tales of spectacular fortunes enjoyed by mariners with a tortoise on board.

But the ship was blown off course, and soon the sailors had finished the rations. The starving men began to gaze at the creature with gastronomic longing. One of them stood up and announced that he was sure it was black cats that were good omens for sailors. Another joined him, and eventually the entire crew agreed that the seaman had been mistaken.

The following day, pirates attacked the ship. When the seaman was taken on board the enemy vessel at gunpoint, he grabbed the bucket in which he had hidden the maligned mascot. Instructed to prepare the meals, he made sure that each was as near a culinary masterpiece as possible, given the limitations of ships’ biscuits. When the vessel eventually docked at Plymouth, he was rewarded with his freedom and returned home to South Wales with his bucket. He presented the tortoise to his wife, who made a small fortune showing her to the good people of Gower, who refused to believe in the existence of a creature that carried its home on its back.

B
ALTHAZAR JONES STIRRED,
his bearded cheek pressed against his wife’s cotton nightgown. As usual upon waking he felt the ache of her absence, but as he lay with his eyes still closed, he sensed that something else was wrong. As soon as he remembered the piece of withered lettuce on the bathroom floor his eyes opened.

Casting back the shabby blanket, he fed his feet into his tartan slippers. Tying his dressing gown across the gentle hillock of his stomach, he started to search for the creature that had been considered the matriarch of the family for generations of Joneses. First he looked in the bathroom airing cupboard, the door of which was kept ajar so that she could enter, lest the Salt Tower’s bitter temperature condemn her to a permanent state of hibernation. He tried her lairs in the bedroom, peering down the side of the dressing table and behind the wastepaper basket. But all he found were the cobwebs the spiders had spun since Hebe Jones had left.

He descended the spiral staircase to the living room and gazed down the gap between the back of the sofa and the
circular wall. Something was there. But when he shone his torch into the dusty expanse, it turned out to be a ball. Moving aside his wife’s easel next to the bookcase, he saw nothing more than an odd black sock. He then lifted up the front end of the pantomime horse, which offered the perfect place for concealment. But all he discovered were the ears that he hadn’t brought himself to sew back on.

Head in his hands, he sat in the armchair trying to think when he had last seen her. He recalled the visit of the Tower doctor the previous week, and the arthritic sound of the animal’s knees as she got to her feet, but couldn’t remember seeing her since. He stood up and retraced his steps, hunting for evidence of loose bowels. After searching underneath the bed for the seventh time, he sat on the floor with his back against the dresser feeling utterly alone in the world.

REV. SEPTIMUS DREW WORKED A FINGER
between each of his pale toes as he sat in bathwater infused with tea tree oil. It wasn’t a belief that cleanliness was next to godliness that led to such meticulousness, but the conviction that prevention was better than cure. While he didn’t get caught in the rain as often as the Beefeaters, he nevertheless feared succumbing to the fungus that flourished on the backs of their knees. As he lay back in the fragrant water, his mind turned to the invitation he had just opened, and he wondered again whether he stood any real chance of winning the Erotic Fiction Award. Having never come first at anything in his life, he put the possibility of victory out of his mind, and closed his eyes.

As he relived his trip to the Abbey’s museum with Ruby
Dore there was a knock on the front door. He rose with the thrust of a whale, slopping water over the side of the bath, hoping it was the landlady. Wrapping himself in a dressing gown, he made his way to one of the spare bedrooms at the front of the house, leant his forehead against the cold windowpane, and looked down. There, standing on his doorstep, was the Yeoman Gaoler. The chaplain had been avoiding the man ever since agreeing to perform the exorcism. He was just about to hide behind the curtain when the Beefeater looked up and their eyes met. Unable to pretend to be out, as he had done on the three previous occasions, the chaplain heaved up the sash window and called: “I’ll be down in a minute!”

Dripping his way back to the bathroom, he took off his damp robe and, as he dried his excessively long legs, wondered why he had always been so hopeless at exorcisms. It was a skill that would evidently be of great use to his congregation. While many of the Beefeaters boasted about the ghosts they claimed to have seen around the Tower, never once did they speak to anyone other than the chaplain about the spectral apparitions in their own homes, as they were a terror too far. Despite the number of times that he had been asked to perform one, he had never quite got the hang of the procedure, much to the Beefeaters’ infuriation.

Once dressed, he idled his way down the stairs, stopping along the way to inspect a mark on the banister.

“Yes?” he said, opening the door.