The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (31 page)

“The Chief Yeoman Warder wondered whether you’d forgotten to lock the enclosures, but I told him that a man who hadn’t lost his tortoise in all these years wouldn’t be that careless.”

Balthazar Jones looked at the table.

“Any idea who let the animals loose?” the equerry continued, returning his glasses to his nose. “I don’t for a minute think that they managed to escape by themselves.”

The Beefeater sat back. “I’ve got my suspicions,” he said.

“Care to tell me who?” he asked.

“I haven’t got any proof.”

“Well, we’ll conduct a thorough enquiry to flush out the culprit,” said the equerry, turning a page in his file. “At least all the animals have been recaptured.”

The Beefeater’s thoughts immediately turned to the occupant of the White Tower weathervane, and he raised his cup to his lips.

“Now,” continued Oswin Fielding. “The reason why I called this meeting is to let you know that the Prime Minister of Guyana has just dispatched some giant otters to the Queen, which is rather annoying, I must say.”

Balthazar Jones stared at the courtier. “But we haven’t got any room for giant otters,” he protested.

“No one is happy about it, I can tell you. We’ll just have to put them in the penguin enclosure for the time being. Make sure you look after them. They’re an endangered species, like that Komodo dragon. How is it, by the way?”

“It’s fine. Just a little plump, that’s all.”

The equerry looked down at his file. “As long as it hasn’t eaten a small child, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The Beefeater gazed out of the window wondering when he had last seen the Chief Yeoman Warder’s dog.

“Now, there’s one other thing I wanted to mention,” Oswin Fielding said.

Balthazar Jones started fiddling with a beer mat.

“There’s a story in the Swedish papers this morning about the giraffes being a gift from the King of Sweden,” the equerry continued. “What I can’t understand is that the Press Office said they got that information from you.”

The Beefeater looked away. “I happened to be carrying a swede at the time,” the Beefeater muttered.

“A Swede? Anyone in particular?” asked the equerry.

“The vegetable, not a Scandinavian.”

The man from the Palace squinted at Balthazar Jones. “Couldn’t you have just picked a country in Africa?” he asked. “We’ve already had a call from the King of Sweden’s office. I told them that the Press Office had got their wires crossed, so I’d avoid those ladies for a while if I were you. They’re not very happy.”

The courtier closed his file and sat back with a sigh. “How’s Mrs. Jones?” he asked.

There was no reply.

“Still hasn’t come back?”

Balthazar Jones looked out of the window. “No,” he replied eventually.

“Shame. My wife never did either.”

ONCE THE TWO MEN HAD LEFT,
Ruby Dore cleared the table of their empty cups and gathered up the pieces of shredded
beer mat. She vowed to go to bed early that night, having been up long past midnight finding the last of the fancy rats. She had almost given up hope when Rev. Septimus Drew ran up to her as she was looking in the bin outside the Tower Café, saying he had just seen two running past the Fusiliers’ Museum. More than an hour later, they had chased them through the doors of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, left open by one of the Beefeaters during the mayhem. The rodents immediately darted underneath the organ, and the pair sat down on the front row of seats in despair. When the vermin reappeared in front of them and proceeded to shamelessly sink their teeth into the white linen altar cloth, the chaplain went to fetch that most unholy of lures: peanut butter.

Once the creatures were safely back in their cages in the Well Tower, Ruby Dore invited the clergyman into the Rack & Ruin, locking the door behind her lest the Beefeaters expected to be served. She reappeared from the cellar with a bottle of vintage champagne, which she had been saving for a special occasion that had never arrived. As she poured them both a glass, Rev. Septimus Drew looked at the canary asleep on its perch and said that he had always thought it such a shame that Canary Wharf had not been named after an infestation of tiny yellow birds as one might assume, but after the Spanish islands whose fruit had arrived there by the boatload. As she handed him his drink, the landlady knew that the special occasion had finally come.

Once she had finished her first glass, she revealed that she was studying for an Open University degree in history. She hadn’t told anyone, she said, watching his reaction closely, as she didn’t want people to think that she had ideas above her
station. She had taken over the pub from her father without having given much thought to another career. But she had come to the conclusion after almost two decades behind the taps that there must be more to life than pouring Beefeaters pints.

Rev. Septimus Drew replied that he thought it a splendid idea, and had considered reading history at university himself, but theology had been a stronger calling. The landlady refilled his glass and as they sipped their champagne, they discussed the lives of several European monarchs including Ethelred the Unready, Pippin the Short, and George the Turnip Hoer.

When the bottle was empty, Ruby Dore finally found the courage to ask him the question that had recently perplexed her: why he had never married. Rev. Septimus Drew replied that he had only once met a woman whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and who would find living in the Tower a privilege rather than a curse.

“What happened?” she asked.

“She doesn’t know,” he admitted. And he held Ruby Dore’s gaze for so long, she lowered her eyes to the bar with a blush.

RUBY DORE YAWNED
as she stood at the sink washing Balthazar Jones’s and Oswin Fielding’s cups. As she looked down, she wondered when people would start to notice that she was pregnant. She had already decided to rebuff any enquiries about the father with the simple explanation that they were no longer together. It was a line she used when she broke the
news to her parents. Her mother had remained silent for so long that Ruby Dore wondered whether she was still on the line. Barbara Dore then told her the truth: “I’m not ready to be a grandmother, but then again I wasn’t ready to be a mother.”

It was her father’s reaction that she had been more concerned about. Once again there was a moment’s silence on the line, this time as Harry Dore worked out that his daughter must have fallen pregnant while in Spain, having honed his mathematical skills during decades of Beefeaters attempting to defraud him. Swallowing the questions he wanted to ask, he offered her his congratulations and shouted to his second wife the exalted news that he was going to be a grandfather. When, several minutes after hanging up, the full ramifications of the situation dawned on him, he immediately called his daughter back. “For God’s sake, don’t let the Tower doctor handle the birth,” he urged. “I don’t think the kitchen lino is up to it.”

The landlady fetched the broom from the cupboard under the stairs and started working it in between the bar stools. When she opened the pub door to sweep out the dust, she noticed the mess left by the howler monkeys when they had been cornered the previous night. They had grabbed what they could as they fled from the home of Rev. Septimus Drew. She picked up a large sock bearing a snowman and a clerical collar, and then reached for the crumpled pieces of paper. As she walked back inside, she was struck by the familiarity of the handwriting. She smoothed down one of the pages on the bar, and it wasn’t long before she recognised the hand that had
written out a recipe for treacle cake. But what she couldn’t understand was why the chaplain would be writing about the glory of rosebud nipples.

HEBE JONES SET DOWN HER SUITCASE
in the hall. Slipping the keys she had just collected from the lettings agency back into her coat pocket, she set about exploring her new home. As she wandered from room to room she discovered to her dismay several things she had failed to notice when she agreed to rent the flat. As she stood in the living room that overlooked a main road, she realised how loud the traffic was. While the kitchen was much bigger than the one she was used to in the Salt Tower, the cooker was electric rather than gas, and the insides of the cupboards were covered in grime. She went into the bathroom and saw that the carpet curled up in discoloured corners under the sink. As she sat down on the lumpy bed used by countless strangers for the most intimate act of all, she wondered whether she would ever get used to sleeping alone.

She looked at the shabby 1970s dressing table in front of her, which she would never have chosen. Already missing the comfort of Valerie Jennings’s over-heated flat with the frilly tissue-box covers, she reminded herself that this would only be temporary. When the tenants’ lease ran out, she would be able to move back into their home in Catford, where the carpeted stairs rose in a straight line, the rooms were square rather than circular, and the neighbours didn’t even know her name, let alone her business.

However, the thought of returning home was not enough
to defend her against the tide of misery that rose up around her, and she picked over the flotsam of her marriage. For years she and her husband had remained in a state of blissful delusion, seeing many more virtues in each other than really existed. While some spent the silences of their marriage imagining being in another’s arms, Hebe and Balthazar Jones had maintained a lifetime of conversation, both entirely convinced that they had picked the right one. But after the tragedy, a corrosive despair had worked its way into the bolts of their affection until the mechanism of their colossal love was unable to turn. And all she had left was its echo.

Eventually, the unfamiliarity of her surroundings drove her to her feet, and she walked back to the hall. She opened the front door and pulled it behind her. As she headed down the steps for the Lost Property Office, the harsh sound of it slamming followed her.

WHEN HEBE JONES ARRIVED,
Valerie Jennings emerged from behind the shelves and asked how the flat was.