The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise

by Julia Stuart

  Frances Stuart eventually eloped and married the Duke of Richmond and Lennox. But when she returned to court, the King was as bewitched as ever, and his jealousy of the foulmouthed bird was as fierce as his adoration for its mistress. In his darkest moments, he swore that the parrot had been his life’s most confounding love rival. When, in 1702, the Duchess eventually passed away, the parrot mourned in the most eloquent of English, and then died six days later. The parrot was stuffed and displayed with her memorial effigy out of respect for its forty-year friendship. And the King, long since buried in the Abbey, was unable to overrule her instructions.

  Ruby Dore was so delighted by the account that on the way out she bought a postcard of the Duchess, which sadly lacked her much more famous pet. And, as she walked back to Westminster station with Rev. Septimus Drew, she wondered why so many men spun stories of their own brilliance, when women would much rather hear an intriguing tale about a stuffed parrot.

  “A-FOUR,” SAID VALERIE JENNINGS, casting a furtive look at her colleague underneath her lustrous eyelashes.

  Hebe Jones looked down at the grid she had drawn. “Miss,” she replied. A moment later she announced: “F-three.”

  “Hit,” replied Valerie Jennings, frowning. “C-five.”

  “You’ve just sunk my destroyer,” Hebe Jones admitted, reaching to answer the phone.

  Valerie Jennings had suggested a game of Battleship after she noticed Hebe Jones gazing into the distance again, lost in a world that no longer existed. She handed her a piece of paper and challenged her to a game, hoping that it would distract her from her troubles. She had fully intended to let her houseguest win, but once they had drawn their grids and positioned their ships, Valerie Jennings completely forgot about raising the other woman’s spirits. Instead, she set about annihilating the enemy vessels with the ruthlessness of a pirate, brandishing her cutlass the moment she suspected that Hebe Jones had placed one of her submarines diagonally, which was in strict contravention of the rules of the high seas.

  Recognising she had now sunk Hebe Jones’s entire fleet, Valerie Jennings decided to clean the fridge as a means of atonement. Squeezing her feet back into her high-heeled shoes, which forced her toes into two red triangles, she stood up and armed herself with a pair of yellow rubber gloves and a damp cloth. As she bent over to see inside, several of her curls sprung from their mooring on the back of her head, and no matter how many times she pushed them away, they returned to obscure her vision with the persistence of flies. Infuriated, she looked around for a solution, and spotted a plastic Viking helmet on one of the shelves. She pulled it on, tossed its yellow plaits over her shoulders, and returned to her penitence. As she threw out an empty cake box, a relic of the glory days of elevenses, she bitterly regretted not having worn make-up for her lunch with Arthur Catnip.

  When the Swiss cowbell rang, Hebe Jones instantly recognised an attempt at the Greek national anthem. She got up to answer it, stopping on the way to twirl the dial on the safe, as was the office custom.

  As soon as she arrived, Thanos Grammatikos returned the bell to the counter and kissed his cousin on the cheek. Following her wasted trip to Mrs. Perkins, Hebe Jones had given up the needle-in-a-haystack method, and asked him to stop by and look at the urn. While he had only a rudimentary knowledge of the dark art of carpentry, proven by his needing to have a finger stitched back on, Hebe Jones hoped he would be able to shed some light on the unusual wood.

  “So how’s everything?” he asked. “I saw Balthazar’s picture in the paper the other week. Why were all those monkeys flashing their bits behind him?”

  “I didn’t like to ask,” Hebe Jones replied.

  He looked at the urn she was holding. “Is this it?” he asked, taking it in his hands and running his fingers over the cream-coloured surface. “To be honest, I’ve never seen this wood before. Do you mind if I show it to someone?”

  “You won’t lose it, will you?” Hebe Jones asked.

  “Name me one thing I’ve ever lost.”

  “Your finger.”

  “That was never lost. It was on the floor all the time.”

  “Well, take care of those ashes,” she said. “They’ve already been lost once.”

  As Hebe Jones returned to her desk, her stomach emitted a low thunderous rumble. As if two whales were calling to each other, it was shortly answered by a similar sound coming from the figure stooped over the fridge. Hebe Jones instantly recognised the cause. The once sacred ritual of elevenses, a practice governed strictly by Valerie Jennings, had, since her lunch with Arthur Catnip, been reduced to a sliced apple and a cup of jasmine tea. As the pitiful sound started up again underneath her own blouse, Hebe Jones stood up and announced that she was just popping out for a minute.

  As she stood at the head of the queue in the coffee shop round the corner, pointing the assistant’s tongs to the largest flapjack in the counter, she suddenly felt a tap on the shoulder. She turned round and instantly recognised the soft, dark eyes and neat hair marbled with silver.

  “I thought it was you,” said Tom Cotton, smiling. “I was the one who lost a kidney, remember?” He invited her to sit with him, and pointed to his table. Reasoning that a quick chat would give her sufficient time to eat her snack before returning to the office, Hebe Jones paid the assistant and followed him.

  “Have you seen the papers today?” he asked as she sat down. “Someone’s spotted the bearded pig that escaped from London Zoo.” He held out his newspaper and showed her the blurred photograph taken by a reader in Tewkesbury of a creature rampaging across the bottom of his garden.

  “It doesn’t look much like a pig to me,” she said, peering at it. “It looks more like the Loch Ness monster.”

  Tom Cotton opened a sachet of sugar and poured it into his coffee. “That kidney you helped me get back saved a boy’s life, you know,” he said.

  Hebe Jones put down the paper. “How old was he?” she asked.

  “About eight, I think.”

  Hebe Jones remained silent for so long, he asked her whether she was feeling all right.

  “They couldn’t save my son’s life,” she said eventually, raising her eyes. “The doctors insisted there was nothing they could do, but you never stop wondering.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Do you have any children?” she asked.

  Tom Cotton picked up a spoon. “Twins,” he replied, stirring his drink. “They lived with their mother after we got divorced. It was really difficult just seeing them at weekends. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” he said.

  Hebe Jones glanced away. “Some people think they can,” she said. “You’d be surprised how many bring up the death of their pet.”

  They sat in silence.

  “What was he like?” he asked.

  “Milo?” she asked with a smile. “I called him the apple of my eye, and he was.” She told him how she had fallen in love with her son the moment she saw him, and while younger mothers would complain about lack of sleep, she always looked forward to his cries in the night so that she could take him in her arms, rest her cheek against his velvet head, and sing him the Greek lullabies that had sent generations of her family to sleep. She told him that when she took Milo for his first day at school, dressed in the trousers that his father had insisted on making for him, she had cried more than all the children put together. She told him how terrified he had been when they first moved to the Tower, but how he had soon grown to love it, which had made the place so much more bearable for her. She told him how Milo had wanted to become a vet ever since the family tortoise lost her tail, and despite his mystification when it came to science, she was certain he would have succeeded. She told him how Milo’s best friend had been a girl called Charlotte, who also lived at the Tower, and how she had hoped that one day the pair would marry, as only his father had been able to make him laugh more than the girl did. And she told him how nobody had made her laugh more than her husband, but that those days were
now gone because after they had lost Milo, they had lost each other.

  WHEN HEBE JONES FINALLY RETURNED to the Lost Property Office, Valerie Jennings had finished cleaning the fridge and was on the phone.

  “We might have,” she replied evenly, casting a look at the magician’s box. “No, it doesn’t sound like the one we’ve got … It was found about two years ago … I see, but if you lost it that long ago why has it taken you all this time to ask for it back? … What were you in prison for, if it’s not impertinent of me to ask? … I see … No, no I quite understand, I’m useless with a saw myself … You have my sympathies. Glamorous assistants aren’t what they used to be … as I say, it doesn’t sound like yours, but you’re most welcome to come and have a look at it … Baker Street … For our more costly items we do like to see some proof of ownership—a receipt or a photograph, for example … Not at all. See you tomorrow then … Valerie. Valerie Jennings.”

  Just as she put down the phone, the Swiss cowbell sounded. Offering to answer it, she stood up and pulled her skirt down over her splendid thighs. On the way, she stopped at the safe, bent down, and turned the dial left and right, entering her vital statistics, as all else had failed. Just as she straightened up, the heavy grey steel door swung open. Hebe Jones turned immediately on hearing the shriek.

  The two women stood side by side looking down at the safe’s open door.

  “Go on then,” encouraged Hebe Jones. “Have a look what’s in it.”

  Valerie Jennings crouched down and reached inside. Out came bundle after bundle of fifty-pound notes, which she stacked on top of the safe around the kettle. She then put her hand in again and withdrew a pile of documents. The two women stared at the money.

  “How much do you think is there?” Hebe Jones whispered.

  “Thousands,” Valerie Jennings whispered back. She looked down at the documents she was holding.

  “What’s in that folder?” Hebe Jones asked.

  “It looks like some sort of parchment,” she replied, holding it up.

  Just at that moment the Swiss cowbell sounded again. Both women ignored the noise as they gazed at the fortune and then at the ancient manuscript. But the clanking continued. Valerie Jennings tutted, passed the papers to Hebe Jones, and went to answer it.

  As she turned the corner, intoxicated with victory at having finally opened the safe, she saw Arthur Catnip standing at the original Victorian counter. The ticket inspector appeared equally surprised to see her.

  “I was just wondering whether I could take you out for lunch again,” he asked.

  “That would be lovely,” she replied.

  “How about tomorrow at twelve o’clock?”

  “Splendid,” she said, and disappeared back round the corner to recover from her second shock. It was only when she was standing in front of the safe again and tried to relieve an itch on her scalp that she realised she was still wearing the Viking helmet, from which hung two blond woollen plaits.

  BALTHAZAR JONES SAT ALONE at a table in the far corner of the Rack & Ruin, a hand round an empty pint glass. It had been a while since he had been in, as he had been trying to avoid the commiserations of the other Beefeaters over his wife’s departure. Eventually, the ale lured him back, and he was relieved to find that the afternoon drinkers failed even to acknowledge his presence as they stood captivated by the spectacle of Dr. Evangeline Moore’s first game of Monopoly. She had chosen as her weapon the landlady’s alternative to the historic boot: a threepenny bit her mother had used to hide in the Christmas pudding, not so much to bestow good fortune on its finder as in the hope of choking her husband. The Beefeater sat shredding a beer mat, completely oblivious to the outrageous bets being laid around him. During the brief moments of respite from mourning his marriage, his mind filled with worries about the collection of royal beasts. While the animals appeared well enough—apart from the wandering albatross, which had failed to settle—Balthazar Jones regarded the menagerie as a delicately balanced house of cards, susceptible to the faintest stirring of an ill wind. What he hadn’t foreseen, however, was that it would be one of the Tower residents who would attempt to blow it down. Realising he could put off the moment no longer, he got to his feet, and on his way out pinned a notice on the board stating that if anyone had lost a gentleman’s vest they could collect it from the Salt Tower.

  Resigned to yet another dressing down, he dawdled down Water Lane to his appointment with the Chief Yeoman Warder, hoping that a tourist would stop him to ask a question. But for once, it seemed that everyone knew the way to the lavatories. He knocked lightly on the office door so that he wouldn’t be heard, but immediately a voice called to him to enter. Balthazar Jones stepped in and found the Chief Yeoman Warder sitting behind his desk, having just returned from a home-cooked lunch.

  “Yeoman Warder Jones, have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair in front of him. The Beefeater took off his hat, placed it on his lap, and held on to its brim.

  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 terribl
e 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.