by Julia Stuart
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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BALTHAZAR 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.
“I was wondering if you’d come and sort out that little problem we were talking about,” the Yeoman Gaoler said, the shadows under his eyes even more noticeable in a freak ray of sunshine.
“What little problem?” the chaplain enquired.
The Yeoman Gaoler nodded towards his home. “You know.”
“I do?”
“Odes to Cynthia? Smell of tobacco? Missing potatoes?”
“Oh, yes,” said the chaplain, starting to close the door. “Just let me know when you’re free and we’ll arrange a time.”
The Yeoman Gaoler put a foot against the door frame. “I’m free now,” he said.
There was a pause.
“Are you sure it’s convenient?” queried the chaplain.
“It’s been convenient ever since you agreed to do it last week.”
The chaplain followed him to number seven Tower Green, hoping to be waylaid by the chairwoman of the Richard III Appreciation Society. But the bench outside the White Tower was empty. The Yeoman Gaoler opened the door and stepped back to allow him in. The chaplain immediately headed down the hall, calling out behind him: “Shall we have a nice cup of tea before we get started? I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”
The Yeoman Gaoler caught up with him and blocked the way to the kettle. “I’d rather get on with it, if you don’t mind,” he replied.
Rev. Septimus Drew peered at the cage on the table. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s the Queen’s Etruscan shrew.”
“Let’s have a look.”
The Yeoman Gaoler picked up the cage and put it on the counter behind him. “I’m sorry, it’s of a nervous disposition. The dining room is through here,” he said, leading the way.
The clergyman followed and immediately went to inspect the Yeoman Gaoler’s long-handled Tudor axe propped up in the corner, which he carried during special ceremonies. “Your predecessors used this when escorting prisoners to and from their trials at Westminster, didn’t they?” asked the chaplain, studying it. “Am I right in thinking that if the blade was turned towards the prisoner, it meant that they had just been sentenced to death?”
“Aren’t you meant to sprinkle some holy water around, or something?” asked the Yeoman Gaoler, ignoring the question.
“Quite right, quite right,” the clergyman replied, patting his cassock pockets for his vial. He then bowed his head, recited a quick prayer, and walked around the room scattering its contents.
“There we are,” he announced with a smile. “All done!”
The Yeoman Gaoler looked at him dumbfounded. “Is that it? Don’t you have to ask it to leave or something?”
The chaplain covered his mouth with his hand. “Do I?” he asked.
The two men looked at each other.
“No, no, that’s so last century,” the clergyman announced, dismissing the suggestion with a bat of his hand. “Right then, I’d better be off,” he added, heading for the front door.
As the Yeoman Gaoler watched the clergyman stride back across Tower Green, his red cassock flapping, he felt the unease of the duped. He walk
ed back to the kitchen, opened the cage, and offered the Etruscan shrew another cricket, which it sniffed with its pointed velvet nose.
HEBE JONES FOUND A NOTE on the kitchen table from Valerie Jennings saying that she had gone to work early to sort a few things out. As she sat at the table eating a bowl of Special K, having found nothing more substantial in her colleague’s cupboards, she looked around at the still unfamiliar surroundings and wondered how long she should stay. While Valerie Jennings had told her that the spare room was hers for as long as she needed it, and had done everything possible to make her feel at home, she didn’t want to outstay her welcome. As she stood at the sink and washed her dish, she decided it was time to dip into the money she had saved for Milo’s university education and rent a flat until the tenants’ lease was up on their home in Catford.
When she arrived at the Lost Property Office, she thought she could smell wet paint. Assuming the odour was coming in through the open window, she put the thought out of her mind and went to make them both some tea. As she waited for the water to boil, she looked down at the safe, firmly closed lest the cleaners make off with its contents, and hoped that her colleague would remember the combination of numbers.
“Did you find everything you needed for breakfast?” Valerie Jennings asked, emerging from the bookshelves.
“Yes, thanks,” she replied, looking up. She was instantly reminded that her colleague was meeting Arthur Catnip for lunch again. Valerie Jennings had clearly searched deep within her wardrobe for something suitably flattering, only to retrieve a frock of utter indifference to fashion. There had been an attempt to tame her hair, which seemed to have been abandoned, and the fuzzy results were clipped to the back of her head.
“You look nice,” said Hebe Jones.
Both women sat down at their desks and got on with the business of reuniting lost possessions with their absentminded owners. It was only when Hebe Jones got up to make another cup of tea that she noticed the flagrant transformation. “The magician’s box is pink,” she said, a hand over her mouth.
Valerie Jennings turned round, one eye enlarged by the magnifying glass she was using to scrutinise the ancient manuscript they had found in the safe. “I thought I’d give it a bit of spruce up,” she said.
Returning to her seat, Hebe Jones studied the lotus leaf embroidery on one of the Chinese slippers whose owner she was still trying to trace, and kept her thoughts about her colleague’s behaviour to herself. Valerie Jennings had been more than good to her by offering her the spare room when she was too ashamed to ask one of her sisters to put her up. Each evening, instead of asking her questions she couldn’t bear to answer, she had simply installed her in the armchair with the pop-up leg rest with a glass of wine. And while she didn’t cook their supper with the talent of her sisters, it was certainly with the love of one.
Shortly after her quartered apple for elevenses, Hebe Jones’s stomach emitted a roll of thunder, and she fetched her turquoise coat from the stand next to the inflatable doll and announced that she was just popping out for something.
As soon as she was gone, Valerie Jennings slipped her hand into her black handbag, withdrew a paperback, and returned it to its place on the bookshelf. As she scanned the shelves for her next fix, the Swiss cowbell sounded. Irritated at being interrupted during her favourite part of the day, she turned the corner. Standing at the counter was a tall man wearing a black top hat and a matching cape that flowed down to the floor. Tucked under his arm was a wand.
“I’ve come to see Valerie Jennings,” he announced, throwing one side of his cape over his shoulder, revealing the red silk lining.
“Oh, yes, I’ve been expecting you,” she said, opening the hatch. “Come this way.”
She led him through the office and stopped in front of the magician’s box that she had repainted that morning, so that Hebe Jones wouldn’t be deprived of her sanctuary. The man ran a white-gloved hand along the surface. “How strange,” he said. “It’s exactly the same as mine apart from the colour. It’s even got the same marks on the wood where I didn’t cut straight.”
Valerie Jennings folded her arms across her plump chest and looked at the prop. “I’m sure it doesn’t help when the glamorous assistant starts screeching,” she said. “It must be difficult telling whether she’s just putting it on for the audience, or whether you’re actually sawing her in half. Anyway, if it’s not the right one, I’ll show you out. If you’d like to follow me …”
When the Swiss cowbell sounded just before noon, Valerie Jennings’s heart leapt. She covered her lips with another coat of Lilac Haze and walked to the coat stand in the shoes that forced her toes into two red triangles. But when she turned the corner, instead of the tattooed ticket inspector, she found a woman in a duffel coat and beret in tears. “Has anyone handed in a boot?” she enquired, gripping the edge of the counter.
It was no ordinary boot, she went on to explain, as it had once belonged to Edgar Evans, the Welsh petty officer who had died while returning from the South Pole under the command of Captain Scott. The curator recounted how she had suddenly fled the carriage when she realised that she was travelling south on the Northern Line instead of north as the name suggested. Only when the doors had shut did it occur to her that she had left behind the historic footwear, which was to be triumphantly united with its mate, for decades the crowning glory of Swansea Museum, labelled simply as “Evans’s Boot.”
Hunting amongst the shelves, Valerie Jennings eventually found it next to a pair of angling waders in the footwear section. When she returned to the counter with it, considerably hotter and crosser, the woman promptly burst into tears again and subjected her to an oral biography of Edgar Evans, warning her never to confuse him with Teddy Evans, Scott’s second-in-command on the expedition.
“Good gracious me, I wouldn’t dream of confusing him with Teddy Evans,” Valerie Jennings assured her, snapping the ledger shut to signal an end to the Antarctic ramble. Just as she was sliding it onto the shelf below the counter Arthur Catnip arrived. The battleground of his hair had been razed with the pomade that his barber had given him as recompense for the previous assault, and it now bore the shine of an ice rink.
Instantly regretting not having taken off her coat as she had started to sweat, Valerie Jennings accompanied him to the street, wondering where they were going. Eventually she found that they were in Regent’s Park again, and the ticket inspector pointed to a bench by the fountain, suggesting that they sit down.
“I’ve brought a picnic,” he announced, as he opened his rucksack and spread a rug on her knees. “Let me know if you get cold.”
As Valerie Jennings helped herself to a roast pork sandwich, she told him that, according to the papers, there had been two further sightings of the bearded pig in Essex and East Anglia. Arthur Catnip replied that if he spotted it in his garden, he would never tell the press as the last thing he’d want would be a herd of journalists trampling all over his vegetable patch.
He offered her a pastry parcel, which Valerie Jennings eyed suspiciously. After her first mouthful, she congratulated him on his salmon en croute and told him that she’d once gone salmon fishing with her ex-husband, and had been so bored that she threw herself into the river so that they would have to go home. Arthur Catnip helped himself to a tomato and replied that he had once thrown a sailor overboard after he made a comment about his then wife, but immediately dived in to rescue him as he realised that the man had a point.
As the ticket inspector looked at the fountain, he recalled the time he poured car anti-freeze into the garden pond one winter, as his biology teacher had told him that the fish in Antarctica had anti-freeze in their blood so they wouldn’t freeze solid. But when he went back to check on them, all his father’s koi carp had died. Wiping a corner of her mouth on her napkin, Valerie Jennings told him how she had just handled a boot that had belonged to Teddy Evans, the petty officer who died on his way back from Scott’s ill-fated trek to the South Pole. He was not, she
pointed out, to be confused with Edgar Evans, Scott’s second-in-command on the same expedition.
ONCE THE TOWER HAD CLOSED, Balthazar Jones, who had led the last tour of the day, headed to the aviary, his nose numb with cold. It had been a particularly busy afternoon, during which he had found time to take some of the tourists around the enclosures. His motivation was not so much to act as a guide—maps had been produced indicating where each animal was housed—as to keep an eye on his charges. He had already noticed that a number of the sightseers were offloading their sandwiches and pastries bought in error from the Tower Café onto the glutton. But even the creature with the enormous appetite had refused them, and the waste was piling up in its pen.
As he climbed the Brick Tower’s stairs clutching a Hamleys shopping bag, he thought again of the gentleman’s vest he had found and wondered why no one had come to claim it. As he pushed open the door, the King of Saxony bird of paradise jumped to a lower branch, its two blue brow feathers that stretched twice the length of its body looping gracefully through the air. The tiny hanging parrot opened one eye from its upside-down slumber and watched as the Keeper of the Royal Menagerie unlocked the wire door and entered the aviary. As he looked around, the female lovebird glided down from its perch and landed on his shoulder. Searching for a telltale pair of ugly feet, the Beefeater eventually found the wandering albatross sitting alone behind a potted tree, its black and white wings tightly drawn in. He sat down beside it and pulled from his pocket his special purchase. Unwrapping it under the continuing one-eyed gaze of the emerald parrot, he laid the organic squid flat on his palm and offered it to the melancholic bird. But the thinning creature refused to look at it. The Beefeater and albatross remained where they were, both staring into the distance, seeing nothing but their troubles. It was almost an hour later that the bird finally lifted its neck and nibbled at the gastronomic gift with its huge hooked beak, by which time the parrot had nodded off again. When it had finished eating, Balthazar Jones got to his feet, followed by the bird, which immediately shook its feathers and released a watery deposit. The Beefeater opened the shopping bag, drew out a white toy duck, the nearest thing he could find to an albatross, and placed it next to the creature before leaving.