‘Good to see you good to see you good to see you!’ he shouted, returning to his desk. ‘What we need is a cup of tea. CRAVE-ERRS!’ He bellowed the last word up at the ceiling and ushered us into some chairs in front of his desk. In response to his call, a short man wearing thick spectacles and a rather nervous look appeared in the doorway.
‘Cravus, there you are. Four glasses of tea!’ For a second Cravus seemed unsure what Mr Jaspers meant, so the old man shouted, ‘AT ONCE! Be gone!’ and flapped his hand until Cravus went away.
At first sight the most remarkable thing about Horatio Jaspers was the fact that he seemed to be working hard on a densely written manuscript even though he was surrounded by the most excessive noise and commotion: the cascading of water into buckets and pots all around, the rattle of wooden wheels and clopping of hoofs outside and the metal creaking of large machinery from the next room, which I assumed was the printing press.
Opposite Jaspers’s desk I now saw a tower of rotting paper quite the opposite from the exact, well-ordered one I had seen in Mr Stamps’s apartment earlier in the day. That had looked like a brick wall; this was more like a crashing wave, with billows of sodden pages curling over each other, piled haphazardly up above the shelves and cupboards and over the door, looking like it was about to pour down and engulf the office below. Underneath it, an alert-looking blond boy not much older than me was talking to a sad-looking red-haired fellow.
‘Have you considered putting in a collapsing windmill?’ the blond boy was saying.
‘That would hardly make sense,’ said the other man.
‘You should,’ said the boy conclusively. ‘Collapsing windmills are all the rage in publishing these days. You can’t fail with one. And does the heroine have an evil sister?’ he continued, with a pretence of idle curiosity.
‘No,’ said the ginger man, more despondent than ever. ‘I don’t think that a book of recipes—’
‘Put one in,’ said the boy, leaning over the desk. ‘No book is published these days without the heroine having an evil sister. They sell like hot cakes, evil sisters do. I’m only thinking of your sales.’ The red-haired man looked as though he might be about to cry, and made some feeble protestations, but without paying him the slightest attention the boy opened a big ledger and turned to other business.
‘Now, with regard to money,’ he said briskly. ‘You understand we can’t afford to pay you a bean . . .’
As I watched this conversation progress, it occurred to me that I should show interest in Jaspers’s work so I said, ‘It must be so interesting working on books all the time, Mr Jaspers.’
In the middle of lowering himself into his chair, he stopped still, and I saw Mr Codger and Uncle fidget nervously. I wondered what I had done wrong as I saw a severe expression settle on Mr Jaspers’s face, and harsh lines twist into a look of disdain.
‘Interesting?’ he asked. ‘Interesting? What did that ever earn a man in wages? Don’t think this is some beautiful storybook, my lad. It’s a book about the history of socks and it’s TOSH!’ With a louder shout than before he grabbed the manuscript and flung it angrily into the pile above the door so that it rested on the curling lip of the great wave of paper. Beneath, the red-haired author jumped and looked round nervously.
The blond boy said to him, ‘Please, Mr O’Sullivan. There’s much to discuss.’
‘TOSH!’ Jaspers yelled even louder. ‘All of it. I tell you, my lad, I’ve got three tons of paper in the warehouse upstairs and forty gallons of ink in the basement downstairs, and nothing to use it for. If you can find something worth printing, you’re a better man than me. And now, gentlemen, I think it’s time for a late lunch.’ He looked at his pocket watch, which was tied to his buttonhole with a short length of cheap string. ‘Or an early supper. Either way, let us repair round the corner.’
So repair round the corner we did, trying to duck out of the rain under the umbrella that Mr Jaspers swayed above his head, to a quiet, dark little restaurant where we settled at a corner table. He immediately ordered a number of dishes, none of which I’d ever heard of. Both Mr Codger and Uncle grew a little more hollow-eyed and hungry-looking at the name of each dish, which made me think we were in for quite a feast, and I realized I was extremely hungry too. The second the waiter disappeared Mr Jaspers collapsed into a gloomy mood again.
‘Words!’ he said. ‘Words, words, I need words. Thousands of them. Millions of the damned things! Where will I find them around here, where not a soul can read or write except me, Cravus, and the weird blond boy I hired one day by accident after a particularly good lunch? What a time to be a publisher,’ he sighed.
‘How d’you make money, then?’ said Codger, piping up most unexpectedly. ‘If folks around here don’t read or write?’
‘Good lord,’ muttered Jaspers easily, ‘I don’t try to sell books to these people; I’m not an idiot. The books I publish (when I can find them, and I’m not being bothered by idiotic authors writing about the history of bathplugs) are for people outside Tumblewater, and are about the people inside Tumblewater, you see? So long as I can find someone to write them, they sell like hot cakes.’
I nodded in agreement, remembering what Jed Field had told me about the grisliness of the stories people told in Tumblewater, how they helped the people feel happy with their lot. I was about to mention this when Codger spoke first.
‘Well, now, Mr Jaspers,’ he said, picking his words carefully as though to make up for his previous rather blunt remark. ‘That’s exactly what we have come here to discuss with you. You see, well, I mean . . .’
Uncle broke in. ‘Mr Jaspers,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve found your answer.’
‘I should like to hear it,’ the publisher said. ‘Although if it’s your life story I can tell you in advance I’m not interested. The last thing people want is another depressing book. They want excitement and heroics and BLOODY MURDER!’ His voice rose to a shout, causing a terrified silence in the little restaurant. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said to the other diners, looking round. ‘I do get carried away. You were uttering . . .’
‘Mr Jaspers, may I introduce Daniel Dorey?’
‘We’ve met,’ said Jaspers without looking at me. ‘I don’t need another copyist, thank you. Cravus serves me well enough.’
‘Mr Jaspers,’ pursued Uncle, ‘you don’t understand this, perhaps, but among the streetfolk here in Tumblewater there’s quite a culture of telling stories.’
‘Horrible ones?’
‘Very horrible,’ agreed Uncle.
‘With dastardly doings and bloodcurdling conclusions?’ asked Jaspers, reluctantly interested.
‘I’ve never known dastardlier doings (if that is a word),’ said Uncle. ‘And as for endings . . . Well – Daniel, tell him yourself.’
I had been rehearsing this moment in my mind, and forgetting my hunger for a moment (although it didn’t help that the food arrived while I was talking) I told him the story of ‘The Boy Who Picked His Nose’, which had pretty much the most bloodcurdling conclusion I could think of, and followed it up with the tale of ‘The Foundling’, which came a close second in that regard. Those tales together should have put him off his food if anything could, but throughout he kept chewing and frowning as more dishes were delivered.
Mr Codger looked on all the while, nodding encouragement, and after I finished he kicked me beneath the table and said under his breath, ‘You done that better than I could have, lad. Well done.’
I blushed, and watched Mr Jaspers for a reaction. Everything depended on him. Minutes passed as Jaspers ate, and finally he looked up from his food.
‘You like the leeks?’ he asked me with a sharp eye.
All my life I had totally and utterly hated leeks. Until he said the word, I had no idea that that was what I was eating, only that it was delicious. He saw my uncertainty.
‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘But they do them in this delicious sauce . . .’ He scooped a spoonful of leeks in the delicious sauce
and stared deeply at it for a moment, before swallowing it down and closing his eyes, so as not to distract from the deliciousness of the flavour. Opening them again, he fixed me with the same sharp look.
‘You’re enjoying the lamb chops?’
This second question put me at just as much of a disadvantage, because at that exact moment one of those very lamb chops was in the process of choking me to death. Nevertheless the importance of an answer was sufficient to make me regain control of my throat by the sheer force of will, and to discreetly cough the offending bone into a napkin. I nodded enthusiastically, with water running from my eyes. Jaspers nodded back, and applied himself again to his food, seemingly satisfied.
Unable to contain himself any longer, Codger asked, ‘Well – did you like Daniel’s stories, Horatio?’
But the publisher was chewing thoughtfully on a hunk of bread he had dipped in sausage gravy, and not paying us the slightest attention. He closed his eyes and said, ‘Delicious.’
The three of us held our breath as he swirled the last bit of bread around the plate and put it in his mouth. After a few more seconds of chewing, he said, ‘Exquisite.’ And then he was suddenly businesslike again. ‘You have more of these tales, you say?’ he asked sharply.
‘Lots,’ I lied. ‘And I mean to discover many, many more. I’ve only been here a day, Mr Jaspers,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think there’s a limit to the number of grisly tales that one person could find in Tumblewater.’
Still he stared at me as blankly as though I was speaking another language, or as though he had just woken up from a daydream. I went on:
‘I’ll wager you this: if in two days’ time I haven’t got enough tales to fill a book, then I’ll shine your boots and polish your glasses for your trouble, and never darken your doorstep again.’
Still the three of us waited. Mr Jaspers finished his glass of wine, let out a deep, satisfied sigh and said in a loud voice as though he was addressing a public meeting, ‘The funny thing is, I myself know a similar type of story. It’s supposed to have happened to the friend of a friend of mine, right here in Tumblewater. Would you like to hear it?’ He didn’t wait to hear our answer, but cleared his throat to start talking.
I couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, with as much respect as I could, ‘but you will hire me to write these tales? You are interested?’
‘Oh, shut up, boy, for a moment, while I try to remember the story. Yes, that’s it, I’ve got it. Now, if I had to give this story a name, I suppose I would call it the tale of . . .
It was under strict and repeated instructions that the colonel directed the deliverymen through to the glass conservatory at the back of the house, as though they were a company of soldiers being drilled.
‘Careful . . . Careful! . . . Man on the right, keep a straight back! . . . God help me, I’m not having this doorway repainted because of you!’
The deliverymen probably would have been more surly and indignant had they not been completely startled by the colonel’s strictness. They might even have been tempted to break one of the valuable-looking vases ‘accidentally’ to teach him a lesson. As it was, Colonel Truff was far too experienced at commanding men to let them get away with any thing. Before they knew where they were, the enormous crate – far larger and heavier than the grandest piano – was set down in the conservatory, they had each received a single shilling tip and the door had been firmly closed behind them.
‘You are dismissed, Mrs N,’ said the colonel to his little mute housekeeper, who had stopped her sweeping to watch, with no idea what was going on. At his words she looked at him with alarm, so he added, ‘For the afternoon, I mean. Have a few hours off.’ She nodded, relieved, and shuffled off to the basement.
The moment he was alone, Colonel Truff went into the conservatory and locked the doors behind him. Then he set about the enormous box with a hammer, carefully prising away the planks one by one until he could lift off the lid and allow the sides to fall flat. What he saw made him sigh proudly. The roar and smoke of battle could not compare to this; the majestic sight of a towering Arctic iceberg faded in comparison; forty years of travel and adventure, of terror and wonder, were as nothing. For, as a man who always kept his word, now in his first year of retirement he had honoured a promise he had made to himself when he had been a ten-year-old boy.
There, on a bed of soiled hay, surrounded by a thick foliage of tropical plants and flowers with which he had filled the conservatory in preparation for this moment, stood his very own hippopotamus.
The creature nodded tiredly as it became accustomed to the light and the colonel rushed forward to pet it, running his hands lovingly over its brow, feeding it bunches of spinach leaves and water lilies.
‘There, there,’ he said. ‘Daddy will look after you. You must be so tired and hungry after the long journey. We shall feed you and let you rest and you’ll be fit as a fiddle in no time.’
Mrs N, meanwhile, was such a forgetful and anxious creature that the second she got downstairs it slipped her mind that she’d been given the afternoon off. So she picked up her mop and bucket and trudged back up to give the drawing-room floor a going over, also forgetting that she’d already done so twice that day. In the middle of mopping she turned round to see Colonel Truff next door in the conservatory, hugging a hippopotamus. The sight made her jump backwards so violently that the mop flew up and got stuck in the chandelier, and she fell down in a faint.
All of a sudden, perhaps because in old age men are said to become children again, and perhaps because he had lived a long life without ever having a wife or children, Colonel Truff found himself overcome with a protective love for his hippo.
He did not change in any other way. He was still gruff and stern with tradesmen, innkeepers and the like, to his friends he seemed as stiff and emotionless as he had ever been, and he continued to regard little Mrs N with complete bafflement (as she had always regarded him). But every time he unlocked the conservatory door he became loving and paternal, so much so that even he would not have recognized himself a short while before.
Over the coming weeks he threw himself into action, buying up all the supplies he could find of spinach leaves and water lilies, and other foods he had read that the hippo would like. Boxes of nettles and truffles and mushrooms and celery arrived. He made chicken soup and pineapple juice and liquorice water and poured them into the trough for the hippo to drink from.
Truff noted that Mrs N made no comment about the creature, so he assumed she was happy for it to be there. (Of course, she made no comment about anything else either, so perhaps he was fooling himself. ) At one point, he had seen her standing in front of the conservatory door with the broom in her hands, staring at the filth spread out over the floor as though a whole new world of work had opened up. But he had relieved her by giving an order that the conservatory was the one area that was not to be cleaned under any circumstances.
He was delighted that the hippo seemed quite comfortable bathing in the mud pit that he had dug into the floor, or lazing against the bank of overturned chaises longues, or munching on the leaves of the palm and bracken which overhung from the shelves of potted plants.
The colonel now relaxed into exactly the sort of retirement he had looked forward to. He rose early, ate kedgeree for breakfast, read the newspaper, wrote a few letters, walked briskly through the rain for an hour or so, lunched at his club, returned, bathed, snoozed or read books for the afternoon, and then spent the remaining time before supper with Albert. This was the name he had given the hippopotamus. It struck him as a fine, upstanding name, ideal for an affectionate pet, and it just so happened that it was his name as well.
‘How are you, Albert?’ he would call from the conservatory door. Hearing no response, he would tiptoe up and pat it on the head, then check its appearance.
‘You’re looking a little bloodshot in the eyes,’ he would say. ‘I’d better get you more greens.’ Or: ‘Getting flabby. Better cut down on
the pork chops!’
Overall, Albert was the best of pets. He did not complain or make a mess (outside his dedicated space). Nor did he make much noise apart from the occasional violent burp. He was not only docile and affectionate but so exotic and extraordinary that the colonel did not feel he had a pet so much as a unique project. Each day he would talk to Albert for a while, play him choice pieces of music on the piano or read him interesting newspaper stories. Then he would empty out any droppings and leave, giving him a kiss on the forehead first.
This happy state of affairs went on for many months through Albert and Truff’s first winter together, until spring set in. Then, one day, he realized that Albert had not eaten anything for a whole week. Indeed, as he stepped back he became convinced that the wonderfully fat animal was definitely thinner. This was not an eventuality that the colonel had ever imagined. Normally very healthy creatures, hippopotamuses rarely become ill, and often lived to the age of forty or forty-five. He knew this. Now he realized something terrible. In his cherished ambition to own a hippo he had selfishly put Albert at risk. What was he to do?
That night he tried to persuade himself not to worry, and that many diseases cured themselves over time. Everything would be all right, he thought.
But another week passed, and it became worse. Albert still hadn’t eaten a thing, and his shoulderblades now stood out clearly where there should have been healthy pads of fat. His hippo eyes sagged and he let out long keening sounds, like those of a dog but much slower, deeper and sadder.
Truff supposed that, given the lack of appetite, there might be something wrong with Albert’s mouth. Perhaps he could help – he had after all performed emergency surgery on injured soldiers in the field, and had a strong stomach for blood. So, as soon as he had decided this, he went into the conservatory and approached with caution, making sympathetic noises and stroking Albert’s head, and carefully propped his mouth open with a wooden spoon.
Grisly Tales from Tumblewater Page 9