The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise Read online

  His time had been spent studiously converting the humble mousetrap into a contraption of suitable robustness to annihilate a rat. First he turned one of the empty bedrooms, which he had hoped would be used by the family he had longed for, into a workshop. It was there that he laboured on his inventions late into the night, the shelves lined with books on basic scientific laws and theories. Numerous plans with perfectly to-scale drawings lay unfurled on a desk, weighed down by anemic spider plants. A series of models, made out of pieces of cardboard, off-cuts of wood and garden twine, were laid out on a table. The arsenal of weapons included a tiny sling and marble, a razor blade which had once formed part of a doomed guillotine, a tiny trebuchet, and a pair of minuscule gates complete with murder holes in the top, through which deadly substances could be poured.

  Arriving at the chapel door, he pressed down on the cold door handle. His hopes mounting for a formidable body count, he pushed open the door and made his way across the worn tiles to the crypt. As he approached the tomb of Sir Thomas More, where he had set up his latest apparatus (which had taken two months of planning and execution, as well as a call to a weapons expert at the Imperial War Museum), he heard a sound in the main body of the church. Irritated at being disturbed at such a delicious moment, he retraced his steps to determine the source of the noise.

  His resentment at being interrupted immediately evaporated the moment he recognised the figure sitting in the front row of chairs next to the altar. Caught off guard by the sight of the woman who had chased away his dreams, he quickly hid behind a pillar and stood with his palms flat against the cold, smooth stone. It was the moment he had been imagining for months: a chance to speak to her alone, take her hand in his, and ask whether there was any hope that she might feel for him the way he did about her. While still uncertain of the merits of such an antiquated approach, he considered it the best out of all those he had thought of since his heart had taken flight. But in all the wistful fantasies he had concocted as he stood at his window overlooking Tower Green hoping for a glimpse of her, his hair had always been perfectly combed into the style first inflicted at the age of eight, and his teeth had been brushed. Cursing himself for having left the house with hangman’s breath, he looked down at his skinny, bare ankles and deeply regretted not having taken the time to put on his socks.

  As he berated himself for his unsavoury state, a burst of sobbing echoed round the ancient walls. Unable to ignore a soul in anguish, he decided to offer her comfort, despite his wretchedness. But at that very moment came a thud and a high-pitched squeak from the crypt. The woman jumped to her feet and fled, no doubt in fear of one of the many spectral apparitions said to haunt the Tower. Rev. Septimus Drew remained where he was, playing the scene over in his mind with a spectacularly different ending as the incense, which he burnt in copious amounts to mask the stench of rat droppings, curled around his skinny, bare ankles. When, eventually, he returned to the crypt, not even the sight of a slaughtered rat improved his mood.

  WHEN BALTHAZAR JONES HAD RECOVERED the will to report for duty after his disastrous breakfast, he clambered into his dark blue trousers and pulled on the matching tunic with the initials ER emblazoned in red across the front, surmounted by a red crown. He reached up to the top of the wardrobe for his hat, and pulled it on with both hands. Like all the Beefeaters before him, he had initially worn the Victorian uniform with pride. But it hadn’t been long before it became a source of utmost irritation. The outfits were unbearably hot in the summer and insufferably cold in the winter. Not only that, but they itched from the clouds of moth repellent sprayed on them twice a year while the Beefeaters were still wearing them lest they shrink.

  Descending the Salt Tower’s stairs, he locked the door behind him, and turned right past the Tower Café. Assigned the post outside Waterloo Barracks, which housed the Crown Jewels, he chose a spot at sufficient distance from the sentry who had won a fistfight with a Beefeater the week before. His pale blue eyes instinctively searched the sky, and his thoughts drifted with the clouds on their way to drench the washing of the residents of Croydon. When his concentration briefly returned, he braced himself for the battery of ludicrous questions from the tourists who had started to seep in.

  An hour later, Balthazar Jones had failed to realise that it had started to rain. Such was his expertise, his subconscious had instantly dismissed the downpour as a particularly common variety for January. He remained in exactly the same position, staring intently but seeing nothing, while the visitors had long since run for cover. When the man from the Palace eventually found him, he was still standing in the same spot, completely sodden and smelling fiercely of moth repellent. On hearing his name, Balthazar Jones turned his head, causing a raindrop to fall from the end of his nose onto the red crown embroidered on the front of his tunic. The man in the dry coat immediately covered the Beefeater with his silver-handled umbrella. Introducing himself as Oswin Fielding, an equerry to Her Majesty, he enquired as to whether he might have a word. Balthazar Jones hurriedly wiped his beard to rid it of water, but then found that his hand was too wet to offer. The man from the Palace suggested that they have a cup of tea at the Tower Café. But as they approached, he sniffed twice, flinched at the affront to his nostrils, and headed straight for the Rack & Ruin.

  The tavern, from which members of the public had always been barred, was empty apart from the landlady, who was cleaning out her canary’s cage. Oswin Fielding walked past the empty tables and chose one against the back wall. He hung up his coat and approached the bar. Balthazar Jones, who had forgotten to remove his hat, sat down and tried to distract himself from his anxiety about what the man wanted by studying the framed signature of Rudolf Hess hanging on the wall. It had been given to a Beefeater during the Deputy Führer’s four-day imprisonment at the Tower. But Balthazar Jones had studied it so many times before, it failed to hold his attention.

  The Beefeater’s hope that Oswin Fielding would be seduced by the real ales evaporated when he returned with two teas and the last Kit Kat. He watched in silence as the man from the Palace removed the red wrapper and offered him half, which he refused on account of his fluttering insides. The equerry proceeded to dunk each finger before eating it, a process that doubled the length of consumption, while at the same time enquiring about the pub’s history. Balthazar Jones answered as briefly as possible, and failed to mention the fact that the man had chocolate on his chin lest it deter him further from getting to the point. When the courtier spotted the framed signature of Rudolf Hess, the Beefeater instantly dismissed it as a fake, as he could no longer bear waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall.

  But much to his annoyance, Oswin Fielding started to talk about a golden monkey called Guoliang, which had belonged to the Queen. “It was a gift from the President of China following his state visit in 2005,” he explained.

  Balthazar Jones was not the least bit interested in golden monkeys, royal or not. He glanced out of the window and wondered whether the equerry had come about his lamentable record for catching pickpockets, which was the worst amongst the Beefeaters. By the time he opened his ears again, he realised that Oswin Fielding was still discussing the late Guoliang.

  “The creature’s death has caused Her Majesty immense personal sorrow,” the equerry was saying, shaking his head, which barely possessed sufficient hair to warrant such a meticulous parting. “Someone at the Palace looked up its name and discovered it means ‘May the country be kind,’ which makes its demise even more unfortunate. It caused the most stupendous diplomatic row. Golden monkeys are indigenous to China and there aren’t many of them left. We explained that we even got in a feng shui expert to redesign the enclosure as soon as the animal appeared off-colour, but the Chinese didn’t seem that impressed. For some reason they had got it into their heads that it would be kept at Buckingham Palace. But with the exception of horses, the Queen keeps all animals given to her by heads of state at London Zoo. Which is just as well as the Palace is enough of a monkey house a
s it is.” The courtier paused. “Don’t repeat that,” he added hastily.

  Just as Balthazar Jones could take no more, Oswin Fielding adjusted his rimless spectacles and announced that he had something of the utmost importance to tell him. The Beefeater stopped breathing.

  “As you will know, relations between Britain and China are in a rather delicate state, and as China is an emerging superpower we need to keep them on our side,” the courtier said firmly. “No one has forgotten those unfortunate comments made by the Duke of Edinburgh, either. As a gesture of goodwill, China has sent Her Majesty a second golden snub-nosed monkey. Shame, really, as they haven’t got the most attractive combination of features—a snub nose, obviously, blue cheeks, and hair the same colour as Sarah Ferguson’s. Anyway, the Queen is stuck with it. To make matters worse, the Chinese also noticed the similarity in hair colour, and have named it the Duchess of York. The Queen is understandably rather unsettled by that.”

  The Beefeater was about to ask why exactly Oswin Fielding had wanted to see him, but the equerry continued.

  “While the Queen has the utmost respect for London Zoo, she has decided to move the new monkey, as well as all her other gifts of animals that are kept there, to a more intimate location. The problem is that foreign rulers always take it as a personal slight if their creature dies.”

  The courtier then leant forward conspiratorially. “I’m sure you’ve guessed where the animals are to be newly lodged,” he said.

  “I can’t imagine,” replied Balthazar Jones, who was contemplating fetching himself a pint.

  Oswin Fielding then lowered his voice and announced: “They are going to be transferred to the Tower to form a new royal menagerie.”

  The Beefeater wondered whether the rain had rusted his eardrums.

  “It’s not as daft an idea as it sounds,” the man from the Palace insisted. “Exotic beasts were kept at the Tower from the thirteenth century. Foreign powers continued to send the monarchy animals over the years, and the menagerie became an immensely popular tourist attraction. It didn’t close until the 1830s.”

  Like all the Beefeaters, Balthazar Jones was well aware that the Tower had housed a menagerie, and often pointed out the remains of the Lion Tower to the tourists. He could even have told the equerry that the elephants were given red wine by their keepers to banish the cold, and that the lions were rumoured to have been able to determine whether or not a woman was a virgin, tales he used to stun the more irritating visitors into silence. But he didn’t utter a word.

  Oswin Fielding continued. “Her Majesty very much hopes that the new menagerie will increase the number of visitors to the Tower, which has been declining.” He paused before adding, “Hirsute gentlemen in antiquated uniforms are not much of an attraction these days. No disrespect to you, your trousers, or your beard.”

  He paused yet again, but the only movement that came from the Beefeater was a raindrop plunging from the brim of his hat. Slowly, the courtier raised his eyes from the spot where it had landed.

  “It’s a little-known fact that Her Majesty is rather partial to tortoises,” he said. “She is aware that you are in possession of the world’s oldest specimen, which, of course, is a source of great national pride. Such an animal undoubtedly requires the most tender care.” And with a triumphant smile the man from the Palace added: “The Queen can think of no one better than you to oversee the project.”

  Oswin Fielding patted Balthazar Jones on the shoulder and then reached underneath the table to dry his hand on his trouser leg. As he stood up, he warned the Beefeater not to tell anyone of the plan, particularly the Chief Yeoman Warder, as details had yet to be ironed out. “We’re hoping to transfer the Queen’s animals in about three weeks’ time, and give them a few days to settle in before opening the menagerie to the public,” he said.

  Announcing that he would be in touch shortly, he put on his coat and walked out with his splendid umbrella. Balthazar Jones remained on the red leather stool unable to move. He didn’t manage the monumental task of getting to his feet until he was asked to leave by the infuriated landlady, who complained that the stench of mothballs had caused her canary to faint, and it had landed in the slops tray.

  IT HAD STOPPED RAINING by the time Hebe Jones returned to the Tower, having left work early on account of her headache. The sky remained an obstinate shade of used bathwater, ready to disgorge a second filthy load at any moment. She nodded at the Yeoman Gaoler, the Chief Yeoman Warder’s deputy, who was sitting in a black hut at the entrance to the Tower, a three-bar electric fire preventing the damp from decomposing his toes. When he enquired about the visit from the man from the Palace, Hebe Jones replied that there had been no such thing, or her husband would have called to inform her. But the Beefeater backed up the sighting with a further nine eyewitnesses, each of whom he named while unfurling a plump finger.

  “Don’t sprout where you haven’t been planted,” Hebe Jones snapped, and continued through the gates. Her passage was soon thwarted by a suffocation of tourists staring at the Beefeaters’ terrace houses along Mint Street. Feeling more than ever the weight of her supermarket shopping in each hand, she squeezed her way sideways up Water Lane, wishing that the visitors would indulge their lunatic weakness for British history elsewhere. As she passed Cradle Tower, she was struck sharply in the chest by a rucksack whose owner had turned to see the window from which two prisoners had escaped on a rope stretched across the moat in the sixteenth century. Once she had caught her breath, she continued on her journey, seeing nothing but the Greek cottage of her fantasies.

  Arriving at the Salt Tower, she searched for the key that failed to fit into a pocket, and discovered that it had already torn the lining of her new handbag. After turning it in the lock, a feat that required both of her doll-sized hands, she made her way up the steps with half her bags, the narrowness of the spiral stairs preventing her from carrying them all up in one go. As she started her descent for the second load, gripping the filthy rope handrail that still bore the sweat of the condemned, she wondered, as she often did, how many of them had kept their heads.

  She put away the shopping and started to wash the breakfast dishes, remembering the argument that morning with her husband. After losing Milo, instead of clinging to each other cheek to cheek as they had throughout their marriage, the couple had found themselves swimming in opposite directions as they battled to survive. When one needed to talk about the tragedy, the other wanted to experience a few fleeting seconds of tranquillity. They eventually ended up collapsed on distant shores, marooned by their grief and aiming their anger over losing him at each other.

  As she scrubbed, she looked up at the picture on the wall in front of her depicting the Salt Tower in wobbly pencil strokes, coloured in with felt tip. Great care had been taken, but not always achieved, to keep within the lines. Next to the Tower stood three smiling figures, two tall, one short. Only the artist’s parents had recognised the small object next to them, which was also smiling, as that of the oldest tortoise in the world. And she peered, with mounting distress, at the colours that had started to fade.

  Suddenly she heard the thud of the Salt Tower door. Not long afterwards, her husband appeared in the kitchen and silently presented her with a warm, flat cardboard box. Hebe Jones, unable to admit that she still detested pizza, set the table and forced down the white flag in small mouthfuls that threatened to choke her. And for the rest of the evening the air in the Salt Tower was so fragile that they spoke to each other as if the place were filled with a million fluttering butterflies that neither dared disturb.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HEBE JONES UNBUTTONED HER COAT next to the drawer containing one hundred and fifty-seven pairs of false teeth. It was a ritual she performed every morning upon arrival at London Underground’s Lost Property Office, even during the summer, a season she vehemently distrusted in England. She hung it on the stand next to the life-size inflatable doll, a deep red hole for a mouth, which no one had yet dared to claim
. Turning the corner, she stood at the original Victorian counter, its shutter still closed, and studied one of the ledgers to remind herself what had been brought in the previous day. As well as the usual several dozen umbrellas and bestselling novels, some with a bookmark tragically near the end, the yield included one lawnmower, a Russian typewriter, and sixteen jars of preserved ginger. The last item brought in was yet another abandoned wheelchair, increasing the office’s hoard to the spectacular figure of thirty-nine. It was proof, if only to the staff, that London Underground could perform miracles.

  She switched on the kettle on top of the safe that no one had been able to open since its discovery on the Circle Line five years ago. Opening the fridge, currently the subject of a standoff about whose turn it was to clean, she took out a carton of milk and raised it to her nose. Satisfied that the boisterous odour came from something no longer recognisable on the lower shelf, she poured some into a teacup. As she waited for the water to boil, Hebe Jones, who felt the weight of loss more acutely than most, gazed with regret at the graveyard of forgotten belongings on metal shelves stretching far into the distance, covered in a shroud of dust.