The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (9 page)

The mute footman opened the door to Oswin Fielding’s office and indicated a green seat upon which Balthazar Jones was to wait. Once the door was shut silently behind him, the Beefeater sat down and removed from his crimson left knee a piece of fluff that upon inspection he failed to recognise. Looking up, he surveyed the room. On the pale blue walls were hung several engravings of Buckingham Palace mounted in thin gold frames, which were part of the courtier’s private
collection. As he leant forward to inspect the photographs on the formidable desk, a drop of sweat started its descent inside his thick crimson tunic, tickling the valley of his chest as it fell. He picked up the nearest silver frame and staring back at him was Oswin Fielding, almost unrecognisable with a profusion of hair, in hiking gear with his arm around a blond woman in a baseball cap. He surveyed the man’s legs, which he immediately concluded were not as good as his own, despite his advanced years.

Suddenly the door opened and in strode the equerry accompanied by a waft of gentleman’s scent. “I must say you’re looking splendid,” announced the courtier, undoing the button on his discreet suit jacket. “Her Majesty has been delayed unfortunately, so I’m afraid it’s just the two of us after all. Still, always fun to put on the old crimson breeches, I’m sure!”

The Beefeater slowly took off his black Tudor bonnet and rested it on his lap in silence.

“What we both need is a cup of tea,” the courtier announced as he sat down behind his desk. After making the call, he sat back. “It must be fun living in the Tower,” he said. “When my children were younger they were always asking whether we could move there. Have you got any children? All I seem to know about your personal circumstances is your tortoise.”

There was a pause.

The Beefeater’s gaze fell to the desk. “A son,” he replied.

“Is he still with you or has he gone off to join the Army like his father?”

“He’s no longer with us, no,” replied Balthazar Jones, looking at the carpet.

The silence was broken by the arrival of a footman with a silver tray. After setting it down on the courtier’s desk, he poured two cups through a silver strainer and left again without a sound. Oswin Fielding offered the Beefeater a plate of shortbread. Balthazar Jones declined, unsettled by the unruly shape.

“Pity, they’re one of Her Majesty’s specialities. Almost as good as her scones. Admittedly, they do appear a little strange. Apparently she couldn’t find her glasses,” said the courtier, helping himself.

The Beefeater looked with regret at the shortbread made by royal fingers, and then at the equerry who had just taken a bite and seemed to float in a momentary state of ecstasy. Once Oswin Fielding came to, he took a file from a locked drawer and opened it. He then went through the planned building works for the menagerie, pointing out that not only would enclosures be constructed in the moat, but a number of the disused towers within the monument would be converted for the keeping of the beasts.

“I’ve no idea where any of them should go. I know nothing about exotic animals—I’m more of a labrador man, to tell you the truth—so I’m leaving all that up to you,” said the courtier with a smile.

Balthazar Jones pulled at the band of his ruff to ease the constriction around his neck.

“Now I expect you’re wanting to know which animals are to be transferred along with the Duchess of York,” the equerry continued, turning to another page. “Some toucans. If I remember correctly, they came from the President of Peru. There’s a zorilla, which isn’t, as one might imagine, a cross between a
zebra and a gorilla, but a highly revered yet uniquely odorous black-and-white skunk-like animal from Africa. In the Sudan they call it the ‘father of stinks.’ We were hoping to send that back before the Queen saw it, but she spotted it and said it was rude to return a gift, no matter how foul smelling. There are a number of Geoffroy’s marmosets from the President of Brazil, and a sugar glider from the Governor of Tasmania. Sugar gliders, by the way, are small flying possums that get depressed if you don’t give them enough attention. There’s also a glutton, sent by the Russians, which looks like a small bear and has an enormous appetite. It costs the Queen a fortune in food. What else? A Komodo dragon from the President of Indonesia. Komodo dragons are the world’s largest lizards, and can bring down a horse. They’re carnivorous and have a ferocious bite, injecting venom into their victims. So I’d watch that one, if I were you.”

The Beefeater gripped his armrests as the equerry turned a page.

“What else?” Oswin Fielding asked. “Ah yes, some crested water dragons, otherwise known as Jesus Christ lizards. The President of Costa Rica sent that lot, God knows why. And there’s also an Etruscan shrew from the President of Portugal. It’s the smallest land mammal in the world, and can sit in a teaspoon when fully grown. It’s also very highly strung—some die from anxiety just being handled. They say moving is one of life’s greatest stressors, so best of luck. Let me remind you that the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, signed in 1373, is the oldest alliance in the world still in force. We wouldn’t want anyone to come along and mess that up. Well, here’s the list. You can read about the others at your leisure. There will, of course, be
a vet at your disposal, should you need one, but it should all be pretty straightforward. Just make sure they’re fed and watered. And jolly them along, I expect.”

The Beefeater reached out a white-gloved hand and silently took the file. Just as he was about to stand up, the man from the Palace leant forward. “A word of warning,” he said, lowering his voice. “Remember to keep the lovebirds separated. They hate each other …”

H
EBE JONES IGNORED THE URN
sitting on her desk as she had done every day since its arrival, and picked up the false eye. As she held it up to her own, the two pupils looked at one another for several seconds. Eventually stared out, she admired the artistry of the tiny brushstrokes on the hazel iris. Her curiosity sated, she picked up the phone, hoping to finally reunite the item with its Danish owner.

It hadn’t taken her as long as she had feared to find a number for him. The breakthrough had come when she spotted the manufacturer’s name and a serial number on the back of the prosthesis. Due to the mouse-like dimensions of the print, she had needed to borrow Valerie Jennings’s glasses in order to decipher it, a habit that had become a particular source of irritation. The request evoked a sigh of despair that stirred the worms in the earth below, but which Hebe Jones never heard. Valerie Jennings disappeared into a labyrinth of petrifying smears as she waited for their return and suggested once again that Hebe Jones have her eyes tested. “Everyone’s sight gets worse as they get older,” she said.

“The old hen is worth forty chickens,” Hebe Jones replied, when she finally handed over the spectacles.

After dialling the owner’s number in Århus, given to her by the receptionist at the eye manufacturer’s, Hebe Jones doodled on her pad as she waited.

“Hallo,” came the eventual reply.

“Hallo,” Hebe Jones repeated cautiously. “Frederik Kjeldsen?”

“
Ja!
”

“This is Mrs. Jones from London Underground Lost Property Office. I believe we may have something that belongs to you.”

There was a moment of pure silence, after which Frederik Kjeldsen began to weep with his good eye. When the damp sound eventually came to an end, the man apologised and began to explain what had happened.

“Two years ago I lost my eye in a road accident and spent seven weeks in hospital,” he said. “I was too scared to drive again and had to give up my job as a teacher. I was so depressed, I didn’t bother getting a … what do you call them?”

“A prosthesis?”

“Ja
, a prosthesis. It wasn’t until my sister announced her wedding that I decided to get one to save her the humiliation of my solitary eye in the wedding photographs. I made the decision that, once the celebrations were over, I would take my own life.”

There was a pause during which the two strangers held on to each other through the silence.

“I had to take two buses to reach the manufacturer’s,” he continued. “But the moment the eye-maker lifted her head from her instruments and spoke to me with the voice of an angel, I fell for her. After eight months, and what I have to admit were many unnecessary appointments, I proposed to her under the same fir tree where my father had proposed to my mother. Our wedding emptied the florists for miles. I was so happy I cannot tell you.”

After swallowing loudly, Frederik Kjeldsen continued: “Ten days ago, I was travelling back to the airport after a weekend in London to see my niece when the Tube suddenly stopped. I banged my head against the glass and my eye flew out. There were so many feet and suitcases in the carriage I wasn’t able to find it before arriving at Heathrow. If I had stayed looking for it any longer, the train would have taken me back to London and I would have missed my flight. I needed to get back in time for work the next day, and I had such a headache you wouldn’t believe, so I put on my sunglasses and got off. Of course my wife has made me another eye, but I so wanted the one that had brought us together. And now it seems that you have found it. It is truly a miracle.”

After Frederik Kjeldsen apologised again for his salty state, Hebe Jones assured him that she would get it into the post immediately. As she put down the phone, Valerie Jennings approached and peered at the eye over her colleague’s shoulder, scratching her nest of dark curls, clipped to the back of her head. She then walked to one of the shelves and returned with a box containing a hand-blown glass eye purported to have belonged to Nelson, and another made of porcelain, which,
according to its accompanying label, was used by a fourteenth-century Chinese emperor whenever he slept with his favourite mistress. After showing them to her colleague, Valerie Jennings, who had started to smell the rank breath of boredom, asked: “Fancy a game of marbles?”

Hebe Jones was certain of winning, particularly as she was prepared to suffer the indignity of lying flat on the office floor to execute a shot. She had honed her skills as a young child on the cool, tiled floors of the house in Athens, and her talent flourished when the Grammatikos family moved to London when she was five, despite the challenge of carpeting. Her ability to win even blindfolded led to the widespread belief that her expertise was due to exceptional hearing, rather than the more obvious explanation that she was peeking. She subsequently claimed to be able to hear the talk of infants still in the womb, and mothers from the Greek community, who were more ready to believe such ability existed in one of their own, presented their swollen abdomens to the girl to learn the first utterances of their child. After demanding absolute silence, she would sit, one ear pressed against the protruding umbilicus, translating the squeaks, whistles, and centenarian groans with the fluency of a polyglot.

“No, thanks,” Hebe Jones nevertheless replied, turning over the prosthesis in her hand. “Look. It’s concave. And anyway, that poor man’s eye has rolled around enough of London as it is.”

After sealing up the box with brown tape, kept on the inflatable doll’s wrist by mutual agreement following one too many disappearances, Hebe Jones added Mr. Kjeldsen’s address and dropped the package into the mailbag with the
warm glow of victory. As she looked around her desk for the next task, her eyes stopped at the urn. Feeling a stab of guilt for having ignored it since its arrival, she turned the wooden box round in her hands and ran a finger over the brass nameplate bearing the words “Clementine Perkins, 1939 to 2008, RIP” in an elegant script. She tried to imagine the woman whose remains had been travelling around the Underground, but felt even greater pity for the person who had mislaid them. Hoping to find something to help her trace Clementine Perkins’s relatives, she decided to look up her entry in the national register of deaths.

“I’m just popping out to the library,” she announced, standing up. And within minutes, Hebe Jones and her turquoise coat were gone.