Niels Reinking put his hands on his hips. "I'm always losing things. Usually it's my glasses, which my wife points out are on the top of my head. You haven't found my chequebook by any chance, have you?" he asked, looking hopeful.
"It's actually something a bit larger than that. It's a safe."
He looked at her for a moment, unable to speak. "I think you'd better come in," he said eventually.
Valerie Jennings sat on the leather sofa in the drawing room looking at the curious paintings on the walls, while Niels Reinking disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with a pot of fresh coffee, which he poured with trembling fingers, then sat back in the matching armchair. Several years ago, he explained, the house was burgled and the thieves managed to make off with the safe. He should, of course, have followed the manufacturer's instructions and bolted it to the wall, but he had never got round to it. Although he had reported the break-in to the police, he had heard nothing about it since, and had completely given up hope of getting the safe back. "And now you say you've found it?" he asked.
Valerie Jennings pushed her glasses up her nose. "A safe was left on the Tube a number of years ago, and we've just managed to open it," she said. "But in order to verify that it's yours, I need to ask you what was in it."
Niels Reinking looked at the cream rug in front of him. "Well, it was a while ago," he said, "but I suspect there would have been some documents relating to the shipping company I once worked for. I've been wondering where they'd got to. There was some cash in there too, which my wife quaintly referred to as her running away fund. Needless to say we're still together. But I'm not bothered about any of that. What I'd like to know is whether there was a manuscript inside."
"There was something of that nature in it," Valerie Jennings replied.
The kiss that subsequently landed on her cheek startled her to such an extent that the coffee she was holding slopped into its saucer. Niels Reinking returned to his seat, then told her the story of the manuscript, which was of such historical significance to his home country that he had been unable to insure it. Back in the seventeenth century, one of his ancestors called Theodore Reinking had been so incensed by Denmark's diminished fortunes following the Thirty Years' War that he wrote a book entitled Dania ad exteros de perfidia Suecorum Dania ad exteros de perfidia Suecorum, or "From the Danes to the world on the treachery of the Swedes." The defamed country promptly arrested him, and after many years in prison, offered him the choice of decapitation or eating his work. He made the book into a sauce, duly consumed it, and his life was spared. Once released, he returned home. But while he was thin, bearded, and foul smelling, victory was all his. The author produced from his mouldering stocking the most damning section of his work, which he had torn out and stuffed down his undergarment. The relic was highly revered by his kingdom not only as testament to the superior cunning of the Danes, but also for being part of the only book in the world ever to have been cooked and consumed, which, explained Niels Reinking, was a great source of national pride.
WHEN HEBE JONES ARRIVED at the coffee shop, Tom Cotton was reading a newspaper on the front of which was a grainy photograph purporting to be of a bearded pig taken in the Scottish Highlands. She took off her turquoise coat and sat down, asking how his day had been. at the coffee shop, Tom Cotton was reading a newspaper on the front of which was a grainy photograph purporting to be of a bearded pig taken in the Scottish Highlands. She took off her turquoise coat and sat down, asking how his day had been.
"I had to go to Birmingham by helicopter to deliver a heart to one of the hospitals," he said, folding his paper.
She tore open a sachet of sugar and poured it into the coffee he had ordered for her. "Whose was it?" she asked, looking at him as she stirred.
"A man who'd died in a car accident."
Hebe Jones lowered her eyes. "At least they know why he died." There was a long silence.
Eventually, when she found her voice again, Hebe Jones recounted that terrible, terrible day. The night before her world ended, she had gone into Milo's room to wish him goodnight as usual. He was lying in bed reading a book on Greek mythology that had belonged to his grandfather. After placing it on his bedside table, she pulled the duvet up to his chin and kissed him on the forehead. As she walked to the door, he asked who her favourite Greek god was. She turned, looked at her son, and replied in an instant: "Demeter, goddess of fertility."
"What's Daddy's?" Milo then asked.
Hebe Jones thought for a minute. "I suppose it would have to be Dionysus, god of wine, merriment, and madness. What about you?"
"Hermes."
"Why?"
"One of his symbols is a tortoise," replied the boy.
The following morning, when Milo still hadn't appeared for breakfast, she walked down the spiral staircase and opened his door. "A hungry bear doesn't dance," she said.
When he failed to stir, she approached his bed, and gave him a gentle shake. But still he didn't wake. She then shook him more forcefully, which was when she started shouting for her husband. When the paramedics arrived, they had to pull him away, as he was still trying to revive the boy. They followed the ambulance to hospital, the only time in her life that she had ever seen her husband jump a red light.
It was a young Indian doctor who had told them that he was dead. After Hebe Jones collapsed, she came round in one of the cubicles, where the doctor informed her that she had to stay until she was fit enough to leave. And when she returned to the Salt Tower no longer a mother, she lay on her son's bed for the rest of the day weeping as the ashes of her life rained down on her.
An expert pathologist examined Milo's heart to find out why he had died. When the man stood up at the inquest, he announced that in about one in every twenty cases of sudden cardiac death no definite cause of death could be found, despite a specialist having examined the heart. This was called sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. He cleared his throat and said that a cardiac arrest was brought on by a disturbance in the heart's rhythm. In some cases such deaths were caused by a group of relatively rare diseases that affected the electrical functioning of the heart, which could only be detected in life and not post-mortem. Some had no symptoms, he said, while others had blackouts. Some youngsters died in their sleep or on waking, others while exerting themselves or suffering from emotional stress. Before he sat down he added that twelve young people died from sudden cardiac death each week.
When the coroner had heard from all the witnesses, he raised his eyes from his paperwork and announced that Milo Jones had died from natural causes. It was then that Hebe Jones stood up and screamed: "What's so natural about a child dying before his parents?"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
AS BALTHAZAR JONES WALKED past the White Tower, he picked off an emerald feather that had landed on the front of his uniform. Refusing to look at its upside-down owner, he continued his journey across the fortress to number seven Tower Green, ignoring the common variety of sticky drizzle that had started to fall. He knocked on the door, and as he waited for it to open, he scratched the back of his left knee, ravished by fungus. past the White Tower, he picked off an emerald feather that had landed on the front of his uniform. Refusing to look at its upside-down owner, he continued his journey across the fortress to number seven Tower Green, ignoring the common variety of sticky drizzle that had started to fall. He knocked on the door, and as he waited for it to open, he scratched the back of his left knee, ravished by fungus.
When the Yeoman Gaoler eventually answered the door, Balthazar Jones immediately detected the amber notes of gentlemen's aftershave. As he followed him down the hall, he looked through the open door of the sitting room and spotted the chairwoman of the Richard III Appreciation Society perched on the edge of the chaise longue, a teacup clutched to her knees and her gunmetal hair in uproar.
The Yeoman Gaoler carefully closed the kitchen door behind them. He approached the table, opened the cage, and, with the flamboyance of a stage magician, took the lid off the tiny plastic house. Balthazar Jones peered inside. For a moment he was unable to speak. "But it's twice the size of the old one," he said, incredulous.
There was a pause.
The Yeoman Gaoler scratched the back of his neck. "It was all I could get my hands on in the circumstances," he said. "There are only so many hedgerows a man can frisk."
There was silence as the two men stared at the creature's colossal hips.
Eventually Balthazar Jones sighed. "If anyone asks, you'll just have to say you overfed it," he said, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
As he passed the scaffold site on Tower Green, the Beefeater looked at his watch. There was still a while to go before the tourists would be let in. He made his way to the Brick Tower, squinting to keep the rain out of his eyes, and climbed the spiral staircase, wiping his face with his handkerchief. He sat down next to the wandering albatross that mated for life, took off his hat, and leant against the cold wall. The movement caused a cloud of white feathers to take to the air, and they pirouetted on their way down, eventually settling on his navy trousers. The melancholic bird, which was losing its shimmering plumage, moved its ugly feet several paces sideways towards the Beefeater. It sat pressed against his thigh, protecting its pink patches from the draught skimming across the floorboards.
With the back of his fingers, the Beefeater stroked its head, as soft as silk. Savouring the time that he had his charges all to himself, he looked up at the King of Saxony bird of paradise, whose blue brow feathers were used by grey songbirds to decorate their courtship bowers. His eyes turned to the female lovebird, its green and peach feathers still puffed up in victory after savaging its mate, and his thoughts turned to the Yeoman Gaoler's dishevelled lady guest, who must have stayed the night to be at the fortress so early. And he knew he would never want to wake up with anyone other than Hebe Jones.
As he continued to stroke the albatross's head, he gazed at the rectangle of dirty sky in the window opposite him and wondered who was holding the hand of the woman he no longer deserved. He hoped that whoever it was appreciated her many virtues that he had spent most of their marriage counting, and that he realised that her great obstinacy was something to be admired rather than judged. But he knew that no one would be able to love her as much as he did.
The Beefeater jumped at the sound of the oak door opening, and the toucans instantly took to the air, carving multi-coloured circles with their alluring beaks, believed by the Aztecs to be made from rainbows. He turned his head to see Rev. Septimus Drew standing in the doorway.
"There you are," the chaplain said, peering at Balthazar Jones through the fencing. "I thought you should know that a herd of wildebeest has just arrived. The Chief Yeoman Warder has called Oswin Fielding to get him to take them away."
There was a pause as both men looked at each other.
"Can I come inside?" the clergyman asked.
"As long as you don't make any sudden movements. It frightens the birds."
The chaplain opened the wire door with his long, holy fingers, and carefully closed it again behind him. He gazed up in wonder at the birds with the colourful bills and deafening shrieks beating crazed circles in the air. Eventually, there was a thud of scaly, grey feet as they landed next to the lovebird, its jewel-coloured head cocked to one side as it peered at the clergyman with the scrutiny of a judge.
Balthazar Jones took a handful of sunflower seeds out of his tunic pocket and offered them to the chaplain. "If you hold these next to your shoulder, the lovebird will come and sit on it," he said.
Rev. Septimus Drew took the seeds and sat with his back against the opposite wall, his excessively long legs stretched out in front of him. It wasn't long before the lovebird landed on the clergyman's shoulder in a flash of green and peach, and started to feed in nervous beakfuls. Once it had finished, it inched its way towards the chaplain's face and proceeded to rub its head against his neck.
"It likes you," the Beefeater said.
"At least somebody does," Rev. Septimus Drew replied. "What's wrong with that one?"
The Beefeater looked down at the albatross. "It doesn't like being separated from its mate," he replied.
There was a long silence as each man's thoughts were blown into the same dark corner.
"How long has Hebe been gone? A month?" asked the chaplain.
Balthazar Jones nodded.
"Is she coming back?"
"No."
There was silence.
"What have you done to try and persuade her?"
The Beefeater didn't reply.
"Isn't it worth trying to change her mind?" asked Rev. Septimus Drew. "If she were my wife, I'd spend the rest of my life trying to get her back."
The Beefeater continued to look at his hands. Seduced by the intimacy of the birds, he eventually replied: "I don't know how to love anymore."
There was a pause.
"Try showing her some of the love you give to the animals," the clergyman said. There was a flutter of wings, and the green and peach bird returned to its perch. Rev. Septimus Drew looked at his watch, got to his feet, and dusted himself down. As the chaplain opened the aviary door, the Beefeater turned his head and asked: "So whose bullet was it in the Rack & Ruin's bar?"
The clergyman stopped and looked at him. "I don't know, I was making it up as I went along. I was trying to cheer you up," he replied, and the only sound that followed was the echo of his large feet on the ancient spiral staircase.
AS HEBE JONES PULLED DOWN the shutter, marking the sacred hour of elevenses, she felt the weight of dread in her empty stomach. Over the weeks she had considered bringing in her own snack to head off the mid-morning thunder that rolled beneath her blouse. But she had dismissed the idea as too cruel to a woman whose marvellous girth prevented her escaping the day's torments by clambering inside the magician's box. Bracing herself for another quartered apple, she wiped off the dust that had settled on the urn. Valerie Jennings approached with a cup and saucer giving off the undeniable bergamot and citrus scent of Lady Grey, as well as a small plate bearing a homemade rock cake of sufficient heft to start a landslide. Once she had finished staring at it, Hebe Jones looked over at her colleague, who had returned to her seat. Not only was she also drinking proper tea, but she had in her hand a rock cake of similar bulk. She glanced at Valerie Jennings again and noticed that she was no longer wearing makeup. Her eyes then travelled down to the woman's footwear, and she saw that her colleague had returned to wearing her flat black shoes. the shutter, marking the sacred hour of elevenses, she felt the weight of dread in her empty stomach. Over the weeks she had considered bringing in her own snack to head off the mid-morning thunder that rolled beneath her blouse. But she had dismissed the idea as too cruel to a woman whose marvellous girth prevented her escaping the day's torments by clambering inside the magician's box. Bracing herself for another quartered apple, she wiped off the dust that had settled on the urn. Valerie Jennings approached with a cup and saucer giving off the undeniable bergamot and citrus scent of Lady Grey, as well as a small plate bearing a homemade rock cake of sufficient heft to start a landslide. Once she had finished staring at it, Hebe Jones looked over at her colleague, who had returned to her seat. Not only was she also drinking proper tea, but she had in her hand a rock cake of similar bulk. She glanced at Valerie Jennings again and noticed that she was no longer wearing makeup. Her eyes then travelled down to the woman's footwear, and she saw that her colleague had returned to wearing her flat black shoes.
Hebe Jones had avoided all mention of the tattooed ticket inspector as each day passed without word from him. Initially she had shared Valerie Jennings's optimism whenever the Swiss cowbell rang, and they would look at each other in silent hope that it was him. Eventually a black cloud of despair drifted into the office and remained over Valerie Jennings as a result of so many disappointments. She had begun to show such reluctance to go to the counter that Hebe Jones had taken it upon herself to answer the clanking as often as she could.
"Lovely rock cake," Hebe Jones said.
"Thanks."
"Any idea how you're going to spend the reward that the owner of the safe gave you?"
Valerie Jennings looked at the cheque propped up against the Oscar statuette, which Niels Reinking had given her when he came to collect the safe. "I haven't really thought about it," she replied.
When elevenses were over, Hebe Jones suggested a game of Battleship to help get them through the morning, and handed Valerie Jennings a piece of paper with two grids already drawn on it before she could refuse. By lunchtime she found herself in the extraordinary position of having sunk her colleague's entire fleet. She then fetched her the box set of theatrical facial hair. But not even the sudden arrival of her favourite Abraham Lincoln beard could tempt Valerie Jennings into trying it on.
Not knowing how else to cheer her, Hebe Jones looked at her watch and got up to meet Tom Cotton. As she stood buttoning up her coat, the phone rang. She turned round, hoping that Valerie Jennings would answer it so she wouldn't be late, but saw her disappearing down one of the aisles carrying a violin case. She sighed and picked it up.
"Is that Mrs. Jones?" came a voice.
"It is."
"This is Sandra Bell. You called me about an urn made from pomegranate wood."
Hebe Jones immediately sat down. "Did you manage to find the man's number?" she asked, fiddling with the telephone cord.
"I did, but unfortunately I haven't been able to reach him. Maybe he's gone away. Would you like his number so you can try yourself? I've got his address too, if you need it."
Once she had hung up, Hebe Jones put the urn into her handbag and left a note for Valerie Jennings explaining where she was going. With the hint of a stoop she had acquired from the weight of her son's and husband's absences, she walked to the Tube station and managed to find an empty seat in the carriage. She spent the journey clutching her handbag, hoping that she would finally be able to reunite the urn with its owner.
Eventually she found the house, built in the 1950s to fill in the gap that the Blitz had left in a row of Victorian terraces. Pushing open the metal gate, she looked at the daffodils flanking the path and wondered whether those on the Salt Tower roof had flowered. She reached up and pressed the bell with a gloved hand, and felt the cold pierce her tights as she waited. When there was still no answer, she cupped her hands against the window and peered inside. There, in an armchair, was an elderly man asleep in front of the television. She knocked gently on the pane, causing the man to jump. He looked at her and she offered him a meek smile. Hauling himself to his feet, he came to open the door.
"Yes?" Reginald Perkins asked, his thin lips just above the steel door chain.
Hebe Jones looked at the old man, willing him to be the owner. "My name's Mrs. Jones, and I work at London Underground Lost Property Office. We've found a wooden urn with a plaque bearing the name Clementine Perkins. I was wondering whether it might be yours."
He remained silent for so long, Hebe Jones wondered whether the man had heard her. A solitary tear shone behind his smudged spectacles.
"You've found her?" he eventually managed to say.
While Hebe Jones unzipped her handbag, Reginald Perkins fumbled with the chain and opened the door. Reaching out hands that trembled like sparrows, he took the urn, and raised it to his lips that had no one left to kiss.
As he made tea in the kitchen, Hebe Jones waited on the sofa, grateful for the warmth of the gas fire. The living room had passed unscathed through decades of decorating fashions and retained the timid wallpaper it had first been dressed in. On the mantelpiece was an old black-and-white photograph of a young couple whose smiles bore the invincibility of new love as they stood in the church doorway fresh from the altar.
Hebe Jones spotted traces of Clementine Perkins around the room: the framed tapestry of a vase of flowers she had made hanging on the wall; a pink button in a china ashtray that she had not got round to sewing back on; and a coaster bearing her initial, which had since been used by her mourners.
Passing Hebe Jones her cup, Reginald Perkins lowered his brittle frame into his chair, placed his hands on the armrests, and began to tell the tale of Clementine Perkins's extraordinary journey.
They had first met as children while queuing for their ration of sugar just after the war. Their mothers forged a friendship as they waited, bonded by the unforeseen difficulties of suddenly having their husbands home. The youngsters were left to play with each other when the women met to swap stories about the stranger in the house whom the children had long forgotten and now had to call Daddy.
Years later, the mothers lost touch when the Perkins family moved. But the distance was not enough to fell the friendship that had developed between their offspring. Unwilling to suffer the delays of the postal service, the teenagers sent each other notes via the milkman, who, recently married himself, understood the agonies of the love-afflicted. All went well for a while, until he started to confuse the notes given to him by the two lovers with those from his other customers. Before long housewives for miles were cursing the besotted milkman with his scribbled outpourings of devotion left on their doorsteps with the wrong order, while the lovers struggled to understand the romantic subtext of a request for an extra pint of milk.
The wedding was a small affair, and by the end of the year Clementine Perkins was pregnant. Two further children followed, and they lived a life of suburban contentment. Eventually, they both took early retirement in order to spend more time together, and their biggest pleasure was taking day trips to see England's historical treasures. But as old age approached, Reginald Perkins was seized by a secret dread of being separated from his wife, and he would look at her in the garden from the living-room window, wondering which would be worse: dying first or second.
He still hadn't made up his mind when he found her collapsed in the bathroom during a holiday to Spain, which they had taken to lift her spirits during the gloom of winter. He flew home in silence, his wife's remains in his blue holdall on the empty seat next to him. For months he refused to leave their home, and no amount of begging by his children could prise him from her ashes.
One afternoon, as he was sitting in his armchair, he could no longer stomach the poison of loneliness. So he went into the kitchen, made some fish paste sandwiches, and put them into his holdall, along with the urn. He then made his way to Hampton Court Palace, the next stately home he and his wife had planned to visit.
It was the first of many places that he and Clementine Perkins visited following her death, and suddenly his life had meaning again. But, while returning from a trip to Kew Palace, he fell asleep on the Tube, lulled by the heat and the rhythm of the carriages. When he woke, he discovered someone had taken the bag containing his wife's remains, and he sank into a decline.
"My greatest fear was having to face her in heaven, knowing what I'd done," he said, a tear running down his sunken cheek. "Where was it found?"
Hebe Jones put down her tea that had gone cold as she listened. "On the Central Line," she replied. "It's not unusual for thieves to abandon things once they realise they're of no value to them. Why, if you don't mind my asking, was your wife's death not registered?"
Reginald Perkins took out a white handkerchief and wiped his cheek. "We registered it in Spain," he said, returning it to his trouser pocket. "You don't have to do it here as well. What am I going to do with a certificate telling me she's dead?"
There was a pause.
"The wood's beautiful," said Hebe Jones.