The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (23 page)

When she immediately sunk again he thrashed towards her and groped with desperate hands for her body. Unable to find her, he breathed in and dived underwater, but failed to see anything in the murky depths. It was only when desperation sharpened his vision that he saw a tendril of black hair floating on the top of the water in the distance. After grabbing her body, as slippery as an eel, he hauled her back to the bank. As he held her, her eyes rolling, he asked her to marry him, as he would rather be betrothed to the dying Hebe Grammatikos than to any other woman alive.

When she eventually came round in the hospital, a piece of pondweed still in her mouth, she was congratulated by the
nursing staff for not only having survived, but also for being engaged to be married. During the sultry days of their engagement, while lost in the contentment of each other’s arms, they often spoke of the proposal that had been so much more romantic than anything Balthazar Jones could have planned. Hebe Jones’s only regret was that she had no memory of his asking her to marry him, as she recalled nothing after walking into the water in the hope that the ability to swim would suddenly come to her like a holy miracle. Each time she asked Balthazar Jones what her reply had been, he would quote back her words that evoked the Greek mysticism of her grandparents: “It is better to tie your donkey than to look for it.”

THE BEEFEATER WAS BROUGHT ROUND
from his memories by a sudden snort from the dreaming bearded pig. Getting up gently so as not to disturb it, he looked at his watch, brushed himself down, and hurried off to meet the man from the Palace before the menagerie opened.

When he pushed open the door of the Rack & Ruin, he saw Oswin Fielding already sitting at the table next to the framed signature of Rudolph Hess. He approached the landlady and ordered an orange juice, despite his urge for a pint. He carried it past the tables occupied by numerous Beefeaters on their lunch break, and sat down opposite the courtier.

“I’m sorry to hear about your wife,” said Oswin Fielding.

Balthazar Jones stared at him. “How did you hear about that?” he asked.

“It was mentioned. You have my sympathies. My wife left me several years ago. You never get over it.”

Both men stared at their glasses.

“Anyway,” said the courtier eventually. “Back to the matters at hand. All set for the opening?”

“Yes,” replied the Beefeater. “Any news about the penguins?”

“Unfortunately not. Thankfully the Argentine Embassy hasn’t been in touch, so it seems they’re none the wiser. Let’s hope they remain that way. We have, however, heard from someone in the Brazilian President’s office. It was he who gave the Queen the Geoffroy’s marmosets, if you remember. The chap wanted to know why they were flashing their private parts in those photographs taken with you, which, as he pointed out, were used all around the world.”

The Beefeater glanced away. “Apparently it’s something they do when they sense danger,” he muttered.

The equerry frowned. “Really?” he asked. “I wasn’t entirely sure, so I told them it must have been your uniform.”

“My uniform? What did he say to that?”

“He said that he found it hard to imagine why monkeys would find the sight of a Beefeater in any way sexually alluring. I tried to explain that the Tower of London attracts more than two million visitors a year from all around the world, and they weren’t just coming to see the Crown Jewels. ‘History’s a big turn-on,’ I said.”

“What did he say to that?”

The equerry reached for his glass. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “It was in Portuguese. Then he hung up.”

WHEN THE TIME CAME
to open the royal menagerie to the public, Balthazar Jones unlocked the gate that led to the moat.
A line of visitors who had been queuing for several hours immediately surged through. The Beefeater followed them in case there were any questions, despite his fear that he would be unable to answer them. They stopped at the empty penguin enclosure and read the information panel that he had had erected, stating that the birds were not only amongst the smallest breeds of penguin in the world, but also the most opportunistic. The tourists happily accepted the Beefeater’s explanation that they were at the vet’s, and then clattered their way along the boardwalk to inspect the President of Russia’s gift. Stopping at a sign that said: “Please Feed Me,” they stood and stared at the small bear-like creature with yellow stripes running down its brown fur. After the recumbent glutton emitted an undignified belch, a young girl asked Balthazar Jones how much the creature ate. “Even more than the Yeoman Gaoler,” he replied.

As the group headed towards the giraffes, the Beefeater immediately suggested that they go to see the Duchess of York before there was a queue. There was an instant murmur of agreement, and he led them into the fortress to the Devereux Tower. Once the tourists had gotten over their disappointment that they were not actually in the presence of Princess Diana’s former sister-in-law, but rather a blue-faced, snub-nosed monkey with titian hair, they got out their cameras declaring that the resemblance was nevertheless remarkable. The Beefeater offered to take them to see the birds next, but they were unable to move because of the crowds flocking up the stairs to see the Geoffroy’s marmosets in all their glory.

IRRITATED BY THE SUDDEN INCREASE
in tourists, the Yeoman Gaoler crossed Tower Green, stopping to point one of them in the direction of the Tower Café. After wishing her good luck, he continued on to the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, wondering whether he would ever sleep through the night again. He had been woken in the early hours by the sound of leather boots striding back and forth across the dining room below. Instead of profanities about the Spanish, the house had been filled with poetic entreaties to a woman by the name of Cynthia. It hadn’t been long before the stench of tobacco started to seep underneath his bedroom door, increasing his yearning for a cigarette. He remained in bed, his sheets drawn up to his chin, fearing not only for his potatoes, but for the life of Her Majesty’s highly strung shrew.

When he and his wife first arrived at the Tower, it had struck them as odd that such a large house was vacant. On learning that its previous tenants had moved to one of the smaller terrace cottages along Mint Lane, they assumed the family had been put off by the windows that were nailed shut, the blocked-up fireplaces, and the numerous locks on the doors. They prised out the nails, opened up the fireplaces, and only drew one bolt at night. Hand in hand they chose some new wallpaper, and started to scrape at the nicotine-stained walls, listening to records on the gramophone that had been a wedding present all those years ago. It wasn’t long before they discovered the ominous warnings the children of the previous inhabitants had scrawled on the walls. Dismissing them as youthful fantasy, they continued redecorating as they swayed their middle-aged hips to the music they had danced to during their courtship.

Their happiness started to drift when the Yeoman Gaoler’s wife accused her husband of having taken up smoking again, which he categorically denied. Each refusal to admit to having succumbed once more to the cursed habit only increased her fury. She named each relative whose life had been dramatically shortened by the vice, but still the smell of tobacco flooded the house each night. Convinced that her husband was going to meet a gruesome early death, she left the Tower in search of a new one, a task that didn’t take long on account of her considerable charms.

Unable to bear his empty home, where the sight of the gramophone reduced him to tears, the Yeoman Gaoler spent his evenings in the Rack & Ruin. In between recounting their heroics while serving in the armed forces, the other Beefeaters would boast of their ghostly encounters in the Tower with even greater bravado. A number claimed to have heard the screeches of Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, who had been chased by a hacking axeman after his first blow failed to remove her head. Several insisted they had seen the white form of Sir Thomas More sitting on one of the chapel’s chairs. And all of them were adamant that they had seen the terrifying vision of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew, the only woman ever to have been racked. The Yeoman Gaoler would listen intently, but never once did he reveal that the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh had taken up residence in his home, something that terrified him more than anything he had witnessed on the battlefield.

The spirit had returned to the Tower to write the second installment of his
History of the World
. The first, written while serving his thirteen-year sentence, had been an instant hit,
outselling William Shakespeare’s collected works. He had assumed that the sequel would come to him with the ease of the first. But when he sat down at his old desk in the Bloody Tower, surrounded by globes and rolled-up maps, he was seized by the torment of second-volume syndrome. As he nibbled the end of his quill with tar-stained teeth, desperately seeking the words that evaded him, he became convinced that the success of the first was simply the result of nostalgia for the man who had introduced to England the mighty potato. And not even the ale brought to him by the equally ghostly form of Owen the waterman could help him.

Pushing down the cold handle, the Yeoman Gaoler opened the chapel door and stepped inside. He found Rev. Septimus Drew bent double, trying to remove chewing gum from the bottom of a chair with furious pinches of his pink rubber gloves.

“I need your help,” the Yeoman Gaoler announced as he walked up the aisle.

The clergyman straightened, and rested his pink wrists on his hips.

“Birth, marriage, or death?” he asked.

“Exorcism.”

WHEN HEBE JONES RETURNED
from her wasted visit to Mrs. Perkins, she stood in silence, unbuttoning her turquoise coat next to the drawer containing one hundred and fifty-seven pairs of false teeth.

“Any joy?” Valerie Jennings asked.

“It was the wrong person,” she replied, taking the urn out of her handbag and returning it to her desk.

There was a moment of silence.

“Going anywhere nice?” Valerie Jennings asked.