Part 12 (1/2)
Niels Reinking put his hands on his hips. ”I'm always losing things. Usually it's my gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.ses 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 doc.u.ments relating to the s.h.i.+pping 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 ent.i.tled 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 d.a.m.ning 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 G.o.d was. She turned, looked at her son, and replied in an instant: ”Demeter, G.o.ddess of fertility.”
”What's Daddy's?” Milo then asked.
Hebe Jones thought for a minute. ”I suppose it would have to be Dionysus, G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances,” 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 courts.h.i.+p 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 c.o.c.ked 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.