The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart Read Free Book Online

The vision instantly reminded him of the wondrous bearded ladies he had seen on his voyages around the Pacific, who had once been guarded by spear-waving elders against circus owners with voluminous nets. The women’s undoubted charms had earned them the highest regard in their village, where they were worshipped as deities and presented with the biggest turtle eggs. They used the golden yolks to gloss their beards, and the whites to oil the succulent flesh that covered their bodies in tantalising handfuls.
    Arthur Catnip had vowed not to trust women again when his eleven-year marriage collapsed on the chance discovery that his wife was having an affair with his Rear Admiral. He left the Navy before he could be discharged for breaking the man’s jaw, and, not wanting to see the light of day, applied for a job with London Underground. But the spectacular vision of Valerie Jennings produced in him such yearning that from then on he always arrived at work doused in eau de toilette. Having never seen her crowned with such lustrous facial hairagain, he eventually convinced himself that the wondrousness had been an illusion. He was left with a ghost of the vision that haunted him during his working day as he rattled through the Victorian tunnels seeking out fare evaders.
    The ticket inspector, whose hands had never recovered their smoothness after years of rope-pulling, placed on the counter a camellia, a pair of handcuffs, sixteen umbrellas, thirteen mobile phones, and five odd socks. He waited in silence, one elbow on the counter, as Hebe Jones noted down the items in a number of ledgers with inscrutable coded cross-references. Just as she closed the final volume and returned it to its place, Arthur Catnip picked up a modest blue holdall from the floor next to his feet and placed it on the counter with the words: “Almost forgot this.”
    Hebe Jones, her curiosity as potent as the first day she started the job, unzipped the bag and stood on her toes to peer inside. Still uncertain of its contents, she reached in a hand and retrieved a plastic lunch box containing the crusts of a fish paste sandwich. Feeling something else inside, she drew out a wooden box with a brass plaque inscribed with the words “Clementine Perkins, 1939 to 2008, RIP.” And neither of them spoke as they stared in horror at the urn of ashes before them.
    After Arthur Catnip had left, wondering out loud how someone could mislay human remains, Hebe Jones noted it down in the ledgers. But her hand shook to such an extent that her penmanship no longer resembled that of a monk. She carried the item back to her desk and put it on top of the gigolo’s diary without a word. But her mind was no longer on the wooden box in front of her with the brass nameplate.Instead, with the twist of a knife, it had turned to the small urn that stood in the back of the Salt Tower’s wardrobe.

    WHEN HEBE JONES HAD RECEIVED THE CALL from the undertakers to say that Milo’s remains were ready for collection, she instantly dropped the vase of flowers that had just arrived from Rev. Septimus Drew. Once Balthazar Jones had swept up the glass from the living-room carpet, he fetched the car keys from the hook on the wall and they made the journey in brittle silence. Balthazar Jones didn’t put on Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” so he could play the air drums to the music while they waited in traffic, nor was there anyone on the backseat joining in with his father at the best bit. The couple only spoke when they arrived, but neither of them could say the purpose of their visit, and all they offered were their names. The receptionist continued to look at them expectantly, and it wasn’t until the funeral director came out that the awkwardness ended. But it started again as soon as he presented them with the urn, as neither of them could bear to take it.
    On their return to the Salt Tower, the heady fumes of white lilies flooding the spiral staircase hit them. Hebe Jones,