Suddenly she heard the thud of the Salt Tower door. Not long afterwards, her husband appeared in the kitchen and silently presented her with a warm, flat cardboard box. Hebe Jones, unable to admit that she still detested pizza, set the table, and forced down the white flag in small mouthfuls that threatened to choke her. And for the rest of the evening the air in the Salt Tower was so fragile that they spoke to each other as if the place were filled with a million fluttering butterflies that neither dared disturb.
Hebe Jones unbuttoned her coat next to the drawer containing one hundred and fifty-seven pairs of false teeth. It was a ritual she performed every morning upon arrival at London Underground’s Lost Property Office, even during the summer, a season she vehemently distrusted in England. She hung it on the stand next to the life-size inflatable doll, a deep red hole for a mouth, which no one had yet dared to claim. Turning the corner, she stood at the original Victorian counter, its shutter still closed, and studied one of the ledgers to remind her what had been brought in the previous day. As well as the usual several dozen umbrellas and best-selling novels, some with a bookmark tragically near the end, the yield included one lawnmower, a Russian typewriter and sixteen jars of preserved ginger. The last item brought in was yet another abandoned wheelchair, increasing the office’s hoard to the spectacular figure of thirty-nine. It was proof, if only to the staff, that London Underground could perform miracles.
She switched on the kettle on top of the safe that no one had been able to open since its discovery on the Circle Line five years ago. Opening the fridge, currently the subject of a standoff about whose turn it was to clean, she took out a carton of milk and raised it to her nose. Satisfied that the boisterous odour came from something no longer recognisable on the lower shelf, she poured some into a teacup. As she waited for the water to boil, the woman who felt the weight of loss more acutely than most gazed with regret at the graveyard of forgotten belongings on metal shelves stretching far into the distance, covered in a shroud of dust.
Passing the long, black magician’s box used to imprison glamorous assistants while sawing them in half, she took her tea to her desk. It was scattered with a number of recent items whose owners she was still trying to trace: a stuffed humming bird in a little glass dome; a false eye; a pair of tiny pointed Chinese slippers with lotus leaf embroidery; a gigolo’s diary which she hoped wouldn’t be claimed before she had finished reading it; and a small box purporting to contain a testicle belonging to an A. Hitler found in the Albert Hall. Standing on a shelf above the desk was a line of faded thank-you cards kept as proof of the more consider ate side of human nature, one that was easily forgotten when dealing with the general public.
Opening a drawer, she pulled out her notebook, hoping that the deeply satisfying task of reuniting a possession with its absent-minded owner would take her mind off her troubles. She read the notes she had made during her search for the manufacturer of the false eye, but her thoughts kept finding their way back to her husband.
She smelt the arrival of her colleague before seeing her. The still-warm bacon sandwich in greaseproof paper tossed on to the neighbouring desk knocked over an Oscar statuette, which had been waiting for collection for two years, eight months and twenty-seven days. Despite the fact that Hebe Jones had repeatedly told her that it was a fake, borne out by all the letters sent to the actor’s agent remaining unanswered, Valerie Jennings was of the utter conviction that one day Dustin Hoffman would arrive in person to reclaim it.
Years of frustration, made bearable by the odd spectacu lar triumph, had bonded the two women like prisoners sharing the same cell. While they rejoiced in one another’s successes as keenly as their own, they were equally susceptible to feeling the dead weight of the other’s failures. It was a job of highs and lows. As a result, neither woman could bear the shafts of boredom that would eventually shine their way into the working day, often with the handing in of the morning’s thirty-ninth set of door keys. It was then that they would long for the arrival of something either exotic, edible, or, if luck would have it, both. And while during particularly intense periods of stress Hebe Jones was able to escape to the sanctuary of the magician’s box, where she would remain entombed with her eyes closed, Valerie Jennings, whose marvellous girth thwarted such pleasure, resorted to trying on the contents of an abandoned box-set of theatrical beards and moustaches, and admiring the many splendid permutations in the mirror.
The two women, who irritated each other as much as siblings, but who loved each other just as fiercely, ruled London Underground’s Lost Property Office with a queenly air that only slipped to that of the filthiest of brothels during moments of intense frustration. Their honesty was utmost. Everything that was handed in by Underground staff, or kindly members of the public, was written down with the penmanship of a monk in perfectly ordered ledgers. The only items the women claimed as their own were perishables, which they were forbidden from storing for more than twenty-four hours, though they made a secret extension for inscribed birthday cakes, which unsettled their hearts more than their taste buds.
The women greeted each other with the casual indifference earned from having spent over a decade at each other’s side. As Hebe Jones raised the counter’s metal shutter, which emitted a gruesome wail, Valerie Jennings inspected the Oscar statuette for damage, then stood it back on its feet. Just as she was about to pick up her sandwich, instinct told her that something was not as it should be, and she peeled back the top slice of white bread. Her suspicions confirmed, she cursed the owner of the greasy spoon for omitting the tomato ketchup. And, with the commendable hope she always bore when faced with adversity, she enquired whether any ketchup had been handed in.
The Swiss cowbell rang before Hebe Jones had a chance to reply. She got up from her seat to allow Valerie Jennings the dignity of an uninterrupted breakfast. On her way to the counter she tried to open the safe, as was the office custom. But despite yet another combination of numbers, the grey steel door remained tightly shut.
Samuel Crapper, the Lost Property Office’s most frequent customer, was standing at the counter dressed in a brown corduroy suit and striped blue shirt, concern threaded across his forehead. A distant descendant of the famous plumber with a glut of Royal Warrants, his family had given him the best private education money could buy. But they paid an even higher price than they had thought. The cruel words in the playground made his cheeks flare, which invariably led to the loud declaration by his tormentors that he was ‘flushed with pride’. Despite his protestations that it was an urban myth that Thomas Crapper invented the flush lavatory, and it was in fact Queen Elizabeth I’s godson, Sir John Harington, they would lie in wait, striking at any opportunity to force his head down the pan. The trauma of the bullying affected his memory, and he tried to compensate for it by purchasing two of everything. However, he failed to realise that if something went missing it didn’t prevent its double from going the same way.
On seeing Hebe Jones approach, his agitation mounted as he realised he couldn’t remember what he had lost. Staring at the floor, he ran his fingers through his ochre-coloured hair, which had never regained its ability to lie flat since the brutal years of being constantly flushed. A smile suddenly appeared as he recalled the object, but it swiftly slid away again when he remembered that it was no longer in his possession.
‘Has a tomato plant been handed in, by any chance?’ he enquired. It was no ordinary specimen, he went on to explain, as it was descended from one of the first such plants ever to have been grown in England, courtesy of the barber-surgeon John Gerard in the 1590s. After several years of infiltration, he had managed to procure the seed from a contact in the tomato world. Such was the magnificence of its fruit, he had decided to enter it into a show. ‘Unfortunately, I left it on the Piccadilly Line yesterday on my way there,’ he confessed. ‘I’d forgotten that the show actually takes place this afternoon.’
‘Just a minute,’ replied Hebe Jones, disappearing