When Hebe Jones returned to her desk, her colleague was looking inside the fridge in readiness for elevenses, despite the fact that there was some time to go before the sacred hour. During those magical fifteen minutes, the shutter was closed, phones remained unanswered, and the two women would serve themselves Lady Grey tea in bone china cups, yet to be claimed, along with whatever cake, tarts or biscuits Valerie Jennings had brought in.
Her appreciation of the fine work of Messrs Kipling and McVitie developed after she returned home from the office one day intending to suggest to her husband that it was time that they start a family. But instead of the night of reckless passion she had been hoping for, her husband turned from his newspaper and told her with the frigidity of a lawyer that he was leaving her. He explained that the marriage had been a mistake, and insisted that no one else was involved. Valerie Jennings was so distraught at the revelation of his lack of affection, she let him handle the divorce. Several months after the decree absolute came through, she heard he had got married barefoot on a Caribbean island, and she threw out the travel brochure she discovered in the drawer of his bedside table. Only then did she take down their wedding photograph from the mantelpiece, and put it in the attic along with the album, both almost too painful to touch.
When, several minutes later, the Swiss cowbell rang again, Hebe Jones got to her feet. Standing at the counter was Arthur Catnip, a London Underground ticket inspector of limited height, whose waistline had been softened by a weakness for fried breakfasts. Over the years he had learnt to detect a fare dodger at a hundred paces. He put his talent down to the same intuition that had warned him he was going to have a massive heart attack fifteen days before the colossal mis adventure took place. After taking annual leave, he attempted to check himself into the nearest hospital in readiness for the disaster. But the tattooed ticket inspector was detained against his wishes in the psychiatric wing. His prophetic warnings were noted down by a squeakily bald doctor thrilled at the thought that he had discovered a whole new subset of insanity. When the medical emergency eventually took place, the only reason Arthur Catnip survived the massive onslaught was because during the height of his suffering a flood of boiling vindication coursed up his body from his toes, pushing through his blocked artery with the thrust of a stallion. As the scent of self-righteousness filled the wing, two patients more sane than their keepers decided that this was their moment, and escaped with their suitcases after a combined stay of forty-nine years.
Over the years, Arthur Catnip had received numerous cups of tea from the ladies for his willingness to hand in everything he found. A number of his colleagues, exhausted by the amount of forgotten belongings choking the network, left the least suspicious items where they were in the hope that they would be stolen. Arthur Catnip, however, took everything that he found immediately to the Lost Property Office. Not only were the two ladies the only people in the entire workforce who ever thanked him for his efforts to make London Underground a bastion of British glory, but the thought of visiting the antiquated department in Baker Street made the former seaman’s innards roll as if he were back on one of his ships. Several months ago, he had caught Valerie Jennings in one of her theatrical beards, a sight which had thrilled him beyond measure. 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 hair again, he eventually convinced himself that the wondrousness had been an illusion, and 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’ ‘In the Air Tonight’ so he could play the air drums to the music while they waited in traffic, and nor was there anyone on the back seat 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, who had clutched the urn while sitting in the passenger seat in a private state of agony, placed it on the coffee table next to Milo’s kazoo on her way to the kitchen to make three cups of tea. The couple sat on the sofa in suffocating silence, the third cup abandoned on the tray, neither of them able to look at the thing on the table that induced in them both a secret wish to die. Several days later, Hebe Jones noticed that her husband had placed it on top of the ancient mantelpiece. The following week, unable to bear seeing it any longer, she put it in the wardrobe until they had decided upon Milo’s final resting place. But each time one of them brought up the subject, the other, suddenly caught off guard, had felt too bruised to reply. So it remained at the back of the shelf behind Hebe Jones’s jumpers. And every night, before turning off her bedside light, the mother would find an excuse to open the wardrobe doors and silently wish her child goodnight, unable to abandon the ritual she had performed for eleven years.
For what he considered to be very good reasons, Balthazar Jones decided not to tell his wife about