J.

  xviiij

  MR Jambres had promised to deliver her to PO Box 42 and duly did so at six o'clock. It was an unprepossessing three storey red brick terrace in the middle of town. Veda returned the ring binder to Jerboa and got out of the car, hearing a shocked intake of breath when he saw a footprint on a page. Jargo Jaconet had trodden on it whilst balancing himself against her breasts.

  Veda hurried into the building. It smelled of musty carpets. Each stair creaked and groaned, announcing her impending arrival to the occupant of PO Box 42 and thus negating any element of surprise she might have wished to preserve. Finally she reached a door under which light was bleeding.

  JAZEY JOSKIN, LL.B

  Solr at law

  the brass plate read.

  She groaned softly. A lawyer. Bloody hell. As though this hadn't already been a bizarre and baffling Saturday. She wondered for a fleeting moment whether to give it up and creep back down the creaking stairs, but then she recalled how she had fled from home and come to Jarrow specifically for answers. She knocked loudly.

  "Come in, come in," the soft voice said. "I'm glad you've arrived. And safely too"

  Veda blinked. The room was lit by a couple of candles and an old gaslight. In the gloom, she could just make out a figure hunched behind a huge oak desk. His nib scratched across a parchment.

  "Welcome, my dear. You're just in time." He scattered sand over the drying document, shook it and placed it on a stack of similar documents before emerging from the gloom, a bewigged, bewhiskered figure with a port-drinker's nose, dressed all in black but for the priest's bands arranged at his throat. "Jazey Joskin."

  Veda smiled uncertainly. "Yes, he did."

  "No," said the lawyer. "My name. Jazey Joskin. Would you care for a jerez?" He shrank into the shadows beside a cocktail cabinet to collect crystal glasses and a decanter of sherry the colour of pale piss. Two brown leather armchairs stood on either side of a black-leaded grate containing the grey ash and clinker of some ancient fire. Meekly she perched in one, trying to avoid the wisps of straw which were slyly emerging from a burst in the seam, and sipped at the sherry. "So what, my dear, can I do for you?"

  "This is the address given for the Timmy Thomas Jazz Quartet Fan Club."

  "PO Box 42," smiled Joskin fatly.

  "I wonder if you have any information about them."

  His smile switched off. She had made a mistake of some kind.

  Even as she accepted the discography and signed photograph of the Timmy Thomas Jazz Quartet, she hurriedly added that she was particularly interested in the Suite for Jason and JASON itself. Asanewcomertothemovement and all that she often foundherselfoutofherdepth and anythingANYTHINGMrJoskincoulddo would be of great help.

  Jazey Joskin tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and smiled again. "You have come to the right man," he said. "I am, after all, The Honorary Beadkeeper."

  Jazey Joskin, solicitor

  read Law at Jesus College Cambridge where he quickly established himself as an expert on the Justinian Code and a leading player of the Spanish game jai alai in which he led the Cambridge team to victory in the 1956 Varsity Match on Jesus Green.

  Jazey Joskin is addicted to Vitamin A, a condition which developed during a holiday outing to Llanstinan in Dyfed, South Wales, where he was attacked by a flock of guillemots. On his return to the mainland, and his visit to the infirmary at St David's for the stitching of his left ear, which had been badly shredded in the assault, it was discovered that he had developed alongside his Vitamin A dependency, excessively droopy jowls. Some doctors attributed this condition to neural shock whilst others put it down to an extreme interest in night vision. Nevertheless, during the course of the psychological tests, no firm conclusion could be reached. One of these tests required Jazey Joskin to stare at a silhouette of a guillemot and name, in forty-two seconds, as many as he could of the Yorkist leaders whose heads were piked round the walls of the ancient city following their defeat at the Battle of Wakefield of December 30th 1460.

  (Richard, Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Rutland, Sir Richard Limbrick, Sir Edward Bourchier, Sir Thomas Harrington, Sir William Parr, John Harrow and John Hanson)

  Curiously, whilst he failed to include Sir Joseph Pickering in his list, he did regale the doctors with the legendary tale of the crowning of the Duke of York's severed head with a paper crown in mockery of his aspirations to the English throne, and the murder of the young Earl of Rutland, butchered by Lord Clifford of Skipton (who, for some reason, was fighting, despite his seat at the "gateway to the Yorkshire Dales", on the side of the Lancastrian House, thus rendering himself a double traitor in the eyes of the Yorkists and fully deserving his brutal death (his throat was transfixed by a blunted arrow) at Towton on Palm Sunday of the following year) in the house of a woman named Jemimah Grundy.

  An enthusiastic potato planter, Jazey Joskin leapt into the local spotlight when he rented allotment space from several other gardeners at the Jarrow and District Horticultural Society and attempted to cross Jersey potatoes with Maris Piper in a challenge to Mendelian genetics. These experiments, in spite of the warnings of several prominent plant and eco-biologists that no good could possibly result from any process of cross-breeding that bore such a strong resemblance to the creation of Frankenstein's Monster, culminated in the short-lived but spectacularly successful Jersey Piper, recognisable by the streaks of maroon in the bushy lushness of its foliage, and the exceptionally large head, earning the tuber the sobriquet Spud Head (Latin: Potatalis Frankensteinis).

  Jazey Joskin has a strong interest in Noh Plays, folk lore and the saints of Northern England. He is JASON’s Honorary Bedekeeper and Honorary Beadkeeper.

  "What's that?" said Veda, fighting a desire to shove the solicitor's wig up his

  "I tend the Beads," said Joskin. "And (a dramatic pause) I look after the Bedes."

  Veda screamed.

  "I'm sorry," said Joskin with enormous benevolence, refilling the glasses from his crystal decanter. "You are a novitiate. I forget. Please. Forgive me." He settled back in his chair. "My tasks are many and occasionally onerous, but the reward will be rich when the jay comes and the fleece is restored."

  Veda screamed again. And at last at last at last he explained.

  Two of the principal officers of the organisation called JASOn (Jason's Argonauts Sail On) are the Honorary Bedekeeper and the Honorary Beadkeeper. The Bedekeeper's task is to look after

  The Bedes

  The writings of the Venerable Bede, the monk and historian who was based in the Northumbrian town of Jarrow contain many accounts of Early English history and the lives of notable English saints including St Aidan, St Alban, St Austell, St Bees, St Columba, St Cuthbert, St David, St Ives and others.

  One of the tales of the Welsh Bishop St David involves the miracle of Justinian, or Jestyn, the saint who later gave his name to the Justinian legal Code. Justinian's head was struck off, and where it fell, a spring of water is said to have burst from the ground. The waters of this spring had curative properties so powerful they could cure leprosy. The members of JASOn identify themselves with this curative spring, the usurpers being compared to leprosy, although all members still pledge their allegiance to Saint Justus of Beauvais, the boy saint who, at the age of nine, fell victim to the Diocletian persecution. When beheaded, his fallen head continued to sing the praises of God.

  The task of the Bedekeeper is to preserve the spirit of the Bedean writings in Jarrow and to preserve the Cult of Saints from the Cultural Revolution.

  The Beadkeeper's task is to preserve and protect the

  The Beads

  Several pieces of black mourning jewellery owned by the late Queen Victoria were stolen by the Great Juggler. The usurping monarch, following the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861, commissioned a set of jewellery to be made from black Whitby jet. This so incensed the Great Juggler that he broke into where the jewels were kept and removed a necklace, a pair of dang
ly earrings, several brooches and some beads declaring that JASOn had recovered a part of what the Germans had stolen and the rest would be returned when the jay came. Until then Jason's Argonauts Sail Onwards.

  The jet pieces were and remain hidden but, once a year, they are paraded at the Festival to remind JASOn members of their task and the work still to do. This element of the Festival has become known as Victoria's Jewels Day (VJ Day). The Beadkeeper's task is to preserve the recovered jewels and represent the historical and political aspects of JASOn.

  Veda gulped the last of the sherry. "But what is it for? What does it mean?"

  "There are some things that have to be preserved," said Jazey Joskin, "And some that must be restored. JASOn exists to do both. We are preservers of the past and subverters of the present. We campaign for restoration, for justice..."

  The thunderous chimes of a grandfather clock BOOMed from the gloom. Joskin glanced at its eighteenth century face. "Eight o'clock," he said. "Time for dinner." He struggled to his feet. Half the armchair's clung to his backside. Veda went to assist him.

  "I want to learn more," she said, bearing his weight on her arm.

  "I'm sure you do, my dear." He patted her hand. "I'll come to your room. We'll talk further there." He leaned over conspiratorially. "I'll bring some things with me." Jazey Joskin winked. It was only as Veda was leaving that she noticed the painting hanging on the wall above the solicitor's desk. It was a reproduction of Jacob Jordaens' The Bean King, (circa 1638).