She kissed her teeth again, and it was echoed around the room by all the other women.
‘I was so heartbroken,’ said Mama Thames, ‘that I went to kill myself. Oh, yes, that is how bad the man broke my heart. So I went to Hungerford Bridge to throw myself in the river. But that is a railway bridge, and the old footbridge that ran along the side – very dirty in those days. All sorts of things used to live on that bridge, tramps and trolls and goblins. It is not the sort of place a decent Nigerian girl wants to throw herself off. Who knows what might be watching? So I went to Waterloo Bridge, but by the time I got there it was sunset and everywhere I looked it was so beautiful that I thought I just cannot bring myself to jump. Then it was dark, so I went home for my dinner. The next morning I got up nice and early and caught a bus to Blackfriars Bridge. But there is that damn statue of Queen Victoria at the north end, and even if she is looking the other way, think how embarrassed you would be if she were to turn round and see you standing on the parapet.’
The rest of the room shook their heads in agreement.
‘There was no way on earth that I was going to throw myself off Southwark Bridge,’ said Mama Thames. ‘So after another long, long walk, where did I find myself?’
‘London Bridge?’
Mama Thames reached out and patted me on the knee. ‘This was the old bridge, the one that was sold soon afterwards to that nice American gentleman. Now there was a man who knows how to show a river a good time. Two barrels of Guinness and a crate of Rhum Barbancourt, that’s what I call an offering.’
There was a pause while Mama Thames sipped her tea. Beverley entered with a plate of custard creams and placed them within easy reach. I had a biscuit in my hand before I realised what I was doing, and put it back. Beverley snorted.
‘In the middle of the old London Bridge was a chapel, a shrine to St Birinus and I thought, good Sunday Christian that I was, that this would be the right place to jump off. I stood there looking west just as the tide began to turn. London was still a port back then, dying but like an old man with a long, exciting life, full of stories and memories. And terrified that he was going to be old and frail with no one to look after him because there was no life left in the river, no Orisa, no spirit, nothing to care for the old man. I heard the river call me by the name I have forgotten and it said, “We see you are in pain, we see you are weeping like a child because of one man.”
‘And I said, “Oh, River, I have come such a long way, but I have failed as a nurse and I have failed as a woman and this is why my man does not love me.”
‘And then the river said to me, “We can take the pain away, we can make you happy and give you many children and grandchildren. All the world will come to you and lay its gifts at your feet.”
‘Well,’ said Mama Thames, ‘this was a tempting offer so I asked, “What must I do? What do you want from me?” And the river answered, “We want nothing that you were not already willing to give.”
‘So I jumped into the water – splash! And I sank all the way to the bottom, and let me tell you, there are things down there that wouldn’t believe. Let’s just say that it needs to be dredged and let it go at that.’
She waved her arm languidly towards the river. ‘I walked out of the river over there on the Wapping Stair where they used to drown pirates. I have been here ever since,’ she said. ‘This is the cleanest industrial river in Europe. Do you think that happened by accident? Swinging London, Cool Britannia, the Thames Barrier; do you think that all happened by accident?’
‘The Dome?’ I asked.
‘Now the most popular music venue in Europe,’ she said. ‘The Rhine Maidens come to visit me to see how it’s done.’ She gave me a significant look, and I wondered who the hell the Rhine Maidens were.
‘Perhaps Father Thames sees things differently,’ I said.
‘Baba Thames,’ spat Mama. ‘When he was a young man he stood where I stood, on the bridge, and made the same promise I did. But he hasn’t been below Teddington Lock since the Great Stink of 1858. He never came back, not even after Bazalgette put the sewers in. Not even for the Blitz, not even when the city was burning. And now he says this is his river.’
Mama Thames pulled herself upright in her chair as if posing for a formal portrait.
‘I am not greedy,’ she said. ‘Let him have Henley, Oxford and Staines. I shall have London, and the gifts of all the world at my feet.’
‘We can’t have your people fighting each other,’ I said. The ‘royal we’ is very important in police work; it reminds the person you’re talking to that behind you stands the mighty institution that is the Metropolitan Police, robed in the full majesty of the law and capable, in manpower terms, of invading a small country. You only hope when you’re using that term that the whole edifice is currently facing in the same direction as you are.