Gaslight (2 page)

“Everything alright?” George asked.

“Everything is fine.”

“And?”

Harry nodded. “It’s empty.”

“So we’re doing it?”

“Yes.”

The house was on Duck Lane. Most of the accommodation in Soho was of poor quality but this particular mews was different. Harry had become friendly with one of the skivvies who worked for the owners, a credulous girl whom he had seduced with almost disdainful ease. She had explained to him that her employer kept plenty of money on the premises, and that his wife was well endowed with furs and jewellery. Harry had taken the lamplighter’s job as a means of scouting the house; there was a lamp directly outside and, when he was up on his ladder, he had an excellent view into the first floor window. He had observed the property for a week and was confident that he had an accurate idea of the comings and goings. The man and his wife typically went out at seven, most likely for dinner; by varying the time that he lit the lamp he was as confident as he could be that the house would be empty from then until eight, and probably later. Since the girl had confirmed his research, he was satisfied that they would not be disturbed.

He propped his bicycle against a lamp post in Berwick Street. He looked around. The smog was thick and cloying and the thin rind of moon, weak in any event, was obscured behind clouds. He led the way into Duck Lane. He had sabotaged the lamp earlier, stuffing a fistful of rag into the gas pipe. The street––which was really no more than an alleyway, fifteen feet from one side to the other––was steeped in dark.

“Gloves,” Harry ordered.

George reached into the bag and took out two pairs. Harry pulled on the left but not the right, sliding his hand into his trouser pocket and taking out the replica key that he had made from the original that the skivvy had given him a week ago. Walking quickly and with a self-assured gait, as if he was meant to be in the alley, he approached the door, pushed the key into the lock and, after a moment of anxious fiddling, turned the lock.

He opened the door and ducked inside.

George followed, closing the door behind him.

Harry waited in the hallway, his hand held backwards so that the palm rested against George’s sternum. Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on his hearing. He fancied he could hear the ticking of a clock, then water running through a pipe. There was nothing else. The house was empty.

“Three floors,” Harry said quietly. “You go up to the top. The master bedroom is up there––that’s where she’ll have her jewellery. I’ll look down here.”

“How long have we got?”

Harry looked at his pocket watch. “Fifteen minutes, not a second longer. Have you got a bag for me?”

George reached into his bag, removed a canvas sack and gave it to him. He moved quickly up the stairs, disappearing into the embrace of the darkness. Harry paused, listening to his footsteps and the creaking of the floorboards, and then made his way deeper into the hallway, squinting into the gloom and feeling for the doorway into the sitting room. His fingers settled on the doorknob and he turned it, edging the door open and glancing inside. It was a large, well-appointed room: bookshelves were loaded with books; cabinets held an impressive collection of silver plate; the arm-chairs were stately red velvet couches stamped with crowns in gold and silver thread, facing an impressive fireplace that looked as if it belonged in an Italian palazzo. There was an antique drinks cabinet and, feeling stupidly triumphant, Harry paused for a moment and poured himself a whisky from the chunky crystal decanter he found on the chrome drinks trolley. His gloved hands fumbled as he tried to replace the stopper and so he gave up, tipped the whisky down his throat and poured again. He gazed across at the Napoleonic crowns on the back of the sofa, the silver thread, the brocade, the plush velvet upholstery and, tumbler in hand, he crossed the room and sat down. He straightened his legs and crossed them at the ankles. This was the life, he thought. He closed his eyes. Could he imagine himself living in a place like this? He could. And why not? Why should the fine things in life be denied to a man like him? Had he not fought for his country? Had he not seen death by the score? Faced it himself? Dealt it out? He had––indeed he had. He did deserve a better standard of life.

He sipped the whisky, stood the tumbler on the table at his elbow, and rose from the chair.

He went across to the silver plate displayed in an handsome dresser. He took the sack and, opening it, he stuffed as much of the collection as he could fit inside.

HARRY AND GEORGE lived in the same lodging house in Little Italy. It was a smoke-dim slum that sprawled between Clerkenwell and Holborn, a graceless wilderness where the kips and spikes thronged with vagabonds, beggars, criminals and brasses, where whole families could be submerged forever and where, down darkened alleyways where policeman would only patrol in pairs, you could get your throat cut as easily as a ship on the South China Sea. The housing stock was old and decrepid, cruel-looking and dark, the floors of the terraces divided into flatlets and single rooms. London brick that had once been rosy red was now stained with smut and smog, browning cards advertising “apartments” stood against the dirty glass in nearly all of the ground floor windows, dingy lace curtains fell helplessly behind them. Mrs. Weaver, their landlady, specialised in rooms for ‘single gentlemen’ and female visitors were strictly forbidden. She offered bed-sitting-rooms with gaslight included, heating and baths costing extra. Meals were included, too, served in the staid dining room with horse brasses on the walls and porcelain models of horses on the dresser. The meals were stodgy and often cold but neither brother, although resented them bitterly, had the financial wherewithal to turn up his nose. They paid twenty-seven and six shillings a week each for the privilege of staying there.

George fumbled with the lock on the front door and then disappeared inside with the bags of swag. They would stow them there overnight and then bring them to the meeting with the fence that they had arranged for the morning. Now, though, they both needed a drink. The thought of his cold, womanless bedroom sickened him and he wanted to put it off for as long as he could. And, after all, they were celebrating! The pubs would be full and noisy and busy with life and didn’t they deserve a drink? Harry waited for him on the street outside. He jingled the pathetic collection of coins in his pocket. He couldn’t wait to get some proper, real cash. He was twenty-five and he had accomplished precisely nothing. He consoled himself that a man could judge his success by any number of means: happiness could be derived from family and from friends, for example, and, on those scores, he considered himself fortunate. But, however many times he tried to fool himself to the contrary, he knew the truth. Money and status were the only measures that really counted. That was the means by which all men were judged. For after all, what is there behind success except money? You needed money. Money greased the wheels, opened doors, lubricated your passage through life from cradle to grave. Money for a proper education, money for friends, money for the trappings that spoke of success and power, money for security and a better life. On that score, the only one that really counted for anything, the ledger of Harry’s life was in the red.

He had tried to persuade himself that the war had interrupted his career but that was a lie: there was no career to be interrupted. Their father was a clock-maker, arriving from Piedmont in 1888 and sending for his wife and children when his little shop in Hatton Garden had become moderately successful. The shop was still there today but following in his footsteps was not something that filled either of his sons with any enthusiasm. Harry was bright but he had been a lazy student and he had left school with no qualifications or prospects. He had drifted around on the fringes of the underworld for a year and then, as the assassination of that Austrian prince had thrown the world into chaos, he had accepted his call-up papers with equanimity. He had reported for duty not because of any sense of patriotism, rather that he had nothing else to do and the prospect of gallivanting across foreign fields sounded like an adventure. He would be fed and warm, they’d teach him plenty of useful skills and, most of all, they had promised in the papers that it would be quick and easy. If he had had an inkling of the things that he had seen and done in the service of the King then, perhaps, he might have approached the matter with the same slippery attitude that his brother had displayed.

He chased the glum thoughts away. Now, though, there was hope. How much could they get for the gear they had lifted? Thirty quid, surely? Forty, maybe, if they were lucky? Dare they hope for fifty? The money was yet to be paid but already his imagination was racing away with itself. He imagined girls’ faces, bottles of expensive wine, as much beer as he could drink and as many fags as he could smoke, a brand new suit and his overcoat out of hock. He could almost feel the rough texture of the crisp, crackling one pound notes between his fingers. The sharpness of the edges. He could almost smell the paper.

The Griffin was in Saffron Hill, not far from their lodgings. The pub was full and noisy. Three women, as chunky as the beer mugs in their hands, stood outside the side door, talking. From within came hoarse voices, the smoke of cigarettes, the acrid fume of ale. The street door had a frosted glass pane, a heavy brass handle and a brass inscription that said ‘Saloon Bar and Lounge.’ Harry led the way into the noisy clamour. The Saloon Bar was oblong and squat, about twenty feet in length and ten feet wide. Dead ahead was the bar itself, a series of bottles arrayed across glass shelves and two beer bumps for the dispensing of ale. On the left was a row of copper-topped tables set against a continuous wooden bench which went the whole length of the bar. The windows were opaque with steam, little rivulets of water running down to the sills. Hard benches, stale beer-stink and brass spittoons. Noise and violent colour. It was quite a place.

To the right, the Saloon Bar opened out into the Saloon Lounge. This was another large room, with a handful of wicker-and-glass tables that were attended to by white wicker armchairs. The walls were lined with antique pewter pint pots on hooks and a series of prints that depicted historic engagements of the British military; there was a fireplace with a well tended fire; the floor was of bare boards, scattered over with sawdust in places. There was a third Public Bar around the other side of the building and, through the Saloon Lounge, there was the Private Bar.

Harry paused. The air seemed damp with beer and the atmosphere was polluted with a thick fug of smoke from innumerable cigarettes, cigars and pipes; it hung in the air like a slowly shifting fog. The bar thronged with a scrum of customers, hurriedly downing their drinks and ordering replacements before last orders were called. The landlady, a tall austere woman with a severe black fringe, looking for all the world like the Madame of a brothel, stood behind the bar, her meaty forearms crossed, watching a game of darts between three labourers. George gave him half a crown; Harry slid between the drinkers, jostled and elbowed as he traversed the busy room. He found a space between a navvy drinking Guinness and a middle-aged man with a fuzz of thinning hair and a husky voice who, quite incongruously, burst into song at seemingly random intervals. The bar was laden with platters of stale ham and beef sandwiches, arrowroot biscuits and cheese, prawns and sardines on toast. None of it looked appetising. It had probably been there all day. Harry slid the half crown into a puddle of spilt ale.

“Two pints of bitter, please.”

“We haven’t any more pint pots,” cried the harassed barmaid, measuring out a dram of whisky with one eye on the clock. She was a pretty thing, neat and tidy, couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, with long dark hair that set off a perfect, porcelain-white complexion. Italian blood, for sure.

“I’ve just put half a dozen pots on the top shelf, Bella!” shouted the landlady over her shoulder.

Bella handed the whisky to a man to her left and then swiped down two tin pint pots. She hauled the pump three times for each, filling them to the brim with frothing ale. She passed them along the bar. Harry winked at her and put one of the pots to his lips. The beer flowed easily down his gullet, refreshing despite the bitterness, and he felt the last frayed nerves from the burglary begin to fade away. He looked at her appraisingly: she was bright and pert and industrious, the recipient of the confidences and jokes and leers of the men she was serving. She had a sharp sparkle in her eyes. She knew how to take it and how to give it out.

“Bella?”

“That’s right.”

“Short for Isabella?”

“It is,” she said with forced diffidence; the twinkle in her eyes betrayed her.

“Pretty name.”

“What’s yours?”

“Harry,” he said.

“Not so pretty.”

She offered her hand––slender, alabaster, delicate––and he took it.

“Nice to meet you, Harry,” she said.

“Bella!” the landlady screeched.

“Got to get back to it. These buggers ain’t gonna serve themselves.”

Harry shouldered his way past drunken revellers, beer sloshing over the lip of the pots and onto his trousers and shoes. A tinker had found his way into the Saloon Bar and was trying to sell as many bootlaces, studs, watches and necklaces as he could before the landlady saw him; but then she did, and with her strident voice rising effortlessly over the clamour, dismissed him with a curt “Not this side, please!”

He had just handed the second pint to his brother when he heard, through the cascade of raucous noise, the barman’s shout: “Last orders, gentlemen, please!”

He put the pint to his lips and took a long pull. George did the same. The beer fizzed in his throat, and because he was hungry it went a little to his head. Harry removed the pot from his face, exhaled in pleasure, and then drank down the rest. George had finished ahead of him and, grinning, he held up the empty pot. Harry crashed his against it, the collision ringing out, and laughed helplessly. It was relief, he knew, but it felt good. They would sell the gear tomorrow; even with the commission that the fence would surely charge they would be looking at a tidy sum of money.