Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (23 page)

As the year goes on, night after night, Tony appears beside me at my reception seat at the club, handing me a glass of champagne, always waving tickets under my nose. One night it's the nativity play at the Interval Theatre Club on Dean Street—he knows someone backstage—and I wonder if I won't lose my job, taking so much time off like this. Is that perhaps part of Tony's plan?

I'm ill that Christmas, a heavy cold and flu, and I spend two days in bed with Tony. Stella is away at James's place so we have the place to ourselves again. We take a flask of tea to bed and whiskey and despite my red nose and snuffling, Tony spends most of his time hot and naked under the covers, running his hands over me, never tiring of telling me how lovely I am, how much he wants me. Even when I'm thick with cold and my head aches, he can always do it, make strange waves rise in me, make me change my mind.

Nearly a year passes like this. A truce. And then it's my birthday and he calls in the morning early to announce that he'll take me tonight to Wheeler's Oyster Bar, best Whitstable oysters in London. I'll be twenty-three. He leaves, telling me to put my best frock on, and says he'll be back for me at seven. He's excited about something, a secret. I think I know what's coming.

Stella and I make a special trip to Liberty's on Regent Street, to mooch around in the lingerie department. It's strangely quiet, like being in church.

“Not exactly
husband
material though, is he, Tony?” Stella says, as if reading my mind.

I never told Stella about our fight. I crept in that night and the next day when she saw the state of me I said I'd been drunk and fallen, and I've wondered all along if she believed me. Now I look sharply at her.

“What d'you mean? He's gorgeous,” I snort, in a sort of whispered sneer.

“Well, he's from Bethnal Green. His uncle runs a caff.”

“Shut up! That's just it. He's like us. He knows what's what.”

“Well, thought you had your sights set on a country pile somewhere? A double-D-shaped pool like Diana Dors; a chauffeur-driven Jaguar . . .”

“When did I say that?”

“All right then, maybe not the double-D-shaped pool, but you know, a fella who can choose a nice bottle in a restaurant and buy you a diamond necklace.”

“Tony's reading a book about wine. And, God, you're not seriously saying he couldn't get me some tom?”

“OK, OK, he could get the tom, but . . . well, for how long? I mean, before he's nicked or the Soho Don decides to make him eat a red-hot poker or something? I thought you wanted those things for
keeps.
”

“Keeps! Nothing's for keeps, is it? Especially not a fella.”

We're angry, but whispering out of the sides of our mouths; wandering around, unfolding bras from their tissue-papered boxes, and getting the snooty sales girl to pull out drawer after drawer of silk French knickers, pretending we've got coupons. I know that I'm annoyed, not just with Stella, but generally. Something about the whole subject of marriage—not just to Tony, but to anyone—makes me mad. An angry
bored
mood swells over me, the feeling I had that first night in Holloway, every day the same, the same four walls, over and over.

Remembering Holloway always makes me long to nick something. The sales girl has her back to us, opening yet another drawer; I slip a satin Berlei bra up the sleeve of my coat, stuffing it like a handkerchief, without even glancing around to see if anyone is behind me or watching.

Outside, I'm thrilled to discover that the peach-colored bra is even my size. I dangle it haughtily in front of Stella, who has come out empty-handed. These days I mostly do it to keep my hand in, the hoisting. I hide it under the bed, never even wear it. Half the time I throw the stuff away.

“Anyhow,” I say, in a softer tone, soothed now that I've nicked the bra, like a baby who got her bottle back. I carefully fold the soft fabric and squeeze it into the inside compartment of my handbag. “Why is it always about hooking a man or getting spliced? How—you know—blinkin' old-fashioned is that! Is that the only way to do it? I want to make my own money—don't you fancy that?”

Funnily enough, as it turns out, that's exactly what's on offer. Stella's wrong about the wedding proposal. Tony has a proposal all right, but it's more original than that. The Soho Don is putting up the money for a jewelry heist. And he needs two girls to play the role of fiancées, to choose the rings. There's two thousand in it for each of us. And another thousand if Stella can introduce him to James, her boyfriend, because tom always needs to be fenced, passed on. The Soho Don has heard that James is an international gem dealer, and in his book, such people always have their price.

I
said yes to Tony's proposal. I didn't hesitate. It was the best offer he could ever have made. I was thrilled and flattered, and started planning right away: the wigs, the outfits, the timing. But that night we got drunk and had another fight, a bad one. Tony said I'd been ungrateful about the oysters (I found them yucky, like snot), and had behaved like a bloody tart in Wheeler's, spending all my time hoping to spot an American film star—in short, according to Tony, I'd been an all-round spoilt middle-class bitch.

I remember that bit. Those exact words, because I had a sense of wild surprise as he said them; I almost wanted to laugh. I didn't though. Laugh, I mean. I took one look at his pale eyes, now black again.
Spoilt middle-class bitch
. Then Tony roared, like a bull, a sound so peculiar that the hairs on the back of my neck pricked up, and he rushed at me, and gave me a hard shove in my stomach. The door to the downstairs floor was open, and I tumbled, and before I knew it, I'd bounced down three stairs. Not the whole way to the bottom. I lay there on my back, winded, and Tony glared at me for a second. He looked shocked; I thought he was going to help me up. The bedroom door opened, and a sleepy Stella appeared, and then stood there, as if she didn't know what to do. Tony thundered down the stairs and
stepped over me
on his way out. Stella ran over to me and I lay there, gazing at a crack in the ceiling, feeling not so much in pain as ashamed. My lower back hurt, but I didn't think anything was broken, so I let her help me up, saying, “Don't fuss don't fuss, I'm fine, just a bit winded,” while Stella said, “The bastard, I can't believe he did that to you—what if you'd fallen to the bottom? You could of broken your neck.”

That was the worst part of it. The fact that Stella had seen. That made it harder to push it out of my mind; Stella wouldn't let me.

Never mind all of that. A sum of money I'd never dreamed of earning had just been offered to me. Stella gave me whiskey and I spent the rest of the evening telling her about it, the heist, and talking about how it might be done, what would we have to do, should we go look at the jewelers first, make sure we knew exactly the layout of the backroom, the room we needed to be shown into, to pick our engagement rings. Stella caught my mood. She forgot about Tony in talking up all the possibilities: were the drawers locked, how would we get the owner to leave the cabinets open? What security did they have, Stella asked. Just a panic button, Tony had said, usually under the counter; we'd have to check it out, make sure we never let the bloke get near it. We'd have to wear wigs and sunglasses: would people think sunglasses looked a bit weird inside a shop? No, they might think we were famous or something. And white cotton gloves, of course, for the fingerprints.

As we're climbing into bed, and after we've switched out the lights, Stella said, “My stepdad used to knock Mum around. Another reason I was always legging it. It weren't just what he did to me, I got sick of the sight of them fighting. She'd give as good as she got, but you know, Queenie. You're half Tony's size. He carries a knife. That's all I'm bleedin' saying.”

That Kropp razor. Sheffield ground, Made in England, a blade that Tony loves sliding silkily from its cover. That's not the half of it. For the robbery, Tony had already told me: he'd bought a German Luger, an automatic. He showed me it earlier in the evening, and the two magazines it came with; one with six cartridges, one with seven. Twenty pounds, it cost him. Easy enough to find one since the war; there are tons of them knocking around if you know where to look, Tony said.

I heard what Stella said, but the lights were out, she couldn't see my face; I said nothing. The next morning I had a bruise on my bottom that looked like a black ink stain. But apart from that, nothing was damaged. I had reason to worry, particularly about
damage
, because I suspected, though I hadn't dared to think about it properly, I might be expecting.

Despite what I'd said ages back to Stella, I knew Tony's method of family planning wasn't foolproof. Some of the girls I knew swore by the diaphragm, but of course you had to persuade some doctor, pretend you were married, get it from somewhere; go through the palaver of having it fitted, and then remember to put it in all the time, and smear it with that disgusting jelly . . . and if Stella was right, men hated it, and could feel it; the blinkin' thing hurt anyway, or sprang out of your hand and shot across the floor just as you were squatting in some bathroom somewhere trying to fit it in.

Abortions, though they weren't called that—I'd heard them talked about often enough by girls in our rolling days, or girls at the club, too. Everyone had had one, or knew someone who had. There were knitting needles or a seriously dangerous way, much quicker, involving having amyl nitrites wafted under your nose and a sort of womb scrape. You could be back at work the same evening, as long as you could stand up. Also a doctor in Streatham that would do you safely for fifteen quid. Worst of these stories and the one that stuck in my mind was a girl called Cynthia. She went to a really sleazy place, and was squirted up her with a syringe filled with—can you imagine—
Daz.
She laughed when she said this, and we were expected to, as well. Washing powder. “You could of bleeding done it yourself and saved your fifteen quid,” Stella said, and the others, listening, passing round a cigarette, laughed again.

But there was more. Cynthia said she pulled her knickers up and struggled home on the bus. And she started coming away—that was what she said—and the others nodded, they all understood, they knew what was coming next, but I didn't; I had no idea. When she talked about the pain, the blinding pain, and the thought that she was going to give birth there and then, on that bus seat, either that or die, I felt hot; I was going to be sick. They were sitting on the fire escape, outside one of the theaters, the back of the Apollo on Archer Street, in the early hours of the morning; smoking, legs dangling down on the black-painted ladder to the street. Cigarette smoke and the smell of fat from an open kitchen door somewhere and that perfume that was always around then: Evening in Paris. My stomach turned over, and I leapt down from the metal perch, it was quite a long drop at the bottom of the ladder; I marched off somewhere, I didn't know where I was going, but I kept walking, I was practically running. It was a boy, I'd heard Cynthia say. She'd been crying by then. A tiny boy: he could fit in her palm, but she saw his thingy, and everything. She saw him clearly, the shape of him, red and bloody, and she wrapped it in newspaper and buried it.

Oh, God. Not me, then. No way could I do that.

T
he day of the heist, Stella and me are dead silent as we get dressed, checking ourselves in the mirror in the hall, then grinning at one another, sort of shimmering with excitement. I feel just like I did that day we escaped from Approved School, how we had to get through all the hours of the day before we could really go for it, with our mouths watering the whole time; our salivary glands prickling, like we were just about to tuck into the best meal of our lives.

We've got our instructions. We've been through it, over and over, with Tony and Joe, and the driver, Jimmy. We've got everything we need in the car: wigs, fur coats, sunglasses. It's been decided that I'm the only one who should open my mouth, I'm the only one who can
pass.
There are two cars; two drivers. The Soho Don has paid for these: two ringers (switched number plates)—the idea is that we'll jump in the first car, then ditch it near Waterloo Bridge, where another will be waiting. That's the genius. They won't be looking for the second car.

All I have to do, I'm thinking, as Stella's white-gloved hand rings the bell for the Bond Street shop, and as Tony straightens his jacket and glides up beside me, is use my talent. Do my best. For myself, for the baby, for the future. I feel like I'm stepping onto a stage to pick up a prize. I'm sailing over the threshold, arm in arm with Tony. These are my best skills—all the things the Green Bottles taught me and more. Balls of steel, Gloria used to say. And eyes in the back of my head. And something else—something really special, and mysterious. I can feel it kicking in now, as I'm smiling,
smiling
, at the man in the gold-rimmed specs, who adjusts his tie and smiles back.

“Oh, darling,” I say, lifting my sunglasses, but only the faintest bit—just enough to point out a diamond the size of a gobstopper to Tony. “That one's exquisite . . .” And then turning to smile in my queenly way again at Gold Specs. “Is there a private room, perhaps, in the back?” And leading him, this man, like a poodle, away from the panic button in the front of the shop and into the back room. There he will unlock drawer after drawer, and cabinet after cabinet, never daring to offend us by locking them up again, and Stella will be cooing softly all the time like a pigeon, and then Tony will quietly, gently, close the door to the back room behind us. Joe will be standing in front of it, and it will be too late, as the prickle of something registers with Gold Specs, sweat springing instantly to his forehead, at the very same moment that Tony pulls a gun from inside his coat, and points it there.