The Lights of London (2 page)

‘I’ll ignore your rudeness. Now just shut up, Buggy,’ Teezer sternly instructed his verbose assistant, ‘and give your eyes a chance for once.’ He reached over the side. ‘Now, will you look at that?’ he said, obviously impressed.

Buggy couldn’t make out a thing in the dark. ‘Hold it nearer the fire.’

As Teezer heaved his catch closer to the glowing coals, Buggy found himself staring at a pale, bony hand, smeared with river mud and what looked like the stringy remains of an overboiled cabbage.

‘Here, there might be a ring,’ Buggy said, leaning perilously close to the brazier, all thoughts of being reduced to a pile of ashes apparently forgotten. ‘Or a bracelet, even.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Teezer said, his excitement rising. ‘Hang on, it ain’t just an arm. And it’s still warm!’ He took a firmer grip and twisted round so that he could get a better purchase on his find. ‘It’s caught up by the bridge here.’ He wedged his feet against the side and yanked, making the boat rock wildly. ‘With a bit of luck it won’t be too bashed up. Just right for them sawbones over at St Thomas’s.’ He peered over his shoulder at Buggy and winked happily. ‘Looks like we’ll be earning ourselves a nice few bob tonight, me laddo.’

Tibs screwed her eyes tight and pushed her even, pearly little teeth hard into the compressed rosebud of her tiny mouth.

Why couldn’t he hurry up and get on with it? She hated it when they went on and on, grunting and groaning into her neck, breathing boozy fumes all over her until she almost suffocated.

This one might have looked and talked like a gentleman, but Tibs hadn’t been fooled by any of that and hadn’t been in the least surprised when, for all his finery, he turned out to be as disgusting as any mark straight out of the rookeries. It made Tibs laugh when people called the likes of him the ‘Quality’.
Quality
? This bloke wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. And as for the noises he was making … They were repulsive. Just like the animals made when they were being herded through the dung-slicked back streets of Whitechapel to the underground slaughterhouses.

Tibs squirmed as he thrust into her. No, she was wrong, he sounded even worse than those poor beasts. She gulped and swallowed hard, as her mouth and nostrils filled with the odour she knew so well: that of a man who was beyond control.

What he was
really
like was the boys who’d lived in the tenement where she’d once managed to get a proper place to stay. They made noises like him when they dragged her up the stairs and shoved her on to her back on the landing. And then, when they’d finished with her, they’d call for all the other boys in the surrounding buildings to come and take their turn and, as they watched, they’d pant, and they’d …

She shook her head to rid herself of the hateful images.

At least she was getting paid for this.

‘Keep still.’ The man grabbed at her hair, snapping her head back and slamming it – whack! – against the slimy alley wall. ‘Now, do as you’re told, or you’ll feel the back of my hand across that pretty face of yours.’

Teezer cocked his head to one side and regarded the soaking-wet bundle that he and Buggy had eventually managed to haul into the skiff.

‘Well, Bug,’ he puffed, ‘what d’you reckon to her?’

Buggy considered their trophy. ‘Well, Teeze,’ he began, ‘from the look of her I don’t reckon she’s no lady. Not one of them what’s been out on a boat trip to a riverside inn, like. You know, one of them what goes out to enjoy the sunset, while she gorges herself on a fine whitebait supper and a glass or two of best Madeira, but has one too many, forgets she’s a lady and falls arse over tit into the drink. I don’t reckon she’s one of them.’

Teezer plucked at their prize’s filthy rags and tutted contemptuously. ‘Buggy, with a brain like your’n, mate, I do not understand how you’re still only working for a purl-seller. It’s a wonder you ain’t standing for sodding parliament, or …’

‘Christ, Teeze!’ Buggy squealed like a frightened child and threw himself as far away from the body as the little boat would allow. ‘It only pissing moved!’

Thank Gawd for that was Tibs’s first thought as she finally pulled her drab, threadbare skirts down over her saggy, darned stockings. She pulled out her hatpin and refastened her battered straw bonnet, fingering its greasy feather into momentary pertness, all the while smiling up at the man who – thank the Lord – was about to give her money.

With a bit of luck she might not only have the price of a bed for the night but, if he felt inclined to give her a little bit extra – as they occasionally did – she’d have enough to pay Mrs Bowdall and some over to give her pimp, Albert Symes. All of which added up to peace of mind, a decent kip in a common lodging house and being safely off the streets for a couple of hours. What
bliss that would be, and all without having to go searching for other punters.

The thought of it had Tibs smiling again, this time with genuine pleasure.

Please Gawd, she prayed silently, let this gent treat me to a few extra shillings. Please.

She held out her hand, her dirt-ingrained nails poking through the torn ends of her tatty lace gloves. ‘Glad you enjoyed yourself, mister,’ she cooed as softly as she could manage with her gruff cockney growl. ‘Now if you’ll just settle up, like, I’ll be on me way.’

The man’s lip twisted into an ugly sneer. ‘You want payment? From me? For that?’ He shoved his clean white shirt down into his trousers and shook his head in contempt. ‘Get out of my sight, you whore.’

Such language coming from an elegant-looking gentleman might not have shocked Tibs, but the idea that he might try to get away without paying her had her boiling. He could have been the Prince of Wales himself, but he still wasn’t going to have one over on her. She grabbed at his sleeve. ‘You don’t reckon you’re getting away with this do you, you thieving, dirty-eyed …’

‘
Get your hands off me.
’ The words hissed through the man’s teeth as he shoved Tibs hard in the chest.

Unusually, for Tibs, she hadn’t seen the blow coming and her head hit the wall again, making her eyes roll and her ears ring. It took her only a moment to recover, but it was time enough for the man to disappear out of the alley.

Even as Tibs recovered, he was swaggering along the Highway in search of a pint of thick, creamy porter and a steaming-hot beef and oyster pie – another slummer’s treat he enjoyed – before returning to the more salubrious surroundings of his home in Belgravia.

Tibs was incensed both at him and at her own stupidity. ‘You bastard,’ she hollered pointlessly into the night.

Ordinarily, she would have hitched up her skirts and given chase, but what with her aching head and the fog which was now so bad that the whole of Tower Bridge had disappeared into its folds, she knew there was little point. He could be anywhere in the maze of rat-infested streets, courts and alleys surrounding the Ratcliffe Highway.

She spat noisily and expertly, imagining the man to be her target, then dug her hand deep into the secret pocket she’d stitched into one of her layers of flannel petticoats.

Having pulled out her total wealth, she counted it with mounting disbelief. ‘A tosheroon?’ she wailed. ‘Half a sodding bloody crown?’

Squatting down on her haunches, Tibs ran her hand over the mucky cobbles of the alley floor, frantically searching in the dark for the rest of her money, but knowing in her heart that she’d been robbed and that her efforts to find it were in vain.

What made it worse was that she knew it couldn’t have been that posh old bleeder who’d done it. He might have been a heartless, sneery bastard, but he wouldn’t have had the skills to flimp her without her noticing. No, it would have been one of the other tarts and, as clear as a summer’s morning in the Essex countryside, she knew exactly when it would have happened.

The brides had all been standing outside the Hope and Anchor, up by the Minories, before they started their night’s work. All of them eager to hear the latest rumours as to the identity of the madman who’d slit the throat, carved up and murdered the girl who’d been found dumped near the Royal Mint opposite the dock
gates. They didn’t show it, but most of them were really scared and were making all sorts of excuses to work close to one another. It was the third similar murder in the past year, but nothing was being done. The police weren’t interested in a few dead whores. Just as they wouldn’t have given a damn about one of them being robbed.

But while Tibs knew there wasn’t one of those tarts she’d been talking to who wouldn’t take the opportunity to earn a bit extra by dipping the marks they’d picked up, flimping one of your own kind was definitely not acceptable. That was only done by someone low. Someone as low as they came. And that, as far as Tibs was concerned, could mean only one person.

‘Blast your eyes and damn you to hell, you stinking, rotten tea-leaf, Lily Perkins,’ growled Tibs. ‘You know I have to pay Mrs Bowdall, you swindling, low-life whore. I’ll kill you stone dead if I get hold of you. I bloody swear I will.

She was going to have to go back to work after all.

As weary and wretched as she felt, Tibs hauled herself out of the alley and back towards the alehouses that lined the notorious dockside streets.

She rubbed her hands over her face with a groan of self-pity. ‘Ne’mind no bed in no common lodging house for the night, Tibs girl, or being scared of some murdering maniac on the loose. If you don’t earn some money a bit lively, Mrs Bowdall’s gonna say she can’t help you out no more, and worse than that, Albert’ll get hold of you and knock your block clean off your shoulders, and you won’t be needing no bed not ever again. And poor little Polly won’t have a flaming mother. Not even a useless, stupid, careless whore like me.’

Slowly, Kitty opened her eyes and blinked uneasily. Was she going mad? It looked and felt, from the swaying and rocking, just as though she was on the floor of some sort of boat.

A boat?

Warily, she ran her fingers about her and probed the rough but unmistakably soggy texture of overlapping wooden planks.

It was a boat.

If she hadn’t actually lost her mind, then how on earth had she got here?

She blinked again, more wildly this time as she realised she wasn’t alone.

Gradually, bit by awful bit, it dawned on her that not only had she failed to end her miserable disaster of a life, but she was in a tiny bucketing craft, squeezed between two strange men – both drunk by the stink coming off them – with her soaking-wet clothes steaming in the heat of what looked like a brazier full of red-hot coals.

She didn’t have time to consider whether she was actually relieved to find herself alive; her bodily reflexes took over and she was far too involved with physical reactions even to consider such philosophical matters. Just in time to avoid vomiting all over herself, Kitty stuck her head over the side and choked up what looked like several gallons of Thames water, back into the river from where it had come.

Buggy watched, fascinated, actually leaning over her to get a better look. Teezer, on the other hand, was interested in more than the projected contents of Kitty’s stomach.

He gripped Buggy’s shoulder. ‘What d’you reckon, Bug? Not a bad-looking sort, is she? Too skinny and a bit on the lanky side maybe, but some fellers like ’em tall,
don’t they? Makes a change, like, from the little ’uns.’

‘Eh?’ Buggy said absently, his attention now fixed on Kitty’s struggle to stop retching.

‘You see,’ Teezer went on, grimacing with the effort of keeping his purl-addled thinking on track, ‘I saved her life, didn’t I? So I reckon in return, like, she owes me some sort of a favour.’

‘How d’you mean?’ Buggy asked vaguely.

‘She could be the first of my girls, couldn’t she? The start of my …’ Teezer paused for effect, then added grandly, ‘my
harem
. Come on, let’s get her back on dry land and see how she cleans up.’ He nodded at Buggy. ‘Play your cards right, mate, and you can be in on this with me. I might even make you a proper partner.’

Buggy, suddenly interested, flashed him a lop-sided grin. ‘You know, Teeze, maybe you ain’t as stupid as you look.’

Teezer winked and raised his chin triumphantly. ‘Me mother didn’t just keep the pretty ones, now did she, Bug.’

Tibs stood in the shadow of one of the huge bonded warehouses – a storehouse packed full of riches that the likes of her couldn’t even begin to imagine, let alone dream of ever owning. She sighed loudly, leaned back against the soot-covered wall and massaged her aching calves. Despite the cold her stiff, leather-cramped toes felt as hot and as damp as a plateful of steaming saveloys. At least in the summer she could pull off her boots, stuff her stockings down into the toes and dangle them round her neck by the laces.

She loved that feeling, having her feet free. Especially when she took ten minutes to get herself down to the river at low tide and walked along the edge, letting the mud ooze and squidge up between her bare toes.

She’d get herself a decent pair of boots one day, ones that really fitted her, and a pot of Elliman’s Embrocation to rub into her legs, and a nice basin of water with Epsom Salts to soak her dogs in. Yeah, and she’d get herself a new tiara and all, while she was about it. You could hardly keep turning up at Windsor Castle in the same old gear every time. …

When she saw people, like the bloke who’d just diddled her, being able to spend so much on fine clothes, just because they liked the look of them, just for the sake of it, it really amazed her how much money there was in the world. Especially when all she needed was probably no more than a fraction of what they’d throw away on a new bonnet for their fat, lazy wives, that would be worn no more than a few times and discarded for the next fashionable style or colour.

That money could change her life.

And Polly’s.

Still, it was no good dreaming. Life wasn’t fair now, and it probably never had been and never would be.

She puffed out her cheeks and blew noisily. Where was the nearest likely gaff to find a mark at this time of night? By now, most of them would have picked up a girl already, or else they’d be too pissed to give a damn about having a bit of the other. And because the crossing sweepers didn’t exactly queue up to ply their trade in this part of London, the streets were that mucky by this hour it was like wading through a swamp made up of dung. Especially when the air was so damp.