The Lights of London (26 page)

‘Kit.’

‘Mmmm?’ she mumbled, her mouth full.

‘I know you’re thinking about getting the place nice for my little one …’

Kitty was surprised and a bit ashamed. Polly wasn’t the visitor she had had in mind – she had actually been thinking about Jack – but she didn’t say so.

‘But don’t go wasting your time and money. There’s no point. It just ain’t possible for me to bring her round to ours. Not with Albert knowing where I live now.’

‘I told you, I’ve seen Jack about him.’

‘Thanks for trying to cheer me up, Kit, and for everything you’re doing. But I won’t bring her round. Just in case. But you mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it though.’ She smiled wryly. ‘It’s just that I’m not right used to people being nice to me. Or to Polly.’

‘Well, you’d better
get
used to it. I told you, Tibs, you leave it all to me. I’m going to look after you, just like you looked after me when I needed it. You wait and see,
we’ll have Polly there with us one day. One day soon. And even if we don’t get the sofa yet, we’re going to make that place a proper little home for her when she does come. And Uncle’s is as good a place to start as any.’

When Jack had first taken Kitty and Tibs to the pawnshop to buy clothes for their act, Kitty had been astonished. Not only by being bought things, things that were almost new, but by ‘Uncle’ – the name cockneys gave to pawnbrokers – himself.

He appeared to Kitty to be at least a hundred years old. Small and bent over, he had skin as thin and yellow as fine parchment and was dressed in a style that was the height of fashion when Queen Victoria had been a slip of a girl.

Then there was the place itself. There had been nothing like it in the countryside where Kitty had been born and raised. It wasn’t very wide, not much wider than their little room, but as they walked through the crowded, dusty shop, it seemed to Kitty that it went on for ever. It was like entering a cave that led deep into a mountainside. In fact, it was a cave, an Aladdin’s cave, filled with some of the most remarkable things she had ever seen: a moulting stuffed bear with bared fangs and razor claws; parcels of fine, dust-clogged lace; a tatty ostrich feather fan; odd, patched boots; a fly-specked print of a group of rather bored-looking women about to be ravished by muscle-bound men in classical costume and, dominating the place, every kind of garment that could be imagined.

They were everywhere. In piles and on racks, hanging from doors and ledges, and wrapped in brown paper and stacked behind the grimy counter on row after row of shelves – a special service at a small extra cost to
preserve the privacy of the pledge’s owner.

Kitty had become used to the shop now, but she still loved to root about, to find the unredeemed pledges that Uncle had decided should be sold off, never knowing if she was about to uncover a glass dome sheltering a beady-eyed owl, a Sunday-best suit, or a table-top mangle.

She held up a length of cream-coloured fabric. ‘We definitely ought to get this runner,’ Kitty said, adding it to the bundle of bedlinen she had draped over her arm. ‘It’s really pretty. All threaded through with pale-green ribbon. It’ll look lovely on the mantelpiece.’

Tibs examined the lace work and smiled up into Kitty’s excited face. She felt as miserable as sin, but Kitty appeared so happy it seemed mean not to let her enjoy herself. ‘It’s lovely, Kit.’

‘And how about this gilt-framed looking-glass? I’ve always liked this type of thing. The mistress, when I worked up at the big house, she had them all over the place. ‘And,’ she grinned, adding in a bad imitation of Tibs’s rough cockney growl, ‘a right bugger to clean they were and all.’

‘Hark at you!’ Tibs said, digging her matily in the ribs and doing her best to join in the fun. ‘No one would ever know you was a yokel.’

Kitty suddenly plonked her pile of spoils on to Tibs and dived into a wooden crate that was half hidden behind a huge stack of books. As she stood up she was waving a pair of matching wooden frames as triumphantly as a warrior displaying the victor’s banner. ‘Look at these, Tibs. They’ll be just the job.’

‘What for? Lighting the fire?’

‘No. For our pictures. We could get proper photographs done and Jack could hang them up in the bar. There’s that photographer’s studio near the London
Hospital.’ Her eyes were shining.

Tibs shook her head in surprise. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Kit, but you seem chirpier than a cageful of finches.’

Kitty dropped the frames back into the box. ‘What I want is you to be happy, Tibs.’

Tibs sighed. Her troubles weren’t Kitty’s fault and the great soft thing was doing her best. ‘Course I’m happy,’ she said with a thin smile. ‘Now how about if we see how much he wants for this?’ She pointed to a stack of Windsor chairs in various sizes and states of repair, pulled one off the top and sat down on its rickety seat, testing its strength. ‘It’d be a nice change to have a chair each to sit on, instead of sharing just the one.’

Kitty’s face lit up. ‘You’re right. And if we pushed the clothes rail right into the corner there’d be plenty of room. And d’you know the other thing I’d love one day? Wallpaper.’ She said the word as though she were describing the most sumptuous luxury. ‘And do you know what else I was thinking?’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘When the winter comes we’re going to be able to afford coal every day.’

‘That’ll be …’ Tibs’s words and her expression froze. She eased Kitty aside with a brisk, ‘’Scuse me a minute, Kit.’

‘Oi, you!’ She grabbed hold of a bare-headed man with hair that looked as though it had been cut with a blunt knife and fork, who was making his way towards the door.

Kitty craned her neck to get a look at what was going on. She had noticed the man earlier, just after they had come into the shop. He’d been talking quietly, no, more secretively really, to Uncle. Now Tibs was talking to him and she seemed really annoyed.

Kitty moved a bit closer, not to listen, but in case Tibs needed help. She had let Tibs down once before and had no intention of doing so again.

‘Don’t you go getting no ideas, Bill,’ Tibs hissed at him. ‘Do you hear me? I’m not having the likes of you doing me over. Or anyone else for that matter. That’s one place that’s out of bounds to you and your thieving mates. Got it?’

The man shrugged morosely. ‘Never had a bad thought about you and your gaff in me head, girl. I never …’

‘But you knew I had a place?’

He shrugged again. ‘S’pose so.’

‘And you can keep your gob shut about what you heard her talking about buying and all,’ she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Kitty. ‘Now clear off, or I might tell Albert you was bothering me. Go on, piss off out of it.’

The odd-looking man slunk away like a whipped dog.

‘Who was that?’ whispered Kitty.

‘Spiky Bill. He lives with Dutch Bet in one of the lodging houses in Ship Alley. You know, where all the foreigners doss. I feel a bit sorry for him to tell you the truth, living with her. But you have to watch him, he’d do anything to get another bottle of rum to keep that old cow quiet.’

‘I couldn’t help it, Tibs, but I heard you mention Albert to him.’

Tibs hesitated, staring at the door as Bill closed it behind him without a sound. ‘Well, I wanted to frighten him off. And if I’m so bloody scared of Albert Symes I reckon Spiky Bill has to be and all.’

Jack didn’t go looking for Marie until much later, not
until he’d tortured himself by watching the girls do their first two performances.

They were pleasant-looking enough apart, particularly young Tibs if it was an obvious sort of prettiness that interested you, but when they did their act together … They had the same effect on him as they seemed to have on every other man in the audience. But it was Kitty who drew him. She was special. Really special. And it was driving him mad.

Eventually, frustrated, disappointed and, he admitted it, lonely, Jack left before the final show began and went to find Marie.

When he found her she was with a fresh-faced young sailor at the end of one of the dark alleys around Dock Street, favoured by the local brides when they didn’t have a room for the night and the railway arches were too full. She was standing so close to the man that at first, Jack had thought she was alone.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the shapes in the shadowy darkness he stood there at the opening to the alley watching, with mounting desire, as Marie moved the flat of her hand up and down the young man’s thigh, each time getting tantalisingly closer to the button flap of his fly.

Jack waited until the very last moment – just before it would be too late to interrupt – to call to her, ‘Are you busy there, lass?’

His voice was husky with desire, but Marie recognised it immediately. She swung round and treated him to a broad smile, then said something hurriedly to the confused-looking seaman before leaving him standing there alone as she trotted off to join Jack at the top of the alley. ‘Hello, Jack,’ she breathed.

‘Thought you might fancy doing business in a bit of
comfort and having a guaranteed customer for the next couple of days. Over the Bank Holiday, like.’

Marie’s eyes opened wide. ‘What? You, you mean?’

He nodded.

‘Hang on.’ She ran back to the sailor, said something else to him and didn’t even flinch as he shoved her aside and rushed off into the night with a mouthful of curses that would have had Jack, a grown man, blushing if he could have understood his broad Highland accent.

‘What did you say to him?’ asked Jack with an amused smile.

She screwed up her nose and said carefully, ‘I sort of told him you were me old man. And that you’ve got this horrible disease …’

There was a long moment’s silence, then Jack laughed loudly, throwing back his head and showing his strong, even teeth. ‘That’ll teach him, messing with other men’s wives. Now, how about a drink before we go upstairs?’

‘That’d be smashing.’ Marie, unused to anything even remotely like a treat from her usual customers, was beaming with pleasure.

‘Let’s go to the Anchor.’ He tipped his head towards a nearby pub. ‘I can see what the opposition’s up to.’

Marie was almost beside herself. He was taking her into a pub where he had to buy the drinks!

‘Look, I know what happened that other night when …’

‘Please, Jack, don’t. There’s no need for any explanations. I’m just glad to be with you.’

Jack smiled and patted her hand. ‘You’re a good lass. Maybe, after we’ve had our drink, we’ll go and get ourselves a bite of something to eat off one of the coffee stalls by the bridge. How about that?’

Marie felt a glow of pleasure warming her through like a hot toddy on a cold winter’s night. She probably
wouldn’t have felt quite so flattered, as Jack steered her across the street towards the din that was pouring out of the grubby-looking half-timbered building, had she realised his real motive for treating her so well. The truth of it was that Jack didn’t want anyone seeing him taking Marie up to his room. Not that he had anything to be ashamed of as far as she was concerned – after all, she wasn’t like some of the addled old toms who worked the dockside streets. No, it was something else. Jack just didn’t fancy people seeing him taking
anyone
up there. Particularly not the girls and specifically not Kitty. So he was going to hang around for an hour or so, until Kitty and Tibs were safely back next door, and even Archie was all tucked up in bed and snoring.

‘Don’t make any noise,’ Jack hissed tipsily into Marie’s ear, as he fumbled around with the padlocked door. ‘Or Rex’ll start barking.’

Marie tapped her lips with the side of her finger. ‘Not a word.’ She giggled happily.

If Jack hadn’t had the last two rums he’d ordered, in his efforts to spin out their visit to the Anchor, and then finished the quart bottle of porter that they’d taken with them to wash down their beef and oyster pies, he might have been sober enough to have spotted the figure standing across the street, watching the door of the Old Black Dog, a woman, patiently waiting for Jack Fisher, the landlord, to return home.

The next afternoon a small group of men, taking advantage of Jack’s unexplained absence, had sneaked upstairs with their drinks so they could get a free eyeful of the girls putting the final touches to their new show –
Sweet and Dandy’s Saucy Seaside Sensation
– that they were putting on for that evening’s special Bank Holiday performances.

The pianist, trying to hide his exasperation, had just stopped Tibs in mid-warble for what seemed about the tenth time – her singing might have improved, but it still definitely wasn’t among her best selling points – and was trying to explain, in as nice a way as possible, that maybe she could dampen down the high notes a bit and try going for a more even type of assault on the poor blameless notes of the song in question.

While Tibs stomped her foot and wagged her finger at the piano player, the unofficial audience decided it was time to sort out getting in another round. Teezer counted out some money from the pot the men had earlier contributed to and looked round enquiringly at his companions. ‘Same as before?’

They all nodded.

‘Right. Go down and get us another round, Bug,’ he said, tossing a handful of coppers at him across the table. ‘I’ll wait up here and keep an eye on the girls to make sure their drawers don’t fall down or nothing.’

‘Dirty bugger,’ grinned Bert.

A purl-selling competitor of Teezer’s, Bert had been
only too glad to accept his rival’s proposal that they forget their usual battle for trade and both go into the pub for a few hours’ respite from the blazing August sunshine.

‘You, Bert, do not fully understand the situation,’ Teezer responded pompously.

‘That girl up there should be his by rights,’ mocked Buggy, as he scraped the coins into the palm of his filthy hand.

‘What was that?’ demanded Teezer.

‘Nothing,
sir
,’ mumbled Buggy sullenly, then added as he slouched off out of earshot: ‘Maybe if you stayed sober for a couple of days you’d remember what a sack of old bones we –
we
– actually dragged out of the river that night.
And
that you’ve already said a dozen times how it definitely wasn’t her. And maybe then you’d stop bleed’n’ going on about being done out of a blinking fortune every time you get pissed.’