The Lights of London (9 page)

‘It’s not funny.’

‘I know, but anyone around here’ll tell you, the Ripper run off to America years ago. Married some rich old sort, some mad woman who’d been let down by her fiancé and was ripe for the picking. Ready to let herself be grabbed by the first bloke who’d have her. Started a new life over there, so they reckon.’

Kitty thought about the impossibility of such a dream and slumped back against the soot-ingrained wall, defeat and exhaustion washing over her like the river at high tide. ‘I wish I could start a new life.’

‘Tell you what my wish’d be.’ Tibs pointed up at the smoke-belching chimneys that crowded every rain-slicked roof. ‘I wish I could sprout wings and fly away. Right up and out of one of them bloody smelly old stacks I’d go. And I’d soar up into the sky, and float higher and higher until I was right up there in the clouds, just like a flaming skylark. Then I’d flap me wings and I wouldn’t stop, not until I was right over a sweet water meadow, then I’d …’

Tibs’s words trailed away. Dabbing at her tangled, soggy yellow curls, a smile slowly dimpled her plump pink cheeks into an image of girlishly happy innocence. ‘Imagine the money we’d make if I really did start growing feathers, eh, Kit? I’d be a right sight, wouldn’t I? People would pay a fortune to see something like that. Don’t you think? It ain’t gonna happen though, is it? And certainly not to the likes of me. But even if I don’t know how to make me fortune, I do know a sure-fire, slap-bang winner of a way to get us a couple of drinks. So cheer up, stick a grin on that gob of your’n, and we can go in and get ourselves warmed up. And I promise you the Old Boy won’t be in there leaning on the bar.’

Kitty was too dispirited to argue and she certainly had nowhere else to go in this strange cockney world. So she nodded glumly, pushed herself away from the wall and followed Tibs obediently into the pub.

Within minutes of stepping into the warm fug of the big downstairs bar of the Old Black Dog, Tibs proved herself as good as her word and had charmed a round of drinks for them out of one of the customers. With a hurried promise that she was just going to take Kitty’s drink over to her and come straight back to him – so quick would she be, in fact, that he wouldn’t even notice she’d gone – Tibs flashed him a wink and disappeared into the crowd.

Kitty sniffed suspiciously at the swift of strong ale. ‘I think it’s a bit on the powerful side for me, thanks all the same.’

‘Christ, Kit, it’s only a drop of barley wine, it ain’t gonna poison you. Now knock it back and you see it’ll warm you right through. Go on,’ she insisted, guiding the glass towards Kitty’s lips, ‘get it down your neck. That’s only the first of many if I have anything to do with it.’

All the time Tibs was chatting and smiling encouragingly at Kitty she glanced about her.

While it was all very well helping people out – and Tibs’s conscience would never have let her leave this gormless young swede-basher to her own devices – all the good turns in the world still never guaranteed that your own luck would get any better. That was all a con that the bible thumpers put about to keep you in order. In fact, if anything, her own luck had been going from bad to worse lately and she wouldn’t even have been surprised to see Albert Symes standing in the corner, glaring at her, cosh in hand, ready to teach her one of his ‘lessons’.

Kitty had closed her eyes and, doing as she was told, knocked back the drink in a single swallow. When she opened them again it was all she could do to stop herself spitting the foul brew back into the glass.

Tibs slapped her on the back and chinked her empty glass against Kit’s. ‘Good drop o’ gear, eh, girl? Few more of them down you and you won’t know whether you’re kipping under the arches or in a great big feather bed.’ Then, without so much as a pause, she asked, ‘Know any songs?’

From the expression on her face it was clear that Kitty thought she couldn’t have heard right. ‘I’m sorry, it must be all the noise in here. I thought you asked if I know any songs.’

‘I did.’

‘What sort of songs?’ Kit finally managed to splutter.

‘Well, I don’t mean hymns, now do I?’

Kitty really didn’t know how to reply, but it didn’t matter anyway, Tibs had carried on chatting away as if they were discussing whether Kitty wanted salt or vinegar on her chips, or just a splash of both.

‘Mind you, it wouldn’t do no harm singing one or two of them church songs. Some of ’em have right good tunes. Stirring, like. It wouldn’t do to sing none of the gloomy … Here.’ She grabbed Kitty’s arm. ‘Quick. Move yourself.’

Tibs whisked her away to the other side of the bar. ‘The geezer what bought our drinks is coming over. Don’t go looking at him for Christ’s sake. Keep your eyes down.’ Then she muttered to herself so Kitty couldn’t hear, ‘Pity you ain’t about a foot shorter.’

‘Shouldn’t we say thank you?’ asked Kit, craning her neck to get a look at their benefactor.

Tibs’s answer was to drag her further into the crowd that was milling about in the middle of the room.

‘You really are fresh from the sticks, ain’t you, Kit?’

‘Manners cost nothing, Tibs. The sisters taught us that. It was a good lesson …’

‘So’s this,’ she said and with that, right in front of everyone, she lifted her skirts almost to her knees and began singing in a loud, bawling voice, ‘My old man said follow the van!’ and flashing her legs in their high-buttoned boots.

Kitty watched in slack-jawed astonishment as the crowd drew back to form a circle, laughing and clapping along to Tibs’s rather erratic rendition of the music-hall favourite.

She beckoned ever more furiously for Kitty to join her, but Kit shook her head in horror. Not believing in taking no as any sort of an answer, Tibs grabbed the still damp, wild-haired, mud-smeared Kitty by the wrists and whirled her round in a wild sort of polka; all the while continuing to strangle the song in an exuberant, off-key screech that bore so little resemblance to the Marie Lloyd rendition it was barely recognisable.

But despite Tibs’s shaky relationship with the right notes and Kitty’s hurried escape from her grasp, the crowd loved it.

Keen for more, an elderly man was urged by his pals to sit himself at the piano to try and provide an accompaniment to her quavering efforts. His playing had the effect of whipping Tibs into an even more enthusiastic performance. Kitty could only stare.

When the moment came for the impromptu accompanist to show off his solo skills during the middle break of the song, Tibs snatched off her bonnet, tossed it to Kitty and shouted, ‘If you ain’t gonna join in you can pass the hat round, girl! Go on, get ’em to fetch out their mouldies!’

Kitty had no intention of doing any such thing but the crowd made the decision for her. They were only too glad to contribute to the providers of such peculiar entertainment.

‘What a pair!’

‘Just look at ’em!’

‘Big and small! Mud-covered and clean!’

‘Blonde and brunette!’

As they tossed and flicked yet more coins in Kitty’s direction they egged on Tibs to cock up her legs in higher and higher kicks. She was only too glad to oblige, not giving a damn that the opening in her drawers was threatening to make a show of her to anyone with half-way decent eyesight.

‘Make sure you get them pennies what’ve rolled on the floor, Kit,’ Tibs puffed, then, turning her back to the crowd she bent over and gave a tantalising flick and flourish of her skirts, showing just that bit more of her drawers to have them all cheering and whistling for more. She straightened up, flashed her eyes at the now sweat-drenched, puce-faced elderly pianist and simpered, ‘Know any others, darling?’

Upstairs in his theatre, Jack Fisher leaned forward unsteadily and reached under the table for his bottle. He closed one eye to enable him to focus and stared at the shattered glass in shock. ‘Who did that?’ he asked no one in particular.

When no one answered him – actually, there was no one
to
answer him, as he was alone apart from Teezer and Buggy, who were now both soundo – Jack decided to go down to the bar for a refill. One more wouldn’t do him any harm. Tess had never liked him drinking because she said it was a waste of money. And she was right, but just another little drink …

After a couple of tries he rose to his feet, almost managed to brush his floppy red fringe out of his eyes and jammed his battered felt hat down firmly to his ears. He took a deep breath. Maybe business was better down in the bar.

Maybe.

He could only hope so. He was depending on the bar profits to get in some decent acts. That’s what he needed. Decent acts.

Who was he fooling? He had about as much chance of attracting decent acts to this God-forsaken hole, and for the sort of money he had left in his pot, as he had of the mine owner turning up tomorrow morning and offering to take him back to his stately bloody pile and to adopt him as his son and heir.

Still scrabbling around on her hands and knees, like a step scrubber who’d mislaid her carbolic, Kitty started in alarm as she felt someone tap her roughly on the back. She froze, the ha’penny she had been chasing between the table legs forgotten.

But, frightened as she was, Kitty’s surprise was nothing compared with Jack Fisher’s. Here was this odd-looking pair – one as pretty as a little doll, but certainly no singer from the caterwauling he’d heard as he’d come stumbling down the stairs, and this other one, as lanky as a boy and, by the look and smell of her, just arrived from being dragged through the Thames-side mud at low tide – and he hadn’t heard such appreciation in the Old Black Dog since he’d taken the place over. Well, not since the opening night, when the fat tenor’s trousers had split and it was clear to the whole audience that, despite the fog, there was a full moon shining over Rosemary Lane.

Jack coughed again.

Kitty pressed her lips together, took a deep lungful of air and turned her head to peer warily over her shoulder. When she saw the tall male figure in the strangely shapeless hat swaying over her she knew her caution had been warranted.

‘What’s your name, lass?’ the man asked in a calm, if somewhat slurred, north-eastern accent.

‘We never meant no harm, sir,’ Kitty spluttered, her eyes pleading for mercy.

‘I’m not saying you did. I just want to talk to you, that’s all.’

‘To me?’ She tapped herself on the chest. Couldn’t he mean someone else? Anyone else. Please.

‘There’s no one else under that table with you, is there?’ he asked, with a jerky movement that had Kitty fearing he was about to get down there with her.

She shook her head and he held out his hand to her. ‘I’d like to talk to you. You and your friend.’

To avoid his touch Kitty did without his help and instead scrambled inelegantly to her feet. ‘I won’t be a minute, I’ll just go over and see what she’s got to say.’ With a furtive glance over her shoulder at him Kitty rushed across the bar and grabbed Tibs roughly by the sleeve.

Tibs spun round. ‘What the hell?’ When she saw it was Kit she leaned closer. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ she whispered. ‘I’m trying to chat this feller-me-lad here, the piano-playing genius, into giving us another song without
us
having to give
him
a cut of the takings.’

‘Forget all that, Tibs,’ Kitty hissed back, willing her to move. ‘We’ve got to get out of here, there’s this …’

She saw Tibs’s attention wander, saw that she was staring at something – or, more accurately, someone – standing behind Kitty’s shoulder.

Kitty might not have had eyes in the back of her head,
but she knew exactly who was standing there: the red-haired man in the odd felt hat.

She watched as Tibs pinned on a pretty little smile, dropped a brief bob of a curtsey, then said in an almost daintily careful voice, ‘Good evening to you, sir.’

‘Name’s Jack Fisher,’ he said, carefully enunciating each word and attempting, and failing, to touch his finger to his battered hat. ‘I might have a proposition to put to you.’

Quick as a flash, Tibs’s smile opened up and spread as sweetly as warm syrup. She threaded her arm through his. ‘Always glad to discuss a bit of business, sir, anyone’ll tell you that.’

Kitty watched in horror as Tibs allowed herself to be led away by the obviously drunken man and almost screamed when she heard him say, ‘And let me have a good look at those legs of yours. You might well have something there.’

As they were about to disappear through a green baize-covered door behind the bar Tibs paused, whispered something to the man, then turned round and winked at Kitty. ‘I shouldn’t be too long, Kit. You just make sure you wait here for me, all right? And tell that nice young barman that this lovely man said he was to give you a double rum and milk. And look out for One-eyed Sal. When she comes in, get one off him for her and all.’

With that, Tibs stepped through the doorway without so much as another backward glance.

It was half past seven the next morning, the beginning of a bright, if chilly, March day, and Tibs and Kitty were standing at the big butler sink in the gloomy, low-ceilinged basement kitchen of a common lodging house in Rosemary Lane.

Although the sky outside was full of spring promise, inside the room was dank and dark, with a miserable excuse for an open fire making little impact on the almost freezing atmosphere.

The girls were doing their ablutions – managing as best they could when surrounded by pairs of staring eyes from the gloomy depths – while they waited for the huge communal kettle to come to the boil on the range in the far shadowy corner.

Tibs had produced a cracked, dried-out slither of soap from one of her petticoat pockets. She handled it as though it were of the very purest, most expensive quality and scented with the finest of French cologne, although in actual fact it reeked of something more like a sewerman would use to clear the drains.

She delved deep into her assorted layers of bodices and underthings and lathered under her arms with the tiny piece of carbolic, shivering as the cold soapy water touched her skin.

When she’d finished she passed it over to Kitty with a nod that said she wouldn’t take no for an answer – Kitty
had
to borrow it, she was a mate after all – then stared up out of the small square of railing-covered
window that looked out on to the street above.