by Beezy Marsh
Molly smirked at me, a horrible grin which showed off her rotten teeth: ‘That’s right. Things go wrong on jobs and as long as everyone gets out alright, there’s no hard feelings. Besides, I got a lot of nice stuff while you were having a tussle with that cozzer.’
‘I don’t understand how he even knew we were there,’ I said. ‘Of all the shops in London…’
‘Probably just chance,’ said Alice. ‘But he had a good look at my face, which means I will have to be careful in future. We might find ourselves going up to Whiteley’s or further afield down to Bentall’s in Kingston for a few weeks, just until things have calmed down,’ she said.
Molly nodded in approval.
We crossed the bridge and the car crawled at a snail’s pace past a brewer’s dray and a rag and bone cart plodding aimlessly through the darkened streets. Waterloo was silent in the snow.
‘I’ve got to get to work later,’ I said, my nerves getting the better of me. ‘Can’t you drop me my side of the river and I will help you out with this favour another time?’
‘No, it can’t wait,’ said Alice, with a glint in her eye. My heartbeat quickened as I struggled to stay calm.
‘What is it you need me to do?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see, all in good time,’ said Alice, settling herself back on the leather seats and gazing out of the window.
Queen’s Buildings loomed like a ghost ship, with sheets billowing between the tenements, like tattered sails.
We got out of the car, with Molly tottering behind across the ice-covered courtyard, and Alice linked her arm through mine, steering me away from her building and to the other side of the tenements.
The stairwell was just as grim as Alice’s block, and as we climbed, our breath formed freezing clouds in front of our faces.
‘Where are we going?’ I said.
‘Shh,’ whispered Alice, as we stopped outside a door. ‘It’s a surprise.’
She took out her silver-topped cane and rapped loudly. Behind me I saw that Molly had taken something out of her carpet bag. It looked like one of those metal handles that the fellas used to start their cars.
A split second later, the door swung open and Iris was standing there, with a look of surprise on her face and a half-skinned rabbit pelt in her hand.
‘Ain’t you going to invite us in?’ said Alice, putting her foot across the threshold. ‘It’s bleeding cold out here.’
‘Who’s there?’
Tommy came staggering down the hallway, with a half a bottle of beer in his hand, swaying from side to side.
‘Just some friends, paying a little house call,’ said Alice, barrelling past him as Iris stood like a statue, all the colour draining from her face.
‘Get of my house!’ he shouted but Molly thwacked him in the knees with the starting handle and he crumpled.
Alice cracked him on the back of the head with her cane, for good measure, and he fell to the floor and started to sob and shake. He put his hands over his head: ‘Please don’t!’
Iris ran to him. ‘Can’t you see he’s not right in the head? He’s a war hero! He’s been through hell in Burma. Stop hitting him!’
‘Oh, save it,’ said Alice, grabbing Iris by her housecoat and propelling her into the tiny kitchen. ‘He’s the man who knocks seven bells out of you, don’t stick up for him, you dozy cow. Have some self-respect.’
Alice turned and kicked him like a dog.
‘I’d go out for an hour, if you know what’s good for you, mate,’ she said. Molly brandished the starting handle again in a way which made it clear she meant business and Tommy grabbed his coat from the peg on the wall and stumbled off out of the front door.
‘That’s right!’ yelled Molly to his departing back. ‘Naff off down the boozer.’
‘Now,’ said Alice, turning to Iris. ‘I have got a bone to pick with you.’
Iris was white with terror as she rushed to my side.
‘Please, Nell, tell them I’m your friend. Don’t let them hurt me!’
‘Nell works for me,’ said Alice, her mouth twisting into a snarl, ‘She does what I say. Tell her to sit down, Nell.’
I turned to face her.
‘Just sit down, Iris, it will all be fine,’ I said, gently. ‘Whatever this is all about can easily be sorted.’ I had a horrible, sinking feeling that I knew exactly what it is all about. Billy’s words about the tallyman getting his leg over with a housewife who owed him money were ringing in my ears. But if I said too much, I’d give myself away and find myself having to take on Molly and Alice. I wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against both of them.
I prized her fingers off my sleeve, and she plonked herself at her tiny wooden table, which was filled with coney pelts. A basket full of white and brown fluff sat at her feet. The kitchen was spotless, but she barely had a pot to piss in. Tommy must have pawned everything they owned to pay for drink. It was such a pathetic sight.
Iris put her head in her hands and began to cry.
‘Oh, don’t turn on the waterworks now, you little snitch,’ said Molly, slapping her around the back of her head, making her yelp.
‘I don’t know what you mean…’ she snivelled.
‘Oh, but you do, Iris. Don’t be so silly, there’s a good girl. Just tell the truth,’ said Alice, smiling at her.
‘Now, it ain’t every day you get the Queen of Thieves round your house for tea, is it? I like to make it an occasion to remember.’
Alice put the kettle on while Iris sat there, dumbfounded. I swear it took forever for that water to boil and in that time, you could have heard a pin drop.
Then, Alice used up all the tea leaves in the caddy to make the strongest brew imaginable and poured the three of us a cup each, filling each chipped mug to the brim. She pointedly didn’t make one for Iris.
I sipped at my tea. It was so strong it could have stripped paint. Iris looked up at me, but I looked away.
Iris was pleading now: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, honest to God, Alice, I don’t.’
Alice put down her tea and took something out of her pocket.
It was a lace handkerchief and there was something inside it which she unwrapped carefully. To my horror, I saw it was a cut-throat razor with a beautifully carved whalebone handle.
‘My old friend here can usually find a way of making people like you remember the truth, Iris,’ she said, handing it to me.
‘Now, Iris, why don’t you tell us all about the tallyman?’
Iris put her head in her hands and addressed her comments to the floor.
‘I had to sleep with him because I couldn’t pay my bills,’ she said, her shoulders shaking.
Somehow, she found the courage to look directly at Alice and she raised her voice.
‘Is that what this is all about? I’ve been cheating on my husband and he knocks me about. But you show me a woman around here who hasn’t done something like that when their fellas were away in the war! And we all know men can all get a bit handy with their fists, so what business is it of yours?’
Her eyes blazed with barely suppressed anger. ‘You can judge me if you like but I don’t care!’
‘I don’t give a toss who you get your leg over with, love,’ said Alice. ‘But you still ain’t telling the truth.’ She prowled around the back of Iris’s chair and then grabbed a lock of Iris’s beautiful chestnut curls, which had grown all the way to her shoulders since I last saw her.
‘Nell, cut that off,’ she ordered.
My hands were shaking but I knew then, I didn’t have a choice, not if I wanted to get out of here unscathed. Still, I hesitated for a moment.
‘Whose side are you on? Hers or ours?’ said Alice, menacingly.
In that moment, the gulf between Iris’s life and mine seemed wider than the River Thames.
‘I’m sorry, Iris,’ I whispered, slicing through her hair, which fell to the floor at her feet.
But Alice was just getting started. She grabbed another
fistful of hair from the other side of Iris’s head. Tears were coursing down my friend’s face.
‘Tell us the truth about what you really did, Iris,’ said Alice. ‘No more silly stories. Just the truth or I swear I will leave you bald as a coot.’
‘I kept watch for the tallyman,’ she blubbed. ‘I told him when you were going out shopping; what days and what times, so he could follow you up West. I didn’t mean any harm by it…’
‘Now we are getting somewhere,’ said Alice, pulling Iris’s hair so hard that she cried out in pain, as Molly cackled to herself.
‘And why did he need to know, that nosey little tallyman? Tell me that!’
‘It was for one of the bosses up in Soho,’ said Iris, her voice barely a whisper.
Alice turned to me, still clasping a clump of Iris’s hair, and said, matter-of-factly: ‘Cut this bit nice and short, down to the scalp.’
‘You are letting her off too easy!’ cried Molly, swigging from her bottle of gin that she liked to carry in her coat pocket. ‘You should cut her face and be done with it.’
Alice ignored her and looked at me: ‘Well? Get on with it!’
‘Nell,’ moaned Iris, her face a mass of snot and tears. ‘Please, don’t.’
Something in me snapped.
‘You shouldn’t have done it, Iris,’ I said, grabbing hold of her hair myself, and cropping it as close to the scalp as I could. ‘You’ve brought this on yourself.’
Then, I grabbed another hunk of it and sliced through that too. Rage came bubbling up from deep inside me; rage at being forced to do what Alice wanted, at what had become of my life and at Iris for not keeping her big mouth shut.
I felt the softness of her hair in my hands and I wanted to destroy it, all of it. I saw Iris running down Tenison Street towards me, late for the factory, her curls escaping her hair band. Iris and me gossiping on the bus, as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear; her curls shaking as we laughed at our old boss Miss Pritchard and joking about spam fritters in the canteen at the Alaska fur factory. The more I cut, the more I wanted to keep going, to slice away every memory of life the way it used to be.
Iris begged and pleaded but I kept cutting and chopping until her hair lay in heaps all over the kitchen floor and all that was left on her head looked more like one of those skinned rabbit pelts, with a few tufty bits sticking up behind her ears.
‘Grass!’ I spat, as I stepped back to admire my handiwork.
Chapter Twenty-One
ALICE
Elephant and Castle, London, March 1947
Watching Nell at work with my razor brought back a few memories. In fact, it made me rather nostalgic for the time when I started out with The Forty Thieves.
Things were a bit harder in those days, shortly after the Great War, because they only let you work as a look-out for the first year or so. South London was chock-full of really skilled hoisters back then. Every woman worth her salt knew how to clout a fur or steal a frock for the gang and I had my work cut out earning my stripes.
This last war changed all that. Girls got ideas above their station, working in offices and the like, so The Forty Thieves had to adapt. Now I let my girls hoist from a much earlier stage in their training they did back in the old days. And, yes, if an occasion arises when I can test their loyalty to me and the gang, then of course I will take it. Life is full of surprises, and you’ve got to keep them on their toes.
Iris had it coming, the dozy mare. She needed to be cut down to size and now everyone in Queen’s Buildings knows that she has done wrong and been punished. Oh, her hair’ll grow back in time, so I wasn’t that hard on her, was I?
Meanwhile, it’ll make her more pliable for what I have in mind; storing a few nice things of mine in her flat if the need arises, in the knowledge that she will not dare breathe a word of it to anyone. And in return, I will knock that lousy husband of hers to kingdom come if he so much as lays a finger on her again. That is the deal.
So, you see, I’m quite fair really, given she has been a very silly girl indeed. She needs my protection. I can save her from herself and stop her having to shag that little prick, the tallyman, because working for me, I will take care of the money side of things.
In fact, I heard his old nag got a bit poorly because someone put glass in a nosebag full of oats and she cut her mouth to ribbons. Shame, that. I don’t suppose we will be seeing him round our way for a while.
I caught a spark of something in Nell when I introduced her to my chiv that gave me high hopes for her and I gave her a little treat as a reward; it’s only a small sparkler, little more than a chip in a band of gold, but she’s pleased as Punch with it. Molly looked askance when I handed it over. I’ve never given her a reward like that, but then again, she’s never been too far out of my sight, so she ain’t needed one.
The only place I ever had to look for Molly was at the bottom of an empty bottle of gin down the boozer. Young Nell is different. She’s across the water in Soho, doing good work for me, and she’s still getting over the loss of her little one. I think it does a girl good to have a treat now and again.
Besides, old Molly’s been getting a bit too reliant on the sauce of late and I had in mind that young Nell might be deputy material for me, given her liking for violence, so I wanted to make my gratitude clear.
I thought she might be a bit squeamish, or refuse me, given that she and Iris go all the way back to Waterloo but, blooming heck, she went hell for leather on Iris. It was like watching Sweeney Todd at work! It did make me laugh.
There is the small matter of her chucking that wristwatch in my pocket in the lift at Derry and Tom’s but after her performance with Iris, I’m prepared to let that slide. No hard feelings. Of course, the moment she put it in there, I felt it, but I had my hands rather full of that cozzer’s bollocks at the time, so I couldn’t plant it back on her, which I might otherwise have done, just to teach her a lesson. When it comes to being light-fingered, I’m the best in the business.
So, putting a razor in a woman’s hand is always a risk because some girls just aren’t used to it. They see it as something male, something that belongs to their brothers and fathers and they daren’t touch it. I never felt that way. In fact, I like to think that my chiv found me, the day after I was let down so badly by my brother, Lim.
The day after my brother Lim abandoned me to start his own gang, the pound note I earned from my night with the captain was burning a hole in my pocket.
I bought myself a pint of prawns and picked at them with a wooden toothpick as I wandered through the Seven Dials. A plan was forming in my head and I found it gave me quite an appetite.
The lights of theatreland burned brightly and crowds of people bustled in and out of the foyers, dressed up to the nines. It was 1919, little more than three months after Armistice Day, and everyone wanted to forget the war and their losses, and they were out for a good time.
Women called from the shadows in the alley and blokes would appear, adjusting their hats or doing up their trousers, whistling to themselves. It was all just part of the fun for them; women were at the bottom of the pecking order in this city. I looked at one old drab, doing whatever she could on her knees, for a few pennies, and decided I’d rather be dead than selling my body on the streets.
I was worried I wouldn’t remember the way to Mrs Tibbs’ house, but it all came back to me as I meandered through the streets and alleyways of Little Italy and into Snow Hill.
The street was shrouded in a thick pea-souper of a fog as I made my way to her door and knocked softly.
She pulled it open and stood there with her arms folded, eyeing me, coldly: ‘Oh, so, you’re back, are you?
‘You still owe me for those clothes you nicked, I’ve a good mind to report you to the law for stealing.’
‘No need to be like that, Mrs Tibbs,’ I smiled. ‘I had a long chat with Lim, and he explained how things would work between you and me. I think it’s a good idea. Can I come in?’
‘I knew you’d see sense eventually!’ she cried, ‘Come over here and give old Ma Tibbs a hug,’ She pulled me across the threshold and I felt the softness of her body as she pressed my bones so hard, I thought they’d crack.
She cupped my face in her hands: ‘You looked tired.’
‘I’ve been walking around all day,’ I said. ‘How about a nice cuppa to seal the deal on our new working relationship?’
‘Oh, you are a card!’ she laughed. ‘You don’t have to worry your pretty head, just leave all that stuff to me and I will tell you how to keep my clients happy. I have a lot of very good quality men through my door. A vicar, a teacher and even one or two with titles, who sit in the House of Lords, if you please! I can guarantee girls who are clean, like you, because they’re so fresh and young.’
I nodded in agreement.
‘How much do you think I can earn? I mean, how much did Lim get for me?’
She gave me a suspicious glance: ‘If he didn’t tell you, I’m not going to. That deal is between me and him and it’s all water under the bridge now.’
‘Oh, it don’t matter, in any case,’ I said, with a wave of my hand. ‘But what I really want to know is, how much do you think I could earn in a week, after paying you, that is?’
She bustled over to the sink and filled the kettle ‘Three, maybe four quid,’ she said, ‘But I ain’t joking about those clothes. They will have to come out of your first week’s wages.’
‘Sounds grand,’ I said.
She clattered the copper kettle on to the stove and struck a match to light the gas. Soon enough it was whistling and she unlocked a tea caddy and spooned a generous heap of leaves in to her teapot, with great ceremony.
‘Got anything to eat? I’m starving,’ I said, suppressing a fishy burp from the all the prawns I’d scoffed on the way round.
While she was rootling in the pantry for a lump of cheese, I crept over to the mantlepiece and took her glass phial of magic drops, the ones she’d used to calm that baby, and tipped the whole contents in to her teacup and put the empty bottle back on the shelf.
