20

Saturday evening

The Borough stinks tonight. The light easterly wind carries the rancid stench of the Bermondsey tanneries to Ruby’s nostrils. It layers the scent of rotting excrement and the pungent, sulphurous smell of a brewery’s wastewater that blow down the High Street whatever the wind direction.

She tries to remember the rich fragrance that pervades the ground floor of Debenham and Freebody or Selfridges, and the bottles of French perfume that one might sniff and dab on one’s skin. Or the warm smell of the fur coats she has wrapped around her shoulders in those stores while pretending that she has means to purchase such luxuries.

Someone is cooking smoked haddock and cabbage. The whole street is eating fish tonight.

She has spent the day wandering the stores over the river, venturing into places she doesn’t usually go hoisting, buying a few items – a handbag, some cosmetics, perfume, silk underwear – and stopping to have lunch. Now she is cleaned out of cash again.

There has been no word from Raymond Calladine. He hasn’t sent a message to say that he has sold her watch. It’s Saturday. He’s only had the piece since Wednesday, but she’d hoped that he might have found someone. She wants the money – even if it means she will have to go to bed with him. The prospect of it makes her feel sick, but she knows that’s the price he’ll demand, as well as his share of the sale, the vile bastard.

She pushes on the heavy door of the Crown and surveys the saloon. Billy is sitting with Charlie Wagstaff, in deep discussion about something. Horses, probably. Charlie is sporting a black eye. It’s worse than Billy’s. Looks like he might have broken his nose, too. She scowls at them both when Billy raises his head and makes her way over to the far end of the room, where some of the Forties have gathered, collecting a gin on the way. It’s a far cry from the champagne she drank with Peter Lazenby.

Edith shuffles along to create a small amount of room for her on the settle.

‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she asks. ‘You look miserable. It’s Saturday. Party night. And pay day.’

Ruby takes a sip of her drink and opens her handbag, hunting for cigarettes.

‘Good job. I need the cash.’

The rest of the Forties drift in slowly, mostly in pairs. There will be as many women here tonight as men, because it’s Saturday. Doll sits in the corner, talking to herself, cutting up a cabbage on the table with a large knife and tipping the slices into a saucepan. Her pint of brown stout is half-drunk already. The men are fewer in number than usual – some of them were arrested at the fight in Clerkenwell last week and are awaiting trial. The ones who have turned up, like Charlie Wagstaff, are still wearing bruises and battle scars as proudly as they wear their war medals.

Annie Richmond enters the saloon, arm in arm with Maggs. They pause at the bar to talk with Clara, and Ronald buys them both a drink. Albert is one of those in a police cell. Edith tells Ruby that Ron left him at the fight and drove off in his car. Bert is furious. Howling curses from behind bars. She heard this from Maggs.

Maggs looks to be in a cheerful mood.

‘And George was arrested by the police, like Bert.’ Edith has all the news. She’s talking to Ruby without worrying whether Ruby is listening. She’s been working in Grace’s warehouse today, helping to sort clothes. She’s been picking over the best of them for herself. She always does. She has picked up all the gossip as well.

‘George?’

‘George Dunning. Alf told Maggs that he went for a copper with a knife – we all know what he’s like when he’s fired up. It’s serious this time. He’ll be inside for a lot longer than Alice. When she gets out of Holloway, she’ll have the house to herself.’

Finally, Ruby breaks into a chuckle. ‘Lucky old Alice. We’ll have the party at her house when she comes out.’

‘We’ll throw out all his clothes and stuff, and he can find himself a new home when he’s served his time.’

‘We should try and get word to her. She’d love to hear it.’

‘If we can’t reach her before the trial, Annie’ll shout it across the court to her.’ Edith laughs. ‘There’ll be a fuss in the gallery if she does, but Annie won’t mind, and I doubt the judge will trouble himself over it.’

‘Daisy!’ Ruby, now more animated by the gin and the good news about Alice’s husband, spots Daisy Gould enter the saloon by herself. Without Harry, she looks lost, thinner. Her weary eyes catch Ruby waving to her, and her mouth curls into a half-hearted smile.

‘Daisy looks rough,’ Ruby mutters. ‘She’s taking it really hard, Harry being inside.’

‘I never fancied Harry much myself, but she really loves him.’ Edith is philosophical about other people’s problems. ‘Five years is forever as far as she’s concerned.’

They shuffle up to make room for her.

‘How are you, Daisy?’ Ruby asks.

‘Not so bad, I’spose. I had a letter from Harry yesterday. He’s well, he says. Been smashing up rocks and hurt his hand, but he’s coping. It’s not the first time he’s been inside.’

Harry and Daisy had lived well enough between them. Harry had worked in a local brewery, delivering barrels to the few public houses that took the beer. It was not well-paid work, but it was honest. The burglaries, the fights, the betting and the casual pilfering were what he did after hours. Daisy went out with the Forties and helped sometimes with the brewery – more so when the men were away at war, less when they came home on leave. They never starved. Harry returned from France with ambitions for a better life for himself and his new wife from the brewery, and the money came in. Daisy started walking around in prettier hats, a smarter coat. Harry was talking about a car. He was not earning enough at the brewery to buy a car, but the money miraculously appeared, and a car was purchased. They talked about moving house and living somewhere better.

And then Harry overreached himself. He travelled out west to ransack a house on his own and was caught by the householder. He might have run away, slipped into the night and been lost to the police, except he decided to attack the man, tried to cut his throat. The man’s housemaid had raised the alarm, running shrieking into the street and finding two constables right outside the house as if they had been waiting there. And Harry had gone to Pentonville.

It might not be the first time Harry Gould has been in prison, but thieving from a store and burgling a house are crimes of a different order, especially if you also try to murder the house’s occupier. He will have plenty of time to grow used to his incarceration.

‘And you?’ Ruby can see Daisy’s eyes are still dark. She’s twitchy, too. ‘How are you? Really?’

‘I’m managing. Just about. I need a job – not just with the Forties, I mean. A regular job. Something to keep me going while Harry’s inside. I really need the cash. Trouble is, everyone in the Borough knows where he is and what he’s done, and I can’t find any straight work. No one wants me.’

Jobs are scarce. The men who returned from the war have moved back into the factories and shops and offices and reclaimed their jobs. The women who kept those jobs warm for them have returned to laundering, serving in small shops and crossing the river at dawn to char in homes and offices in the City. Women like Daisy, suddenly in need of work, are discovering that many jobs are taken. And employers don’t want to hire a woman whose husband is a burglar with a knife. Who knows what she would make off with? They certainly won’t hire her if they know of her association with the Forties. She is tainted, as well as penniless.

‘I thought I’d ask Grace if there’s any work at the warehouse.’

Edith says nothing. She knows that Grace will be reluctant to take on another worker, even out of charity. And she won’t give up her own place, not even for Daisy.

The Crown continues to fill with people. Men wearing their better suits for party night mill around, still discussing the boxing match and the fight that came after it. Snatches of conversation rise and fall – talk of the coppers and their coshes, who is in the cells and, most importantly of all, how the Clerkenwell lads received the thrashing they deserved. The Elephants might be depleted in number, by one or two, but they have restored the honour of the Borough and their reputation among the London gangs. There are cheers, roars, laughs swirling into the air with the tobacco smoke.

Ruby knows that this world is fading. The people here cling onto a past that has slipped away with the war. Twenty, thirty years ago, the Elephants were mighty in this part of London. Now, they are scrappy thieves and crooked bookmakers. They run the betting at the racetrack and the dog track, but others like Billy Kimber and the men from Birmingham are moving in, and the real money – the real influence – is to be had where the rich men play.

She looks over at Billy, joshing and joking with the others. This is what he’s doing – he and Frederick Moss are trying to lead the others into modernity. Dragging them by the nose. Moss and Billy are forging alliances with bigger players, elbowing aside Kimber’s Brummagems, building up the Elephants’ reputation in new ways. Moss is shrewd – almost as shrewd as Annie Richmond. He knows that the men who operate in Peter Lazenby’s circle will be far better protected than those working with the gang leaders like Kimber, for all their knife-wielding bravado. Billy Walsh has been sent in to deal and negotiate because he’s fought alongside these men in France, and he’s earned their respect.

Ruby can admire them for it, even if she’s annoyed that Billy won’t let her be part of the business. It’s not unknown for the Forties and Elephants to work side by side, and he knows it. He is deliberately keeping her out of it. Keeping her small and in her place.

The Forties are adapting, too. The larger department stores have grown wise to their ways, and it is not only Debenham and Freebody who are employing superintendents to walk and watch the customers. Even Gert’s ingenious clothing has had its day – with the changing fashions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to shove stolen goods up your skirts without spoiling the line of your outfit and standing out like a sore thumb. Annie has noticed this in the London stores and is already exploring the possibilities of taking the girls raiding around the country, in places where they won’t be expected nor noticed. She pores over the train timetables, like Charlie Wagstaff pores over the Sporting Life. And because the odds of being caught in the capital are increasing, she is planning more raids with motorcars, so that the Forties can escape at speed, driving faster than a policeman can run or cycle.

Maggs, Grace and Gert weave their way to where Ruby, Daisy and Edith are sitting. They part, like ladies in waiting, and the Queen of the Thieves passes through, making her stately progress to the table.

‘Ladies.’ Annie smiles affably as she sits, a glass of stout in her hand, rings glittering over her fingers. ‘Pay day today, as I’m sure you’re all aware.’

She opens her handbag and pulls out several envelopes. ‘We did well this week, despite losing Alice.’ Annie hands out the envelopes. ‘Try not to spend it all at once, girls,’ she cackles, pulling cigarettes out of the bag as well. ‘But if you need to lose it, I’ve got a good tip on a horse running at Newmarket next week – and I know a bookie offering very reasonable odds.’

They all laugh at this.

Ruby opens her envelope and skims a thumb across the thin bundle of notes. She could have more for herself if she worked on her own. The others don’t even check their earnings; they shove the packet into their pockets or bags and carry on the conversation.

‘Never mind Newmarket, I’ve heard that Whiteleys is having a sale next week,’ Maggs says, leaning in. ‘We should go. I love a good sale.’

They all love a sale. Hundreds of hands will be grasping, rummaging, sifting, pawing at the goods, making it all too easy for the Forties to slip in, hoist and escape unseen.

Annie considers it. ‘We could pull a couple of the cells together,’ she says, puffing on her smoke. ‘Make up the numbers. Your girls, Maggs, and Scotch Mary’s. That’ll take us to eight girls. We’ll put six hoisters in the store – no one will notice you among the crowds. You can jostle and hustle and pack half the store into your coats. Gert, we’ll need some new expandable bags to fit inside blouses and under skirts. There’ll be a lot of merchandise.’

Gert nods. ‘I can do that.’

‘There’s Scotch Mary.’ Grace waves and a tall woman with a halo of bright red hair wanders over. She’s not Scottish, nor is her name always Mary.

‘We’re discussing Whiteleys, Scotch,’ Maggs says, pulling out a seat. ‘Annie thinks we should put our girls together next week. They’ve got a sale on.’

Mary’s eyes light up. She places her whisky on the table and eases her lanky body into the chair. ‘Sounds good to me. I can bring my three.’

‘We’ll put six inside and keep two bolsters on Queen’s Road, ready to catch the goods that are in hand and run for the cars,’ says Annie. ‘I’ll bring the Chrysler and Ronnie’ll be around, too. Ruby, you’re nippy, so you can bolster, and we’ll put little Florrie outside as well.’

‘I want to be inside,’ says Ruby. ‘I can pack a pile inside my coat.’ She hates standing on the street, turning blue in the cold, waiting to take the goods from the others and quickly carry them away. She prefers to be part of the crush inside when there’s a sale. You can swipe a lot in a crowd.

Annie shakes her head. ‘You’ll do as I say and stay outside. You’re too small for this kind of operation. You’ll be better suited to receiving anything brought out and bolstering it to the cars.’

Ruby chews her lip, saying nothing. It’s Annie’s quiet way of keeping her down. She’s stepped out of line once or twice recently, so now she’s being given a lower responsibility – relegated to the same role as Florrie, who is only thirteen and still learning.

The chatter continues over Ruby’s head. Outwardly, she laughs and jokes, but she’s still seething at Annie’s insult. She, Ruby Mills, can pick up priceless watches, go to bed with nightclub owners, find diamonds and pearls that others would miss. And Annie won’t let her inside Whiteleys during a sale.

After a while, Annie, Grace and Maggs leave the table to talk to some of the other Forties. Scotch Mary goes with them. Edith grabs Daisy’s hand and drags her over to the piano, determined to raise her spirits. The man who is sitting on the stool happily bangs out the song she requests, and half of the saloon joins in singing. Even Doll puts down her knife to hum and tap along, before finishing the last inch of her pint and reluctantly standing to go home. Ruby sits, observing, no longer in the mood for their company.

Annie has left her handbag open on her seat.

Ruby checks the room. No one is looking in her direction; they are too busy singing. Quietly, she moves to sit next to the bag and feels around inside it. There are several tightly rolled wads of notes among the envelopes. She squeezes them, assessing how much there is. It would be easy enough to lift one, to pull her hand out slowly as if she were raiding a letterbox. It’s tempting.

She withdraws her hand quickly – empty. Annie is as sharp as a knife. She will have counted the notes and she will know exactly where and with whom she left her bag. Even if she only suspected Ruby of stealing, Annie would maim her for life, or worse, throw her out of the Forties and turn everyone against her.

Ruby stands and drains her gin, eyes scanning the room. No one has seen her hand in Annie’s bag, she’s sure of it.

She hitches her coat over her shoulders and walks to the door. She gives Maggs’s arm a pat as she passes, claiming a headache that requires an early night, and nods goodnight to Annie, fire burning inside her chest.

One day, she will be better than all of them. One day, she will be Queen.