Queen of Thieves

by Beezy Marsh

  My girls need to be fast learners and have nimble fingers and being a fur factory girl will stand her in good stead.

  The first trip up West is always an easy one, just me and the new girl and my trusted second-in-command, Molly, to keep an eye on things. You could trust your grandmother to Molly, although she’d probably bring her home one over the eight, she’d show her a good time while she was out.

  The way we operate is that if we are going for a proper spree, which happens three or four times a week, we have teams of us out there, with drivers at the ready. The Forty Thieves don’t work for men, ever. They work for us. That’s how it’s always been and that will never change, not as long as there’s breath in my body.

  Money talks and I make sure I pay the drivers well, so they’re loyal to me. A few of them are brothers of the girls, which helps keep things in the family. Molly’s brother, Jack, is my top wheelman. He has a straight job too, as a porter up Covent Garden, but he knocks off early which means there’s plenty of time to take us shopping.

  Petrol is on the ration these days so that makes it a bit more tricky to run a nice big car with a roomy boot, but I’ve got a Chrysler I keep down in a lock-up off the Borough market. I had to work bloody hard to buy that car and it’s my pride and joy. Everyone round the Elephant knows when the Queen of the Forty Thieves is in town when they see me gliding by in it, with my best mink wrap on. And nobody dares lay a finger on the paintwork or I’ll give them what for.

  Jack drives us up to town in it and parks up outside the stores, while me and the girls go inside. If a cozzer asks him why he’s there, he’ll just say his missus is running an errand. Meanwhile, I will come downstairs and meet one of my gang in the stairwell or just outside the shop and give her a bagful of goods, and she will swap me back the exact same bag as mine; this one will be empty for me to refill it. Works a treat that one, hoisting stuff into a bag and swapping it. If we have to make a quick getaway Jack is there waiting.

  I’ve got lots of tricks up my sleeve.

  Jewellery – Tom foolery – is a particular favourite because everyone likes a sparkler, don’t they? Diamonds are best; they’re small and expensive. Stones are easy to move on and gold can be melted down, just ask my friends up in Hatton Garden, who’ll be happy to oblige. But getting hold of them takes skill, especially these days. Fellas like the smash and grab but that usually ends up with the cozzers chasing them down a dark alley and all that drama and headlines in the papers the next day which make it harder for anyone to do an honest day’s thieving.

  Some might get off on the thrill of the chase, but I enjoy bringing a woman’s touch to the fiddle, to keep things more discreet. It’s less brazen and you can get more done, making a real day of it down Bond Street if you can do more than one shop. It’s brains not brawn that The Forty Thieves are all about.

  Me and my girls might pretend we’re interested in a ring, but we will already have a worthless paste one that matches it tucked away in a pocket. Indecision is the hoister’s friend, along with the desire to ‘see things in the light’, by walking over to a window where you can perfect the switch. You’ve got to keep the patter up while you do it. I have had a few good fiddles where I’ve slipped an entire tray of rings into my carpet bag by keeping some old fool of a jeweller talking and back in the old days, there were friends of mine who made a habit of haring out of the shop with fistfuls of whatever they could lay their hands on. But being behind bars gave them a long time to consider why that was a mistake.

  Now, I’ve never been one to fall for a handsome GI but some of my girls have, and as well as getting silk stockings without having to nick them, they discovered American gum. It always looked a bit unsightly to have a girl chewing the cud like some blooming cow in my opinion but having a bit of gum to stick a ring or two under little ledge at the edge of the counter works a treat to park a ring for a while, until I send an accomplice along to pick it up later.

  The golden rule for The Forty Thieves is you never wear what you have hoisted, ever. Anything you nick belongs to me, first and foremost, and I will pay you handsomely and take a cut for fencing it. That means you have a ready supply of cash to go out and buy yourself something nice, without having to nick it.

  My girls know the joy of stepping into Selfridges or Marshall and Snellgrove and going up to the snooty shop assistants waving a wad of pound notes to make them dance to their tune. They can get their hair done, go out to dinners and dances up West, all on their own pay packets. There’s no other job round our way can provide all that; at least not one where you can keep your knickers on. I ain’t got time for my girls being brasses, that just lowers the tone, but if they want to have a boyfriend that’s fine, as long as they remember where their loyalties lie.

  But I won’t have two girls fighting over the same fella and if it comes to it, I will bang their heads together and they’ll be banned from seeing him for good.

  I won’t stand for all night parties and I dock their pay and give them what for if they turn up to work looking like they’ve pulled an all-nighter. It’s a bit like being a mother to these girls and raising them right, especially the younger ones. I like to give them a good work ethic. Going shopping is going to work and it’s early to bed and early to rise. That’s always been the way, ever since I was a nipper, because if you are too hungover, you get sloppy and it puts everyone at risk.

  The number one rule is never grass or to help a cozzer. To grass is to bring shame on you and your family we won’t ever forget it. In a close-knit community, that can make life very uncomfortable, but anyone who snitches has got it coming, in my opinion.

  The only other hitch is getting caught. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it…

  Chapter Four

  NELL

  Waterloo, London, June 1946

  ‘Is that it?’

  Dad sat hunched over a tiny slice of bread, thinly spread with jam, as Mum wrung her hands in despair.

  ‘I’m sorry, Paddy, it’s the new rations. They cut the bread we get because the people in Berlin are starving.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about Berlin!’ he shouted, banging his fist on the table, which looked as if it might be about to give way. ‘Seems like only five minutes since they were dropping bombs on us and now we’re bothering about what they have for breakfast! How’s a man supposed to do a day’s work on an empty stomach?’

  He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

  ‘And I saw some German POWs cleaning up the mess from the Victory Parade the other day up in Hyde Park and I can tell you, they didn’t look like they were starving,’ he said.

  I stirred the pan of watery porridge on the range. I was famished but given that the button on my waistband was threatening to pop off, I kept quiet, in case my parents looked too closely at my expanding figure. My back had started aching last night, a niggling pain that I couldn’t shift. Oh, I’d give anything to go for a good old soak in the tubs down at the Manor Place Baths but that was a luxury we could rarely afford, at sixpence a turn. The word was that the attendant was getting parky about putting more than a quarter of an inch of hot water in, with requests for ‘a bit extra, please’ being greeted with icy blasts from the pipes, which made it feel more like Siberia than a lovely, steamy bath. Still, it was better than cramming myself into the tin tub in the scullery where Mum might catch sight of my protruding stomach.

  Dad ran his hands through his slicked back hair.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said, glancing over to Mum, who was scouring the cupboard in the scullery for something else to feed him, ‘I know it ain’t your fault but if the government keeps this up, there’ll be a revolution, I’m telling you. The common man will not stand for it.’

  He swallowed the rest of the bread in one gulp, threw his jacket over his shoulder and stalked out of the door.

  I had some sympathy for the Germans. I’d seen some terrible things on the newsreel at the cinema, of their cities in ruins and listless
kids lying on hospital beds, their bellies bloated with hunger. I honestly didn’t mind going without some bread to help. They were ordinary folk like us, who just happened to live in Germany and be on the losing side, that’s all.

  Mum sighed and took our ration books down from the mantelpiece. She handed them to me. They were a mass of complicated instructions.

  ‘Tear this portion off’ and ‘Write in this margin – official use only’ and boxes filled with capital letters for the shopkeeper to tick off; the newest one was B for bread.

  ‘See if you can get us some sausages for his tea on the way home, will you?’

  I nodded as she spooned the porridge into my bowl.

  I’d been planning to go down the Elephant in search of the mysterious Alice Diamond after work but standing in the queue to get meat would take over an hour. The butcher wasn’t fooling anyone with the slimy grey lumps he was palming off on the neighbourhood; they tasted like wet crumbs with a bit of sage added, mostly because that was what they were. Complaining was pointless because everyone wanted the best cut they could get with their coupons, but there were stony glares in his direction when his back was turned. People had barely forgiven him for providing turkeys which looked more like sparrows for the first peacetime Christmas.

  Mind you, at least he had some birds to sell. A fella down in Southwark had all his stock half-inched on the day before Christmas Eve and there was nearly a riot. Our butcher up The Cut wasn’t taking any chances and he slept under the counter after that, with an old army revolver as a companion, to deter looters.

  Mum searched my face: ‘Are you alright, love, you’re looking a bit peaky. Not sickening for something are you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I’m fine, honest, just trying to get this down me. It’s like swallowing glue!’

  Mum started to heat some water on the range for the washing up and set about blacking the grate. She was on second shifts at the factory, so she usually got some of the housework done before she left. We didn’t have much; some blue and white china, a few ornaments, a clock in a walnut case, threadbare tablecloth, a picture of Brighton where they went on their honeymoon before the war hanging off a nail and piece of string, but Mum kept everything neat and tidy. There were no carpets, just bare boards and a rag rug by the range, which she used sling over the washing line in the backyard to beat once a week.

  As I pulled on my coat, I’d decided there was only one thing for it, I’d have to nip down to the Elephant in my lunchbreak and pray Miss Pritchard wouldn’t notice if I was a bit late back.

  Stepping out into the street, the women who worked up in the wastepaper factory with Mum, round on Belvedere Road, were traipsing out of their houses, with shouts of: ‘Morning!’

  They had sacking tied around their legs, to keep the rats away. That thought made me shudder; the longtails crawling over their feet as they sorted through bales of old newspapers.

  The Alaska fur factory, where I worked, was a step up from that. There was always the stench of the dyes and resins to contend with, but at least the animals weren’t crawling all over our feet.

  I’d started there two years ago, helping the war effort. We’d made thousands of sheepskin linings for RAF flying jackets, as well as some for the US Air Force. My section made yellow hoods for the RAF, which were used to help the Air Sea Rescue find airmen in the water when they bailed out.

  The boss, Miss Pritchard, spotted I had a very steady hand and an eye for detail and so after the war, I was put on the beaver lamb section. She had a way of peering at me over her horn-rimmed spectacles, which put the fear of God into me. It turned out she was watching me like a hawk because she had a bit of a promotion in mind. She was a hard woman, stiff as a board with a mouth like a thin red line, which only ever turned one direction: downwards. She had no friends at the factory and she never joined in any of the socials or the once-a-year beano to Margate. How could she? She was the boss and I’d seen her make grown men cry for screwing up dye jobs on the furs, giving them their marching orders, with a glint in her eye. I think she enjoyed it, actually.

  I was a given a job as a groover, someone who painted the stripes on conditioned, trimmed lambskins after they had been dyed brown. That meant I had to paint resin in long, black stripes to make the sheepskin look like a row of beaver pelts. Miss Pritchard said we’d make a really beautiful fur which could pass for beaver, for a quarter of the price, as long as we didn’t muck it up, in which case we’d get our cards. I could lose myself in that fur, the details of every hair I painted, but the responsibility of it meant the first time I did it, my hands were trembling. The lines had to be straight, dead straight. Even with the fear of being fired, it was better than the jobs most of the others had to put up with.

  My pal Iris came running down the road towards me, fixing her hair into place as she went, and coughing her guts up, as usual.

  She worked in the fur beating room at the Alaska factory; it was the worst job in the world, feeding rabbit pelts into a machine with flailing bamboo rods, which whacked the living daylights out of them, sending rabbit fluff up your nose and down your throat. Iris, bless her, was a bit cack-handed and there was no way Miss Pritchard was going to let her loose with a paintbrush near a pelt, so her days were spent in bunny fluff hell.

  ‘Tommy’s going to look for work down the docks today,’ she said brightly, after she’d stopped spluttering.

  We both knew this was a lie. Tommy would spend the morning staring at the wall or swearing at her mother, before traipsing off to the pub for a lunchtime pint, as usual.

  ‘Maybe I could ask my dad to have a word with the foreman at the jam factory, see if there’s any casuals needed?’ I said, tentatively.

  ‘No, no need,’ said Iris. ‘He’s got plans, big plans, he kept me awake half the night talking about it, which is why I slept in. Things are looking up for us, I can feel it.’

  Iris clung to hope like a kid grasping a melting ice cream.

  The tallyman was waiting with his cart at the top of the street, with his old nag quietly chomping on a nose bag of oats. He was tall and almost boyishly good looking, despite his thick mop of silvery grey hair which was tucked under a cloth cap. The tallyman was a real charmer, handsome, with the gift of the gab, and the housewives up Tenison Street and Howley Terrace loved to have a natter with him, because he knew all the gossip and had a way of making them feel special. Buying a tea-towel or two usually involved swapping secrets about people from the neighbouring streets. He soaked it all up, like a sponge, safe in the knowledge that he could squeeze it all back out a few streets away, and no one would ever find out it was him.

  I’d always thought there was something shifty about him, the way his blue eyes darted about and he’d sidle up to people, like a nasty little crab. He walked a bit wonky too, knock-kneed, which is how he’d got out of doing the Army.

  ‘I’ll catch you later,’ he murmured to Iris out of the corner of his mouth, as we hurried past. I caught the look Iris’s face. It didn’t sound like a question, more of a statement and Iris had gone a bit pale.

  Everyone needed the tallyman, for everything from candles to cutlery, but no one welcomed his visits because it always involved paying him for the stuff they’d had on tick the month before. Dad called him ‘that blasted, lanky con-man’ and was always fuming about the interest on repayments, which seemed to go up weekly, but that didn’t stop Mum from being a name in his little red book of customers, which he kept in the top pocket of his waistcoat.

  Iris thrust her hands deeper into her pockets as we scurried along Belvedere Road and up the steps towards Waterloo Road, to catch the tram down to the Elephant; from there we’d always get the bus down through Bermondsey, to the factory gates.

  ‘It can be easy managing on just your wages,’ I said, gently. ‘Is everything alright, Iris?’

  ‘’Course, it’s fine,’ said Iris, without looking me in the eye. ‘We’re getting by.’

  That’s the best that any of us cou
ld say, I suppose.

  We squeezed into a seat side by side on the tram, which was full to bursting with other girls, all headed down to the factories which were known as the Larder of London. The only problem was, these days, the larder was looking quite bare, and everyone was heartily sick of paying through the nose for what went on the table.

  When Miss Pritchard wasn’t on the prowl that morning, the other girls snatched a moment to gossip about what they’d got up to at the Victory Parade. I didn’t have much to talk about, for obvious reasons, ‘Yeah, me fella went off with a tart with red hair and left me up the duff.’ So, the less said, the better.

  In any case, I was too busy watching the clock ’til lunchtime. When the bell went, the others shuffled off over the road to the works canteen and I quietly slipped out of my green overalls. Our factory wasn’t as bad as some, but that canteen, good Lord, what they did to the food was verging on criminal. The stench of boiled cabbage and spam fritters was enough to make me retch, so I didn’t mind missing out.

  I hopped on a bus back up to the Elephant and made my way to the tenements in Scovell Road. Now, where I lived wasn’t what you’d call a white curtain street, by any stretch of the imagination; the kind of place where office workers rubbed shoulders with dockers, and everyone’s nets were starched to perfection. But to find anything positive to say about Scovell Road in them days, was like saying there was a tasty end to a lump of shit. And by the time you’d thought about that as you made your way down Scovell Road, you’d probably have stepped in it anyway.