by Dawson, Jill
“What d’you mean? He’s gorgeous,” I snort, in a sort of whispered sneer.
“Well, he’s from Bethnal Green. His uncle runs a caff.”
“Shut up! That’s just it. He’s like us. He knows what’s what.”
“Well, thought you had your sights set on a country pile somewhere? A double-D-shaped pool like Diana Dors; a chauffeur-driven Jaguar . . .”
“When did I say that?”
“All right then, maybe not the double-D-shaped pool, but you know, a fella who can choose a nice bottle in a restaurant and buy you a diamond necklace.”
“Tony’s reading a book about wine. And, God, you’re not seriously saying he couldn’t get me some tom?”
“OK, OK, he could get the tom, but . . . well, for how long? I mean, before he’s nicked or the Soho Don decides to make him eat a red-hot poker or something? I thought you wanted those things for keeps.”
“Keeps! Nothing’s for keeps, is it? Especially not a fella.”
We’re angry, but whispering out of the sides of our mouths; wandering around, unfolding bras from their tissue-papered boxes, and getting the snooty sales girl to pull out drawer after drawer of silk French knickers, pretending we’ve got coupons. I know that I’m annoyed, not just with Stella, but generally. Something about the whole subject of marriage—not just to Tony, but to anyone—makes me mad. An angry bored mood swells over me, the feeling I had that first night in Holloway, every day the same, the same four walls, over and over.
Remembering Holloway always makes me long to nick something. The sales girl has her back to us, opening yet another drawer; I slip a satin Berlei bra up the sleeve of my coat, stuffing it like a handkerchief, without even glancing around to see if anyone is behind me or watching.
Outside, I’m thrilled to discover that the peach-colored bra is even my size. I dangle it haughtily in front of Stella, who has come out empty-handed. These days I mostly do it to keep my hand in, the hoisting. I hide it under the bed, never even wear it. Half the time I throw the stuff away.
“Anyhow,” I say, in a softer tone, soothed now that I’ve nicked the bra, like a baby who got her bottle back. I carefully fold the soft fabric and squeeze it into the inside compartment of my handbag. “Why is it always about hooking a man or getting spliced? How—you know—blinkin’ old-fashioned is that! Is that the only way to do it? I want to make my own money—don’t you fancy that?”
Funnily enough, as it turns out, that’s exactly what’s on offer. Stella’s wrong about the wedding proposal. Tony has a proposal all right, but it’s more original than that. The Soho Don is putting up the money for a jewelry heist. And he needs two girls to play the role of fiancées, to choose the rings. There’s two thousand in it for each of us. And another thousand if Stella can introduce him to James, her boyfriend, because tom always needs to be fenced, passed on. The Soho Don has heard that James is an international gem dealer, and in his book, such people always have their price.
I said yes to Tony’s proposal. I didn’t hesitate. It was the best offer he could ever have made. I was thrilled and flattered, and started planning right away: the wigs, the outfits, the timing. But that night we got drunk and had another fight, a bad one. Tony said I’d been ungrateful about the oysters (I found them yucky, like snot), and had behaved like a bloody tart in Wheeler’s, spending all my time hoping to spot an American film star—in short, according to Tony, I’d been an all-round spoilt middle-class bitch.
I remember that bit. Those exact words, because I had a sense of wild surprise as he said them; I almost wanted to laugh. I didn’t though. Laugh, I mean. I took one look at his pale eyes, now black again. Spoilt middle-class bitch. Then Tony roared, like a bull, a sound so peculiar that the hairs on the back of my neck pricked up, and he rushed at me, and gave me a hard shove in my stomach. The door to the downstairs floor was open, and I tumbled, and before I knew it, I’d bounced down three stairs. Not the whole way to the bottom. I lay there on my back, winded, and Tony glared at me for a second. He looked shocked; I thought he was going to help me up. The bedroom door opened, and a sleepy Stella appeared, and then stood there, as if she didn’t know what to do. Tony thundered down the stairs and stepped over me on his way out. Stella ran over to me and I lay there, gazing at a crack in the ceiling, feeling not so much in pain as ashamed. My lower back hurt, but I didn’t think anything was broken, so I let her help me up, saying, “Don’t fuss don’t fuss, I’m fine, just a bit winded,” while Stella said, “The bastard, I can’t believe he did that to you—what if you’d fallen to the bottom? You could of broken your neck.”
That was the worst part of it. The fact that Stella had seen. That made it harder to push it out of my mind; Stella wouldn’t let me.
Never mind all of that. A sum of money I’d never dreamed of earning had just been offered to me. Stella gave me whiskey and I spent the rest of the evening telling her about it, the heist, and talking about how it might be done, what would we have to do, should we go look at the jewelers first, make sure we knew exactly the layout of the backroom, the room we needed to be shown into, to pick our engagement rings. Stella caught my mood. She forgot about Tony in talking up all the possibilities: were the drawers locked, how would we get the owner to leave the cabinets open? What security did they have, Stella asked. Just a panic button, Tony had said, usually under the counter; we’d have to check it out, make sure we never let the bloke get near it. We’d have to wear wigs and sunglasses: would people think sunglasses looked a bit weird inside a shop? No, they might think we were famous or something. And white cotton gloves, of course, for the fingerprints.
As we’re climbing into bed, and after we’ve switched out the lights, Stella said, “My stepdad used to knock Mum around. Another reason I was always legging it. It weren’t just what he did to me, I got sick of the sight of them fighting. She’d give as good as she got, but you know, Queenie. You’re half Tony’s size. He carries a knife. That’s all I’m bleedin’ saying.”
That Kropp razor. Sheffield ground, Made in England, a blade that Tony loves sliding silkily from its cover. That’s not the half of it. For the robbery, Tony had already told me: he’d bought a German Luger, an automatic. He showed me it earlier in the evening, and the two magazines it came with; one with six cartridges, one with seven. Twenty pounds, it cost him. Easy enough to find one since the war; there are tons of them knocking around if you know where to look, Tony said.
I heard what Stella said, but the lights were out, she couldn’t see my face; I said nothing. The next morning I had a bruise on my bottom that looked like a black ink stain. But apart from that, nothing was damaged. I had reason to worry, particularly about damage, because I suspected, though I hadn’t dared to think about it properly, I might be expecting.
Despite what I’d said ages back to Stella, I knew Tony’s method of family planning wasn’t foolproof. Some of the girls I knew swore by the diaphragm, but of course you had to persuade some doctor, pretend you were married, get it from somewhere; go through the palaver of having it fitted, and then remember to put it in all the time, and smear it with that disgusting jelly . . . and if Stella was right, men hated it, and could feel it; the blinkin’ thing hurt anyway, or sprang out of your hand and shot across the floor just as you were squatting in some bathroom somewhere trying to fit it in.
Abortions, though they weren’t called that—I’d heard them talked about often enough by girls in our rolling days, or girls at the club, too. Everyone had had one, or knew someone who had. There were knitting needles or a seriously dangerous way, much quicker, involving having amyl nitrites wafted under your nose and a sort of womb scrape. You could be back at work the same evening, as long as you could stand up. Also a doctor in Streatham that would do you safely for fifteen quid. Worst of these stories and the one that stuck in my mind was a girl called Cynthia. She went to a really sleazy place, and was squirted up her with a syringe filled with—
can you imagine—Daz. She laughed when she said this, and we were expected to, as well. Washing powder. “You could of bleeding done it yourself and saved your fifteen quid,” Stella said, and the others, listening, passing round a cigarette, laughed again.
But there was more. Cynthia said she pulled her knickers up and struggled home on the bus. And she started coming away—that was what she said—and the others nodded, they all understood, they knew what was coming next, but I didn’t; I had no idea. When she talked about the pain, the blinding pain, and the thought that she was going to give birth there and then, on that bus seat, either that or die, I felt hot; I was going to be sick. They were sitting on the fire escape, outside one of the theaters, the back of the Apollo on Archer Street, in the early hours of the morning; smoking, legs dangling down on the black-painted ladder to the street. Cigarette smoke and the smell of fat from an open kitchen door somewhere and that perfume that was always around then: Evening in Paris. My stomach turned over, and I leapt down from the metal perch, it was quite a long drop at the bottom of the ladder; I marched off somewhere, I didn’t know where I was going, but I kept walking, I was practically running. It was a boy, I’d heard Cynthia say. She’d been crying by then. A tiny boy: he could fit in her palm, but she saw his thingy, and everything. She saw him clearly, the shape of him, red and bloody, and she wrapped it in newspaper and buried it.
Oh, God. Not me, then. No way could I do that.
The day of the heist, Stella and me are dead silent as we get dressed, checking ourselves in the mirror in the hall, then grinning at one another, sort of shimmering with excitement. I feel just like I did that day we escaped from Approved School, how we had to get through all the hours of the day before we could really go for it, with our mouths watering the whole time; our salivary glands prickling, like we were just about to tuck into the best meal of our lives.
We’ve got our instructions. We’ve been through it, over and over, with Tony and Joe, and the driver, Jimmy. We’ve got everything we need in the car: wigs, fur coats, sunglasses. It’s been decided that I’m the only one who should open my mouth, I’m the only one who can pass. There are two cars; two drivers. The Soho Don has paid for these: two ringers (switched number plates)—the idea is that we’ll jump in the first car, then ditch it near Waterloo Bridge, where another will be waiting. That’s the genius. They won’t be looking for the second car.
All I have to do, I’m thinking, as Stella’s white-gloved hand rings the bell for the Bond Street shop, and as Tony straightens his jacket and glides up beside me, is use my talent. Do my best. For myself, for the baby, for the future. I feel like I’m stepping onto a stage to pick up a prize. I’m sailing over the threshold, arm in arm with Tony. These are my best skills—all the things the Green Bottles taught me and more. Balls of steel, Gloria used to say. And eyes in the back of my head. And something else—something really special, and mysterious. I can feel it kicking in now, as I’m smiling, smiling, at the man in the gold-rimmed specs, who adjusts his tie and smiles back.
“Oh, darling,” I say, lifting my sunglasses, but only the faintest bit—just enough to point out a diamond the size of a gobstopper to Tony. “That one’s exquisite . . .” And then turning to smile in my queenly way again at Gold Specs. “Is there a private room, perhaps, in the back?” And leading him, this man, like a poodle, away from the panic button in the front of the shop and into the back room. There he will unlock drawer after drawer, and cabinet after cabinet, never daring to offend us by locking them up again, and Stella will be cooing softly all the time like a pigeon, and then Tony will quietly, gently, close the door to the back room behind us. Joe will be standing in front of it, and it will be too late, as the prickle of something registers with Gold Specs, sweat springing instantly to his forehead, at the very same moment that Tony pulls a gun from inside his coat, and points it there.
We move fast then. Me and Stella open our bags, no finesse, we throw in whole cases, trays, boxes. These are big bags, deep, huge in fact. The size of a man’s briefcase. Funny how no one noticed that when we came in.
“Don’t move,” Tony says, and Joe stands the other side of this bloke, listening at the door: there is another man, lighting his pipe—old school security—and a shop girl, pretty in her pale blue dirndl, at the front of the store, but they’re paying no attention to what’s going on in the back room. Still, we have to walk back past those two before we can leave. My heart is clamoring, scrabbling it feels like, like there’s a whole bunch of desperate kittens in my chest, trying to get out. The same old feeling, the jabbering, glorious alive feeling I always have: my head is dizzy with smells—the leather smell inside Stella’s new bag, the Windolene of the glass in the shop, the stink of a spray of lilies, old cigar smoke. The powerful smell of sweat coming off the man with the gold-rimmed specs. And the acid smell of diamonds; that most of all. Their smell and the feel of them. Even through my cotton gloves I can feel them, shivering, like living things, long strands rattling and shrieking, into my bag.
And then these long seconds pass, and Tony stays behind to cover Gold Specs with the gun, as the rest of us trip politely out of the shop, past the blue skirt at the counter, who has her back to us, doesn’t notice our faces with our glasses back on, the size of our leather handbags and the way we clutch at them; past the bloke with his pipe, who is chatting her up, doesn’t notice the clipped way we’re walking, practically running, doesn’t see Joe’s hand, folded meaningfully inside the top pocket of his coat.
It’s only in the street, climbing into the car—Jimmy’s got the engine running—that I hear shots, two shots, and a shout, and think in a kind of stunned unbelieving way: oh, God, Tony. None of us had bargained on blinkin’ Tony. He’s taut as elastic and he just went ping.
I think there’s screaming, somewhere. It might even be me. We keep the car door open and we’re bouncing along the pavement with it like that as we pull away and Tony comes running out and flings himself in on top of us, a heavy heap, and Stella screams at him—“What did you do, you stupid git!”—and are there people looking, I don’t know, are there any witnesses? I’m calm now, flat as a slice of cold ham at the butcher’s. “Just drive,” I say, leaning forward, talking to Jimmy, “no one is following us, just drive to where we said . . . and put the radio on.” And Jimmy keeps his eyes fixed on the road, and slides easily through the lunchtime traffic. I run hands over myself under my fur coat as if I’m checking that I’m all here, as if it was me who was shot at. I’m pouring with sweat inside my dress, dripping down both sides of my body, like someone just ran a garden hose over me.
“I’m pregnant,” I say, to Tony, in a whisper, but crammed in the back with us, Stella hears me and gives a strange, jerky sort of yelp.
“Huh?” Tony shakes his head, staring at me.
“I’ve clicked. I’m expecting a baby,” I say calmly, as the car weaves skillfully, Jimmy’s eyes always on the rearview mirror, and we approach our drop-off point.
“Oh doll, oh baby, Queenie—Queenie . . .” Tony reaches for me, and throws his arms around me, burying his face in my neck, hugging me so hard he knocks half the breath out of me.
I’m suddenly aware of Stella—who has been quiet, so quiet through all of this—who’s now squirming in the seat beside us, crazily tapping at the window, then reaching for the handle. “Jimmy! Pull over. I’m going—to be sick . . .” she shouts, and we pull over, but only for a second, so she can splash sick into the gutter, before speeding off again towards Waterloo Bridge, all praying that the Soho Don has done his bit; that the promised car is waiting.
That’s the easy bit, the robbery. The waiting, the getting away with it, that’s something else. All thrill ebbs away from you and your limbs feel heavy and dead, and the cigarette in your mouth tastes of nothing but ash and the food on your plate is just colors and smears and you just want to push it around, and put your knife and fork down, shove your plate away from you. All y
ou can do is wait, and it gives you a headache, the worry, the fears, that something will now go wrong. We listen to the radio and pick up the papers, and wonder. What’s going to happen now? I jump out of my skin if there’s a knock at the door. Stella nearly flies through the ceiling one time when she hears a siren pass us in the street. It’s such a big jump, that afterwards we look at one another and burst out laughing.
I picture Tony’s gun, now that I’ve seen it. “It’s at the bottom of the Thames, I chucked it,” Tony says, and I wonder if I believe him. Falling asleep that night, my eyes fly open as I remember it—the Luger—and smell the sweat again of the skinny bloke with the gold-rimmed specs. All this in yellow light, a kind of heat, like a flashbulb just went off. Then I close my eyes again and it’s fine; there’s no gun anywhere. I tell myself: Tony said he got rid of it.
Finally, about a week later, the heist is mentioned in the paper. Stella brings it upstairs and we pore over the account, feeling like film stars: they found the abandoned car, as we’d meant them to, by the river at Waterloo. Tony says the Old Bill probably guessed at who was financing it, but they couldn’t prove it and there were too many at Scotland Yard who were already in the pocket of the Soho Don—he’s sure we’re safe. The papers go on about these two dark-haired, well-spoken women, who they seemed to think “might have been hostages”—and Stella squeals with joy. “Can’t no well-spoken girl ever do a heist then?” she says. “Bleedin’ stupid, these journalists, aren’t they?” It doesn’t occur to the reporter that we might be wearing wigs; that we might not be “dark-haired” at all, or innocent. It’s only Tony who is given a proper description; he’s the only one anyone got a good look at. The witness, still recovering from shock, is a Mr. Alfred Richardson, Senior Sales Assistant, who, “despite being short-sighted,” is certain the man was in his late twenties, dark haired, around six foot three in height, and well-built.” Mr. Richardson was “terrified when with no provocation whatsoever the gangster fired two shots at the ceiling.”