by Dawson, Jill
“OK, I’ll get Maria. Stay outside. We can go to Vicky Park. But Tony—tuck your shirt in. Try and sort yourself out. She’ll be upset, seeing you like that.”
I’m determined to talk to him as if everything is normal. As if I’m not wondering about that Kropp razor that he sometimes taped open, and whether he has it in his pocket. As if I’m not thinking: I always knew you had it in you to be like this; I wondered when I would see it. As if my whole body isn’t braced, like a dog’s: to attack, or defend, or whatever is needed.
Tony allows me to close the door and go back inside. I stand in the hallway for a moment, rest my cheek against the raised shapes on Annie’s wallpaper. Annie’s worried face appears at the top of the stairs and then Maria darts out, a flickering black-and-white shape, running towards us. “Daddy! Is it Daddy?” She races towards the front door and without hesitating flings it open, throws herself into Tony’s arms.
And I’m thinking, again: can I really do this? Break them up? She loves him. She loves him more than she does me. What right have I to make this appalling decision, to deny her the only father she’ll ever have?
I watch them for a moment or two. He’s down on one knee, on the pathway, burying his face in Maria’s hair. He’s holding her very tight, and once again, she squeals: “Daddy, you’re squeezing me . . .”
Then he looks over her head at me, and I see it, but too late. There’s no love there for Maria. This is all about punishing me. In an instant he sweeps her up and he’s off and running. He strides away, down Lauriston Road, before I can follow. I dart out after him, not bothering to fetch my shoes, only dimly conscious of the iciness under my bare feet, screaming and shouting, and watching helplessly as I see him bundle her into a parked car, a car he’d parked out of sight, but screams off in a moment, as if he left the keys in, the engine running. Like a getaway. His talent, of course; how could I hope to follow him?
An old man comes over to me, to where I’ve sunk to the ground. I think I might be crying.
“Is that your husband?” the old fella asks.
When I say nothing he points to the call box near us with his walking stick.
“Shall I call the Old Bill for you?”
Call the police. Should I? That would be a first. Annie has come running out onto the street after me, and she’s brought my shoes. She puts an arm around me and nods to the old man, dismissing his help, and huddles me up onto my feet, ushers me back towards the house. I’m sobbing, but I’m also stunned; I can’t think straight. I can’t believe my own stupidity: that I would let Tony get this close to us and not realize he was going to do something. As if he would take a rejection lying down.
“When Gracie comes in, I’ll get her to fetch your dad,” Annie says. “He’ll know what to do. Your dad’s got friends, you know, someone who could sort Tony out . . .”
I can’t bring myself to answer her. To voice my worst fears. That it would be too late. That before anyone could get to him, Tony would do something to Maria. And that in any case, it wouldn’t be enough to sort Tony out once. He’d never stay away. I’m not numb anymore; my mind is racing. Am I really made of rubber? Perhaps it’s wood, like that wooden heart Tony once made me—“Treat me right, treat me good, for I’m not made of wood . . .”—and those things are not indestructible. Whatever I’m made of, I’m an idiot. Where has he gone? Should I phone the police and get them to chase him?
Then there’s suddenly a commotion at the door, and Annie leaps up, thinking no doubt that Dad’s returning. But someone is pounding, thumping with a fist on the front door. Annie opens it, and a tumbled Maria is heaped over the threshold, weeping hysterically, dumped on the welcome mat.
“You fucking bitch!” Tony roars. I slam the door in his face, rushing towards Maria, hugging her and holding her. What was that all about? Was it just meant to be a threat? Or did he regret it, think better of it? That explanation somehow rings true; Tony’s moods are unpredictable, and I know he despises his own temper, tries sometimes to get a hold of it.
Once again, I feel how terrified Maria is: her entire body trembling, her teeth chattering, her arms clamped around my neck.
“Save me, Mummy,” she keeps crying. Which makes no sense. She’s home now. But I understand what she means. I have to get us away. Somewhere Tony won’t find us. Not Gloria’s . . . that would be the first place he’d think of. Bobby’s in a place on Vallance Road; Tony knows that, too. Maybe I can go to Stella’s for a while; I don’t think Tony knows where her new flat is, the one belonging to the fat boyfriend, the huge fat one who likes the clinical sex, although it won’t take him long to find out. I need some money. Enough to move somewhere Tony can’t find us, somewhere he’ll never think of. Enough to start a new life, and save us both.
OK, enough excuses. Yes, it was a huge risk to take part in a robbery of this scale, just when I’d got my life on track, when I was out of prison, had got my daughter back, and was trying to go straight, to give Maria a different life than mine. Yes, yes, I’ve tried looking at my life, and how I got here, and I think I’ve covered quite a lot. Genetics, parents, family background, social environment, the wider society I found myself in, blah blah blah; peers, education, values of those around me—yes, yes, you must admit, I’ve covered all of that. What have I left out? What else makes you who you are? Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you believe in destiny, fate? God’s guiding hand? I don’t, I have to say. No, I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing.
I’m staying at Stella’s flat in Mayfair with Maria. It’s a squash, for three people, and it means Maria can’t go to school. Also, as we are all sleeping in the same bed, Maria and I have to make ourselves scarce for one hour every week when the huge fat man comes around. At least Tony hasn’t yet figured out where we are and we’ve been here six months, scrounging off Stella and using up the last few quid of my saved money.
To my horror, I miss Tony sometimes. I feel sickened by the way that a song, a particular song, like that Roy Orbison one, “Falling,” can catch me off guard. I feel quick to bruise, like a peach. Just a snatch on the radio, that aching plea to be forgiven. Tony had a good line in aching to be forgiven. Stella jumps up whenever she hears it. Switches it off.
So we edge along to the summer of 1963. The summer of the Profumo Scandal. Everywhere you go you hear Randy Mice-Davies jokes and record shops are selling a daft album full of silly songs about the case; there are Profumo cartoons in all the newspapers. Stella is particularly obsessed with following it all, because she met both Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler a couple of times; both of them worked at Murray’s as dancers, or showgirls on and off, like Stella. Stella remembers Christine as being striking. She had haunting eyes, like an Egyptian goddess, Stella says, an extraordinary face. What surprises Stella is how the girls are always presented like best friends in the newspapers. Stella remembers them fighting. She remembers a time when Mandy chucked a whole load of Leichner theatrical powder over Christine in the dressing room. Well, threw it into the air and it whirled around in the fan and landed on Christine’s hair as she was sitting there in her Red Indian costume, doing her makeup, ready to go on. And another funny thing: Stella remembers Christine as a blonde, and Mandy as having dark hair, almost black, with a fringe and kiss curls on each cheek. In the papers it’s always the other way around: Christine with her snaky black hair and her mate Mandy a daft blonde in a petal-strewn hat, swaggering out of court.
Anyhow, we follow all this gleefully, poring over the photographs, heartily approving of the fact that Christine and Mandy are, according to the press, still going to Vidal Sassoon in Bond Street throughout the trial to have their hair done; or that Mandy comes out of the Old Bailey in that lovely wrap dress, giving everyone a whirl.
Stella remembers suddenly, reading about the trial, that the name Stephen Ward means something to her. Wasn’t Stephen Ward a name in the little black book of Ruth Ellis, all those years a
go, when we went to visit her at the Little Club? What a strange coincidence, but Stella’s sure she’s remembered right. That Ward knew Ruth’s friend Vickie, who was killed in a car accident in 1956. And there’s another name from the Profumo Scandal that prompts a memory in Stella. The landlord Peter Rachman, ripping off all those colored tenants. One-time lover of both Christine and Mandy. But she can’t remember why or how she came across his name before. I remember immediately: he was in Ruth’s book, too. Small world, Stella says.
Just about to get smaller. Because the robbery was introduced to me through two separate routes. What a criminologist would no doubt call my “social milieu.” The main players were all people Bobby knew. That’s Bruce Reynolds, Charlie Wilson, Buster Edwards, and Roy James. Three of them were boys he knew from borstal; another was a racing-car driver he’d known from his kennel-boy days at Hackney Wick. One of them had been in primary school with us; another in primary school with Stella. They’re all about our age (thirty-ish). Too old to be the Beatles but still wanting their five minutes of fame. Not that I remembered meeting any of them before, but they were deeply familiar, just the same.
Only one of them, as far as I knew, had links to either of the gangs that might mean Tony would know the plan—the Krays or the Richardson gang—and that was a bloke called Tommy Wisbey. It soon became reassuringly clear that Tony wasn’t invited. His current heavy drinking and wildness would have been known of and ruled him out. Also, surprisingly for the time, the Krays weren’t behind this plan. The money was being put up by someone else, though no one ever seemed to know who.
The second connection was through Stella. Her fat man bought his properties with the help of a solicitor, John Wheater. She mentioned him casually to me; she was thinking of trying to buy a flat of her own, and had been talking to this John Wheater about it. He had an Irish friend, handsome, who was always with him; this fella had a couple of rich girlfriends who intimidated Stella. She was always trying to get the two men alone. She did finally, plying them with whiskey when her boyfriend was away visiting one of his other mistresses. These two men started talking to Stella—indiscreetly—about a robbery on a fantastic scale that they’re involved in. She had no doubt, years later, that the Irish man was the one referred to by the robbers as the mysterious “Ulsterman” who tipped them off about the train leaving Glasgow. The train they were about to rob. The solicitor John Wheater was later arrested and sentenced to three years in connection with that same robbery. I’m sure you know which one.
It’s Bobby who suggests it first. Says he needs my help, and there’s a really good whack in it for me if I do. We’re round at this terrible place he’s now living in, on Vallance Road, a real slum; yours must be the only remaining one, I tease him, I thought they were all demolished? I have Maria with me, and I’m nervous. It can only be a short visit: Tony might find us here.
Bobby’s in some sort of trouble. He’s left the firm, or his boyfriend—he doesn’t say which and I don’t ask—and he owes someone a lot of money. An enormous sum, something like twenty-five thousand pounds, and there’s no way on earth to get that kind of money without a really huge job. Why does he owe it? Because he was gambling with it, and it wasn’t his to flush away, but he believed his luck was in (he always believes his luck is in), and he kept piling more and more bets on, that seam of optimism in him, like a strip of mercury, poisoning everything.
He can never hang on to money. I’ve wondered about that, before now. How money that’s “won,” that lands in your lap or is stolen, perhaps never feels quite real or solid. If he tries to translate it into real things, bricks and mortar, it just puffs away.
He’s making us a cup of soapy-looking tea in the kitchenette attached to his living room, and pacing around, talking about this fella Bruce, the leader, and how I’d better say yes quickly, because it’s all set for about a fortnight’s time. Every so often he pauses, clutches at his ribs, winces.
I noticed a toffee-apple seller on Vallance Road on the way up here. I send Maria outside with sixpence to get one, so I can look at Bobby’s ribs.
Under his jacket, his lovely Prince of Wales checked suit jacket—that I know is his pride and joy—under his pale blue shirt, I find sodden bandages. He lets me discover them, but pulls away from me when I put my hand out to touch.
“Leave off. I’m fine.”
I take my tea and go sit on the sofa, hearing Maria’s returning footsteps on the steps outside his front door. He’ll never tell me. I know that, but all the same, the words leak out: “Who was it?”
He’s trembling, I notice. His skin is a watery grey color and his eyes bloodshot. He gives an almost imperceptible shake of the head, meaning: that’s as much as I’m going to say.
“Have you got a television set?” I ask Bobby, opening the front door to Maria’s light knock. He says no. I turn back to him then, aghast at the thought that just occurred. “It wasn’t Tony? It wasn’t because you wouldn’t tell him where we are?” A cold slick of sweat forms on my back as I wait for his answer. Slowly I become aware of a little dark form in front of me, and the sound of splintering toffee. Maria.
“Maria—here, sugar, go into Uncle Bobby’s bedroom and put the radio on. See if you can find that song you like about the devil in disguise.” Maria eyes me suspiciously over the top of her toffee apple, but does as she’s told. I close the bedroom door behind her.
Bobby sits down heavily on the sofa, and makes it clear that the subject of how he got his ribs broken is closed.
“Right. Give me a cigarette and tell me about this job then,” I say.
Bobby opens his packet of Player’s and offers me one.
“Not any old job. It’s only the biggest job you ever heard of.”
So, Bobby explains.
The biggest train robbery in history. A Glasgow-to-London postal train. A traveling post office, in effect. A train due to arrive in Euston at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday 8th August, but with a dash of luck and quite a bit of planning, most of it now in place, will never get there with its £2.6 million in mail sacks, all neatly in marked packages, very helpfully marked with the amount of cash contained within. Bobby will be one of those on the track, hauling the mail sacks. His whack with mine combined is likely to sort us both out. We’ll split it. He can get the man he owes money to off his back—that’s all he’s prepared to say about it—and bugger off to Spain, where he’s happy to live for the rest of his life. I can leave London, live anywhere I like. Anywhere that Tony can’t find me. Give Maria the life she deserves.
“Give me the life I deserve,” I say. I’m not going to make my daughter the scapegoat. I’m not going to be one of those mothers moaning: after everything I’ve done for you . . .
I’m thinking of that day with Stella, after the jewelry robbery. Those bank notes: prancing in our high heels like show ponies, tossing our hair. Two and a half million pounds. What does two and a half million pounds look like?
“We need you to stock the hideaway, kit out the place,” Bobby says. “We’ll do the main bit. You won’t be on the track, but we need a bird for the shopping, for stocking this farmhouse we’re going to hole up in afterwards, because . . . well, blokes look suspicious, don’t they. Blokes don’t buy food.”
You have to laugh.
He tells me a bit more what the setup is. As much as he thinks I need to know. His job is to find the ringer—the cars with plates—but also to be on the track. They’ll be using Land Rovers and an ex-army lorry. Everyone will be in army uniforms and balaclavas. There’s a meeting in South London, and he wants me to go.
“Bruce says girls are unlucky. Crime’s a man’s business.”
“Who is this Bruce?”
“I need him to meet you, see that you’re as good as any bloke . . .”
“Better.”
He grins at me.
“So you’re in, are you, Queenie?”
As
if one of us signaled the discussion over, we both suddenly stand up. Comical, somehow; formal. We stand smiling at each other, trying to pretend just for a while longer that there’s a possibility I might say no. Finally, Bobby laughs, and then winces, and I go to hug him, then remember.
“That day at Hackney Wick,” Bobby says, as I go towards his bedroom to fetch Maria. “The dogs . . .”
No need for me to ask him which day, or why he’s bringing that up again, after nearly twenty years. I pause, my hand on the door handle; nod, say, “I know. You made a decision. Not necessarily the wrong one. You were more scared of Dad than the thought of going to borstal . . .”
“So, are you more scared of Tony? You should be.”
“Bobby. How much will my whack be? That’s all I need to know.”
I open the door to the bedroom and an unusually docile Maria gazes up at me. She’s engrossed in her toffee apple, sitting on the bed, gnawing at it, her face red and sticky, much of the bedspread smeared with it. Bobby won’t like that. On the radio it’s not Elvis but Tony Bennett crooning away. I stand and listen for a moment, and for the first time in months and months, I’m not scared; my heart is rising and rising, like a balloon.
“Oh the good life . . . to be free and explore the unknown . . .”
Even all these years later there is so much that’s written about it, about them, that’s absolute rubbish. The line that always makes me laugh is the one about the “criminal mastermind” behind it all. It’s like no one could actually imagine a bunch of working-class criminals, most of them knowing each other from poor bits of London or their time inside, actually planning it together, carrying off something that cheeky, “the crime of the century” they called it, without a posh bloke to boss them around.
I remember the Sunday Telegraph going on about this shadowy evil genius, a miser living alone in one room in Brighton. An “uncrowned intellectual king of the underworld.” One thing they did get right in my view is that, yes, most big crimes have connections to each other, most cons come from the same families, going back a few years, and we know each other. We meet in school. We go to the same pubs. We go out together, get married, have kids together. You’ve seen that.