Mostly, I thought of Pale Joe and the morning that we met.
For while I was a good thief, I was not above making mistakes. Ordinarily they were inconsequential and easily resolved: I chose to target the wrong person, I was forced to give a policeman the slip, I picked a wallet only to find it as empty as a fool’s promise. On one occasion, though, when I was twelve years old, I made a mistake with more far-reaching consequences.
It was one of those London mornings when the sun does not rise so much as the fog changes colour, from black to pewter to a yellow-tinged gun-metal grey. The air was thick with factory smog and the oily smell rising from the river; it had been thus for days and I had suffered a poor week’s takings. There were simply fewer fine ladies willing to ride alone in London when the sullen fogs came in.
That morning I had taken Little Girl Passenger on the omnibus that ran between The Regent’s Park and Holborn, in the hope that I might find the wife or daughter of a lawyer returning from her morning stroll around the park. The plan was sound, but my technique was not, for I was distracted by a conversation I’d had with Mrs Mack the night before.
Although she was of an optimistic disposition, Mrs Mack had an image to uphold and was thus never happier than when she had a gripe in her mouth. One of her frequent laments, owing to the expense of keeping me in fine dresses, was that I grew like a weed: ‘No sooner do I finish letting out the seams or dropping the hems than I have to go back and start all over again!’ This time, however, she had not left the comment there: ‘The Captain and I have been saying it might be time we made some changes to your work. You’re getting too old to be Little Girl Lost. Won’t be long and those Helpful Gentlemen are going to be getting other ideas about how they might like to “help” a pretty girl like you. More so, how you might be able to help them.’
I didn’t want to make changes to my work, and I was quite sure that I didn’t like Mrs Mack’s insinuation as to the sort of ‘help’ I might be able to render the gentlemen. I had started to perceive a change in the way the barflies at the Anchor and Whistle looked at me when I was sent in to drag the Captain home for dinner, and I knew enough to realise that it had more than a bit to do with the ‘nice little pair of buds’ that Mrs Mack had noted when she was measuring me up for recent alterations.
Martin, too, had begun to observe me more closely. He lingered in the hallway outside the room where I slept, and when I dressed in the mornings, where light should spill through the keyhole, it was dark instead. I was finding it almost impossible to escape his watch. It had always been a part of his role within his mother’s enterprise to keep an overseeing eye on things – to make sure that none of us kids mistakenly dragged home trouble in the evenings – but this was different.
And so, as I rode the omnibus that morning, as I slipped my hand into the pocket of the lady beside me and felt her purse beneath my fingertips, I was not concentrating as I should have been; I was turning over Mrs Mack’s worrying pronouncement, probing it for implications, and wondering for the umpteenth time why my father still had not sent for me. Every month or so, Jeremiah would arrive to collect from Mrs Mack the money to be forwarded on to America, and Mrs Mack would read me my father’s most recent letter. But whenever I asked whether he had instructed me to purchase a ticket to America, she told me, no, that it was not yet time.
Thus, I was careless, and the first I knew that the lady was intending to leave the omnibus was when I felt the tug against my hand as she stood up, taking her pocket with her and my arm with it. And then the cry of: ‘Why, you little thief!’
Over the years I had prepared myself for this precise scenario. I had been through it many times in my head. I should have feigned innocence, widened my eyes and pretended that it was all a mistake, perhaps even produced some pitiable tears. But I was caught unawares. I hesitated a fraction too long. All that I could hear was Mrs Mack’s voice reminding me that accusing is proving where power sits in judgement. Against this lady with her fancy hat, fine manners and wounded delicacy, I was nothing.
The driver was moving up the aisle towards me; a gentleman, two seats ahead, was on his feet. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that there was a relatively clear path towards the rear door, and so I ran.
I was a good runner, but in a stroke of bad luck a newly minted policeman doing rounds nearby heard the commotion, saw me take flight, and with a jolt of lusty enthusiasm began to give chase. ‘Stop! Thief!’ he yelled, wielding his baton above his head.
It was not the first time that I had been pursued by a policeman, but on this particular morning the fog had driven me too far north to be able to rely on any of my friends to help my flight. As Lily Millington had warned, to risk capture at my age was to flirt with a one-way ticket to the workhouse, so I had no choice but to run as hard as I could towards the safety of Covent Garden.
My heart pounded as I pelted down Red Lion Square. The policeman was carrying more weight than he might, but was nonetheless a grown man and faster than I was. High Holborn was teeming with traffic and my spirits lifted; I could duck and weave between vehicles and that way escape him. But alas, when I reached the other side and shot a look over my shoulder, he was still there, even closer than before.
I slipped down a narrow alleyway and immediately realised my folly: on the other side was Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with its wide green plain offering nowhere to hide. I was out of options, he was almost upon me, and then I glimpsed a slender lane that ran behind the imposing row of rendered houses, a ladder snaking up the brick back of the nearest one.
With a surge of elation, I gambled that I would be faster than the policeman if I were to move the chase off the ground.
I began to climb, step by step, as quickly as I could. The ladder shook beneath my grip as my pursuer clambered after me, his heavy boots clanging on the metal rungs. Higher and higher I went, past one, two, three rows of windows. And when I had gone as high as the ladder would take me, I scrambled off and onto the slate tiles of the rooftop.
I picked my way along the guttering, arms out wide to keep my balance, and when one house gave way to the next, I climbed over the partitions between them and shimmied past the chimneys. I had been correct in my assumption that I would have an advantage at height, for although he was still behind me I had gained a small amount of breathing space.
But my relief was short-lived. I was already well along the row of houses, and once I reached the other side, there was nowhere further for me to go.
Just as the dire realisation was dawning, I saw it! One of the windows in a rooftop dormer was pushed halfway open in its sash. I didn’t think twice: I forced it higher still and slipped beneath.
I fell hard to the floor, but there was not a spare second to admit injury. I scurried to fit under the wide sill, pressing myself against the wall in a tight crouch. My pulse was roaring such that I was sure the policeman would be able to hear it. I needed to silence it so that I could hear him pass, for only then would I know that it was safe to climb out again and start making my way home.