Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (30 page)

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 . . .”

E
ven 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.

Funnily enough Ronnie Biggs, the one who ended up being the most famous of all, was really just a bit player. A petty thief, part-time handyman friend of Bruce's who'd spent more time in prison than out of it. He started off in 1946, nicking pencils.

One thing that's agreed in all accounts of the robbery was that there were people who were involved who were never named, or caught. One book by this Piers Paul Read called one of them Bill Jennings. I don't remember any Bill Jennings. Bruce, in his own highly colorful account, called one of them Frank Monroe. I don't remember any Frank Monroe. There was a retired train driver giving specialized advice whose name changed every five minutes: was it Stan, was it Peter, or Frank?

The other thing that's agreed is that only about a seventh of the original £2.6 million haul was ever recovered. One writer on the robbery, the best in my view, wrote, with obvious frustration: “Where the rest went only the surviving robbers know. And as usual, those who are still alive are not saying.”

I
see him once that summer. Tony. I'm on the bus with Maria; he's in the street. He looks . . . handsome. He runs a hand through his hair, and I see a flash of his wrist under the cuff of his shirt. Even now, it's possible to see that wrist like a signal, like a flag raising, a message.
See how you still love me, doll.
He's walking fast though, along Bethnal Green Road, with his usual deliberation. He walks as though he's chasing something.

“Look, there's Daddy!” Maria squeals, and lifts her hand in a wave. I grab her hand.

Am I wrong—I wonder—am I wrong to be afraid of him, to keep his daughter from him? How will I ever know? All I know is that I don't want to be one of those women you read about. The ones discovering their husband jumped from a balcony, or gassed himself in a car, and took the kids with him. The wives who say, yes, he threatened it, but I could never imagine he would
really
do it, do such a thing to his own child . . .

I've seen that gun, the Luger. I never believed he chucked it, not really. And when Dad told me about that girl, that girlfriend before me that Tony hospitalized, was I surprised, really? My problem is, just as it's always been: I have a good imagination
.
I
can
imagine it.

T
he meeting then. Bobby is silent all the way there. Just as we get out of the car, he puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. Then he steps up to the door, knocks sharply. A bloke who must be Bruce opens it. There's a woman hovering in the background as we step in. She moves upstairs without a word, a whiff of baking powder and disapproval as she bangs a bedroom door on the landing above, where she's obviously been told to make herself scarce. A child's voice from somewhere calls to her. I think about Bruce's comment that crime is a man's business, suppressing a smile. Oh, yes. We're just the wives and girlfriends: mopping up.

Bruce takes us into the front room, where the television screen has been covered by a white sheet pegged to the curtains. He's sort of brainy looking, dark hair starting to recede, soft moustache, beginning of a double chin, black-framed glasses. What I notice straightaway is his posture: poker-straight, army bearing. Or like a teacher, somehow. The glasses perhaps.

There's a couple of bottles of scotch on the coffee table and two ashtrays already full of fag-ends. About seven men sitting around. Introductions done quickly—Bobby's sister, I think you know her? That kind of thing. They're so close to the Big Day; the tension smolders in the smoky room like a heat haze.

I find myself wondering if one of them is a new boyfriend of Bobby's. Which one would it be—the tall one with close-together blue eyes is handsome, but there's no sign that any of them is a queer. I decide I must be wrong and not about that for Bobby; it really must be about escaping, and the money.

There's one introduced as Jack and he's really swanking in a mohair suit that looks hand-tailored. I notice a pricey looking watch on one wrist but he's not flash—no other jewelry. He's the only one not smoking. He also has manners. He stands up when we're introduced, nods, smiles, runs a hand through his blond hair, sits down again, carefully tugging his trousers so as not to spoil the creases with his knees. I suddenly feel a tremor of excitement that I've barely yet allowed myself. Perhaps this job might have the odd little bonus for me in it, beyond the money.

This is just last-minute stuff. The Up Special has been thoroughly checked out. The HVP coach is the one they want (High Value Package). This is the core group, but there are others, about the same number again, and the railway worker, needed to beat the railway signaling system and teach the others how to uncouple the carriages. This is trickier than you might think, it seems, if you don't know what you're doing.

“Draw the curtains, Frenchie,” Bruce suddenly says, and a slim man jumps up and the room is hastily darkened, while Frenchie fiddles with a film projector. The one Bobby called Footpad helps himself to a slug of scotch, topping up his glass without offering it to anyone else. I sit down next to Jack, as close as I dare to those long folded legs. He budges up a little for me. I'm conscious that I can feel his thigh against mine, and I try to move away but there's no room on the squashed sofa. His thigh muscle radiates heat towards mine through the fabric.

We're shown a brief wobbly film of the train, then this place called Sears Crossing, all projected onto the sheet pegged to the curtains. At one point the woman from upstairs bursts in with a tray of tea and the light makes us all blink, and her husband—I think this must be Charlie's house—says to her by way of explanation, “It's Frenchie's . . . war stories . . . love, just leave that on the table, ta, we'll put the milk in.”

She glares at me. A bunch of men watching Frenchie's war films? In that case, what's
she
doing there? As the door closes, leaving only a frame of light, Jack places his hand on my knee. No one else sees it. The room is dark. I stay absolutely still, but I don't shake it off. His hand rests there, unmoving, like a leaf that just fell innocently from a tree. We both stare straight ahead, at the screen.

I gather that the train has been studied over and over and these seven men are familiar enough with that side of the operation. They just like going over it. The way they all looked up so shiftily when Charlie's wife came in with the tea was so like naughty boys caught in school that I wanted to laugh. Now we're sitting in a dark pit with dust motes dancing in the strip of light from the projector between us, and it's like being bats in a cave. The room has that feeling: the high whine of something that passes back and forth between us, over and above what is being said.
I've missed you.

A bit more discussion and a few grumblings about having me on the team. Just like Bobby said, they wonder if it's unlucky, having a bird onboard; it's like having a girl on a ship.

“I love being called a girl,” I say. I'm thirty years old.