The Illusionists. Rosie Thomas
day’s dinners hung outside working men’s eating-houses. It was noisy here, with street vendors shouting their wares over the hammering from building sites and the clip of horses’ hooves as loaded drays and hansom cabs and a crowded omnibus bound for Oxford Street rolled by. Pedestrians brushed past Devil, some of them glancing at his handsome face.
Let them stare, he always thought. What’s worth looking at must be worth seeing.
On the opposite corner of the street stood the Old Cinque Ports, a large public house. He hadn’t decided where he was heading today, but wherever it turned out to be would be fine because he felt lucky, and his instincts rarely let him down. In any case there was no hurry. A quick visit to the Ports would be a good way to get business started.
The heavy doors had twin panels of etched glass. Devil leaned on a brass handle and pushed open the door. It was the middle of an autumn afternoon but the lamps in the ornate saloon were blazing, and the bevels of the glass split the bright beams into little rainbows. As it always did, the interior of the pub reminded him of a place of worship. The cavernous ceiling arched overhead, polished brass and carved mahogany fittings glowed, and the altar – or in this case the long, sinuous curve of the bar – was the focus of all attention. The main differences were that it was warm in here and the place attracted a more interesting class of sinner, including numbers of women. One of them swayed towards Devil now. She had broad hips swathed in red sateen and a deep-cut bodice that revealed most of a pair of white breasts so heavily powdered that a pale fog rose off them as she moved. He didn’t think he had encountered her before, but she linked her bare arm in his as if they were old friends and guided him with a nudge of the hips towards a pair of stools. Devil had no objection. He liked sitting up here against the bar where he could admire the rows of bright bottles and their reflections in the painted glass, or flick a glance sideways at the drinkers’ profiles ranged on either side to assess them as potential threat or target. The stools were carved to fit a man’s rear, and when you parked yourself you felt that there was no finer place on earth to be than beneath the roof of this brewer’s temple, and no more promising day in your life than this very one.
‘I’ll have a gin, duck,’ the woman sighed in his ear. She had hopped up on to the stool next to his. Devil rapped on the marble bar top with a florin, and the barman came with a brief nod of greeting. The Old Cinque Ports was a busy place and Devil didn’t come here quite often enough for the man to try to use his name, which was how he preferred it. He ordered a glass for the woman and a pint of Bass for himself, and when the drinks came he put hers into her hand.
She had bad teeth which she tried to hide by keeping her lips drawn taut over her smile. Her hair lay thin and brittle over her grey scalp. She was several cuts above Annie Fowler’s wretched girls but most likely she lived in one corner of a room somewhere in the rookery from which he had just emerged, and probably struggled to find the shillings even for that. No doubt she had children to feed.
The woman lifted the glass and swallowed an eager gulp of gin. Her eyes met his, acknowledging that it was a hard life.
Devil leaned forward so their faces almost touched, like a kiss about to happen.
‘Now, get off with you and leave me alone.’
Her smile died, but she made no attempt to change his mind. She slid wearily from the stool and moved into the throng in search of another mark.
Devil sat back and made a survey of his companions. Several were familiar, none was of interest to him today. Sighing with satisfaction, he drank his beer and lit a cigarette. All was well. All would be well, at least. Coupled with the gift of an optimistic disposition he had the knack of finding contentment in small things. Current circumstances were unpromising, but this was a pleasant interval and he wouldn’t spoil it with dismal thoughts. He might be broke today – indeed, he was broke – but that didn’t mean that tomorrow would tell the same story. He wasn’t like the beggars and thieves who populated the Holborn alleys, immured in poverty and unable to help themselves, nor did he resemble the slightly better-off clerks and drovers and shop workers who gathered under the decorated ceilings of this public house as a break from their menial routines.
He was a man of talents.
Devil had finished his pint and was contemplating the possibility of another when a woman screamed, high and long. This was followed by a burst of shouting and cursing. There were the sounds of a scuffle and breaking glass and Devil idly turned to see two bloodied men in shirtsleeves swinging punches at each other. A woman staggered between them as she tried to haul one out of the fray. There was some jostling for a better view and a few shouts of encouragement from the onlookers, but fights weren’t at all uncommon in the Old Cinque Ports. The publican, a muscled fellow with a pugilist’s face, was already shouldering his way across the room to break it up. Devil was about to turn his back on the spectacle when he noticed the child. He was sliding between the drinkers, short as a midday shadow, dipping pockets.
The slut in the red dress began hauling at the other woman, shrieking, ‘Nellie, Nellie! Stop it now, afore ’e kills the both of you.’ Her purse was a leather pouch pinned at her waist and the child had obviously noted that the mouth of it gaped open. With the swirl of the crowd in the path of the approaching publican to his advantage, he pressed close up against the woman and his hand flashed faster than the eye could follow.
He was good, Devil noted.
Amusement, a dart of interest, or perhaps just a sense that he had treated the whore rudely despite having paid for her gin, made him jump from his stool. He leapt through the crowd and caught the boy as he reached the doors. Devil held him by the throat with one hand and grasped his surprisingly sturdy wrist with the other. The doors swung open and the publican booted the brawlers out into the street, followed by the handful of onlookers who wanted to jeer the fight to its end. Devil and his writhing captive stumbled out amongst them and Devil whipped off the child’s cloth cap so he could get a good look at his face. He stared in astonishment at the glare that met his.
The child wasn’t a boy at all but a man, his own age. There were furrows at the sides of his mouth and a jaw dark blue with stubble.
A pocket-picking dwarf. That was a fine thing.
The little man cocked an eyebrow.
‘I’ve seen you in the halls. You’re Devil Wix.’
He frowned. ‘Mr Wix to you. How much did you get?’ The dwarf tried to look offended but Devil snatched him off his feet and shook him until his pockets rattled. ‘How much?’
The feet in miniature boots swung viciously. Devil’s interest quickened. This was a lively little pickpocket.
‘Put me down.’
‘Give me the money you nabbed.’
‘Why should I? It’s not yours, is it? Unless she’s working for you.’
‘Do I look like a pimp?’
The dwarf put his head back, pretended to consider the question, and then shrugged. Devil almost laughed.
The combatants had exhausted their antagonism. One slumped on a doorstep and mopped his face with a rag. The other spat out blood and broken teeth while his whore clung to his arm and wailed. The woman in red stuck her fingers into her open purse and her mouth fell open in dismay. Devil and his captive were beginning to attract attention so he lowered the dwarf to the ground and roughly explored the small pockets with his free hand. He found a few coins – two shilling pieces, a threepenny bit and four pennies. He held out this haul to the drab and her mouth snapped shut again.
‘Don’t throw your money away,’ he advised pleasantly. She took the coins from him with a blink. Dragging his miniature companion by the arm, Devil marched out of the circle and made for the nearest corner. Another hundred yards brought them to a cabmen’s halt where a sign in the smeary window read: ‘Try our champion 4d. dinners’.
‘I feel like I’ve got a hole in me. Let’s eat,’ he said.
‘Got no money. You just stole it,’ the dwarf snarled.
‘I’ll