The Lights of London by Gilda O'Neill Page A

had nowhere else to go, but who had no chance of finding anything to fill their bellies other than the rotten discarded rubbish left at the end of the day under the market stalls.
    And as for the children, Kitty
really
couldn’t bear to look at them.
    When she had arrived in London – was it really only a few days ago? – she had considered herself to be badly off. Then she had seen the first of the poor little barefoot mites draped in their filthy shreds, raking the streets with no expression in their eyes other than fear.
    And now, here she was, just another one of the desperate, anonymous creatures, slumped in a line along one side of a dark, narrow roadway that curved under the vaulted roof of a railway bridge, so near to the wealth and comfort of the City, but so far away from any chance of ever sharing in its fortune and prosperity.
    Kitty wondered if they crowded on the one side of the road like that so they could keep warm. But it didn’t seem very likely. Bony bodies wrapped in rags didn’t give out much heat, even if they were huddled together like piglets in a sty.
    The bells of a nearby church chimed ten and Kitty realised she had been asleep for less than an hour; shealso discovered why the other side of the street was left clear.
    Glimmering through the slanting rain came the dull yellow light of a bull’s-eye lantern, the sort carried by constables on the beat; it was accompanied by the firm, confident footsteps of a heavy, well-fed man.
    The policeman himself appeared out of the gloom, his drooping black moustache and dark, bulky cape sparkling with droplets of water.
    He slowed down, then stopped, adjusted the wick of his lamp and swung it slowly back and forth, illuminating the hollow eyes and scared faces of the scraps of humanity lined up along the roadway.
    ‘I told you last night and I told you the night before,’ he droned, ‘you’re not going to get away with using this public highway as a dosshouse. Now pick up your things – if you’ve got any other than lice and fleas – and clear off out of it.’
    ‘We ain’t hurting you,’ Tibs snapped at him. ‘And we’ve left the other side clear so’s people can get past. So what’s the harm?’
    ‘The harm,
young lady
, is that they –
you
– are an eyesore and a public nuisance and, as an officer of the law …’
    ‘As a wicked old fart, you mean.’ Tibs scrambled to her feet and jabbed her finger at him. ‘You can see how we’re all suffering, you miserable great rabbit-pie shifter. Just look at you, too fat and lazy, and too much of a coward to have a go at that lot of ruffians up in the graveyard. Women and kids, that’s your mark. Why don’t you just piss off out of it and leave us alone, you mean old bastard?’
    The policeman, his eyes bulging and his face flushing as scarlet as his fat, strawberry nose, enquired in a low, menacing voice, ‘What did you call me?’
    Usually, Tibs would have carried on with her disrespectful attack, on the principle that she could wear down the best of them with the sharpness of her tongue, or, if it came to the worst, could outrun them if they seemed to be winning the argument, but she had this half-barmy country bumpkin to think about.
    She jerked her head at Kitty and said in a much softer tone, ‘Don’t be mean, officer. You can’t expect her to carry the banner all night, can you? Look at her, she’s wringing wet.’ Slowly, Tibs dipped her chin, lowered her lashes and smiled shyly up at him. ‘You wouldn’t upset two young girls like her and me, now would you, sir? Have pity on us.’
    The constable’s tongue flicked across his fleshy lips. He moved closer, flashing his light over Tibs’s face to get a better look. ‘If you were nice to me,’ he said, ‘I might find it in my heart to give you a few pennies to spend on a room for the night. Think of that. A chance to get all nice and warm.’
    ‘Sod off,’ she snarled, ‘or I’ll be down that station so fast