The Lights of London Read Online Free PDF

never knew who might be lurking in the foggy alleyways, ready to jump out and slit your throat for the few coppers you had tucked in the leg of your drawers. Sal shuddered involuntarily. She would definitely feel more secure with a companion, especially so close to the river …
    ‘What’s your name then, darling?’ Tibs asked softly.
    ‘Kitty,’ the girl rasped in a voice made almost as harsh as Tibs’s own by the overwhelming combination ofswallowed Thames water, vomiting and weeping.
    ‘Here, what a coincidence. We’re a right pair of pussycats, we are.’
    ‘They call her Tibs,’ Sal explained flatly, jerking her thumb towards Tibs’s face. ‘Got them slanty eyes, see.’
    ‘Yeah, me best feature they reckon. Well, me best till I get me corsets off!’ Tibs, realising immediately from Kitty’s expression that she wasn’t used to such ripe talk, tried another tack. ‘You can’t stand here and catch your death, now can you, love? You come with me. Come on, sweetheart, and we’ll have you all warmed up and dried out in a trice. All right? Come on, let’s get going, shall we?’
    Kitty stiffened, her eyes widening in apprehension.
    ‘Darling, believe me, you ain’t got no choice. You don’t know this place. Anyone could tell from a mile off that you’re a stranger round here, and if …’
    ‘Not in this fog, they couldn’t tell,’ snapped Sal sarcastically.
    Tibs ignored her. ‘Look at you. You’re as nervous as a rabbit and with them soaking-wet things hanging off you, slowing you down, you won’t last five minutes with some of the tripe hounds you get roaming around these parts. I wouldn’t trust ’em with me old granny, let alone a fine-looking girl like you.’ She smiled winningly. ‘You might not realise it, you know, but it’s lucky you bashed into me mate Sal here. If you’d have kept on running in the direction you was heading you’d have wound up in Chinatown.’
    ‘Yeah, I can just see her in an opium den.’ Sal puffed out her cheeks and slapped her arms about her shoulders to keep warm. If
she
was cold in her thick woollen dress, this dopey cow must be perishing in all that wet gear. Why wouldn’t she just get walking? That’d be a start.
    ‘I won’t take no for an answer, Kit.’
    ‘She won’t,’ emphasised Sal, eager for something, anything, to happen, so she could get off with Tibs and on with the business of earning a few bob.
    ‘Let’s at least go somewhere where you can find a bit of shelter and have a little rest,’ Tibs coaxed her. ‘You look like you’ve done a three-day shift in a sweat-shop.’ As she spoke, she stretched out her hand as cautiously as if she were trying to trap a butterfly. ‘I’m just gonna slip me arm through your’n, so as we don’t lose one another in this fog. Then we can walk part of the way with Sal.
    ‘That’ll be nice,’ said Sal, narrowing her eye at Kitty, ‘you can let me go off alone and earn a few bob, while you look after your new friend here and earn bugger all. Still, I’ll enjoy your company while you can spare it, I suppose.’
    ‘Enjoy me company? Enjoy me protection more like,’ retorted Tibs.
    One-eyed Sal smiled in resigned agreement. ‘Don’t look so surprised, Kitty, or whatever you reckon your name is. She’s a right street scrapper this one. Might look like a pretty little pussycat but she acts more like a terrier.’ Without so much as a pause, Sal added, ‘You in the family way, are you? That why you chucked yourself in the drink? I suppose you reckoned that
that’d
make ’em all feel sorry for you. Guilty, like.’
    Kitty didn’t answer, but some progress had been made: she was so bewildered by Sal’s barrage of words and questions that she was allowing Tibs to steer her gently forward.
    ‘He pissed off and left you, I’ll bet. That’s the usual story, eh Tibs?’
    ‘No.’ Kitty dropped her chin. ‘It weren’t like that.’
    ‘Here, Tibs. Listen to that voice. She’s only a