Mind the Gap (5 page)

Home,
Jazz thought, with a sudden longing.

“Now, then,” the man continued. He groaned slightly as he sat on a large blanket in the center of the floor. “Cadge, if you’d be kind enough to illuminate our day’s haul, I’d be most grateful.”

“No problem, Mr. F.” A boy to Jazz’s left disappeared out of her line of sight, coming close to the cabinets and apparently slipping between two of them to whatever lay behind. She had thought they were lined against a solid wall, but maybe not. Seconds later, the rest of the strung lights lit up, and Jazz had to squint against the glare.

There was a brief cheer from the kids and a satisfied smile from the tall man—or Mr. F., as the boy Cadge had called him.

Cadge came into view again and performed an elaborate, slow bow. He was a short, skinny kid, maybe fourteen, with an unruly mop of bright ginger hair, baggy jeans, and a denim jacket studded with button badges. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, which seemed too delicate for his face. He glanced back once—Jazz held her breath—then he slipped the rucksack from his shoulders and went to sit close to Mr. F. From the brief glimpse of his face lit up by the lights, Jazz was sure she had seen no lenses in his glasses.

The children gathered around Mr. F., sitting on blankets, mattresses, or bare concrete. They all took off rucksacks or duffels and placed them beside them on the floor, and the tall man looked around with a warm smile. “Good day, my pets?”

“Best I’ve ’ad in a while,” one boy said.

“Ah!” Mr. F. clapped his hands. “If Stevie Sharpe tells me he’s had a good day, I know we’ll be eating well tonight.”

Stevie Sharpe smiled tightly, the expression hardly changing his face. He tipped up his rucksack, and Jazz gasped. Dozens of wallets and purses fell from it, pattering to the floor like dead birds. “American bus trip broke down,” the boy said. “They had to catch the Tube to meet up with a new bus.” He picked up one wallet and flipped it through the air.

Mr. F. caught it and put it to his nose. “Real leather, of course,” he said. Then he opened the wallet and flipped through the contents. He smiled. “Yes, eating
very
well tonight. That’s if you all don’t mind fillet steak bought with honestly earned money?”

The children laughed and started offering their own hauls to the man sitting in their midst.

What the hell is this?
Jazz thought. And as she watched the strange display before her—more loot, more celebrating, more banter, and plenty of laughter—another realization struck her: she needed to pee.

Wallets and purses were the main hauls, handed to Mr. F. as though he were some ancient god to which the kids had to pay tribute. Jazz guessed that the youngest was maybe twelve, the oldest eighteen. A couple of them were about her age—seventeen—and old enough to pass as adults.

She closed her eyes and tried not to concentrate on her bladder. However desperate her situation, she was too proud to piss herself while shut away in some cupboard. Some
smelly
cupboard, she realized. The coats and jackets compressed beneath her seemed to be exuding an old, musty odor, a mixture of damp and sweat and something more spicy and exotic.

When she looked again, several of the children were gathering their haul and starting to store it away. They shoved it seemingly at random into cupboards and cabinets, but they worked in a way that convinced Jazz there was some sort of system here.

No coats today,
she thought.
No jackets, no coats or jackets, please, not today.

But remaining undiscovered was simply delaying the inevitable. Unless she could stay here until these people went out again, what hope did she have?

Mr. F. stood and strolled to the other end of the shelter, opening the fridge cabinets and taking out a bottle of beer. He popped the top and drank deep, turning around to watch his kids hide away their stolen goods.

Bunch of thieves. Nothing more, nothing less. Jazz actually felt disappointed. Discovering this subterranean place had instilled a sense of mystery in her, distracting to some small degree from the seriousness of her situation. The
hopelessness.
She had been thinking only minutes, maybe hours ahead—avoid capture by the Uncles, maybe plan forward to where and when she could go back up to the surface. And then the ghosts—

(though she had not really seen them, had she? Not really. The stress, the strain, the trauma had thrust visions at her from the darkness, that was all)

—and the discovery of this strange place had combined to help remove her even more from the world. She had not only come deeper, she had come
farther away.
That had felt good.

“Just bloody thieves,” she whispered.

“Mr. F.?” One of the girls walked to the tall man, holding something in her hand.

Jazz held her breath. What had she left? What had she forgotten?

“So who’s the litterbug?” Mr. F. asked. “Cadge?”

“Not me, Mr. F. I’m clean an’ tidy.”

Mr. F. smiled and held up the half-empty biscuit wrapper. “Someone craving bourbons? It’s hardly surprising. They are, after all, members of the biscuit royalty, though I’d only bestow a princehood on them. The king being…?”

“Chocolate Hobnobs,” a tall boy said, rubbing his stomach and sighing.

“Right. So…?”

A chorus of no’s and shaken heads, and then the strange group went back to tidying their haul.

“As ever, I believe you all,” the man said. His voice was lower than before, and Jazz could see the confusion on his face.

Damn, she really needed to pee.

Jazz sobbed. She couldn’t help it. She quickly pressed her hand to her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut, and the torch slipped between her knees. The handle touched the metal wall of the cabinet, making a sound as loud and striking as a school dinner bell.

Oh fuck!

“Guests?” she heard Mr. F. say.

She tried to open her eyes, but fear kept them glued shut. Tears squeezed out and tickled her cheeks, and when she finally found the strength to look, the shelter was frantic with activity, children darting here and there as they searched for the intruder. The only person not moving was Mr. F. He was once again standing on the blanket in the center, turning slowly around until his gaze settled in her direction.

“Cadge?” he said.

“Mr. F.?” The voice came from very close by, and Jazz’s breath caught in her throat. She leaned forward slightly and saw the ginger boy, Cadge, standing six feet away.

“The coat cupboard,” Mr. F. said.

Jazz kicked open the doors and went to leap out and brandish the torch as a weapon. But her left leg had gone to sleep, and instead of leaping she stumbled, falling to the ground and sending the torch spinning away.

Cadge was on her quickly, knocking her left hand away and sending her falling painfully onto her side. He sat astride her and pinned her right arm beneath his legs.

Jazz struggled for a moment, then realized it was far too late.

“Mr. F.!” Cadge called. “’Fink we caught us a proper lady!”

“Is she wearing a hat?” one of the girls asked, and everyone laughed.

“Trust Hattie to think of the most important things,” Mr. F. said. He came into Jazz’s field of vision, sideways because she still had her face pressed to the cool concrete, and he looked even stranger close up. His skin was so pale as to be almost white, and even beneath the stubbled chin and cheeks it looked like flesh that had been underwater for too long. He had a large Roman nose, a wide mouth, and deeply piercing eyes. She thought they were green, but it was difficult to tell in this light.

There were very fine, very intricate tattoo swirls beneath both ears and disappearing down under the collar of his coat.

“Who are you?” Jazz asked.

“We ask the questions down ’ere,” Stevie Sharpe said. “In fact, you don’t even talk. Not a word. This is our place, and the walls hear only our words.”

Mr. F. pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think, my pets, that we should hear this girl’s story before we start imposing such rules?”

“She could be trouble,” a tall girl said.

“She could be, Faith. But weren’t you trouble as well when I found you?”

Faith shrugged, still staring at Jazz. “Suppose.”

“First thing I wanna know is how she found us,” Stevie said.

Cadge remained silent, still pressing her down. Jazz could sense that he was tensed and ready to move should she try anything foolish.

“I really need to piss,” Jazz said.

Mr. F. frowned. “We don’t swear and curse down here, young lady. Avoid vulgarity, please.”

“Right. Pee.”

Mr. F. regarded her for a while, expression unchanging.

“She does look a bit desperate,” a short, chubby boy said.

“Hmm.” The tall man squatted and turned his head so that Jazz could see him straight on. “Well then, Hattie, would you be good enough to take her to the loo?”

“No problem. Cadge?”

Cadge stood from Jazz, gently, so that he didn’t hurt her.

Jazz sat up slowly, shifting her foot to test whether she had feeling back in her leg. It seemed better, but she didn’t want to collapse again in front of these people. So she waited awhile, looking around, trying not to appear as confused and frightened as she felt.

“My name’s Harry,” Mr. F. said. “And nobody here will hurt you.” Jazz believed him. There was something about his voice that made her suspect that she would believe it if he told her black was white. It was smooth, intelligent, and assured.
Mum would like him,
she thought, and the thought surprised her. She looked down at the ground and stood, rubbing away a tear as she did so.

Facing them, feeling their attention bore into her, sensing the suspicion coming off them in waves, she realized that there was no reason at all to lie.

“My mum’s dead,” she said. “She was murdered today. And the people who did it are looking for me.”

Harry’s expression did not change, but the kids around him all reacted in some way.

“Then you’re lost too, just like us,” Harry said.

Lost,
Jazz thought.
Can it really be this easy?

Hattie led her to the loos. There was a narrow opening in the end wall of the tunnel, the same place Cadge had gone to switch on the rest of the lights. The walls were bare brick festooned with cables and spiderwebs, the concrete floor damp from several leaks that looked decades old. As they walked past a room off to the right, Jazz felt a draft that could only have come from a vent to the world above. Light from the corridor shone into the room just enough for her to see several clotheslines hung with drying laundry and an ironing board.

Hattie noticed her looking and laughed softly. “What, didn’t think a bunch of tunnel rats would want clean clothes?”

“No,” Jazz said, not wanting to offend. Then she shrugged. “The iron surprises me, though.”

“Mr. F. likes things neat and tidy,” Hattie said. “A bit of cleanup makes it easier to go unnoticed up above.”

The passageway went on another dozen feet before opening into a large round room. Jazz knew this place had been built as a bomb shelter but still found the chamber remarkable this far underground. At its center stood three roughly plumbed basins. On one end were two curtained shower stalls, and on the other there were four toilet cubicles. The room smelled faintly of piss and shit and, underlying that, the stench of old bleach.

“Best we can offer,” Hattie said. “’Spect you’re used to bidets and people handing you the toilet roll.”

“No,” Jazz said. “Not at all.” She went into one of the cubicles and peed, not minding for a second that the girl was still standing outside.

“Sorry about your…” Hattie said, unable to continue the sentence.

Jazz could not reply. She looked at the floor between her feet, reaching for small talk. “Is Hattie your real name?” she asked at last.

“No. But I like hats, so Hattie it is. What’s your name?”

“Jazz.” She realized that none of them had asked her this until now, and that was strange. Surely a name was the first thing anyone asked?

“Ha! You like music?”

“I do, but it
is
my real name.”

“Right,” Hattie said, and Jazz could hear the smile in her voice. “Well, it’s strange enough to keep, I guess.”

Jazz finished and flushed the loo. A trap vented into a flowing sewer, then slammed shut again.

“You’ll want to use the spray,” Hattie said, and Jazz noticed the cans on a shelf above her. She sprayed the air around her, trying to screw her nose up against the stench.

“That is fucking foul,” she said.

“Hey,” Hattie said, “Harry meant it. We don’t swear down here.” The admonishment seemed strange coming from a girl her own age.

“So who are you all?” Jazz asked, stepping from the cubicle and going to wash her hands. The water wouldn’t get hot, and she shivered as she thought how cold the showers must be in the winter.

“We’re the United Kingdom.”

Jazz stared at the girl, waiting for the teasing smile. But none came.

“Come on,” Hattie said. “I’ll let Harry tell you himself.”

“Gather round, my pets. Time to have a chat with our little wandering note, our Jazz girl. Leave off the dinner prep just now, Stevie, and come to circle.”

The boy looked up from perusing the contents of the tribe’s many refrigerators. He must have been eighteen or so, tall but slender with muscles like whipcords. He wouldn’t be very strong, but he’d be quick as the devil. His black hair hung straight to his shoulders, and his eyes were a coppery brown. Jazz couldn’t help taking a second glance at him, and a third, and when he noticed, she turned her eyes away.

Now that she’d calmed down a bit and the panic of her urgent bladder had passed, Jazz took a closer look at the nine runaway urchins who made up Harry’s United Kingdom. Hattie and Faith seemed like opposites: Hattie a bit odd and wild but happy enough, and Faith with grim blue-steel eyes and suspicion deep as a knife wound.

The boys seemed to lack any real leader aside from Harry, unless the silent Stevie filled that role. The youngest among them was twelve-year-old Gob, but Jazz couldn’t be sure if the nickname came from his lurking in the tunnels like some hobgoblin or from the fact that he never seemed to stop nattering, even to breathe, unless Harry hushed him.

Cadge had a bit of the peacock in him. The prize pupil, he obviously fancied himself a miniature Harry, even mimicking the man’s body language, that particular quality that bespoke an earlier life as a gentleman. Just a few minutes watching him scramble about revealed that Cadge must be the procurer among them, the most adept with his fingers. He seemed also to know where every item in the old shelter had been stored.

“Come, come,” Harry urged, gesturing for them to move in closer.

The United Kingdom formed a circle, seated on the cold ground. Somewhere a train rumbled past, and Jazz remembered where they were, how deep, with the whole of modern London looming over their heads and only the echoes of the past around them. She studied Harry’s face, searching for guile or cruelty, but saw only a gleaming pride in his tribe, a love for them that seemed simultaneously out of place and all too natural there in the forgotten cellar of the city.

Harry settled down, leaving Jazz the only one standing. He gestured for her to take a place beside him in the circle.

“Small comforts in our kingdom, love, and chairs not among them. Do join us, please.”

For a moment, Jazz was struck by the upturned faces of Harry’s followers. The word
urchins
would not leave her head, though surely many of those nine children were far too old to bear the word comfortably. Still, urchins they were. Lost and dirty children, far from whatever homes they might once have had. They looked to her like schoolchildren waiting for the teacher to begin reading, eyes alight with the eager anticipation of story time.

I’m Wendy Darling,
she thought. But Jazz understood her foolishness instantly, and a tremor passed through her. Neverland did not exist in the rotting belly of London, under the feet of the world, and these were not the Lost Boys. Wendy Darling had run off on a girlish whim, heart aflutter with the allure of Peter Pan, and when she’d gotten over her crush, her parents were waiting for her with open arms, ready to whisper happily-ever-afters as they tucked her into bed.

There’d be no fairy-tale ending for her. Not with those words her mother had written in blood.

“Thank you,” Jazz said, her voice quavering only a little.

She sat down beside Harry, and a collective sigh of relief seemed to sweep over the tribe of urchins—the United Kingdom. Did that make Harry the king? she wondered.

“The circle is for sharing stories,” Harry began a bit ceremoniously, though his eyes were gentle. “Whether it be the day’s adventures, or the nightmares that wake us in the night, or the longings for times gone by, what’s spoken here is never judged, never questioned. We bring only truth to the circle.”

The nine apostles nodded their assent and Jazz followed suit.

“A time for proper introductions, then,” Harry said, turning to Jazz. “Harold Pilkington Fowler, at your service.”

He made a bow of his head and spoke the words with a courtly flourish of his hand. Jazz gnawed her lower lip for a moment, glancing nervously about. Shouldn’t she still be running? Or was there simply nowhere left to run? She had no reason to trust this odd band, save that they seemed the utter opposite of the Uncles and their BMW men. Harry Fowler’s tribe was the opposite of everything, really. Opposite of the world as she’d always known it.

A twitch of a smile touched her lips. Their oppositeness suddenly seemed more than enough reason to trust them. Thieves, ruffians, and scoundrels they might be, but she sensed the nobility in them and a sense of honor she’d rarely encountered among the tidier folk aboveground.

Jazz returned Harry’s bow and offered her hand. “Jasmine Ellen Towne, Mr. Fowler. And she’s grateful for your hospitality.”

Harry beamed. He shook her hand and then adjusted the lapels of his coat as though chairing a meeting of the board of a brokerage or similarly snooty enterprise.

“Now then, my compatriots, my fine filchers, do likewise please and make yourselves known to our Jasmine—”

“Jazz,” she interrupted. “Just Jazz, please.”

Hattie sighed, rolling her eyes. “’Course it’s just Jazz. I said as much, didn’t I? We don’t care much for proper names down in the kingdom. No use for ’em.”

She wore a pale peach bonnet with faux flowers on the brim and a smear of black grease along one ragged side. Jazz wondered how many hats she had hidden about the shelter.

“Jazz it is, then, and a fitting name. Improvisation is vital to our little enterprise, so I hope you shall earn the appellation,” Harry said. “But back to our introductions. Round the circle, if you please.”

And they began. The boy to Jazz’s left had small dark eyes set back in his face above a long thin nose that had been broken more than once. She’d thought his name would be Rat, or some synonym, but he went by Bill, an ordinary enough name. Bill did not introduce himself, however. That task fell to Leela, an Indian girl who sat beside him. Leela’s eyes seemed to have their own luminescence, but they dimmed a little when she explained that Bill had no voice of his own. Whether the boy was actually mute or simply chose never to speak, Leela did not reveal, and Jazz hadn’t the heart to ask.

Cadge was next, and for a moment the confidence he had when imitating Harry faltered and he gave Jazz a shy smile. The names came too quickly. She’d already marked Hattie, Faith, Gob, and Stevie. Another of the boys was called Switch, and still another Marco—after the explorer Marco Polo, according to Harry—but by the time they’d gone round the circle entirely, Jazz couldn’t recall which was which.

“Good to meet you all,” she told them, “and thanks for not running me off.”

Some of them smiled in return, but others sniffed at her words and one or two eyed her with open suspicion.

“Nonsense,” Harry said with a flutter of his hand. “It’s not our way, love. You’re a stray. We’ve all gone astray ourselves, but now we’re lost together. Far better than being lost on your own. Now, then, let’s have your story. I see it’s all still fresh, a bit of glaze in your eyes, but pain needs telling, Jazz girl. Pain always needs telling. The only way to stanch the wound.”

Jazz squeezed her eyes shut and a moment of vertigo washed over her. If she hadn’t already been seated, she’d have fallen. Was she really supposed to share her story with them all, like some tale told round a campfire?

Nothing’s for nothing,
her mother had once said.
Those that help mostly help themselves.
Jazz could hear the echoes of that voice whispering in her head, and she wanted to claw into her brain to stop it. It felt now as though her mum had been preparing her for this all her life. But Jazz wasn’t ready to be alone. How could she survive down here in the dark by herself?

She opened her eyes again and saw those faces, all watching her curiously. Her mother’s whispers became more insistent, but Jazz shut them out. After all, her warnings had been about people up in the world, people like the Uncles, not about the discarded, like Fowler and his United Kingdom. Even if she told them, how could they hurt her with the truth? They lived down here. Who would they tell?

“My mum’s dead,” she said. “Murdered, just today.” Jazz frowned and looked upward, as though she could see through hundreds of feet of earth and stone and pavement. “Or yesterday. I’m not sure what time it is. I was walking home from school and a queer feeling came over me, and then I saw the cars.”

“Cars?” Harry asked.

Jazz nodded. “The Uncles were there, but there’d never been so many visiting at once and I knew something was wrong. Mum brought me up paranoid, made sure if things took a turn I’d suspect it right off, and I did. I went up the alley that runs behind the house…”

She left out any mention of ghosts or whispers, fearful that they’d think her mad or doubt every word if she started up talking about phantoms. By the time she finished recounting the hours leading up to their discovery of her, like Goldilocks in Baby Bear’s bed, Jazz felt exhaustion beginning to claim her again. Her tears flowed freely while she spoke, and several times she had to pause simply to catch her breath. The sympathy on Harry Fowler’s face and the empathy shining in the eyes of the urchins were the greatest gifts she had ever received.

Jazz never would have imagined herself crying so openly in front of anyone, let alone a roomful of strangers. But she could still smell her mother’s blood. Her life had new rules, now and forevermore.

When she fell silent, no one spoke for a moment. Harry reached out as though to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder but hesitated. Then he cupped the back of her head and looked into her eyes. Had anyone else done such a thing, Jazz would have slapped the hand away.

“You’re well hid, Jazz girl. Well hid. So you’ve done as your dear mother asked,” he said, his gaze intense. After a moment, he withdrew his hand but continued to stare at her.

“You can keep running if you like,” Harry went on. “No one will try to stop you. We’ll give you a bit of food, let you keep a torch, even an extra set of batteries. But know that you’re not alone down here, and I’m not talking about us. There are old empty stations all through the Underground, and shelters like this one as well, and other places besides. The whole city’s got a warren under it, and a wonder it doesn’t collapse right down into the earth. Sometimes I think the old tunnels are growing, spreading like the roots of some invisible tree.

“Point is, others have retreated down here over the years. Some come and go. Mostly they’re hiding, like you, or don’t trust anyone up above, like me. They aren’t all as hospitable as the United Kingdom, I’m sorry to say. There are lots that are homeless as well, not hiding so much as fallen through the cracks. You’ll see them in your rambles underground. And there may be other things down here, wild dogs and the like. Pets lost to the tunnels.

“So I say this: go if you like, and Godspeed. Stay if you like, and welcome. But if you stay, you’ve got to contribute, just like the rest.”

Jazz glanced at the hard ground at the center of the circle. “By contribute, you mean steal.”

Harry laughed at that, the sound a harsh, barking cough. “Steal from them topside? Surviving isn’t thieving, Jazz girl. We’re scavengers, so we are, living off the corpse of a decaying society. If we pick a pocket or snatch a purse, or forage for food or supplies, they don’t miss it. Not really. We’re invisible down here, girl, just as we like it. It’s a world of monsters up there.

“There are the rich and the poor, and the poor must stick together. If we don’t, the rich will pick our bones.”

Even without the encouragement on the faces around the circle, Jazz felt the truth of Harry’s words. The world above had taken her mother, or at least turned a blind eye while killers spilled her blood. Rich men who followed the rules. The world had shaken her off like a dog shakes off fleas.

Her mother had told her to hide, but Jazz understood the deeper meaning of the word, communicated over the course of years. Mum had wanted her to survive, above all else.

“I might not stay forever, or even for very long,” she warned.

Harry only smiled. He clapped his hands and stood up.

“I’m famished. Let’s have a nibble, eh? Then we’ll see if Jazz girl’s got the knack.”

Half the cast was crowded into the green room while a quartet of volunteer mothers applied the final touches of the stage makeup. Mrs. Snelling darted her head back and studied Jazz, then put down the brush—done with blush, apparently. Unsatisfied, she picked up the coal pencil and darkened the lines around her eyes. At last she smiled, sat back, and nodded.

“Gorgeous, love. You’re ready for your close-up.”

Jazz thanked her and hurried out of the room. In full costume, she had to reach down and gather up the bustle of her dress to squeeze through the crowded space. Making a point, Tom Rolston gestured broadly and clipped the edge of her bonnet. Had Jazz not flinched away from him, he might have dislodged the hat, pins and all.