Thief

By phillip thomas

The narrator is proud to be a thief. It's the only profession she knows. Since she was a little girl she's been stealing. She has left behind her a string of relationships and has no family and no man. She is alone. She is seeking love and one day she finds it. Or so she thinks. Can she trust the man she loves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: phillip thomas
• Release date: Mar 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224950157

phillip thomas

Philip Irving was educated at the City of London school. He has degrees in English and Classics from London and Cambridge universities.

Book preview

Chapter One

I am a good thief. Others have gifts in various ways. But my one great ability was always stealing. Without theft I would have been doubly impoverished. Because I loved adventure and wished to make something of myself. Why read the history of a quite inappropriate woman? Because you too have known the joy of theft. Because even though you dared not take a knife and plunge it into the heart of a lover, as I have done, you must read on and be instructed. You must come to think as I do and become honest.

I was adopted about fifty years ago into a moderately thriving family, living in a nondescript southern suburb of London. My parents were a scaffolder, a taciturn man who kept away from the house as much as he could and a portly fierce-tempered redhead. They had two sons. The elder boy, of whom I grew increasingly fond, would supervise my childish projects and became my principal playmate. The younger who was less robust and growing up to be quite an effete youth became my enemy. He was much smaller than his brother and conscious of it and soon appointed himself to be the bane of my early years. He was jealous of his brother and timid in his presence, but when he was alone with me was insulting and unreasonable.

My mother was a busy woman, never silent, who felt she had a multitude of reasons to hold a grudge against the world. Yet she made herself serviceable to me from the very outset, for which I found myself oddly grateful. But she never made any attempt to conceal her preference for her two boys. For example, she served them what they wanted but I was given, whatever my tastes ran to, virtually the same meal every day. I was backward in reading, mainly because my parents refused to sit by me and explain the effects of the various combinations of the letters. I was mostly educated by the elder boy. He showed me now and then how the mysterious symbols of the words came to connect and to make sense.

My main toy at this early time was a small cast iron safe. It had a bright red lock with a combination. The acquisition of it had accompanied a great deal of screaming on my part, so desperate was I to own it. Inside I secreted the little shiny odds and ends I found about the house. I challenged both of the sons to open it and was most eagerly surprised when, after a trial of twenty minutes or so, they confessed themselves defeated and requested me to tell the combination. But I steadfastly refused. This safe was not only my delight and fascination, it was also where I placed the proceeds of my first childish frauds.

I was entrusted with the task quite often of getting groceries and always I kept a little aside. When I was questioned, which happened rarely, about the shortfall I merely replied that prices were going up; and my mother accepted this easily enough as my emoluments were only a few pennies. But stratagems like this gathered for me a little rudimentary wealth. And all the while I was building up a hoard in my little safe. I believe that, to my childish sensibility, I was seeking some assurance against expulsion and my thieving was no more than an attempt to be provident should I some day be forced to keep myself.

I toyed with my secret a great long while, delighting in continuing undiscovered but eventually the desire to share my bravado became urgent. I began to speculate whether I might approach the elder brother. He seemed to have a generous nature and was very trusting towards me, sympathetic because I was unprotected, and thinking little of himself. I worried that since I was not in reality his sister he would choose to side with his parents and betray me to them. He was no thief and to make an untimely confession would perhaps forfeit his softness to me forever. Or he might betray his information innocently to the younger son, who had appointed himself my perpetual enemy.

One day we were out playing in the fields behind the house. We were amusing ourselves with throwing hoops. I timidly suggested to him we might sit down and share secrets. He smiled at this (he was a couple of years older) and asked me what secrets I had had time to accumulate. I told him, to begin with, that I had once spied on him bathing and that, though boys were strangely put together, I would have preferred to be in his place, a boy with a brother to play with. He grew more serious and declared he was a brother indeed to me and that I should not complain. His sincerity increased my confidence and I went on to confess that I preferred him to all the boys I had met. I said that my design in saying I wished to change my sex was to be a better friend to him. He began to look perplexed and suggested we resume our game of hoops.

I held him in conversation a little while longer and gave him to understand indirectly that I too was capable of performing boyish adventures. He continued to look ill at ease but seemed anxious to know the nature of these exploits. I told him I was not at liberty to share them until he took a mortal oath never to betray me. But he got up and went to retrieve the hoops and for the next few days avoided me and left me alone to regret the extreme step I had taken in wishing to find a sharer of my little crime. I grew fearful the father would eventually remember my entering his room to steal and subject me to some unpleasant discipline or punish me. I lost all appetite, too anxious to feel hungry or digest my food.

I hinted to the elder son that I had a weighty secret that was preventing my eating. If I revealed it he was to swear to keep it from his parents. He was at first amused but then told me I had placed him in a great difficulty because he had never intended to side with me against his family. But, as I was his great favourite and he was especially fond of me, if I told him what was on my mind he would be fonder of me still. He looked somewhat perplexed, the colour of embarrassment vividly in his cheeks.

Once again, I found it necessary to swear him to secrecy, which agitated him a good deal and almost made him rise from his seat to go away. But I held his arm a moment and looked into his eyes with great intensity. I told him that if he could keep a secret I would be willing to let him do whatever he wanted with me. He looked uneasy, even a little frightened at my earnestness and once again, without speaking, rose to go. But I once again took his arm. I should say that I was nearly fifteen at the time and, without speaking vaingloriously, comely and rather elegant in figure. I went to my little safe and took out the money, all ten pounds in change, and spread it out before him. I repeated that if I could have him as a partner in my secret he could do what he wanted with me.

I should say that at this time I had never even kissed a boy, let alone taken on a lover, but the financial advantages of having an accomplice in the house rendered me a quite reckless. And I knew in an innocent enough sort of way that I was pleasing to him. He seemed to take a good deal of time in reflection, then smiled at me and asked me how I came by such a generous amount. But once again I insisted that he first promise to keep his mouth shut and assist me in my future enterprises. He was loath to do it but eventually curiosity got the better of him. He solemnly promised that no ill consequences would come of my admitting to him how I came by my money.

But he steadfastly refused to come in with me as a partner. My desire to corrupt him was great and as was the terror of being found out. I had no other ally in the house, being exposed to the anger of my mother who would assuredly punish me by throwing me out on the street. This was something she was always threatening to do at that time for I began to displease her more and more as I became comely and began to feel my power over her sons. I wanted to share my secret and have done with it; but I also wished to corrupt the elder son into an alliance. I wanted to enlist him as an answer to my loneliness and displeasure at having no father and mother of my own.

I could go no further in my scheme for his secession. And now we both became aware of the baleful eye of my mother who for some reason was beginning to suspect my design upon the elder brother. We were both anxious and embarrassed and took great pains to show our indifference to each other, but although we succeeded in imposing on my father and the younger brother the old woman sensed our conspiracy in everything we did. In fact, she was always spying on us and one day kept the brothers back after our dinner and told me to go away from them on an errand. I was all shaking as I went- it was to get a pound of flour- and felt like owning up to my theft as soon as I got back and take the risk of being cast out of the family circle. I was running to confess but eventually slowed down on my way back and began to ruminate on the nature of my crime.

In all the time I had lived in that house I had never received one moment of what I could call real affection. My only presents were hand-me-downs or broken toys rejected by my brothers. Not once did I feel that I could go to either of my parents, tell the truth to them or have them take a share in my little concerns. I had been excluded certainly from affection, from that uncritical affection that a family experiences when it puts up its shield against the world. My father was a decent enough man but seemed to care about little else than sitting quietly with a newspaper and a rolled-up cigarette. My mother was fierce and tyrannical to me and encouraged both her sons to feel themselves above me and to correct and bully me. Clearly there was little love between the older people and in all the time I knew them I never witnessed a single caressing word or any form of intimacy beyond their habitual collusion. I had the impression that very often the old man could not bear to look upon my mother. She in turn had reached the stage where she no longer bothered to harass and upbraid him. She took every decision for the family as if he did not exist and she was governing things on her own.

I decided that I would persevere in my campaign to seduce the elder son and have him on my side and decided to pass him a note to meet me in a nearby park. I wrote because I could no longer take the risk of being spied on by the family. I felt proud of what I had it in my mind to do with this boy and truly believed that I could not only keep him as an ally but also persuade him to go against his parents. I had chosen him to initiate me physically and start me along the path to adulthood. I was only thinking of myself and not truly caring for him at all. And so we met that night in a secret place in the park and the thing was done. I lost my virginity. I had not been expecting much and I was not disappointed.

Chapter Two

From that day forth the elder son became an irritation and a trial to me. He began to put on the airs of a great lover, making claims upon my time as well as upon my person. He steadfastly refused to involve himself in any financial adventures, as I had suggested, and I was constantly anxious that he would reveal everything. I found he was a prude, a petty sophist, and completely boring on the subject of anything I found curious or exalting about life. He knew nothing about female psychology except what he had gleaned from his mother and myself. I was often in the position of having to correct him about even the most obvious facts about women. He did not have the slightest idea of what I wanted from him except he had the inkling that I needed to be dominated and tamed. He thought I should make myself available to him whether I was in the mood or not. I was forced to along with these demands because he knew of my delinquency.

Eventually I came to know the first real unhappiness for which I was ever responsible myself. Certainly, up till that time, circumstances being so much against me, I had believed that I had been obliged to become so wayward. I came to think that delinquency and fornication were the natural result of having been jettisoned by my real parents. I was forced to contend with an unfavourable situation in a family that did not love me and seemed to have conspired to make me into a sort of voluntary burden. My status amongst them seemed at times to be that almost that of a skivvy, certainly inferior, and of someone who was always owing gratitude. Gratitude was due to them since they in their magnanimity had agreed to take in a poor pathetic outsider, an upstart from the streets. Therefore I had increasingly rebelled against their authority, although the course I took was mostly secret.

Now I was having my differences with the elder son, was unhappy and ashamed at having yielded to him, and wanted mostly to be away from the house. A new melancholy, or the first vestiges of depression, stirred a wanderlust in me. I began to truant and ride the buses all day, taking the route from the ghastly suburbs up into town. I had a great yearning for escape. I wanted to be nearer to the crowd, possibly the crowd that contained my own parents, or even my brothers and sisters.

When I took the bus each morning in my fancy I was like any other daughter or sister, someone with a place of her own to go. I imagined then that my family was only waiting for me at the end of the journey so that they could greet me with complete affection. What others accepted without question as their natural right and habit, the experience of belonging, was, in my fantasy, also awaiting me. So, in this strange state of mind I travelled through south London and then up into town, occasionally glancing at my watch as if I had appointments to keep and I was on my way somewhere. And then, when I had arrived in town, in Islington or Soho or wherever, I took to following those I wished might be my parents. I was in the habit of observing them and telling myself little tales about their particular existence.

For example, a woman with shopping in smart bags would be on her way home to furnish me with presents. A man who drove a sports car with a wooden wheel was about to take me to the country and buy me my first drink. In this way I was always furnishing myself with imaginary parents I could follow. They glanced at their watches, in a hurry to reach appointments, and I did the same. But when these fortunate people turned and looked at me casually, I became abashed and ashamed of myself. They were people from higher life, dwellers in the great, wide world, who had appointments to keep and keys to open the doors to comfortable homes somewhere. I felt so far away from them, from the ordinary inhabitants of the great, busy, grown-up, world that I would start weeping. I would turn aside from my stalking and watch myself a moment in a window, ungainly and common.

My mother noticed I was getting thinner and that I often had the same, sad, bedraggled look when I returned from these expeditions. Because she had the instinct of certain malicious people who perceive another weaker person is in some new emotional distress she began to feel the necessity for one of her inquisitions. One day she asked me if there was anything in particular that drove me so much out of doors.

‘Nothing,’ I replied.

‘Then it isn’t the boys starting to bother you?’ I replied that I knew they were growing up but they had always treated me as a sister should be treated.

‘You are a good-looking, yes, a fine-looking thing, growing up these days.’ I affected to be flattered and smiled and said nothing to her. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

‘But I see you are always off from school.’ I told her I was worried by a migraine these days and couldn’t always stay in class.

‘I like to take walks and leave off from school until I feel better,’ I said. She pursed her lips again.

‘You are taking your walks out with my boys, I think,’ she said.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because they tell me you are always together with them,’ she said.

I stood there in perplexity, not wishing to let on that I how intimate I was with the elder son. Nor did I wish it to be known that I sometimes let the younger boy put his arm around me and kiss me and defend me from the attentions of his brother. But it seemed that they did not mind getting me in trouble with their mother, telling her that I spent my time with them. It seemed the family were in league against me, the mother ready to throw me out and the boys not caring much if this were to happen. But the more likely thing was she had decided to tell lies to get some further information from me and did not know herself about my relations with the brothers.

Certainly, I had judged the younger boy more apt for my purposes than his brother, being more secret and more of a hypocrite. I did not believe he would betray me. So, I declared that they both treated me as a sister and that I had nothing to complain of from their behaviour.

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Because I would be very disappointed if I were to find out you were leading them wrong.’

I said that I had never let either of them touch me. She looked at me long and hard, narrowing her eyes again as if she were weighing this and then said at last: ‘Who said anything about touching?’

It seemed she did not care about my truanting at all, nor about my little thefts from her and her husband, nor all the other coins and tokens I had in my safe. She just wished to play the most important role in guiding the progress of her boys and keep them from giving themselves to someone as unclean as I was. She warned me that both the boys were destined for great things – the elder was to become an electrician and the younger was to be a draughtsman.

‘If I was to find you messing about with them…’

The implication was that she would cease being a mother to me and send me to an orphanage, which she often threatened me with. But I did not care and spoke out angrily against her sons, saying that they were always troubling me with their attentions and I did not wish to have anything to do with either one of them. This was untrue but I felt indignant and at that moment did not much care if my mother were to send me back to the orphanage where she had found me. My sadness and depression were so powerful and my spirits so low that I felt I would rather take my chances in an orphanage than continue to reside in such a family. I thought of the two boys starting trouble with me; I thought of my mother and my father not caring much. I thought of being without a proper home, with nothing to do all day but ride the buses into town and steal and lie and always to feel so lonely and of such little importance in the world.

‘Let her throw me out,’ I thought. ‘Nothing could be worse than this.’

After a little more talk she sensed that my anger was making me impossible to manage and that I was standing up to her quite well and she broke off the conversation. She left me with a warning that she would inspect my room the following day and even break up my little safe if necessary.

This proved the final insult and I packed my bags to leave. I had no idea what I would do but I could not countenance the old woman breaking up my safe and finding there my earnings and my secret supply. I would ride the buses all day and all night, I decided, rather than let my privacy be destroyed. I was troubled by the notion that somewhere out in the world were my true parents and I would one day have the happiness of finding them. Once again, I imagined a home and family and a complicity proof against the entire world, where there was no resentment against me for being an outsider and I was naturally a favourite.

Chapter Three

I had no idea where I would stay or how I could begin to keep myself. That night I decided to sleep on the pavement but was constantly disturbed by kindly people asking me what I was doing out alone. And I did not dare seek out a place far from humanity, somewhere darker and more isolated, where I might be attacked and robbed. So instead I mostly occupied myself in trying to stay warm and the following day slept while it was light. And now my ardour to be alone and done with my adoptive family was cooling and I could not foresee anything arising from a life spent homeless except cold and hunger. I anticipated the necessity to ward off the attentions of those people of the streets who prey on the unprotected and who are at an advantage in respect of those, like me, who do not yet know the ropes. But my pride would not yet permit me to return home and to undergo interrogation from my mother. I had stolen my travel fare from her and a little more besides. In the end I decided that I would become a thief in earnest if I could and somehow find some people from the streets to help me.

I began to look around in the weeks that followed for people who looked a little desperate and cut off from the straight life. I began to form a little gang. We would grab the handbags of incautious women travelling up to the West shopping and rune off into the crowd.. I was very successful in identifying my crew, being instinctively drawn to people like myself, who were cut off from honest work due to their youth. I could identify those with a distaste for earning a living in the daily grind and who were deep down reprobates and not to be reformed. I had in my gang young blacks and some Irish and a softly spoken young queer