Dodger Read online

  Dodger did mind, but the world seemed to be moving fast, and so he said, ‘If I tell you, mister, you won’t tell anyone else, promise? Can I trust you?’

  ‘On my honour, as a journalist,’ said Charlie. Then, after a pause, he added, ‘Strictly speaking, Dodger, the answer should be no. I am a writer and a journalist, which is a very difficult covenant. However, I have high hopes and great expectations of you and would do nothing to get in the way of your progress. Excuse me . . .’ Abruptly, Charlie took a pencil and a very small writing pad out of a pocket and scribbled a few words on it before looking up again with a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry about that, but I do like to write a line or two before the words escape me . . . Now, please do continue.’

  Uneasily, Dodger said, ‘Well, I was brought up in an orphanage. You know; I was a foundling, never knew my mother. I wasn’t a very big kid neither, and there was a lot of bullies around there when I grew up. So I used to dodge about a bit, keep out of the way, as it were, because some of the bigger boys laughed about my real name; and if I complained, they beat me to the ground when the superintendent wasn’t looking. But that stopped after a while when I got bigger, and then they picked on me again, didn’t they just! And there I was, and I thought, I ain’t ’aving this no more, and when I got up, I grabbed hold of a chair and I set about me.’ He paused, treasuring that moment when all sins had been punished; even the superintendent hadn’t been able to get a hold on him. ‘So I finished that day out on the streets, when life really began.’

  Charlie listened intently to the carefully abridged version of this and said, ‘Very interesting, Dodger, but you haven’t told me your name.’ Shrugging, because there seemed no hope for it, Dodger told Charlie his name, expecting laughter and getting no more than, ‘Oh, I see. Yes, of course, that would explain quite a lot. Naturally, my lips will remain sealed on this issue. Although could I venture to ask you about your life subsequently?’

  ‘Is this going to be written down in your little notebook, mister?’

  ‘Not as such, my young friend, but I am always interested in people.’

  Never tell nobody nothing they don’t need to know. That was what Dodger believed. But he had never before in his life found an outsider that could so easily wriggle his way inside, and therefore in this world, which seemed to be changing direction all the time, he decided not to be coy.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I got ’prenticed to a chimney sweep, being a skinny youth, see, and after a while I ran away, but not before coming out of the chimney into a bedroom, a swell bedroom, and coming out with a diamond ring what I nicked off the dressing table. And I tell you, sir, best move I ever made that was, ’cos the chimneys ain’t no place for a growing lad, sir. The soot, it gets in everywhere, sir, everywhere. Into every cut and scrape, sir, and it’s perilous stuff; does very nasty things to your unmentionables, and I know because I’ve seen the lads who stayed on and they were in a very bad way, but thanks to the Lady I got right out of it.’ He shrugged, and went on, ‘That’s how life was. As for the diamond ring, when I fenced it, the fence saw that I was a likely lad and pointed me in the way of being a snakesman, sir, which is—’1

  ‘I know what a snakesman is, Mister Dodger. But how did you get from there to toshing, may I ask?’

  Dodger took a deep breath, breathing in the ashes of the past. ‘I had a little difficulty concerning a stolen goose and got chased by the runners, just because I had feathers all over me, and so I hid out in the sewers, see? They didn’t even follow, on account of being too fat and too drunk, in my opinion. Then I found out about toshing and, well, that’s it, sir, all of it, more or less.’

  He watched Charlie’s face for an expression more than a noncommittal stare, and then Charlie appeared to wake up and said, ‘And what would you do if you had had a different name, Dodger? A name such as Master Geoffrey Smith, for example, or Master Jonathan Baxter?’

  ‘Dunno, sir. Probably been a normal person, sir.’

  At this, Charlie smiled and said, ‘I rather believe that you are an unusual one, my friend.’

  Was that a real smile on Charlie’s face? You couldn’t be sure with Charlie, and so that was unresolved as they left the coffee house and went their separate ways, Charlie to go wherever he went and Dodger to make his way back, delighting Onan by buying him a juicy bone from a butcher just before the man closed for the night. Onan carefully carried it home in his mouth, dribbling as he did so.

  Not a bad day, Dodger thought as he walked up the stairs to the attic room. Finishing with more money too, not to mention a pocketful of sugar lumps.

  1 A small man or boy who could wriggle into narrow, open windows or fanlights – especially fanlights, which were often ajar – to get into a building, then let in his associates to join him in stealing everything that could be stolen.

  CHAPTER 5

  The hero of the hour meets his damsel in distress again, but wins a kiss from a very enthusiastic lady

  SOLOMON WAS STILL at work at his little lathe when Dodger came up the stairs. It was always strange to watch Sol working; it was as if he had disappeared. Oh yes, he was there, but mostly his brain was lodged in his fingertips, paying no attention to anything other than what he was very carefully doing until it seemed all part of some kind of natural process, as gentle as grass growing. Dodger envied him that peacefulness, but it wouldn’t suit him, he was sure.

  Sol’s choice of clobber wouldn’t suit him either, oh no. When he went to the synagogue the old boy wore baggy pantaloons and a ragged gabardine coat, summer and winter; and when safely back in his lair in the attic, even longer pantaloons from who knew where, with a vest which – give him his due – was generally always as white as could be achieved. On his feet he chose to wear some very carefully embroidered slippers acquired in foreign parts where Solomon had some time or another apparently lived and, possibly, from which he had escaped with his life. Then, of course, there was his apron, with a very big pocket in the front so that any small fiddly and expensive items that rolled off the workbench would be caught in it.

  There was an appetizing smell coming from the cauldron on the stove – Mrs Quickly’s mutton being put to good use – that automatically made Dodger lick his lips. Dodger never knew how Solomon managed it; the old man could make a delicious dinner out of half a brick and a lump of wood. When he’d asked him one day, Solomon had replied, ‘Mmm, I suppose it was all that wandering in the wilderness; it makes you do the best you can with what you’ve got.’

  Dodger lay awake on his mattress for most of the night, and lying awake was very easy to do; often there were fights back down in the yards when the blokes came home, and then the screaming babies and terrible rows – the whole cacophony that was the lullaby of Seven Dials. Happy families, he thought. Are there any? And over and above the streets there were the bells, clanging out all over the city.

  Dodger stared at the ceiling, thinking about the coach. Messy Bessie probably wasn’t going to be any more help, and so it seemed to Dodger that the only way to find out more was to continue to ask questions, in the hope of coming to the attention of the aforesaid people who didn’t like questions being asked, and especially didn’t like questions being answered. He bet they would know a thing or two.

  Where to start, where to start? A squeaky wheel, and a nobby coach. Did it have a crest on it? Maybe one with eagles? Perhaps the girl would remember more if he saw her again . . .?

  Well, he thought, Mister Mayhew wants to see me and so does his wife, and perhaps a smart young man could smarten himself up and try to put some kind of shine on his boots and wash his face before going to see them, in the hope that a good lad might at least come out of the meeting with something more than a cup of tea, perhaps something to eat. And who knows; possibly, if he was very good and very respectful, he would be allowed to see the girl with the wonderful golden hair again.

  Because you cannot switch cunning off when you want to, Dodger’s own cunning treacherously prompte
d him: maybe they will give you some money as well, for being a good boy. Because he thought he knew the kind of people that Mister and Mrs Mayhew were; amazingly, every now and again you came across nobby folks who actually cared about the street people and were slightly guilty about them. If you were poor, and perhaps took the trouble to scrub up as best you could, and had no shame at all and could also spin a hard luck story as well as Dodger could – though, frankly, he didn’t really need to make one up, since his life, as he had very nearly truthfully described to Charlie, had included big dollops of hard luck anyway – why, then they would practically kiss you, because it made them feel better.

  Lying there in the darkness and thinking about the girl, Dodger felt somewhat ashamed to be thinking only of what he could make out of it, for surely saving the girl was in itself a kind of reward, but he was only a little bit ashamed, because you had to live, didn’t you?

  Uncomfortable, he turned over and thought about Charlie, who seemed to think that Dodger was some kind of a pirate king, and when you thought about it, Charlie was playing a little game of his own. Every lad wants to be thought of as a wide boy, a geezer, right? Dodger thought. ’Cos it makes you feel big. For Charlie, words were a kind of complicated game and it might not be a game Dodger knew well, but it was still a game – and he, Dodger, was pretty good at the game of surviving.

  Staring up at nothing, he thought about Grandad, dying with a smile on his face in the sewers and in all that the sewers contained. It would be a long time before he ever went into the Maelstrom again. Rats were small, but there were a lot of them, and more and more when the news got around. He would leave a week or two at least before he would return to the place where the old man had died. Died, he reminded himself, where he wanted to be.

  Then there was Stumpy, who’d had two legs until a cannonball hit him when he was fighting somewhere in Spain.

  And here he was, and suddenly now Charlie’s words were clinging to him, changing his world – a world where one moment you are happily on the tosh, then quick as a wink coppers might call you a hero and you are wandering around in nobby houses. Not the person you had been when you woke up. It was like some great big spring was tugging at him – and maybe, perhaps sooner rather than later, a boy has to decide what kind of man he is going to be. Is he going to be a player, or a playing piece . . .?

  In the gloom, Dodger smiled and went to sleep, dreaming of golden hair.

  In the morning, as clean as he could be, he headed to the house of Mister Mayhew. By daylight, the man’s house looked pretty good; not a palace, but the place of somebody who had enough money to be called a gentleman. The whole street looked like that, smart, ordered and clean. There was even a policeman patrolling it, and much to Dodger’s surprise the policeman gave him a little salute as they passed. It wasn’t anything much, just a flick of the fingers, but up until now a policeman in a place like this would have told him to go somewhere else sharpish. Emboldened, Dodger remembered the way that Charlie talked, and saluted the constable back, saying, ‘Good morning, Officer, what a fine day it is to be sure.’

  Nothing happened! The copper strolled slowly past him and that was that. Blimey! In a hopeful mood, Dodger found the house. He had learned at an early age how to hang about the back doors of houses on the swell streets, and also – and this was important – to get known as a spritely lad. He had realized that if you were an urchin, then it might help to treat it as a vocation and get really good at it; if you wanted to be a successful urchin you needed to study how to urch. It was as simple as that. And if you are going to urch, then you had to be something like an actor. You had to know how to be chatty to everybody – the butlers and the cooks; the housemaids; even the coachmen – and in short become the cheerful chappie, always a card, known to everybody. It was an act and he was the star. It wasn’t a path to fame and fortune, but it certainly wasn’t the road to Tyburn Tree and the long drop. No, safety lay in having one talent that you can call your own, and his lay in being Dodger, Dodger to the hilt. So now he walked round to the back door, hoping he might perhaps run into Mrs Quickly the cook again and come away once more with a pie or another piece of mutton.

  The door was opened by a maid, who said, ‘Yes, sir?’

  Dodger straightened himself up and said, ‘I’m here to see Mister Mayhew. I believe he is expecting me, my name is Dodger.’

  No sooner had he said this than there was a clang from somewhere beyond, and the maid panicked a little, as maids do (especially when they met Dodger’s cheerful grin), but she visibly relaxed as she was replaced by Dodger’s old friend Mrs Quickly, who looked him up and down critically and said, ‘My word, ain’t you the toff and no mistake! Pray excuse me if I do not curtsey, on account of me being all but up to my armpits in giblets.’

  A moment later the cook came back to the door again, this time unencumbered by the bits of the insides of animals. She shooed away the maid, saying, ‘Me and Mister Dodger is going to have a little chat, so go and see to the pig knuckles, girl.’ Then she gave Dodger a hug involving a certain amount of giblet, wiped him down and said, ‘You are a hero of the hour, my little pumpkin, yes indeed, they were talking about it at breakfast! It seems that you, you little scallywag, single-handedly stopped that Morning Chronicle being overrun by robbers last night!’ She gave Dodger a saucy smile, and said, ‘Well, I thought to myself, if that is the selfsame young man I met the other day, then the only way he would stop anything being stolen would be to put his hands behind his back. But now it appears that you fought a battle with some robbers and chased them to kingdom come, so they say. Just fancy that! Next thing you know they will be asking you to be the Lord Mayor. If that is so I would like you to take me as your Lady Mayoress – don’t worry, I’ve been married lots of times and know how it is done.’ She laughed again at his expression and, more soberly, said, ‘Well done, lad. We’ll get the girl to take you upstairs to the family, and you be sure to come down here again when you go, because I might have a little bundle of food for you.’

  Dodger followed the maid up a flight of stone stairs to a door, to the magic green baize door between the people who clean the floors and those people who walk on the floors – the upstairs and the downstairs of the world. Actually, what he found was a kind of pandemonium, with a husband and wife as unwilling referees in a dispute between two boys over who had broken whose toy soldier.

  Mister Mayhew grabbed him and nodded to his wife, who could only smile frantically at Dodger from the middle of this tiny war as he was hurried into her husband’s study. Henry Mayhew pushed him onto a uncomfortable chair and sat down opposite him, saying immediately, ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance again, young man, especially in the light of your intervention yesterday evening, of which Charlie has informed me.’ He paused. ‘You are a most interesting young man. May I ask a . . . few personal questions?’ His hand reached for a notebook and pencil as he spoke.

  Dodger was not used to this sort of thing: people who wanted to ask him personal questions such as, ‘Where were you on the night of the sixteenth?’ normally damn well asked them without permission, and also expected them to be answered with equal speed. He managed to say, ‘I don’t mind, sir. That is, if they ain’t too personal.’ He stared around the room while the man laughed, and he thought: How can one man own this much paper? Books and piles of paper were on every flat surface, including the floor – everywhere on the floor, but neatly on the floor.

  Now Mister Mayhew said, ‘I imagine, sir, that you were not actually christened? I find the idea unlikely. Mister Dodger is a name you . . . came by?’

  Dodger settled for a variant on honesty. After all, he’d been through all of this with Charlie, and so what he delivered was a slightly abbreviated version of ‘the Dodger story’, because you never told anyone everything. ‘No, sir, was a foundling, sir, got called Dodger in the orphanage because I move fast, sir.’

  Mister Mayhew opened the notebook, which Dodger looked at with suspicion. The pen
cil was poised over the paper, ready to pounce, so he said, ‘No offence meant, it makes me come over all wobbly if things gets writ down, and I stops talking.’ He was already scouting the room for other exits.

  However, much to his surprise, Mister Mayhew said, ‘Young man, I do apologize for not asking your permission. Of course I will not make further notes without asking you. You see, I write things down for my job, or perhaps I should say my vocation. It is a matter of research – a project on which I have been engaged for some time now. I and my colleagues hope to make the government see how terrible conditions are in this city; it is, indeed, the richest and most powerful city in the world, and yet the conditions here for many may not be far removed from those in Calcutta.’ He noted that there was no change in Dodger’s expression and said, ‘Is it possible, young man, that you do not know where Calcutta is?’

  Dodger stared for a moment at the pencil. Oh well, there was no hope for it. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said. ‘Do not have a clue, sorry, sir.’

  ‘Mister Dodger, the fault is not yours. Indeed,’ Mister Mayhew continued, as if talking to himself, ‘ignorance, poor health and lack of suitable nutrition and potable water see to it that the situation gets ever worse. So I simply ask people for a few details about their life, and indeed their earnings, for the government cannot fail to respond to a careful accumulation of evidence! Curiously, the upper classes, while generally very gracious in the amount of money that they give to churches, foundations and other great works, tend not to look too hard below them, apart from occasionally making soup for the deserving.’