Dodger: Chapters 3–5

He fretted outside while the old man went through his convoluted process of unlocking the door, then spun Solomon round when he hurtled through.

It was money down the drain, lost to humanity, on its way to the sea and out of human ken.

But in those days Dodger was not above a bit of thievery, getting stuff you could say was extremely dodgy and totally not, as Solomon would say, “kosher.”

In the vicinity, news of Dodger’s mercurial personality had got about, and so he and Solomon could travel entirely unmolested.

“Allow me to elucidate,” said Solomon, and after a glance at Dodger’s blank face, “I mean explain, young man. It appears to go like this..."

The streets were so crowded that you were rubbing shoulders with people until you had no shoulders left; and the place to do a bit of rubbing now would be the Baron of Beef, or the Goat and Sixpence, or any of the less salubrious drinking establishments around the docks where you could get drunk for sixpence, dead drunk for a shilling, and possibly just dead for being so stupid as to step inside in the first place.

Oddly enough, the smell of death was a smell with a strange life of its own, and it would find its way in anywhere and it was damn hard to get rid of—rather, in some respects, like the smell of Onan, who was faithfully walking just behind him, his passage indicated by people in the throng looking around to see wherever the dreadful smell was coming from and hoping it wasn’t from them.

She never had many of them; to see them at all you probably would need a microscope, such as the one he saw once in one of the traveling shows. There were always traveling shows, and they were ever popular; and in this one they had this apparatus you could stare into.

Her associates were idly looking around, but specifically not focusing on her, as if to make it quite clear that they had nothing to do with this strange and dangerously talkative woman.

She gave Dodger a sharp and meaningful look, and he handed over an extra couple of farthings, wondering as he did so if he could reclaim some of this necessary expenditure from Mister Charlie.

He fumbled in his pocket, a receptacle that contained anything that Dodger could punch into it.

He didn’t have much time, and that was all he had to go on, in a city with hundreds of coaches and other miscellaneous conveyances.

It looked a bustling place to be, and now he had to find the Chronicle in all of this, hampered by the fact that he wasn’t very good at reading, especially big words like that.

It was a large knife—a bread knife, with a serrated edge, perfectly okay in a house where someone wanted to carve up a loaf and probably, Dodger thought, not too bad either for carving up a person.

He knew what was coming, and here it came as the policeman poked a thumb in his direction and said, “This gentleman was an accomplice, yes?”
The clerks looked at Dodger, and somewhat reluctantly their chief said, “Well, no, in fact to tell the truth he threatened the miscreant with a spike and chased him away.”

It would appear that he is a hero of epic proportions, having saved the Chronicle from the depredations of such a terrible creature as the one that I’ve just heard spoken about—possibly he should have a medal of some kind; I will speak to the editor.

You, Dodger, are what is known as a tabula rasa—Latin for a clean slate; you are smart, indeed, but you have so very little to be smart about!

Believe me, my friend, there are very few depths in this city that I haven’t plumbed as a matter of business.

And I suspect there is some excitement about this in high places. The crest on her ring is providing an interesting line of inquiry, and my friend Sir Robert Peel is being rather circumspect, leading me to believe that there is a game afoot.

They are given to believe that you are an angel, albeit one with a dirty face, with a sweet nature and possibly useful career ahead of him; whereas I, as you know, regard you as a blaggard and scallywag of the first water, full of guile and mischief, the kind of smart lad who would do anything to reach his goals.

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 who could so easily wriggle his way inside, and therefore in this world that seemed to be changing direction all the time, he decided not to be coy.

Because you cannot switch cunning off when you want to, Dodger’s own cunning treacherously prompted him: maybe they will give you some money as well, for being a good boy.

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.

A moment later the cook came around the door again, this time unencumbered by the bits of the insides of animals.

The pencil was poised over the paper, ready to pounce, so he said, “No offense meant—it makes me come over all wobbly if things gets writ down, and I stops talking.”

...ignorance, poor health, and lack of suitable nutrition and potable water see to it that the situation gets ever worse.

He smiled at Dodger, as he rang the bell, and said, “How about you, Mister Dodger, who I believe is a tosher as well as dabbling in other lines of ad hoc business when the opportunity arises? Do you consider yourself rich, or poor?”

She seems to understand English, although I fear that her mind has been disturbed by the nature of her ordeal and she seems unable to give an account of the dark events that appear to have befallen her.

He instinctively halved the amount of his earnings, saying, “Well, there’s good days and there’s bad days, sir, but I reckon I might earn as much as a chimney sweep, with every now and again a little windfall.”

And in order to boost his bona fides as an upstanding young gentleman he added, “Of course, sometimes I find something down there that someone has lost, and it does my heart good to give it back to them.”

However, I’m glad to see that her physical faculties seem to be coming back slowly and the bruises are fading.

He said, “She gets worried when she hears carriages, does she? What about other street noises, like horses or honey wagons—they tend to rumble a lot?”
Mrs. Mayhew said, “You are a very astute young man.”

“Well, it would be unseemly to leave a young lady alone in a bedroom in your company.”
“Yes, sir, and it’s unseemly to beat a lady half to death and try to drown her, but that wasn’t me, sir. So I think, sir, in the privacy of this house, you might allow the rule to be a little more...human?”

I think I might be able to trust a man who has fought valiantly for a woman he doesn’t even know.

There were sounds of stirring on the landing and he immediately stood up, spry as a guardsman, and practically saluted a very surprised Mister Mayhew and his wife.

You must see that leaving her just with a young man—however valiant he may be—is something that would be very much frowned upon in polite circles. We must be adamant in this respect, although, of course, I believe that your intentions are entirely innocent.

Mister Mayhew looked as embarrassed as his wife, and Dodger, still trusting his luck, in his most ingratiating voice, said, “Well, dear Mrs. Mayhew, I can promise you that there will not be any hanky-panky, because I do not know what panky is and I’ve never had a hanky. Only a handkerchief.”

Mister Mayhew looked at his wife and said, “You are commendably eloquent, Mister Dodger, but we—that is my wife and myself—feel there could be other aspects to this situation.”

“I’m quite certain that is true, but my husband and I feel that we stand in loco parentis to this young lady, who appears to have no one else to care for her, and so the social niceties must be observed.”

She said, “Well, my lad, ain’t you the rising star, hobnobbing with your elders and betters! Good for you! I reckon what I see in front of me now is not just another tosher but a smart young man for whom the world is an opportunity.”