Dodger (36 page)

‘Well, sir,’ said Dodger brightly, ‘as you know, we were at a jolly dinner party that night. I went home with Solomon, who I am sure will testify should you require it.’ And he thought, I wonder if Solomon would lie for me to a policeman? Swiftly the thought came back: Solomon must have lied to policemen all over Europe, and with God on his side, and would be very unlikely in the presence of a peeler to know if the sky was blue.

Sir Robert smiled, but the smile had no warmth in it and the drumming of his fingers became a little more insistent. ‘Mister Dodger, I am absolutely certain that Mister Cohen would say exactly that. And since we are on the subject, would you know anything about a Jewish gentleman who called in at our front desk this morning with a little package of documents for me? The sergeant in charge said he placed them on the desk and scuttled off at some speed and most certainly without leaving his name.’
There
was the unfunny smile again, and Sir Robert went on, ‘Of course, generally speaking, all elderly Jewish gentlemen in their black clothing look very similar to everyone except their nearest and dearest.’

At this point Dodger piped up and said, ‘Indeed, I never really thought of it.’ He was enjoying this and so, in some twisted way, was at least part of Sir Robert.

‘So you know nothing,’ said Sir Robert. ‘You know nothing, you heard nothing and you weren’t there, of course.’ He added, ‘These are very interesting documents, very interesting. Especially in the light of the current discussions taking place. Which is why the embassy want them back. Of course, I don’t know where they are. Surely Solomon must have pointed out to you the worth of what you brought home?’

‘What, sir, sorry, sir. Solomon ain’t mentioned to me anything about any documents and I ain’t seen them,’ said Dodger, thinking, What’s he think I am? A little baby?

‘Ye-e-s,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Mister Dodger, have you heard the phrase,
You are so sharp that you might cut yourself
?’

‘Yes, sir, very careful with knives, sir, you can be sure of that.’

‘I’m so glad to hear it. You may go now.’ And as Dodger had his hand on the door knob, Sir Robert said, ‘Don’t do it again, young man.’

Dodger said, ‘Can’t, sir, haven’t done it once.’ He didn’t shake his head, except in the privacy of his brain. Yes, they always wait until you think you are out of trouble and then they fly one on you. Honestly, I could teach them a few tricks.

He left Scotland Yard, calling out cheerfully as he did so, ‘Told yuz! You’ll never find anything on me, my lads.’ But he thought, So there are clocks ticking. A government’s clock. The Outlander’s
clock
. And mine. It will be best for Simplicity if mine chimes first.

As for the Outlander? Here he paused. A man whose only description was that he never seemed to be the same man twice? How could you ever find a man like that? But he comforted himself as he thought, We are so close now, and he’s got to learn all about me and find out where I am. That’s going to be very difficult for him. This didn’t entirely satisfy him, because the thought that came after was that the Outlander was a professional killer, apparently of important people, so exactly how hard would it be for him to wipe a snotty-nosed tosher off of the world?

He considered this and then said aloud, ‘I’m Dodger! It will be very hard indeed!’

1
Sights like this were commonplace. Henry Mayhew’s research is full of details of this level of poverty, nowadays unimaginable in cities such as London.

CHAPTER 15

In the hands of the Lady

AS SEVEN O’CLOCK
neared, Dodger went over all his precautions and preparations and came up out of the sewer a little way away, in order to be seen cheerfully walking to The Lion public house.

He was not surprised to find Mister Bazalgette sitting on a bench outside, wearing what might be called serviceable clothes for someone who is going to perambulate underneath the streets of London. The young man looked like a kid waiting for the Punch and Judy show to begin, and had festooned himself with various instruments and a large notebook, and had also very thoughtfully come with his own lantern, although Dodger had made certain to borrow three of these already. It meant calling in a few little favours, but that was surely what favours were for.

The young engineer was primly nursing a pint of ginger beer,
and
right there and then he struck up a conversation with Dodger about the nature of the sewers, with reference to the amount of water that Dodger had seen in them, the prevalence of rats, the dangers of being underground and other things of interest to a gentleman as enthusiastic as Bazalgette.

‘Looking forward to seeing your Lady, Mister Dodger?’ he asked.

Dodger thought, Yes, both of them, but smiled and said, ‘I ain’t never seen her, ne’er even once. But sometimes, you know when you are by yourself, you get a feeling that someone’s just walked past, and there is a change in the air, and then you look down and all the rats are running very fast, all in the same direction; and then sometimes, as it might be, you look at a bit of rotted old sewer wall and something tells you that it might
just
be worth fumbling around in the crumbling bricks. So you take a look, and glory be, there’s a gold ring with two diamonds on it. That’s what happened to me one time.’ He added, ‘Some toshers say they’ve seen her, but that’s supposed to be when they are dying, and I ain’t intending to do that right now. Mind you, sir, I’ll be happy to see her right now if she points me to a tosheroon.’

There followed a conversation on the legendary tosheroons and how they were formed. Fortunately, at this time a growler pulled up and disgorged Charlie and Mister Disraeli, who was bright and shining and somewhat nervous, as sensible citizens tended to be in the general vicinity of Seven Dials. Charlie sat him down on the bench and headed into the pub, coming back shortly afterwards with a man carrying a couple of pints of beer on a tray, and Mister Bazalgette rubbed his hands and said, ‘Well now, gentlemen, when do we start?’

‘Very soon, sir,’ Dodger replied. ‘But there’s been a slight change
of
plan. Miss Burdett-Coutts wants one of her young footmen to come down with us because she wants to encourage him to better himself.’ He added brightly, ‘Maybe he might become an engineer like yourself, sir.’

Dodger stopped, because a very smart coach with two beefy coachmen had spun into the pub’s yard, and its doors opened to disgorge the aforesaid young footman, somewhat plumper in certain regions than the average footman, and remarkably – yes, thought Dodger – the signs of shaving around his jaw. Simplicity, and just possibly Angela, was really taking this charade seriously. The rest of them were taking it on the chin.

It wasn’t at all a bad disguise and quite a lot of young serving men were on the plump side, what with all the leftovers, but to anyone who had seen her in a dress she was Simplicity, absolutely Simplicity, and if you were Dodger, looking more beautiful – even if unshaven – than ever before. But she had been wrong; her legs were not fat! No, in Dodger’s mind, they were perfectly shaped, and he had to fight to take his mind off her legs and back onto the task ahead of him.

He wasn’t sure what Joseph Bazalgette was thinking, but quite possibly he was thinking about sewers and couldn’t have seen that much of Simplicity at the party in any case. And since Angela was right there, Charlie and Disraeli were seeing – my word, yes! – what they were supposed to see. It was, thought Dodger, a kind of political fog.

Miss Coutts leaned out of the coach window and said, ‘I will return for my young footman in an hour and a half, gentlemen. I trust you will take care of him because I have no wish to answer for him to his grieving mother. Roger is a good boy, rather shy and does not talk much.’ She added meaningfully, ‘If he is sensible.’

The coach window closed again, and Miss Angela was gone. It was left to Charlie to say, ‘Well, gentlemen, maybe we should start? We are in your hands now, Mister Dodger.’

All things planned in the rookeries had to be carefully thought through, Dodger knew. That was why, just before they left, he threw a handful of ha’pennies and farthings down where they were standing, so that the urchins around the place had more interesting things to do than follow them, so engrossed were they as they struggled against one another for this sudden storm of wealth.

Dodger kept the pace brisk with a number of unnecessary twists and turns and doubling back until he got to the sewer entrance of his choice, and proceeded to help the party down one at a time with the young footman first.

When they were all assembled, staring around at the rotting bricks and the curious unnamed growths that hung from the walls, he put a finger to his mouth to indicate silence, walked a few steps and gave out a two-tone whistle, which floated along the pipes. He waited; there was no answering call. He wasn’t expecting any other toshers today, but if there had been any, they would have answered; generally speaking, it was common sense to know if other people were working down there as well.

‘And now, gentlemen,’ he said jauntily. ‘Welcome to this, my world. As you can see, in this light sometimes it even seems a little bit golden. It’s amazing how the sun gets through. What do you think of it, Mister Disraeli?’

Disraeli, who Dodger was slightly unhappy to see had come in proper useful boots for the occasion, wrinkled his nose and said, ‘Well, I cannot recommend the smell, but it is not quite as bad as
I
expected.’ This was quite probably true, Dodger knew, because for quite some time in the last few hours he had done his level best to prepare the most salubrious bit of sewer there had ever been. After all, Simplicity was going to be walking in it.

‘It used to be nicer, in the old days,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not so good now people are banging holes through from their houses, but just step careful, and please, if I ask any of you to do anything, please do it with alacrity and without question.’ He was pleased with ‘alacrity’; every so often Solomon hit him with a word he didn’t understand and Dodger had a good memory. He let them walk for a little while and then, like a tour guide, glanced down and said in the gluey tones of a Crown and Anchor man, ‘Now here’s an interesting place that’s occasionally kind to toshers.’ He stepped back and said, ‘Mister Disraeli, will you now try your luck as a tosher? I noticed you have clapped your eyes on what might be generously called a “sand bar” on the floor over there by that rivulet, and may I say, well done, sir, and so I will give you this stick and suggest you have a go.’

The group moved forwards as Disraeli, with the fixed grin of someone who wants to seem a good sport and dare not seem to be a bad one, took the stick from Dodger and approached the pile of miscellaneous debris with caution. He hunkered down and stirred about fastidiously until Dodger produced a pair of small gloves and handed them to the man, saying, ‘Try these, sir – very useful in certain circumstances if you can afford them.’ He thought Disraeli almost giggled at this point – the man did have some gumption after all – but the politician put on the gloves, rolled up his sleeves and trailed one hand in the pile, being rewarded with a clinking sound.

‘Hello,’ said Dodger. ‘Do we have some beginner’s luck here?
That’s
the sound of specie, right enough. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

They crowded round and Disraeli, almost in a daze, held up a half crown, as shiny and as untarnished as the day it had been coined.

‘My word, sir, you have the luck of a tosher and no mistake. I see I had better not let you down here again, hey? If I was you I would have another go, sir; where you find one coin, you tend to find another one. After all, it takes two to make a clink. It’s all to do with how the water’s running, you see; you never quite know for certain where the specie might turn up today.’ Again they craned as Disraeli, this time with every evidence of enthusiasm, rummaged in the heap of litter, and there was another clink and he held up a gold and diamond ring. ‘Oh my word, sir.’ Dodger reached for the ring and Disraeli pulled his hand away until he realized that was bad manners, so he allowed Dodger to handle the ring and was told, ‘Well, sir, it’s gold, that’s true. It ain’t diamonds though, just paste. Shocking, isn’t it, but there you go, sir, first time out and you’ve already earned a working man’s daily wage.’ Dodger straightened up and said, ‘I think we ought to be getting on because of the light, but maybe our young man here would like to try next time? Would you, Master Roger? You could make a day’s wages like Mister Disraeli here!’

Dodger was rewarded with a wide smile, and Disraeli, smiling just as much, said, ‘This is rather like a lucky dip, isn’t it?’