Dodger (5 page)

Then Dodger was aware of something in the air, or perhaps the subtle sound of something that had been there and then gently ceased to be so. But there was still something there; and as Dodger leaned over he felt something carried on the last breath and was simply hovering as Grandad said, from wherever he was now, ‘I can see the Lady, lad, I can see the Lady . . .’

Grandad was smiling at him, and went on smiling until the light in his eyes faded, when Dodger then leaned down and respectfully opened the man’s hand to take the legacy that was duly his. He counted out two coins, which he solemnly placed on
the
dead man’s eyes because, well, it was something you had to do because it had always been done. Then he looked into the gloom and said, ‘Lady, I am sending to you Grandad, a decent old cove who taught me all I know about the tosh. Try not to upset him ’cos he swears something cruel.’

He came out of the sewer as if Hell and all its demons were following behind him. Suspecting that it might well be so, he ran the short distance to Seven Dials and the comparative civilization that was in the little tenement attic where Solomon Cohen lived and worked and did business in a small room above a flight of stairs, which being high up gave him a view of things that he probably did not want to see.

1
Cockney rhyming slang, short for Richard the Third, which rather happily rhymes with another interesting word.

CHAPTER 3

Dodger gets a suit that is tough on the unmentionables, and Solomon gets hot under the collar

IT WAS RAINING
again as Dodger got to the attic, a dreadful sombre drizzle. He fretted outside while the old man went through his convoluted process of unlocking the door, then spun Solomon round when he hurtled through. Solomon was old enough and wise enough to let Dodger lie in a smelly heap on the old straw mattress at the back of the attic until he was ready to be alive again, and not just a bundle of grief. Then Solomon, like his namesake being very wise, boiled up some soup, the smell of which filled the room until Onan, who had been sleeping peacefully beside his master, woke up and whined, a sound like some terrible cork being twisted out of a dreadful bottle.

Dodger uncoiled himself from the blanket, gratefully took the
soup
that Solomon handed wordlessly to him, and then the old man went back to his workbench with its pedal-powered lathe, and soon there was a homely, busy little noise that would have made Dodger think of grasshoppers in a field, if he had ever seen a grasshopper or, for that matter, a field. Whatever you thought it was though, it was comforting, and as the soup did its work of recovery and the grasshoppers danced, Dodger told the old man, well, everything – about the girl, about Charlie, about Mrs Quickly and about Grandad – and Solomon said not one word until Dodger was empty of words of his own, and then he murmured, ‘You had a busy day, bubele, and a great shame about your friend, Grandad mmm, may his soul rest comfortably.’

Dodger wailed, ‘But I left him there to be eaten by rats! He told me to!’

Sometimes Solomon talked as if he had just woken up and remembered something; a curious little mmm sound that came out, something close to the chirping of a little bird, heralding what he had to say next. Dodger never really understood what the automatic mmm stood for. It was a friendly noise and it seemed to him that Solomon was winding up for the next thought; you got used to it after a while and missed it when it wasn’t there.

Now Solomon said, ‘Mmm, was that any better or worse than being eaten by worms? It is the fate of all mankind, alas. You were with him when he died mmm, his friend? So that is a good thing. I have met the gentleman in the past, and I suppose he must be mmm oh, thirty-three? A very good age for a tosher, and from what you say he saw his Lady. Sad to reflect that I myself am mmm fifty-four, though thankfully in good health. You were lucky to meet me, Dodger, just as I indeed was lucky to meet you. You know about keeping clean and about putting money by. We
boil
water before we drink it, and I’m pleased to say I have mmm made you aware of the possibility of cleaning your teeth, which is why mmm, my dear, you still have some. Grandad died as he had lived and so you will remember him fondly but not mourn unduly. Toshers die young; what else can you expect if you spend half your life messing about in mess? You never see a Jewish tosher – you can’t be a kosher tosher! Remember fondly your friend Grandad, and learn what lessons you can from his life and death.’ And the grasshoppers continued to dance, sizzling as they did so.

Dodger could now hear a fight down in the street somewhere. Well, there was always a fight; fights sprouted up like a fungus, usually because a lot of people all pushed together in these wretched, dirty slums ended up not just at the end of their tether but right off it completely. He had heard people say that the drink was behind it all, but well, you
had
to drink beer. Yes, too much of it made you drunk, but on the other hand water out of the pump might quite likely make you dead, unless you boiled it first and had the money for coal or wood. That had to wait its turn, after the food and the beer (usually the other way around).

He thought, I believe that Grandad had the death he wanted. But surely no one should want a death like that? I can’t say it would do for me. There was suddenly another thought: if that isn’t what I want, then what is it I should strive for? It was a surprising little thought, one of those that hangs around out of general view until it pops up like a wart. He placed it behind his ear, as it were, for future deliberation.

Solomon was talking again. ‘Mmm, as for your Mister Charlie, I’ve heard of him down at the synagogue. He is a sharp cove, he is, sharp as a razor, sharp as a snake, so they tell me. They say
he
can take one look at you and he’s got a perfect study of you, from the way you talk down to the way you pick your nose. He is in with the police too, as tight as a tick with them, so now old Solomon is thinking, why did a man like him give a job of police work to mmm a snotty-nosed tosher like you? And it is snotty – I know you know how to use a wipe mmm, I taught you how; just sucking it down and spitting it out on the pavement is distasteful. Are you listening? If you don’t want to end up like poor old Grandad then you’d better end up like somebody else, and a good start mmm would be to
look
like someone else, especially mmm if you are to do this work for that Mister Charlie. So while I am making the dinner, I want
you
to go to see my friend Jacob, down at the shonky shop. Tell him I sent you, and that he is to dress you from head to toe with decent schmutter for one shilling, including boots, and mind you mention that last word. Maybe you could think of it as spending part of your legacy, mmm from the late Mister Grandad? And while you’re about it, take Onan with you – he could do with the exercise, poor old thing.’

Dodger had started to argue before he realized that this would be stupid. Solomon was right; if you lived on the streets that’s where you died, or perhaps, as in the case of old Grandad, underneath them. And it seemed the right thing somehow to spend part of his gift from Grandad – and the bounty from the sewers – on smartening himself up a bit, and it
would
help to look better if he was to try this new line of work . . . he liked the idea of more specie from Mister Charlie. Besides, if you were going to help a lady in distress, it paid to look smart while you were doing so.

He set off, trailed by Onan, who was overjoyed at going out in daylight, and you just had to hope that he didn’t get carried away. For all dogs smell – this being a chief, nay essential component of
being
a dog when being able to smell and be smelled is of great importance – but it had to be said that Onan not only smelled like every other dog; he introduced a generous portion of Onan smell into the mix as well.

They headed for the shonky shop to see Jacob and, if Dodger remembered correctly, Jacob’s rather strange wife whose wig, however you looked at it, never quite seemed to be right. Jacob ran a pawnshop as well as the shonky shop, and Dodger knew that Solomon suspected that Jacob also bought things without troubling himself where they came from, although he never said why he suspected that.

The pawnshop was where you took your tools if you were out of work, and where you bought them back again when you were back in the job, because it’s easier to eat bread than eat hammers. If you were really skint you popped your unnecessary clothes too; well, at least some of them. If you never turned up to buy them back they would go into the shonky shop, where Jacob and his sons worked all day sewing and mending and cutting and seaming and generally turning old clothes into, if not
new
clothes, at least into something
respectable
. Dodger found Jacob and his sons quite friendly.

Jacob greeted Dodger with an expensive grin, which is one where the seller hopes that the buyer is going to buy something. He said, ‘Why, it’s my young friend who once saved the life of my oldest friend, Solomon, and . . . put that dog outside!’

Onan was tied up in the little yard behind the shop with a bone to worry at – and good luck to him in that endeavour, Dodger thought, since any bone that got given to a dog in old London town had already had all the goodness boiled out of it for soup. This didn’t seem to trouble Onan all that much,
and
so he snuffled and crunched in happy optimism, and Dodger was ushered back inside, made to stand in the very small space available in the middle of the shop and treated like a lord going to one of the nobby shops you found in Savile Row and Hanover Square, although quite probably in those places the clothes you put on hadn’t already been worn by four or five people before you.

Jacob and his sons bustled around him like bees, squinting at him critically, holding up only slightly yellow ‘white’ shirts in front of him and then whisking them away before the next tailor was magically there, holding up a pair of highly suspect pants. Clothes spun past, never to reappear, but never mind because here came some more! It was: ‘Try these – oh dear no’; or, ‘How about this? Certain to fit – oh no, never mind, plenty more for a hero!’

But he hadn’t been a hero, not really. Dodger remembered that day three years ago when he had been having a really bad afternoon on the tosh, and it had started to rain, and he had heard that somebody else had picked up a sovereign just ahead of him so he was feeling angry and irritable and wanted to take all that out on somebody. But when he was back on the foggy streets, there had been two geezers kicking the crap out of somebody on the pavement. Quite possibly, in those days, when his temper was more liable to explode into a spot of boots and fists, if some little wheel in his head had turned the wrong way, he might have helped
them
, just to get it out of his system. But as it happened the wheel turned the other way, towards the thought that two geezers kicking an old cove who was lying on the ground groaning were pox-ridden mucksnipes. So he had waded in and laid it on with a trowel, just like last night, didn’t he indeed, panting and
kicking
until they cried uncle and he was too tired to chase them.

It had been a madness born of frustration and hunger, although Solomon said it was the hand of God, which Dodger thought was pretty unlikely since you didn’t see God in those streets very often. Then he had helped the old man home, even if he was an
ikey mo
, and Solomon had brewed up some of his soup, thanking Dodger fulsomely the whole time. Since the old boy lived by himself and had a bit of space to spare in his tenement attic, it all worked out; Dodger ran the occasional errand for Solomon, scrounged wood for his fire and, when possible, pinched coal off the Thames barges. In exchange, Solomon gave Dodger his meals, or at least cooked whatever it was Dodger had
acquired
, coming up with dishes much better than Dodger had ever seen in his life.

He also got much better prices for the stuff Dodger came back with from the toshing; the drawback of this was that the old Jew would always,
always
ask him if what he was buying was stolen. Well, stuff from the sewers was definitely OK – everybody knew that. It was money down the drain, lost to humanity, on its way to the sea and out of human ken. Toshers, of course, didn’t count as humanity – everybody knew that too. 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’.

Every time the old man asked him if this stuff was just from the toshing, Dodger said yes, but he could tell by the look in Solomon’s eyes when the old man thought that he was not telling the truth. The worst of it was that Solomon’s eyes invariably got it right. He would take the stuff anyway, but things would be a little bit chilly in the attic room for a while.