Dodger of the Dials (28 page)

Once the thick iron door had clanged shut between us, and I heard the many slides, clicks, jangles and clunks of the locking process, there was nothing to stop me from sinking down and into despair. I lay on my mattress and felt the last of my optimism leak away. Over the last week I had fought to convince Mouse that our liberty was assured and I saw now that I had been lying to myself as much as to him. But now he was dead there was no one left to lie
to. I was to die on the morning after tomorrow and nothing now would prevent it. The turnkeys had performed a thorough search of the cell and had confiscated everything I had to trade with. The chances of any of my Diallers arranging another visit was too small to count on, while every obstacle stacked against me seemed too great. I was defeated.

Mouse haunted my thoughts. He had wanted a more dignified death than the one he had received last night, one where he could confess his sins beforehand. With my false promises I had denied him even that comfort.
This is your doing
, I kept hearing his sharp words come at me from his dark half of the room.
You always say things’ll be rosy! And they never are!

So – in the long and lonely hours what followed his death – I began confronting the truth about myself. I had blood on my hands after all. I may not have killed a young boy as I had led the London underworld to believe – and nor was I guilty of the crime for which I was set to hang – but Mouse’s fatal fall was indeed my doing. I had been a bad influence on him since our very first meeting and had led him to that rooftop – and in more ways than one. And the shame of it was a torture to me.

One mercy was that the gaolers had confiscated that cheap faded fob with its hateful ticking. I understood now why Tanner had been so relieved to lose it at cards. With it gone the only method I had of marking the passage of time was the steady chimes from the church upon every hour. I dreaded every strike of the bell.

At length the short winter light turned to darkness and I grew still as the room turned to black. I was sat on my bed in a hunched position and I still stared at the fireplace, one of the few sources of light save for some candles. I tried to just sit in silence and let my mind deaden itself. So I do not know what time of the night it was when I heard the rattle of the keys outside my cell. In my weakminded
state I almost wondered if more time had passed than I had counted – a whole day perhaps – and, as the locks was heard turning and the chains unfastened, I thought with a jolt that this was it – that the door was now opening for the last time and they had come to take me to the scaffold. I rose to my feet and stared at the candlestick I saw being held by the stout figure of Turnkey Baines. I heard him speak in a soft voice, but he was not addressing me.

‘Here he is, sir. Jack Dawkins. As requested.’

Somebody was standing behind the turnkey although the candlelight did not reveal his face. I blinked to get a better look but all I could make out was his tall silhouette.

‘How odd,’ I heard the voice say as they both looked in on me. ‘That he should occupy this cell.’ He wore a stiff top hat and I could tell, even in this dimness, that his thick grey coat cost decent money. He did not move as the turnkey stepped into the cell to approach me but continued watching from out there in the corridor. He seemed to be wary to cross the threshold.

‘Odd, sir?’ said Baines as he stoked the fire to create some more warmth for my guest. ‘How so?’

‘I’ve visited this cell before,’ said the man whose voice was becoming more familiar by the word. ‘At least I think it was this cell. The prison walls smelt of vinegar then too.’ He began turning his head about to inspect the whole condemned area as if this business of which cell he had already been to was of the uppermost importance. ‘It was some years ago. I was just a small boy.’

Baines had now come over to me and was checking that my manacles was good and secure so I still could not even get a good look at the man as he stepped into the room. He approached the bed where Mouse had slept.

‘A small boy, sir?’ asked Turnkey Baines as he produced another
chain from out of his pocket and attached it onto my wrist fetters. ‘We ain’t accustomed to let small boys visit the condemned in their cells here at Newgate. A close relative, was he?’

‘Lord, no,’ said the stranger as he took out a handkerchief and brushed the bed before sitting on it. ‘It was a man who I doubt I had even known longer than a few weeks.’ Baines chained the other end of this new short fetter to a hook on the wall as the man sat down. ‘But I don’t think a single night has gone by when I haven’t dreamt about that visit.’

I said nothing as the two men continued to talk around me like I was just some dummy in a waxworks museum. I remained on my bed and looked closer at the young man as Baines began to light the lamps around the room. It was still too dim to see but as the light grew brighter I began to get a better view of him. He seemed to have with him a notepad and pencil and he placed these on the bed beside him.

‘I return every night to this cell,’ he said and I was unsure if the young man were addressing me or the turnkey. ‘And I’m always haunted by how terrified the man looked. He wasn’t such a bad person, I think. Or perhaps he was, I’ve never known for certain. But I don’t think that he deserved to die like that.’

The turnkey had lit the final lamp and the room was as bright as it was ever going to get. He crossed over to me and shook his head as if disappointed.

‘Well, this one here is a right young villain, sir,’ he sighed. ‘The Artful Dodger the newspapers call him. But then you must know that,’ he gave the man a quick chuckle, ‘you’ve been covering the story in your own fine newspaper, I imagine!’

‘I have indeed.’

‘So,’ Baines wheezed, ‘just to remind you that I shall be out in the corridor at all times. He can’t get too close and if he does just
shout, I’ll be forced to come in and give him a hearty whack with this.’ He touched his truncheon which was still hung on his belt and looked down at me. ‘I won’t want to,’ he sighed. ‘But, as we discovered last night, Mr Dawkins here can be a right handful.’ Then he turned to my visitor once more before leaving through the door. ‘Don’t let him give you anything, sir, and do not give anything to him. He’ll be thoroughly searched after you’ve gone so we’ll know if you do.’ He nodded then at both us, wished us a pleasant interview and then swung the cell door shut.

Once alone with just the man, a silence passed between us. I looked at him hard but he was sat in the dark spot between two lamps and his topper shaded his eyes. After a moment he removed the hat and placed it on the bed beside him. Then he came closer, sitting himself on the edge of the bed and this was when I got my first clear view of his sharp and handsome face.

‘Tell me, Dodger,’ he said in his voice of refined gentility. ‘Do you remember me?’

Recognition struck.

‘My eyes!’ I said, unable to suppress my astonishment. ‘It’s you!’

His smile was wistful and he nodded. ‘Yes, Dodger. I have often wondered whatever became of you and, I daresay, you have been wondering about me. I was never more stunned than when I heard of your arrest for the murder of Anthony Rylance but I suppose it was fate that our paths should one day cross—’

‘
You’re the cove from the trial!
’

The man stopped what he was saying and blinked. ‘I see,’ he said.

‘You was there in the press bench, sir, and you called out in my defence when the peelers was testifying against me.’ I corrected myself. ‘Against
us
. All the other reporters had made up their
minds against us, sir, but you was one what took our part. What paper was it you said you wrote for?’

‘The
Morning Chronicle,’
the young man replied.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place for a story,’ I spoke with great urgency. I was sitting up straight for the first time since Mouse’s death, relit with hope. ‘Because what I have to tell you of my wrongful incarceration damns the British legal system and will shock your readers very much, sir, if they have any sensitivities at all.’ My excitement was hard to contain and I was filled with gratitude to the young man for visiting me. I still had no clue as to what he had come here for but this was a chance to tell the true story of my arrest to a sympathetic stranger. Had I not been chained to the wall I would have gone straight over and given him a good hug. ‘What is your name, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Brownlow,’ he said.

‘Well, if you’re here to write a story, Mr Brownlow, then you may want to take a look at those what run this prison, an’ all. My friend Mouse died yesterday on the roof, shot to death by the cruel Newgate guards. And he was – like my good self – an innocent man.’

I continued to babble away at him about how I was a man wronged but he held up his white-gloved hand for me to stop speaking. Then, once I was silent, he shifted on the bench and perched himself at the end so I could see his face even better now. Then he spoke in a soft, delicate tone as if he were a doctor breaking bad news.

‘My name is Oliver Brownlow,’ he said. ‘Formerly Oliver Twist.’

I looked back at him and said nothing. Then I must have cocked my head as if asking him if he would be so kind as to repeat that.

‘Oliver Twist,’ he said, ‘is the name I first came to this city under.
I was starving and homeless and no doubt I would have died on the streets if nobody had taken pity. You were the first Londoner I ever met, Jack. You took me to a place with shelter, food and warmth. And for that I should always be eternally grateful to you. Regardless of what followed.’

I was stupefied by the revelation of his identity, and more silent moments passed. His account of our first meeting was strange and unfamiliar to me, as though he was relating a story what bore no relation to the encounter between us as I recalled it.

‘Regardless of what followed, eh?’ I said, repeating his words. Then I cocked my head to the other side. ‘What did follow then?’ He sighed and shook his head.

‘Pickpocketing,’ he told me. ‘Burglary. The attempted corruption of a child. The successful corruption of countless other children. And finally, murder.’

‘Murder?’ I asked as I took all that in.

‘Yes. Of poor fallen Nancy.’

I jumped up from my bed and darted towards him. I had every intention of getting my hands around his throat to choke the very life out of him. If the authorities really did have to hang me for someone’s murder then it might as well be for this smug little shit. But the chain the turnkey had fastened to the wall yanked my arms back and I could not get to him. I was like a dog chained to a fence and Twist jerked backwards and out of my reach.

‘You’ve got a fine nerve, Twist,’ I raged at him, ‘coming here and bringing up Nancy’s murder!’ I tugged at the chain in the hope that it would break free from the stone wall. ‘When you’re the boy what was responsible for it!’

Twist looked most shocked by this statement and from outside the cell Turnkey Baines shouted in. ‘What’s going on in there?’ he called. ‘Mr Brownlow, sir?’

‘It’s quite all right, Gaoler!’ Oliver replied, although his eyes never left mine as I stood before him still swearing all my curses. ‘Don’t come in! Mr Dawkins is still restrained and I’m quite safe, thank you!’ He spoke with some command but there was a note to his voice what told me how unsettled he was. He may have asked the turnkey to chain me up like this – or perhaps the turnkey had insisted – but it did not look like he had expected this reaction.

‘There’s a murderer in this cell, Twist!’ I spat at him as he sat where my dead friend once had, ‘only it ain’t the one in fetters. You’re the bastard what killed my family and it’s you what should be facing the noose, not me!’

‘Killed your family?’ Oliver responded in disgust. ‘What do you mean?’

‘By blowing on us! By talking out of school and betraying your own class! You’re the lowest sort there is, Twist, and if there’s a hell you’ll be further down in it than me!’

‘You consider me responsible for Nancy’s death?’ he asked in what looked like genuine confusion. ‘Why on Earth?’

‘Everyone was nice and comfortable until you came along! We was a happy family what never had a cross word with one another. Then you appeared, pouring your poison into everyone’s minds, pitching crim against crim. Worst piece of work I ever done was take you home to meet my sweet Fagin. I should’ve just left you there on that street to starve!’

A laugh from him then but it was mirthless and sharp, expressing his disbelief. It seemed that he had been expecting our reunion to be somehow warmer than this. ‘Dodger,’ he said after he had collected himself. ‘There was one man responsible for the death of that woman. And his name was Bill Sikes.’

That, of course, was true. But if Twist thought he had won
me over by uttering this cold statement of fact then he was much mistaken.

‘Bill killed Nancy on account of you,’ I charged him with. ‘So her murder is your doing. Then he got hounded to death for it, so that’s on you too. And also the destruction of his dog Bullseye what had never hurt a fly.’ Oliver opened his mouth to respond but my blood was up and I rode roughshod over him. ‘But the worst of it, Twist,’ I seethed, ‘is what you done to dear old Fagin. After the kindnesses he showed to you – welcoming you into our little den, cooking you bacon fresh from the market, telling you jokes, teaching you tricks – and you repay him by splitting on him to the first rich gentleman you come across. You sentenced that man to his doom just so you could climb up a class.’

I was pacing the short space of the cell now as far as the chain would allow and I was all sneer. He just sat there and took it.

‘Yeah, I heard you got yourself adopted by a rich man. Well, that’s very cosy for you, I must say. But what about all the bodies what had to fall first? What about the honest cockneys what got strung up for you to flounce off and do the genteel? You sicken me, Twist, you always have! You visited Fagin in Newgate on the night before his hanging, eh? What was that about then? To gloat? By God, I’ve known some wicked buggers in my time but never one as black as you.’