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 prompted 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.’