Dodger followed the maid up a flight of stone stairs to a door, to the magic green baize door between the people who clean the floors and those people who walk on the floors – the upstairs and the downstairs of the world. Actually, what he found was a kind of pandemonium, with a husband and wife as unwilling referees in a dispute between two boys over who had broken whose toy soldier.
Mister Mayhew grabbed him and nodded to his wife, who could only smile frantically at Dodger from the middle of this tiny war as he was hurried into her husband’s study. Henry Mayhew pushed him onto a uncomfortable chair and sat down opposite him, saying immediately, ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance again, young man, especially in the light of your intervention yesterday evening, of which Charlie has informed me.’ He paused. ‘You are a most interesting young man. May I ask a . . . few personal questions?’ His hand reached for a notebook and pencil as he spoke.
Dodger was not used to this sort of thing: people who wanted to ask him personal questions such as, ‘Where were you on the night of the sixteenth?’ normally damn well asked them without permission, and also expected them to be answered with equal speed. He managed to say, ‘I don’t mind, sir. That is, if they ain’t too personal.’ He stared around the room while the man laughed, and he thought: How can one man own this much paper? Books and piles of paper were on every flat surface, including the floor – everywhere on the floor, but neatly on the floor.
Now Mister Mayhew said, ‘I imagine, sir, that you were not actually christened? I find the idea unlikely. Mister Dodger is a name you . . . came by?’
Dodger settled for a variant on honesty. After all, he’d been through all of this with Charlie, and so what he delivered was a slightly abbreviated version of ‘the Dodger story’, because you never told anyone everything. ‘No, sir, was a foundling, sir, got called Dodger in the orphanage because I move fast, sir.’
Mister Mayhew opened the notebook, which Dodger looked at with suspicion. The pencil was poised over the paper, ready to pounce, so he said, ‘No offence meant, it makes me come over all wobbly if things gets writ down, and I stops talking.’ He was already scouting the room for other exits.
However, much to his surprise, Mister Mayhew said, ‘Young man, I do apologize for not asking your permission. Of course I will not make further notes without asking you. You see, I write things down for my job, or perhaps I should say my vocation. It is a matter of research – a project on which I have been engaged for some time now. I and my colleagues hope to make the government see how terrible conditions are in this city; it is, indeed, the richest and most powerful city in the world, and yet the conditions here for many may not be far removed from those in Calcutta.’ He noted that there was no change in Dodger’s expression and said, ‘Is it possible, young man, that you do not know where Calcutta is?’
Dodger stared for a moment at the pencil. Oh well, there was no hope for it. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said. ‘Do not have a clue, sorry, sir.’
‘Mister Dodger, the fault is not yours. Indeed,’ Mister Mayhew continued, as if talking to himself, ‘ignorance, poor health and lack of suitable nutrition and potable water see to it that the situation gets ever worse. So I simply ask people for a few details about their life, and indeed their earnings, for the government cannot fail to respond to a careful accumulation of evidence! Curiously, the upper classes, while generally very gracious in the amount of money that they give to churches, foundations and other great works, tend not to look too hard below them, apart from occasionally making soup for the deserving.’
The thought of food once again got Dodger’s stomach rumbling. It must have grumbled enough for Mister Mayhew to hear, because the man was suddenly flustered and said, ‘Oh my dear sir, you will be very hungry, of course; I anticipated this, so I will ring the bell and get the maid to bring you some bacon and an egg or two. We are not rich, but thankfully we are not poor. It must be said that everybody has a different calculus on this matter, however, because I have met people who I would have thought were amongst the most extreme of the poor, who nevertheless protest that they are jogging along nicely, whilst on the other hand I have known men who live in very large houses on really good incomes to consider themselves one step away from debtors’ prison!’ 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?’
Dodger knew a trick question when he saw one. Mister Mayhew, he considered, was probably not as darkly sharp about the world as Charlie was but it wouldn’t pay to underestimate him; and therefore he took refuge in the last resort, which was honesty. He said, ‘I reckon me and Sol aren’t really the poor, sir. You know, we’re doing a bit of this and a bit of that and we do pretty well, I think, compared to many, yes.’
This seemed to pass muster, and Mister Mayhew looked pleased. He glanced at his notebook and said, ‘Sol being the gentleman of the Jewish persuasion with whom Charlie tells me you share lodgings?’
‘Oh, I don’t think he needed any persuading, sir. I think he was born Jewish. At least, that’s what he says.’
Dodger wondered why Mister Mayhew laughed, and he wondered too how it was that Charlie knew enough to tell the man where he lived when Dodger himself couldn’t seem to remember telling him. But that didn’t really matter, because he could hear the sound of the servant just outside the door, and the rattling of a tray. A rattling like that meant that it was heavy – always a good thing. And, as it turned out, it was. Mister Mayhew said that he had already had breakfast, so Dodger tucked in to bacon and eggs at considerable speed.
‘Charlie has high hopes of you, as you know,’ said Mister Mayhew, ‘and I must confess my admiration of the fact that you have put yourself out for our young lady, especially as, I understand, you had never met before. I will take you to see her shortly. 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 which appear to have befallen her.’
Most unusually for Dodger, he looked at the food in front of him without instantly finishing it up, and instead said, ‘She was very scared. She’s been married to a cove who treated her rotten and that’s a fact. And . . .’ Dodger was about to say more, but hesitated. He thought: She’s hurt, yes; she’s frightened, yes; but I don’t reckon she’s lost her mind. I reckon she’s biding her time until she finds out who her friends are. And if I was her, badly beaten though she be, I reckon that I would find it in myself to appear a little worse off than I was; it’s the rule of the streets. Keep some things to yourself.