This bowled him over, but he managed to say, ‘Because I don’t like people who bash up other people who ain’t got anybody to bash back on their behalf. I had too much of that when I was a kid, and besides, you were a girl.’
The tone of her voice changed as she said, ‘In fact, a woman, Dodger. Did you know that I lost my baby?’
This flustered Dodger, who managed, ‘Yes, miss, I mean missus. Very sorry not to have been there earlier.’
‘Dodger, you came out of the drain like a god. Who could have come up any faster?’ And this time the kiss didn’t need to be blown. She delivered it directly, as it were.
Charlie was not at the Chronicle, but inside his office there was a boy, one of the numerous boys employed by the paper to run around with other bits of paper, looking very important as they did so. This one, though, stared at Dodger as if he was the Angel Gabriel and whispered hoarsely, ‘Is it true that you throttled the monster with his own necktie? Oh, can you write down your name on this bit of paper for me, please? I am making a scrapbook.’
Dodger stared at the boy’s slightly grubby face which, like his clothes, made it perfectly clear that this was a building with a lot of ink on the premises. He was at a loss and therefore took refuge in the truth, saying, ‘Look, kid, he was just a very sick old man, right? He thought he was killing dead men who were coming back to haunt him, and I never laid a finger on him, right? I just took the razor off him and the peelers took him away and that is that, do you hear?’
The lad backed away a little, and then said, ‘You are only saying that because you are modest, sir, I am sure. And Mister Dickens says that if you was to turn up here again today, looking for him, you could find him in the Houses of Parliament, on account of the fact that he is doing a bit of court reporting today. Mister Dodger, he said he’d tell the man on the door to let you in if you ask for him, and if there is any trouble to say you’ve come from the Chronicle, and will you sign this piece of paper for me anyway?’ The boy almost pushed a pencil up Dodger’s nostril, so Dodger relented, and the boy got a squiggle and Dodger got the boy’s pencil.
The boy said, ‘I don’t quite know exactly where Mister Charlie will be right now, but you could always ask the peelers.’ He smiled. ‘You can be sure that there will be a lot of them about.’
Ask a peeler! Dodger? But surely that was the old Dodger saying that, he thought. After all, because of two admittedly total misunderstandings he was a hero, at least to some kid with blobs of ink in his hair, and therefore a hero should be able to stand up and talk to a peeler man to man, shouldn’t he? Because a hero would look the peelers directly in the eye and, besides, Simplicity had kissed him, and for another one of the same he would kick a peeler in the arse. All he had to do was keep on the square, life would get better, and it might be better still if he could enlist the help of Mister Dickens.
He looked at Simplicity and said, ‘Sorry, but it looks like we’ve got another journey to make.’
Then there was nothing for it but to pick up another growler amongst the plenty outside and head for Parliament Square.
CHAPTER 9
Dodger takes a cut-throat razor to Parliament, and meets a man who wants to be on the right side
THE MEN WHO guarded what was left of the Houses of Parliament, in uniform or otherwise, were not very happy about letting them in, possibly because they could be French spies, or even Russian ones. Dodger wasn’t either, but instead of telling them to go to blazes, which he would have done once upon a time before he had Simplicity hanging on his arm, he simply stood there, making himself look as tall as he could, and said, ‘I am Mister Dodger and I am here to see Mister Charlie Dickens.’
This caused a certain amount of chuckling, but he stood straight and stared at them and then somebody said, ‘Dodger? Isn’t he the man who wrestled the Demon Barber to the ground this morning, right down there in Fleet Street?’ The first man who had spoken came closer and said, ‘Yes, the peelers were frightened to go in there, so people say! I heard that people have already subscribed nearly ten guineas for him!’
Now there was another crowd, and the only thing Dodger could do was to keep saying, ‘I am here to see Mister Dickens on a very important matter.’ Then he told himself that all he would have to do would be to hang on, stand up, shake the hands that were proffered, nod and smile and wait until somebody came back with Charlie.
That worked, and a man – a very smart, very dapper man – suddenly appeared and said, with withering scorn, ‘If this is the Hero – twice the Hero of Fleet Street according to the newspapers – then what kind of service are we giving him when he comes to see us, yes, what do you think?’
There was a kind of little hum on that last ‘think’, and people started clapping and a couple of them said things like, ‘Well said, Mister Disraeli, well done; where are our manners, after all?’ And finally one of them said, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but it seems to me that a hero like that is just the kind of person to have that dreadful cut-throat razor about his person even now!’ A statement which made Dodger’s heart whine as his mind flashed through images of the repercussions of being caught with it, until the very man who had said that burst out laughing, and added, ‘The very thought, indeed.’
‘The very thought,’ Dodger murmured in response, matching the man’s laugh with one of his own.
And that was how Dodger and Simplicity got into Parliament, indeed with the cut-throat razor – and with a lie, which was fine, considering that’s how so many people got into Parliament. Dodger still wasn’t quite sure why he had taken Mr Todd’s razor in all the confusion, but he had a feeling that the best place for it to be right now was close to him. Anyway, before he could do anything about it, Mister Dickens was called for and arrived shortly afterwards, taking good care to shake Dodger very theatrically by the hand and then looking at Simplicity and saying, ‘You are surely not the young lady I last saw fair beaten up three nights ago?’ Then he said that he had urgent business with the young cavalier, whatever that meant.
They were escorted along carpeted halls and poured into a small room with a table in it. While Dickens was sorting out chairs and getting Simplicity settled, Dodger kept his eye on Mister Disraeli. He reminded Dodger somewhat of a much younger Solomon, and he also looked like a cat who had found a saucer of milk and had enjoyed every last bit. He was, yes, that was it: he was a dodger – not a dodger like Dodger, but another kind of dodger, and it took one to know one. He looked sharp as a knife, but probably the knife was his tongue; he was that kind of bloke – a smart person, but a definite geezer.
He looked at Disraeli and caught his eye, and Mister Disraeli winked – a tribute from one dodger to another dodger, perhaps. Dodger let himself smile, but didn’t wink back, because a young man could get into trouble winking at gentlemen, and up until then this place – all these statues, all these soundless carpets, all these pictures on the walls of elderly men with white hair and an expression of acute constipation – had been preying on his nerves, pushing him away, telling him he was small, insignificant, a worm. That wink had broken the spell and told him that this place was just another rookery: bigger, warmer, certainly richer, definitely better fed to judge by the stomachs and the redness of the noses, but after that wink just another street where people jostled for advantage and power and a better life for themselves if not for everybody else.
Dodger couldn’t stop grinning as he clutched this thought to himself, like a magic ring that gave you power and no one knew you had it. Then after this high came the low; this rookery was full of words, the place was full of books, and right now he could find no words at all.