However, he noticed when she took a small book off the hall table that it was one of those that some people used for jotting things down, the ones with a tiny little pencil attached to them by a piece of string. That meant she thought she might have occasion to write things down, and Dodger – who had always kept a significant distance between himself and the alphabet – started to wish that he had perhaps spent more time getting to grips with the irritating business of reading as opposed to picking at the letters slowly, one at a time. Too late, too late, and now there was a certain amount of movement upstairs and Mrs Mayhew came down, holding Simplicity by the hand and descending very carefully, making sure that every foot had found the right place before the next foot joined it. This took some time, about a year by Dodger’s reckoning, until they were both standing in the hall.
Mrs Mayhew gave him what you might call an inadequate smile, but Dodger looked just at Simplicity, and realized that Mrs Mayhew had been very careful to provide her with a bonnet and a shawl which covered quite a lot of her face, and therefore most of the bruises, which were already losing some of their colour. And just as Dodger looked at her, Simplicity beamed at him, and it was indeed a beam, because the bonnet made a sort of shield around her, so that the centre of her face seemed highlighted.
He held out his hand and said, ‘Hello, Simplicity, I’m so glad you’ve decided to come for this little walk with me.’
Simplicity held out her hand, grasped his very lightly and said . . . nothing that Dodger could hear; and her head turned very slightly so he could see the bruising to the throat, and that burden that he was carrying almost without noticing now whispered to him, ‘You will make them pay!’ In that moment, he thought he saw in Simplicity’s eye a glint like a falling star shining as it fell to earth; he had only ever seen one, a long time ago and a long way away on Hampstead Heath, and he had never seen another one since, because you don’t get many shooting stars when you are a tosher. But she hadn’t let go of his hand, which was extremely pleasant but not practical, unless he wanted to walk backwards.
In the end, Dodger carefully let go and trotted around her to grasp her other hand, all in one movement, with no harm done, leading the way gently to the gate, tiptoeing through the very small front garden, where a few roses attempted to make a difference. You saw this more and more these days, he thought; people with enough money at last to live in a decent area set about trying to make their tiny little bit of land look like a very small version of Buckingham Palace.
He didn’t often walk slowly in London; after all, he was Dodger, dodging here and there, and never there long enough to get caught. But now Simplicity was holding his arm and he was aware that she needed his support, which slowed him down, and that somehow also slowed his thinking so that the bits came together neatly, instead of in a hurry. He turned and looked at Mrs Sharples, walking behind them. It was early afternoon and around here it was pleasant to walk, and in this bright light he felt curiously happy and at home with the girl on his arm. She kept in step, and every time he glanced at her she smiled at him and there was a peace that you didn’t get in the rookeries until one in the morning when the dead had stopped screaming and the living were too drunk to care. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter whether Simplicity recognized anything important or not; it was enough that they were out for this walk together.
Yet there was a part of Dodger that would always be a dodger, and it guided his eyes and ears around, listening to every footstep, looking at every face and watching every shadow, calculating, figuring, estimating, judging. Now he turned his attention to old Soft Molly, whom he could see approaching.
For a long time Soft Molly had been a puzzle to Dodger, because he had never been able to make out where the flowers came from that she sold in the streets – little nosegays, all very delicate and fine. One day the old lady, who had a face that was a playground for wrinkles, told him where she got them from, and after that he had never thought about the cemeteries in the same way. She had made his flesh creep, but he reckoned perhaps that when you were so very old that you were older than some of the people buried beneath your feet, and therefore deserving of some respect yourself, he could see why it would make sense to you to ‘borrow’ some of the blooms scattered on the headstones of the recently deceased. It was hard to see where the harm was, and if you thought about it, the flowers stolen from the dear departed who, it must be said, could hardly be able to smell them now, were nevertheless keeping the old dear alive.
It was a sad thought, and a horrible picture, that Molly would spend time in the graveyard at night methodically collecting floral wreaths to be carefully unravelled in the heart of darkness and lovingly made into little posies for the living. In the scales of the world, how much did it matter that the dead had been robbed of the flowers they could never have seen when, for one night at least, poor old Soft Molly, who had as far as he could tell just one tooth, was still living. Besides, he thought, some of those wreaths looked like a florist shop all by themselves so would barely miss a few blossoms, and that thought made him feel a bit better.
That was why he gently pulled Simplicity with him as the old girl crouched on the pavement, looking pitiful and not having to try. He pressed sixpence, yes, a whole sixpence, on a little bundle of fragrant blooms. And if the dead turned over in their graves, they were generous enough to do it quietly, and besides, the exercise would do them good.
When he handed them to Simplicity, all he could find to say was, ‘Here is a present for you,’ and she said, she actually said, ‘Oh, roses!’ He was certain of it. He saw her lips move, he saw the lips become a rose as they pronounced the words and then close, and even Simplicity seemed surprised to have heard the words, while deep in his heart, once again, Dodger wanted very much to hurt somebody.
Then she said, ‘Please, Dodger, I heard them talking. I am very grateful to Mrs and Mister Mayhew but . . . it is as I feared. I heard them say that they will be very pleased when I am sent back, to the safety of my husband.’ The look on her face as she said it was pure terror.
Dodger turned to look at the housekeeper, who was some way behind them, still clutching her notebook, and whispered, ‘I believe that despite everything you are not quite as ill as you appear, yes?’ There was a silent ‘Yes’. To which he more or less silently said, ‘Don’t let them know. Trust me, I’ll see to it that you go somewhere else.’
Simplicity’s face shone as she said quietly, so that only he could hear, ‘Oh, Dodger, I am so happy to meet you again. I burst into tears every night when I remember that storm and how you drove away those terrible men who were’ – and here she hesitated a little – ‘so unkind, shall we say.’
The softness of that speech pierced Dodger’s heart, orbited right round him and came back and did it again. Was she truly beginning to believe him when he said he wanted to help her? Believe that he wasn’t playing some kind of game?
‘I know I should not hate,’ she continued, ‘but for them, yes! Because of them I must not use my proper name, and I dare not tell anyone it – not even you, not yet. For now, I must remain Simplicity, although I do not believe that I am very simple.’
But although the sun was still shining and the honey was still in the air, Dodger had an inkling that somebody other than Mrs Sharples was watching them; someone was following. He knew this simply because on the streets you learned to notice these things almost out of the back of your head – someone with a hand out, or maybe a peeler. You didn’t get to become a geezer if you didn’t have eyes in your arse, and it helped if you had them on the top of your head too. Surely now, someone was following them; and it had to be someone with a mission: a mission of their own.
He cursed himself for not thinking about this, but really you can’t be thinking of everything when you are a hero. He thought, Well, that was quick work – he’d only been asking questions on the street yesterday. Someone was in a great hurry. But right now he did nothing about it and strolled along at a steady pace, a sim
ple young man taking his young lady for a little constitutional walk, without a care in the world, while inside his head the wheels turned and the troops were called up, plans were made and angles sought.
Whoever it was was keeping their distance, and whatever happened Dodger was certain that he ought to make sure nobody knew where Simplicity was living. Whoever they were they weren’t at the moment confident enough to attack him right here, especially not with Mrs Sharples in tow; that disapproving look of hers would have been worth a battalion to the Duke of Wellington.
And so all three of them walked on happily, just like normal people, until he heard the voice of the old baggage saying, ‘I think this is quite far enough, young man, and so I insist that we rephrase our steps. Simplicity’s condition is still very delicate, and you will do no service to let the cold find its way to her.’
Her voice did not seem as unpleasant as he had heard it before, and so he guessed that the only hope was to take her into his confidence. He reached out and, much to her surprise, pulled the woman towards them, and whispered, ‘Ladies, I believe there is a gentleman following us who means somebody harm. It may be Simplicity or it may be, well, me. For the love of God, and your job, I implore you now, without saying a word, to turn at the next corner and wait while I send the cove about his business.’
To his amazement Mrs Sharples whispered back, ‘I have misjudged you, young man. And if the bastard puts up a fight, pray kick him in the unmentionables, good and proper. Do him up bad!’ Then her face returned to its usual expression of low-grade dislike for all and sundry.
Simplicity snorted and said, ‘Dodger, if you can, put him in the gutter.’
Dodger saw Mrs Sharples’ look of surprise, but Simplicity was standing up straight and right now looked as though she was ready for a fight.
Puzzled, but somehow reassured for the moment, Dodger watched as the women barely missed a step as they walked on, and then, when the time was right, he turned the corner sharply into an alleyway and let the ladies pass him. He waited, his back to the wall so that when the man stepped round carefully, Dodger had him by the throat and had brought his foot straight upwards to a place that would jangle, being rewarded with a groan. Then he pulled the man upright again and dragged him so close that he could smell the sweat. And there was slightly more light so he could now see him as well as smell him.
‘Oh my word, Dirty Benjamin, as I live and wish I couldn’t breathe. Down for a little stroll among the toffs, ain’t you? What’s your game today? ’Cos you have been following me a step for a step over the last seven corners I have travelled, and on one of them I crossed over my own steps. Funny, ain’t it, that you should have the same roundabout journey in mind, you nasty, nasty little man. A spy! Jesus, you stink like a five-day dog, you wheeze like a pig in difficulty, and if you don’t say something soon, so help me God, I will give you a pasting, see if I don’t.’
At that moment it occurred to him that the man was unable to say anything because Dodger’s other hand was on his throat. And, indeed, Benjamin looked as if he was about to explode. Dodger loosened his grip a little, and pushed the luckless Benjamin further into the alley.
The alley was narrow, and no one else was around, so Dodger said, ‘You know me, don’t you, Benjamin, even in my smart new clobber? Good old Dodger, who will never do you a bad turn if he could do you a good one. I thought you were my friend, I really did. But friends don’t spy on friends, do they?’
Dirty Benjamin stood frozen in front of Dodger, and after a bit of effort managed to get out, ‘They is saying as you killed that barber – you know, the one with all them dead bodies in his cellar, yeah?’
Dodger hesitated. Life was so much simpler in the sewers, but he had learned something lately, which was that the truth was indeed a fog, just like Charlie said, and people shaped it the way they wanted it to go. He had never killed anybody, ever, but that didn’t matter, because the fog of truth didn’t want to know that poor Mister Todd had been a decent man who saw so many terrible things in the service of the Duke of Wellington that his mind had become as twisted as the corpses of the men they placed in front of him. The poor devil was indeed more a candidate for Bedlam rather than the gallows, though any man with any sense but no money – oh, not those of the poor who did go to Bedlam – would choose the hangman any day. But the mist of truth didn’t like awkward details, and so there had to be a villain, and there had to be a hero.
Although it was a wretched nuisance, right now at least it could make itself useful, and so he looked at Dirty Benjamin sternly and said, ‘Something like that, but not all that. Now, if you are my friend you will tell me why you were following me, because if you don’t I will make cold meat of you.’
It was a rotten thing to do to Benjamin, who he knew of old as a snow-dropper, who mostly stole ladies’ underthings off clothes lines – being a man of no ambition whatsoever apart from being alive tomorrow – and ran errands for anyone who had some money and was bigger than him. He was the kind of person who would make a body want to wash their hands after meeting him; the man was a worm. Yes, all he did was wriggle. He was one of the lost souls, one of the people who were behind the door when God went past; they just grazed on the world, hardly disturbing it a bit, and were always scared of something.
Right now, Dirty Benjamin looked very scared, and Dodger relented, saying, ‘Well, maybe it won’t be cold meat, because I know you, Ben, and I’m sure you’re going to tell me who sent you to follow me, am I right? If you do that, I won’t hurt you.’
Both Dodger and his captive turned as the shadows changed to reveal Mrs Sharples peering round the corner with Simplicity next to her. The housekeeper said, ‘I am sorry to interrupt your little concussion, gentlemen, but I think it is time for us to go home, if it’s all the same with you?’
Dodger turned back to the hapless villain in front of him. ‘Benjamin,’ he said sternly, ‘I have no beef with you. This is your last chance. Tell me who you are working for and why, and I will never let on it’s you.’
Dirty Benjamin was crying, and not just crying by the smell of it. He slid to the ground in a pitiful heap.
And Dodger leaned over and whispered, ‘I have in my hand the razor of Sweeney Todd the barber, and at the moment I haven’t opened the blade. But it calls to me; it calls to me to use it . . . So now, Benjamin, I strongly suggest you tell me who you are working for. Do you understand?’
The words came out so fast that they tumbled among themselves. But Dodger made out: ‘It was Harry the Slap from Hackney Marshes, but the word is there’s important coves wanting to know where you are, and if you’ve got some girl with you. That’s all I know, honest to God. There’s some kind of reward out.’
Dodger said, ‘Who set up the reward?’
‘Don’t know. Harry the Slap never told me nuffin’, just to tell ’im. Promised me a cut of the profit, so he did.’
Dodger stared at the face. No, he wasn’t lying. Benjamin was easy meat, and so he said, ‘Well, Benjamin, as a friend, I rely on you not to tell Harry the Slap that you have seen me.’ There was a frantic nodding of the head from the wretched little man on the ground. ‘And, of course, there is just one other thing I must do. I did say that I would not harm you but this’ – and he swung his boot – ‘is from Mrs Sharples. Sorry, but she asked me to.’
He was rewarded with a deep groan from Benjamin and, amazingly, a huge and horrible grin from Mrs Sharples, who said, ‘Well done, young man, do it again!’
Dodger thought, This is the time to be the man who saved the world from Mister Sweeney Todd. So he said quietly, ‘Simplicity, and you too, Mrs Sharples, listen. I have reason to fear that there are people who are searching for Simplicity to do her harm, and therefore I am going to remove her from the kind embrace of the Mayhew household. Although I don’t doubt that they are kind to her, it makes me shiver, it does, to think of you opening the door to them very nasty coves.’
‘But she is in their care, Mister Dodger,’
Mrs Sharples insisted.
Dodger opened his mouth, but the noise he heard was Simplicity speaking. Not loudly, but not a whisper either, and she said, ‘I am a married woman whose husband turns out to be a weak and stupid boy, Mrs Sharples, and I believe that Dodger is right in this instance. So I suggest we make our way back to the house as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Dodger. ‘I am sure you would be in agreement, Mrs Sharples?’
Mrs Sharples looked down at Dirty Benjamin and said, ‘What are you going to do about him?’
Dodger said to Benjamin lying on the ground, ‘Listen, my friend, I know who you are, and I know where you live, don’t I just! Still collecting corsets, are you? Trust me that what you are going to do as soon as you are fit to stand is start walking up the road there, and you will go on walking as fast as you can in that direction as long as possible and you will not, repeat not, turn round to look behind you until it’s absolutely dark, understand? Because you know me and I am Dodger. The new Dodger. I’m the Dodger what done up Mr Sweeney Todd. The Dodger what has his razor now! And if you do the wrong thing by me, I’ll come up through the floor one night with it and make certain you never wake up.’
There was a groan from Benjamin, who said, ‘I ain’t never clapped eyes on you, mister, and by God I wish I ha’n’t. You’ll have no trouble from me.’
They began to walk back to the house by a roundabout route, and it wasn’t until he saw the kid selling newspapers and screaming, ‘’Orrible murder! Read all about it! Valiant hero to the rescue!’ that Dodger fully realized how life would be getting even more complicated.
At last the little gate to the Mayhew household was back in front of them, and he quickly cased the area for spies and found none. Then he opened the gate for Simplicity, who said, ‘Thank you very, very much, my dear Dodger,’ and she blew him a kiss, which made no sound at all, except that in his head the belfries of London all clanged at once in one great peal.
Dodger Page 13
