Dido and Pa

by Joan Aiken

  ‘Aye, aye, I’ll be sartin sure, guvnor,’ replied the lad, emphasizing his intentions with an evil grin, screwing up his unpleasing face and laying one finger alongside his nose.

  ‘Do so. That’s my good boy.’

  ‘But Pa – I don’t wish to leave Simon – I haven’t even said goodbye – I only just met him again –’ protested Dido, struggling in vain against her father’s grip.

  ‘No matter for that, my dilly; idle politeness must always give way when Necessity calls.’ And Mr Twite picked up his daughter bodily and thrust her into the carriage. ‘You will have ample time to see Simon hereafter, have no fear – perhaps –’ and he sprang into the vehicle after her, slamming the door. ‘Give ’em their heads, then, Morel,’ he called to the driver through the trap, and the coach started off with such a jolt that Dido was thrown to the floor.

  ‘Saints save us, Pa, you sure are in a rush,’ she gasped, picking herself up from among the rushes with which the floor was strewn, and thankful for the thickness of her new jacket, which had protected her bones from bruising.

  ‘Never mind it, my sugarknob; the sight of your sister’s joy will repay any such slight vexation,’ replied Mr Twite, pulling out a pipe and a pouch of Vosper’s Nautical Cut tobacco.

  Dido said nothing. She was beginning to be more than a little aggrieved at this summary treatment. Pa’s got no right to hale me off thisaway, she thought. Still, I’ll make sure he don’t keep me under his thumb once I’ve seen Penny. Soon as I see how she really is – prob’ly not so bad as Pa makes out – I can cut and run. But what riles me most is that poor Simon will be so put about; he’ll be wondering where in herring’s name I’ve got to. And he’ll think it downright rude and capsy of me to light off like this without a by-your-leave.

  That shravey-looking boy won’t give him no message, I’ll lay.

  In this guess Dido was quite right.

  She was so displeased with her father that she said nothing to him about having carried the king’s train during the coronation ceremony.

  When Simon returned to the stable yard, followed this time by his aged groom, Matthew Mogg, he found the table cleared, the plates removed, and a drunken carter sitting on the bench where Dido had been, with his head resting on the table beside a mug of Mountain Dew.

  ‘Where’s the young lass who was sitting here?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Lass? Lass? I never see no lass,’ replied the man blearily.

  ‘A skinny young girl in a sheepskin coat? Dressed as a boy?’

  ‘Sheepskin coat? I hain’t seen so much as a moleskin coat,’ yawned the carter, and, making a pillow from the folds of his smock, he laid his head down on the table once more and began to snore.

  ‘Rackon thee’s lost her, Mester Simon,’ gloomily pronounced old Mogg. ‘And dang me if I fathom why that lad yonder told thee the grey mare was lame, when ’er be fit and flighty as a flea.’

  ‘Curse it! I hope no mischief has come to Dido!’ worried Simon, looking vainly about the stable yard for her. ‘Do you go that way, Matthew, and ask everybody you pass, and I’ll try this way. Perhaps she just strolled out to look at the dancing.’

  But, ask as they might, no word or trace of Dido was to be found. She seemed to have vanished like a bubble, like a drop of dew, as if she had never been there.

  And, in the carriage beside her father, Dido, fairly tired out by her long day’s adventures, and somewhat stifled by the copious, heavy fumes of Vosper’s Nautical Cut, gradually slid down sideways against the lumpy horsehair upholstery of the carriage, and drifted off into uneasy slumber.

  2

  WHEN DIDO NEXT opened her eyes, she was startled to see that the night was nearly over; the squares of black sky outside the carriage windows were now paling into a stormy grey. A high wind buffeted the coach as it rolled along, and rain slapped at the window-panes.

  Sitting up straight, and peering out to her right, Dido could see, far away, a band of lemon-yellow light where the sun was half-heartedly trying to rise under a threatening pile of lumpy black cloud. The landscape faintly shown by the yellow light was also a surprise to Dido – and not a pleasant one: she had expected to see fields or woods, but what met her eyes in place of these was a desolate region of brick railway viaducts, small market gardens crisscrossed by black ditches and half-made roads; there were tall sheds, factory chimneys, and clumps of houses that seemed to have escaped briefly from the city and were now waiting for it to catch up with them.

  In the light of a rainy dawn, this no-man’s land, neither city nor country, looked wholly dreary and forlorn.

  ‘Bless us, Pa,’ said Dido, ‘where in the world are you taking us? Where’s Penny? I thought you said we hadn’t far to go? But at this pace we must ’a come forty mile and more?’

  ‘Humph – awrrrk – aaargh – beg pardon? Whazzat you say, my chaffinch?’ croaked her father.

  Mr Twite, in the harsh morning light, presented almost as dismal a spectacle as the glum landscape outside the carriage window. His red wig hung awry, the moustache dangled sideways from his stubbly lip, his cheeks were drawn and grey, his eyes bloodshot and gummy.

  ‘I said, Pa, that it’s a plaguy long way you’re taking me to Penny’s place. I thought you said it was only a mile or so?’

  He stared at her for a moment or two, working his face about as if getting it into order for the day while he collected his thoughts and put them in position.

  ‘Ar, humph – y’r sister Penny – yes, quite so. That is to say – well. I must acknowledge, my eucalyptus – deuce take it, how I do long for a mug of Organ Grinder’s Oil –’

  ‘You must acknowledge what, Pa?’

  Mr Twite said rapidly, ‘’N speakingof – y’rsister Penny – been guiltyof – very slight diggle-gression from fact.’

  ‘You told a lie, Pa.’

  ‘Not a lie,’ said Mr Twite. ‘No, not a lie. Different person, is all. Different deathbed. Arrrh hum. Oh, pisky bless us, how I do need a little something.’

  ‘Whose deathbed?’ queried Dido, now really cross and very puzzled.

  ‘One o’ myoldestfriends – dear, poor fellow – told him fetch m’ daughter t’tend ailing brow – anyhow, not far now,’ added Mr Twite gladly, looking out of the window, where the rain was showing a disagreeable tendency to turn to snow.

  After another half-hour’s drive, Dido exclaimed, ‘Croopus, Pa, we’re a-crossing London Bridge! You never said as you was bringing me to London?’

  ‘Did I not, my seraph? Ah dear me, what an absent-minded old fellow I am becoming, It is the power of music – the penalty of music.’

  ‘Of music, Pa?’

  ‘When I am engulfed in themes for a new serenade, a new suite, a new symphony – why, don’t you see, that drives all other considerations out of my poor head. Tum, tum, terum, titherum, tarum, tarum, tiddle-I-dee!’ And Mr Twite suddenly burst into vigorous song, the violence of which almost seemed as if it might shake him to pieces. He looked like an aged moulting thrush.

  Dido, however, at this burst of musical activity, eyed him a little more respectfully.

  ‘Are you making up some new tunes then, Pa?’

  ‘I am always at it, my euphorbia. But, bless us, yes, my mind is at present engrossed – engrrrr – osssed,’ he repeated, giving the word a slightly guttural, foreign accent, ‘I am engrossed in a suite for a Royal Progress.’

  ‘Like, you mean, when the king goes from St James’s Palace to Hampton Court?’

  ‘Just so, my poppet. I plan to call my suite the Royal Tunnel Music.’

  ‘Why Tunnel Music, Pa?’

  ‘Why, my chicken, you probably may not be aware, having been absent for so long on your travels, but the old king, King James, had, while he was alive, put in hand the work for a tunnel to be dug under the River Thames, running from Shadwell to Rotherhithe. This tunnel was, in fact, all but completed when he died, and the new king, King Richard – that is, ahem! – will open it at a grand opening ceremony shortly.’ Under h
is breath Mr Twite murmured, ‘And then, just won’t there be fireworks! Oh, butter my whiskers.’

  ‘So, is your Tunnel Music a-going to be played at the opening ceremony, Pa?’

  ‘Well, my lovekin, that remains to be seen. But I hope so, I certainly do hope so.’

  And Mr Twite gave several very emphatic nods, dislodging his moustache entirely. Dido thoughtfully picked it up from among the rushes and handed it to him.

  Their carriage, having turned eastwards and gone past the Tower of London, now plunged into a maze of narrow streets that lay close to the docks – winding, slippery streets, littered with orange-peel, fish-heads and straw.

  Children sailed boats in the filthy gutters, despite the worsening weather; tattered old women picked over dirt heaps, looking for bones or rags or bits of rusty iron; groups huddled round breakfast stalls, blowing the steam off mugs of coffee; little slattern girls carried baskets of water-cresses or shrimps, and shrilly called their wares.

  ‘Juststopaminnit,’ croaked Mr Twite, running all his words together, as the carriage rolled past a corner tavern called the Two Jolly Mermaids; and he tapped on the panel and called out, ‘Jarvey, jarvey, I say! Morel! Pull up, pull up. I have to wet my whistle.’

  ‘His excellency gave me no instructions about stopping,’ replied the driver.

  His excellency? thought Dido. Who the pize can his excellency be, when he’s at home?

  ‘His excellency don’t want a cove to die of thirst,’ retorted Mr Twite, hastily ramming his moustache back into place. ‘You stop here, and you can have a mug of Organ Grinder’s Oil for yourself.’

  ‘Oh, very well; tol-lol.’

  The two men dismounted, the driver giving the reins into the hand of a boy who was pushing a wheeled coffee-stall along the road, presumably from its night quarters to its daytime position.

  ‘Here, you! Mind these for a couple o’ minutes and I’ll give you half a jim.’

  Dido made to follow her father, but he checked her.

  ‘You’d best not come in, my dove; it’s a sailors’ tavern, not suited for your youthful innocence. I’ll bring you out a mug of hot purl.’

  Dido was about to protest that she had been in far wilder places during the course of her travels, but then it occurred to her that she might, while Mr Twite was in the public house, turn the time to good account. Accordingly, as soon as the two men had gone into the tavern, she stuck her head out of the carriage window, and said to the boy holding the horses, ‘Hey, cully! D’you want to earn a brown?’

  ‘I’d sooner a tanner,’ retorted the boy, eyeing her shrewdly. ‘Let’s see the colour of your blunt.’

  He was a stocky, round-faced boy, wearing a pair of leather smalls, rather too large for him, and over them a smock-frock which he had belted up with a dog-collar. His blue eyes were somewhat crossed, which gave him a carefree appearance; one of them looked hard at Dido, the other one stared over her shoulder. He was very freckled. Dido noticed that his coffee-stall looked neat and clean, and the brass urn was brightly polished.

  She had a little money with her and was able to pull a silver sixpence out of her pocket and hold it up.

  ‘Boil me! A real silver Simon. What d’ye want me to do?’

  ‘You know the way from here to Chelsea!’

  ‘Do I know my granma’s patch box?’ retorted the boy scornfully. ‘Well?’

  ‘Go to Chelsea, and ask for the Duke o’ Battersea’s house.’

  ‘Now who’re you gammoning? Go to the dook’s house? He’d turn me over to the traps, sure as you’re born. Who’d do that, even for a Simon?’

  ‘No he wouldn’t,’ said Dido earnestly. ‘He’s a right decent cove, the dook – his name’s Simon too – and he’ll be glad to get word of me. You give him –’ she searched her person for something which she could send as a token, and finally pulled off one of the brass buttons from her sheepskin coat. ‘You give him this here button,’ she said, ‘and tell him it’s from Dido Twite, that I’m with my pa on an urgent errand, I’m here in – where is this?’

  ‘Wapping.’

  ‘I’m here in Wapping, and I’ll come to Chelsea as soon as I’m free. Got it?’

  ‘I go to the dook, I tell him Died o’ Fright’s with her pa, an’ll come to him as soon as she kin.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Let’s have the mish, then.’

  Dido handed over the sixpence, the boy took it, bit it, nodded sagaciously, and stowed it away among the folds of his breeches.

  ‘Mind,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave the coffee-barrer long enough to git all the way to Chelsea – that’s a fair step, that be – but someone’ll get it there.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Dido, wondering doubtfully whether she could really trust him, and wishing she had paper and pencil so that she could write Simon a note. How long would this business with her father take? Was he speaking the truth about this mysterious sick person? Did her father ever speak the truth?

  Dido sighed.

  ‘Name’s Wally Greenaway,’ the boy said, eyeing Dido with care, first out of one eye, then the other. ‘Everyone round here knows me – my dad has the apple-stall yonder.’

  He nodded to a barrow along the road, piled with russet apples. A tall, large-boned man sat behind it. Despite the cold wet morning he wore only a check waistcoat over shirtsleeves and drab breeches and a red belcher neckerchief. His hair was pale grey, almost white. Dido thought that he was blind for he sat staring straight ahead without looking around him.

  ‘Reckon I’ll buy one of his apples,’ she said, and scrambled out of the carriage. ‘Pa’s being mighty slow with that mug o’ purl.’

  A sign on the stall said ‘4 APPELS 1d.’ On close inspection the apples looked rather wizened, but Dido was hungry and thirsty. Besides, if she bought the father’s wares, the son might be more likely to do her business. Remembering a piece of advice that a sailor had once given her, she said to the boy, ‘When’s your birthday? Mine’s the first o’ March.’

  When you talk to a savage or a native, Noah Gusset had said, always tell him some secret about yourself – your birthday, your father’s name, your favourite food – tell him your secret and ask him his. That’s a token of trust; soon’s you know each other a bit, then you can be friends.

  The question certainly had an electrifying effect on the boy Wally. He gaped at Dido as if she had told him that she was the Queen of Japan. He did not immediately answer.

  Meanwhile Dido turned to the stall owner. ‘I’d like one o’ your apples, please, mister. Can I take this one with the leaf, in front?’

  ‘They’re four for a yenap, daughter.’

  ‘I only want one.’

  At that moment Mr Twite and the carriage driver emerged from the tavern, wafting strong fumes of Geneva spirit.

  ‘Hey, cockalorum, what’s this?’ demanded Mr Twite, in tones of strong disapproval, as he advanced. ‘M’daughter hobnobbing with all the scaff and raff of London in the public street? That won’t do, no it won’t, by bilboes! Giving money and – and tokens – to barrow boys and crossing sweepers – chatting up louts and cads! Where’s your sense of pride and propriety, child?’

  And Dido’s father, who must, she realized with dismay, have been watching through the tavern window, suddenly pounced on Wally Greenaway, shook him till his teeth rattled, and removed from him the button and the silver sixpence. Mr Twite pocketed the latter, and gave the former back to Dido, wagging his finger at her admonishingly and saying, with a knowing wink, ‘Mustn’t give coins and tokens to young lads in the streets, stap me, no, you mustn’t! That’s flighty, daughter, and owdacious – can’t have ye demeaning the name of Twite, no, damme, we can’t. Come along, come along now – bundle back in the carriage and look sharp about it.’

  ‘Hey – leggo of me, Pa –’ Dido began furiously, but the driver was plainly prepared to assist Mr Twite in bundling his daughter into the carriage; she saw that resistance would be a waste of time and undignified as wel
l.

  But she was very angry indeed, affronted at being shamed in the presence of the boy and his father. Resolving to bide her time and to get away at the very first opportunity, she bit her lip, and climbed back into the stuffy conveyance.

  The driver jumped back on to his box and Mr Twite was preparing to follow Dido when a voice called, ‘Wait a minute! Wait just a minute, mister! You forgot something!’

  It was the apple-seller calling after them – in a surprisingly loud, deep, resonant voice.

  Mr Twite turned, startled and not pleased.

  ‘You forgot her apple!’ called the stall keeper, and he took an apple from the front of his stall and tossed it towards Mr Twite, who, more by luck than judgement, caught it in his left hand.

  ‘Mister! You better watch out for that liddle maid!’ called the apple-seller, warningly. ‘She be a rare ’un, she be! I can see crossed sparkling lines over her head, an’ a whole shower o’ lucky stars. I can see a gold crown in her hand, look so, and a velvet carpet under her foot. So take good care of her, do-ee; or else the luck’ll turn inside out for ’ee, and the shining lines’ll turn to flint stones and sharp fangs, as’ll strike and batter ye to the heart. There’s a warning plain and clear for them as’ll heed it!’

  ‘Godblessmysoul!’ ejaculated Mr Twite, looking quite pale and shattered at this unexpected harangue. Dismayed, he stared at the apple, then at the apple-seller, then, shaking his head from side to side as if wasps were buzzing round it, he clambered into the carriage and slammed the door.

  ‘What next, I’d like to know?’ he grumbled. ‘Blind coster-mongers roaring out warnings – who the deuce do they think we are, King Solly the First and the Queen o’ Sheep’s Head Bay?’

  But just the same, Mr Twite gave Dido a narrow, appraising look, as if wondering, perhaps for the first time, whether there might be more to her than met the eye; and he sat frowningly regarding her as the driver cracked his whip and the horses began to move once more.

  ‘You better give me my apple, Pa, I’m hungry, and you never brought me that jossop you promised,’ said Dido, and he absently handed her the apple. Noticing with interest that it was the very one she had asked for, the one with a leaf from the front row, she carefully polished it on her sheepskin sleeve and took a large bite. I never paid the blind cove for it, nor did Pa, she suddenly thought; soon’s I can, I’ll find out where he lives, or come back to his stall, and pay him a farden. I reckon he done me a good turn.