Dodger wailed, ‘But I left him there to be eaten by rats! He told me to!’
Sometimes Solomon talked as if he had just woken up and remembered something; a curious little mmm sound that came out, something close to the chirping of a little bird, heralding what he had to say next. Dodger never really understood what the automatic mmm stood for. It was a friendly noise and it seemed to him that Solomon was winding up for the next thought; you got used to it after a while and missed it when it wasn’t there.
Now Solomon said, ‘Mmm, was that any better or worse than being eaten by worms? It is the fate of all mankind, alas. You were with him when he died mmm, his friend? So that is a good thing. I have met the gentleman in the past, and I suppose he must be mmm oh, thirty-three? A very good age for a tosher, and from what you say he saw his Lady. Sad to reflect that I myself am mmm fifty-four, though thankfully in good health. You were lucky to meet me, Dodger, just as I indeed was lucky to meet you. You know about keeping clean and about putting money by. We boil water before we drink it, and I’m pleased to say I have mmm made you aware of the possibility of cleaning your teeth, which is why mmm, my dear, you still have some. Grandad died as he had lived and so you will remember him fondly but not mourn unduly. Toshers die young; what else can you expect if you spend half your life messing about in mess? You never see a Jewish tosher – you can’t be a kosher tosher! Remember fondly your friend Grandad, and learn what lessons you can from his life and death.’ And the grasshoppers continued to dance, sizzling as they did so.
Dodger could now hear a fight down in the street somewhere. Well, there was always a fight; fights sprouted up like a fungus, usually because a lot of people all pushed together in these wretched, dirty slums ended up not just at the end of their tether but right off it completely. He had heard people say that the drink was behind it all, but well, you had to drink beer. Yes, too much of it made you drunk, but on the other hand water out of the pump might quite likely make you dead, unless you boiled it first and had the money for coal or wood. That had to wait its turn, after the food and the beer (usually the other way around).
He thought, I believe that Grandad had the death he wanted. But surely no one should want a death like that? I can’t say it would do for me. There was suddenly another thought: if that isn’t what I want, then what is it I should strive for? It was a surprising little thought, one of those that hangs around out of general view until it pops up like a wart. He placed it behind his ear, as it were, for future deliberation.
Solomon was talking again. ‘Mmm, as for your Mister Charlie, I’ve heard of him down at the synagogue. He is a sharp cove, he is, sharp as a razor, sharp as a snake, so they tell me. They say he can take one look at you and he’s got a perfect study of you, from the way you talk down to the way you pick your nose. He is in with the police too, as tight as a tick with them, so now old Solomon is thinking, why did a man like him give a job of police work to mmm a snotty-nosed tosher like you? And it is snotty – I know you know how to use a wipe mmm, I taught you how; just sucking it down and spitting it out on the pavement is distasteful. Are you listening? If you don’t want to end up like poor old Grandad then you’d better end up like somebody else, and a good start mmm would be to look like someone else, especially mmm if you are to do this work for that Mister Charlie. So while I am making the dinner, I want you to go to see my friend Jacob, down at the shonky shop. Tell him I sent you, and that he is to dress you from head to toe with decent schmutter for one shilling, including boots, and mind you mention that last word. Maybe you could think of it as spending part of your legacy, mmm from the late Mister Grandad? And while you’re about it, take Onan with you – he could do with the exercise, poor old thing.’
Dodger had started to argue before he realized that this would be stupid. Solomon was right; if you lived on the streets that’s where you died, or perhaps, as in the case of old Grandad, underneath them. And it seemed the right thing somehow to spend part of his gift from Grandad – and the bounty from the sewers – on smartening himself up a bit, and it would help to look better if he was to try this new line of work . . . he liked the idea of more specie from Mister Charlie. Besides, if you were going to help a lady in distress, it paid to look smart while you were doing so.
He set off, trailed by Onan, who was overjoyed at going out in daylight, and you just had to hope that he didn’t get carried away. For all dogs smell – this being a chief, nay essential component of being a dog when being able to smell and be smelled is of great importance – but it had to be said that Onan not only smelled like every other dog; he introduced a generous portion of Onan smell into the mix as well.
They headed for the shonky shop to see Jacob and, if Dodger remembered correctly, Jacob’s rather strange wife whose wig, however you looked at it, never quite seemed to be right. Jacob ran a pawnshop as well as the shonky shop, and Dodger knew that Solomon suspected that Jacob also bought things without troubling himself where they came from, although he never said why he suspected that.
The pawnshop was where you took your tools if you were out of work, and where you bought them back again when you were back in the job, because it’s easier to eat bread than eat hammers. If you were really skint you popped your unnecessary clothes too; well, at least some of them. If you never turned up to buy them back they would go into the shonky shop, where Jacob and his sons worked all day sewing and mending and cutting and seaming and generally turning old clothes into, if not new clothes, at least into something respectable. Dodger found Jacob and his sons quite friendly.
Jacob greeted Dodger with an expensive grin, which is one where the seller hopes that the buyer is going to buy something. He said, ‘Why, it’s my young friend who once saved the life of my oldest friend, Solomon, and . . . put that dog outside!’
Onan was tied up in the little yard behind the shop with a bone to worry at – and good luck to him in that endeavour, Dodger thought, since any bone that got given to a dog in old London town had already had all the goodness boiled out of it for soup. This didn’t seem to trouble Onan all that much, and so he snuffled and crunched in happy optimism, and Dodger was ushered back inside, made to stand in the very small space available in the middle of the shop and treated like a lord going to one of the nobby shops you found in Savile Row and Hanover Square, although quite probably in those places the clothes you put on hadn’t already been worn by four or five people before you.
Jacob and his sons bustled around him like bees, squinting at him critically, holding up only slightly yellow ‘white’ shirts in front of him and then whisking them away before the next tailor was magically there, holding up a pair of highly suspect pants. Clothes spun past, never to reappear, but never mind because here came some more! It was: ‘Try these – oh dear no’; or, ‘How about this? Certain to fit – oh no, never mind, plenty more for a hero!’
But he hadn’t been a hero, not really. Dodger remembered that day three years ago when he had been having a really bad afternoon on the tosh, and it had started to rain, and he had heard that somebody else had picked up a sovereign just ahead of him so he was feeling angry and irritable and wanted to take all that out on somebody. But when he was back on the foggy streets, there had been two geezers kicking the crap out of somebody on the pavement. Quite possibly, in those days, when his temper was more liable to explode into a spot of boots and fists, if some little wheel in his head had turned the wrong way, he might have helped them, just to get it out of his system. But as it happened the wheel turned the other way, towards the thought that two geezers kicking an old cove who was lying on the ground groaning were pox-ridden mucksnipes. So he had waded in and laid it on with a trowel, just like last night, didn’t he indeed, panting and kicking until they cried uncle and he was too tired to chase them.
It had been a madness born of frustration and hunger, although Solomon said it was the hand of God, which Dodger thought was pretty unlikely since you didn’t see God in those streets very often. Then he had hel
ped the old man home, even if he was an ikey mo, and Solomon had brewed up some of his soup, thanking Dodger fulsomely the whole time. Since the old boy lived by himself and had a bit of space to spare in his tenement attic, it all worked out; Dodger ran the occasional errand for Solomon, scrounged wood for his fire and, when possible, pinched coal off the Thames barges. In exchange, Solomon gave Dodger his meals, or at least cooked whatever it was Dodger had acquired, coming up with dishes much better than Dodger had ever seen in his life.
He also got much better prices for the stuff Dodger came back with from the toshing; the drawback of this was that the old Jew would always, always ask him if what he was buying was stolen. Well, stuff from the sewers was definitely OK – everybody knew that. It was money down the drain, lost to humanity, on its way to the sea and out of human ken. Toshers, of course, didn’t count as humanity – everybody knew that too. But in those days Dodger was not above a bit of thievery, getting stuff you could say was extremely dodgy and totally not, as Solomon would say, ‘kosher’.
Every time the old man asked him if this stuff was just from the toshing, Dodger said yes, but he could tell by the look in Solomon’s eyes when the old man thought that he was not telling the truth. The worst of it was that Solomon’s eyes invariably got it right. He would take the stuff anyway, but things would be a little bit chilly in the attic room for a while.
So now Dodger generally nicked only stuff that could be burned, drunk or eaten, such as the stuff on market stalls and other low-hanging fruit. Things had warmed up after that, and besides, Solomon read the newspapers down at the synagogue, and occasionally there would be sad little pieces in the Lost and Found column from somebody who had lost their wedding ring or some other piece of jewellery. And it was jewellery that was more to be valued, well, because it was the wedding ring, wasn’t it, and not just a certain amount of gold. There were often the magic words ‘Reward to finder’, and with a certain amount of careful negotiation, Solomon pointed out, you could get rather more for it than you would get from a fence. Besides, you would never take it to a kosher jeweller, because they would set the police on you even though you’d merely ‘found’ it, not stolen it. Sometimes honesty was its own reward, said Solomon, but Dodger thought it helped if some money came with it.
Money apart, Dodger found he felt happier on those days when he had indeed been able to bring somebody back in touch with some treasured necklace or ring, or any other trinket which they held dear; it made him walk on air for a while, which was indeed a cut above what he was normally treading on in the sewers.
One day, after a kiss from a lady who had recently been a blushing bride and whose wedding ring had unfortunately come off her finger whilst she was getting into the carriage to go to her new home, he had said to Solomon, because some of the other toshers had been teasing him a lot, ‘Are you trying to save my soul?’ And Solomon, with a little grin that was never far from his face, said, ‘Mmm, well, I am exploring the possibility that you may have one.’
That little change in his habits, which helped glue together the relationship with Solomon, meant that he didn’t – unlike some of the other toshers – have to shiver in doorways of a night, or hunker down under a piece of tarpaulin, or pay for the dreadful stinking ha’penny rope down at the flophouse. All Solomon wanted from him was a bit of company in the evenings, and occasionally the old man tactfully required Dodger’s companionship when he was going to see one of his customers and therefore carrying mechanisms, jewellery and other dangerously expensive things. In the vicinity, news of Dodger’s mercurial personality had got about, and so he and Solomon could travel entirely unmolested.
As a job, Dodger thought Solomon’s was pretty good. The old boy made small things – usually things to replace things, precious and treasured things that had gone missing. Last week Dodger had seen him repair a very expensive musical box, which was full of gears and wires. The whole thing had been damaged when some workmen had dropped it when the owners were moving house, and he had watched the old man handle every single piece as if it was something special – cleaning, shaping, and gently bending, slowly, as if there was all the time in the world. Some ornamental ivory inlays had been broken on the rosewood cabinet and Solomon replaced them with little bits of ivory from his small store, polishing it up so neatly he said that the lady he had done it for had given him half a crown over and above his normal charge.
OK, sometimes some of Dodger’s chums called him shabbos goy, but he noticed that he ate better than any of them, and cheaper too, since among the market stalls Solomon could haggle even a Cockney until the man gave in – and Heaven help any stallholder who sold Solomon short weight, bad bread or rotting apples, let alone a boiled orange and all the other tricks of the trade, including the wax banana. When you took into account the good and healthful eating, the arrangement was not to be sneezed at, and Dodger never liked to catch a cold.
When Jacob and his sons had got through with the dance of the flying pants, shirts, socks, vests and shoes, they stood back and beamed at one another in the knowledge of a job well done, and then Jacob said, ‘Well now, I do not know. Upon my word, what magicians we are, ain’t we? What we have created here, my sons, is a gentleman, fit for any society if they don’t mind a slight smell of camphor. But it’s that or moths, everybody knows, even Her Majesty herself, and right now I reckon, my dears, that if she walked in this door she would say, “Good afternoon, young sir, don’t I know you?”’
‘It’s a bit tight in the crotch,’ said Dodger.
‘Then don’t think naughty thoughts until it stretches,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Seeing as it’s you I will throw in this excellent hat, just your size if you padded it out a bit so it ain’t covering your ears, and I reckon the style will soon be all the rage again.’ Jacob stood back, mightily pleased with the transformation he had achieved. He put his head on one side and said, ‘You know, young man, what you need now is a very good haircut and then you will have to poke the ladies off with a stick!’
‘Solomon helps me cut it when it gets too hot and I want things to cool off a bit,’ said Dodger, upon which Jacob gave the kind of explosive snort that only an offended Jewish tradesman could make, even more expressive than a Frenchman on a very bad day. Generally speaking, if it had to be written down, it would begin with something like ‘phooieu’ and end with a certain amount of spittle in the general vicinity.
Jacob wailed, ‘That’s not a haircut, my boy. You look like you’ve been sheared! As though you’ve just got out of the clink! If Queen Victoria saw you then, she’d probably call out the runners. Take my advice, next time go to a proper barber! Take the advice of your old friend Jacob.’
And so, in company with the dog Onan, who was still optimistically carrying his bone in his jaws, Dodger walked back into the world. Of course, shonky was shonky, however you looked at it; it might just do, but it wasn’t the full shilling. What around here was? Nevertheless, Dodger felt all the better for the new clobber, even with the associated crotch problem and a certain prickling under the arms, and it was certainly better than anything else he owned and hopefully worthy of the girl from the storm.
He walked back to the alley and climbed up the rickety stairs to the attic, where Solomon greeted him with, ‘Who are you, young man?’
On the table, spread out, were the contents of the Happy Families game. ‘Mmm . . . very interesting,’ said Solomon. ‘This is a remarkable and mmm somewhat deadly device you have presented to me. It is mmm deceptively simple, but dark clouds soon gather.’
‘What?’ said Dodger, looking at the brightly coloured cards laid out on the table. ‘It looks like something for kids – though nothing like the Happy Family man and his wagon, which is strange. It’s just a kids’ game, ain’t it?’
‘Alas, yes it is,’ said Solomon. ‘I shall expand on my little theory. Every player is dealt a hand from the pack of cards, and the object appears to be to put together one complete family, the happy fam
ily, simply by asking one of your opponents if they have a particular card. It would seem a cheerful game for children but, in fact, if they only did but know it, the parents are setting the child on the way to be a poker player or, worse, a politician.’
‘What?’
‘Allow me to elucidate,’ said Solomon, and after a glance at Dodger’s blank face, ‘I mean, explain, young man. It appears to go like this. In order to mmm get your happy family, you have to choose one family, and so you might, as it were, choose to collect all of the mmm Baker family. You might think that all you need do is simply wait until it is your turn again, and boldly ask somebody to give you the next card you were looking for. It might be Miss Bun the baker’s daughter. Why? Because mmm when the cards were dealt out at the start of the game you had already got Mister Bun the baker, and so his daughter would be a step in the right direction. But beware! Your opponents might mmm, if you keep simply asking for a Bun, in their turn start asking you for a member of the Bun family; they may not be collecting the Buns themselves, but possibly they intend to get together a whole set of the mmm Dose family, the head of which is Mister Dose the doctor. They are asking you for a Bun when they need a Dose, because they had noticed your interest in Buns, and despite their longing for a Dose would rather use their turn mmm to put you off track whilst at the same time depriving you of a precious Bun!’
‘Well, I would just lie and say I hadn’t got it,’ said Dodger.
‘Ah ha! As the game lumbers to its conclusion your ownership of the disputed Bun will come to light, mmm yes indeed! And it will be a very sad day for you. You have to tell the truth, because if you don’t tell the truth, you will never win the game. Thus this terrible battle wages, as you decide to forsake Buns now and see if your salvation might lie mmm in collecting the family of Mister Bung the brewer, despite the fact that your family is teetotal. You hope to put at least one of your enemies under a false impression of your real intentions, while all the time you must suspect that every single one of them, no matter how innocent mmm they appear to be, are trying by every strategy they can think of to foil your plans! And so the dreadful inquisition continues! Son learns to deceive father, sister learns to distrust father, and mother is trying to lose in order to keep the peace, and it is dawning on her that her children’s facial expressions of fake desire or optimism to put others off the track might mmm trick an opponent into thinking in the wrong direction.’
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