Then Sweeney was between Dodger and the door to the street, waving the gleaming razor like a bride just after her wedding, straining to see who is going to catch the bouquet . . .
Dodger, hoping that his heartbeat could not be heard, said calmly, ‘Tell me what you see, Mister Todd; it sounds terrible. Can I help you?’
Bang bang went his heart, but Dodger ignored it. Unfortunately, so did Sweeney Todd, whose mutterings began to take on something vaguely if erratically understandable. Moving gently, so very gently, Dodger slowly eased himself out of the chair and to his feet and he thought, Opium, maybe? He sniffed, wished he hadn’t – no alcohol on the man’s breath either. He said in as kind a voice as he could muster, ‘What is it you are looking at, Mister Todd?’
‘They . . . they keep coming back. Yes, yes, coming back, trying to take me away with them . . . I remember them . . . Do you know what a cannonball can do, sir? Sometimes they bounce, very funny, ha, and then they are running along the ground, and then some lad . . . yes, some lad fresh from the farm in Dorset or Ireland, with his head full of lies about combat, and in his pocket a badly drawn picture of his girlfriend, who might have let him tickle her fancy because he was the brave warrior off to fight Boney . . . This young warrior sees that dreadful cannonball rolling along on the turf like it’s a game of skittles, and so like a bloody idiot he calls out to his mates, such as have survived, and he decides to give it a big kick, not knowing how much force there is still left in the ball. Which is quite enough to take off his leg, and not just his leg. Barber-surgeon, that’s me, the surgeon bit on the battlefield being somewhat akin to butchery, but slightly better paid . . . And I see them now . . . the broken men, the handiwork of God twisted into terrible shapes, terrible . . . and here they come . . . here they come, just as they always come, our glorious heroes, some seeing for those with no eyes, some carrying those with no legs, some screaming for them with no voice . . .’
All the time the razor danced and weaved, hypnotically, back and forth, while Dodger slid slowly towards the sweating man.
‘Not enough bandages, not enough medicines, not enough . . . life . . .’ Sweeney Todd mumbled. ‘I tried. I never pointed the weapon at another man, I just tried to help, when the best help you can give is the gentle knife, and yet still they come . . . they come here now, all the time . . . looking for me . . . And they say they aren’t dead, but I know they are. Dead, but still walking. Oh! The pity of it, the pity . . .’
Now Dodger’s hand, which had been following the twisting flight of the erratic blade, gently gripped the hand that held it, and it seemed to Dodger that he could see those soldiers himself, so hypnotic was the sway of the razor, and he could feel himself being dragged towards some terrible outcome until the inner Dodger, the bit that wanted to survive, woke up, saluted, took control over Dodger’s arm and neatly and carefully lifted the razor out of Sweeney Todd’s hand.
The swaying man didn’t even notice it go. Still staring into a place where Dodger did not want to see, he simply let it go and slumped down over the chair, foam settling around him softly.
Only then did Dodger realize that they weren’t alone, because while he had been half in the dream world of Sweeney Todd, there in the doorway – and being remarkably quiet for their kind – were two peelers, sweating and staring at him and poor Mister Todd. One of the peelers said, ‘Holy Mary, mother of God!’ and both men jumped back as Dodger folded up the razor and shoved it into his pocket out of harm’s way. Then he turned back, smiled cheerfully at the peelers, and said, ‘Can I help you gentlemen?’
After that, the world went mad, or at least more mad than it had been before. Dodger was surrounded by people, and the little shop was lousy with peelers, brushing past him to the back of the shop, and then he could hear the rattle of a lock, the thud of a boot and, in the distance, some terrible swearing. A gust of corruption of graveyard proportions swept through the shop to cries from the crowd, leaving Dodger suddenly feeling rather queasy and, for some reason, a bit annoyed that he hadn’t had his haircut.
There was the sound of police whistles outside and more peelers flooded into the shop, two of them then grasping the recumbent and possibly insensible Mister Sweeney Todd, who had tears running down his face. He was rushed out again, leaving Dodger on a chair in the epicentre of a hubbub that was loud enough to be considered a hubbub with at least an extra hub, not to mention bub. Faces watched him from every direction, and there was a gasp every time he moved, and in his rather troubled state he dimly heard the voice of one of the peelers who had just emerged from the cellar saying, ‘He just stood there. I mean, he just stood there, eyeball to eyeball with the man, not blinking at all, just waiting for a moment to grab the wretched weapon! We didn’t dare say a word, ’cos we saw the malefactor was in some kind of dream, a dream in the mind of a man flourishing a dreadful weapon! What can I say? I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, do not go down into the cellar. Oh no, ’cos if you do, you might see something that you really would not like to see. Stop them, Fred! Calling it dreadful carnage would not do justice to the crimes. You must trust me on this – I was a soldier once. I was at Talavera and that was bad enough. When I went down there I threw up, so I did, all over the place. I mean, well, the stink! No wonder the neighbours had been complaining! Yes, sir, you sir, can I help you?’
Blearily, Dodger saw Charles Dickens arrive on the heels of the peelers. Charlie said, ‘My name is Dickens, and I know young Dodger here to be a most excellent and trustworthy individual; he is also the hero who saved the staff of the Morning Chronicle just the other evening, and I’m sure you have all heard of that.’
Dodger began feeling rather better now, especially as there was tremendous applause, and he brightened up still further when he heard somebody in the crowd shout, ‘I propose we make up a subscription for this young man of such exceptional valour! I pledge five crowns!’
He tried to get to his feet at this point, but Charlie Dickens, who was bending over him, pushed him gently back down into the chair, bent down until his lips were very close to Dodger’s ear and whispered, ‘It would be in order to groan a little in response to your terrible encounter, my friend. Trust me as a journalist; you are a hero of the hour, again, and it would be a pity if an unguarded comment at this juncture spoiled things.’ He leaned an inch closer and whispered, ‘Listen to them shouting out how much they will pledge to the hero, and so I will carefully get you to your feet and take you to the magnificent offices of the Chronicle, where I will pen an article the like of which has never been written before, since possibly the time of Caesar.’
Charlie smiled. Rather like a fox, Dodger thought, in the spinning, roaring, suddenly baffling world. Then he inched closer, and said, ‘Incidentally, my intrepid friend, it would interest you to know that I have been told just now that Mister Sweeney Todd used his razor to slit the throats of six gentlemen who came to him earlier this week for a haircut and a close shave. But for your almost magical response you would have been the seventh of them. And these were my best trousers!’ These words were shouted, or more accurately screamed, because Dodger had thrown up his breakfast all over Charlie.
Sometime after, Dodger was seated at the long table in the editor’s office of the Chronicle, wishing he could be on his way to see Simplicity. Opposite him was Charlie, who was somewhat less angry now since, being a man of means, he had acquired another pair of trousers and sent the other ones to be cleaned. The inner wall of the office was one of those half-height affairs so that people passing by in the newsroom could see what was happening, and now, how they did pass by. And linger too, with every writer, journalist and printer finding an excuse to see the young man who, according to the magical telegraph of the streets, had wrestled to the ground the terrible Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Dodger was getting rather annoyed about this. ‘I hardly touched ’im! I just pushed ’im gently down and took the wretched razor off ’im, that’s all! Honest! It was as if he had been taking opium or
something, ’cos he was seeing dead soldiers – dead men coming towards him, I swear it, and he was talking to them, like he was ashamed that he couldn’t save them. God’s truth, Mister Charlie, I swear I was seeing them too, come the finish! Men blown all to pieces! And worse, like men half blown to pieces and screaming! He wasn’t a demon, mister, although I reckon he may have seen Hell, and I ain’t a hero, sir, I really ain’t. He wasn’t bad, he was mad, and sad, and lost in his ’ead. That’s all of it, sir, the up and the down of it, sir. An’ that’s the truth you should write down. I mean, I ain’t no hero, ’cos I don’t think he was a villain, sir, if you get my drift.’
Then there was silence, somehow filled by Charlie’s gaze, in this polished little room. A clock ticked and, without looking, Dodger could feel the employees still taking every opportunity to look at him, the unassuming and reluctant hero of the hour. Charlie was staring at him, occasionally playing with his pen, and at last the man said, with a sigh, ‘Dear Mister Dodger, the truth, rather than being a simple thing, is constructed, you need to know, rather like Heaven itself. We journalists, as mere wielders of the pen, have to distil out of it such truths that mankind, not being god-like, can understand. In that sense, all men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear, notwithstanding that a man sitting opposite them might very well brew an entirely different view as to the nature of the occurrence. That is the salvation and the demon of journalism, the knowledge that there is almost always a different perspective from which to see the conundrum.’
Charlie played with his pen some more, looking uncomfortable, and went on, ‘After all, my young Dodger, what exactly are you? A stalwart young man, plucky and brave and apparently without fear? Or possibly, I suggest, a street urchin with a surfeit of animal cunning and the luck of Beelzebub himself. I put it to you, my friend, that you are both of these, and every shade in between. And Mister Todd? Is he truly a demon – those six men in the cellar would say so! If they could but speak, of course. Or is he the victim, as you would like to think of him? What is the truth? you might ask, if I was giving you a chance to speak, which at the moment I am not. My answer to you would be that the truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.’
Dodger began to protest. He hadn’t seen no heavenly host; no elephant neither – he didn’t actually know what one of those was – though he’d put a shilling on the fact that Solomon had probably seen both on his travels.
But Charlie was still talking. ‘The peelers saw a young man face down a killer with a dreadful weapon, and for now that is the truth that we should print and celebrate. However, I shall add a little tincture of – shall we say – a slightly different nature, reporting that the hero of the hour nevertheless took pity on the wretched man, understanding that he had lost his wits due to the terrible things he had witnessed in the recent wars. I will write that you spoke very eloquently to me about how Mister Todd himself was a casualty of those wars, just as were the men in his cellar. I will make your views known to the authorities. War is a terrible thing, and many return with wounds invisible to the eye.’
‘That’s pretty sharp of you, Mister Charlie, changing the world with a little scribble on the paper.’
Charlie sighed. ‘It may not. He will either hang or they will send him to Bedlam. If he’s unlucky – for I doubt he would have the money necessary to ensure a comfortable stay there – it will be Bedlam. Incidentally, I would be very grateful if you could attend at the premises of Punch tomorrow so that our artist, Mister Tenniel, can draw your likeness for the paper.’
Dodger tried to take all this in, and said finally, ‘Who are you going to punch?’
‘I am not going to punch anybody; Punch is a new periodical magazine of politics, literature and humour which, if you don’t know, means something that makes you laugh, and possibly think. One of the founders was Mister Mayhew, our mutual friend.’ Charlie’s jaw dropped suddenly, and he scribbled down a few words on the paper in front of him. ‘Now off you go, enjoy yourself and please come back here as soon as you can tomorrow.’
‘Well, if you will excuse me, sir, I have another appointment anyway,’ said Dodger.
‘You have an appointment, Mister Dodger? My word, it seems to me that you are becoming a man for all seasons.’
As Dodger hurried off, he wondered exactly what Charlie had meant. He was damned if he was going to ask him, but he would find out what it meant as soon as possible. Just in case.
CHAPTER 8
A young man takes his young lady for a constitutional walk; and Mrs Sharples comes to heel
DODGER MADE HASTE towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny? he thought. Was that funny at all? He’d lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn’t laughing . . .
Running faster than he had before, Dodger arrived, if you put any reliance on all the bells of London, at just about the time when people would have finished their lunch. Feeling very bold, he walked up to the front door – he was, after all, a young gentleman with an appointment – and rang the bell, stepping backwards when the door was opened by Mrs Sharples, who gave him a look of pure hatred, and since she then slammed the door, couldn’t have got a receipt from him.
Dodger stared at the emphatically closed door for several seconds and thought, I don’t have to believe what just happened. He pulled himself upright, brushed the dust off his coat and grabbed the bell pull for the second time, till at last the door was opened once again by the same woman. Dodger was ready, and even before she had finished opening her mouth he said, ‘This morning I defeated the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and if you don’t let me in we will see what Mister Charles Dickens has to say about it in his newspaper!’ As the woman ran down the hall he shouted after her, ‘In big letters!’
He stood waiting by the open door, and very shortly after this he saw Mrs Mayhew walking towards him with a smile of a woman who wasn’t sure that she should be smiling. She came a little closer, lowered her voice and said, in the tones of one almost certain that she was going to be told the most enormous lie, ‘Is it really true, young man, that you were the one who this morning defeated the most dreadful of villains in Fleet Street? The cook told me about it; and apparently, according to the butcher’s boy, the news is already the talk of London. Was that really you?’
Dodger thought of Charlie’s fog. Thought of wanting to see Simplicity again, and did his best to look suitably bashful and heroic all at the same time. But he did manage to say, ‘Well, Mrs Mayhew, it was all a sort of fog.’
It seemed to work, for Mrs Mayhew was speaking again. ‘Somehow, Mister Dodger, you will not be surprised that Simplicity herself, subsequent to your recent call, has made it quite clear to us that she would like to go out in the sunshine for a constitutional walk with you, such as you suggested previously. Since it is such a fine day, and she herself seems well on the way to being restored, I cannot find it in me to deny her this wish. You will of course, as we said before, have to be in the charge of a chaperone.’
Dodger let a little silence reign and then forced it to abdicate. He attempted to make the little noise that Solomon produced when he was trying to make conversation more pleasant and intimate, and said, ‘Mmm, I am most grateful, madam, and whilst I’m on the subject, if you don’t mind, I would like someplace where I can sit quietly while Simplicity is getting ready. I have a few aches and pains that I need to deal with.’
Mrs May
hew was suddenly all motherly. ‘Oh, you poor dear boy!’ she said. ‘How you must be suffering. Are you very badly wounded? Shall I get somebody to bring the doctor? Do you need to lie down?’
Dodger hastened to stop her turning this into something dreadful and said, still slightly breathless, ‘Please, no, just a nice quiet room where I can sort myself out for a minute or two, if you don’t mind. That will do me fine.’
Shooing him before her like a hen with one chick, Mrs Mayhew guided him down the corridor and opened a door into a room which had white and black tiles everywhere and a wonderful privy, not to mention a washbasin. Complete with jug.
Once he was left alone and unseen, Dodger did indeed use the water to do something at least to his hair, which fortunately had not felt the ministrations of Mister Todd, and generally slicked himself down and made use of the privy. He thought, Well, I’ve made myself a hero to Mrs Mayhew, but it’s all about Simplicity, isn’t it? And Simplicity herself, it appeared, had totally understood what he had said the previous day and indeed was very keen on the walk.
Dodger had never heard the term ‘the end justifies the means’, but when you had been brought up like him its principle was nailed to your backbone. So after a discreet interval during which he essayed an occasional groan, Dodger turned himself into a hero and strode out of the privy ready to meet his young lady.
Mrs Sharples was waiting in the hallway, and this time she looked at him nervously, which you certainly should do when you’re looking at a man who is in the news, and what news! Since it had been such a good day, Dodger was generous enough to give her a little smile, and got a little simper in exchange, which suggested that hostilities, if not entirely forgotten, were at least temporarily suspended. After all, he was the wounded hero now, and that had to count for something, even to someone like Mrs Sharples.
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