The rain was falling faster now, rain that was undeniably London rain, already grubby before it hit the ground, putting back on the streets what had been taken away by the chimneys. It tasted like licking a dirty penny.
The door to the bathhouse was up some steps, although there was nothing much else to recommend it; it certainly didn’t look like a haven for nubile Nubians of any kind. Once inside, however, they were greeted by a lady, which sent Dodger’s spirits up a bit, although the fact that she turned out to be quite old and had something of a moustache lowered them once again. There was a muted conversation between her and Solomon. The old boy would haggle over the price of a penny bun but had apparently now met his match in the old woman, whose expression suggested that the price was that well-known one, ‘take it or leave it’, and as far as she was concerned she would be very happy if he left it, as far away as possible.
Solomon was not often thwarted in his determination to haggle the cheapest price for everything, and Dodger heard him mutter the word ‘Jezebel’ under his breath, just before paying for what turned out to be the keys to a couple of lockers. Of course, Dodger had been to the ordinary public baths many times before; but this one, he hoped, might be more adventurous. He was rather open to the prospect of being oiled.
So, clothed only in large towels, their feet slapping on marble, Solomon and Dodger stepped out into a huge room which looked rather like Hell would look if it had been designed by somebody who thought people deserved another chance. It was full of the strange echoes you get when steam, stone and humanity are all in one place. To Dodger’s dismay, there were no signs of the eagerly anticipated ladies in thin vests, but shadowy figures – male figures – were visible everywhere in the steaming gloom. At this point, Solomon put a hand on Dodger’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Be careful of the Percys, a word to the wise.’
This word to the wise left Dodger no wiser until the penny dropped, and he said, as they were stepping down into the nearest bath, ‘This isn’t the first bath I’ve been in, you know, but I think it’s the prettiest. The Percys never bothered me before.’
‘God seems to have really taken against them,’ said Solomon as the hot water rose up their legs. ‘For myself, I can’t see why, because it seems to me that, in a small way at least, they are doing this small planet something of a service by not helping to fill it with unnecessary people.’
There wasn’t just one bath in the baths; there were sweat baths, cold baths, hot baths and, right now, clambering down into the bath with the two of them was a gentleman wrapped in towels and with biceps bigger than most people’s thighs, who said in a voice like a grinding mill, ‘Would either of you gentlemen require a massage? Very good, very thorough, you will feel the benefit and afterwards you will be as right as ninepence, yes?’
Dodger looked at Solomon, who nodded and said, ‘You should try it, by all means. They tend to be rather brisk in here, but afterwards you will feel the glow.’ He nodded to the man and said, ‘I will take a massage myself alongside my young friend, and we can talk and relax.’
Afterwards, Dodger considered that the massage had not been relaxing, unless it was that you felt so much better when it stopped, but while the two masseurs twisted and pummelled with no other interest in their victims/clients, he unloaded his thoughts to Solomon, occasionally punctuated with an ‘ouch’.
‘I’m glad that Simplicity is safe where she is,’ he said, ‘but she will be in danger every time she goes for a walk, and as far as I can see there ain’t nobody in the government who wouldn’t do nothing to help her (ugh!).’
‘Mmm,’ said Solomon. ‘That is because mmm the government thinks mostly about all the people – they are not very good at individuals – and undoubtedly there would be those in the country who consider that handing her back against her will might save any bad blood between two countries. And indeed, although I fear to say it, it would be a Christian act, since after all she is a wife in the eyes of God – although, Dodger, God sometimes appears to be looking the other way and I have often told Him so. The wishes of the husband are mmm invariably considered more important than those of the wife.’
‘That man last night was working for a cove called Sharp Bob, who is (ouch!) interested in Simplicity and me,’ Dodger said between blows. ‘Wants to know where she is, so there must be money in it for him. Do you know him? I heard tell he’s a legal kind of gentleman.’
‘Sharp Bob,’ Solomon mused. ‘Mmm, I believe I have heard of him. And yes, he’s a lawyer – for criminals, you might say. I don’t mean getting them off in front of the beak. He does do that, certainly, but he is more a sort of mmm go-between, you might say. Someone will approach him and say, as it might, “There’s a gent in our town who I might like to see inconvenienced.” Nobody would say anything about killing or chopping off an ear because it would be done simply by looks, and a touching of the nose and little signals like that – just so that Sharp Bob himself can say that he knew nothing about the matter or why somebody’s dining room had blood all over it.’ Solomon sighed. ‘You say his men are those who attacked Miss Simplicity?’
‘Yes, and now I need to find him,’ Dodger said. ‘Soon as we’ve got this business tonight out of the way. I oughta have got the whereabouts of this Sharp Bob off that cove last night, but I was (ouch!) kicking him in the crotch at the time and forgot to do anything about it. I think I had perhaps punched him heavily on the conk as well, flattened it over his face, so all he could say was grunts.’
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ said Solomon. ‘Violence is not always the way to resolve things.’
‘Solomon, you have a six-barrelled pistol back at home!’ said Dodger.
‘Mmm, I said, not always.’
‘Well, if you know where he might be, let me know ’cos tomorrow I’m after him anyway,’ Dodger said. ‘Maybe he reckons someone would be happy to hear that Simplicity was dead. Not because they hate her, but just because she is (ugh!) in the way.’
There was a very long mmm from Solomon, which at first Dodger thought was because of an extra-special twist from the masseur, then Solomon said quietly, ‘Well then, Dodger, you have answered your own little conundrum. Let them hear that Simplicity is mmm dead. No one hunts a dead man. Mmm, just a point that crossed my mind, of course. No reason to take it seriously.’
Dodger looked at Sol’s expression and his eyes were shining. ‘What do you mean!?’
‘I mean, Dodger, that you are a very resourceful young man, and I have given you something to think about. I suggest you think about it. Think about people seeing what they want to see.’
A fist came down on Dodger with a thump, but he barely noticed it as his brain started to clamour and then began to spin. He looked back at Solomon and just nodded with a glint in his eye.
Solomon loomed up then like a whale and patted his arm, saying, ‘Time to go, young man. There is such a thing as being too clean.’
No sooner had they got dried off and back in their cubicles than Solomon said, ‘We should sit here for a little while for a drink; it doesn’t do to go out immediately after a bracing massage, you could catch a fever. After that, my boy, I intend to introduce you to Savile Row, where all the top men go for their clothing. We haven’t got much time, but last night I sent a boy over to my friend Izzy, who will see you right. His place is no shonky shop, and I am certain that he will give a good deal to an old friend who incidentally carried him to safety when the Cossacks shot him.’ He added, ‘He had better. Running, I carried him for more than a mile before we lost them in the snow and none of the three of us had boots on, having been woken up at night. After that we went our separate ways, but I will always remember young Karl – I believe I have mentioned him to you before? – saying to me that all men are equal but they are downtrodden, though sometimes they do their own treading. Now I come think of it, he said a lot of other things too. Worst haircut I have ever seen on a young man, and wild eyes too – reminded me of a hungry wolf.’
Do
dger wasn’t listening. ‘Savile Row is in the West End!’ he said, like a man talking about the ends of the earth. He went on, ‘Do I really need toffs’ clothing? Mister Disraeli and his friends, well, they know what I am, don’t they?’
‘Mmm, oh, and what are you mmm exactly, my friend? Their subordinate? Their employee? Or, I would suggest, their equal? That’s what young Karl would certainly have said, and probably still does. Unless he’s no longer alive.’ Dodger gave Solomon a strange look and Solomon hastened to clarify: ‘Mmm, as I recall, if you go around telling people that they are downtrodden, you tend to make two separate enemies: the people who are doing the downtreading and have no intention of stopping, and the people who are downtrodden, but nevertheless – people being who they are – don’t want to know. They can get quite nasty about it.’
Intrigued, Dodger said, ‘Am I downtrodden?’
‘You? Not so you would notice, my boy, and neither do you tread on anybody else, which is a happy situation to be in, but if I was you I shouldn’t think too much more about politics, it can only make you ill. As a matter of fact I certainly believe that some, if not all, of the people that you will meet tonight will be considerably richer than you, but from what I have heard of the lady in whose house we will be dining, I have reason to assume that they will not think this means they are that much better than you. Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.’ Solomon drained his coffee cup and said, ‘Since it’s a long way, and my feet hurt, we will take a growler, and behave like the gentlemen we are.’
‘But that’s a lot of money!’
‘So? I should walk all that way in this rain? What are you, Dodger? You are a king of infinite space – provided that said space is underground. You are a man who picks up money for a living, and because you have a wonderful eye for it I think it makes something of an everlasting child of you. Life is fun with no responsibilities, but now you are taking on responsibilities. You have money, Dodger, as that shiny new bank book proves. And you hope to have a young lady, mmm yes? This is good for a man because responsibilities are the anvil on which a man is forged.’
Just as soon as they were outside the baths Solomon had to rescue an elderly lady who had simply patted Onan. He helped her brush herself down, then, when both her dress and Sol’s handkerchief were cleaner, he hailed a growler, which stopped without the driver having meant to, his horse’s hooves leaving sparks on the cobbles.
Once they were safe on the cushions inside, with the London rain and all its stickiness falling outside the windows, Solomon sat back and said, ‘I have never really understood why these gentlemen seem so hostile to their clientele. You would have thought that driving a growler was a job for somebody who liked people, wouldn’t you?’
It was pouring down now and the sky was the colour of a bruised plum. It was not a good day to be a tosher, but the night might be, when with any luck Dodger could be back after dinner where he belonged, underground . . . With Solomon’s recent lecture in mind, he amended it in his thoughts to ‘the place where he sometimes chose to be’.
He felt he would need to be there because he was once again feeling not entirely sure about himself. He was still Dodger, of course, but what kind of Dodger? Because he was most definitely not the Dodger that he had been a week ago. And he thought, If people change like this, how can you be sure about what you get and what you lose? I mean, these days, well, getting into a growler . . . easily done, I’m the kind of lad who goes around in growlers, not the lad with the arse hanging out of his trousers who used to run up behind them and try to hold on. Now I actually pay; would I still recognize the boy?
It looked as if the weather was shaping up to be a storm akin to the one on the night when he had met Simplicity for the first time. In front of them, the coachman himself was out in all elements and weathers, which may have had something to do with the growling, and surely only the horse could be doing the navigating in this downpour. There was nothing in the world but rain, it seemed, and now, surely against all the rules of nature, some of it was even falling upwards, since there was no room anywhere else.
At this point Dodger heard, only very slightly, the sound he had for days been subconsciously listening for – it was the squeal of metal in pain. And it was ahead of them. He dived towards the little sliding plate that enabled the inmates of a growler to speak to the coachman, if ever he wanted to listen to them, and water splashed on his face as he yelled, ‘If you overtake the coach in front of us – that one with the squeaky wheel – I will give you a crown!’
There was no answer – and how could you hear one in these crowded streets of vapour and flying water? – but nevertheless the speed of the growler suddenly changed, just as a puzzled Solomon said, ‘I am not at all sure we have a spare crown on us!’
Dodger wasn’t listening; a growler had a lot of places where somebody with quick wits could grasp and pull their way to the roof of the thing, in this case much to the extreme annoyance of the driver, who swore like the devil and shouted out above the noise of the storm that he would be mogadored if a poxy upstart was going to climb all over his vehicle. Above the noise of the storm and the cursing, Dodger leaned down and said, ‘You must have heard of the man who brought down Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber? Well, cully, that was me, yes, Dodger. Now, you want to talk about it or shall I get angry?’ Dodger worked his way down so that he could hang on while talking to the man, and said, ‘The person who owns the coach ahead of us is wanted for attempted murder, assault and battery. Probably also kidnapping a young lady and responsible for the death of a baby!’
With water pouring off him in every direction, the captain of the growler growled, ‘The hell you say!’
‘The hell I do indeed, sir!’ said Dodger. ‘And if I find that person before the peelers do, it will be the worse for him, and incidentally of course there will be a reward in all of this for you.’
The coachman, trying to keep the horse under control with lightning flashing around them, gave Dodger a sideways look in which was mingled anger, intrigue and uncertain disbelief. ‘Oh, so he’s got more to fear from you than the peelers, does he? They have damn big sticks, as I very well know!’ He opened a mouth in which there appeared to be just one solitary tooth, adding, ‘We certainly know when they want to get their point across, those bastards.’ He spat, increasing the storm by the equivalent of about three raindrops, and gave Dodger a pitying look, then growled with another toothless grin, ‘Well, how will you be worse than the peelers, my little lad, do tell me?’
‘Me? Because the peelers have rules. I don’t firkytoodle around! And unlike the peelers, when it comes to bashing, I don’t have to stop!’
The growler, though, had come to a stop. A dead stop, and its driver cursed under his breath. ‘Piccadilly Circus, guv, all fouled up ’cos of the rain. To tell you the truth, I can’t tell which of these buggers is the one you’re after, chief, ’cos people are cutting in like Christmas dinner. I don’t know why they’re always messing about with the roads, but I reckon it’s the four-horsers that are causing this lot – they shouldn’t be allowed in the city! People are walking around in the road too like they own it, ain’t they got no sense?’
It was true; there were people dodging between stationary vehicles, and Piccadilly Circus was a pattern of umbrellas spinning through the growing host of rain-soaked vehicles, none of which could move until the others did. Now the horses were beginning to panic, and yet other coaches, cabs and one or two brewer’s drays were piling in. Then somewhere in the damp, jostling, frantic cauldron of frightened horses and bewildered pedestrians, someone must’ve stuck part of his umbrella up a horse’s nose, causing what previous centuries would have called a hey-ho-rumbelow, but what the growler captain called it could not be put on paper because it would have immediately caught fire.
After that, there was nothing else for it. As the growler coachman said, ‘
If they want to get everybody out of there, they need to drag out one or two coaches and dismantle the whole damn mess.’ With that, the sun came out, bright and shining in the clear blue sky, which made it even worse, because every human or horse who wasn’t already steaming began to steam.
Even Dodger could see they had lost their quarry with very little chance of finding it now. No point. Solomon was looking at him from the vehicle’s window, holding up his huge pocket watch and pointedly showing him what the time was. Dodger groaned inwardly. If he gave in, then maybe, just maybe, when this seething fiasco was eventually unravelled – and hopefully before any more fights started – he might be in the right place to hear the dreadful screeching wheel scream again. If he couldn’t find out what he wanted from Mister Sharp Bob, of course. But right now it was Solomon who looked as if he was likely to be the one doing the screaming.
Dodger looked back at the coachman, shrugged, and said, ‘How much, mister?’
To Dodger’s surprise, the man gave him a sly grin, waved his hands in the air to demonstrate that the progress of horse-drawn transport in this vicinity was a bucket of sheep droppings, and then said, ‘You really the geezer who brought down Sweeney Todd? You look like a liar to me, but then so does everybody else. Ho-hum, never mind, just give me your signature on this little page I have here, making a suitable mention of the fact that it was indeed you what done it, and we’ll call it quits, how about that? ’Cos I think it’d be worth some money one day.’
Well, thought Dodger, this was Charlie’s fog again; if the truth wasn’t what you wanted it to be, you turned it into a different version of the truth. But the man was waiting patiently, with a pencil and a notebook. Taking them up and sweating, Dodger very carefully scribed, one letter at a time: It woz me wot took dahn Sweeni Tod. Dodjer and that iz troo.
As soon as he had handed it to the coachman, he was dragged to the kerb by Solomon, who was frantically trying to open an umbrella – a black and treacherous thing that reminded Dodger of a long-dead, but nevertheless large, bird of prey and could take your eye out, if you let it. Dodger pointed out that right now, at least, it wasn’t necessary – except, of course, for protection from the horses all around them, which were doing what horses regularly do and doing it slightly more because they were in a state of panic.
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