Another Twist in the Tale

by Catherine Bruton

  Yes, reader, you are quicker off the mark than our young heroine, for you must have guessed that Twill beheld none other than Oliver Twist, her long-lost twin brother – now grown into Master Twist-Brownlow, heir to the Brownlow fortune, and travelling off on an errand of some importance to his well-being and that of his guardian. But if there was a momentary flicker of recognition from either Twill or Twist it was over in an instant, as Mr Brownlow reached for Oliver’s hand to steady his faltering gait, and Oliver engaged him in conversation about mutton or pudding for lunch. Then, with one last curious glance at the girl sitting on the barrel by the horse trough, he turned and was gone.

  Chapter 11

  In which another old friend is encountered, in less than ideal circumstances

  Two hours later, Twill found herself standing outside the house on Doughty Street where Bob had said they were advertising for a housemaid. Bob had business in Gray’s Inn Road nearby but had said he would come and enquire after her when he was done. So now Twill found herself knocking on the scullery door, which was opened by a plump kitchen maid who eyed her suspiciously.

  “Please, ma’am. I’ve come about the post.”

  The young woman – who might have been fifteen or sixteen years of age – was red-cheeked and large-bosomed, and had the appearance of a well-risen but rather lumpy loaf of bread.

  “You got references, ’ave ya?”

  “No, but I have been working in the kitchen of a large house in Camberwell since – well, since I was ever so small. I’m proper handy, Baggage says.”

  “Who’s Baggage?” the loaf-of-bread girl demanded. “Your mistress?”

  “No – she’s … my family. But Mrs Spanks said I wasn’t completely useless. She was the cook – and housekeeper too.”

  The warm-loaf girl looked unconvinced. “She write you a reference, did she?”

  “No … I don’t have any references, but—”

  “No references, no interview. Tha’s what the master says. Says ’is young mistress is in a delicate condition. Don’t need to be troubled with no chancers with shady backgrounds knocking on the door, claimin’ to ’ave experience – run away from their old posts cos they’re workshy, more like.” As she spoke, Twill got the impression that this girl was perhaps the second kitchen maid, previously bottom of the servant pile, but due to rise in the ranks with the arrival of a new underling, and enjoying her first exercise of power over an inferior.

  “I’m a good worker,” she insisted. “Strong and quick to learn and willing to do anything.”

  “No references – no chance!” said the girl.

  “But if I might just speak with the housekeeper – or the lady of the house!”

  “Lady of the ’ouse don’t have time for the likes of you. Be off with ya!” And with that, the girl slammed the door and Twill found herself suddenly jobless, homeless and hopeless, in an unfamiliar area of the great and bustling metropolis – and with no idea what to do next.

  Clutching her bundle, she climbed the area steps and surveyed the street on which the house was located with an air of the unreal. City life was unfolding as normal even as hers seemed to have come to a premature end. Grand folks paraded in top hats and tails; a nanny pushed a baby in a giant perambulator; a shoeshine boy sat on a box by the corner, whistling for trade; a couple of ragamuffin children played with a hoop and stick; a flower seller sang an old ditty about a long-lost love.

  What was she to do now? Baggage had made Twill promise never to return, but she had nowhere else to go. And she was really rather hungry – and any longings for adventure that she might have harboured earlier in this long and most peculiar day had now completely left her.

  As it happened, at that very moment, the main door to the household opened, and from therein emerged the master of the house and his young mistress. She was a beautiful young creature, dark-haired and blue-eyed, much younger than her husband and with a brightness about her eye and a spot of pink in her cheek that had captured his heart. Twill caught sight of her and her heart leapt.

  “M’lady!” she called.

  The master and his young mistress were already down the steps and crossing the square, too caught up in one another to be aware of their surroundings. The young mistress’s arm rested in the crook of her husband’s elbow; her reticule hanging gaily from her other. She laughed at something her husband had said. Twill was nearly upon them now.

  “Please, mistress – I beg your pardon, ma’am…”

  And then it happened.

  A boy – a shadow, he seemed, for he was so quick – darted between Twill and the woman. He wore a battered top hat, a scarlet waistcoat under a set of tails that had definitely seen better days, and broken hob-nailed boots that seemed somehow to move noiselessly across the cobbles. Twill saw his hand shoot out, grab the young lady’s reticule and pop it into his pocket before departing so swiftly down an alley she half wondered if she had imagined it.

  Twill felt several emotions at once. The first was an instantaneous instinct to give chase. Had she not been brought up hunting down the ragamuffins of Peckham Rye? She could run this top-hat boy down in minutes! The second feeling was an instinct to warn the young lady – to help her reclaim her possessions. Not just out of a sense of right and wrong that Baggage had instilled in her, but also from a third emotion: hope. Might there not be a reward for retrieving the young lady’s possessions? Might she not look kindly on Twill’s application for the post of kitchen maid?

  “M’lady,” she cried – tugging on the young lady’s arm to attract her attention. “Your purse!”

  Then she set off in pursuit of the top-hatted pocket-picker, shouting, “Stop, thief!”

  And therein lay her downfall.

  Chapter 12

  In which Twill becomes the victim of mistaken identity

  It was somewhat unfortunate that what the young lady turned to see was a rather poor-looking girl (for though Baggage had done her best, Twill’s attire was of the meanest variety), and then the absence of her purse – and then the girl fleeing. She put all this together and reached quite the wrong conclusion.

  “My purse – that girl stole my purse!” she cried, breathless and bright-eyed, pointing to Twill’s departing figure.

  “Stop, thief!” cried her husband, keen to be the knight in shining armour for his young bride.

  The shoeshine boy took up the cry, and so did the boys playing hoop and ball. “Stop, thief!” they yelled. The flower seller added a harmony: “Stop, thief!” And this alerted a policeman who was doing his round on the corner and who set up the chase, hollering, “Stop, in the name of the law!” The husband too was on Twill’s tail, to prove he was not too old for heroics, and so was the shoeshine boy – his eye upon a reward – and the hoop-and-ball kids joined in for the larks. And so, as the top-hatted urchin ran pell-mell down alleyways and byways, twisting and turning, ducking and diving, and Twill gave chase, behind her there came a veritable mob of pursuers, all chiming in with the cry: “Stop, thief!” and “Catch that girl!”

  The top-hat thief ran up Mount Pleasant – that most ill-named district of the metropolis, where all the rubbish and detritus of London was dumped – past the Middlesex Prison, where petty criminals walked the treadmill in silence to atone for their crimes; past the Cold Baths, where the idle rich went to treat their rheumatism and gout. He ducked, he dived and he was fast; faster than any of the Camberwell Grovers, or the wiry-limbed Peckham railway children. But as she neared the corner by Farringdon Lane, Twill was sure she was gaining on the top-hat boy.

  He turned into Pear Tree Court, Twill hot on his tail, both of them jostling past the drinkers outside the Crown Tavern then into the oasis on the periphery of the slums that was Clerkenwell Green, a place filled with booksellers and men giving out pamphlets and the buzz of ideas and words. Here Twill saw her chance. There was a cattle trough up ahead where a farmer had stopped to give his horse a drink. Twill recalled an ambush she had lately planned on the Peckham Rye
kids and, quick as a flash, she vaulted over the cattle trough, cut off the top-hatted thief who had gone round it, and whipped the reticule out of his hand with a yell of triumph.

  For a second the top-hatted thief stared at her in surprise, and Twill felt a momentary glow of triumph. Then she glanced behind and so did the top-hatted thief, and only then did she realise that the crowd was chasing her – and that she was now in possession of stolen goods!

  “Stop, thief!” yelled the policeman.

  “Stop that girl!” called the shoeshine boy.

  And suddenly there was no sign of the top-hatted thief. He had vanished into thin air – and with him the proof of her innocence.

  Once again Twill took to her heels – and she ran now not in pursuit but because she was being pursued. She was fast and resourceful, but the streets near Clerkenwell Green market were crowded, and trying to duck around the stalls selling fish and flowers and books and all manner of other paraphernalia was difficult. She didn’t know this area as she did the alleys and lanes of Camberwell and Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye and so she was running blind – no object in view other than getting away now, all chance of gaining reward quite gone. She just needed to escape the angry claws of unfair justice that were closing in on her. What would happen if she were caught? Would she be put in jail? Or in the stocks? Or made to walk the treadmill? Or would she be a “lagger” – sent to Botany Bay for her crimes? She’d heard of children transported for the theft of a loaf of bread, and though she had longed for a trip to foreign climes this wasn’t quite how she’d envisaged it.

  She was heading deep into the city’s most desperate slums now, and more and more people had joined the chase, enjoying the entertainment as they might a cockfight or a bout of bare-knuckle boxing. The streets around Hatton Garden were littered with detritus and stank of starvation – half-naked children crouching in doorways, rats and dogs and dead cats and streams of sewage running down the centre of each dingy thoroughfare. She rounded into an alley called Sixpence Lane. Her heart was beating so fast she felt as if it might burst out of her chest as she sprinted into Lilley Lane, where the dilapidated houses closed in on her and the stench of excrement made it hard to breathe, then deeper into the slums, down the notorious Rookery … and then she was faced with a dead end – the game was up!

  She pulled up short, closing her eyes – waiting for the jaws of justice to descend. But then she was being dragged and jerked violently – not backwards but sideways – and she found herself tumbling through a doorway and down damp steps on to a cold stone floor, where a hand was roughly clamped over her mouth and the reticule snatched rudely out of her hands.

  It took a moment to register that she was in near-pitch darkness at the bottom of some slimy cellar steps, lying on top of somebody who she could make out only by the sharp gleam of a pair of extremely bright eyes, and by the hand that was clamped over her mouth.

  She struggled and gurgled but to no avail.

  “Hush, woman, and quit your wrigglin’,” urged a whispered voice. “Or you’ll ’ave the beaks down here ’an you swingin’ in the wind outside Newgate!”

  Twill stopped struggling for a moment at the mention of the gallows. She could hear voices above: a clamour of “Where’d she go? … Got clean away … The thief jus’ disappeared into thin air!” And the breathless voice of the Doughty Street gentleman declaiming, “My wife’s purse … the little wretch got away with it clean!” followed by the deep tones of a policeman: “Move along, folks … nothing to see here … leave it to the law – we’ll catch ’er – see if we don’t.”

  Twill stayed very still, suddenly very aware of the loud beating of her heart in the darkness and the hot sharp breaths of her … rescuer? abductor? … close to her ear. She felt a huge desire to clamp her teeth down on the hand that was still tightly held over her mouth, but she did not do so till the crowd outside had passed on and the danger was gone.

  Then she bit down as hard as she could and as her assailant released her with an angry yell, she turned around and in the gloom beheld … the top-hatted urchin.

  Chapter 13

  In which you know who we are going to meet – don’t you?

  “You!” declared Twill.

  The young gentleman before her took a low bow and then looked up with eyes that were full of a rather world-weary mischief.

  “Jack Dawkins, miss – at ya service. Some call me John, or Master Dawkins, but generally I am known as the Artful Dodger – or Dodge to me friends. An’ I do believe we is goin’ to be friends, my good woman!”

  “I am not your good woman!” said Twill, hands on hips, eyes ablaze with indignation. “An’ I would never be friends with such as you – you nearly had me arrested. Now, give me that reticule so as I can clear my name!”

  “What, this?” asked the Artful Dodger.

  He was a little older than he had been when he first encountered Twill’s brother, all those years ago. A little wiser too. A lad of fifteen – maybe sixteen, for he’d never known his birthday, no more than he had his long-gone parents – and taller now, with an occasional dip and catch to his voice. But the Artful Dodger he was in the flesh, and he dangled the reticule before Twill, who made a sweep for it and missed. Despite the passing of the years, Dodger was as quick as in the days of Fagin’s gang – and more wary with it.

  “You’re a quick ’un, I’ll grant you!” said Mr Dawkins. “There’s not many can outpace the Artful Dodger. Shame you’re not so bright in the upstairs department!” At this he tapped his forehead and raised an eyebrow in a way that made Twill’s blood boil.

  “Give it here!” said Twill, making another swipe for the reticule. “I need to return it.”

  “And what you fink’ll happened if you does?” said the Dodger. “Turn up at tha’ grand house, clutchin’ a stolen purse, seekin’ a reward, will ya? The traps’ll have you clapped in irons an’ transported to the colonies – an’ tha’s if they don’t let you swing!”

  At this point the Dodger made a pantomime of being suspended by the noose, complete with gurning and gruesome sound effects that were most disconcerting to behold.

  Twill paused for a second. “I’ll tell them it wasn’t me!”

  The Dodger just laughed. “You’re a green ’un, no mistake! Woutn’t ’ave thought it – cos you got a good pair of legs on ya. Though your knowledge of the area ain’t wot it needs to be for this line of work. You was lucky I was here to rescue you.”

  “Rescue me? Of all the nerve! You’re the reason I’m in so much trouble.”

  “Gammon an’ spinnage!” said the Dodger, who was, in truth, rather enjoying the encounter with this fair-haired maiden. “Wha’s the difference between a rescue and a peachin’ job between friends. An’ you gotta admit you’da been in a fix without me.”

  “I’ve got to admit no such thing!” said Twill. “And if you don’t mind – I’ll be leaving now.”

  “Got better places to be, ’ave ya?” said Dodger with an ironic smile. “I woutn’t go out there just yet. They’ll have peelers stationed all around – on the lookout for you, my flash com-pan-i-on! No, youse best to stay ’ere till it gets dark. Don’t fret your eyelids – Dodger’ll take care of ya!”

  Twill looked outraged but she didn’t dare go out and risk arrest.

  “Wha’s your story then!” asked the Artful Dodger, leaning back against a pile of old crates and surveying Twill with keen interest. There was something familiar about the girl, now that a shaft of light fell down through the cellar door and caught her face in a golden glow. Dodger couldn’t quite place it but he was sure he had seen her somewhere before.

  “Story?”

  Dodger produced a large spotted handkerchief from within his capacious jacket, which he unwrapped to reveal a length of cold sausage. The smell hit Twill’s nostrils and her stomach growled with hunger.

  “Who are ya? Wha’s your name? Where ya from?” asked the Dodger.

  “You first!”

  “I’m pretty
much famous, me,” declared Jack Dawkins, removing a small pearl-handled knife from his waistcoat pocket and slicing off a piece of sausage, which he held tantalisingly just out of Twill’s reach. “You ’eard of the orphan Oliver Twist, I s’pose?”

  Twill had heard of the tale. She and the Camberwell Grove kids had sometimes played it out in the street. She liked to take the role of the gruesome child-snatcher Fagin, or the brave Nancy, who had laid down her life to return the boy to his rightful family, or even the murdering villain Bill Sikes. She didn’t recall there being any mention of a top-hatted scoundrel!

  “I was the one wot met ’im first!” said Dodger. “When ’e first come to London – all ’ungry and cold, ’e was. It was me wot took ’im to Mr Fagin – you’ve ’eard of old Fagin, I suppose?”

  Twill had indeed. The old wretch, who had run the gang of child thieves, had been sentenced to be hanged outside Newgate – though, according to Mr Scapegrace, he had mysteriously escaped, and no one had heard anything of him since.

  “I was Fagin’s right-hand man!” declared Dodger proudly. “I ’elped him train Oliver up – tried to, anyhows. He’d never a’ made a decent pickpocket – too nervy, too slow. You, on the other hand…”

  Dodger surveyed Twill with an admiring glance that made her want to kick him. Dodger grinned, and produced a heel of bread from his tailcoat pocket. “So, you ’ungry, is you?”

  Twill shrugged. She did not want to accept anything from this rapscallion of a boy, who had ruined her chances of a respectable career as a kitchen girl. But when he unwrapped some rather musty-looking cheese, which he appeared to be have been storing inside his battered top hat, her stomach betrayed her by rumbling.