by J C Briggs
He found himself in Wimpole Street just by number fifty, once the home of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had married his friend Robert Browning; they were in Italy now. He remembered meeting her outside this house, a slender woman with a shower of dark curls framing her face, large expressive eyes with thick lashes. Her spaniel, Flush, had been with her, and she had told Dickens that the beloved dog had been kidnapped three times – she had paid a ransom, despite her father’s and Robert Browning’s opposition. He remembered the dog, and how it had looked at her with eyes like her own, wise and loving – he would think about Flush when he invented Jip, Dora’s dog.
Dickens stood stock still. Stolen! Poll had been stolen – that could be it. That must be it. Scrap would have gone after her. That was how the children had met Scrap – he had saved Poll from a thief. Soft you now, he told himself, let us think. Admittedly, Poll was not a pedigree like Flush – there was a trade in pedigree dogs; ransoms of as much as ten guineas had been paid, and there was profitable business in the export of stolen King Charles Spaniels to Holland and Belgium. But Poll had a collar – had some opportunist thief snatched her? If so, however, when would the demand for a ransom be made? Why not immediately? His questions died in his throat. It could be worse – dogs were often sold on at country fairs and markets, having been clipped, sometimes even dyed to disguise them. Many, and he shuddered for Poll at the thought, were killed for their skins. And his own dog, Timber, the small curly white-haired Havana spaniel that he had brought back from America all those years ago, had been stolen once from the kitchen at Devonshire Terrace. Timber had been brought back by the coachman, Topping, and a very large policeman. It happened – often.
Would he pay a ransom for Poll? Of course he would, just as he had been prepared to pay a ransom for Timber. He could not have borne the thought of loyal Timber tied up in some dank cellar. And a ransom for Scrap? Yes, and he would pay a ransom for any of his own children, for anyone he loved and who needed to be rescued from some dank cellar, for someone whose life might be set at naught. He knew the counter-arguments that in paying a ransom he would be encouraging the trade, increasing the wickedness, putting money in the hands of blackmailers. But he felt driven to his wits’ end. And, what would Sam say? He, too, was distressed by the disappearance of Scrap and the dog, but he was a policeman; he could hardly be paying money to thieves. But this was Poll who had to be saved. Dickens thought he would have to do it without the superintendent, and without telling Elizabeth – he could not compromise her, a policeman’s wife. But then, he checked his racing thoughts, how to find a dog thief?
Occy Grave! The very man. Occy, whom Dickens knew well, was the crossing sweeper whose pitch was at the junction of Drury Lane and Long Acre, convenient for the pedestrians coming and going from Lincoln’s Inn, Bow Street Police Station and the magistrates’ court. He had been there for twenty years, and knew everyone, even their cats and dogs which he returned to their owners if they had strayed. Sometimes he delivered letters and parcels to augment his earnings. He never forgot a face. He might have seen Scrap, Dickens thought; he might have seen Poll, and he would certainly know a dog thief – a dog thief in what might be called a small way. Dickens knew that there were those who were organisers in a big way; a certain Mr Taylor could be paid to get a dog back – no questions asked. Chelsea George was famed for his ingenious, if repulsive, method of dog capture; he smeared his hands with a paste of cooked liver and tincture of myrrh then seemed to caress the dog’s nose and hey presto, he had a faithful follower. No, thought Dickens, Poll was not valuable enough for a Chelsea George.
It was too late now to see Occy – too dark. His business was finished for the day. Mornings were the best times. He made his way home out of Wimpole Street and on to Devonshire Terrace. It was quiet here behind the high brick wall but he could hear the hum of the teeming city. Dickens went through the iron gate and into the garden. The clouds had fled and he stood looking at a sky clear as black glass, cracked here and there with the splintering stars.
That restless night he dreamed a familiar dream, of a long staircase up which he went, feeling his way in the shadows to a landing where there were closed rooms. Somewhere a child was sobbing, but all the doors were locked. In the dream, a dog howled and he woke. He heard it again and went to the window to look out at the empty night, and into the garden where the bushes hunched like beggars, and the black trees reached down to them as if to pluck them from the dark. He heard the clip clop of a horse, and a hoarse cry suddenly shut off as if an unknown hand had stopped it. The night seemed threatening – out there, he thought, were terrors. Those living in the mansions and grand houses of York Gate and the elegant squares thought they were safe, but the alleys and courts were too near and out of them came menace – the sly thief, the mug-hunter with his cosh, the assassin with his garrotte and the dog stealer. Somewhere a dog howled again, the lonely, haunting, hollow sound of something bereft. Where were they?
3
OCCY GRAVE
The morning brought no news from Superintendent Jones, but there was a letter from Mrs Georgiana Morson, matron of Urania Cottage, the home for fallen women Dickens had established at Shepherd’s Bush. She was reporting on the insubordination of a girl called Isabella Gordon and her partner in mischief, Anna-Maria Sesini who called herself Sesina. The rules of the Home were not harsh; the girls were allowed out, although always accompanied; they wore plain dresses in different colours rather than the institutional garb of the prisons, the workhouses or reformatories. They were taught to read and write, to cook and sew, because Dickens intended that these girls should be instructed to desire a better life. They would find new lives in Australia where he advised them they might marry and go on to lead useful lives. That was the plan; in most cases it succeeded, but there were some for whom any rule was chafing, and for whom a quiet and orderly life was stifling. One girl had simply vanished over the wall one day and another had been expelled for drunkenness.
Isabella Gordon was full of life, restless, witty, intelligent but rebellious. He had liked her, but had wondered very often whether she would last. When Sesina came, they formed an unholy alliance – Mrs Morson had suggested that their relationship might have been more than a girlish friendship, and that, he thought, was dangerous to the stability of the Home, but he could hardly have dismissed her on the suspicion that she was sexually involved with Sesina, and, in any case, Mrs Morson was not sure if their conduct were not just deliberately provocative, simply to get attention. Now, it seemed that they were conspiring against Mrs Morson, breaking the rules, fomenting dissatisfaction and quarrels. It was time for Isabella to go; perhaps Sesina would settle down without her friend. Dickens doubted it; he could well imagine them departing together in a flurry of indignation and accusation. He would have to go to Shepherd’s Bush, and the committee would have to meet to deal with these two girls.
Time to find Occy Grave. He was up to date with his monthly instalment of David Copperfield; he thought it a smashing number, describing young David’s first dissipation in which he gazed at himself in the looking-glass with vacant eyes and wondered how only his hair looked drunk, and in which he was indignant that someone had accused Copperfield of falling downstairs, realising that it might be true when he found himself on his back in the hall – Dickens had laughed when writing it, remembering his own youthful folly. The novel was, in effect, his autobiography – he had not needed to go back to the blacking factory to remember it – the memory was written on his heart.
He had not time to look at the other letters – he expected a sea of correspondence in response to the two letters he had written to The Times protesting against public hangings after he had seen the Mannings hanged for the murder of Mrs Mannings’s lover. Dickens was so horrified by the brutal mirth and callousness of the watching crowd that he had thought it was like living in a city of devils; he argued that such sights must surely coarsen and harden the spectators and he did not believe in the idea of han
ging as a deterrent. And he was haunted, too, by the dead shapes swinging from side to side on the gallows, the woman’s skirts ballooning out so that she seemed not dead but doomed to swing there forever, enduring the yelling and whistling of the crowd. Murderess as she was, it had been better that she hang in private, he believed. He had been relieved when the murderer whom he and Jones had pursued in an earlier case had escaped the hangman.The man had been callous, selfish and depraved, but Dickens had not wanted to hunt him to the gallows to be baited with the rabble’s curse. And that, he thought, was the moot point – it was all very well to bay for the murderer’s death when another man put the noose round his neck. Well, he thought wryly, some of these letters would no doubt be protesting against his views but he could deal with them later. Out, out, he told himself – let us find Occy.
Dickens enjoyed walking – seventeen miles was nothing to him – so a ten-minute walk to Drury Lane was a mere step. Occy was there in his long coat and leather cap, sweeping a path for his customers with his habitual good cheer. For Dickens, Occy was a source of fascination. His past was quite remarkable – Dickens thought it as extraordinary as anything he might have written. Once, on a cold winter’s day with a particularly insolent and insinuating wind, Dickens had taken the frozen man to a nearby chop house with a warm fire and even warmer rum punch, and Occy had told his tale.
His father had been a scholar, a man so immersed in books that in a fit of abstraction, he had married his kitchen maid, and, according to Occy, he could not have found a better Mrs Grave, though she was destined for an early one. It was by her economies that the family survived at all, their income being rather smaller than the outcome of their union which was nine children.
Septimus Grave was a student of the arcane; he had formed a lunatic scheme for the improvement of the family fortunes. Himself a seventh son, he determined that he should produce a seventh son, which prodigy would save them from ruin – if they could wait long enough for him to grow to man’s estate. Before this madness set in, Septimus named his first two sons plainly: William and John, but the madness gained hold step by step through each succeeding child. Thus they were christened, in turn, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus, Sextus (who was followed, with a gnashing of teeth, the mother’s in labour, the father’s in baffled rage) by two daughters and then, at last, the longed-for Septimus – seventh son of a seventh son. But alas, Tertius, sickly from birth, died of a fever. The lunatic’s confusion was alarming. In his derangement, he believed that now Septimus was only the sixth. Another child came – the exhausted mother assumed that he must be Octavius. Not so, he must be Septimus, and the others, by the ingenious calculation of the madman, should be renamed; Septimus should become Sextus and so step by step backwards to Quartus who filled the empty space left by Tertius. But before the accomplishment of this confusion, the madman died. There was just time to christen Occy as Octavius. The fever raged through the house again, taking off Mrs Grave, all her offspring bar Occy himself and one sister; they were taken in by Mrs Graves’s sister, a cook, with no children of her own. Her husband was a crossing sweeper, and in time, Occy came into his inheritance – the broom.
Occy had told his story with remarkable cheerfulness. ‘What,’ he had asked, ‘would have become of them all at the mercy of Septimus Grave?’ They would have starved to death, that’s what, he had argued. For himself, he had been happy in the care of Emmy Theed, the cook, and was grateful for his inheritance. What more should a man want than a regular job, a comfortable wife? Here he toasted Mrs Sally Grave, his own, and two good sons. They would not take the broom. ‘Why, bless you, Mr Dickens,’ Occy had said, ‘with all this new traffic, omnibuses, cabs and the like, the days of the crossing sweeper are numbered.’
Dickens waited for Occy to come back to his side of the road. ‘The George at twelve? I need some information.’
Occy signalled his assent with a wave of his broom before clearing the way for two pedestrians. Dickens had an hour to kill. He could not go to Bow Street without telling the superintendent what he was planning. He ought to go to the stationer’s shop, but could not bear the thought of turning up empty-handed, nor could he bear the flare of optimism which would light up the children’s eyes if he appeared at the door. They would think he had news. Dickens stood uncertainly on the pavement. What a curious thing – he was at a loss, somehow lonely, not knowing where to look for Scrap and Poll who might, for all they knew, be dead.
The traffic whirled past him, cabs and omnibuses wheeling by, the dust swirling in clouds; pedestrians buffeted him as they went by; a man with a basket balanced on his head jostled him and a woman poked at him with her umbrella as if he were a suspicious piece of meat – the stream of life that will not stop, pouring on, on, on, he thought. A blind violinist took up his place at the corner of Queen Street, his white eyes turned up to the troubled sky. He was dressed as if for some long-ago concert in a worn black tailcoat, once-white shirt, ragged tie and cracked patent shoes. As Dickens drew nearer, he could hear the strains of music which for a moment seemed to drown out the roaring world. Most blind musicians were not musicians at all – they got their money for pity, but this one seemed, with his uplifted eyes, not of this world, as if he played for some invisible audience seen only in his mind’s eye. The sound was piercing in its sweetness, plaintive and infinitely sad. It spoke of loss and yearning, and no one listened but Dickens as if he and the ragged blind man were alone in the teeming city.
The spell broke when a crowd of sharp-faced, hard-eyed urchins jostled the player and yelled abuse. Dickens threw some coins away down the street and they scattered, shoving and pushing each other to claim their prize. The violinist bowed to Dickens. Perhaps he had sensed the unseen listener. Dickens placed some money in the battered top hat, and saw, for the first time, the little dog crouched at the man’s feet. Not Poll. He walked away.
Time to take refuge in the warmth of the George, an ancient black and white inn just along Great Queen Street. Inside, the landlord greeted Dickens as an old friend, and Dickens was cheered by the sight of the fire and a hot rum punch.
‘Wot’s ’e up to, that Steerforth, Mr Dickens? No good, I ’spect. Is Little Em’ly in danger? – I thought it very queer, sir, when ’e spoke of the black shadow following ’er. ’E kep’ lookin’ after ’er, too. It’s all very mysterious, that it is.’
Dickens said he must wait for the next instalment; he was pleased that Bill Sprigge, the landlord, had read so attentively. In truth David Copperfield had not sold as well as Dombey and Son, and he was disappointed because he had put so much of himself into it; the writing of it made him restless, in want of something never to be realised, though he did not know what, and the visit to Hungerford Stairs had brought his childhood misery back as vividly as when he had depicted David Copperfield in the bottle factory. He was haunted, he thought, by the phantoms of those days that seemed to follow him. He could never shake them off. The past seemed so often to be snatching at his coat tails, sometimes shoving him on, impelled to achieve greater and greater things, and sometimes dragging him back as yesterday to that dreadful wreck of a place where as a boy he had felt so hopeless and forlorn.
Occy Grave arrived punctually at twelve, having left his broom at the post where he swept – it would be safe, he said, as everyone knew whose it was. They settled themselves in the box by the first fireplace where, Occy had sagaciously pointed out last time, there wasn’t a leg in the middle of the table which all the other tables had – very inconvenient, he had observed. He chose a pint of ale, a mutton pie and mash, in which Dickens joined him. They ate first and when the last morsel of meat and pastry was gone, and when Occy had downed a draught of his ale, he looked at Dickens.
‘Very good pie, that. Thank you kindly. Information, sir?’
‘I am looking for a boy – and a dog. The boy is called Scrap – black hair, about four foot eight – he does deliveries for the stationer’s in Crown Street. You might have seen him going to Lincoln’s Inn wi
th his parcels. If you see him, you’ll let me know?’
‘I will, Mr Dickens. Can’t say as I’ve noticed but there are a lot o’ boys about.’
‘Dog thieves – seen any?’
‘Professionals or amateurs?’
‘Amateurs, I should think – the dog in question is neither very big nor very valuable. A little terrier which belongs to some children I know. Missing for a few days. I want to get it back for them, if I can.’
‘Boys take ’em sometimes – ’oping to get a bob or two from the professionals. Sometimes sell ’em for fightin’. There’s meetins’ at the King’s Head in Compton Street. Yer know – settin’ ’em on rats. Big money in that.’
Rats took Dickens back to Hungerford Stairs and the dead boy. He felt sick. Not Poll, he thought, oh no, not little Poll put to fight rats. A horrible business that was – fifty rats flung in a pit and the dog sent to kill as many as he could.
‘Oh, Lord, I hadn’t thought of that, Occy –’
Occy saw his face turn white. ‘Not likely, Mr Dickens – don’t yer fret none. A fancier’d only buy ones ter train up – your dog won’t be ready for that yet. Now, I ain’t seen any dog fanciers my way, but I know someone who might ’elp – sister’s ’usband – second-hand clothes in Monmouth Street – Zeb Scruggs.’