Unexpected Twist

by Michael Rosen

  They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some strange perversion of terms, “The Green”: when the Dodger made a sudden stop; and, laying his finger on his lip, drew his companions back again, with the greatest caution and circumspection.

  “What’s the matter?” demanded Oliver.

  “Hush!” replied the Dodger. “Do you see that old cove at the bookstall?”

  “The old gentleman over the way?” said Oliver. “Yes, I see him.”

  “He’ll do,” said the Dodger.

  “A prime plant,” observed Master Charley Bates.

  Oliver looked from one to the other, with the greatest surprise; but he was not permitted to make any inquiries, for the two boys walked stealthily across the road and slunk close behind the old gentleman towards whom his attention had been directed. Oliver walked a few paces after them, and, not knowing whether to advance or retire, stood looking on in silent amazement.

  The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and carried a smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall, and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were in his elbow chair, in his own study. It is very possible that he fancied himself there, indeed; for it was plain, from his abstraction, that he saw not the bookstall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short, anything but the book itself: which he was reading straight through, turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at the top line of the next one, and going regularly on, with the greatest interest and eagerness.

  What was Oliver’s horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking on with his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the Dodger plunge his hand into the old gentleman’s pocket, and draw from thence a handkerchief! To see him hand the same to Charley Bates; and finally to behold them, both running away round the corner at full speed!

  In an instant the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy’s mind.

  He stood for a moment, with the blood so tingling through all his veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then, confused and frightened, he took to his heels; and, not knowing what he did, made off as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.

  This was all done in a minute’s space. In the very instant when Oliver began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the culprit; and shouting “Stop thief!” with all his might, made off after him, book in hand.

  But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the hue-and-cry. The Dodger and Bates, unwilling to attract public attention by running down the open street, had merely retired into the very first doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the cry, and saw Oliver running, than, guessing exactly how the matter stood, they began shouting “Stop thief!” too, and joined in the pursuit like good citizens.

  Chapter 12

  As Shona pushed the door open to the rooms where she and Dad now lived, she felt for a moment she was pushing against everything that she had been thinking about: Serena, the phone, Pops and his flat, the looks on those boys’ faces. What had seemed like a simple thing about getting a phone was now heavy and difficult. She would have asked Nan about it, but she could see that Nan was getting more and more touchy about her illness, like even walking round her stall was hurting her. Not much point in talking to Dad about it; he seemed to have given up.

  If I had a mum, I’d tell her about it. Other kids at school came in talking about, “My mum says that I’ve got to do such-and-such”, like it was some really bad thing to do with how they were not allowed to go to the caff on their own and how “unfair” it was to have a mum! Yeah, really unfair. Try not having one.

  Dad was of course sitting on the sofa. Doing nothing. The door to her little box of a room was open and, looking past Dad into her room, she could see the edge of her picture of Mum. It was on the wall. That’s funny; she hadn’t put it there. She had left it on the chair next to her bed. Dad must have stuck it up there with something.

  “Hi, kid,” Dad said in a put-on American accent.

  Shona ignored it, just grunted half-a-hello back and went into her room to dump her jacket on the bed. Nowhere else to put it.

  “Ron put a hook on your door,” Dad said.

  “Who?”

  “Ron,” Dad said, “you know, the guy who brought our stuff over in his van.”

  “Who put this on the wall?”

  “He had some sellotape.”

  “I didn’t ask you to,” Shona snapped back at him.

  “I know…” he said, not knowing what to say next.

  There was a pause. They couldn’t see each other; Shona had half-shut her door.

  “I’ll take it down if you like.”

  “No point,” Shona said. “It’s up there, now.”

  She was staring at the photo and a shred of the old terror she got in the night floated past her, mocking her, jolting her, as if it was whispering, “You did that to me. You did that to me. That’s why you haven’t got a Mum. You brought all this on yourself.”

  It was enough to trigger the beginning of some crying. Shona turned away from the photo and came back into the main room. Dad was watching her and could see the tears in her eyes straight away.

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. Shona knew he didn’t know what to say and do. He knew that Shona knew. They were both stuck in a hole with no way out.

  “Like I said,” Dad muttered, “I can take it down – it’s only a bit of sticky tape. You know that stuff that Nan sells. It’s rubbish, actually,” he tried to laugh.

  Shona paused. “It’s OK, there. It’s just that sometimes … sometimes I get scared.”

  Dad stared ahead of him. Shona noticed that “scared” seemed to ring a bell in his head.

  “I know,” he said.

  He knew that she was scared by what she had done to Mum? Does he really know that I think that?

  “Do you think I could have done more to save her?” Dad asked.

  Shona looked at him. She suddenly realized that he was scared. He was scared that she thought he had done wrong, that it was all his fault that Mum hadn’t lived.

  The hole they were in was what both of them thought they had done to Mum. Shona was afraid to tell Dad, and Dad had been, up until this moment, afraid to ask her if she thought Mum’s dying was his fault.

  Shona thought about Dad’s question. It had never occurred to her that he hadn’t done enough. “No,” she said, “you’re not a doctor, are you?” It seemed a relief to him. Crazy! She was the one with the night terrors, and now she was comforting him.

  They sat for a while. It was getting dark and neither of them had switched on the lights.

  A slow realization crept over Dad: Shona had said she was scared. And he had said, “I know”; he did know, he knew the feeling. But thinking about that now, What was Shona scared of? Ghosts?

  “Do you get the creeps with that picture by your bed, then?” he asked. “I mean, like it’s a ghost or something?”

  Shona screwed up her face. “No! As if!”

  Dad was puzzled. Whatever could she be scared of, then? He didn’t ask. They went on sitting in the dark.

  Shona finally said it. Slowly and weakly, she said, “In the night, sometimes I think Mum is saying that I … I did it.”

  “She says you did it?” Dad said, not believing that Shona could mean what he thought she meant.

  She nodded, a single tear escaping down her cheek.

  “No, no, no,” Dad said, “of course you didn’t. You were just a tiny thing. You just … you just came into the world. It was wonderful. You did what you were made for. Swimmin
g into the world.”

  He was crying too.

  Shona leaned sideways on the sofa, and drooped like a sack against him. She hadn’t hugged him and he hadn’t hugged her for a long time. They had got to a point where they were like two cups at opposite ends of the table: in the same place, near to each other but not touching. He put his arm round her shoulder.

  “I didn’t realize,” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “And I really did do all I could,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Shona said, “I know.”

  They sat together on the sofa, not saying anything more, each in wonder at not having had even a tiny sniff of a thought of how the other had been thinking, each in wonder that they had both had the same awful worries.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  To refresh your memories, X10, Oliver had just taken off, chased by the gentleman at the bookstall (and Dodger and Bates). Oliver was caught and put to a rushed “trial” before a magistrate who was all too ready to sentence him when the bookseller arrived, out of breath, to declare himself a witness to Oliver’s innocence. Oliver faints, and Mr Brownlow, the man who had been robbed, takes Oliver back to his own home to recover under the care of Mr Brownlow’s housekeeper, Mrs Bedwin.

  It had been bright day, for hours, when Oliver opened his eyes; he felt cheerful and happy. The crisis of the disease was safely past. He belonged to the world again.

  In three days’ time he was able to sit in an easy chair, well propped up with pillows; and, as he was still too weak to walk, Mrs Bedwin had him carried downstairs into the little housekeeper’s room, which belonged to her. Having him set, here, by the fireside, the good old lady sat herself down too; and, being in a state of considerable delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began to cry most violently.

  “Never mind me, my dear,” said the old lady; “I’m only having a regular good cry. There; it’s all over now; and I’m quite comfortable.”

  “You’re very, very kind to me, ma’am,” said Oliver.

  “Well, never you mind that, my dear,” said the old lady; “that’s got nothing to do with your broth; and it’s full time you had it; for the doctor says Mr Brownlow may come in to see you this morning; and we must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the more he’ll be pleased.” And with this, the old lady applied herself to warming up, in a little saucepan, a basin full of broth: strong enough, Oliver thought, to furnish an ample dinner, when reduced to the regulation strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers.

  “Are you fond of pictures, dear?” inquired the old lady, seeing that Oliver had fixed his eyes, most intently, on a portrait which hung against the wall; just opposite his chair.

  “I don’t quite know, ma’am,” said Oliver, without taking his eyes from the canvas; “I have seen so few that I hardly know. What a beautiful, mild face that lady’s is!”

  “Ah!” said the old lady, “painters always make ladies out prettier than they are, or they wouldn’t get any custom, child. The man who invented the machine for taking likenesses might have known that would never succeed; it’s a deal too honest. A deal,” said the old lady, laughing very heartily at her own acuteness.

  “Is – is that a likeness, ma’am?” said Oliver.

  “Yes,” said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth; “that’s a portrait.”

  “Whose, ma’am?” asked Oliver.

  “Why, really, my dear, I don’t know,” answered the old lady in a good-humoured manner. “It’s not a likeness of anybody that you or I know, I expect. It seems to strike your fancy, dear.”

  “It is so pretty,” replied Oliver.

  “Why, sure you’re not afraid of it?” said the old lady: observing in great surprise, the look of awe with which the child regarded the painting.

  “Oh, no, no,” returned Oliver quickly; “but the eyes look so sorrowful; and where I sit, they seem fixed upon me. It makes my heart beat,” added Oliver in a low voice, “as if it was alive, and wanted to speak to me, but couldn’t.”

  “Lord save us!” exclaimed the old lady, starting; “don’t talk in that way, child. You’re weak and nervous after your illness. Let me wheel your chair round to the other side; and then you won’t see it. There!” said the old lady, suiting the action to the word; “you don’t see it now, at all events.”

  Oliver did see it in his mind’s eye as distinctly as if he had not altered his position; but he thought it better not to worry the kind old lady; so he smiled gently when she looked at him; and Mrs Bedwin, satisfied that he felt more comfortable, salted and broke bits of toasted bread into the broth. Oliver had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful when there came a soft rap at the door.

  “Come in,” said the old lady; and in walked Mr Brownlow.

  Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; he raised his spectacles on his forehead and thrust his hands behind the skirts of his dressing gown to take a good long look at the boy. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness, and made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again; and the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr Brownlow’s heart, being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen, forced a supply of tears into his eyes.

  “Poor boy, poor boy!” said Mr Brownlow, clearing his throat. “How do you feel, my dear?”

  “Very happy, sir,” replied Oliver. “And very grateful indeed, sir, for your goodness to me.”

  “Good boy,” said Mr Brownlow, stoutly. “Have you given him any nourishment, Bedwin? Any slops, eh?”

  “He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir,” replied Mrs Bedwin: drawing herself up slightly, and laying strong emphasis on “broth”: to intimate that between slops and broth there existed no affinity or connection whatsoever.

  “Ugh!” said Mr Brownlow, with a slight shudder; “a couple of glasses of port wine would have done him a great deal more good. Wouldn’t they, eh?”

  The old gentleman looked in Oliver’s face, the resemblance between his features and some familiar face came upon him so strongly, that he could not withdraw his gaze.

  “I hope you are not angry with me, sir?” said Oliver, raising his eyes beseechingly.

  “No, no,” replied the old gentleman. “Why! what’s this? Bedwin, look there!”

  As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture over Oliver’s head, and then to the boy’s face. There was its living copy. The eyes, the head, the mouth; every feature was the same. The expression was, for the instant, so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed copied with startling accuracy!

  Chapter 13

  Désol’é and Shona were walking down one of the school’s endless corridors. Some of Year 11’s paintings were on the wall. Someone had done a perfect repro of The Scream, but there was a speech bubble coming out of the person’s head, saying, “I can’t find my lanyard…”

  Désol’é looked sideways at Shona. “You all right?”

  “Yep,” Shona replied. She would never admit to not being all right to anyone.

  “I’m meeting up with my cousin. She goes to Parkway and some of her squad are going to be there?”

  “I can’t,” Shona said, “I’ve got one of these meeting things with Miss Cavani.”

  “Again? What number are you on now?”

  “This is my sixth one,” Shona said, nearly smiling.

  “Next time,” Désol’é said in a kind way and peeled off down another corridor while Shona walked on. And on.

  Ahead of her, she could see some older boys. Not a good moment. She had already learned that it could be nasty if she was on her own when a bunch of boys walked past. There could be comments, there could be laughs, there could be a shove that pretended it wasn’t a shove. Unless they were so wrapped up in something of their own, something massively important like Manchester United. Or Real Madrid.

  The group got nearer, and in the middle of them, she reco
gnized Gazz. He was shaking his head and flicking his hands, saying over and over again, “Man! No, I mean: man!”

  He was stressed. No question of it, he was severely stressed. Not that the others in this group were helping him. If anything they were making it worse.

  “Yeah,” Shona heard one of them saying, “you ain’t going to slip out of this one, Gazz, man.”

  “I know, I know, I KNOW!” Gazz shouted back at him. “Don’t tell me what I know.”

  The others glanced at each other, doing cutting-throat signs, and finger-flicks. One of them was miming being on the phone and tapping out numbers.

  As the group came up to and passed Shona, she heard Gazz blurt out, “They know where I am, even when I’m at my aunty’s.”

  Was he crying? Shona thought he was. Not so cool now, like when he was Tino’s mate, nodding and smiling at whatever Tino said. But then as the group moved on down the corridor behind her, this feeling drained away, and a worry rose to the surface: Gazz was part of how she had got her phone. He hadn’t done much or said much, but he had been there all the time. The picture of what she had just seen stayed in her mind: Gazz shaking his head, the others doing cut-throat signs, but why the phone thing? Why was that boy doing a pretend dial-up?

  Shona felt the phone in her pocket. She loved the way she could feel its shininess with her fingertips. And then she remembered how she hadn’t hooked Serena on to this free phone thing. It was as if her mind was being jerked to and fro between Gazz’s stress, phones, Serena, and that scene at Pop’s flat where it was all nicey-nicey but – come on! – it was a bit creepy, wasn’t it?

  The longer the corridor went on, the more uncomfortable Shona felt. The last picture on the wall of the corridor was a Year 11 painting of Michelangelo’s statue of the Boy David, standing naked (of course) with the speech bubble above his head saying, “Sorry Miss, I left my homework on the bus.”