Dodger

chapter 11

Dodger smartens up, and Solomon comes clean



SOLOMON HAD BEEN waiting up for him. He hadn’t been in the neighbourhood audience, because no room in the attic faced the street. His windows instead looked out on one side of some warehouses, which Solomon had considered a much better view than the kind of things you have to see in the street itself. Only a very few words were exchanged in the darkness before Dodger flopped down onto his mattress and the last candle was snuffed.

As he snuggled down under his blanket in the knowledge of a day well filled, Dodger watched his own thoughts swim past his eyes. No wonder the world spun – there were so many changes. How long ago was it that he had heard a scream and jumped out of a foaming sewer . . . how many days was it? He counted – three days. Three days! It was as if the world was moving too fast, laughing at Dodger to keep up with it. Well, he would chase the world and take what came and deal with it. Tomorrow he would be attending a wonderful dinner at a place where there was certainly going to be Simplicity, and it appeared to him as tiredness built up that the important thing in all this was how you seemed and he was learning how to seem. Seem to be a hero, seem to be a clever young man, seem to be trustworthy. That seemed to fool everybody, and the most disconcerting thing about this was it was doing the same to him, forcing him on like some hidden engine. And with that strange deduction still in his head, he fell asleep.

The following morning, the man whose job it was to open the doors of Coutts Bank to the customers found himself looking at an elderly Jewish gentleman in a ragged gabardine coat, whose eyes gleamed with mercantile zeal. This apparition pushed past him, followed by a young man in an ill-fitting suit and a nasty-smelling dog. Among some of the other clients, there was some murmuring about poor people coming in there, until it turned out – after every coin above the rank of sixpence was duly bagged and signed for – that these were poor people with a lot of money.

A receipt and a shiny new bank book were received, the little party swept away as fast as they had come in, and the Red Sea closed again, the planets wobbled back to their rightful orbits, first-born children once again played happily and all was right with the world. Except that part of it now contained one of Mister Coutts’ senior partners, who was realizing that somehow he had agreed to a rate of interest that they seldom offered, but he had considered cheap at the price if it got Solomon out of the building before he threw out the moneylenders. The suggestion was, of course, ridiculous and unfounded in every respect, but Solomon nevertheless was always a winner when it came to bargaining and it tended to leave everybody somewhat dazed.

As soon as they got outside the bank, Dodger reminded Solomon, somewhat reluctantly, that he was due in the offices of Punch magazine, so that some artist or other could draw a picture of him for the front cover.

Mister Tenniel turned out to be a young man only a little bit older than Dodger and whose brown hair seemed closer to red. With Dodger in a seat in front of him, the two of them chatted away while the artist drew. Being drawn by Mister Tenniel wasn’t all that difficult, and a lot less difficult, Solomon said, than being drawn and quartered, at least. That was apparently a Solomon joke; one he didn’t explain to Dodger.

Perhaps, Dodger thought, he should have said that the process was not difficult but occasionally worrying, because Mister Tenniel would scribble and scribble and then suddenly dart a glance towards Dodger, which pinned him like a butterfly, and then just as soon disappear as Mister Tenniel got back to the scribbling again. Only the top of his head could be seen as the artist bent over his work, while Solomon sat drinking coffee and reading a complimentary issue of Punch.

To Dodger’s amazement, being drawn didn’t take very much time, and finally Tenniel made a sudden few last-minute adjustments to the portrait on his easel and turned it towards Dodger with a grin. ‘I’m pretty pleased with this, Mister . . . may I call you Dodger? I think I have your essence down pat, but of course the paper is always somewhat cluttered, and I will be expected to add a few other details to give the public some vision of what transpired in Mister Sweeney Todd’s shop. I need to draw Mister Todd too, you know – the public demands both hero and villain.’

Dodger swallowed. ‘But Mister Todd wasn’t really a villain, sir—’ he tried.

Tenniel cut him off with a wave of his brush. ‘I hear that Talavera was a most dreadful battle. They say that Wellington simply threw men forward into the mouths of the cannons in abandon, and to great loss of life. One can only hope that the deaths were worth the sacrifice, if that could be possible.’ He shook Dodger by the hand and went on, ‘Mister Dickens told me the truth about what happened on that day in Fleet Street, and it is wonderful, is it not, how the public perception of what is true these days seems always biased towards the macabre? It would seem that the common man likes nothing so much as an ’orrible murder.’ He paused and added, ‘Is there something the matter, Mister Dodger?’

As often as Tenniel had closely scrutinized Dodger, so had Dodger in his turn scrutinized him. He had seen not what was there, but at one point seen something very subtly out of kilter. It took a while for him to see it properly and to find the words.

Embarrassed at being caught staring, he decided to make a clean breast of it and said, ‘I believe you have something wrong with your left eye, don’t you, Mister Tenniel? I hope it ain’t too much of a drawback in your profession?’

The artist’s face froze and then thawed into a lopsided smile. ‘The scar is so small, I believe that you are the first man I have met to notice it. In fact, it was a trivial childhood accident.’

Dodger, watching the smiling face, thought: Not, I think, so trivial.

‘Charlie was right in what he said about you the other day!’

‘Oh? Mmm, and what did Charlie say about my friend Dodger the other day, if you please, sir?’ Solomon rumbled, standing up and packing the magazine into the depths of his coat. ‘I would very much like to know.’ He smiled, of course, but the wording was emphatic.

This was most certainly picked up by Tenniel, who blushed and said, ‘Since I have put my foot in it, sir, I can do no more than tell the truth – will you please not tell Mister Dickens that I mentioned it? What he said, in fact, was: “Mister Dodger is so sharp that one day his name will be known on every continent, possibly as a benefactor of mankind, but also quite possibly as the most charming scoundrel ever to be hanged!”’

Mister Tenniel took a step backwards in amazement when Solomon, laughing, said, ‘Well, at least Mister Dickens is a wonderful judge of character, and directness in a man such as himself is admirable. But should you meet him before I do, please tell him that Solomon Cohen is endeavouring to see that the first option will prevail! Thank you very much for your time, sir, but please excuse us now, because I must go with the young ruffian to a place where he will get cleaner than he’s ever been in his life, because this evening we are due to go to a very important dinner engagement in the West End. Good day to you, sir, and thank you, but now we really must take our leave.

‘No time to dawdle, Dodger,’ said Solomon as the door closed behind them. ‘You know how keen I am on bathing? Well, we are today going to have a Turkish bath, with all the trimmings.’

This was news to Dodger, but Solomon’s wisdom and efforts at basic hygiene had kept him alive so far, so it was almost inconceivable for Dodger to thwart his friend on this occasion; he dared not argue for fear that Solomon’s righteous zeal would cause him to drag Dodger there by the ear. Acquiescence was better than becoming a laughing stock in all the rookeries and stews. And so, putting a brave face on it, he followed the old man out into what was really a drizzle with smoke in its eye, where they unhooked Onan from the lamppost where he had been tethered in the certain knowledge that nobody would ever want to steal him.

Dodger felt better when he cogitated on the word ‘Turkish’. Somebody, probably Ginny-Come-Lately – a nice girl with a laugh that made you very nearly blush; they had been quite close once upon a time – had told him about Turkey. She had filled his mind with exciting images of dancing girls and light-brown ladies in very thin vests. Apparently, they would give you a massage and then oil you with what she called ‘ungulates’, which sounded very exotic, although to tell you the truth, Ginny-Come-Lately could make anything sound exotic. When he had mentioned this to Solomon – Dodger had been much younger then, and still a bit naïve – the old man had said, ‘Surely not. I have not travelled widely in the countries of the Levant, but whatever else they do to their goats, I am quite sure they don’t rub them all over their own bodies. The goat has never been distinguished by the fragrance of its aroma. I suspect you mean “unguents”, which are perfumes distilled from fragrant oils. Why’d you want to know?’

The younger Dodger had said, ‘Oh, no reason really, I just heard somebody say the word.’ Right now, though, whatever way you put it, the word Turkish conjured up visions of eastern promise, and so he became quite optimistic as he strolled through the streets all the way to the Turkish baths in Commercial Road.

There were, of course, bathhouses all over the place, often used even by those who were really poor, when – as one old lady had put it to Dodger – ‘sometimes you need to knock the lumps off ’. Often, the baths were ordered just like the rest of the world, in that the more you paid the more likely it was that you got the hottest and cleanest water which was, at least before the soap went in, transparent. Dodger was aware that in some of those places the water that the nobs had bathed in ended up in the baths habituated by what you might call the middle classes, travelling afterwards to the great bath for the lower classes, where at least it arrived soapy, which if you took the cheerful view meant a saving. Even though you might never sit down at a table with mayors and knights and barons, at least you could share their bath, which made you proud to be a Londoner.

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.’

Dodger 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.

They headed on foot to Savile Row. The side streets were more busy with pedestrians than usual because of the tangle that they had thankfully left behind them. They arrived, wet and warm – which can sometimes, as in this case, be worse than wet and cold because it includes sticky and horsy – at the shining, polished door of Davies & Son, at 38 Savile Row, leaving Onan at a lamppost and on this occasion with a bone brought along for the purpose, in the company of which he was oblivious to the world.

Once inside, Dodger tried not to be awed at the world of schmutter. After all, he knew there were swells that had much finer clothes than he ever wore, but seeing such a lot of it in one place would have been overwhelming if he let it be so. As it was, he tried to look like somebody who barely glances at this sort of thing because he sees it every day – although aware that the cleaned-up but still quite fragrant shonky suit might be a clue that this was not entirely the case. But after all, a tailor is a tailor and all the rest of it is just shine.

Eventually, they were handed into the care of Izzy, small and skinny but nevertheless possessed of some inner nervous energy that would in other circumstances have turned a mill. He appeared like an arrow between Dodger and Solomon and the front-of-house man who opened the door for them, talking all the time so fast that the best you could do was understand that Izzy would take care of everything, had anything, and everything was in hand and if everybody left it to Izzy, everything would not just be all right but also extremely acceptable in every possible way, and at a price that would amaze and yet satisfy all parties – if, and this was important, Izzy was allowed to get on with the job, thank you all so very much. He fussed Solomon and Dodger into one of the fitting rooms, never at any time ceasing to worry, fret and apologize to nobody in particular about nothing very much.

A long cloth tape measure was whisked around his shoulders and Dodger was pushed gently but firmly to the centre of the room, where Izzy looked at him with the expression of a butcher faced with a particularly difficult steer, walking around him, measuring by the pounce-and-run-away method. And in all this time the only words he said to Dodger were variations on the theme of ‘If you would just turn this way, sir?’; and sir this, and sir that, until Dodger was seriously in need of refreshment. It didn’t help matters either when the spinning, dashing Izzy, apparently now with no alternative left to him, finally stopped with his mouth in the vicinity of Dodger’s left ear, and in the tones of a man enquiring after the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, whispered, ‘How does one dress, sir?’

This request was something of a problem for Dodger, who had never really given a thought to the aspect of putting his clothes on; after all, it was just something you did. But the little tailor was standing by him as if he expected to learn the location of hidden treasure, and therefore he made an effort, and said, ‘Well, normally I’d put on yesterday’s unmentionables if they ain’t too bad, and then I pulls on my stockings . . . No! I tell a lie; most days I put on my vest and then I put on my socks.’ It was at this point that Solomon crossed the room at the normal speed of a god intending that the ungodly should be smitten, only to whisper something in Dodger’s ear, causing the latter to say, with some indignation, ‘How the hell should I know? I never bothered to look! Things find their own way, don’t they? What kind of question is that to ask a man, anyway?’

Solomon laughed out loud, and then went into a huddle with an ever-vibrating Izzy, who seemed never to be actually still. Solomon and Izzy were chattering to one another in a language that went all over Europe and the Middle East until at last, laughing, Solomon said, ‘The luck of the Dodger is holding; Izzy says he can do us a wonderful deal! It appears that another tailor was told to work on a frock coat and a very elegant navy-blue shirt, but regrettably one of Izzy’s associates made a laughable mistake during the measuring, which meant that they would no longer fit the fine gentleman they were intended for, and so my friend Izzy,’ he continued, staring fixedly at Izzy, ‘has a little proposition for you, my friend.’

Izzy looked hesitantly at Solomon, and like a man throwing a bone to a lion about to eat him, turned to Dodger and said hurriedly, ‘I could do you an excellent deal, young sir, on both those garments; they are happily only a stitch away from your requirements at a very spirited discount of . . . fifty per cent?’

Oh, that little tell-tale question in the statement which told the world that Izzy was just slightly uncertain, and even more worryingly for Izzy, he was uncertain in the face of Solomon’s deadpan face.

The bargaining had only just begun, and rather wisely, Izzy, with an eye on Solomon, dived to, ‘I beg your pardon – seventy-five, sorry, no, eighty per cent. I will throw in two pairs of very elegant unmentionables as well?’

Solomon smiled, and Izzy looked like a man who had not only been pardoned on the very steps of the gallows, but had also been given a purse full of sovereigns to atone for the misunderstanding. And twenty minutes later a grateful Izzy sent Solomon and the Hero of Fleet Street on their way, with Dodger clutching his new schmutter, Solomon carrying the bag containing the unmentionables, and Izzy now in possession of some of the hero’s reward. There was also, courtesy of the management, Solomon’s umbrella, which had been dried and brushed; and there was a growler waiting for them in the street.

Well, not exactly; it was coming along the street right up until Solomon stood in front of it waving his finger of God in the air, and the horse began to slow even before the coachman had time to pull on the reins, because horses know trouble when they see it. Dodger was quite careful to put Onan and his bone in the cab before the man had a chance to object; Onan tended to leave a certain Onan-ness wherever he went.

Once inside, Solomon made himself comfortable and said to the man, ‘Lock and Co. of St James’s please, my man.’ He turned to a startled Dodger and said, ‘They will almost definitely have a hat there for you, my lad. Everyone who is anyone, or at least thought by everyone to be anyone, gets their hats there.’

‘I’ve got a hat from Jacob!’

‘That shonky thing? It looks like somebody used it as a concertina and handed it to a clown. You need a hat for a gentleman.’

‘But I am not a gentleman,’ Dodger railed.

‘You will be much closer to being one with an elegant hat for special occasions.’

And Dodger had to admit that the shonky hat, no doubt about it, was shonky. Generally, hats were not your friend when you were a tosher; they got knocked off your head far too easily. He often wore a thick leather cap, just good enough to save you from cracking your skull if you stood up too quickly in a small sewer, and easy to keep clean.

Everybody wore a hat of some kind, but the hats in the shop they stepped into now were extraordinary, and some were extremely high. And so, of course, Dodger pointed to the biggest one, which looked like a stovepipe and called to him with a siren voice which only he could hear. ‘I rather think that one will do me a treat.’

When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he thought, oh yes, a really sharp look, sharp as a razor. He would be no end of a swell, where recently he had been no end of a smell – because no matter how hard you scrubbed, the curse of the tosher would always leave its own cheerful mark on you.

Oh yes, this would do him! How amazed Simplicity would be when she saw him in such a splendid hat! However, it didn’t do for Solomon, who considered the price of £1 and 18 shillings to be grossly extravagant. Dodger was firm. True, it was a lot of money for something that he really didn’t need, but it was the principle of the thing. He didn’t know exactly what the principle was, but it was a principle and it had a thing, and that was that. Besides, he pointed out that only the other day Solomon had said while he was working on one of his little machines that ‘this thing needs oiling’ and, he continued relentlessly, only the day before that the old man had said that his little lathe had ‘wanted’ oil.

‘Therefore,’ said Dodger, ‘surely want is the same as need, yes?’

Solomon counted out the coins very slowly and in silence, and then said, ‘Are you certain you weren’t born Jewish?’

‘No,’ said Dodger. ‘I’ve looked. I’m not, but thanks for the compliment.’

The last call before they went home was to a barber – a perfectly reasonable and careful barber who didn’t include extras like having your throat cut. However, the poor fellow was unmanned when Solomon said, just as the barber was shaving Dodger, ‘It might impress you, sir, if I told you that the gentleman you are now shaving was the hero who put paid to the activities of the nefarious Mister Sweeney Todd.’

This intervention caused the man to panic – only a fraction, but nevertheless not a thing to do when you have just put a very sharp cut-throat razor to a man’s throat, and it nearly caused another hey-ho-rumbelow in the vicinity of Dodger’s neck. The nick was not big, but the amount of blood was out of all proportion to the size, and so there was a great performance with towels, and alum for the cut. It would certainly leave a scar, which was something of a bonus as far as Dodger was concerned; the Hero of Fleet Street ought to sport something on his face to show for it.

Then, once his face was tidy and, of course, Solomon had negotiated in a friendly but firm way six months of free haircuts, they caught another growler home and there was just about enough time to get washed, dressed and generally smartened up.

It was while Dodger was sponging himself down, including the crevices because, after all, this was a special occasion, he found part of himself thinking: What would I have to do to let someone die and then come alive again? Apart from being God, that is.

Then, for some reason, the dodger at the back of his head remembered the Crown and Anchor men with their dice, and the man with the pea that you never, ever found. Then tumbling on top of that there was the voice of Charlie, saying that the truth is a fog and in it people see what they want to see, and it seemed to him that around these little pictures a plot was plotting. He trod carefully so as not to disturb it, but wheels in his head were clearly turning and he had to wait until something went click.

The new clothes still fitted him exactly as promised and Dodger wished that he had something more than a tiny piece of broken mirror in which to see himself in his finery. Then he pushed aside the curtain to ask Solomon’s opinion and was confronted by Solomon arrayed in all his glory.

A man who usually wandered around in embroidered slippers or old boots, and wore a ragged black gabardine, had suddenly become an old-fashioned but very smart gentleman with a fine black woollen barathea jacket, dark-blue pantaloon trousers and long, dark-blue woollen stockings with ancient but well-kept court shoes sporting silver buckles that shone. But what amazed Dodger most of all was the large dark-blue-and-gold medallion around Solomon’s neck. He knew what the symbols were on the medallion, but Dodger had never associated them with the old man: they were the seal and the eye in the pyramid of the Freemasons. Finally, since Solomon had washed his beard and primped it, the whole effect appeared to have an amazing power.

And Dodger said so, which caused Solomon to smile and say, ‘Mmm, one day, my boy, I will tell you the name of the august personage who was gracious enough to give this to me. And may I say, Dodger, as always you scrub up very well; one might almost take you for a real gentleman.’

It only remained to very cautiously give Onan his dinner and equally cautiously take him for a little walk outside to do what he needed to. They left him in dog Heaven with another bone; and then there was nothing for it but to find another growler, just as the evening fog was rising, and head back west to number one Stratton Street, Mayfair.