chapter 2
In which Dodger meets a dying man and a dying man meets his Lady; and Dodger becomes king of the toshers
AS THE BELLS tolled five o’clock, Mrs Sharples woke up, making a noise that could best be expressed as Blort! Her eyes filled with venom when they alighted on Dodger and subsequently scoured the room for indications of malfeasance.
‘All right, you young castle, you have had your nice warm sleep in a Christian bedroom, as promised – and, as I suspect, for the first time. Now just you get out of here, and mind! I shall be watching you like a fork until you’re out of the back door, you mark my words.’
Nasty and ungrateful oh those words were, and she was as good as them, marching him down the grubby back stairs and into the kitchen, where she flung open the door with such force that it bounced on its hinges and slammed itself shut again, much to the amusement of the cook, who had been watching the pantomime.
As the door hung there reproachfully, Dodger said, ‘You heard Mister Charlie, missus, he is a very important man, and he gave me a mission, and I have a mission so I reckon, and a missionary gets a bite of breakfast before he is slung out into the cold. And I don’t think Mister Charlie would be too happy if I told him about the lack of hospitality you’ve shown to me, Mrs Sharp Balls.’
He had mangled her name offensively without a thought, and was rather pleased, even though she appeared not to have noticed. The cook, however, had, and the laugh she laughed had a sneer in it. Dodger had never read a book, but if he had ever done so he would have read the cook just like it – and it was amazing how much you could glean from a look, or a snort, or even a fart if it was dropped into the conversation at just the right place. There was language, and there was the language of inflections, glances, tiny movements in the face – little bits of habit that the owner was not aware of. People who thought that their face was entirely blank did not realize how they were broadcasting their innermost thoughts to anyone with the gumption to pick up the signs, and the sign right now, floating in the air as if held by an angel, said that the cook did not like the housekeeper, and the dislike was sufficient enough that she would make fun of her even though Dodger was standing there.
So he carefully made himself look a little more tired and a little more frightened and a little more pleading than usual. Instantly the cook motioned him towards her, saying in a low voice, but not so low that the housekeeper couldn’t hear it, ‘OK, lad, I’ve got some porridge on the boil – you can have some of that, and a piece of mutton that’s only slightly on the nose, and I dare say you’ve eaten worse. Will that do you?’
Dodger burst into tears; they were good tears, full of soul and fat – there was a certain amount of body to them – and then he fell on his knees, clasped his hands together and said, with deep sincerity, ‘God bless you, missus, God bless you!’
This shameless pantomime earned him a very large bowl of porridge with a very acceptable amount of sugar in it. The mutton wasn’t yet at the stage when it was about to start walking around all by itself, and so he took it thankfully; it would at least make the basis of a decent stew. It was wrapped in newspaper and he shoved it in his pocket very quickly for fear that it might evaporate. As for the porridge, he pushed the spoon around until there was not one drop left, to the obvious approval of the cook, a lady, it might be said, who wobbled everywhere one could wobble when she moved, including the chin.
He had written her down as an ally, at least against the housekeeper, who was still glaring at him balefully, but then she grabbed him sharply by the hand and shouted, much louder than necessary, ‘Just you come down here into the scullery and we’ll see how much you have stolen, my lad, shall we?’
Dodger tried to pull out of her grip, but she was, as aforesaid, a well-built woman – as cooks tend to be – and as she was dragging him she leaned towards him and hissed, ‘Don’t struggle. What are you, a bloody fool? Keep mum and do as I say!’ She opened a door and dragged him down some stone steps, into a place that smelled of pickles. After slamming the door behind them, she relaxed a little and said, ‘That old baggage of a housekeeper will swear blind that you must have picked up a lot of trinkets when you were here last night, and you may be sure that the picker-up of said trifles will be that lady herself. Therefore it would be very likely that any friendships you have made here will vanish like the morning dew. The family are decent sorts, always a soft touch for a hard luck story from a broken-down artisan or fallen woman who would like to get up again, and I’ve seen them come and go. Quite a lot of them are genuine, let me tell you; I know.’
As politely as possible, Dodger tried to remove her hands from his person. She seemed to be patting him down rather more than was warranted and with a certain enthusiasm and a gleam in her eye.
She saw his expression and said, ‘I ain’t always been this old fat baggage; I fell once and bounced back up again. That’s the way to think about it, lad. Anyone can rise if they have enough yeast. I was not always like this; oh my word, you would be amazed and probably quite amused – and I might say in one or two cases embarrassed.’
‘Yes, missus,’ said Dodger. ‘And would you please stop patting.’
She laughed, causing an oscillation of chins, and then, rather more solemnly, said, ‘The kitchen maid told me that the talk is that you helped save some sweet girl from ruffians last night and I know, I just know you will get blamed for something unless I show you the lay of the land. So, little fellow, you just give Aunty Quickly here anything you is thinking of running away with, and I will see it gets put back where it belongs. I like this family and I won’t have them robbed, even by a lively lad such as yourself. So if you own up now all sins will be forgiven and you will walk out of here without a stain on your character, although I wish I could say the same about the stains on the rest of you.’ Her nose wrinkled as she took in the state of his trousers.
Smirking, Dodger handed her one silver spoon, saying, ‘One spoon, and only because I was still holding it when you dragged me down here!’ Then he pulled out the pack of cards. ‘And this, missus, was handed to me by Mister Dickens.’
Nevertheless, but with a grin, the cook patted him down again right there and then, finding his knife, his brass knuckles and his short crowbar; she pointedly ignored them, but also made him take his shoes off for inspection, whereupon she winced at the smell, with a hand theatrically over her nose, and made it clear that she wanted him to put them on again as quickly as possible. She said cheerfully, ‘Not got nothing up your jacksie, yes? Wouldn’t be the first to have tried. No, I ain’t going to look; you’ve got more meat on your ribs than most of your type, which means you are rather innocent, or very clever; I trust that it is the latter, and would be most surprised if it is the former. Now what we’ll do next is that I’ll drag you upstairs, shouting at you like the scum you are, so that the old baggage can hear. What I shall shout is that I’ve searched you thoroughly at risk to my own health and am throwing you out absolutely empty-handed. After that I will kick you out the door on the toe of my boot for the look of the thing, and then I’ll get on with my work, which will be all the more enjoyable when I think of the nasty old boot seething like a cauldron of bees.’ She gave Dodger a long look as if sizing him up and said, ‘You’re on the tosh, ain’t you?’
‘Oh yes, missus.’
‘A lot of work for not much money, so I hear.’
Never tell anybody everything. So he said, ‘Oh well, I don’t know, missus, I just makes a living.’
‘Now, come on, let’s do the pantomime for them as is surely listening, and off you go, but remember – come and see Quickly if you ever feel the need for a friend. I mean what I say: if I can ever help you, you just have to whistle. And if I knock on your door in hard times, don’t leave it shut.’
Outside, the sun was hardly visible in the smoke, mist and fog, but that was the clear light of day for somebody like Dodger. A bit of sunshine was OK, he would agree, because it helped your clothes dry, but Dodger liked the shadows and, if possible, the sewers, and right now something in him wanted the solace of darkness.
So he crowbarred the lid of the nearest drain cover and dropped onto what wasn’t all that bad a surface down below. The storm last night had been kind enough to make the sewers just that bit more bearable. There would be other toshers down there, of course, but Dodger had a nose for gold and silver.
Solomon said his dog Onan had a nose for jewellery. Indeed, Dodger was happy to give him the honour, because you had to feel sorry for the poor creature, who was really quite embarrassing at times, but for some reason the dog’s pointy little face did actually light up whenever he smelled rubies. Sometimes Dodger would take him down into the gloom with him, and if Onan’s amazing nose found wealth down there in the darkness then when they got back home Solomon would give him extra chicken gizzards.
Dodger wished he had the dog with him today – for Onan had ears so good that he could hear a sudden shower miles upstream, and would bark accordingly – but he had started in the wrong area without the time to go and fetch him, so he had to make do the best he could, which after all was pretty good at that. If you were smart on your feet, like Dodger, you’d have grabbed your loot and been up in the fresh air long before the first surge of storm water came down the sewers.
But it was as if last night’s storm had emptied the sky. It was as calm as a millpond down in the tunnels today: small puddles here and there, with a little trickle down the centre of the sewer. After the storm, it mostly smelled like, well, wet dead things, rotten potatoes and bad air – and these days, unfortunately, shite. This always infuriated Dodger. From what Solomon told him, some coves called the Romans had built the sewers to keep the rain water flowing down to the Thames instead of pouring into people’s houses. But these days toffs here and there were getting pipes run from their cesspits into the sewers and Dodger thought this was really unfair. It was bad enough with all the rats down here, without having to make certain you didn’t step in a richard.1
A fair amount of light filtered down from the gutters through the drain covers, which themselves had holes in to keep the water running away, but really, being a tosher meant that you felt around – with fingers, and toes sometimes – for all those little heavy things that would get caught up on the crumbling brickwork as the water went past. But you had to search with your mind and your instinct as well, and that was the soul and centre of being a tosher – old Grandad had taught him that, telling him that it could get so much a part of you that you could smell the gold even among the richards.
Dodger didn’t know much about the Romans, but the sewers they had built were old and in a general state of falling to bits. Oh, gangs came down here to patch things up occasionally, but it was always a case of a bit of work here and a bit of work there, seldom anything very substantial. The work gangs – who were handed an official job occasionally, shoring up and repairing bits of the ever-crumbling sewers – would chase you off if they found you, though they were not as young as Dodger so he could easily leave them behind. Besides, they were working men with working hours, and a tosher might work all night on a good night, feeling in those little places where a brick had fallen out of the wall, or the floor was not level. Best of all were the places where the water would swirl around in a little whirlpool causing pennies, sixpences, farthings, half farthings and – if you were very, very blessed – sometimes even sovereigns, half sovereigns and crowns to collect; maybe even brooches, silver hat pins, eyeglasses, watches and golden rings. They would all swirl around in this dark carousel, a great spinning ball of sticky mud which, if you were a lucky tosher and believed in the Lady of the Toshers, then you – yes, you – might be the lucky tosher who one day found a ball of mud like a big plum pudding. This was that wonderful thing known to the toshers as the tosheroon, which when you smashed it open would deliver unto you the fortune of a lifetime.
Dodger had found all of those things separately at some time or other, and occasionally one or two together in a little nest in a crack, which he would make a note of in his head and, of course, go back to again. But while he could often come back with some goods that would make Solomon smile, he had never come across that great pie of dirt and jewels and money that was the key to a better life.
But, he thought, what better life was there than a life on the tosh, at least if you were a Dodger? The world, which meant London, was built for him, just for him; it worked in his favour as if the Lady had meant it. Gold jewels and currency were heavy and got trapped easily, while dead cats, rats and richards tended to float, which was a good thing because you never like to tread in a dickie – thank goodness they floated. But, Dodger mused, as he almost absentmindedly but very methodically felt his way along the sewer, taking care to cover his favourite traps while at the same time keeping an eye out for any new ones, whatever would a tosher do if he got hold of such a thing as a real tosheroon? He knew them, the tosher lads, and when they had a good day, what did they do with their loot? What did they do with all the hard-earned money they had splashed through the muck for? They drank it, and the bigger the amount the more they drank. Maybe if they were sensible ones they’d put a bit aside for a bed for the night and a meal; in the morning they would be poor again.
There was a clink under his fingers! That was the sound of two sixpences together in the spot he called ‘Old Faithful’ – a good start.
Dodger knew that he had the edge on the other toshers; that was why he had broken every tosher rule and gone into a sewer during the storm, and it would have worked too if it hadn’t been for that fight and what had followed. Because if you had your eye to business, you could see places in the sewers where a tosher could hang on in a bubble of air while all around him the world raged. He’d found a good one, and while it was damned chilly, he would have been the first one down in this vicinity to reap the harvest of the night. Right now, he had to hurry because other toshers would be coming up the sewers towards him, and suddenly there was a glint in the gloom as the sun caught something. It went away instantly, but he had marked it in his mind and so he worked his way carefully to where his head told him the glint had been, and found a pile of muck on a little sandbank where the outflow of a smaller sewer flowed into this one; it was still dribbling.
There it was – a dead rat, and in its jaws what looked like a gold tooth but turned out to be, as it happened, a half sovereign gripped tightly in the teeth of Mister Rat. You never, if you could help it, touched a rat, which was why Dodger carried a little crowbar with him down there. Using it together with his knife, he levered the nasty little jaws open and flicked the half sovereign out. Balancing the coin on the blade of his knife, he held it up to the trickle coming down the wall, giving it something of what you might call a wash.
May every day be as good as this! Who would be a working man on such a day? A skilled chimney sweep would have to work for a week to get the money he had picked up today. Oh, to be a tosher on a day like this!
Then he heard the groan . . .
Dodger edged his way round the rat and into the smaller sewer, which was half choked with debris – much of it pieces of wood, some of them sharp as knives – and all the other detritus that had last night been dislodged. But to Dodger’s astonished gaze it appeared that most of the debris was a man, and that man did not look well; there was nothing very much where one eye should have been, but the other one was opening now and it looked Dodger in the face. It stank, the face Dodger looked into, and he shuddered, because he knew it.
He said, ‘That’s you, Grandad, isn’t it?’
The oldest tosher in London looked as if he had been tortured, and Dodger almost threw up when he saw the rest of him. He must have been working by himself, just like Dodger, and got caught up when the flood came down, and there would have been everything in it, anything that someone had thrown away or lost or wanted to hide and dispose of. A lot of it had apparently smashed into Grandad, who was nevertheless trying to sit upright, covered in bruises, bleeding and coloured with all sorts of nastiness, such as only a flooded sewer could provide.
Grandad spat mud – at least, Dodger hoped it was only mud – and said weakly, ‘Oh, it’s you, Dodger. Good to see you in such fine fettle, in a manner of speaking; you’re a good lad, I always said so, smarter than I ever was, see. So what I want you to do now, right now, is to get a pint of the worst brandy you can find, and bring it back down here and pour it down this thing what used to be my throat, right?’
Dodger tried to pull some of the stuff away from the old man, who groaned and mumbled, ‘Trust me on this one. I am banged about like nobody’s business, fool that I am, and at my age too! Should have known better, silly old fool. I reckon I have eaten more than my peck today and so it’s time to die. Be a lovely lad and get me the liquor right now, there’s a good boy; there’s a sixpence and a crown and five pennies in my right hand, and they’re still there ’cos I can feel it, and that is all for you, my lad, you lucky boy.’
‘Here,’ said Dodger, ‘I’m not taking anything from you, Grandad!’
The old tosher shook his head, such as was left of it, and said, ‘Firstly I ain’t your grandad really, you boys only give me the name just ’cos I’m older than what you lot are, and by the Lady you will take my stuff when I’m gone, ’cos you are a tosher and a tosher will take what he finds! Now I knows where I am and I knows there is a bottle shop just round the corner, up there downstream. Brandy, I said, the worst they’ve got, and then remember me fondly. Now piss off right now, or be followed by the curse of a dying tosher!’
Dodger came out of the next drain cover at a run, found the rather greasy bottle shop, bought two bottles of a brandy that smelled as if it could cut a man’s leg off and was back climbing down the drain almost before the echoes of his leaving Grandad died away.
Grandad was still there, and was dribbling something cruel, but there was something like a smile when he saw Dodger, who handed him the first open bottle, which he threw down his throat in one long glug. Some of it spilled out of his mouth as he beckoned for the other, saying, ‘This will suit me right enough, oh yes indeed, just the way a tosher should go.’ Then his voice dropped to a whisper, and with his one relatively good hand he grabbed at Dodger and said, ‘I saw her, lad; the Lady, standing large as life just where you are now, all crimson and gold and shining like the sun on a sovereign. Then she blew me a kiss and beckoned to me and scarpered, only in a ladylike way, of course.’
Dodger didn’t know what to say, but managed to say it anyway. ‘You’ve taught me a lot, Grandad. You taught me about the Lady of the Rats. So look, get the taste of the sewer out of your mouth, and then I reckon I can pull you out of here to somewhere better. Let’s give it a try, please?’
‘Not a chance, lad. I reckon if you were to pick me up right now I’d fall to bits, but if you don’t mind you will find the time to stay with me for a little while.’ In the darkness there was another liquid noise as Grandad took a further draught of the fiery brandy and went on, ‘You was a bloody good learner, I will say that for you; I mean, most of the lads I see doing it just don’t have the nose for toshing, but it done me good all these years to see how you was treating toshing like one of them professors going through all them books. I seen you just look at a whole pile of shite and your eyes would twinkle like you knew that there was definitely something worthwhile under there. That’s what we do, lad – we find value in what them above throw away, what they don’t care about. And that means people too. I seen you toshing, lad, and knew you had toshing in your blood, just like me.’ He coughed, and bits of his broken body moved in a rather ghastly dance. ‘I know what they call me, Dodger – king of the toshers. The way I see it, that’s you now and you have my blessing on it.’ What was left of his mouth smiled. ‘Never did know who your dad was, did you, lad?’
‘No, Grandad,’ said Dodger. ‘Never knew and probably neither did my ma; don’t know who she was neither.’ Water dripped off the ceiling as Dodger stared at nothing much and said, ‘But you were always Grandad to me, I certainly know that, and if you hadn’t given me the knowing of the toshing I would never have found out about all of them places down here in a month of Sundays, like the Maelstrom and the Queen’s Bedroom and the Golden Maze and Sovereign Street and Button Back Spin and Breathe Easy. Oh yes, that place saved my bacon a dozen times when I was still learning! Thank you for that, Grandad. Grandad . . .? Grandad!’
Then Dodger was aware of something in the air, or perhaps the subtle sound of something that had been there and then gently ceased to be so. But there was still something there; and as Dodger leaned over he felt something carried on the last breath and was simply hovering as Grandad said, from wherever he was now, ‘I can see the Lady, lad, I can see the Lady . . .’
Grandad was smiling at him, and went on smiling until the light in his eyes faded, when Dodger then leaned down and respectfully opened the man’s hand to take the legacy that was duly his. He counted out two coins, which he solemnly placed on the dead man’s eyes because, well, it was something you had to do because it had always been done. Then he looked into the gloom and said, ‘Lady, I am sending to you Grandad, a decent old cove who taught me all I know about the tosh. Try not to upset him ’cos he swears something cruel.’
He came out of the sewer as if Hell and all its demons were following behind him. Suspecting that it might well be so, he ran the short distance to Seven Dials and the comparative civilization that was in the little tenement attic where Solomon Cohen lived and worked and did business in a small room above a flight of stairs, which being high up gave him a view of things that he probably did not want to see.
1 Cockney rhyming slang, short for Richard the Third, which rather happily rhymes with another interesting word.