Dodger (37 page)

‘You ungrateful wretch,' I said in disgust. ‘That man taught you skills for getting on in this life. He was father and mother to us all and his lessons was important. You can't expect to survive in this world without picking a pocket.'

‘Tell that to Eddie Inderwick,' he replied, ‘when you visit him in his squalor.'

‘Eddie got caught,' I shot back. ‘That was his luck. You married a farmer's daughter. That was yours. Look here, I don't want to row with you just before we say goodbye forever, but you're wrong. Fagin loved me the most because I was sharpest. He didn't have time for the greens.'

I had become most vexed by this suggestion that I was not the old man's best boy because it struck me as a wicked lie. Why would Fagin call me top-sawyer if he favoured another more? But Charley just laughed in response, not his usual warm laugh but one what was bitter.

‘He loved the greens best!' he exclaimed. ‘Remember how excited he would get whenever one of us would bring home a new one we'd found on the streets. “Your face is your fortune, my dear,”
he used to say to them and he'd treat them like they was made of china. He thought that they was best on account of where you could send them – into a church, to the theatre, into a rich man's home. An angelic boy could go anywhere, steal anything, that's what he used to say. That can't be said of you, Dodge.'

‘Why can't it?' I asked, outraged by the suggestion. I was starting to think that the country air had affected his senses.

Charley just sighed and looked to the wagon what was set to take me away from him again. It was almost empty. ‘Because you're like Alan Mullins,' he replied. ‘You look like what you are.'

With this impertinence he had gone too far and I faced him in anger. ‘Look like what I am?' I cried. ‘And that's a thief, is it? Meanwhile you've got a face like the baby Jesus, I suppose?'

‘Don't get upset, Dodge,' he said, trying to calm me, but it was too late for that.

‘I'll have you know,' I declared loud enough for the whole village to hear, ‘I have spent time in the company of proper society. Lords have confided their deepest secrets to me. Men of the cloth have invited me to dine with their families, even thrown their daughters at me for marriage if I cared to have them. Quality like that wouldn't let a common rustic like you set foot in the house!'

‘Everything all right, Farmer Bates?'

Two hefty farmhands had appeared from around the corner of the lane what led down to his farmhouse and had chanced upon me in the throes of my anger. I corrected myself as they walked towards me, readying themselves like a pair of sheepdogs to chase me off should Farmer Bates give them a whistle. But Charley told them that everything was fine and assured them that I would be leaving soon.

After they had walked on he turned to me and spoke softer. ‘All I meant was,' he said as the horses of the wagon trundled
towards us and Warrigal threw our bags into the back, ‘that Fagin liked those what was uncorrupted. He made it his sport to turn a good boy bad. The angels, they was his biggest weakness. And in the end it was an angel what was the death of him.' The wagoner pulled his horse up to where I stood and gave me an unfriendly look but Charley was still speaking. ‘You should know, Artful,' Charley went on. ‘You introduced them.'

This comment confused me. I had no clue as to what he was talking about. Georgie walked over to us. He was getting ready to bid me farewell.

‘Introduced who?'

‘Fagin and the boy what peached upon him,' explained Charley. ‘You must remember. The one from the workhouse. You and I took him out to go finding one morning and he got himself caught. Oliver, I think his name was.'

As he spoke a dim light became brighter inside my memory. I did recall an Oliver, some pale little weakling what had got Fagin all agitated. He had got grabbed, if I recalled right, and taken to a wealthy home. Bill, Nancy and the Jew had gone to great trouble to snatch him back for reasons I had never understood. He had then been taken to aid Bill Sikes in the burglary of a home in Chertsey and he had gone and gotten himself caught there too. As far as I knew that was the last of the hopeless bugger. I had not thought on him since and had certainly never entertained the idea that he, not I, would be Fagin's favourite boy.

‘You must not have heard,' Charley went on as I scratched my mind for more details on him, ‘on account of you getting lagged before all the trouble began. I only blowed upon Bill and that was for murdering Nancy. But it was this Oliver what peached upon Fagin. He told the police all about our school and that was what finished us. He was the great destroyer.'

I saw him then. A small child shivering on some cold stone steps. I remember thinking about how he would starve if no kind soul thought to step in. I took pity.

‘
Hullo, my covey
,' I had said. ‘
What's the row?
' And I had invited him home with me.

Georgie was saying goodbye to me now and Warrigal was in the wagon waiting for me to join him but my thoughts was still absent. I was thinking on that boy and nothing else, and I was not engaged with what was going on around me as we went to leave. Charley gave me a hug and said he hoped we would meet again although I could hear in his voice that this was not true. He made me promise to write though and let them know the moment it was safe for him to send Georgie back.

‘I just wish,' he said as I climbed up on to the wagon, ‘that I could remember the second name of that boy. You could look him up and see if he has the stone.' I told Charley that I planned to do just that and that I remembered the name now. It was all coming back to me in sickening clearness.

‘
This is him, Fagin
,' I had said to my beloved master, all proud and unaware of the poison I was presenting, ‘
my friend Oliver Twist!
'

Seven nights had passed since I last saw my lovely Ruby but I had not rested my head upon a pillow without thinking on that precious moment when she had finally told me she loved me. It was like something from a romantic novel and I was keen to take her in my arms again and repeat the experience, only this time without the cellar, the murderer and the army of police about to burst in on us. That she had not actually said the words ‘I love you, Jack,' was a detail I was not letting trouble me. She could never have said that with Jem listening, I told myself, so instead said, ‘Don't get caught.' And if ever there was a better coded phrase for ‘I love you, Jack,' then these young ears had not heard them. There was a chance, I considered, that it was Jem that she had been speaking to or perhaps that she was addressing all four of us. But I decided to cast these thoughts aside as unromantic. With Jem gone, I said to Warrigal as our train pulled into Islington station late in the afternoon, Ruby was mine for the taking and I planned to head straight round to her house and unload my heart to her. Warrigal, a business-minded cove who had little time for the intrigues of young lovers, shook his head and told me no. We had wasted too much time up north, he said, we had still not found the jewel and
we had less than a week before Evershed arrived in London. We would be better employed tracking down some of those names I had jotted down in my notebook, he told me, and asking them about the third doll. ‘Eddie Inderwick,' he said and then, as if it was the most ridiculous name he had ever heard, ‘Oliver Twist.'

This, I admitted, was a fair argument and I was very keen to track down young Twist for reasons that went far beyond the search for the jewel. But I reminded him that we also needed to retrieve our things what had been left at that address and so the hunt for the Jakkapoor stone would have to wait. We stepped on to the foggy streets and hailed a cab to Bethnal Green where I was sure that Ruby, my ever-constant sweetheart, had been longing for my return.

‘Ruby's gone,' Greta told us upon answering the door. ‘She don't want nothing to do with none of you lot.'

‘Gone?' I exclaimed in disgust at the fickleness of woman. ‘But Jem's only got took a week ago! Where has she gone?'

‘She's gone back to work in the music halls, or so she told me before packing her bags. Said she wishes she'd never given all that up for a rotter like Jem.'

‘Don't blame her,' I remarked. ‘She was wasted on him. Now, what theatre has she gone to, so I can pay her a visit?'

‘I dunno,' Greta shrugged. ‘And I wouldn't tell you if I did. Now, are you going to come in and take what's left of your things inside or what?' She stepped away from the door and let us cross into the house, smiling at my companion with fondness as she did so. ‘I see you're still with us, Warrigal.' She stroked the front of his shirt with her finger as he passed by her to go up the stairs. I could not help but notice she was not pestering him for his five shillings.

Every door of every room in that house was open and filled with chattering women what was not here last week. Many of
them was in a state of undress and one was sat upon her pisspot in front of all the others and complaining to them about the price of cockles as water hit tin. Some of these women glanced our way and they did not conceal their hostility towards us. Others just acted like we was not there. They was a toughened set of females and I asked Greta, as she led us into the bedroom where our trunk was, if this was now a brothel.

‘No, it ain't,' she said sounding scandalised. ‘Well, apart from my room. And even that will have to change now these girls are here. This will now be a house where women come to get away from all that. And away from any bastards what mistreat them.'

Sat on a chair beside the bed where Nancy died, and in a manner most relaxed, was a tall woman with cropped hair what was dressed in gentleman's clothing. She was sat with her legs crossed, smoking a cigar, and was regarding herself in a hand-mirror. She looked over to us, a small smile playing upon her lips, as we went over to open our luggage, and something about her seemed familiar. It was not until Warrigal threw open the smashed lock of the trunk, revealing it to be almost empty, that I realised why this was.

‘If I'm not much mistaken, madam,' I said to the woman as she held my gaze and drew on the cigar, ‘those are my trousers you've got on.' She blew out a smoke ring and watched it float towards me.

‘Is they?' she said.

‘Yes, they is,' I replied, and pointed at her canary waistcoat. ‘And that there is mine as well. The shirt and the cufflinks though belong to my companion. Be a friend and take them off for us, will you?' The woman looked to Greta and then turned back to me.

‘You want me to get unrigged for you?' she said, all antagonistic. ‘I just heard Greta tell you that this weren't that sort of place.'

‘But it is the sort of place where you crack open the locks of others,' I said as if I had never before seen the like, ‘and take whatever
you care to without the decency to pretend like you haven't? I should be ashamed of such brazenness.'

‘Jack,' said Greta, coming between us, ‘the peelers broke your lock, not us. They rummaged through the whole place, and once they was done there was not a lot left in there. These girls came here at my invitation after Ruby left. And, yeah, we helped ourselves to what remained in your trunk, which weren't much. For all I knew you was never coming back.'

‘Well, here we are. So, if you don't mind –' I turned back to the woman – ‘I should like my togs.'

The tall woman stood and shook her head at Greta as though I was being most unreasonable. But, with the cigar still clenched in her teeth, she began pulling at her waistcoat buttons and asked Warrigal and myself to face the wall while she changed into something more feminine. This we did, all the while asking Greta about what had happened while we was away. As we spoke I found myself staring at that music-hall poster of Ruby's what was still hanging upon the wall.

*

Douglas Boyd, I recalled, was the name of the producer what had first introduced Ruby into the music halls and it made sense to me that she would try him if anyone. This place, Rafferty's in Wideapple Square, was therefore where I was likely to find her.

‘I'm surprised she didn't take this poster,' I said as Greta was telling me all about the damage the peelers had done to the place.

‘Ruby left all sorts, she was in such a hurry,' Greta sniffed. ‘I expect she'll come back for it and the rest once she's settled. But you just leave her alone from now on, Jack,' Greta warned. ‘She told me she's done with thieves like yourself.'

‘She didn't say that, did she?'

‘As good as. Anyway, you can turn round now, your clothes is ready.'

Warrigal and myself turned back around and saw the clothes tossed on to the floor between us and the woman. She was sat back upon the chair looking at herself in the hand-mirror, in the precise pose that she had been in when we entered. Only now she was as naked as a babe and sniggering.