Dodger (12 page)

‘Oh yeah,' I answered, and held her close to me, breathing in her perfume and stroking her hair all gentle with my fingertips. ‘I'll never leave you again.' And from his place sat on the trunk, and in spite of the hard expression still stuck on his face, I got a
sense that even Warrigal was a little touched to see so tender a reunion.

I still had no idea who she was though.

‘Let's get a good look at you then,' I said, holding her out in my arms and trying to recall how I knew her. ‘You've grown up lovely, you have. Just lovely.' She was younger than me, about seventeen, and she had a figure what was most fetching. Her scarlet dress struck me as a bit pricey for one of her class and this told me that she was either on the thieve or earned her living on her back. Either way she was good at her job, as I had only ever sniffed that perfume before on rich ladies. The only rum thing about her looks was the hat. It was tall and stiff and, in spite of the dainty flower tied upon the rim, it seemed like that of a man.

‘You're dressed up like a real gen'leman,' she said as her fingers stroked my superfine coat, passing over the bump made by my pocket watch. She had the touch of my profession, I could tell that. ‘Fagin would be ever so proud. He always said you were the best of them.' And it was then that I made a very sudden and pleasing realisation. This was Ruby Solomon, this was.

‘You're Ruby Solomon, you are,' I told her, as if she herself was in the dark about her own identity. ‘Fagin's little girl.' She stepped back from me and placed her hands on her hips.

‘Have you only just remembered me?' she asked, annoyed.

‘I haven't thought about you for years.' I laughed in wonderment at how much she had altered. ‘You've transformed into a right beauty.'

‘Well, that is as maybe,' she huffed, and turned her cheek towards me in mock indignation. ‘But I cannot believe you haven't thought on me once while I've been here pining for your return every day for three long years.'

‘I've been gone six years.'

‘Have you now?' She shrugged. ‘Well, it felt more like three.'

*

During the years that I lived at Saffron Hill there was only ever one girl what was allowed into our gang and she was this here Ruby. As a matter of principle Fagin was always very strict about letting girls into his den – he didn't even like us having sweethearts come to visit let alone would he teach any of them the tricks of his trade. He said that the female sex was a talkative sex, too talkative for safety's sake, and considering his own downfall was due to Nancy's indiscretions it seemed he had a point. He also said that girls was too often the source of fisticuffs between boys and he preferred to keep things harmonious between us. But with Ruby it was different. He treated her as though she was his own daughter which, considering how close he was to her mother, was thought to be true. The Widow Solomon had died when Ruby was very young, but Fagin spoke of her as if she was the greatest love of his life and he used to take Ruby to visit her graveside often. There was an old uncle what would come to visit her on occasion but he was too poor and feeble to take care of her and so, as was typical, Fagin took responsibility himself and gave her a home. Ruby was a great favourite with us boys, so happy and mischievous a child was she, and her fast little fingers made her a wonder at the snatching game. The old Jew was never more fierce than when acting as her protector and if he ever caught any of us treating her bad, such as the time Crisper got caught trying to set light to her hair, they would be cast out into the night no matter how cruel the hour. But Ruby still had to earn her lodgings, same as the rest of us, and she soon proved to be a good distracter. I remember when she was still small I took her promenading around the many pleasure gardens in the spring where the well-to-do
would stop and comment on the delightful child in her fine pink dress and beaded necklace what had been stolen just for her. As they bent in, to coo and kiss and tell her how adorable she was, their dress pockets was a dipper's delight and such excursions proved most profitable.

As was natural, Ruby was besotted with me. I was two years older than her, as handsome as a hero and as silver-tongued as a villain. And, let's not forget, I was top-sawyer after all. She followed me everywhere, or she tried to, and she made a proper pest of herself, considering she was only little. But six years later, seeing her all grown up and looking and smelling of stolen money, I realised what she meant to me. She made me feel glad to be home.

‘You make me glad to be home,' I told her, and went in for another squeeze. She laughed and let me hold her but the magical moment was ruined by the sound of Warrigal clearing his throat. He had finished eating and was looking at his pocket watch with a face that was reminding me we still had business to attend to.

‘And what might your friend's name be, I wonder?' she asked.

‘Warrigal,' said Warrigal before I could say Peter Cole.

‘Charmed to meet you, Warrigal,' she said, curtsying as if he had said Prince Albert.

Warrigal just stared back at her.

‘Warrigal's my valet. I have a valet now.'

‘Blood,' said Warrigal, and he pointed at her.

‘The reason I'm back, see,' I continued, ignoring him, ‘is that I got this pardon from the Governor of New South Wales. You ain't going to believe this, Ruby, but I'm in the sheep-farming business now and business has been most—'

‘Blood,' said Warrigal again.

Ruby looked to Warrigal and then quick back to me. She raised her white-gloved hand to her forehead. ‘Oh no,' she said. ‘Oh
dear no!' And then I saw three red lines dripping down from under her hat and on to her brow. ‘Oh, Jack,' she said, her voice sick as she saw my expression change. ‘I wish I'd never seen you.'

She hitched up her skirt and with one hand placed the other on top of her hat and took to running in the direction of Cloth Lane. I chased straight after her, and Warrigal in turn chased after me. Her parasol and our trunk was both left on the pavement untended.

‘Ruby!' I shouted as she scudded into an alley. ‘Come back! I want to help!' She ran halfway up the narrow path until she reached a water pump which could not be seen from the street and there she stopped dead. She was facing the stone wall, as if ashamed to be seen, and I caught up with her and touched her on the shoulder. ‘You're hurt,' I said. ‘Let's have a glim.'

Still with her back to me, she raised her hands to her temples and lifted that queer hat up so I could see what it hid. There, resting on top of her crown, was a thick slab of steak what was leaking blood all down her head.

‘This never happens,' she cried as she turned to face me. She looked as vexed as I had ever seen a person, although this may have been on account of the redness which had spread down to her tearful eyes, making a right old smeary mess of her. ‘I gets it home in time most days. You were a distraction to me, Jack Dawkins!' She took the steak, flung it into the hat and handed it to me as she bent over to shake her dripping hair out into the lane, grumbling about how hard it was to rinse out cow's blood. I looked inside the hat, as Warrigal caught up behind, and saw that it was lined with newspaper what had soaked up some of the blood but had not stopped it seeping through the rim. Warrigal looked cross with me for running off but I handed him the steak and turned back to Ruby. She was trying to wash the blood from
her hair and so I yanked at the pump while she held her head under it.

‘How did you get that in there without being seen?' was the first question. ‘And what for?' was the second. ‘It's only a steak, not worth messing up your pretty hair over.' Once she had washed her hair and face she straightened herself up, shook her head dry and snatched her hat back.

‘It's for Jem,' she answered, tying her wet hair into a bunch. ‘He eats steak and not much else. And where else can a lady hide such a thing?' She was starting to calm herself and then went on. ‘I peruse the meat counters while twirling my parasol and then, when a gust of wind blows by, I make like I'm all feeble and I drop it on to the counter between me and the butcher. By the time I've raised it back up there's a steak under my hat.' She took the steak back from Warrigal and put it back in the hat. ‘It's easy when you practise.' She put it back on her head and asked me how she looked.

‘Jem who?' I asked back. ‘Jem
White
?' Ruby nodded and then held her chin up as if to ask what of it. ‘What are you doing going around pinching steaks for Jem White of all people? He's big and ugly enough to steal his own dinner by now surely.'

‘Jem is my fancy man,' she said in an
I'll have you know
voice. ‘We live together in Bill and Nancy's old place. He's the flashest crook in the rookeries. Top-sawyer. And if he says he wants a steak, then a steak he must have.'

This information could not have surprised me more than if she had said that during my time away Queen Victoria had given birth to an elephant prince. Jem White was not cut out to be top-sawyer – he didn't have the fingers for it. Charley Bates was the only boy that could touch me on that scent and even he knew his place. But now I was having to listen to Ruby witter on about what
high fashion Jem had been keeping her in ever since she became his kept woman.

‘My parasol!' she cried out all of a sudden. ‘I've dropped it.' And then she hitched up her skirt again, hand on her hat, and ran back to where she had left it. Warrigal and myself followed close behind and when we ran back out on to the street we found a gang of four boys about to lift our locked trunk off in the other direction.

‘Get out of it!' I shouted at them. They dropped the trunk and scattered and, as they disappeared in every direction, Warrigal bent down to check that the locks had not been opened.

‘It's gone,' complained Ruby about the parasol. ‘It was a present from my Jem. He'll be furious that I lost it.' The market was now emptying of people and it reeked of rotten offal. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘If I catch the little urchin what took my gamp,' she said, ‘I'll wring his neck like a chicken.'

‘I should like to reacquaint myself with your Jem,' I told her. ‘And all the others. Where do they lurk?' She looked back to me and at last her face began to brighten.

‘They'd all love to see you again, Dodge', she said and touched me on the arm. ‘Jem, Mouse, Georgie, Herbie Sharp … They all still talk about you like you never left. I'm sure Jem'll let you back in the gang.'

Let me back in the gang? The cheek of her. I
was
the bloody gang.

‘Go to the Cripples the night after next. They'll be there betting on the rats.'

‘I will,' I said, pleased to hear it. ‘It'll be nice to be reintroduced into London society.'

Finally, after many large hints from Warrigal, our conversation came to its end. Ruby held out her hand to feel for raindrops and
made to leave. As she said goodbye and scurried away I called out after her. She was crossing the busy street away from the market but I was loud enough to be heard over the noisy hoofs of the traffic.

‘It was good seeing you again, Rube,' I said, raising my hat to her as carriages passed between us. ‘Sight for sore eyes.'

She smiled back at me. ‘Go to the rat pit,' she repeated. ‘You'll have fun. But be warned, they might not let your ugly friend in.'

‘Warrigal will be fine,' I told her.

She blew me a kiss. ‘I was talking to Warrigal!' she said. Then I heard her mischievous laugh as two large shires pulled an omnibus between us, obscuring her from me in much the same way that a parasol at a meat counter would. By the time the packed carriage had passed she was gone. I could still smell the perfume on me though.

The church bells was now counting to ten and, as I wound my gold timepiece to match it, I remarked to Warrigal that Ruby had a fine nerve saying that I was the distraction. We lifted up the trunk and made towards a coach stand, both agreeing that we should head straight towards the address I had written down on a small card inside my wallet. It was an address of a man in Greenwich and had been given to me by Lord Evershed when he bid us farewell at Botany Bay. This was the man we was supposed to take the doll to as soon as we had it in our possession and I wanted to waste no time in delivering it. Warrigal, who was treading in ankle-deep puddles all the way along the road, offered no objection to this plan but said nothing, as was his way. So I just let him dwell upon whatever he cared to while my own thoughts turned back to our simple errand.

It was a rum business, this finding and delivering of my old toy, but the reward for a job well done was my freedom. However,
the penalties of failure was terrible, and I did not like to dwell on what would have happened had the doll not been where I had hoped. I had experienced many bad dreams on the voyage back to London, imagining that I would get all the way back to the old attic and be disappointed in my search. The thought had been a torment to me ever since Lord Evershed had reminded me of the brown-faced doll six months before. But now that the grinning prince was safe inside Warrigal's pocket I could at last begin to breathe easy, knowing that I would soon be out of Evershed's clutches. He was a wicked fellow, of this there was no doubt, but then so was most of the people I had grown up with so I had decided not to hold it against him. I had met the man while serving time in Australia and it was there, on a penal colony on the opposite side of this here world, where I had first learned about the curse of the Jakkapoor stone.

There are coves in this world, those who are flatter of mind and straighter of purpose, who do not see things in the way what I do. These sorts of coves, and perhaps you are one of them, might think that my getting packed off to Australia at a tender age was not the outright disgrace that I saw it to be. They might feel that I should have been grateful for the magistrate's decision and try to tell me that the London from where I had been banished was a very wicked place for one of my class. It was all filth and rats, disease and danger. Most of my associates, they might remind me, had met with bloody ends soon after my transportation but I had survived by being sent away. I was the lucky one. I was spared.