Dodger (29 page)

The shop window of Dick's was still, regardless of the disrepair, as magical to me as it had ever been when I was a small kinchin. I remember gazing in then, all excitable, at the many brightly coloured wooden soldiers, dolls hanging from strings, the soft bears and alphabet blocks, and wondering which of these enchanting items I would be shoplifting later to sell in other districts. Old Dick never caught me though and he smiled at me now as he unlocked the many chains on the front of the shop. The vagrant in the doorway refused to respond to my friendly taps to shoo him away and so I just stepped over him once the door was open. Inside I was struck with the musty old smell of the place, a mixture of paint oils, sawn wood and the real animal hair what was used on the dappled rocking horses.

‘Finer stock than Tackleton's,' I complimented him after we had shook hands. ‘You'd never know this stuff was second-hand if it didn't say so outside.'

‘Most of it ain't.' He winked, knowing I was safe. ‘Much of it was lifted straight off the back of a Tackleton's cart last Wednesday. And you should see the prices they charge for 'em in the big shops. Compared to what I'm selling 'em for it's downright villainy.'

He then walked me through to a tiny back parlour what was also stuffed with stolen toys. This was where he made his own
dolls and there must have been a hundred stringed wooden figures, Mr Punches, Joey the Clowns, devils, all dangling from hooks and clothes lines. As he began boiling up a kettle a voice squawked down the crooked stairs.

‘Who is it, Dicky? What do they want?'

‘An old friend, petal,' Dick shouted back up the stairs. ‘Just saying hello.'

‘Tell him it's a Sunday and come back to bed.'

Dick rolled his eyes as he poured my tea. ‘Ignore Albert,' he said. ‘He's new.'

‘I won't keep you long, Dicky,' I said, after blowing on my tea. He pulled out some old wooden chairs covered in bits of cloth and tiny dolls' eyes. I brushed them off and sat down. ‘I just wanted to know what you made of this,' I took out the two parts of my toy and showed him.

Before learning that Louisa Evershed had hidden the Jakkapoor stone inside a small wooden doll, I had always imagined that Fagin had got my toy from this here Dicky. It was very like the sort of thing what he made and because he and the Jew was so close it seemed likely that this was where it had come from. Dicky took out his steel-rimmed glasses and inspected the smiling prince, turning both parts around in his hands, sniffing at the paint and the inside wood.

‘One of mine,' he said after a time, ‘if I know me own handiwork. You ain't looked after it very well, I must say.' My heart sank as I realised I had been mistaken in ever thinking I had been given Louisa's doll in the first place. ‘My wood, my paint, and look here –' he pointed to a tiny ‘DD' scratched underneath the left foot. ‘That's my little signature.'

‘So Fagin did get it from you,' I sighed. ‘Not from George Shatillion.'

Dick raised an eyebrow at the famous name. ‘Oh, I made it all right –' he grinned then – ‘but it weren't my design. I was manufacturing to order.'

‘You mean Fagin asked you to make it special?'

‘Heh. He did indeed. I recall I painted it for him most particular, this one and another. That was a peculiar afternoon. Most peculiar indeed.'

‘How so?' I could not keep the interest from my voice, and Dick, always the frustrated performer, seemed pleased to have a keen audience.

‘For one thing,' he said as he stood and crossed over to a dilapidated chest to search through the drawers, ‘it was the only time he ever bought anything off me and not me off him.' Sticking out of the chest I could see the small wooden limbs of even more of his creations and Dick rifled through them in search of something. ‘He was always the seller, was he not?' He turned to me and winked. ‘And if he ever wanted anything, most times he'd send one of you boys in to lift it for him, eh, Dodge?' He waved his hand to say that I should spare him my denials and he went over to another pile of toys stacked upon a dresser. ‘But the most peculiar thing about this occasion,' he paused for dramatic effect, ‘was his companion.'

‘Why?' I asked, aware that Dick was the sort who liked to have a tale teased out of him.

‘Ah! Here we are.' He had shifted along to a big collection of assorted dolls hanging in a little nook and he hooked one off and brought it over to me. ‘A good likeness, is it not?'

It was another wooden doll, the same size and weight as the Indian prince, only this one had a brown coat, thick black lines painted on his face giving him a fiendish expression, and a shock of red hair. It took me some seconds to make sense of it.

‘It was for his execution,' Dick explained. ‘I do a roaring trade on hanging days if I can make them fast enough.'

‘This is meant to be Fagin?' I asked.

Dick looked hurt by my disbelief. ‘Course,' he said. ‘Don't it look just like him?'

The horrid creation he'd placed in my hands made me want to be sick. ‘This is disgusting,' I told him.

‘Thanks very much,' he grinned. ‘I did put a lot of work in. I feel I captured the spirit of the man beautifully.'

‘I mean, it's disgusting that you made a doll out of him for hanging day. He was a friend of yourn.'

‘That's as maybe,' he said with indignation as he snatched it out of my hands, ‘but old Fagin was never one to begrudge a neighbour the chance to spin a guinea. And besides,' Dick protested, ‘me going poor was never going to save him from the gallows.' He went on to explain that whenever a villain is reported to be put to death there is always a market for such dolls. The ghoulish reasons for why people might wish to own wooden likenesses of the doomed he did not like to speculate on; he just knew that there was always a crowd gathered outside Newgate on such days what liked a souvenir. ‘I made a dozen of Fagin,' he told me, ‘for he was so very hated. And they all sold out, save for this one. I kept the last one back, y'know, for sentiment's sake but –' he shrugged as if he was about to rob himself – ‘you can buy it off me if you fancy it, Dodge. But only because I know you and him was so close.'

‘I don't want the rotten thing,' I said, not bothering to hide my outrage at the very idea.

‘Then how about a Bill Sikes?' he said, and pointed to another brutish figure what was hanging high above the clock. ‘Bill was the most popular murderer I ever carved, what with him being such a butch bastard and all.'

‘I ain't come here to buy no dolls, Dick,' I snapped. ‘At least no morbid ones like them. I want answers about this one here.' I waved the top half of my prince in his face again. ‘I want you to tell me about that peculiar afternoon.'

‘Please yourself,' he said, and sipped up his tea again. With his other hand he took the Fagin doll and began making a pantomime of him.

‘So …' he turned the doll's head this way and that as if it was looking out for eavesdroppers, ‘on one queer summer's afternoon in, oh I forget the year, in walks our dear Mr Fagin –' the doll jerked back and forth as if walking – ‘into my humble shop to buy himself some dolls.'

‘With a companion?'

‘With a wooden companion,' he nodded, and he settled his tea next to a little red box on the table between us. ‘A doll, with nothing special about it. One what had been made as part of the colonial craze we had at the start of the century. Indians was most popular then, redcoats too.'

‘A doll like this one?' I said, holding up my divided plaything.

‘That one,' said Dick, ‘and the other one I made, was both fashioned to look just like the one he had brought in. He wanted two identicals.' I could not hide my surprise as he said this and Dick grinned and tapped his mug against the small red box. The lid sprung open and I cried out in fright as a dusty-looking Jack with a maniac face jumped out and began this drunken swaying. ‘Heh,' said Dick, after I had composed myself. ‘I done that deliberate.'

As I watched him try to stuff the Jack back into his box and wind up the spring I thought about the meaning of all this. Fagin had come in here, many years before, and asked Dick to make him two dolls to match this other one, what I had no doubt was the doll containing the Jakkapoor stone given to him by Shatillion.
And then he had handed me one of the false ones. What mad game was he playing at?

‘Thimble and pea,' said Dick once he had finished fussing over his jack-in-the-box. ‘That was all he told me about what he was up to. He said he was just playing a friendly game of thimble and pea.'

This referred to an old street game Fagin was fond of, one what he played with us boys often. It involved three thimbles, one of which would have a pea placed under it. Fagin would slide them about, in and out of one another, with such dexterousness that the player would lose sight of which was which. Nobody could ever beat him at thimble and pea; no matter how hard you tracked it the pea was never where you guessed it to be. I remembered that Evershed had told me that George Shatillion had met Fagin after he had tried to swindle the novelist on a street corner, and there was a high chance that it was with this game. It would explain why Shatillion named his next novel, the one what featured a character based on Fagin, after it. Was Fagin now playing Thimble and Pea with these dolls and the Jakkapoor stone? So that anyone looking for it would be given two false alternatives to chase after? He was a wily old fox and such behaviour would not be unlike him.

‘I had to carve and paint these dolls so they could not be thought distinguishable from his own –' Dick took both halves of my doll from me – ‘and place a pebble inside each one. I imagine –' he held up the top half of mine and peered into it – ‘that the original contains more than just a pea, eh, Dodger?'

‘Did he say anything about that?' I asked. ‘About what was inside his own doll?'

He chuckled, placed it down again and took the Fagin doll over to his paint-splattered desk. There he stood it on the edge as if it
was overlooking all the tiny pots of paint, oils and jars of water where the brushes stood. ‘Chasing hidden treasure, are you?' He winked at me as he swirled a small brush around in a water jar. ‘What exciting things you young men will pursue!' Dick dipped the brush into a black paint pot and begun touching up the lines of Fagin's face. ‘He told me nothing more worth knowing. He just made his order and paid me handsomely. That is what I miss most about our dear departed. He knew how to reward services rendered.'

I took the hint, reached into my pocket and pulled out one gleaming gold coin. Dick was not impressed. ‘One little sovereign,' he tutted, ‘for a fortune's-worth of memories. My word, Dodger, must you insult me in my own home?' I flipped a second coin and he was more gracious about it. I then collected the two halves of my doll and bade him farewell.

‘Are you certain I can't interest you in a doll of your old friend Fagin?' Dick said as I put my hat on. He had been dabbing at that doll as we had spoke, making it look as good as new. ‘Or one of the others perhaps? As you can see I have a vast array of different characters!' I looked around the room, so cluttered with wooden men and women that I wondered if there was not one here for every soul in the city. And then a thought occurred.

‘You got one of the Pimlico Pincher?' I asked.

‘Not ringing any bells,' said Dick. ‘Who is he?'

‘She,' I told him. ‘A jewel thief what was hung some time in the past five years. She must have sold well outside Newgate, I should think.'

‘Never heard of her.' He shrugged. ‘Which is rare, because women under the rope are good sellers oftentimes. What was her name?'

I did not want to tell Dick that I was asking after my own
mother and so I let the matter drop. As I turned to leave that high complaining voice from above called down again.

‘Your rich friend going now is he, Dicky?' Albert said. ‘Tell him to climb back in his carriage and leave us in peace.'

‘He's off now, Albert,' Dick called back up. ‘And he didn't come in no carriage that I saw.' He winked at me as he said this. ‘He ain't found his fortune yet.'

‘Then whose is that gothic horror waiting out the front then?' asked Albert. ‘It's been there across the street all this time the rider's eyes haven't left our shop. Tell her to move on, she's giving me chills.'

I moved through to the front of the shop and peered out on to the street to see what he was on about. There, as Albert had said, stood a brougham carriage in as deep a shade of black as the horse what pulled it. The windows was curtained, the lamps at the side was still lit, showing me that it had travelled through the night, and it looked like it belonged to a funeral procession. Sat on the box-seat and holding the reins was a woman rider staring straight back at me, unblinking. She was tall, dark-complexioned and with a most severe expression. Nothing about that picture made me want to venture outside and join it.

‘Well, you'd best be getting on then, young Jack,' said Dicky, as he got the door. It seemed he too could tell that the coach was trouble. ‘I hope you find what you're looking for – I like to hear about happy endings. Off you pop now.' And with that he shoved me outside into the cold and away from his shop.

Across the road the coachwoman dismounted from her seat and stood on the pavement staring at me like a mesmerist. Trying to avoid her eyes I looked both ways along the still deserted street. Even the vagrant had gone now, scared him off by her in all likelihood. The cat remained on the wall behind the woman though, eyeing me just as hard.

‘A fine-looking beast,' I said to her in reference to the horse not the cat. Somewhere in the distance church bells was chiming. ‘Hope you and him have a very pleasant Sunday.' I doffed my hat to her, buttoned up my coat and began to stroll off.