Dodger (3 page)

Instead there my hand remained, the snuffbox waiting to be passed to another hand that just would not come. I left it there, open to the street, for five or six seconds, which in pickpocketing is too long for anything to happen. So I curled it back into my own pocket and carried on down the street, careful not to look behind to see what had happened to the boy. And then all this shouting was heard.

Stop that boy! Stop him!

This is when dash meant really dash and my feet took to running before the cries was even out. I darted headlong into the crowd, away from the cove, and weaved my way through the spectators at great speed. I was heading towards the direction of Goswell Street, where I knew I could lose myself down an alley, but the people about was now agitated and the voices of
Stop that!
and
No, boy!
grew louder and panicky and I wondered if I would make it past the people who was turning and gasping in shock. And then there was this scream, a woman's scream, followed by more screams and some crashing noises and the people became hysterical and the crowd began to lurch and I was squashed between other bodies what had begun dashing about in all manner of directions. There was more shouting of
Seize that boy!
and
What boy?
and then
The boy with the stones!
and I knew then that all these cries was not in reference to my activities.

I turned back towards the procession to see what the fuss could be about but I saw nothing more than the backs of gentlemen gathered around where the acrobats had stood. I approached with
caution, still ready to dart if need be, and as the backs parted I saw the five lady acrobats all lying across each other on the stone street, crying in pain. Near them was a stilt-walker who had also come down hard into the crowd. His stilts was snapped and he was face down on the cobbles with blood trickling out underneath. The drumming had stopped and some selfless gentlemen was attending to the fallen women by running over with offers to rub their bruised bodies. I cast my eyes about for my partner-in-crime, Horrie Belltower, knowing that he would be close by, and saw him just outside the inn, being grappled to the ground by four large men, two of whom appeared to be policemen. He was red-faced and crying out for his mother.

I surveyed this ugly scene and decided that it was not for me. Nothing could be done to help Horrie now. I had tried to be a good influence on him and teach him our ways but there are some youths that will always be trouble and I'm sad to say that he was one of them. If my mother should feel a grievance against me for allowing him to get pinched, then I would tell her the honest story and say she should take it up with Horrie when he was finally released from jail. The men was dragging him away so I shook my head at the shame of it and turned on my heels. I was planning on meeting Charley and the others, if they was still at the pump, where I would enjoy telling them the whole sorry tale, when, just as I was leaving, my coat was grabbed from above and I was hoisted up.

‘You, my young shaver,' said an angry voice, ‘is going nowhere!'

It was a rough man what had got hold of me, who had been creeping up behind in an unsporting way while I had been watching the chaos. I tried to escape, but his grip was tight and he pulled me towards himself with one hand and knocked me hard on the head with the other. ‘Stop your wriggling!' he said, with breath
that stank of the gin-house, and he began going through my pockets. I cried out at this injustice and demanded to know for what reason was I being abused in this here fashion. Some of the crowd, what was still gawping at the injured acrobats, turned to look, but they seemed to consider my struggles to be an even fresher entertainment and did nothing to help. I called for the police, knowing that they was all busy with Horrie, in the hope that this would startle the man into loosening his hold, but he just laughed.

‘I
am
a policeman,' he said, ‘and I've been watching you from that there window.' He nodded his head towards the building opposite and to the second-floor, which overlooked the street. ‘I saw you and the other boy work the street together. You were stealing from coat pockets while he threw stones by way of distraction. Very clever! But not so clever as could get by me. Oh no!' I was vexed with this person, first for the grab and second for thinking I would ever work a plan as stupid as that. I had no love for policemen – they was ordinary men what work against their own class – and I bit this one's hand good and hard. He just struck me harder than before. And then a voice spoke on my behalf.

‘Good sir,' it said in a gentle tone, ‘I pray, do not treat the lad with such viciousness. He is just a child after all. Do you not have children yourself?'

‘Certainly I do,' replied the man. ‘To speak truth, I have a son the same age as this one.' And then he boxed me on the ears once more. ‘And I don't care for him much neither.'

‘Please,' continued the voice, ‘do not debase yourself with brutality. What on earth has the child done to deserve such ill treatment?' I wriggled towards my champion so as to display my innocent, helpless face and to encourage him in his heroism, when I made the ironical discovery that he was none other than the writer cove in the blue velveteen coat.

‘Check your pockets, sir,' said the rough policeman. ‘You will find them lighter for this item.' And then he produced from my pocket the silver snuffbox.

‘That's mine,' I cried. ‘I takes snuff myself. You've no proof it belongs to him! Let me go!'

But the man remained cold.

‘Yours, hey?' he said. ‘So is this your name engraved upon it then?' He showed me the lid of the box and then passed it to the cove. ‘Or is it perhaps this gentleman's?' The writer peered at his own property through his little, round spectacles and gasped in surprise.

The engraving read:

MR SAMUEL PICKWICK, Esq., G.C.M.P.C.

‘Bless me,' he said, and he began searching through his coat-pockets as if expecting the box to be in two places at once. He seemed a decent sort of cove but he had something of the simpleton about him. ‘I didn't notice the loss,' he said eventually, half smiling, like someone who has been the victim of a most rare magic trick. ‘He must have the touch of a feather, this boy.'

*

The magistrate who presided over my trial days later was less enchanted by my mastery of the magical art of pickpocketing, however. I was shoved into the hot and heaving police office, full of watching women and crying babies, and I had to speak loudly to make myself heard. I was one of countless unfortunates what was put forward for sentencing that morning and Constable Hodge was telling the court that I was a troublemaker. I had just enjoyed two nights' hospitality in an Old Bailey cell under his protection and I still had the bruising to show for it. Not that Jailer Hodge was responsible for these; in truth he had tried to stop me from getting bruised-up the night before. The good fellow had chanced
upon me getting a kicking from Constable Hummerstone in the outer yard, which I had broken into during my third try at escape. Hummerstone was applying his boot to me with enthusiasm when Hodge had ordered him to stop.

‘Hummerstone!' he cried. ‘Have you run mad? The whole prison can hear you.'

‘I caught the rascal again, sir,' said Hummerstone sweating. ‘You should see the damage he's done to his cell door. Lord knows where he keeps getting the chisels from.'

‘But can't you see he'll be red raw? He'll use those marks against us in court. I'll take him back to the lower cells while you get him a nice soft cushion. Then we'll take turns punching him while the other holds it between.' He was a kind old soul, Constable Hodge.

I promised Hodge and Hummerstone not to peach about their violent ways, if they swore not to bring up my escape bids, but I still found plenty to say to the magistrate. I addressed the court in a most familiar manner and accused the police of entering into a conspiracy against me. When my arresting officer gave his statement I threw some nice insults across at him and I then asked the magistrate to hurry things along as I had an appointment in town after lunch. I then declared that I had several good character witnesses sitting just outside the doors and when they couldn't be found I said they must have gone to lunch. None of this amused the officers of the court but it went over very well with the watching crowds, who liked to see some cheek in the face of authority. I saw few people I recognised in the crowd, which was as expected, as my sort of people tend to steer clear of the police office.

The magistrate was having none of me. He had a head on him what seemed to be made out of red brick, like it was weighing down into the rest of him, and this discomfort may account for
the harshness of his judgment. Seven years transportation he gave me, just because I was a notorious criminal well known to the law in many a locality. He couldn't have cared less about my promise and talent. I was booked for a passage aboard a ship what was to sail me down the Thames, away from my home city, and take me around the world to Australia, where it's nothing but heat, flies and hard labour, and no one has invented anything worth pinching except for some queerly shaped sticks. A place where the sun makes a mockery of Christmas, and if St Nicholas shows up he wonders if he hasn't read his calendar wrongly. Australia, where a lesser lad would have remained, withered and died.

But the Crown was soon to discover that, like the boomerang, I was not to be chucked so easy.

Sometimes, in the more fashionable novels, there comes a part in the story what is so very unpleasant that the cove narrating it will spare his reader the horrible details and write something such as
No words can describe the horrors that I endured
. This is never true – there are always words to describe anything.

Take my voyage out to New South Wales by way of argument. Some of the words I could use to describe what it was like to travel on a six-month voyage down in a hold with fifty other convicts include:
starving
,
sweating
,
spewing
,
shitting
,
fleas
,
rats
,
cockroaches
,
shackled
,
flooded
,
underfed
,
airless
,
freezing
,
boiling
,
rotting
,
punching
,
kicking
,
unwanted
,
sexual
and
advances
. Stick some of them together in the same sentence and you get a fair idea of the transportation experience. But where is the use in dwelling upon such an ordeal when my return journey at the age of nineteen was so much more agreeable? I sailed aboard a magnificent vessel called the
Son and Heir
what was transporting wool back from the colonies, and myself and a man named Warrigal stayed in a large cabin what rivalled the captain's for comfort. This luxury had been paid for by my new benefactor, a Lord Franklin Evershed, and his generosity did not end there. Warrigal and myself would parade around the
top deck, as our ship sailed across the equator, dressed in our fine tailorings and bearing other signifiers of wealth, and these did much to make up for my rough accent and unvarnished ways. Although I had spent my youth picking the pockets of people of their class, the other travellers did not seem to suspect me of criminality and I was pleased that they was ready to believe that I could have made my fortune at such a young age. Warrigal, they all agreed, was an unusual choice of valet, but he seemed an attentive servant and they was sure he would be happy in London society. Perhaps, suggested Captain McGowan as we shared a pipe one evening as we watched the Canary Islands fade into the distance, I should consider giving him a nice English name when we arrived home so that he should fit in better. I gave this idea some thought and, when the ship docked in to Dover on a miserable November day, I had almost started to believe our story myself and was sorry to have to wave goodbye to the crew.

Warrigal and myself walked down the unsteady gangplank of the
Son and Heir
, harassed by the wind and rain, with carpet bags over our shoulders and each carrying an end of my trunk. We made straight for the local booking office to see what could be done about a coach to London and when we got into the mouldy little room we found other wet people making the same enquiry. The clerk behind the counter was an oily-skinned, belligerent lad what I took to be about my own age and he was telling everyone that he was sorry but the last coach to London for the day had just been taken and there was an end to it. He didn't look very sorry and, as I pushed my way through the dispersing crowd to the front of the counter, he took a long lazy look at me, then at Warrigal, and then turned his eyes back down to a newspaper he was pretending to read. I impressed upon him the importance of me and my valet securing a passage to the capital forthwith and
I hinted that there could be something in it for him if he could arrange events to my satisfaction, wink wink. But either the lumpen youth misunderstood my subtle insinuations or he lacked the spirit and capability that you would have found in a boy from the rookeries. He thumbed to a posting bill pasted on to the wall behind him that told how the next carriage out wouldn't leave until six o'clock the next morning.

‘You won't find another coachman what'll take you to town in this weather,' he yawned, his eyes still not leaving the paper, ‘so you can either book yourself into an 'otel or you and your black are welcome to bed down in the stables with the 'orses. Either way, you ain't getting out of Dover tonight less you plan to foot it.' I was somehow getting the impression that this waste of blood and bones doubted my credentials as a gentleman. I held a silver-tipped cane in my hands which I raised to my lips and made a
hmm
ing noise as if pondering upon these suggestions and, as he turned the page of the paper, I hit him over the head with it. He cried out in pain. ‘What's that for?'