Dodger (8 page)

It was a fine scheme but even I, a boy of optimism, could see
it would have been full of danger and possible mishap even without this obstacle of Bracken. But there was no harm in going over such imaginings on a sleepless night; this was something Fagin had taught me during the days that I had spent living above his kitchen in Saffron Hill. He had said that a buzzing mind is a brilliant mind and that it was only natural that I was kept awake at night by devious thoughts and hatching plots as so was he and we was two articles what was cut from the same fine cloth. From my first days under his care he had let me sit up with him through the night and had kept me entertained with his tales of swindles, dodges and other trickeries. He let me watch as he counted out his stolen trinkets, something he would never let the others do. He would tell me that I was the best of them, his top-sawyer he would say, and that he could see in me a younger version of himself what would grow to be just as dazzling a thief, something I took to be a very great compliment. The day he coined my nickname, which he did with typical generosity in front of all the other boys, was the proudest day of my young life. He was a jewel of a man.

And what was troubling my young mind on that lonely winter's night, was that tomorrow I would return to him, after six cruel years of separation, with nothing to show for it. Him, what had welcomed me into his warm home after I had run away from my lunatic mother and given me, and countless other children like me, kindnesses, shelter, friendship and encouragements, and had only ever asked that in return we should prove ourselves industrious for him. This man was like a father to me, and all I had to present him with was two worthless rings that I could have found lying in a Chelsea gutter. What would he make of me then?

If only, I found myself wishing again, I could somehow take that diamond ring that lay so close by and offer it as a gift to my Fagin. I would surprise him in his kitchen, having got past the
watch-boys and the locks that I was so familiar with, and he would be startled to see a well-attired young gentleman standing before him in his sacred den, smiling. Then he would blink and recognise me and ask if this was young Jack Dawkins he saw before him what was snatched away at such a young age. I would answer by coolly slipping my hand into my coat pocket and pulling out the ring.

‘Maybe you can find a home for this, you dirty old fence,' I'd say, and then toss it to him across the room. Upon catching it his eyes would light up as he saw the quality he held in his fist. Then he'd dance his merry jig and tell me that he always knew I would come back to him.

I was interrupted in this pleasant dreaming by the sound of hurried footsteps coming up the hall, like those of little mice. They reached up to my room and ran straight off again. It was a second before I saw that something had been slipped underneath the door. I tiptoed over, careful not wake the bad-tempered abo, and I picked up a little card that smelled of ladies' perfume. On it something was written in ink, and in a feminine hand, but I could not read what, as the room was too dark. I crept over to the candle and took it to the table at the far end of the room. I lit it, with one hand covering it from disturbing Warrigal, and read.

‘My Darling Jack,' it began, ‘I cannot sleep for thinking of you. If you should leave tomorrow and never see me again I think I should die.' I smiled in the dark as I realised that the fish was on the hook, and kept reading. ‘Meet me in the stables at the strike of the midnight hour if you feel as hotly for me as I am sure that you must. There we can plan our escape as I cannot spend another hour living with my stultifyingly stupid family. We can live off the money we will get from pawning Constance's engagement
ring, which I have already taken for mine. Make haste, my rough diamond.' The note was signed with the initials
A.C
.

It was five minutes to twelve. I went over to the window to look at the stables and saw a shadow dart across the inn-yard. Someone wearing a black cloak had entered through a side door and had left it ajar. What a puzzlement, I thought, that Amy Cherry, who had been so cold at first, was now so very warm that she was willing to ruin herself for me and give me her sister's ring without me having to do a thing for it. I put on my greatcoat and thought about how this would work. At the very least I should get the pleasure of deflowering a young virgin and that alone should be worth the trip outside. I opened the door, slow and silent, and took one last look at the sleeping Warrigal before entering the corridor. As I tiptoed my way down the passage I passed the room where Inspector Bracken slept and thought about what he would do if I was to run off with Amy. He would know to track me down to Fagin's, that was certain, but if I got there in time, and the Jew could move the jewel quick enough, it would be impossible to trace. I could tell the law that Amy and I was planning to wed and that we had run off to get a marriage licence and neither of us knew anything about no missing diamond. If pressed, I could say that Warrigal could have took it. I trod on. As I passed the room where the Reverend Cherry and his wife slept, a thought struck.
Call me Annabel
, she had said. I stopped, looked at the card and the initials and I sniffed it to see on who could I place the perfume. It was hard to tell. Could it be that the feet I was feeling under the table did not belong to Amy but those of an older, plumper Cherry? She had drunk too much wine and had a playful look about her all evening. I considered this and decided that, in either case, it would turn out to be an adventure. I trod on.

Downstairs in the inn I saw that the door leading out to the
yard had been left ajar by this A.C. and I stepped through. I crossed the courtyard, reached the door of the stables and went through.

It was dark in there, and stunk of horses and leather. The door swung shut and someone stepped out from behind it. The tread was heavy, a pair of man's hands was around me and I was pushed against the saddle bench. I thought I would be sick as a horrible fear took grip of me.
My name is Reverend Albert Cherry
, he had said.

I cried out in terror and the horses was startled and woke. I could feel him pressing his weight down into the back of me and he reached for both my hands and forced them behind my back. Then he pulled me, with surprising strength, and threw me against the wooden wall where I was at his mercy.

‘No girl. No diamond. Sorry to disappoint.' He forced me to face him. It was Bracken. I was right relieved.

‘“A fully reformed individual”, eh?' he said, banging my body against the wall with every question mark. ‘“A complete moral transformation”?'
Bang
. ‘To me, sir, that letter was as transparent as glass.' His big fists was grabbing my collar and I was sure of only one thing. Amy Cherry was not coming.

‘Would a man truly changed by the teachings of Christ fall for such easy bait?'
Bang
. ‘I think not. You're a thief, sir, even worse than your rotten mother.' I kicked him then but he just laughed. ‘Gnat bites. That's all your kicks are to me, sir. Less than gnat bites.' He picked me up and walked me past the watching horses to the other end of the stable. There he banged me against the far wall. He must have done this just to show me and the nags that he could.

‘I'm a respectable businessman!' I told him. ‘You can't treat me in this here disgraceful fashion! Get your hands off!' I struggled some more but he seemed to enjoy brutalising me and so I tried
to reason with him. ‘I come down here for the sole purpose of telling the author of that card that they should behave themselves. And now I know the author to be you I still say it. Behave yourself!' Bracken released me from his clutches and I dropped to the ground. My back hurt terrible. ‘My letter is real.' I drew the perfumed card and flicked it at his shoes. ‘Yours ain't. Tell that to the magistrate.'

‘You are not under arrest, Dawkins,' he said. ‘At least not yet. I just wanted to see if I was right about you. And I was.' He picked up his card. ‘I know some things about this Lord Evershed whom the Governor mentions in his letter. Your character witness. The Bow Street Runners used to speak of him. Many years ago, when they still policed the capital, his wife turned up dead. The Runners didn't like the stink of it but, being only Runners, they did little to investigate.' He knelt down and looked me in the eye. ‘Your letter may be real, but it stinks even so. It stinks because he does and so do you. I am the new police and I will make it my business to find out what it stinks of.' He prodded me in the chest with his big finger of justice. ‘And I shall solve the mystery of you.'

He got to his feet and walked to the stable door. Just as he opened it he turned to me, still on the ground. ‘A warning: stay out of my city. When we catch you again, as I am sure that we shall, it won't be transportation like it was before. This time we shall hang the very breath out of you.' He paused and looked into the night, speaking slow and cold. ‘Just as we hanged your rotten mother. Goodnight.'

*

I was in that stable for another hour after he had gone, alone with my thoughts. Just as I was readying myself to leave I realised that someone was standing in the darkest corner watching me.

‘Warrigal!' I said with a start as he made himself known. He was still wearing his white nightshirt and cap and looked like a ghost. ‘You frightened the eyelids off me. How long was you there?'

‘Long time,' he said. There was a silence and I thought that he must have followed me out of the room and been shadowing me all along. It was the sort of thing he would do.

‘Crying,' he said.

‘No, I'm not.'

‘For mother. Sorry business.' So he had been there, the crafty spy, and heard all.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Sorry business.'

We walked back across the yard and found the door to the inn still open. Then we crept up the stairs and through the creaky passages towards our chamber. As we passed Bracken's room I imagined him to be still awake, listening out for us and writing the time of our return down in a little notebook. When we was inside our room I whispered to Warrigal that we would hire a carriage before breakfast and leave for London before anyone else woke up. We was drawing too much attention to ourselves, I told him. He nodded.

‘Take the good bed,' he said, and went over to the grate to settle himself on the floor, ‘for the bad back.' I thanked him and he said nothing. I blew out the candle.

All of my boyhood Christmases, if my recollections serve, was happy and white. It was as if a giant chambermaid had stood above old London Town and spread a great silken sheet of white across the city, beautifying all parts, even the rookeries. The snow fell just as heavy on the broken old slums as it did upon the Queen's new palace and it did a perfect job of hiding the muddy filth of Jacob's Island so you would never guess at the squalor beneath if you did not know the place. At Christmas, what was dirty and derelict was made pure and new and this was true not just of the outsides of buildings but also of the insides of the souls living in them. Mean men, men what would step on the likes of me at any other time, would turn soft in the head on Christmas morning and start giving away their money as if it was their last day on earth. They would recover their wits by Boxing Day of course, and return with force to their spiteful and miserly ways, but by then the damage would be done and they was ruined.

In Fagin's den spirits was as high and as festive as in any great home and the merry old gentleman, Jew though he was, knew how to celebrate. Every year, at the crack of dawn, he would dress up in the same green gown with white cotton lining, hide his
features under a fluffy false beard and climb up into the attic room where the smallest infants slept to wake them all as old St Nick. He'd have a bag flung over his shoulder full of toys and they would squeal their heads off as he'd open it and hold them out as prizes to whichever small hand could snatch them away fastest. These toys was the newest made, painted wooden soldiers, toy trumpets, small bears, all of them found the night before under pine trees what stood inside the richest homes in London, where they had been waiting for Bill Sikes to break in and grab them. The snatcher with the most amount of toys would be declared the winner and also be given a special paper crown to wear in victory, while the boy what failed to snatch any toy at all would be told by Mr Fagin that there was a lesson for him and that he would not be given any pudding in punishment for his slowness.

During my early years there, as was natural, I was always top snatcher, but soon I grew too old to play for toys and Fagin gave me and the other older lads cigars and whisky for gifts instead. He would ask us to be good and responsible though and not to blow smoke in the faces of the below-tens as we all sat at the table eating our steaming goose. The place would be decorated with holly stolen from off the back of a country cart and after dinner, while the Jew played blind man's buff and Snap-dragon with the children, Bill would kiss Nancy under the mistletoe, his dog Bull's Eye would lick away the last of the plum pudding and we'd all sing carols until dawn.

These memories was flooding upon me as we entered London on the first morning of my return. It was four weeks until next Christmas, and we had much to do in that time, but the dark early morning reminded me of its approach. Christmas day, what I had always very much looked forward to, was now a coming terror to me, thanks to Lord Evershed. If I did not complete the task
that the red-coated devil had set for me by then, I would be the steaming goose and Warrigal would be the one to do the carving.

As decided, we had left the Booted Cat before the cock crowed and found an apple-man in the neighbouring village what had agreed to let us ride in the back of his cart to the winter-fruits market in Covent Garden. We was grateful for we had not wanted to book a carriage from the inn as Bracken would be sure to discover where we went. The day had advanced and the sky had turned the colour of tombstones by the time we crawled over Waterloo Bridge. We jumped off at the Strand without the driver seeing, leaving no gratuity save for two dozen apple cores. Then we footed it to Golden Cross to book a carriage to Saffron Hill.