Dodger Read online

  Dodger

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

  Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2013 James Benmore

  The moral right of James Benmore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 78087 465 4

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78206 194 6

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78087 466 1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  For my parents, Henry and Eithne.

  ‘It’s all up, Fagin,’ said Charley … ‘the Artful’s booked for a passage out … To think of Jack Dawkins … the Artful Dodger – going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box … without no honour nor glory!’ …

  ‘Never mind, Charley,’ said Fagin soothingly; ‘it’ll come out, it’ll be sure to come out. They’ll all know what a clever fellow he was; he’ll show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and teachers … What a distinction, Charley, to be lagged at his time of life!’

  From Oliver Twist, Chapter XLIII

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  The Silver Sneeze Box

  Wherein the reader learns of how my carefree childhood was cruelly snatched away by a cold-hearted magistrate with no regard for my youthful promise

  We was a gang of six and we was swooping through the London crowds like low-flying jackdaws, fast, thieving and beautiful to behold. It was the first day of May and the people of the city was all dressed in their Sunday finery, not least us, the happy students of the Saffron Hill School of Finders Keepers. We was scudding through the dusty lanes towards Covent Garden, where we hoped to find the choicest trinkets that London could offer, and we was all very much feeling that spring buzz. I was leading the thing, as was natural, and close behind me was my best pal, Charley Bates. After him came Jem White, Georgie Bluchers and Mouse Flynn and that, I now reflect, should have been all. Five has always been more than enough to work a spring crowd; in truth the ideal number of boys to go finding with was three. One to distract, the other to dip and pass, and the last to make the dash. But what with the day being so merry and fresh we was all feeling companionable and so was stuck together like toffees in sun. All of these boys was gifted in the art and had it just been us then it would have remained a very pleasant and productive morning. But we also had Horrie Belltower dragging along behind us and this stupid oaf proved to be my undoing.

  Horrie was not one of us. I had never taken him to Saffron Hill because I knew the Jew would not be interested. He was too old and too lumbering. He looked and smelt as if he’d been dredging through the riverbank all night, so shabby was his clothes. We was all dressed up flashy and colourful in proper gentleman’s attire, with studs, rings, gold chains and such, so we didn’t much care for the look of him in his dirty coat and faded neckerchief. On top of this he was too feeble-minded and fat-fingered to make a living in our chosen profession. As a thief, all he was good for was the kinchin lay – jumping out in front of young children what are running errands for their mothers in the genteel districts and taking their sixpences by force. No one respected the kinchin lay, an idiot could do it. What Horrie couldn’t do was turn himself invisible like we could, he couldn’t put himself just outside a cove’s sight and stay there no matter which way their heads may turn. But worse than all this, he was slow. And we all hated slow.

  We slid by the corner of Jarrett Street, where a big crowd was distracted by the puppet show. Mr Punch was busy battering his wife with a stick and he squawked a friendly That’s the way to do it! as we brushed past tailcoats and gowns, finding ourselves all the richer for it. We was well pleased with our earnings and was itching for more when Mouse asked me where the Belltower boy was. We looked back towards the puppet booth and saw Horrie still stood among the crowd and watching the story.

  ‘Good riddance,’ said Jem. He had been vexed with me all day for letting Horrie tag along but until now had not shown the steel to say it. ‘I thought we’d never shake him.’

  Charley was most amused at the thought that, any minute now, the gentlemen either side of Horrie would feel that their pockets was lighter and grab him as the culprit. The younger boys laughed too and only Jem was sharp enough to see there was nothing droll about that. He turned to me.

  ‘We ain’t going back for him, Dodger. Least I ain’t.’

  The other boys stopped laughing and looked at me in wonder at the very idea.

  ‘He’s got nothing on him,’ said one.

  ‘He won’t say nothing,’ said another.

  ‘And even if he does, so what?’ asked a third, ‘he ain’t even met the Jew.’

  ‘I know Horrie ain’t much,’ I said. ‘But friends is friends. And if any of you lads was in a tight spot, then I would just as soon come to your aid.’ This remark made an impression upon Charley and the two younger boys and they nodded at me with due admiration. Jem, though, was having none of it.

  ‘Tell that to the workhouse boy,’ he said, referring to a recent incident what had led to all sorts of trouble for the Jew. ‘If this Horrie wasn’t a relation of yourn, then you would just as happily stroll off.’

  I ignored this slur against my good character and spoke to the others. ‘You lot go to the courtyard off Crick Lane to compare findings. I’m going back for Horrie and, while I’m there, I may feel like collecting some more valuables for my trouble. We’ll meet at the broken pump in ten minutes.’ I emptied my pockets of my morning’s work and handed them to Charley for safekeeping. These was some handkerchiefs of the finest silk, two ladies’ purses containing eighteen sovereigns between them and, what was most impressive, a gold watch and chain what I had liberated from an old gentleman’s vest pocket. The boys oohed and aahed, as well they might, as these findings was worth more than all theirs put together. I dangled the ticker from its chain so they could see its value and I tossed it to Charley. I was the only one among us what dared to do vest pockets.

  With that I shot Jem a hard look to remind him who was topsawyer around here. Then I put my hands in my pockets, so as to strike an idle pose, and went sauntering back to the scene of my freshest crime whistling a carefree tune. Those boys may well have wondered, as they watched me stroll away, as to why a clever thief of distinction, such as myself, would be risking the grab for one such as Horrie, a boy that we had long since nicknamed the Fartful Podger. The answer to this lay in my regrettable dealings with a woman I was once unfortunate enough to live with. A wicked, conniving old hag called Kat, who I often had cause to wish that I had never even met. But it is a sorry truth that you cannot pick your own mother.

  *

  The last time I had seen this Kat Dawkins was two nights prior in the taproom of the Three Cripples public house. This was a safe establishment in Saffron Hill where I could often be found after a hard day’s work drinking and conversing with like-minded individuals. On this particular evening I was in the back room playing cards and enjoying a nice pot of beer with Len Pugg, Precious Tom and some Chinamen. Normally these gen
tlemen would not have gambled with someone of my tender years, considering as they did that such behaviour was an unnatural corruption of childhood innocence. However, earlier that day I had pinched some high-quality cigars from a Mayfair tobacconist and so they agreed to overlook my youth. The little room grew smoky, the conversation ribald and I soon won a tidy sum using skill, bluff and nerve, as well as a second pack of cards I had hidden just below the table. Just as I was about to clean them all out with my royal flush of diamonds, the door of the taproom blew open and in burst my mother like an unfortunate queen of spades. I had not laid eyes on the woman in eighteen months but here she was, just as I remembered her, wild-haired, starey-eyed and shrieking like a banshee.

  ‘Here you is!’ she screeched, making Precious Tom, who is of a nervous disposition at the best of times, spit up his whisky and drop his playing cards on to the table where we could all see them. ‘Here, among thieves and low characters, just as your father ever was! Shame on you, gennelmen, for corrupting him so!’ I was sat at the furthest end of the round table, facing the door, but my fellow players had their backs to her so they was good and startled. She circled the table, slapping them all on the back of the head and laying curses upon them, and the poor confused Chinamen reacted as though she was an officer of the law and made for the exit. As they left they pushed past Barney, the landlord of the Cripples, who was following her in from the front bar. He was swearing that he had tried to stop her from coming back here but that she was slippery as an eel and had dodged him. His meek apologies though was no match for her violent wailings.

  ‘You have given me nothing but agonies since you was first placed inside me, you ungrateful wretch!’ She grabbed my ear and began her striking of me. ‘I have borne countless miseries for you, young wastrel, I’ve sacrificed my own comfort for yourn, and never once have you heard me repine!’

  If these charges had been made against me in a more delicate manner, then I could have answered back. I would have refuted the image that she had painted of herself as a selfless mother, as well as her claim that I had never once heard her repine. But at the time I was unable to make these arguments, bent over as I was and covering my face against her sharp whackings. Then Len Pugg decided that he had stood this interruption for long enough and he rose from his seat to knock some sense into her. Len was a hero in that vicinity due to his prowess in the boxing line, and behind the bar of the Three Cripples there was displayed many pencil sketches of him in the ring knocking men out. But here he faced a challenger of a different sort, and no sooner had he risen to his feet than Kat reached inside her petticoat and produced a flash of metal that caused him to stop cold.

  ‘Sit, Pugg!’ she spat, pointing the knife towards him in a way that created a strong impression that she had used it before, and not just for skinning rabbits. Precious Tom cried out like a woman, Barney begged her to take it outside and Len sank back down. ‘I’s come here to talk to my Jacky,’ she said. ‘And my Jacky alone. If you gennelmen would be so kind as to piss off out of my face, then we shall both bid you goodnight.’ She hoisted me from my seat and tugged me out of the room. ‘It’s long past his bedtime, the poor lamb.’ Then she pulled me through the front bar, which was full of drunken associates of mine. They was all singing along to a bawdy tune being played out on the piano and none of them saw fit to come to the aid of a young boy being led out into the night by a woman with a knife pressed to his ear. But then the Cripples was a smoky inn, so let’s be generous and say that they must not have seen me. Outside she near pulled my arm clean off as she dragged me through a maze of back alleys and crooked lanes until reaching one, all dark and dripping, where only the rats could hear us talk. She pushed me against the slimy wall and grinned at me. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘ain’t you going to give your dear old mum a kiss?’

  ‘What you after?’ I demanded.

  ‘That’s pleasant,’ she replied, all innocence. ‘I travel all the way from Seven Dials just to visit my angel child and this is the greeting he gives me. I’m after nothing, Jacky, nothing other than what is due me.’ My belly turned with the beer and cigars. I felt like I was going to empty my dinner right out into the dirty lane if she wouldn’t stand back and let me breathe. She started brushing down my coat of all the sawdust from the Cripples and spoke gentle. ‘All I wants from you is returns,’ she said, ‘and not for me, you understand. But for your older brother Horrie, bless his simple heart.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ I said. ‘We ain’t got the same dad.’

  ‘Half is still half,’ she winked, wiping the dust away, ‘even if it ain’t the good half.’

  She began telling me that she felt that I had done her a wrong turn as a son. I had benefitted, she felt, from all that she had taught me at an early age, such as how to pinch my own supper from the markets, and by what means a lady’s clothing may be penetrated by small, searching hands. And all she had ever prayed for, she said, was that one day I would be able to use these skills to provide for my mother in her dotage and for my slow-witted brother who was not born as gifted as I. But, she lowered her voice to stress the depth of my treachery, instead I had applied my talents for the good of some Jew to whom I owed nothing, whilst my family was starving to death. As she said this last thing I thought I spied a tear glisten in her blue eye and thought, not for the first time, that she could have made a success of herself on the stage if life had turned out differently.

  ‘I saw Horrie two days gone,’ I answered back. ‘He’s good and fat for someone starving to death.’ Her hand was like a claw around my neck.

  ‘Clever lad, ain’t you?’ she hissed. ‘But you won’t feel so clever when someone starts whispering about your Hebrew friend and his little school up there.’ She banged my head against the wall. ‘Horrie needs to learn the ways and means with which to make his living. He eats too much, he drinks too much and he’s about as much use around the house as a hole in a pisspot. You come by with your little friends on Sunday and take him out to work the crowds.’ She released me from her grip and stepped away. ‘And mind he don’t get pinched,’ she added before taking her leave, ‘else it’ll turn ugly for all.’ I dropped on to the muddy ground and, sure enough, my guts started emptying. By the time I raised my head to wipe away the spew, my mother had gone.

  *

  So that is why, two days later, I was having to edge my way back into the puppet-show crowd to fetch Horrie, squeezing past ladies and gentlemen whose pockets I had picked just moments before. The former owner of the gold watch was so engrossed in the entertainment that he had yet to perceive his loss and every eye was still on Mr Punch, who was now hitting a police constable good and hard with his stick. Everyone was laughing at this while my half-brained half-brother just stared, mouth open, as if the whole scene was giving him ideas. I worked my way through, stepping over stray dogs and trying not to disturb the baby carriages, and sidled up close. He had helpfully managed to position himself between two large gentlemen, both of whom, to my trained eye, looked to be the taking-the-law-into-their-own-hands type. I tapped him on the shoulder and addressed him most genteel.

  ‘Horace, good fellow,’ I said, ‘do come along. We have an appointment with some right distinguished personages elsewhere for whom we must not be late. Let us leave this vulgar entertainment and proceed forthwith.’ Horrie turned his fat head and looked at me as if I had took to speaking Russian, so I stamped on his foot and whispered, ‘Move your fat arse!’ This woke the dreamy lump up and he remembered where we was and what sort of trouble we was in. He nodded and I led him out of the crowd, both of us trying hard to avoid notice. We was not helped in this by Horrie stepping on the tail of a young lady’s pet dog. The dog yelped, a baby cried, eyes turned upon us and I had to make a grand show of petting the noisy creature until Mr Punch won back his audience’s attention.

  Once out of the crowd we quickened our feet until we was clear of Jarrett Street. The two of us then hid ourselves deep within a fresher crowd, what was watching a procession of
musicians and acrobats pass along Great Knaves. There was stilt-walkers, people on tambourines, jugglers, drummer boys, all creating a fine distraction. People was stopping on both sides to enjoy the sight and I nudged Horrie to say that here was good pickings. He was busy gawping though, just as before, at the fellow on the tallest stilts, as if the whole thing had been laid on for his entertainment alone.

  ‘Let’s get stones,’ he said suddenly. ‘Let’s get some stones and chuck ’em at the wooden legs. See if they tumble.’ He snorted like a pig and I looked at the boy amazed that we could ever be of the same blood. I used to remind myself, in such moments, that Kat Dawkins was a wicked liar and that in all likelihood she had found one of us as a baby, abandoned in an alley. If this was true I also hoped that I should be the one that would prove to be the foundling.

  ‘It’s May Day,’ I reminded him. ‘We ain’t out to have fun.’ I was vexed with Horrie for getting so distracted and I had a mind to do a Len Pugg and wallop him hard. I stopped myself because violence is lowering and also because he was much bigger than me and would most likely wallop me back. So instead I just asked him if he felt ready to try his hand. ‘Just do what you saw me and the others do. And keep your wits sharp. You ain’t robbing kinchins now.’

  We walked along with the crowd. Horrie was moving close by, all stiff and with a fierce look on his face, and I fretted that he would give us both away. I told him to saunter like I was doing, trying to capture the air of a gentleman at leisure but he didn’t understand. ‘Do you want me to look at ’em or don’t you?’ he asked. What could be done with him? Some boys just don’t have the aptitude for this line of work.

  There was lots of rich people strolling about and I fanned them as I brushed past. When you’ve been practising the art for as long as I have you become good at fanning the outsides of pockets and with only the lightest touch I could tell you to the nearest shilling the value of what was within a person’s tailcoat. This crowd’s pockets was bulging with fogles, tickers and other trinkets and I was itching to take them for mine. I felt as though they was mine and that these people was the thieves and my stealing of them was a stealing back. It stung when I realised that I would have to let them stay where they was just because I had no faith in Horrie as an accomplice. If this outing was going to be an education for him, then we would need to start off with something simple.