Dodger

Charlie was but it wouldn’t pay to underestimate him; and therefore he took refuge in the last resort, which was honesty. He said, ‘I reckon me and Sol aren’t really the poor, sir. You know, we’re doing a bit of this and a bit of that and we do pretty well, I think, compared to many, yes.’
    This seemed to pass muster, and Mister Mayhew looked pleased. He glanced at his notebook and said, ‘Sol being the gentleman of the Jewish persuasion with whom Charlie tells me you share lodgings?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t think he needed any persuading, sir. I think he was born Jewish. At least, that’s what he says.’
    Dodger wondered why Mister Mayhew laughed, and he wondered too how it was that Charlie knew enough to tell the man where he lived when Dodger himself couldn’t seem to remember telling him. But that didn’t really matter, because he could hear the sound of the servant just outside the door, and the rattling of a tray. A rattling like that meant that it was heavy – always a good thing. And, as it turned out, it was. Mister Mayhew said that he had already had breakfast, so Dodger tucked in to bacon and eggs at considerable speed.
    ‘Charlie has high hopes of you, as you know,’ said Mister Mayhew, ‘and I must confess my admiration of the fact that you have put yourself out for our young lady, especially as, I understand, you had never met before. I will take you to see her shortly. She seems to understand English, although I fear that her mind has been disturbed by the nature of her ordeal and she seems unable to give an account of the dark events which appear to have befallen her.’
    Most unusually for Dodger, he looked at the food in front of him without instantly finishing it up, and instead said, ‘She was very scared. She’s been married to a cove who treated her rotten and that’s a fact. And . . .’ Dodger was about to say more, but hesitated. He thought: She’s hurt, yes; she’s frightened, yes; but I don’t reckon she’s lost her mind. I reckon she’s biding her time until she finds out who her friends are. And if I was her, badly beaten though she be, I reckon that I would find it in myself to appear a little worse off than I was; it’s the rule of the streets. Keep some things to yourself.
    Dodger felt the man still watching him, and sure enough, Mister Mayhew said, ‘So if you don’t mind . . . where were you born, Mister Dodger?’
    He had to wait until Dodger had finished the plateful of food and licked the knife on both sides. Then Dodger said, ‘Bow, sir, though don’t know for sure.’
    ‘Would you mind telling me about your upbringing . . . how you came to be a tosher?’
    Dodger shrugged. ‘Was a mudlark for a while first, ’cos, well, that’s the kind of stuff you like as a kid – it sort of comes natural, if you know what I mean, mucking about in the river mud picking up bits of coal and suchlike. Not bad in the summer, bloody awful in the winter, but if you are smart you can find a place to sleep and earn yourself a meal. I done a bit of time as a chimney sweep’s lad, like I told Charlie, but then one day I began toshing, and never looked back, sir. Took to it like a pig to a muck heap, which is pretty much the same. Never found a tosheroon yet, but I hope to do so before I die.’
    He laughed and decided to give the very serious-looking man something to think about, and so he added, ‘Of course I found practically everything else, sir – everything what folk throw away, or lose, or don’t care about. It’s amazing what you can find down there, especially under the teaching hospitals, oh my word yes! I can walk from one side of London to another underground, come up anywhere I like, and I’ll tell you, sir, you won’t believe me sometimes, sir, beautiful so it is! It’s like walking through old houses sometimes, the slopes of the stairs and stuff growing on the walls – the Grotto, Windy Corner, the Queen’s Bedroom, the Chamber of Whispers and all the other places we toshers know like the backs of our hands, sir, once we’ve washed them, of course. When the evening light strikes and comes off the river, it looks like a paradise, sir. I can’t expect you to believe it, but so it does.’
    Dodger paused and considered what he had just said, common sense meaning that he wouldn’t tell a man with a poised pencil about stealing things and being a snakesman and a thief; that sort of revelation was fine for someone like Charlie, but for the