Dodger

ornaments, especially the kind that could be picked up very easily and shoved into a pocket at speed and sold again almost as fast). But what was the point of them? To show that you could afford them? How much better did that make you feel? How much happier were you really?
    The Mayhew household had been doing its duty in a stiff kind of way, but it didn’t appear to be very happy – there had been a kind of tension there which he couldn’t quite fathom, unhappiness riding on the very air – and in a strange way that made Dodger feel a little unhappy himself, and he wondered why. Unhappiness was a state of mind generally alien to him. Who had the
time
to be unhappy, after all? He was often pissed off, fed up, even angry, but these were just clouds in the sky; sooner or later they passed. They never lasted long. But as he walked aimlessly away from the Mayhews’ it seemed that he was dragging other people’s worries with him.
    He felt that the only cure for something like this would be to go down into the sewers, because if you had to be down in the dumps you might as well have a feel around and see if you could find sixpence. He would have to go and get changed – the shonky outfit was the finest and smartest he had ever worn, and it would never do to go to work in, would it?
    But . . . Simplicity. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Wondering who she might be, and who might know what had happened to her and why. And who had
hurt
her, of course. He really, really
needed
to know that now. And in this crowded town there would always be somebody to overhear anything that a body said.
    The police wouldn’t know
anything
, of course – that was because no one in their right mind ever talked to the peelers. One or two of them were OK, but it didn’t pay to trust them. However, people talked to Dodger, good old Dodger, especially when he loaned them a sixpence, to be repaid on St Never’s Day.
    And so, on his winding way back to the attic to change, a route not just roundabout but swings and slides as well, he found time to lounge around chatting to the dregs of the earth; and to the Cockneys, who sold apples and who liked nothing better than to gang up on the peelers for a real old-fashioned, no-holds-barred war in which any weapon was fair game. He spoke to the street traders, trading on the smallest of margins; and he chatted to the ladies who hung about doing nothing very much, but always happy to meet a gentleman with money who would be generous to a girl, especially after his drink had been spiked – after which he could have the luxury of a long voyage down the Thames to places far, far away where he would possibly meet interesting people, some of whom might even endeavour to eat him, by all accounts. If a gentleman was very unlucky – or upset someone like Mrs Holland on Bankside – he would do the journey down the Thames without a boat . . .
    Then there were the men offering games of Crown and Anchor, which at least had the benefit of being winnable if you were sober enough and the dice rolled your way – unlike the other game you might be offered by a cheery man who owned nothing more than one flat wooden board on which were three thimbles and one pea. On that little battlefield you would indeed bet some money on the whereabouts of the said pea, relying on your keen eyesight to keep track of it as the thimbles turned and spun under the hands of the cheerful chattering man. You would never,
ever
guess right, because where the pea really was was known only to the cheerful man and God – and probably not even God was certain. If you had drunk enough, you would try again and again, betting more and more, ’cos sooner or later, even if you simply guessed, it was
surely
bound to be under the one you guessed. But sadly, it never would be, ever.
    Finally, of course, there was the Punch and Judy man, running his puppet show, which was even more of a hoot these days now there was a policeman for Mister Punch to beat with his stick. The kids laughed, and the adults would laugh, and everyone would laugh as the laughing Mister Punch screamed, ‘
That’s the way to do it!
’ in that squeaky voice of his, like some terrible bird of prey . . . or the wheels of a coach.
    You knew when you grew up that Punch was the man who throws the baby out of the window and beats his wife . . . Of course, such things did happen: certainly the beating of the wife, and as to what might happen to the baby, that