Dodger

slightly scruffy perhaps, but taken all together it did you good and kept you warm. All right, there may occasionally have been a bit of horse, that being the Froggy way, but it just meant you had a slightly more nourishing soup. It had been said that even some of the grand eating places these days would give Marie Jo leftovers, knowing that they would be going on her stall. Apparently, people said, her French wiles twisted the nobby chefs around her little finger, but ‘Well done, her,’ everyone said, because it all went in the great big pot that she stirred all night, pausing only to dip the ladle in for the next customer; and what you paid was what she reckoned you ought to pay, and because people didn’t like to see her shake the ladle at them for being greedy, nobody haggled.
    And so, when Dodger turned up with the two kids in tow, she looked him up and down and said, ‘Well now, aren’t we in the money, Dodger, and who did you steal that from?’ But she was laughing, perhaps because both of them could surely remember the time – years ago before her hair was so white – when Dodger himself was very small and had hung around near her stand with one hand out, looking very sad and very hopeful, just like the pair he was delivering.
    He said, ‘Nothing for me, Marie Jo, but feed these two up today and tomorrow to the length of sixpence please?’
    The expression on her face was strange. Like the soup she sold it was full of everything, but mostly it was full of surprise. But this was the street, and she said, ‘Let me see your sixpence, young Dodger.’ He plonked it on the stall, where she looked at it, looked at him, looked at the kids who were very nearly drooling with anticipation, then looked back at Dodger, who was red with embarrassment, and she said quietly, ‘Why, oh why, well now, here’s the thing and no mistake, what am I to do?’ Then her face broke out into wrinkly smiles as she said, ‘For you, Dodger, I will feed the little buggers today and tomorrow, maybe the next day too, but oh my word what has happened? Glory be! The world has gone upside down while I wasn’t looking! Don’t tell me that you have been going to church – I’m sure the confessional would not be big enough to hold everything you’ve got to say! And lo, what is this? My little Dodger has grown up to be an angel.’
    Marie Jo pronounced his name ‘Dodgeurr’, which sent little silver messages passing up and down his spine every time he heard it. Marie Jo knew everybody, and all about everybody, and now she looked at Dodger with a dangerous smile, but you always had to play her game, so he smiled back and said, ‘Now don’t you go saying those things about me, Marie Jo! I don’t want nobody to whiten my name! But well, I was a kid once, you know what I mean? Mind, if you keep tally of what you feed them, I’ll see to it you get the cash later, trust me.’
    Marie Jo blew him a little kiss with the smell of peppermint in it, lowered her voice, leaned forward and said, ‘I’m hearing all kinds of things concerning you, my lad. Careful how you tread! One of them was the little fracas you had with Stumpy yesterday. He’s boasting about it, you know.’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘Then there was a gentleman. And I know a gentleman when I see one. He was asking about someone called Dodger, and I don’t think it was because he wanted to give you a present. He was an expensive kind of gentleman.’
    ‘He wasn’t called Dickens, was he?’ said Dodger.
    ‘No, I know
him
– Mister Charlie, the reporter man, knows the peelers. One of you insufferable English, though. If I had to guess, my friend, this gentleman was more like a lawyer.’ Then, as if nothing had happened, she turned to the next customer without a further glance.
    Dodger wandered on, meeting somebody he knew on every street corner, with a bit of banter here and a bit of conversation there, and every now and then asking a little question – not very important really, just as a sort of afterthought, concerning a girl with golden hair escaping from a carriage into the storm.
    Not that
he
was interested, of course; it was just something he had heard, in a round about way, as it were – not for any special reason, of course. It was just good old Dodger, and everybody knew Dodger, wanting to know about the coach and the girl with the golden hair. He would have to be careful how he walked, but so what? He always was. And right now he was