Dodger

constitutional walk; and Mrs Sharples comes to heel
    DODGER MADE HASTE towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny? he thought. Was that funny
at all
? He’d lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn’t laughing . . .
    Running faster than he had before, Dodger arrived, if you put any reliance on all the bells of London, at just about the time when people would have finished their lunch. Feeling very bold, he walked up to the front door – he was, after all, a young gentleman with an
appointment
– and rang the bell, stepping backwards when the door was opened by Mrs Sharples, who gave him a look of pure hatred, and since she then slammed the door, couldn’t have got a receipt from him.
    Dodger stared at the emphatically closed door for several seconds and thought, I don’t have to believe what just happened. He pulled himself upright, brushed the dust off his coat and grabbed the bell pull for the second time, till at last the door was opened once again by the same woman. Dodger was ready, and even before she had finished opening her mouth he said, ‘This morning I defeated the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and if you don’t let me in we will see what Mister Charles Dickens has to say about it in his newspaper!’ As the woman ran down the hall he shouted after her, ‘In big letters!’
    He stood waiting by the open door, and very shortly after this he saw Mrs Mayhew walking towards him with a smile of a woman who wasn’t sure that she should be smiling. She came a little closer, lowered her voice and said, in the tones of one almost certain that she was going to be told the most enormous lie, ‘Is it
really
true, young man, that you were the one who this morning defeated the most dreadful of villains in Fleet Street? The cook told me about it; and apparently, according to the butcher’s boy, the news is already the talk of London. Was that
really
you?’
    Dodger thought of Charlie’s fog. Thought of wanting to see Simplicity again, and did his best to look suitably bashful and heroic all at the same time. But he did manage to say, ‘Well, Mrs Mayhew, it was all a sort of fog.’
    It seemed to work, for Mrs Mayhew was speaking again. ‘Somehow, Mister Dodger, you will not be surprised that Simplicity herself, subsequent to your recent call, has made it quite clear to us that she would like to go out in the sunshine for a constitutional walk with you, such as you suggested previously. Since it is such a fine day, and she herself seems well on the way to being restored, I cannot find it in me to deny her this wish. You will of course, as we said before, have to be in the charge of a chaperone.’
    Dodger let a little silence reign and then forced it to abdicate. He attempted to make the little noise that Solomon produced when he was trying to make conversation more pleasant and intimate, and said, ‘Mmm, I am most grateful, madam, and whilst I’m on the subject, if you don’t mind, I would like someplace where I can sit quietly while Simplicity is getting ready. I have a few aches and pains that I need to deal with.’
    Mrs Mayhew was suddenly all motherly. ‘Oh, you poor dear boy!’ she said. ‘How you must be suffering. Are you very badly wounded? Shall I get somebody to bring the doctor? Do you need to lie down?’
    Dodger hastened to stop her turning this into something dreadful and said, still slightly breathless, ‘Please, no, just a nice quiet room where I can sort myself out for a minute or two, if you don’t mind. That will do me fine.’
    Shooing him before her like a hen with one chick, Mrs Mayhew guided him down the corridor and opened a door into a room which had white and black tiles everywhere and a wonderful privy, not to mention a washbasin. Complete with jug.
    Once he was left alone and unseen, Dodger did indeed use the water to do something at least to his hair, which fortunately had not felt the