Dodger

cleaner than he’s ever been in his life, because this evening we are due to go to a very important dinner engagement in the West End. Good day to you, sir, and thank you, but now we really must take our leave.
    ‘No time to dawdle, Dodger,’ said Solomon as the door closed behind them. ‘You know how keen I am on bathing? Well, we are today going to have a Turkish bath, with all the trimmings.’
    This was news to Dodger, but Solomon’s wisdom and efforts at basic hygiene had kept him alive so far, so it was almost inconceivable for Dodger to thwart his friend on this occasion; he dared not argue for fear that Solomon’s righteous zeal would cause him to drag Dodger there by the ear. Acquiescence was better than becoming a laughing stock in all the rookeries and stews. And so, putting a brave face on it, he followed the old man out into what was really a drizzle with smoke in its eye, where they unhooked Onan from the lamppost where he had been tethered in the certain knowledge that nobody would ever want to steal him.
    Dodger felt better when he cogitated on the word ‘Turkish’. Somebody, probably Ginny-Come-Lately – a nice girl with a laugh that made you very nearly blush; they had been quite close once upon a time – had told him about Turkey. She had filled his mind with exciting images of dancing girls and light-brown ladies in very thin vests. Apparently, they would give you a massage and then oil you with what she called ‘ungulates’, which sounded very exotic, although to tell you the truth, Ginny-Come-Lately could make anything sound exotic. When he had mentioned this to Solomon – Dodger had been much younger then, and still a bit naïve – the old man had said, ‘Surely not. I have not travelled widely in the countries of the Levant, but whatever else they do to their goats, I am quite sure they don’t rub them all over their own bodies. The goat has never been distinguished by the fragrance of its aroma. I suspect you mean “unguents”, which are perfumes distilled from fragrant oils. Why’d you want to know?’
    The younger Dodger had said, ‘Oh, no reason really, I just heard somebody say the word.’ Right now, though, whatever way you put it, the word Turkish conjured up visions of eastern promise, and so he became quite optimistic as he strolled through the streets all the way to the Turkish baths in Commercial Road.
    There were, of course, bathhouses all over the place, often used even by those who were really poor, when – as one old lady had put it to Dodger – ‘sometimes you need to knock the lumps off ’. Often , the baths were ordered just like the rest of the world, in that the more you paid the more likely it was that you got the hottest and cleanest water which was, at least before the soap went in, transparent. Dodger was aware that in some of those places the water that the nobs had bathed in ended up in the baths habituated by what you might call the middle classes, travelling afterwards to the great bath for the lower classes, where at least it arrived soapy, which if you took the cheerful view meant a saving. Even though you might never sit down at a table with mayors and knights and barons, at least you could share their bath, which made you proud to be a Londoner.
    The rain was falling faster now, rain that was undeniably London rain, already grubby before it hit the ground, putting back on the streets what had been taken away by the chimneys. It tasted like licking a dirty penny.
    The door to the bathhouse was up some steps, although there was nothing much else to recommend it; it certainly didn’t look like a haven for nubile Nubians of any kind. Once inside, however, they were greeted by a lady, which sent Dodger’s spirits up a bit, although the fact that she turned out to be quite old and had something of a moustache lowered them once again. There was a muted conversation between her and Solomon. The old boy would haggle over the price of a penny bun but had apparently now met his match in the old woman, whose expression suggested that the price was that well-known one, ‘take it or leave it’, and as far as she was concerned she would be very happy if he left it, as far away as possible.
    Solomon was not often thwarted in his determination to haggle the cheapest price for everything, and Dodger heard him mutter the word ‘Jezebel’ under his breath, just before paying for what turned out to be the keys to a couple of lockers. Of course, Dodger