Dodger

another, and it was all rather jolly. It was still jolly when the roast saddle of mutton turned up, slightly yellow and rather greasy, and to a lad as energetic as Dodger, pure pleasure, although he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten so much. In the attic, the meals prepared by Solomon were . . . wholesome, and enough. Meat came in small amounts, more a seasoning than the whole meal, and generally the basis of a thick soup or nourishing gruel. He was aware now of a general tightness of the stomach; but good mutton was the food of the gods, and therefore it would be totally unrighteous not to do it justice.
    Things were going well; he had listened to Solomon on the subject of which knife and fork you should use for each course, 2 he had tucked his napkin in his neck, and he could definitely do this sort of thing every night. But he knew that he had been ignoring – how could he? – Simplicity, who was, he saw, very politely listening to one of Solomon’s stories now, with every semblance of interest, which was right and proper because Solomon could surprise you every time.
    Just as he turned to look at her, she turned to look at him, and said, ‘It’s rather droll, Dodger, that you appear to be dressed like a slightly smaller version of Sir Robert.’ Here she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Much more handsome, and you don’t scowl as much. But I must say you look like two peas in a pod.’
    Dodger said, ‘He’s a lot older and bigger than me.’
    A remark which caused Simplicity to smile and say, ‘Sometimes I think English people don’t always think about what they say; if you look inside any pod of peas, you will see that they are all sizes. The pea pod shapes them differently.’
    He stared at her with his mouth open. Because firstly, he realized he often shelled peas for Solomon and had never really bothered what shape any of them were, and secondly, here was Simplicity telling him something new. Not for the first time, he thought, Yes, Simplicity is not simple.
    She laughed softly. ‘You don’t know anything about me, Dodger.’
    ‘Well, I expect that someone will let me find out some more at some time, please?’
    ‘I have very fat legs!’ she announced.
    The chances of getting very fat at all in the rookeries were small, but Dodger had never heard of any girl saying that her legs were too thin, and so he said, in the silence that followed her remark, ‘I don’t want to be indelicate, miss, but that is a matter of opinion – your opinion obviously, but alas I have as yet been unable to form one for myself.’
    It wasn’t quite an uproar, he thought, more like a halfway up roar, but Dodger heard variations on the theme of ‘I’d say!’ And quite a few examples of that hard-to-describe noise that people make when they are pretending to be shocked, but really are just rather amused and possibly also relieved. It was probably Charlie who said, ‘Excellent, worthy of the famous Beau Brummel himself!’
    Solomon’s face was absolutely blank, as if he hadn’t heard, and Angela, God bless her, was chuckling. This was very useful, Dodger thought, because she was the hostess, and an incredibly rich woman, and quite clearly to everybody there she was perfectly happy about what was going on, thus defying anyone who thought otherwise. After all, who would want to disagree with one of the richest women in the world?
    Around them there grew then a sort of comfortable buzz as people finished their drinks and in some cases started them again anew, and at this point Dodger realized that he certainly needed the jakes, and he had no idea where they would be, except of course they would be downstairs. In a world of unmentionables – real, erratic and sometimes invisible – he was not going to ask a lady where he could go to take a piss.
    Then he found himself looking into the eyes of Sir Robert Peel, who was grinning round Angela like a cat who has seen a mouse, and the boss of the peelers said, ‘Ah, Mister Dodger, I rather suspect from the way in which you are searching about that you are looking for a place of some easement; allow me to escort you, because I myself am noticing the same urgency.’
    Dodger was in no position to refuse. Sir Robert exchanged a nod with Angela and piloted Dodger out of the room and down some steps, ushering him eventually into something like a paradise made of mahogany and gleaming brass and copper.
    It sparkled; it was a palace. The jakes in the