Dodger Page 0,120
Dodger went over all his precautions and preparations and came up out of the sewer a little way away, in order to be seen cheerfully walking to The Lion public house.
He was not surprised to find Mister Bazalgette sitting on a bench outside, wearing what might be called serviceable clothes for someone who is going to perambulate underneath the streets of London. The young man looked like a kid waiting for the Punch and Judy show to begin, and had festooned himself with various instruments and a large notebook, and had also very thoughtfully come with his own lantern, although Dodger had made certain to borrow three of these already. It meant calling in a few little favours, but that was surely what favours were for.
The young engineer was primly nursing a pint of ginger beer, and right there and then he struck up a conversation with Dodger about the nature of the sewers, with reference to the amount of water that Dodger had seen in them, the prevalence of rats, the dangers of being underground and other things of interest to a gentleman as enthusiastic as Bazalgette.
‘Looking forward to seeing your Lady, Mister Dodger?’ he asked.
Dodger thought, Yes, both of them, but smiled and said, ‘I ain’t never seen her, ne’er even once. But sometimes, you know when you are by yourself, you get a feeling that someone’s just walked past, and there is a change in the air, and then you look down and all the rats are running very fast, all in the same direction; and then sometimes, as it might be, you look at a bit of rotted old sewer wall and something tells you that it might just be worth fumbling around in the crumbling bricks. So you take a look, and glory be, there’s a gold ring with two diamonds on it. That’s what happened to me one time.’ He added, ‘Some toshers say they’ve seen her, but that’s supposed to be when they are dying, and I ain’t intending to do that right now. Mind you, sir, I’ll be happy to see her right now if she points me to a tosheroon.’
There followed a conversation on the legendary tosheroons and how they were formed. Fortunately, at this time a growler pulled up and disgorged Charlie and Mister Disraeli, who was bright and shining and somewhat nervous, as sensible citizens tended to be in the general vicinity of Seven Dials. Charlie sat him down on the bench and headed into the pub, coming back shortly afterwards with a man carrying a couple of pints of beer on a tray, and Mister Bazalgette rubbed his hands and said, ‘Well now, gentlemen, when do we start?’
‘Very soon, sir,’ Dodger replied. ‘But there’s been a slight change of plan. Miss Burdett-Coutts wants one of her young footmen to come down with us because she wants to encourage him to better himself.’ He added brightly, ‘Maybe he might become an engineer like yourself, sir.’
Dodger stopped, because a very smart coach with two beefy coachmen had spun into the pub’s yard, and its doors opened to disgorge the aforesaid young footman, somewhat plumper in certain regions than the average footman, and remarkably – yes, thought Dodger – the signs of shaving around his jaw. Simplicity, and just possibly Angela, was really taking this charade seriously. The rest of them were taking it on the chin.
It wasn’t at all a bad disguise and quite a lot of young serving men were on the plump side, what with all the leftovers, but to anyone who had seen her in a dress she was Simplicity, absolutely Simplicity, and if you were Dodger, looking more beautiful – even if unshaven – than ever before. But she had been wrong; her legs were not fat! No, in Dodger’s mind, they were perfectly shaped, and he had to fight to take his mind off her legs and back onto the task ahead of him.
He wasn’t sure what Joseph Bazalgette was thinking, but quite possibly he was thinking about sewers and couldn’t have seen that much of Simplicity at the party in any case. And since Angela was right there, Charlie and Disraeli were seeing – my word, yes! – what they were supposed to see. It was, thought Dodger, a kind of political fog.
Miss Coutts leaned out of the coach window and said, ‘I will return for my young footman in an hour and a half, gentlemen. I trust you will take care of him