Dodger Page 0,13

care about. And that means people too. I seen you toshing, lad, and knew you had toshing in your blood, just like me.’ He coughed, and bits of his broken body moved in a rather ghastly dance. ‘I know what they call me, Dodger – king of the toshers. The way I see it, that’s you now and you have my blessing on it.’ What was left of his mouth smiled. ‘Never did know who your dad was, did you, lad?’

‘No, Grandad,’ said Dodger. ‘Never knew and probably neither did my ma; don’t know who she was neither.’ Water dripped off the ceiling as Dodger stared at nothing much and said, ‘But you were always Grandad to me, I certainly know that, and if you hadn’t given me the knowing of the toshing I would never have found out about all of them places down here in a month of Sundays, like the Maelstrom and the Queen’s Bedroom and the Golden Maze and Sovereign Street and Button Back Spin and Breathe Easy. Oh yes, that place saved my bacon a dozen times when I was still learning! Thank you for that, Grandad. Grandad . . .? Grandad!’

Then Dodger was aware of something in the air, or perhaps the subtle sound of something that had been there and then gently ceased to be so. But there was still something there; and as Dodger leaned over he felt something carried on the last breath and was simply hovering as Grandad said, from wherever he was now, ‘I can see the Lady, lad, I can see the Lady . . .’

Grandad was smiling at him, and went on smiling until the light in his eyes faded, when Dodger then leaned down and respectfully opened the man’s hand to take the legacy that was duly his. He counted out two coins, which he solemnly placed on the dead man’s eyes because, well, it was something you had to do because it had always been done. Then he looked into the gloom and said, ‘Lady, I am sending to you Grandad, a decent old cove who taught me all I know about the tosh. Try not to upset him ’cos he swears something cruel.’

He came out of the sewer as if Hell and all its demons were following behind him. Suspecting that it might well be so, he ran the short distance to Seven Dials and the comparative civilization that was in the little tenement attic where Solomon Cohen lived and worked and did business in a small room above a flight of stairs, which being high up gave him a view of things that he probably did not want to see.

1 Cockney rhyming slang, short for Richard the Third, which rather happily rhymes with another interesting word.

CHAPTER 3

Dodger gets a suit that is tough on the unmentionables, and Solomon gets hot under the collar

IT WAS RAINING again as Dodger got to the attic, a dreadful sombre drizzle. He fretted outside while the old man went through his convoluted process of unlocking the door, then spun Solomon round when he hurtled through. Solomon was old enough and wise enough to let Dodger lie in a smelly heap on the old straw mattress at the back of the attic until he was ready to be alive again, and not just a bundle of grief. Then Solomon, like his namesake being very wise, boiled up some soup, the smell of which filled the room until Onan, who had been sleeping peacefully beside his master, woke up and whined, a sound like some terrible cork being twisted out of a dreadful bottle.

Dodger uncoiled himself from the blanket, gratefully took the soup that Solomon handed wordlessly to him, and then the old man went back to his workbench with its pedal-powered lathe, and soon there was a homely, busy little noise that would have made Dodger think of grasshoppers in a field, if he had ever seen a grasshopper or, for that matter, a field. Whatever you thought it was though, it was comforting, and as the soup did its work of recovery and the grasshoppers danced, Dodger told the old man, well, everything – about the girl, about Charlie, about Mrs Quickly and about Grandad – and Solomon said not one word until Dodger was empty of words of his own, and then he murmured, ‘You had a busy day, bubele, and a great shame about your friend, Grandad mmm, may his soul rest comfortably.’

Dodger wailed, ‘But I