Dodger Page 0,51

– ones that might include some daring remarks about young ladies. However, the person that had given him this advice had simply not calculated on Sweeney’s terrible lack of anything that could be called bonhomie, cheerfulness, ribaldry or even a simple sense of humour.

Nevertheless, Dodger noticed he did try. Oh my, how he tried, stropping his razor while messing up punch lines and, horror of horrors, laughing at the joke which he himself had so clumsily executed. But at last the razor was sharp enough for Sweeney and then there was the matter of the shaving foam, which the man attended to just as soon as he had laid the razor down so that its gleaming edge faced north, all the better to maintain its sharpness.

Dodger, helpless in the chair, watched in something like awe, his mind springing to and fro from the spectacle of the barber’s preparations to a pleasing image of the admiration he hoped would appear on Simplicity’s face once she saw him scrubbed up so well, oh my, a proper young gent. Now he could see that the man’s hands had scars on every finger, although this slight problem barely showed up because Sweeney was briskly whisking up the shaving foam with all the manic enthusiasm of a circus clown. The stuff was falling out all over the place, and here and there, because it had been so suffused with air as to make it practically dirigible; it was floating away on the breeze as if it wanted to get out of there as much as Dodger did right now – especially since he was aware of that smell, that heavy and unpleasant smell, gradually permeating the shop.

‘Are you feeling all right, Mister Todd?’ he said. And, ‘Your hands are shaking a little bit, Mister Todd.’

The barber’s face looked like steel, if steel could sweat, and he was swaying back and forth with his eyes like two holes in the snow, looking far away but at something else, somewhere else. Dodger began stealthily to extricate himself from the cloth, whilst keeping a sharp eye on the man. And, oh dear, and now Mister Todd started to mumble, the words blurred as they tried to get out one after the other, some of them so urgent to get away from the swaying man that they overtook themselves.

Then Sweeney was between Dodger and the door to the street, waving the gleaming razor like a bride just after her wedding, straining to see who is going to catch the bouquet . . .

Dodger, hoping that his heartbeat could not be heard, said calmly, ‘Tell me what you see, Mister Todd; it sounds terrible. Can I help you?’

Bang bang went his heart, but Dodger ignored it. Unfortunately, so did Sweeney Todd, whose mutterings began to take on something vaguely if erratically understandable. Moving gently, so very gently, Dodger slowly eased himself out of the chair and to his feet and he thought, Opium, maybe? He sniffed, wished he hadn’t – no alcohol on the man’s breath either. He said in as kind a voice as he could muster, ‘What is it you are looking at, Mister Todd?’

‘They . . . they keep coming back. Yes, yes, coming back, trying to take me away with them . . . I remember them . . . Do you know what a cannonball can do, sir? Sometimes they bounce, very funny, ha, and then they are running along the ground, and then some lad . . . yes, some lad fresh from the farm in Dorset or Ireland, with his head full of lies about combat, and in his pocket a badly drawn picture of his girlfriend, who might have let him tickle her fancy because he was the brave warrior off to fight Boney . . . This young warrior sees that dreadful cannonball rolling along on the turf like it’s a game of skittles, and so like a bloody idiot he calls out to his mates, such as have survived, and he decides to give it a big kick, not knowing how much force there is still left in the ball. Which is quite enough to take off his leg, and not just his leg. Barber-surgeon, that’s me, the surgeon bit on the battlefield being somewhat akin to butchery, but slightly better paid . . . And I see them now . . . the broken men, the handiwork of God twisted into terrible shapes, terrible . . . and here