Dodger Page 0,53
a most excellent and trustworthy individual; he is also the hero who saved the staff of the Morning Chronicle just the other evening, and I’m sure you have all heard of that.’
Dodger began feeling rather better now, especially as there was tremendous applause, and he brightened up still further when he heard somebody in the crowd shout, ‘I propose we make up a subscription for this young man of such exceptional valour! I pledge five crowns!’
He tried to get to his feet at this point, but Charlie Dickens, who was bending over him, pushed him gently back down into the chair, bent down until his lips were very close to Dodger’s ear and whispered, ‘It would be in order to groan a little in response to your terrible encounter, my friend. Trust me as a journalist; you are a hero of the hour, again, and it would be a pity if an unguarded comment at this juncture spoiled things.’ He leaned an inch closer and whispered, ‘Listen to them shouting out how much they will pledge to the hero, and so I will carefully get you to your feet and take you to the magnificent offices of the Chronicle, where I will pen an article the like of which has never been written before, since possibly the time of Caesar.’
Charlie smiled. Rather like a fox, Dodger thought, in the spinning, roaring, suddenly baffling world. Then he inched closer, and said, ‘Incidentally, my intrepid friend, it would interest you to know that I have been told just now that Mister Sweeney Todd used his razor to slit the throats of six gentlemen who came to him earlier this week for a haircut and a close shave. But for your almost magical response you would have been the seventh of them. And these were my best trousers!’ These words were shouted, or more accurately screamed, because Dodger had thrown up his breakfast all over Charlie.
Sometime after, Dodger was seated at the long table in the editor’s office of the Chronicle, wishing he could be on his way to see Simplicity. Opposite him was Charlie, who was somewhat less angry now since, being a man of means, he had acquired another pair of trousers and sent the other ones to be cleaned. The inner wall of the office was one of those half-height affairs so that people passing by in the newsroom could see what was happening, and now, how they did pass by. And linger too, with every writer, journalist and printer finding an excuse to see the young man who, according to the magical telegraph of the streets, had wrestled to the ground the terrible Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Dodger was getting rather annoyed about this. ‘I hardly touched ’im! I just pushed ’im gently down and took the wretched razor off ’im, that’s all! Honest! It was as if he had been taking opium or something, ’cos he was seeing dead soldiers – dead men coming towards him, I swear it, and he was talking to them, like he was ashamed that he couldn’t save them. God’s truth, Mister Charlie, I swear I was seeing them too, come the finish! Men blown all to pieces! And worse, like men half blown to pieces and screaming! He wasn’t a demon, mister, although I reckon he may have seen Hell, and I ain’t a hero, sir, I really ain’t. He wasn’t bad, he was mad, and sad, and lost in his ’ead. That’s all of it, sir, the up and the down of it, sir. An’ that’s the truth you should write down. I mean, I ain’t no hero, ’cos I don’t think he was a villain, sir, if you get my drift.’
Then there was silence, somehow filled by Charlie’s gaze, in this polished little room. A clock ticked and, without looking, Dodger could feel the employees still taking every opportunity to look at him, the unassuming and reluctant hero of the hour. Charlie was staring at him, occasionally playing with his pen, and at last the man said, with a sigh, ‘Dear Mister Dodger, the truth, rather than being a simple thing, is constructed, you need to know, rather like Heaven itself. We journalists, as mere wielders of the pen, have to distil out of it such truths that mankind, not being god-like, can understand. In that sense, all men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear, notwithstanding that a man sitting opposite