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made, and which he had subsequently worn quite a lot afterwards – that was, after some serious washing.

CHAPTER 11

Dodger smartens up, and Solomon comes clean

SOLOMON HAD BEEN waiting up for him. He hadn’t been in the neighbourhood audience, because no room in the attic faced the street. His windows instead looked out on one side of some warehouses, which Solomon had considered a much better view than the kind of things you have to see in the street itself. Only a very few words were exchanged in the darkness before Dodger flopped down onto his mattress and the last candle was snuffed.

As he snuggled down under his blanket in the knowledge of a day well filled, Dodger watched his own thoughts swim past his eyes. No wonder the world spun – there were so many changes. How long ago was it that he had heard a scream and jumped out of a foaming sewer . . . how many days was it? He counted – three days. Three days! It was as if the world was moving too fast, laughing at Dodger to keep up with it. Well, he would chase the world and take what came and deal with it. Tomorrow he would be attending a wonderful dinner at a place where there was certainly going to be Simplicity, and it appeared to him as tiredness built up that the important thing in all this was how you seemed and he was learning how to seem. Seem to be a hero, seem to be a clever young man, seem to be trustworthy. That seemed to fool everybody, and the most disconcerting thing about this was it was doing the same to him, forcing him on like some hidden engine. And with that strange deduction still in his head, he fell asleep.

The following morning, the man whose job it was to open the doors of Coutts Bank to the customers found himself looking at an elderly Jewish gentleman in a ragged gabardine coat, whose eyes gleamed with mercantile zeal. This apparition pushed past him, followed by a young man in an ill-fitting suit and a nasty-smelling dog. Among some of the other clients, there was some murmuring about poor people coming in there, until it turned out – after every coin above the rank of sixpence was duly bagged and signed for – that these were poor people with a lot of money.

A receipt and a shiny new bank book were received, the little party swept away as fast as they had come in, and the Red Sea closed again, the planets wobbled back to their rightful orbits, first-born children once again played happily and all was right with the world. Except that part of it now contained one of Mister Coutts’ senior partners, who was realizing that somehow he had agreed to a rate of interest that they seldom offered, but he had considered cheap at the price if it got Solomon out of the building before he threw out the moneylenders. The suggestion was, of course, ridiculous and unfounded in every respect, but Solomon nevertheless was always a winner when it came to bargaining and it tended to leave everybody somewhat dazed.

As soon as they got outside the bank, Dodger reminded Solomon, somewhat reluctantly, that he was due in the offices of Punch magazine, so that some artist or other could draw a picture of him for the front cover.

Mister Tenniel turned out to be a young man only a little bit older than Dodger and whose brown hair seemed closer to red. With Dodger in a seat in front of him, the two of them chatted away while the artist drew. Being drawn by Mister Tenniel wasn’t all that difficult, and a lot less difficult, Solomon said, than being drawn and quartered, at least. That was apparently a Solomon joke; one he didn’t explain to Dodger.

Perhaps, Dodger thought, he should have said that the process was not difficult but occasionally worrying, because Mister Tenniel would scribble and scribble and then suddenly dart a glance towards Dodger, which pinned him like a butterfly, and then just as soon disappear as Mister Tenniel got back to the scribbling again. Only the top of his head could be seen as the artist bent over his work, while Solomon sat drinking coffee and reading a complimentary issue of Punch.

To Dodger’s amazement, being drawn didn’t take very much time, and finally Tenniel made a sudden few last-minute adjustments to the portrait on