Dodger Page 0,86

a hat of some kind, but the hats in the shop they stepped into now were extraordinary, and some were extremely high. And so, of course, Dodger pointed to the biggest one, which looked like a stovepipe and called to him with a siren voice which only he could hear. ‘I rather think that one will do me a treat.’

When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he thought, oh yes, a really sharp look, sharp as a razor. He would be no end of a swell, where recently he had been no end of a smell – because no matter how hard you scrubbed, the curse of the tosher would always leave its own cheerful mark on you.

Oh yes, this would do him! How amazed Simplicity would be when she saw him in such a splendid hat! However, it didn’t do for Solomon, who considered the price of £1 and 18 shillings to be grossly extravagant. Dodger was firm. True, it was a lot of money for something that he really didn’t need, but it was the principle of the thing. He didn’t know exactly what the principle was, but it was a principle and it had a thing, and that was that. Besides, he pointed out that only the other day Solomon had said while he was working on one of his little machines that ‘this thing needs oiling’ and, he continued relentlessly, only the day before that the old man had said that his little lathe had ‘wanted’ oil.

‘Therefore,’ said Dodger, ‘surely want is the same as need, yes?’

Solomon counted out the coins very slowly and in silence, and then said, ‘Are you certain you weren’t born Jewish?’

‘No,’ said Dodger. ‘I’ve looked. I’m not, but thanks for the compliment.’

The last call before they went home was to a barber – a perfectly reasonable and careful barber who didn’t include extras like having your throat cut. However, the poor fellow was unmanned when Solomon said, just as the barber was shaving Dodger, ‘It might impress you, sir, if I told you that the gentleman you are now shaving was the hero who put paid to the activities of the nefarious Mister Sweeney Todd.’

This intervention caused the man to panic – only a fraction, but nevertheless not a thing to do when you have just put a very sharp cut-throat razor to a man’s throat, and it nearly caused another hey-ho-rumbelow in the vicinity of Dodger’s neck. The nick was not big, but the amount of blood was out of all proportion to the size, and so there was a great performance with towels, and alum for the cut. It would certainly leave a scar, which was something of a bonus as far as Dodger was concerned; the Hero of Fleet Street ought to sport something on his face to show for it.

Then, once his face was tidy and, of course, Solomon had negotiated in a friendly but firm way six months of free haircuts, they caught another growler home and there was just about enough time to get washed, dressed and generally smartened up.

It was while Dodger was sponging himself down, including the crevices because, after all, this was a special occasion, he found part of himself thinking: What would I have to do to let someone die and then come alive again? Apart from being God, that is.

Then, for some reason, the dodger at the back of his head remembered the Crown and Anchor men with their dice, and the man with the pea that you never, ever found. Then tumbling on top of that there was the voice of Charlie, saying that the truth is a fog and in it people see what they want to see, and it seemed to him that around these little pictures a plot was plotting. He trod carefully so as not to disturb it, but wheels in his head were clearly turning and he had to wait until something went click.

The new clothes still fitted him exactly as promised and Dodger wished that he had something more than a tiny piece of broken mirror in which to see himself in his finery. Then he pushed aside the curtain to ask Solomon’s opinion and was confronted by Solomon arrayed in all his glory.

A man who usually wandered around in embroidered slippers or old boots, and wore a ragged black gabardine, had suddenly become an old-fashioned but very smart gentleman with a fine black woollen barathea jacket, dark-blue pantaloon trousers and