Dodger (2 page)

*

The last time I had seen this Kat Dawkins was two nights prior in the taproom of the Three Cripples public house. This was a safe establishment in Saffron Hill where I could often be found after a hard day's work drinking and conversing with like-minded individuals. On this particular evening I was in the back room playing cards and enjoying a nice pot of beer with Len Pugg, Precious Tom and some Chinamen. Normally these gentlemen would not have gambled with someone of my tender years, considering as they did that such behaviour was an unnatural corruption of childhood innocence. However, earlier that day I had pinched some high-quality cigars from a Mayfair tobacconist and so they agreed to overlook my youth. The little room grew smoky, the conversation ribald and I soon won a tidy sum using skill, bluff and nerve, as well as a second pack of cards I had hidden just below the table. Just as I was about to clean them all out with my royal flush of diamonds, the door of the taproom blew open and in burst my mother like an unfortunate queen of spades. I had not laid eyes on the woman in eighteen months but here she
was, just as I remembered her, wild-haired, starey-eyed and shrieking like a banshee.

‘Here you is!' she screeched, making Precious Tom, who is of a nervous disposition at the best of times, spit up his whisky and drop his playing cards on to the table where we could all see them. ‘Here, among thieves and low characters, just as your father ever was! Shame on you, gennelmen, for corrupting him so!' I was sat at the furthest end of the round table, facing the door, but my fellow players had their backs to her so they was good and startled. She circled the table, slapping them all on the back of the head and laying curses upon them, and the poor confused Chinamen reacted as though she was an officer of the law and made for the exit. As they left they pushed past Barney, the landlord of the Cripples, who was following her in from the front bar. He was swearing that he had tried to stop her from coming back here but that she was slippery as an eel and had dodged him. His meek apologies though was no match for her violent wailings.

‘You have given me nothing but agonies since you was first placed inside me, you ungrateful wretch!' She grabbed my ear and began her striking of me. ‘I have borne countless miseries for you, young wastrel, I've sacrificed my own comfort for yourn, and never once have you heard me repine!'

If these charges had been made against me in a more delicate manner, then I could have answered back. I would have refuted the image that she had painted of herself as a selfless mother, as well as her claim that I had never once heard her repine. But at the time I was unable to make these arguments, bent over as I was and covering my face against her sharp whackings. Then Len Pugg decided that he had stood this interruption for long enough and he rose from his seat to knock some sense into her. Len was a hero in that vicinity due to his prowess in the boxing line, and behind
the bar of the Three Cripples there was displayed many pencil sketches of him in the ring knocking men out. But here he faced a challenger of a different sort, and no sooner had he risen to his feet than Kat reached inside her petticoat and produced a flash of metal that caused him to stop cold.

‘Sit, Pugg!' she spat, pointing the knife towards him in a way that created a strong impression that she had used it before, and not just for skinning rabbits. Precious Tom cried out like a woman, Barney begged her to take it outside and Len sank back down. ‘I's come here to talk to my Jacky,' she said. ‘And my Jacky alone. If you gennelmen would be so kind as to piss off out of my face, then we shall both bid you goodnight.' She hoisted me from my seat and tugged me out of the room. ‘It's long past his bedtime, the poor lamb.' Then she pulled me through the front bar, which was full of drunken associates of mine. They was all singing along to a bawdy tune being played out on the piano and none of them saw fit to come to the aid of a young boy being led out into the night by a woman with a knife pressed to his ear. But then the Cripples was a smoky inn, so let's be generous and say that they must not have seen me. Outside she near pulled my arm clean off as she dragged me through a maze of back alleys and crooked lanes until reaching one, all dark and dripping, where only the rats could hear us talk. She pushed me against the slimy wall and grinned at me. ‘Well,' she said, ‘ain't you going to give your dear old mum a kiss?'

‘What you after?' I demanded.

‘That's pleasant,' she replied, all innocence. ‘I travel all the way from Seven Dials just to visit my angel child and this is the greeting he gives me. I'm after nothing, Jacky, nothing other than what is due me.' My belly turned with the beer and cigars. I felt like I was going to empty my dinner right out into the dirty lane if she
wouldn't stand back and let me breathe. She started brushing down my coat of all the sawdust from the Cripples and spoke gentle. ‘All I wants from you is returns,' she said, ‘and not for me, you understand. But for your older brother Horrie, bless his simple heart.'

‘Half-brother,' I said. ‘We ain't got the same dad.'

‘Half is still half,' she winked, wiping the dust away, ‘even if it ain't the good half.'

She began telling me that she felt that I had done her a wrong turn as a son. I had benefitted, she felt, from all that she had taught me at an early age, such as how to pinch my own supper from the markets, and by what means a lady's clothing may be penetrated by small, searching hands. And all she had ever prayed for, she said, was that one day I would be able to use these skills to provide for my mother in her dotage and for my slow-witted brother who was not born as gifted as I. But, she lowered her voice to stress the depth of my treachery, instead I had applied my talents for the good of some Jew to whom I owed nothing, whilst my family was starving to death. As she said this last thing I thought I spied a tear glisten in her blue eye and thought, not for the first time, that she could have made a success of herself on the stage if life had turned out differently.

‘I saw Horrie two days gone,' I answered back. ‘He's good and fat for someone starving to death.' Her hand was like a claw around my neck.

‘Clever lad, ain't you?' she hissed. ‘But you won't feel so clever when someone starts whispering about your Hebrew friend and his little school up there.' She banged my head against the wall. ‘Horrie needs to learn the ways and means with which to make his living. He eats too much, he drinks too much and he's about as much use around the house as a hole in a pisspot. You come
by with your little friends on Sunday and take him out to work the crowds.' She released me from her grip and stepped away. ‘And mind he don't get pinched,' she added before taking her leave, ‘else it'll turn ugly for all.' I dropped on to the muddy ground and, sure enough, my guts started emptying. By the time I raised my head to wipe away the spew, my mother had gone.

*

So that is why, two days later, I was having to edge my way back into the puppet-show crowd to fetch Horrie, squeezing past ladies and gentlemen whose pockets I had picked just moments before. The former owner of the gold watch was so engrossed in the entertainment that he had yet to perceive his loss and every eye was still on Mr Punch, who was now hitting a police constable good and hard with his stick. Everyone was laughing at this while my half-brained half-brother just stared, mouth open, as if the whole scene was giving him ideas. I worked my way through, stepping over stray dogs and trying not to disturb the baby carriages, and sidled up close. He had helpfully managed to position himself between two large gentlemen, both of whom, to my trained eye, looked to be the taking-the-law-into-their-own-hands type. I tapped him on the shoulder and addressed him most genteel.

‘Horace, good fellow,' I said, ‘do come along. We have an appointment with some right distinguished personages elsewhere for whom we must not be late. Let us leave this vulgar entertainment and proceed forthwith.' Horrie turned his fat head and looked at me as if I had took to speaking Russian, so I stamped on his foot and whispered, ‘
Move your fat arse!
' This woke the dreamy lump up and he remembered where we was and what sort of trouble we was in. He nodded and I led him out of the crowd, both of us trying hard to avoid notice. We was not helped in this by Horrie stepping on the tail of a young lady's pet dog. The dog
yelped, a baby cried, eyes turned upon us and I had to make a grand show of petting the noisy creature until Mr Punch won back his audience's attention.

Once out of the crowd we quickened our feet until we was clear of Jarrett Street. The two of us then hid ourselves deep within a fresher crowd, what was watching a procession of musicians and acrobats pass along Great Knaves. There was stilt-walkers, people on tambourines, jugglers, drummer boys, all creating a fine distraction. People was stopping on both sides to enjoy the sight and I nudged Horrie to say that here was good pickings. He was busy gawping though, just as before, at the fellow on the tallest stilts, as if the whole thing had been laid on for his entertainment alone.

‘Let's get stones,' he said suddenly. ‘Let's get some stones and chuck 'em at the wooden legs. See if they tumble.' He snorted like a pig and I looked at the boy amazed that we could ever be of the same blood. I used to remind myself, in such moments, that Kat Dawkins was a wicked liar and that in all likelihood she had found one of us as a baby, abandoned in an alley. If this was true I also hoped that I should be the one that would prove to be the foundling.

‘It's May Day,' I reminded him. ‘We ain't out to have fun.' I was vexed with Horrie for getting so distracted and I had a mind to do a Len Pugg and wallop him hard. I stopped myself because violence is lowering and also because he was much bigger than me and would most likely wallop me back. So instead I just asked him if he felt ready to try his hand. ‘Just do what you saw me and the others do. And keep your wits sharp. You ain't robbing kinchins now.'

We walked along with the crowd. Horrie was moving close by, all stiff and with a fierce look on his face, and I fretted that he
would give us both away. I told him to saunter like I was doing, trying to capture the air of a gentleman at leisure but he didn't understand. ‘Do you want me to look at 'em or don't you?' he asked. What could be done with him? Some boys just don't have the aptitude for this line of work.

There was lots of rich people strolling about and I fanned them as I brushed past. When you've been practising the art for as long as I have you become good at fanning the outsides of pockets and with only the lightest touch I could tell you to the nearest shilling the value of what was within a person's tailcoat. This crowd's pockets was bulging with fogles, tickers and other trinkets and I was itching to take them for mine. I felt as though they was mine and that these people was the thieves and my stealing of them was a stealing back. It stung when I realised that I would have to let them stay where they was just because I had no faith in Horrie as an accomplice. If this outing was going to be an education for him, then we would need to start off with something simple.

Further along, at the corner of Knaves and Goswell, I saw a cove who was ripe for this purpose. Sitting at a table outside an inn was a portly, bald-headed gentleman in a blue velveteen coat that spoke of money. He was alone, scribbling into a notebook, and he raised his head every few moments in order to see the coming procession before returning to the book as if describing what he saw. A writer, I thought, pleased. Picking the pocket of a writer is akin to stealing from a baby carriage; they is a dreamy-headed lot. This one seemed oblivious to the world about him so lost was he in his words and I signalled to Horrie that here was sport. As we approached him he reached inside his coat and produced a silver snuffbox that glinted in the sun. He took a delicate pinch of snuff and put the box back into his coat, the street-side pocket no less, from which it stuck out for anyone to see. He
was ever so accommodating and couldn't have made this easier if he'd tried. I was feeling the tingle as we drew near and, with the drumming and the whoops and the cheers covering my words, I instructed Horrie as to what was expected of him.

‘You dip, I dash. As practised.'

‘I dip?' he said.

‘Yeah, you dip.'

‘I want to dash.'

‘No. You walk ahead, dip, I come fast behind, you pass, and I dash. Right?'

‘Why should you get to do the dashing?'

‘All right. I'll walk ahead and dip. You dash. But Horrie, dash don't mean really dash. It means sauntering off quick. Inconspicuous. Don't just run for it.'

‘In-con-spic-a-what?' he said. I told him what it meant. Stone me, he was stupid.

The procession of stilt-walkers and acrobats was nearing the inn where our silver snuffbox was waiting for us and the crowds was at their thickest. The spectators was mixing in with those that sat outside enjoying the acrobats, and this writer cove was surrounded by people, any of whom could snatch his snuffbox if they'd only had the steel. I walked a few paces in front of Horrie and veered towards the cove whilst pretending to watch four lady acrobats stand on each other's shoulders, one on top of the other. This produced a roar of amazement from the people, and various gentlemen that sat outside the inn, including this writer, got to their feet to clap and cheer. I brought my body close to him, laughing loud at the lady acrobats, crossed my arms and pressed myself against the blue velveteen coat. As a fifth lady began climbing the others and the crowds held their breath, I inserted my left hand, covered from view by my right arm, into the pocket. My
fingers removed the snuffbox and I coiled it up into my hand so as not to be seen. Then I unfolded my arms, just as the crowds began their mad clapping, and moved my hand behind my back, so that Horrie could just take the box and just glide away with it.

Horrie did not glide away with it.