Dodger (27 page)

The outhouse in the backyard of the Three Cripples shook with the weight of the bodies what was crammed within, all crowded around a large pit made of apple-case boards and in which a vicious dog scrambled around over a dozen dead rats in hot pursuit of the one remaining. This rat, the final thirteenth, had been doing a heroic job of dodging his destiny for several minutes and if he could keep it up for one more then the dog would be yanked out of the pit and the bets counted.

‘Cur!' yelled Sikes again at the dog, as the last rat made to leap over the wooden fence only to be thrust back down by the surrounding gamesmen. ‘You're four times 'is size! 'Ave 'im, cur!'

Despite this encouragement the dog, whose name for all I knew really was Cur, was still not quick enough for the rat and the game continued apace. Cur was all muscle and aggression and had seized the other rats in his teeth clean and quick and they was dead before he was on to the next. But he was panting with tiredness now
while the nimble rat darted to the left, the right and even through the unhappy mutt's short legs. Sikes continued cursing over the cheers of the crowd, what was all boisterous young men fired up with gin, and, save for those losing money over it, they was all whooping with delight at so spectacular a show. Stood close beside me was Georgie, now a foot taller than I was, and he put his arm around my shoulder in a show of affection and handed me his half-drunk bottle. ‘Good to 'ave you back, Dodge!' he said, stupid with happiness as I drank from it. He had been telling me all evening how much he had missed me. ‘You was …' he slurred, his finger on my chest, his legs unsteady, ‘the best of 'em. Fagin always said you was the best of 'em.' The raucous noise inside that outhouse was building, the rat had turned desperate on its attacker and the dog seemed to be retreating from it. ‘Top-sawyer, that's what 'e called you. Even after you was gone.' Stood just as close on the other side was Jem White, and I could feel him turn as Georgie said this. ‘None of us,' Georgie carried on in spite of Jem's pricked ears, ‘could touch you on any scent. Tha's what Fagin said.' He prodded my chest with every word. ‘On. Any. Scent.' Jem snatched the bottle out of my hand and gave Georgie a dark look. Georgie seemed blind to this and glanced over to him, looking for approval. ‘In't that right, Jem?' he said. ‘What Fagin said.'

‘Fagin said all sorts,' Jem said before swigging.

It was my first time back at the Cripples since my return to London and I was happy to be surrounded by the companions of my youth. As well as Jem and Georgie I had been reunited that night with Mouse Flynn, Mick Skittles, Herbie Sharp, Little H and the Chickenstalker, all of whom treated my reappearance in the old neighbourhood as if Christ himself had risen again and brought with him a case of his father's finest cigars. I had left
Warrigal at Ruby and Jem's house after I had returned from Cunningham's so he could sleep off his sickness, but Jem had been most rattled to see him. Was this not the same Warrigal, he asked in alarm, what just the night before I had told him had tried to strangle me and from whom I had fled? Yes, I admitted, it was. But that had been a misunderstanding. Warrigal and I had made it up now, we intended to speak no more upon the unpleasant business and we would thank Jem if he too could respect this decision. Jem grumbled a bit but in the end relented. This, I suspect, was because, in spite of his ill health, Warrigal had the look of the very devil about him and Jem, in spite of his bluster, was a coward. So Warrigal was put to rest and an evening's entertainment was arranged for those of us what, even now, was still calling ourselves Fagin's boys.

‘Useless cur!' yelled Sikes on the other side of the pen as his dog failed to land his teeth in the rat once more. ‘I'll kill ya, if the rat don't first.'

I was pleased with this rat for putting up such a good show. I, like most of the lads from Saffron Hill, had money on the previous dog, one that had belonged to the McAllister twins, to catch his thirteenth rat in quicker time, and if this rat could keep away from Cur just a bit longer then we would have won the bet. If, however, the rat should fall before that time then all the money would be taken by the hated Sikes gang crowded opposite.

We Fagin's boys was all orphans. We had been plucked from the streets by the kindly Hebrew because he had seen promise in us and we had been taught secret skills without having to discover them for ourselves. Other young thieves, those what had been born into established criminal families and whose reputations rested on the dark deeds of their older relatives, hated us for this. They felt that we was favoured by the old man, treated like grubby
princes, in spite of having no connections of our own to draw on. We had no names, the other boys would say of us, we had no families. We only had an ageing Jew who did not really care for us.

I had a touch more respect afforded to me by such people on account of Kat Dawkins who, while a dangerous lunatic with a knife, was at least a distinguished whore and villain. But there was a feeling among the other gangs that a boy what rested under Fagin's roof could turn traitor at any moment because they was wastrels from other places, not true Londoners. We could, as far as anyone knew, be related to anyone and therefore lead disaster into the rookeries. Often we would find ourselves getting into scraps with gangs of boys from named families. And one such gang was here tonight, betting on a different dog in the outhouse of the Three Cripples. They was the Sikes gang, made up of the sons, brothers and nephews of the nastiest crooks about, and they was led by this here Ben, younger brother of the more famous Bill.

‘A curse on you!' Ben swore at the indomitable rat as it again leapt away from canine teeth. Fagin's boys, my boys, laughed all the harder to see his frustration and every so often he, or one of his cronies, would look over and call us bastards. We put up a fine show of pretending not to be scared of him but there was no doubt that his mob was bigger than ours and that if things erupted we would be outmatched.

‘Out of time!' yelled Mouse, still the most excitable of us, and he drummed his little hands on the edge of the pit and jumped up and down. ‘He's got to be out of time by now, Bolter!'

Morris Bolter, a slimy-looking cove what I had never met before but who seemed to be most familiar to the others, was keeping track on a faded old timepiece and shook his head.

‘T'ain't,' he replied in a stubborn country accent. ‘Still loads to go.' Nobody in the outhouse believed this, including myself. Cur had been in the pen for much longer than the McAllister dog, we all felt this, and a number of the boys tried to snatch the watch from his hands, accusing him of favouring Cur. Bolter whined and held it aloft but this made the boys fight for it all the harder. Young Crackit, a menacing cove and son of a respected burglar, then fought to protect Bolter, which was as sure a sign as any that the shifty country boy was in league with the Sikes gang. A rumpus broke out, just some light pushing, shoving and name-calling, but it gave me the chance, as I puffed upon my clay pipe, to regard Fagin's boys in action with as much freedom as if they was fighting in the pen themselves. Could any of these, I wondered, have been given the Jakkapoor stone?

As I watched my boisterous friends punch and kick at harder men I could see what a corrupting influence an upbringing in the house of Fagin had been to these once innocent children. It had made malefactors of them all. There was not one among them, even Mouse who had once been so easy to scare and who could never go to bed unless one of the older boys had brushed it for spiders beforehand, that I did not now view as the basest sort of villain. They had become the men polite society was afraid of, rogues, ruffians and thieves all. They was a scourge upon the peace and tranquillity of the city. They was, in short, some of the grandest companions a person could wish for and I was glad to be amongst them once more.

‘The winner!' boomed Sikes then and threw his hands in the air in triumph. We all turned from the fracas and looked back down into the pit where Cur had at last sunk his teeth into his prey. The rat screamed in the dog's mouth as Cur began worrying it and, it should be recorded, it still put up an almighty fight to
the last. But it was no use – the game was over and the rat done for.

The rest of his gang began crowding around Ben Sikes in congratulation, patting him on the back and cheering. Sikes laughed and called over to where I stood. ‘You know your trouble, Dodger?' he jeered. He had heard that I, to be flash in front of the rest of the boys, had placed more money on the McAllister dog than anyone. ‘You ain't that fuckin' artful after all.' His gang all roared at that and a chorus broke out about how I should have stayed abroad. I was having none of it though and I strode straight over to this Bolter, who I had disliked from the very moment I had set eyes on him, and got out my own watch to match his. It was a gold one that Evershed had presented to me to help me pass as a gentleman and that Warrigal had now returned. I could see the gathered thieves was most impressed with it.

‘By my reckoning,' I said, showing everyone around the fine craftsmanship of the piece, ‘it's ninety seconds after what your man here says it is. Which means he's a cheat what dialled his long hand back to favour your dog. And I ain't tolerating no cheats!' I snapped the watch shut as Fagin's boys all cried support and the Sikes gang roared outrage. Another rumpus broke out as Morris Bolter had to defend himself against accusations of rat fixing and a fist landed on his face courtesy of Georgie Bluchers. In truth, he must have only dialled it forward thirty seconds as my own had been wound back a minute to favour our dog. But as he fell to the floor the Sikes gang all bundled over to help him and then the outhouse shook with real sport as we all laid into each other and a fine time was had by all.

*

‘You know who I feel sorry for?' moaned Mouse hours later in the taproom of the Cripples. He was pressing a slab of steak on
to the bruise on his cheek in an effort to soothe it and was leaning over the same table I had been playing cards on six years ago when I had last seen Kat Dawkins. Georgie had been trying to count out the cards for another game of cribbage but he had dropped them all over the floor and he was now slumped asleep on his hands and knees. None of us wanted to disturb him – he'd been very free with his fists all night, even after we had left the outhouse and stumbled in here for an after-fight drink. It was best, we all agreed, to just leave him in his hunched position until morning rather than risk him lashing out at us again.

At this early hour there was only myself, Mouse and Jem still awake as the Sikes gang had all headed off back to Jacob's Island and the remains of Fagin's boys was either passed out or had run off during the fisticuffs. Herbie Sharp had long since emptied his guts into a metal bucket and was now, for all we knew, dead in the gutter. From the main bar we could hear the few remaining revellers gather around the new piano as someone played out a singalong, and every so often Barney, the landlord, would stick his head into the taproom and ask us if we needed anything. I'd been paying for the gin all night, even before we had gone into the yard for rat-pitting, and Barney was sure to tell me how pleased he was I was back and how proud Fagin would be of me. I smiled at him and raised my pipe in drunken thanks before asking him if he would care to scuttle along and get us another bottle before bedtime as this one was nearly done. After he'd gone I leaned over to the glasses of Jem and Mouse and with an unsteady hand shared the dregs out between them.

‘The rat,' said Mouse as I did so.

‘What about him?'

‘That's who I feel sorry for.'

‘Why?' asked Jem, vexed by the sentiment. He had been cradling
his face in his hands, ready to sleep, but was now awake again and reaching for his glass, an irked look on his face.

‘Because if that sneak Bolter,' Mouse spat the name, ‘had played fair and called time earlier,' he pointed his finger in stern judgment at Bolter, who was not present, ‘the rat woulda been crowned champion.' I smiled at Mouse as he slurred this. He was still as soppy as ever, underneath the grime. ‘The rat,' he went on, slapping the steak down on the table, ‘should have won. I think he deserved to.'

‘You're a fool then,' growled Jem, who had never found Mouse's whimsy to be as charming as I did. ‘If he'd've won they just woulda stuck him back in his box and used him in the next game. Rats don't win, idiot,' he explained. ‘They're doomed from the start.'

Mouse looked crestfallen at this remark and I thought it as good a time as any to raise a toast to something less maudlin. ‘To Saffron Hill,' I said as I held my own glass aloft, ‘and to good old Fagin.' Mouse and Jem lifted their own and chinked them against mine. ‘And to Eddie Inderwick,' I went on, ‘and to Charley Bates. Wherever those boys may be.'

This toast did not go down well and I had expected it not to. Jem sneered in disgust at both their names, Mouse went silent and even Georgie raised up his head and shook it. I knew from earlier that both these boys was less popular than before I went abroad and so I had raised their names now to discover more about why.

Eddie Inderwick was one of the older boys what had been nearing the end of his education at Fagin's school around the time that we was beginning ours. You might say he was our prefect, at least is how the more respectable schools around the land might have referred to an older boy what was so admired. Fagin was forever holding him up as a model thief to the rest of us. ‘Be as steady as Eddie,' he would urge us before pushing us out of the door for
our day's work, ‘and as lucky.' When Eddie came of age he soon moved out of Fagin's lodgings and in with an attractive young woman named Sally Quick, who was as admired for her handsome looks and her thievery as much as he was. Still Eddie used to come back and visit the kitchen often, dressed up all flash. He would slip some money to his dear old teacher and give us boys all good advice about how to stay one step ahead of the traps. He was a hero, was Eddie Inderwick, and I wondered at how his name could now meet with such derision.