Dodger (4 page)

‘Apologies,' I said, all concerned. ‘Just thought you wanted rousing, that's all. You was so very taken by these tales of crooks and lowlives –' I tapped his copy of
Bentley's
 – ‘that you must have imagined you was talking to one of them. You ain't. You is talking to a respectable gent what appreciates a bit of manners.' The room was now almost empty save for some gentlemen drying themselves off and Warrigal who was standing by my trunk and staring out of the doorway towards the rain. He was dressed in a brown greatcoat and wore a top hat as splendid as any Englishman's but his thoughts must still have been on the other side of the world. ‘This here is my servant,' I said, pointing my cane at him, ‘and as such is not accustomed to sleeping in stables. The last carriage to town has been booked, eh? Well, unbook it then, because
I don't plan to spend one more hour in this here town.' I smiled at the boy to show that I was a reasonable gent but I still held my cane in a way that made him flinch every time I moved it.

‘Bravo, sir,' said a voice from behind me. ‘A swift but gentle knock to the head is the surest way to combat insolence. You were right to strike him.' I turned to see a man in a clergyman's collar who had been watching me close throughout the whole performance. At a quick glance I could see that he had no valuables about him worth pinching. His clothes was not special and nor was the cheap timepiece he had pinned to his waistcoat. He was the sort of cove you would hardly be aware of if he lived in your same street, and had he not spoken then I would have never have noticed him.

‘If it is a carriage towards London that you want, then perhaps I can assist,' he continued in his pleasant way, ‘for I was the man that booked the last coach. My name is Reverend Albert Cherry and my family and I are headed towards the suburbs. If you would care to travel with us we will happily take you, and perhaps you can book into the Booted Cat, the same inn where we are to lodge. I fear that is all the progress you are likely to make today.' I told this Cherry that I feared he could be right. Then accepting his kind offer I said that I would like to pay for my share of the journey, but that if he had his heart set on letting us ride with him for free then I wouldn't insult him by refusal. He had not actually mentioned that the ride was gratis but now he was stuck with it.

‘Dawkins is the name,' I told him, offering him my hand, ‘and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You can help my valet carry this luggage if you care to.'

‘Good gracious, Mr Dawkins,' said the game fellow as he grabbed the end of my trunk and lifted it with Warrigal. ‘This is a mighty weight.'

‘You're not wrong, Reverend,' I said as I buttoned up my coat and readied myself to head back out into the wet. ‘You'll find it easier if you lift with your knees,' I advised him. ‘We don't want you to be doing yourself a mischief now, do we?' Before picking up my other bags I reached into my pocket for a coin. I tossed it towards the clerk and thanked him for his trouble but he was a clumsy catcher and was busy searching on the ground for it as I walked out. He needn't have bothered; it was Australian money.

Outside the rain was letting off but I had to step around a great many puddles on my way to the coach so as not to muddy my expensive shoes. The reverend was chattering away as he carried the trunk and I admired how much puff he had in him for his age. He was all questions. From where had I travelled? How long had I been away? What on earth was Warrigal? I kept my answers good and short like Evershed had warned me to.

‘There will be just enough room for you to join us inside the carriage, Mr Dawkins, but your valet may have to sit out beside the coachman.' He didn't look to Warrigal as he said this, despite being nearer to him. ‘He will be rather exposed to the elements, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh, you needn't worry about Peter Cole, reverend,' I replied. ‘It'll be a treat for him to feel the drip of English rain on himself after all those years of living in heat and dust. I imagine he'd be disappointed if we didn't let him ride outside.' I also took great care not to look at Warrigal as I spoke, especially since it was the first time he would have heard his new name. We reached the coach that the reverend had booked and I saw that it was a larger, grander vehicle than I had expected and seemed a bit plush for a simple clergyman. The rest of his family was already inside and the horses waiting to go as Reverend Cherry explained to the coachman about the new arrangements. The coachman eyed
Warrigal with suspicion as he helped him stow my luggage, and I saw the reverend give him a shilling to let Warrigal sit beside him. Once they was sat atop, Reverend Cherry said that all that was now left for him to do was to introduce me to his family and we could set off. With that, he pulled open the carriage door and revealed something well worth travelling back from the other side of the globe for. They was four women in all, a wife and three daughters, and these girls was as sweet and as delicious a set of English Cherries as I could have hoped to have met upon arrival home. I smiled and doffed my hat to them as their father explained that I would be joining them on the journey.

‘My family, this is Mr Dawkins, a businessman, and he, like us, has just returned home after many years abroad. Mr Dawkins, allow me to introduce to you my wife, Mrs Cherry …' Mrs Cherry was a plump, pink-faced woman who, as I took her hand to kiss it as a gentleman should, let out a little gasp as though it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. From this I reasoned that it was not difficult giving thrills to a clergyman's wife. ‘… And our three daughters, Constance, Amelia and Lucille.' Their three pretty, bonneted heads was smiling out at me and I guessed their ages to be between sixteen and nineteen.
So
, I thought as I removed my hat and climbed into the carriage, squeezing myself good and tight between Amy and Lucy,
the good reverend does have something worth pinching after all
. Once the reverend was settled inside I tapped the roof of the carriage with my cane and we was on our way towards London.

I was, you must remember, still a young fellow who had spent most of those difficult years wherein a boy becomes a man stuck in a penal colony surrounded by convicts, soldiers and aborigines. So for me to be now pressed in a small space among three lovely roses, all sweet smelling and in the fullest of bloom, was having
a strong effect upon my senses. The coach was rattling gently as it trundled along the stony ground and this created a nice jiggling sensation inside the carriage, which made looking at the Cherry girls in their white cotton dresses even more appealing. We had travelled less than half a mile when I had to find an excuse to place my hat over my lap in order that it should hide the dirty great dart that had begun to grow beneath. Also, it must be noted that during my time away I had grown into an attractive fellow myself, not handsome in a traditional way but there was some young wives of the ship's crew what had fallen for my rakish charms while their husbands was busying themselves on the top deck and away from their unlocked cabins. I knew I had good looks enough for those smiling ladies to welcome me in whenever I paid them a visit, so I was now hoping now to press a similar advantage upon these three fair maidens.

All this time Reverend Cherry had been talking about how he and his family had just returned from Bombay where he was doing missionary work and I was making a good show of pretending as though I cared. He was saying how the girls had been well educated there, and had been raised as paragons of Christian virtue, but he was worried about how they was to fare now that they was back in England. They was so innocent, he said, and London had a reputation for wickedness. He hoped they would not prove corruptible. The dearest prayer of him and his wife was to see all three girls wedded off to successful men of distinction so that they would not have to worry about their financial futures. But they met so few eligible bachelors abroad, he sighed.

‘There was one young man though,' he beamed, touching the hand of the girl sat next to him, ‘an officer in the navy, no less, whom we had the pleasure of meeting while he was stationed in India, and who developed a strong admiration for our little
Constance.' This did not surprise me as I was sat opposite the buxom Constance and as we bounced along the hilly path I found I was developing a strong admiration for her myself. ‘Before he returned to England,' continued her father, ‘this man came to me and asked for her hand. I can honestly say that it was the proudest, happiest day in the lives of myself and Mrs Cherry.'

‘And you were delighted too, weren't you, Constance dear?' twittered the mother like an idiot bird. Constance looked as though this was the first time anybody had asked her opinion on the matter and she returned a weak smile. I wondered why Mrs Cherry thought that she would be in any way excited about marrying a man too miserly to give her an engagement ring as I had noticed that, buxom though she was, she had no decent jewellery about her for me to steal.

‘And so you find us, sir,' Reverend Cherry continued, ‘on our way to reunite these two lovebirds. William has requested that Constance be brought to the town of Welling in Kent where the wedding preparations are already under way. His family, as I understand it,' he lowered his voice to a whisper, although who he thought was listening in I don't know, ‘are rather affluent, I believe. They even arranged for this carriage.' He winked.

‘If only we could find such suitable husbands for our younger daughters,' commented Mrs Cherry. She paused and looked to her husband as if waiting for him to say something. He said nothing so she asked me herself. ‘You seem rather young to be a businessman, Mr Dawkins. What line do you say you are in?'

‘Sheep shearing,' I told her.

‘Sheep shearing?'

‘That's it. The shearing of sheep. Down in Australia I've got some farms with my name on the outside and plenty of sheep to put in them. The world will always need wool.' Reverend Cherry
agreed that this was so and said that I must be quite prosperous indeed if my clothes was any indication. ‘I keep the wolf at bay,' I said. ‘If you lie down under a blanket tonight,' I assured him, ‘there is a strong chance it'll be made of Dawkins wool. We export shiploads of the stuff.' The reverend and his wife seemed most impressed with this boast and, to the left of me, I could feel young Lucille sitting up a little straighter. To my right, however, Amelia was still looking out at the green fields in a sulk, showing herself to be the harder to impress of the two.

‘Do you hear that, girls?' cooed her mother. ‘Dawkins wool! I can't say that I've ever heard of it, but I am certain that I shall. To think that I will be able to tell people that we once shared a carriage with the famous Jack Dawkins of Dawkins Wool.' Sat opposite me, Constance was tilting her head to one side.

‘Will you stay in England very long, Mr Dawkins,' she asked, ‘or must you soon return to Australia?' Her eyes were full of curiosity and I had a feeling that her fiancé was not too close to her thoughts at that moment, which served him right for not giving her an engagement ring.

‘I imagine that Mr Dawkins must have a sweetheart back in Australia waiting for him, Constance,' said Lucille, with all the subtlety of her mother. ‘Do you have a sweetheart, Mr Dawkins, back in Australia, waiting for you?'

‘No, Miss Lucy I do not.' I made the sad face. ‘It seems that I have been so very industrious that I have just not had the time to find anyone worth sharing my fortune with. Perhaps I never will.' This made Constance, Lucille and Mrs Cherry all of a cluck and they was quick to say that I was mistaken in thinking it. Reverend Cherry promised me that the Lord had made matches for every beating heart and that mine was sure to make herself manifest before long.

‘Sometimes, Mr Dawkins, He hides these things beneath our very noses. Isn't that so, Amy?' All of the other Cherrys looked towards this middle child as if this was her cue to deliver her one line in a play that they often acted out. But she just shrugged and raised her hand to her mouth to yawn. Reverend Cherry was a smooth performer though and he changed the subject quick to what a delightful creature his youngest daughter was, while his wife looked at Amy with a burning eye. The rest of the journey was taken up with Lucy this and Lucy that, as both her parents was keen for me to know of her every skill and accomplishment. Several times I was told that she could speak French, German and Dutch, could play the harpsichord, dance a quadrille and sing like an angel, as if could I care a tinker's tit for any of that. The reverend was boasting of how she had always been an obedient daughter and that she was sure to prove a pliable wife for some lucky fellow. Lucy blushed to hear herself spoken of like this and she gasped and giggled to hear any nice compliment that I chose to sprinkle on her. I told Mrs Cherry that her three daughters had better watch out when being introduced into London society as the Indian sun had turned their complexions to such a pleasing brown that this, on top of their blonde loveliness, was sure to send the lesser beauties of the city into violent fits of jealousy. Lucy and Constance was as delighted with my flattery as I had expected them to be, and their mother clapped her hands in joy, but, much to my surprise, I heard a small scoffing sound from the girl to my right. That Amy Cherry seemed not to be susceptible to my gentlemanly charms was a source of annoyance to me, as she was more interested in gazing at passing hedges than in anything I had to say. I was starting to wonder as to what her problem might be. Here was I, Jack Dawkins of Dawkins Wool, a successful capitalist and silver-tongued charmer, and here was she, a penniless
clergyman's daughter without a jewel on her, and yet still she was treating me like I was some common boy from the rookeries. I hoped that her father or mother was fixing to give her a good talking-to later that night for being so ill-mannered.