Dodger (42 page)

The Queen, her eyes on her husband, said, ‘Well, my dear, there is a nice surprise for you.’ Although it was quite a pleasant sentence, it had a little clip on the end, to remind everybody that
that
conversation at least was at an end. She turned to Dodger and said, ‘You, then, must be Mister Dodger? You do very well around desperate criminals, I believe. Everyone is still talking about Sweeney Todd. That must have been such a terrible day for you.’

Dodger recognized that it might not be a good idea to deny this fact, even though the day had been more astonishing than terrible. And so he took refuge in: ‘Well, Your Majesty, there he was and there I was, and there the razor was, and that was it really. To be honest, I felt sorry for the poor man.’

‘So I have heard,’ said the Queen. ‘It is a disquieting thought, but it is to your credit, at least. I believe that the young lady beside you is your fiancée, is that not so? Do come here, Miss Serendipity.’

Serendipity stepped forward, and suddenly Dodger found himself somehow outside the room looking down on it, watching how expressions changed and changed again, and then he was back in himself and everything was cheerful and someone had just brought in some tea and there was a definite feeling that things were satisfactory.

Who would dare lie to a queen? he thought. How much did she know? For that matter, how much did Prince Albert know? He was from one of the Germanys, wasn’t he? But that would start him thinking about politics again, and so he chased the thought out of his mind and as time floated back, Serendipity curtsied – rather better than Solomon had bowed – and the room began to be more cheerful.

‘When do you think your wedding will be, my dear?’

Serendipity blushed and said, ‘Dodger says he will have to get a new job first, Your Majesty, so we don’t know yet.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Queen. ‘What is it you do, Mister Dodger, when you are not thwarting criminals?’

Dodger didn’t answer that, not being entirely sure what thwarting meant, but Solomon was in there fast with, ‘He assists with the proper running of the drainage, Your Majesty.’

Prince Albert rolled his eyes and said, ‘Oh, drains, we have them here and they never seem to work properly.’

Dodger opened his mouth, but the Queen, anxious to get drains out of the way, said, ‘Well, sir, I wish you well in whatever post you eventually take. And now . . .’ she added, glancing at a flunky, ‘we think that bravery such as yours should be recognized, and so I would like you to step forward here and get down on one knee. See the cushion here, and it would probably be a good idea if you took off your hat.’ A flunky stepped forward holding a sword, and quite a shiny one at that. The Queen took it, and then said, ‘What is your full name to be, Mister Dodger? I have been advised that you would like to see the last of Pip Stick.’

Dodger stared at her, and then Serendipity said, ‘If it’s any help, Your Majesty, I’ve always thought that Jack is a very nice name.’

Jack Dodger, thought Dodger. It sounded slightly nobby, but he didn’t know why. The Queen looked at him expectantly and said, ‘If I was you, sir, I would take the advice of your lady.’ She glanced at Prince Albert and added, ‘As all sensible husbands do.’

All Dodger could do now was say, ‘Uh, yes please,’ and then there was a breath of air over his scalp and the sword was back in the arms of a flunky again and Sir Jack Dodger stood up.

‘It makes you look taller,’ said Serendipity.

‘Indeed it does,’ said Queen Victoria. ‘Incidentally,’ she went on, ‘I am told, Sir Jack, that you have a very intelligent dog as a pet?’

Dodger grinned. ‘Oh yes, Your Majesty, that would be Onan; he’s a very good friend, but of course we couldn’t bring him along here.’

‘Quite so,’ said the Queen and she cleared her throat. ‘You mean Onan, as in the Bible?’ Out of the corner of his eye Dodger could
see
Solomon stepping backwards, but nevertheless he said, ‘Oh yes, miss.’

‘Why did you call him that?’

Well, Dodger thought, after all she did ask. So he told her,
¹
and the young Queen glanced at her husband, whose face was a picture, and then burst out laughing and said, ‘Well now, we
are
amused.’

Like some sort of clockwork, the tea then disappeared as quickly as it had turned up, and there was a certain signal that this audience was at an end. Greatly relieved, Dodger took Serendipity by the arm and led her away, and was slightly surprised as they left the room when the white-haired man he had met before walked boldly up to him and said, ‘Sir Jack, allow me to be the first to congratulate you. May I trespass upon your time for a moment? Have you perchance had time to consider my proposal?’

‘He wants you to be a spy,’ murmured Solomon behind him.

The white-haired man made a ‘tsk, tsk’ noise and said, ‘Oh dear no, Mister Cohen. A spy, sir? Perish the thought. Her Majesty’s government, I can assure you, has no dealings with spies, oh my word, no. But nevertheless we like the kind of people who help us . . . take an interest.’

Dodger took Serendipity to one side and said, ‘What should I do?’

‘Well, he does want you to be a spy,’ Serendipity replied. ‘You can tell that by the look on his face when he says that he doesn’t. For someone like you, Dodger, it seems to me to be the perfect occupation, although I suspect it will mean learning one or two
foreign
languages. But I have no doubt that you will find learning them quite easy. I myself know French and German, as well as a little Latin and Greek. Not too difficult if you put your mind to it.’

Not to be outdone, Dodger said, ‘Well, I know some Greek.
?’
²

Serendipity smiled at him and said, ‘My word, Dodger, you do lead a very interesting life, don’t you?’

‘My love,’ he replied, ‘I think it’s only just beginning.’

And that was why two months later, Jack Dodger was running through the boulevards of Paris with the gendarmerie lagging far behind him. He was carrying a pocket stuffed with coins and bonds, a tiara that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette and would look very good on his wife Serendipity, and last but not least, the plans for an entirely new type of gun. Whistles were blowing all over the place, but Dodger was never where anyone thought he would be. He had been most interested to find out that the Froggies had drains too, pretty good ones which you wouldn’t have expected from Froggies, and so he jigged and dodged and ran on to the safe house he had sorted out last night, and he was having the time of his life.

1
If you want to know more about Onan – a well-known biblical character – I am sure that many of my readers know their Bible from one end to the other. And if not, Google, or any priest – possibly a slightly embarrassed one – will help you.

2
Please direct me to where the naughty ladies are.

 

Author’s acknowledgements, embarrassments and excuses with, at no extra cost, some bits of vocabulary and usage

DODGER
IS SET
broadly in the first quarter of Queen Victoria’s reign; in those days disenfranchised people were flooding into London and the other big cities, and life in London for the poor – and most of the people were the poor – was harsh in the extreme. Traditionally, nobody very much bothered about those in poverty at all, but as a decade advanced, there were those among the better off who thought that their plight should be known to everybody. One of those, of course, was Charles Dickens, but not so well known was his friend Henry Mayhew. What Dickens did surreptitiously, showing the reality of things via the medium of the novel, Henry Mayhew and his confederates did simply by facts, lots and lots of facts, piling statistics on statistics; and Mayhew himself walked around the streets chatting to little orphan girls selling flowers, street vendors, old ladies, workers of all sorts, including prostitutes, and exposed, by degrees, the grubby underbelly of the richest and most powerful city in the world.

The massive work known as
London Labour and the London Poor
ought to be in every library, if only to show you that if you think things are bad now, they were oh so much more worse not all that long ago.

Readers may have heard of the movie
Gangs of New York
; well, London was worse and getting even more so every time fresh hopefuls arrived to try their luck in the big city. Mayhew’s work has been shortened, rearranged and occasionally printed in smaller volumes. The original, however, is not heavy going. And if you like fantasy, in a very strange way fantasy is there with realistic dirt and grime all over it.

And so, it is to Henry Mayhew that I dedicate this book.

Dodger is a made-up character, as are many of the people he meets, although they are from types working, living and dying in London at that time.

Disraeli was certainly real, and so was Charles Dickens, and so was Sir Robert Peel, who founded the police force in London and became Prime Minister (twice). His ‘peelers’ did indeed replace the old Bow Street runners who were, more or less, thief-takers and not known for excessive bravery. The peelers were a very different kettle of fish, being drawn from men with military experience.

Readers will recognize other personages from history along the way, I expect. Most fantastic of all was Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, heiress of her grandfather’s fortune when she was still quite young and at that time the richest woman in the world, apart perhaps from a queen here or there. She was an amazing woman who did indeed once propose marriage to the Duke of Wellington. But more importantly, for me at least, she spent most of her time giving her money away.