men involved might form a close acquaintance with the comfort of Dodger’s fist . . .
CHAPTER 4
Dodger discovers a new use for a Fleet Street spike, and gains a pocketful of sugar
FLEET STREET WAS always busy, day and night, because of all the newspapers, and today the Fleet was not so much running as oozing along the open drain in the centre of the street. Dodger had heard stories about the Fleet sewers, especially the one about the pig that escaped from a butcher’s shop one time and got down there and then into everywhere else, and since there is so much to eat in a sewer if you are a pig, it became enormously fat and nasty. Perhaps it would have been fun then to go and find it; on the other hand perhaps it wouldn’t have been – those things had tusks! But right now, the only monsters in Fleet Street, he had been told, were the printing presses whose thumping made the pavement shake, and which demanded to be fed every day with a diet of politics, ’orrible murders and death.
Of course, there are other events, but everybody liked an ’orrible murder, didn’t they? And everywhere along the street men were pushing trolleys and piles of paper, or running fast holding tight to smaller bits of paper in a terrible urgency to explain to the world what had happened, why it had happened, what should have happened and sometimes why it hadn’t happened at all, when in fact it did happen after all – and, of course, to tell everyone about all the people who had been ’orribly murdered. It looked a bustling place to be, and now he had to find the
Chronicle
in all of this, hampered by the fact that he wasn’t very good at reading, especially big words like that.
In the end, a printer in a square hat pointed the way, while giving him a look that said, ‘Don’t you dare steal anything here.’ A bit of a slander to Dodger’s way of thinking, since toshing wasn’t stealing – surely everybody knew that? Well, they did if they were a tosher.
He tied Onan to a rail, confident that nobody would steal him because of the peculiar smell, and walked up the steps to the
Morning Chronicle
, where he was understandably stopped by one of those men whose job it is to stop the kind of people who need stopping. He looked as though he enjoyed his job, and he had a hat to prove it, and the face under the hat said, ‘Nothing here for the likes of you, boy, you have no business here and you can go and do your thieving somewhere else, you and your dreadful suit. Hah, looks like you’ve got it off a dead man!’
Dodger carefully did not change his expression, but stood up straight and said, ‘My business is with Mister Dickens! He gave me a mission!’ While the man stared at him, he pulled out of his pocket Charlie’s visiting card, and said, ‘And he gave me his card, and told me to meet him here; can you get that into your head, mister?’
The doorman looked daggers at him, but the name Dickens apparently had an effect here for some reason, because another man with a busy look came and stared at Dodger, stared again at the card, looked back at Dodger for one last stare, and said, ‘You might as well come in then, don’t steal anything.’
Dodger said, ‘Thank you, sir, I will try my very best not to.’
He was ushered into a crowded little room filled with desks and clerks, all looking busy with that same sense of frightful importance he had seen out in the street. The clerk at the nearest desk – who looked like the cove in charge of all the rest – watched him like a frog watches a snake, his hand very close to a bell.
Dodger sat down on a bench by the door and waited. Already the fog was rising – it always was by this time of day – and it was creeping in now through the open door. It was like an airborne river Thames, coiling and shimmering as if someone had emptied a bucket of snakes over the street. Mostly it was yellow; often it was black, especially if the brick yards were working. The nearest clerk got up,
CHAPTER 4
Dodger discovers a new use for a Fleet Street spike, and gains a pocketful of sugar
FLEET STREET WAS always busy, day and night, because of all the newspapers, and today the Fleet was not so much running as oozing along the open drain in the centre of the street. Dodger had heard stories about the Fleet sewers, especially the one about the pig that escaped from a butcher’s shop one time and got down there and then into everywhere else, and since there is so much to eat in a sewer if you are a pig, it became enormously fat and nasty. Perhaps it would have been fun then to go and find it; on the other hand perhaps it wouldn’t have been – those things had tusks! But right now, the only monsters in Fleet Street, he had been told, were the printing presses whose thumping made the pavement shake, and which demanded to be fed every day with a diet of politics, ’orrible murders and death.
Of course, there are other events, but everybody liked an ’orrible murder, didn’t they? And everywhere along the street men were pushing trolleys and piles of paper, or running fast holding tight to smaller bits of paper in a terrible urgency to explain to the world what had happened, why it had happened, what should have happened and sometimes why it hadn’t happened at all, when in fact it did happen after all – and, of course, to tell everyone about all the people who had been ’orribly murdered. It looked a bustling place to be, and now he had to find the
Chronicle
in all of this, hampered by the fact that he wasn’t very good at reading, especially big words like that.
In the end, a printer in a square hat pointed the way, while giving him a look that said, ‘Don’t you dare steal anything here.’ A bit of a slander to Dodger’s way of thinking, since toshing wasn’t stealing – surely everybody knew that? Well, they did if they were a tosher.
He tied Onan to a rail, confident that nobody would steal him because of the peculiar smell, and walked up the steps to the
Morning Chronicle
, where he was understandably stopped by one of those men whose job it is to stop the kind of people who need stopping. He looked as though he enjoyed his job, and he had a hat to prove it, and the face under the hat said, ‘Nothing here for the likes of you, boy, you have no business here and you can go and do your thieving somewhere else, you and your dreadful suit. Hah, looks like you’ve got it off a dead man!’
Dodger carefully did not change his expression, but stood up straight and said, ‘My business is with Mister Dickens! He gave me a mission!’ While the man stared at him, he pulled out of his pocket Charlie’s visiting card, and said, ‘And he gave me his card, and told me to meet him here; can you get that into your head, mister?’
The doorman looked daggers at him, but the name Dickens apparently had an effect here for some reason, because another man with a busy look came and stared at Dodger, stared again at the card, looked back at Dodger for one last stare, and said, ‘You might as well come in then, don’t steal anything.’
Dodger said, ‘Thank you, sir, I will try my very best not to.’
He was ushered into a crowded little room filled with desks and clerks, all looking busy with that same sense of frightful importance he had seen out in the street. The clerk at the nearest desk – who looked like the cove in charge of all the rest – watched him like a frog watches a snake, his hand very close to a bell.
Dodger sat down on a bench by the door and waited. Already the fog was rising – it always was by this time of day – and it was creeping in now through the open door. It was like an airborne river Thames, coiling and shimmering as if someone had emptied a bucket of snakes over the street. Mostly it was yellow; often it was black, especially if the brick yards were working. The nearest clerk got up,
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