‘Solomon helps me cut it when it gets too hot and I want things to cool off a bit,’ said Dodger, upon which Jacob gave the kind of explosive snort that only an offended Jewish tradesman could make, even more expressive than a Frenchman on a very bad day. Generally speaking, if it had to be written down, it would begin with something like ‘phooieu’ and end with a certain amount of spittle in the general vicinity.
Jacob wailed, ‘That’s not a haircut, my boy. You look like you’ve been sheared! As though you’ve just got out of the clink! If Queen Victoria saw you then, she’d probably call out the runners. Take my advice, next time go to a proper barber! Take the advice of your old friend Jacob.’
And so, in company with the dog Onan, who was still optimistically carrying his bone in his jaws, Dodger walked back into the world. Of course, shonky was shonky, however you looked at it; it might just do, but it wasn’t the full shilling. What around here was? Nevertheless, Dodger felt all the better for the new clobber, even with the associated crotch problem and a certain prickling under the arms, and it was certainly better than anything else he owned and hopefully worthy of the girl from the storm.
He walked back to the alley and climbed up the rickety stairs to the attic, where Solomon greeted him with, ‘Who are you, young man?’
On the table, spread out, were the contents of the Happy Families game. ‘Mmm . . . very interesting,’ said Solomon. ‘This is a remarkable and mmm somewhat deadly device you have presented to me. It is mmm deceptively simple, but dark clouds soon gather.’
‘What?’ said Dodger, looking at the brightly coloured cards laid out on the table. ‘It looks like something for kids – though nothing like the Happy Family man and his wagon, which is strange. It’s just a kids’ game, ain’t it?’
‘Alas, yes it is,’ said Solomon. ‘I shall expand on my little theory. Every player is dealt a hand from the pack of cards, and the object appears to be to put together one complete family, the happy family, simply by asking one of your opponents if they have a particular card. It would seem a cheerful game for children but, in fact, if they only did but know it, the parents are setting the child on the way to be a poker player or, worse, a politician.’
‘What?’
‘Allow me to elucidate,’ said Solomon, and after a glance at Dodger’s blank face, ‘I mean, explain, young man. It appears to go like this. In order to mmm get your happy family, you have to choose one family, and so you might, as it were, choose to collect all of the mmm Baker family. You might think that all you need do is simply wait until it is your turn again, and boldly ask somebody to give you the next card you were looking for. It might be Miss Bun the baker’s daughter. Why? Because mmm when the cards were dealt out at the start of the game you had already got Mister Bun the baker, and so his daughter would be a step in the right direction. But beware! Your opponents might mmm, if you keep simply asking for a Bun, in their turn start asking you for a member of the Bun family; they may not be collecting the Buns themselves, but possibly they intend to get together a whole set of the mmm Dose family, the head of which is Mister Dose the doctor. They are asking you for a Bun when they need a Dose, because they had noticed your interest in Buns, and despite their longing for a Dose would rather use their turn mmm to put you off track whilst at the same time depriving you of a precious Bun!’
‘Well, I would just lie and say I hadn’t got it,’ said Dodger.
‘Ah ha! As the game lumbers to its conclusion your ownership of the disputed Bun will come to light, mmm yes indeed! And it will be a very sad day for you. You have to tell the truth, because if you don’t tell the truth, you will never win the game. Thus this terrible battle wages, as you decide to forsake Buns now and see if your salvation might lie mmm in collecting the family of Mister Bung the brewer, despite the fact that your family is teetotal. You hope to put at least one of your enemies under a false impression of your real intentions, while all the time you must suspect that every single one of them, no matter how innocent mmm they appear to be, are trying by every strategy they can think of to foil your plans! And so the dreadful inquisition continues! Son learns to deceive father, sister learns to distrust father, and mother is trying to lose in order to keep the peace, and it is dawning on her that her children’s facial expressions of fake desire or optimism to put others off the track might mmm trick an opponent into thinking in the wrong direction.’
‘Well,’ said Dodger, ‘that’s like haggling in the marketplace. Everybody does it.’
‘And so the game comes to a conclusion, undoubtedly with tears before the end, not to mention shouting and the slamming of doors. In what way then does this make a family happy? Exactly what has been achieved?’ Solomon stopped talking, his face very pink and upset.
Dodger had to think for a moment before he said, ‘It’s only playing cards, you know; it’s not as if it’s important. I mean, it’s not real.’
This didn’t satisfy Solomon, who said, ‘I have never played it, but nevertheless a child playing with their parent would have to learn how to deceive them. And you say this is all a game?’
Dodger thought again. A game. Not a game of chance like the Crown and Anchor man, where you might even walk away with a pocket full of winnings. But a game to play as a family? Who had time for family games? Only babies, or children of the toffs. ‘It’s still just a game,’ he protested, and received one of Solomon’s stares, which if you were not careful would go right through your face and out the back of your head.
Solomon said, ‘What’s the difference when you are seven years old?’ The old man had gone red, and he waved the finger of God at Dodger. ‘Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore and things we change make us what we become.’
It was biblical stuff, right enough. But when Dodger thought about it, what was the difference? The whole of life was a game. But if it was a game, then were you the player or were you the pawn? It seeped into his mind that maybe Dodger could be more than just Dodger, if he cared to put some effort into it. It was a call to arms; it said: Get off your arse!
The one thing you could say about this dirty old city, Dodger thought as he headed out of the attic, strutting along in his new suit with Onan at his heels, was that no matter how careful you were, somebody would see anything. The streets were so crowded that you were rubbing shoulders with people until you had no shoulders left; and the place to do a bit of rubbing now would be the Baron of Beef, or the Goat and Sixpence, or any of the less salubrious drinking establishments around the docks where you could get drunk for sixpence, dead drunk for a shilling, and possibly just dead for being so stupid as to step inside in the first place.
In those kind of places you found the toshers and the mudlarks hanging out with the girls, and that was really hanging out because half of them would had worn the arse out of their trousers by now. Those places were where you spent your time and your money, so that you could forget about the rats and the mud that stuck to everything, and the smells. Although after a while you got used to them, corpses that had been in the river for a while tended to have a fragrance of their very own, and you never forgot that smell of corruption, because it clung, heavy and solid, and you never wanted to smell it again, even though you knew you would.