Sometime after, Dodger was seated at the long table in the editor’s office of the Chronicle, wishing he could be on his way to see Simplicity. Opposite him was Charlie, who was somewhat less angry now since, being a man of means, he had acquired another pair of trousers and sent the other ones to be cleaned. The inner wall of the office was one of those half-height affairs so that people passing by in the newsroom could see what was happening, and now, how they did pass by. And linger too, with every writer, journalist and printer finding an excuse to see the young man who, according to the magical telegraph of the streets, had wrestled to the ground the terrible Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Dodger was getting rather annoyed about this. ‘I hardly touched ’im! I just pushed ’im gently down and took the wretched razor off ’im, that’s all! Honest! It was as if he had been taking opium or something, ’cos he was seeing dead soldiers – dead men coming towards him, I swear it, and he was talking to them, like he was ashamed that he couldn’t save them. God’s truth, Mister Charlie, I swear I was seeing them too, come the finish! Men blown all to pieces! And worse, like men half blown to pieces and screaming! He wasn’t a demon, mister, although I reckon he may have seen Hell, and I ain’t a hero, sir, I really ain’t. He wasn’t bad, he was mad, and sad, and lost in his ’ead. That’s all of it, sir, the up and the down of it, sir. An’ that’s the truth you should write down. I mean, I ain’t no hero, ’cos I don’t think he was a villain, sir, if you get my drift.’
Then there was silence, somehow filled by Charlie’s gaze, in this polished little room. A clock ticked and, without looking, Dodger could feel the employees still taking every opportunity to look at him, the unassuming and reluctant hero of the hour. Charlie was staring at him, occasionally playing with his pen, and at last the man said, with a sigh, ‘Dear Mister Dodger, the truth, rather than being a simple thing, is constructed, you need to know, rather like Heaven itself. We journalists, as mere wielders of the pen, have to distil out of it such truths that mankind, not being god-like, can understand. In that sense, all men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear, notwithstanding that a man sitting opposite them might very well brew an entirely different view as to the nature of the occurrence. That is the salvation and the demon of journalism, the knowledge that there is almost always a different perspective from which to see the conundrum.’
Charlie played with his pen some more, looking uncomfortable, and went on, ‘After all, my young Dodger, what exactly are you? A stalwart young man, plucky and brave and apparently without fear? Or possibly, I suggest, a street urchin with a surfeit of animal cunning and the luck of Beelzebub himself. I put it to you, my friend, that you are both of these, and every shade in between. And Mister Todd? Is he truly a demon – those six men in the cellar would say so! If they could but speak, of course. Or is he the victim, as you would like to think of him? What is the truth? you might ask, if I was giving you a chance to speak, which at the moment I am not. My answer to you would be that the truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.’
Dodger began to protest. He hadn’t seen no heavenly host; no elephant neither – he didn’t actually know what one of those was – though he’d put a shilling on the fact that Solomon had probably seen both on his travels.
But Charlie was still talking. ‘The peelers saw a young man face down a killer with a dreadful weapon, and for now that is the truth that we should print and celebrate. However, I shall add a little tincture of – shall we say – a slightly different nature, reporting that the hero of the hour nevertheless took pity on the wretched man, understanding that he had lost his wits due to the terrible things he had witnessed in the recent wars. I will write that you spoke very eloquently to me about how Mister Todd himself was a casualty of those wars, just as were the men in his cellar. I will make your views known to the authorities. War is a terrible thing, and many return with wounds invisible to the eye.’
‘That’s pretty sharp of you, Mister Charlie, changing the world with a little scribble on the paper.’
Charlie sighed. ‘It may not. He will either hang or they will send him to Bedlam. If he’s unlucky – for I doubt he would have the money necessary to ensure a comfortable stay there – it will be Bedlam. Incidentally, I would be very grateful if you could attend at the premises of Punch tomorrow so that our artist, Mister Tenniel, can draw your likeness for the paper.’
Dodger tried to take all this in, and said finally, ‘Who are you going to punch?’
‘I am not going to punch anybody; Punch is a new periodical magazine of politics, literature and humour which, if you don’t know, means something that makes you laugh, and possibly think. One of the founders was Mister Mayhew, our mutual friend.’ Charlie’s jaw dropped suddenly, and he scribbled down a few words on the paper in front of him. ‘Now off you go, enjoy yourself and please come back here as soon as you can tomorrow.’
‘Well, if you will excuse me, sir, I have another appointment anyway,’ said Dodger.
‘You have an appointment, Mister Dodger? My word, it seems to me that you are becoming a man for all seasons.’
As Dodger hurried off, he wondered exactly what Charlie had meant. He was damned if he was going to ask him, but he would find out what it meant as soon as possible. Just in case.
CHAPTER 8
A young man takes his young lady for a constitutional walk; and Mrs Sharples comes to heel
DODGER MADE HASTE towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny? he thought. Was that funny at all? He’d lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn’t laughing . . .
Running faster than he had before, Dodger arrived, if you put any reliance on all the bells of London, at just about the time when people would have finished their lunch. Feeling very bold, he walked up to the front door – he was, after all, a young gentleman with an appointment – and rang the bell, stepping backwards when the door was opened by Mrs Sharples, who gave him a look of pure hatred, and since she then slammed the door, couldn’t have got a receipt from him.
Dodger stared at the emphatically closed door for several seconds and thought, I don’t have to believe what just happened. He pulled himself upright, brushed the dust off his coat and grabbed the bell pull for the second time, till at last the door was opened once again by the same woman. Dodger was ready, and even before she had finished opening her mouth he said, ‘This morning I defeated the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and if you don’t let me in we will see what Mister Charles Dickens has to say about it in his newspaper!’ As the woman ran down the hall he shouted after her, ‘In big letters!’
He stood waiting by the open door, and very shortly after this he saw Mrs Mayhew walking towards him with a smile of a woman who wasn’t sure that she should be smiling. She came a little closer, lowered her voice and said, in the tones of one almost certain that she was going to be told the most enormous lie, ‘Is it really true, young man, that you were the one who this morning defeated the most dreadful of villains in Fleet Street? The cook told me about it; and apparently, according to the butcher’s boy, the news is already the talk of London. Was that really you?’