Artful: A Novel, Page 2

  So it was that when the Artful emerged from his aborted incarceration, he discovered the following circumstances had transpired.

  Fagin had been arrested, tried, convicted, and hung before a courtyard full of entertained well-wishers.

  Having been the center of gravity for his band of rapscallions, the youngsters had quickly dispersed, most of them putting London to their back as hurriedly as possible lest their association with the late overseer of cutpurses and pickpockets wind up with their sharing his fate. One of them, Charley Bates, had been so appalled by what he had witnessed that he absented himself from the life of a criminal. We will currently not trouble ourselves on bringing up his occupation save to say that, if it becomes relevant, we shall inform you of it thusly: “There stood Master Bates.”

  Nancy, she who had represented the ultimate in female pulchritude to Dodger, despite the fact that any true gentleman—as opposed to the faux gentleman that the Artful made himself out to be—would have taken one look at her and been repulsed because of her low office—unless, of course, he was prone to take advantage of her services and thus employ her briefly for higher office . . . alas, poor Nancy’s premonitions had been all too real, and she had been bludgeoned to death by the man in whom she had misplaced her trust and faith. She had always believed he would be the ruin of a woman already ruined, and in that regard, her trust and faith in him were, in fact, well placed.

  That man, of course, was Bill Sikes, whose escape attempt from the mob baying at his heels went amiss when he inadvertently hung himself with the very rope he hoped to use to scamper to safety amidst the rooftops. This greatly frustrated his pursuers because failing to capture him alive meant that he could not be executed at their convenience and on their schedule—this being the same crowd that would not have given a halfpenny for Nancy’s life while she was living it. Thus it has always been: Only in death do worthless people have worth.

  And then there was young Oliver, whose entire association with Fagin and his band was the result of Dodger’s own actions, when he had come upon the lad in the little town of Barnet on the outskirts of London. Dodger had seen possibilities in the boy, perceiving the perpetual sorrow Oliver wore around him like a greatcoat as a distinct advantage, and was sure he would make a splendid beggar and even better source of distraction. The plan had been, as Dodger hatched it in his constantly scheming mind, that young Master Twist would stand at curbside or accost pedestrians while looking limpid-eyed and pathetic, making them easy pickings for Dodger to relieve them of their valuables. As you well know, matters did not pan out for Dodger as he had planned, though—a rare misfire in his normal calculations. Indeed, things had gone so completely awry since the appearance of Oliver in Dodger’s life that the Artful was inclined to wish he’d never set eyes on the creature in the first place. Yet for all the disaster that had befallen everyone who came within the influence of Master Twist’s orbit, Oliver himself had landed upon his feet in a manner that any plummeting cat would have envied. Indeed, the Artful had espied the aforementioned felinesque Master Twist in a hansom less than a week after he had managed to extricate himself from the hospitality of those in authority (yes, yes, we are aware we have not yet explained how the Artful managed to escape transportation to Australia; we shall do so in the very next chapter, and so ask for your patience until we arrive at that point in the narrative). So on the side of the curb stood Dodger, aghast, as there—on the side of a smiling older man—sat Oliver, who was so ebullient that one could have leaned against him in pitch-blackness and had sufficient illumination to read a book. Oliver looked neither right nor left and took no notice of Dodger at all as the cab rolled by.

  To be charitable to Oliver (or more charitable, as has been explained above), the Artful’s greatest weapon had always been his invisibility. Indeed, it was a power shared by all children who lived upon the street, for no one of any substance gave them even a first look, much less a second. But Dodger had honed his illusion of absence far beyond anything that others of his ilk could aspire to. Yet now he became a prisoner of that selfsame ability he had exploited, for though he waved frantically from the curbside and even shouted Master Twist’s name once or twice to attract his attention, it was to no avail. Whether it was the wind and the hustle and bustle of the crowd that drowned Dodger’s words or that Oliver’s interests were so upon the man who had recently adopted him as his own son that he failed to notice his former friend, Dodger couldn’t be sure. All he knew at that particular moment was this: He might well have been a pane of glass, so thoroughly transparent was he.

  Dodger considered sprinting after him, for there was none fleeter of foot than the Artful, and it was possible that he might have caught up. But then what? Ask whether Oliver remembered him? Beg for tuppence?

  In the words of a man with his own disturbing tale (which must wait for another time): “Bah, humbug.”

  The Artful straightened his coat, snapped his chin up, kept his wavering top hat in position with that customary imperceptible tilt of his head to which we earlier alluded, and declared briskly, “I have my pride; yes, I does. A gen’leman don’t have no need to be runnin’ after the attentions of some former street urchin aspirin’ to move up to a class what he don’t belong in. That”—and he snapped his fingers—“for Oliver Twist.”

  Thus having wrapped himself in a cloak of self-delusion that one normally had to reach full adulthood to acquire, Dodger went upon his way without once looking back (save for the three or four times he looked back until the cab vanished into the gathering evening).

  And so it was that the Artful Dodger reclaimed his rightful place upon the street. His first order of business was to seek shelter; sleeping in the streets or in back alleys had quickly worn thin. His natural inclination was to hie himself back to those domiciles that had served him for so long, namely the beloved run-down pit of squalor that had been Fagin’s den of thievery. But he dared not, for the whispers in the wind declared the nature of the place public knowledge. This made the prospect of taking up residence therein dodgy for Dodger.

  “What if Fagin peached on us,” muttered the Artful to himself, “in the hope of savin’ his scrawny neck from being drawn even scrawnier? And what with me just having taken my leave of that fine ’stablishment, which is to say the jail, they might come lookin’ for me here, if they was having a reason to come lookin’, such as Fagin’s peachin’.” Having come full circle in his speculations, Mr. Jack Dawkins did not hesitate to turn himself from his path and head instead in another direction entirely, one that he had not walked for a good long time but now found himself drawn to slowly and inevitably because it was his personal starting point, the place where his life had begun. All of it had started there, and so it was that it was there that he went now, the place being Drury Lane.

  Night rolled in and brought the fog with it, and the Artful sank into its embrace like a child clinging to its mother’s bosom. He always enjoyed the fog. It had served to cover his criminal activities any number of times. Thanks to the fog, he had been able to sneak up on people without their seeing him, and then vanish with their purses or snuffboxes securely in his pockets. Once again he felt momentary gratitude for having escaped from being shipped off to Australia. He knew very little about the continent down under, but he doubted that the atmosphere would have been at all as suitable as his preferred environment.

  The cobblestones were uneven, the cracks thick with dirt. Ladies of the evening were gathered at street corners, and some cast speculative eyes upon Dodger as he approached, for the fog obscured his age and his high hat and long coat gave him the appearance of a fine gentleman and potential customer coming their way. When he drew closer, of course, the painted ladies laughed and winked at him, but offered him nothing beyond that. Dodger, for his part, would remove his hat and bow deeply, even as sorrow panged at his heart.

  For in every one of them, he saw poor, dead Nancy.

  Nancy had b
een his solace, his escape from an even greater sorrow buried deep within him. When he had looked upon Nancy, so alive, so nurturing to him, his mind had a brief respite from memory of the woman in his past who should have been doing that very nurturing: his own mother, so cruelly and strangely snatched away from him.

  The flame of his mother’s murder had burned less brightly with Nancy in his life. Now, with Nancy gone, not only was the pain not mollified, not lessened, but instead it was doubled.

  Nay, quadrupled. For before he knew it, his feet—all on their own—had brought him to that very place that he had sworn he would never go to again, that pathetic little building that had been his family’s refuge from the hardships that the streets had to offer. He had not known what to expect when he came to it, and once he had, he stared upon it in confusion and looked around to make certain that the address was as he had remembered it.

  At its best, the collection of tiny flats within the rundown tenement had been barely livable. But at some point, fire had swept through the building and gutted it. The walls were stained with blackened soot, the windows gone, half of the door hanging stubbornly upon the hinges as if refusing to acknowledge that its days as a useful portal were long gone. The roof was mostly intact, which was the most that the building had to recommend it.

  For one such as Dodger, that was tantamount to a three-star endorsement from a board of governors.

  Leaving the door to its solitude, he clambered in through one of the windows. There was no one around, which was a relief as he had been concerned that someone else might have seized upon the structure. Such was not the case, confirming for the Artful that, at least at this particular point in time, he had actually managed to find someplace in London so pathetic that no one could possibly want to reside there. He squared his shoulders and smiled in pride. “That’s something of an accomplishment of one sort or another, innit?” he asked no one save himself, and nodded in reply.

  Thus did the Artful Dodger find a place for himself where he was not always in residence, but was more often than not. Whether the landlord had abandoned it or the city had taken it over and simply could not be bothered to attend to it, he neither knew nor cared. He had found a new home, which was his old home, and was thus content. The memories of his mother remained vivid to him, and at first he had trouble sleeping at night because he could not get past his recollections. He would wake up crying out as he would see the events of her death played out in his sleeping mind. However, as time passed, they faded sufficiently so that he was able to rest in relative peace, and awakening was a much rarer—albeit consistently traumatic—circumstance.

  TWO

  IN WHICH THE READER’S PATIENCE IS REWARDED BY EXPLAINING THE SEEMINGLY INEXPLICABLE AND THE JAILER IS INTRODUCED FOR AS LONG AS HE SUITS OUR PURPOSES

  By now, you are doubtless becoming impatient in wondering just how it was that the Artful was walking the streets of London rather than striding the deck of a ship bound for the land of Oz (an excursion not to be confused with his later unexpected journey to the Land of Oz, an astoundingly unlikely sequence of events that will remain unexplored for the duration of this history). Lest this curiosity become so consuming that it impedes your ability to become wholly involved in the narrative, be aware that it transpired thusly:

  The Artful was only minutes departed from the courtroom, wherein he had laced into the judge and given him what for. The jailer was in the process of escorting him back to the lockup, there to wait for collection and enforced escort to the ship that the Crown’s representatives had arranged. Their intention was to make sure that the charm of Dodger’s acquaintance could be made with the savages, roughnecks, and criminals who largely comprised Australia’s population. The Crown’s representatives apparently felt that because the Artful was such a unique individual, it would be positively unjust to keep him to themselves.

  The jailer was two heads taller and five heads wider than Dodger, waddling rather than walking, quacking rather than talking, so much so that Dodger was quite certain that if the man’s boots were removed, they would reveal webbed toes. By contrast, Dodger walked with his customary swagger, and this seemed to sorely annoy the jailer, although whether it was because he considered it an inappropriate attitude for a rapscallion such as the Artful, or he was simply jealous because he would have been physically incapable of emulating it, is impossible to say. “Show some respect for your situation, you rascal,” he snarled at him. “Bedad, you should! What right have you to act like cock of the walk?”

  “The right of all free men and gentleman to behave the way God meant us to.”

  Angrily, the jailer lashed out with one meaty, oversized fist and struck the Artful squarely in the back of the head. The startled Dodger went down upon the unforgiving floor, scratching his hands; scraping his knees; and, most catastrophic of all, failing utterly to prevent his hat from tumbling off his head.

  “Know your place!” thundered the jailer. He hauled the lad to his feet, scarcely allowing Dodger the time to grab up his fallen hat, and shoved him forward with such force that Dodger nearly fell once more before he righted himself at the last second.

  The jailer guffawed loudly as he approached Dodger’s cell. He reached into his pocket, extracted the keys, and opened the cell door with a rickety creak. “In ya go!”

  The Artful strode in, but then, once having crossed the threshold, his shoulders slumped mightily as if the air had just been let out of him. The jailer slammed the door shut behind him, and then Dodger said something so very softly that the jailer could not hear him properly. Naturally expecting that it was some sort of imprecation, he snapped, “What said you, boy? Bedad, I’ll beat you senseless, even through these here bars—see if I don’t!”

  Still not turning around, Dodger said, “I simply wish to offer my fart-helt apologies, sir, for you’re just an honest man doin’ your job, and I’m a dishonest lad doin’ mine, and of the two, you have far more reason to hang your head high than does I.”

  “Well,” harrumphed the jailer, “it’s nice to see that in the twilight of your criminal career in our lands, you have some slight ability to see things as they are instead of what you wish ’em.”

  The Artful turned to face the jailer then, and to the shock of that rotund individual, there were tears streaking the boy’s dirt-stained face. The jailer took a step closer to make sure he was seeing aright, and with an agonized sob that only the truly repentant could expel, Dodger shoved his arms through the bars and embraced the startled elder. “God bless ya, sir! And may ya get everythin’ that’s comin’ to ya!”

  “And you, my lad,” said the jailer, unsure of what to do and settling for awkwardly patting the top of Dodger’s hat. “Look at this new chapter of your life not as a punishment, but as a great adventure and a chance to start off with a clean sheet.”

  “My sheets will be of the cleanest, sir—I swear it so!”

  The Artful then stepped back, having removed his hat and holding it in front of him and bowing so deeply that he could well have looked between his own legs.

  The jailer waddled away then, swaying with the sort of pleasure that only comes from a bully having satisfaction from the powerless. As he did so, though, he began to become aware ever so slowly that something was wrong or out of place or out of joint, but could not quite determine which one or the other. And then, with the force of a thunderclap, it came to him. The side-to-side gait that was his customary method of locomotion was unaccompanied by any sounds other than the rubbing of his thighs and his own labored breathing. And the particular sound in question that was conspicuous by its absence was the jingling of his keys. By a startling lack of coincidence, the absence of the sound of keys was accompanied by an absence of actual keys.

  The jailer voiced a roar that was intended to be on par with that of an infuriated lion, and indeed sounded like that to him in his own head (but to an observer or listener was much more akin to
a consumptive mallard) and sped—which is to say moved with slightly less slowness than he typically did—to the cell that he had just absented.

  This gave the jailer something in common with the Artful, who had likewise absented the cell. That was where the similarity ended, for the jailer knew where he himself was, but was clueless as to where Dodger had gone.

  He sounded an alarm, which made it sound as if the consumptive mallard had acquired severe agita, but in the end it accomplished nothing. Dodger was long gone, and it was only subsequently that the jailer realized his purse had decided to provide Dodger some company in his sojourn from His Majesty’s tender embrace.

  “This cell will not remain unoccupied long—I swear it, bedad!” bellowed the jailer, and in that, he was right. He wound up spending the next six months in it himself for his rank incompetence.

  THREE

  IN WHICH WE CONTINUE IN THE SPIRIT OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER BY EXPLAINING HOW SOMEONE WHO SHOULD, BY NO RIGHTS, BE WALKING THE STREETS OF LONDON, NEVERTHELESS IS DOING PRECISELY THAT

  It is extremely unusual for anyone to interfere with, interpose upon, or in any way impede the progress of an undertaker, because the average person, of whom there is an insufferable number in the world, prefers to distance him- or herself from anything having to do with that inevitable end result of life, that common condition in which we all find ourselves at some point or another, and from which none of us has a hope of getting out alive.