The ice man and his cart, with its two horses and distinct ICE painted in tall letters upon the side, make domestic deliveries in the mornings after supplying the butchers and fishmongers. Oliver has a block sent directly down to the larder, where, in spare moments, Jonathan has at it with a pick and helps Oliver pack it into boxes to store vaccine. One physician notoriously destroyed a vial by carrying it in the warmth of his pocket, and, since then, Oliver's erred on the side of caution by not performing the smallpox vaccination on calls, but asking that children be brought to the surgery so that he can administer it on the premises. Jonathan is not altogether happy about the fact that the vaccine's produced by inoculating and then scraping the skins of calves. "But it's still a cow-pox, ain't it," he says, dubiously, "if it comes from cows?"

"Actually, it's a particular type of cow-pox. Most people suffer only the few days with slight fever, but there have been unexpected effects observed afterwards. Notable extension of the tailbone, growths on the head, and changes to the vocal chords that cause a sound like a bleating - or possibly a lowing..."

Jonathan's small, freckled face falls a mile. The ever-curious Hester, whose nose has been appearing around the door in between washing the breakfast pots and pans, emits a little shriek, as everyone in the house has been given the vaccine. "That was a joke, by the way," Oliver finishes, in a hurry.

"Doctor Brownlow, sir, I ain't going to turn into a cow, am I?"

"Jonathan, I give you my word that both of you will remain fully human." Oliver keeps one of the vials back; he's due to carry out two vaccinations this morning. "Make sure that these stay on the floor, where it's cool and away from the food," he adds, and returns back upstairs.

On Monday, the House of Lords had sat for the first time on the Vaccination Extension bill. The Lancet had previously published an extensive editorial on the matter, and an account of the debate had afterwards appeared in The Times, with the participating peers quoted almost to the point of tedium. If the bill is taken up, vaccination against the smallpox will be no longer merely advised for newly-born children, but enforced. Oliver has perused the articles repeatedly, in two minds. The doctor in him throws his hands into the air in celebration that controlling the disease has been acknowledged as a public health matter; the citizen has doubts that enforcing the issue to the point of imposing penalties for 'non-compliance' is the method by which to go about it. A man who feels that an action is being forced upon him will always have the natural reaction of balking at it. Oliver favours education and demonstration. As he climbs the staircase, he wonders idly about the likelihood of Jack allowing a lancet near him. Morning surgery lasts until half-past twelve; afternoon calls, until five o'clock.

Hunger once more carries him back across his own threshold in the evening; today, however, it seems less of a hunger for food alone - although his stomach informs him that this will also be not at all unwelcome. He bursts to tell someone of his recent discoveries, but, more than that, he has the desire to simply see Jack again; to have him under his roof; to, as always, know simply by his presence that he's safe and well. He has, he feels, always been the contemplative sort, much given to debating rights and wrongs, what might or might not have come to pass if circumstances had been different to what they are, and the depths and intricacies of the human character, and he finds himself aware once again of the fleeting wish inside him for Jack to become something, if only for an evening, that would make inviting him to his home not such an irresponsible risk. And then he realizes, just as abruptly, that while there are men who might have fallen into their ways through need alone and would readily fall out if offered honest work, and men who might have been enticed to go against their natural inclinations by poor company and are open to reform, and men like himself who have qualms about their deeds, if Jack were not what he is, he simply would not be Jack.

Later dining is not the best for digestion, but Oliver typically has little choice, not having the timetable of a man in the City who puts down his pen or locks up his door at a designated chime of the clock. Although he sets hours for practice, he's constantly aware that he could, in theory, be asked for at any time. Dinner at seven enables him to return in good time, perform his routine ablutions with sponge and soap, change his clothes, and rest for a short while with a newspaper or book, and it's the last that Jack's sudden arrival this evening cuts short. Sarah looks so startlingly pink by the time that she enters the drawing room with him that Oliver devises wild theories about what the other man has managed to do within the space of just a few minutes.

"Please finish setting the table, Sarah," he says, quickly. "Mr Dawkins and I," rising slightly from his chair and indicating for Jack to take the other, "would like to have a few words before dinner."

Sarah exits in such a hurry that her skirts almost take the lady fern near the door with her. Oliver turns to his visitor. "Jack," he says, for what feels as if it were the hundredth time, although it has a distinctly softer edge to it now.

"Oliver," Jack acknowledges. He makes himself comfortable, his mouth straight, but something subtle in his eyes. The previous tension between them is now more of something resembling a delectable secret. He seems to be intrigued as to whether this evening is - as they had previously phrased it - business or pleasure, but determined that if it should be the former, the latter will still accompany it as an uninvited but very prominent guest.

"Can I ask what you said to my housemaid in the hall?"

Jack shrugs. "Only that she seemed like she was a very tidy and handy girl, and I was certain that she must please you about the place."

"That could be interpreted two ways, and if you'd care to remember what I told you before, the second one would be wrong."

"By your choice more than hers, I'd say."

"What in the world are you talking about now?"

Jack looks at him, quite incredulously. "She's sweet on you."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Oliver, you might read a lot of them books of yours, but you still ain't half slow to catch on some of the time. Now, I'll grant you that it mightn't be the first thought in some fellers' heads that someone else with a cock has a personal interest in theirs, leading to my having to elaborate in our own situation. But I'm having a hard time with this one."

"You have an interesting imagination, but I sometimes wonder what it is that sets it off."

"And I sometimes wonder how it is that you've ever managed a fuck."

"I've made a friendship, and asked," Oliver says, honestly.

"You've done the one, but I'm still waiting for the other."

"You're beyond any hope." With a smile of his own, Oliver rises to fetch the pocketbook containing his notes from the bureau. He only half-believes Jack, yet the idea is a strange one to consider, perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, the fact that he thinks of Sarah with some fondness. If he had ever been one to approach his servants as a man, it would have been in search of a companion, not a conquest; a girl with a simple nature who he cannot help but feel would have suited him far better in marriage than many of the wealthier young ladies whom his uncle holds quiet hope that he might make a match with. In another life that had not been destined to be so inextricably bound up with Jack's, he might still have flouted convention.

He turns to the back pages, and, returning to stand before Jack's chair, hands the book to him, holding it open. "Tell me what you make of this," he says.

Jack accepts it and reads obediently. He has the habit of shaping the words with his lips as he does so, speaking a few of them aloud. When he reaches the deeply-scored Robbery & Maliciously Wounding, his eyebrows twitch upwards. "May I suppose that this is all about your snuff-box cove? Davy told me how he filched it and you'd got it into your head to look him up."

"You'd suppose correctly."

"Well, I can't say he did himself any favours. Never did care all that much for violence, unless the other feller started it first. As for leaving a poor bugger to die -" Jack's mouth twists, as though in distaste. "I reckon he deserved whatever he had coming to him."

Oliver nods. He wonders if Jack considered that Mags Lewis started it. "Would you say that he deserved to be robbed himself?" he asks.

Jack opens his mouth to continue, but stops. He looks at Oliver. Thoughtfully, he sucks at the inside of his cheek, a small hollow appearing briefly on his right hand side. Then he releases it, and slowly, very slowly, a grin begins to grow. "Oh, Oliver," he says, "oh, my fine old covey! Are you telling me that the first owner of this here sneeze-box and our good friend Mr Richard Manns happen to be one and the same?"

"I'm almost as sure of it as I can reasonably be. His age; the accent that he speaks with; the illness that I've been treating him for." In short terms, Oliver explains the malarial fever, so prolific among the natives in the Indies. "What I really need," he goes on, "is to have the man remove his shirt. If I'm correct, the reason that he refuses is because he has the tattoo beneath his arm that deserters are given. Even if he tries to disguise it with some sort of paint, something should still be visible. The aim is that everyone about them should recognize it. If he'd ever been hired, it might have been found, but, as I've said, he appears to be a self-made man. I don't believe that he was fortunate and assisted by his family, as I was. I believe that he stole those first funds."

"I presume that you was struck by the irony of one thief stealing off another when this came to light?"

"It wasn't altogether lost on me," Oliver replies.

Jack closes the pocket-book and hands it back. He looks Oliver up and down. "Speaking of Davy," he says, "he also informed me when I went to collect our key this morning that you in action was a beautiful thing to behold. Now, I was about to confess to a fancy or two about that, but it seems that he meant that you picked that pocket like you was born to it."

"I hardly went about it like an expert. But I managed it, and without his noticing, so that does constitute success, I admit."

"Oliver, it might have taken you 'til now, but you finally done old Fagin proud."

"I think that he had even more of the devil in him than you do." It seems strange to Oliver that he should feel nostalgia, even a sort of fondness, at the memory of a man who had tried to corrupt him; to make him a common criminal. And yet it always remains so. Skinflint, cheat and liar as he was, Fagin had nevertheless taken in an unknown boy from the streets, sheltered him, and told a child who believed himself less than nothing that he could be the greatest man of all time. The law would insist that Fagin was a man who stole childhood for his own gains, but if he had not put a roof over the heads of boys whom no-one else would, the fact remains that many of those same boys would have either met their ends remarkably quickly, or been forced to support themselves by far more horrific methods than lifting wallets or robbing shops. Suddenly Oliver feels a little empty, as he realizes how natural it seems, even without knowing for sure, to think of the man in purely the past tense. As a doctor, he forms one half of the industry that deals in death, his partner for the second leg of the journey being the undertaker. He supposes that he has only moved throughout his life from one to the other. Yet, 'dead', to him, describes the shrunken, anonymous faces for whom his last gesture was to issue a certificate stating the cause of their passing. It doesn't seem to fit a man who he ate with and whose roof he slept beneath, if only for a short time. And yet he asks, "He is dead, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"No need. Long time ago now. I was fifteen, sixteen - somewhere thereabouts."

"It still stands. I know that you thought of him as a true friend."

"The way I see it, Oliver, there's plenty of us what has the bad luck to be orphaned. And then there's some of us what are orphaned twice." Something flits across Jack's face. Then, almost as quickly, it vanishes, and he sniffs the air. "Now, is that eels on the way what I can smell?"

"Almost," Oliver answers. "Lamprey." His brows crease a little. For a brief moment there, he'd seen a glimpse of someone else.

-oOo-

There are two sofas against the wall in the dining room as well as the surplus chairs. Oliver explains about the fact that he also uses it as his waiting room, the surgery being adjoining, at which point Jack requests to change seats so that he can eat with his back to the latter. Conversation over dinner should be by the laws of etiquette kept light so as not to spoil the food, but Oliver remembers many thoughtful discussions around the table as he grew up that never seemed to ruin his uncle's satisfaction with the meal, and he's personally inclined to find his appetite stimulated by the same.

Sarah stays to help serve if Oliver has a larger number around the table; if not, the dishes are easily passed from one to the other. After the first remove, they focus on a very good pair of roast fowl. Jack turns his plate about a time or two in great interest, prods the meat extensively with a fork, and, taking his first bite, finally speculates it to be duck.

"Wigeon, to be exact," Oliver says, enjoying his enthusiasm. Having Jack as a guest is a delight in a multitude of ways. There might be business to be transacted here this evening, but the pleasure is fully present. Jack, he thinks, is the reflection of the cruder, more sensuous side of life, and perhaps in some ways the truest.

"Well, wigeon or pigeon, it tastes a treat. I'll be more than happy to clear any of yours what gets left over, and the same with that sherry triffle what you said was over there. You can have the vegetables."

"Trifle. And I don't have any worries at all with regards to vegetables, as long as they're cooked well. I don't believe that Mrs Phillips has once generated a cause for complaint throughout her entire time in service. They help to regulate and stimulate the bowels, in my opinion. I've never met anyone who could take much fruit in its raw state without the colic, though."

"My bowels is quite happy, thank you, and seeing as how I ain't got the luxury of a privy seat all to myself, I'd just as soon not stimulate 'em any more. If you've taken a liking to shitting morning, noon, and night as well, I wish you all the best in your labours." Noticing Oliver's expression, he pauses, cocking his head quizzically.

"I'm not sure if I could even have these conversations with another doctor."

"You couldn't have had our last conversation with anybody."

"The part where you taught me to pick pockets?" Oliver says, softly. "Or the part where you asked me to bed?"

"Oh, there's lots of fellers what could show you how to dip."

"And the other?"

"That," Jack replies, "was personal."

Oliver cuts another slice of his bird. "I did pay honest money for this," he says, innocuously, nodding towards Jack's own. "I hope that you're going to finish it."

"Oliver, I always finish what I start."

Footfalls on the kitchen staircase and the creak of a door serve as a poignant reminder that the two of them are not alone in the house, even if they might be, temporarily, in the room. They exchange glances. Such, Oliver thinks, is the way. His exchange for comfort will always be a fundamental lack of the privacy that Jack takes for granted. He straightens himself in his seat.

"So, to business, then?" he says, firmly.

"To business," Jack agrees.

"Manns is to travel next Monday. The eleventh of April. I found this out when he requested to change the visit that I'd wanted to make to another day. He'll be returning home that night, but late; he expects it to be after twelve o'clock. The butler is sitting up to attend to him when he comes in, but I should think that he won't stray far from the pantry before Manns arrives. If you want to look at the safe, I think that you have an opportunity."

Jack's nodding before he finishes speaking. "Could do with knowing how many sliders the lock's got, if it's a Bramah. There's different models, see. And how good the spring is. Cove I know tried one of these and found out his regular instrument what he carries wasn't strong enough for the job."

"I'm sure that you know what you need to do, Jack, although I don't pretend to understand the technicalities."

"I'm a dab hand in my field. Exactly the same as what you are in yours."

"No," Oliver says, smiling, "you're just a wonder. Even if I thoroughly disapprove of your motivations most of the time."

"I could show you a few wonders if you'd give me half a chance." Jack reaches forward, still chewing, and taps Oliver's plate with his fingers. "Now, eat. And when I've had a taste or two of that triffle, we can talk some more."

Although London is engaged in the protracted turn from winter to spring, the evenings are still drearily chilly more often than not. The fog that creates a form of twilight during the day, its damp, saturating particles already more of a mizzle than a mist, now changes to a more defined fall of light rain that the breeze patters against the window-pane. Oliver imagines that Jack is as pleased as he is when they return to the drawing room to pull forward two easy chairs and take their seats closer to the fireplace. They cup their brandy glasses in their hands for a while, for the glowing arrival in the mouth that disperses through the veins like the lick of an inner flame. Sarah brings a plate of bread and butter after a short time, and one of plum cake, then shuts the door quietly behind her. The sounds of her boots die slowly down the hall. Jack swirls his liquor about his glass, well stuffed with food and clearly delighted by the prospect of the escapade ahead.

"I prescribe it for colds," Oliver explains, "to be taken in hot tea. It helps to clear the sinuses. The fruit brandies are lighter and better for women. Simple remedies can still sometimes be quite effective."

"You're a considerate physic," Jack says. He takes a trial sip and lets the brandy slide over his tongue. "Very considerate indeed," he adds, with obvious pleasure.

"A frustrated one at times, though, when I see patients who can't afford the prescriptions. Nor can they afford to stay in bed and forfeit a day's earnings - although sometimes I wonder if they aren't better off away from their homes. Rooms that barely see daylight, no dust-bins to be found, so much damp that it runs down the walls, courts that sit on giant cesspools..." Oliver breaks off, realizing that, if he continues, he will simply have no idea where to end.

Jack eyes him. "You spend your time in places like that, and you're going to end up one of your own patients."

"If they need me, what option do I have?"

"They don't need you dead. Neither do I."

"Adequate hygiene and clean air do go a long way. The first thing I do at home is wash. My clothes are hung outside to fumigate in the sun when the weather's fine; by the scullery window, otherwise."

"Oliver," Jack says, patiently, "if you've breathed it into your guts already, you ain't going to flush it out at the wash-stand."

Oliver turns his glass between his hands a few times, studying the golden refraction of the gas and firelight through the brandy. "Well, that would depend on whether it's in the bowels, in the lungs, or lying upon the skin, wouldn't it?"

"Now, what is it what gives me the feeling that the word 'spores' is going to feature in this conversation?"

"Only a percentage of people living and working near filthy water or fouled air are made ill by it. Can you come up with a better reason why?"

"Yes." Jack sits back in his chair, and swings a foot up onto the small stool. "It's all down to your own constitution, whatever life's got planned out for you, and a dose of luck to decide whether you live or die of it." He meets Oliver's gaze, levelly. "I always did have a bit of luck on my side."

It takes Oliver a moment or two to realize what it is that the other man means, but when he does, he feels the trickle of the brandy through his blood cool rapidly. "What else did you have?"

"The typhoid."

"Typhoid? Dear God!"

"Me and Fagin. He died; I lived. I had it first and he tried to nurse me, what he knew about nursing, which wasn't much."

Oliver cannot help feeling something akin to a hatred of himself; a disgust that there should have been a point in time when he had been unutterably fortunate and the scale of fate had been so weighted in favour of him, and so heavily against Jack. While he slept peacefully among clean sheets, Jack had been left to alternately rave, dream, and vomit in a hovel perhaps not unlike the one that they and Fagin's other boys had inhabited together. While he had dabbed the light sweat of a summer's day from his brow as he bent over his sums or his Latin in the schoolroom, Jack had burned with the fever that threatens to consume one from the inside out. Oliver has heard of sudden outbreaks of typhoid fever to which close to half of those affected succumbed. But the Dodger had once more proved his nickname apt. With a hop and a wink, he had sidestepped death.

"You stayed with him, after all?" he finally asks.

"Partners, wasn't we?" Jack shrugs, in a matter-of-fact fashion. Yet it's clear to Oliver. The wily old Jew, who had been friend and mentor to Jack, is the only figure whom he might have called 'father'. Jack seems to him to have a good many friends nowadays, but no family. A man on his own, who never draws quite as close as he might, can never again have anything taken from him that matters.

He thinks on it for a minute or so. Then he puts down his glass and holds out his hand.

"Fagin's boys?" he says. That there's no real truth in it on his side is irrelevant. All that's important is that it's good for Jack to hear.

Jack considers this. Then he accepts the hand and shakes it. It feels strangely formal, almost gentle, compared to what's already passed between them, but there's something good about it; something strong and true. "Not many of us about, now," he says. "Who'd've thought that it'd come down to you and me in the end, Oliver Twist?"

"I always wondered what became of Charley," Oliver says.

"Oh, are you referring to the gent what still is, as far as I'm aware, the merriest grazier in all Northamptonshire?" To Oliver's astonished look, he adds, "Went straight, didn't he? A country farmhand. I heard it from a cove in the dairy trade, sometime after."

"I can only say that I'm somewhat surprised."

Jack shakes his head in a manner resembling acute sorrow. "No more than I was. My old cocker, Charley Bates, one of the best Adam-Tilers you could have ever had, shovelling cow-shit. The world just ain't put together right."

Oliver lets his eyes drop to where their fingers still clutch. He could develop, he thinks, a great love for the feel of a man's hand in his. "Sometimes I think that it's put together perfectly."

"Us boys used to have a competition going. We was always at it - who got to be the man what made the best haul of the day. Used to love waiting to see old Fagin look the goods over. Knew quality when he saw it, he did."

"Let me guess. You always won?"

Jack looks modest. "Usually."

"For what it's worth, I'm sure that Fagin would be proud of you if he were here now."

"Of the both of us, I'd say."

"A lot prouder," Oliver says, soberly, "than my uncle would be. When he took me into his home, he believed in me from the first. He had confidence in me; trusted me. It looks as though that might have been misplaced."

"How is Mr Brownlow, Senior, these days?" Jack enquires.

Oliver manages a smile. "Elderly, but well, and refusing to consider a retirement. I think that he'll only leave the Treasury when they carry him out."

"Well, I should like to send my good wishes to the determined gent, though I don't think I'll leave him my card. Ain't the Treasury the place what looks after public spending? Deciding where it is what gets what?"

"Yes," Oliver says. He feels that he can see where this is going.

"A distribution of the wealth, like."

"Yes, Jack."

"Well, all it is that you're doing is re-distributing a bit of wealth to some fellers what need it more that what its first owner does. You're just following in his footsteps, ain't you? And dispensing a bit of home-made justice along the way. I reckon that he might understand that, if he was to give it some thought."

"He might. I'm not sure, though, that he'd understand that I first set out to do it because of what I felt for another man."

Jack's eyes grow warmer, like the brandy. "Oliver."

"Not to mention that I violated the Hippocratic Oath by engaging in intentional ill-doing in the house of my patient."

"The ill-doings is all going to be mine, mate. You're off scot-free."

Jack's thumb brushes the tiny hairs on the back of Oliver's hand. For a while, he concerns himself with other thoughts than the fact that he's sitting in his drawing room planning a housebreaking, with a known housebreaker, and with a forgery of a key that he stole tucked firmly in the other's pocket.