Page 85 of River
CHAPTER 23
Trust
Noah
I couldn’t decide if I was the biggest fool or the luckiest man on earth.
Seeing River play with the puppies and laugh with my colleagues felt like a dream.
They all liked her right away, but I should have expected that much as she was funny and had excellent social skills.
Marvin recognized River from the tabloid magazines right away, and unlike the rest of us, she was able to understand him when he spoke his cockney accent.
“Lawd above! It’s daft. This lot don’t understand anythin’ I say.” Marvin chuckled. “I asked fer a cup ov rosy an’ they look at me blankly. Ye should see their faces when I speak on me dog ter me nan back ’ome. They stare like I’m tellin’ pawky. It’s enuff ter make a bloke emp’y a bottle ov Vera Lynn, innit.”
River laughed and looked around at the rest of us. “I don’t blame you for not understanding. Cockney is like a secret code of slang. It took me a while to understand everything when I first moved to London.”
“Can you translate? I understand something about him speaking about a dog, which makes sense, but the rest is a blur to me,” Vicki, one of the American sisters said.
“No, he’s not talking about a dog. He’s talking on his phone. The word dog refers to phone.”
They all frowned in confusion.
“There’s a system to it; you see, the cockney accent is hard enough as it is with the way they cut out sounds, but they also use a particular type of rhyming that makes it extra hard. It’s kind of fascinating really because the slang is an old type of code from back in the day when criminals didn’t want the police to understand what they were saying to each other. Let me give some examples and see if you can guess the code.”
“Okay.” I straightened up in my chair. I loved codes and the idea that this was developed to trick English police officers only enticed me.
“Fall on your bottle and glass.” River gave us time to think.
“That’s an easy one,” Marvin noted, but the rest of us scratched our necks.
“The system is that it’s always two words where the last one rhymes with the meaning we’re looking for. What rhymes with glass?”
“Class,” I exclaimed quickly.
“Yes, but that’s not it.”
Marvin was entertained and smiled widely.
“Ass?” Vicky suggested, and when River clapped her hands, I got even more eager to get it right.
“Plates of meat,” River said.
“Beat?” I suggested.
“No.”
“Feet?”
This time I got it right, and River leaned against me. “Well done.”
“Marvin, help me with some other ones.”
“Mork and Mindy,” he said.
“Windy?”
“That’s right. You’re getting the hang of it. What about dog and bone?”
