The man was tall. He loomed above them, rain running from an old Army trenchcoat and dripping from the brim of his trilby hat. Jim Cooper, ex-serviceman, thirty years old and minus his left arm, stared down at the huddled figures of a boy and girl. He was just home from a late evening stint at the United Kingdom Club near Blackfriars, where he worked in the kitchens. There he did every kind of odd job required of him, including washing-up, at which his one hand did the work of two in the way of a man determined to surmount his handicap.
The boy spoke.
‘Please, mister, we’re only sittin’, we ain’t doin’ anyfink except just sittin’.’
‘But where’s your home, why aren’t you there? D’you know what the time is?’
Orrice drew a breath. Some instinct told him to confess.
‘Please, mister, we’re orphans,’ he said, and Effel pushed her face deeper into his shoulder.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Jim. That was a blow to the heart. He had been an orphan boy himself. Worse, an illegitimate orphan. He had never known his father, and he could not remember his mother, for she had been knocked down and killed by a tram when he was only three years old. He had grown up in an orphanage, knowing no family, no relatives. But one day, when he was five, a woman had come to see him, a woman called Lily Downes, in service as a lady’s maid. She had been his mother’s closest friend, and only recently had she discovered he was in this orphanage. She brought him comfort and friendship. She visited him four times a year, out of affection for his dead mother.
From Lily Jim learned about his mother, a country girl called Betsy Miller who had come to London to go into service. She was pretty, bubbly and laughing. Lily became her best friend. After a year in service with a family in South Norwood, Betsy began to talk about a lovely soldier she had met on one of her days off. She was an affectionate young lady, but not fast, no, no-one could ever say she was fast. It was not long before she showed the signs of being very much in love, but these were followed by little moments when she was obviously unhappy. She confessed to Lily that her soldier had gone ove seas with his regiment. But since he had given her an engagement ring before he left, Lily did not think she ought to be quite as unhappy as she was.
The shock came when she gave birth to a son in the early spring of 1891. The family she and Lily worked for were outraged, and Betsy was dismissed. She departed with her child in a desperate search for another post. She had not said who the father was. Only Lily knew it was the soldier, and that Betsy had not heard from him for months. Lily said to Jim after he had left the orphanage, ‘I don’t think he ever knowed about you, Jim. He went off to the African wars with Kitchener before you was born, and probably before your mother knowed you was on the way even. He was probably killed dead by them Fuzzy-Wuzzies. So don’t think too hard of him, and never think hard of your mother. She was a sweet woman, she suffered having to tell her parents about you, they was strict church people. I went to the village in Hampshire where your mother come from, I went while you were still in the orphanage, I wanted to tell her parents where you was, but their son wouldn’t let me in. You’ve got to know, Jim, that your mother loved you, she did, and she loved your father. She wouldn’t of given herself to any man she didn’t love. It’s not every child that’s born of love, like you was. Your father wrote to her from Africa, then his letters stopped coming, which was when he was probably killed, only the Army never got in touch with her about it, well, I suppose because she wasn’t what they call a next-of-kin. Not his wife, you see.’
‘Mister?’ said Orrice tentatively, for the man was so silent, just standing there and looking down at them, the wind sweeping him with rain.
Jim came to.
‘You’re wet through, the pair of you,’ he said quietly. ‘I think you’d better come up with me to my room and wring yourselves out.’ He rented just one room, with a gas ring, a coal fire, a bed and some neat and tidy sticks of furniture. He was under notice to quit at the moment, not because he and his landlady, Mrs Palmer, had fallen out, but because she wanted the room for her elderly brother, recently bereaved by the loss of his wife. Jim quite understood. He had a fortnight to find new lodgings. That was no problem. There were always families in Walworth looking for lodgers to help out with the rent. ‘We’ll be quiet, kids, we don’t want to wake sleeping people, do we?’
‘Mister?’ said Orrice, a little overcome.
‘Oh, Orrice, could we go up wiv ’im?’ begged Effel, emotionally overcome herself at the thought of a cosy room with four walls, a ceiling and perhaps some warmth. She lifted her head. Jim saw a pale little face and wet eyes. He also saw childish entreaty.
‘Come on,’ he said, and used his key to open the door. Getting to their feet and picking up their sacks, Effel and Orrice followed him into the dark passage. Jim struck a match and lighted a candle that stood in its holder on the hallstand. Picking it up, he led the way up the stairs, the boy and girl creeping up after him. One stair faintly creaked, but that was the only noise, and Jim warmed to the pair in the way they were taking such care to be quiet. He opened the door of his room, put the candle down on a little table, and struck another match. He lit the gas mantle. Orrice and Effel ventured in, and he closed the door. They saw then that the left sleeve of his trenchcoat was empty, its end tucked into the coat pocket. Effel, wet and shivering, stared at it. Orrice winced in boyish sympathy.
In a corner of the room was the gas ring. Jim lit that too, his manipulation of match and matchbox dexterous. The fire was laid. He thought for a moment, then applied another match to that. The paper took instant hold. It flared, and a moment later the chopped sticks of firewood began to spark and crackle. Effel regarded the leaping flames in bliss.
‘Oh, mister, ain’t that nice?’ she said.
‘And a hot drink, that would be nice too?’ said Jim, taking his hat off.
They looked up at him. He was dark, his hair blue-black, his cheekbones sparse of flesh, his face long. His appearance might have been saturnine had he not owned a wide, good-looking mouth and the little lights of a friendly man in his grey eyes. People who had known his mother might have said he had inherited some of her warmth, some of her willingness always to believe the best of people. Jim had left the orphanage at sixteen when he secured a job with a small building firm and lodgings with a family in Mill wall. He went to evening classes to better himself, and he devoured books.
There was, however, the ever-present inquisitiveness of people and friends about his background, his family, and his admission of illegitimacy made some feel sorry for him. It also made parents steer their daughters away from him. If he did not like either reaction, he at least eschewed bitterness or self-pity. He felt himself to be as good as other men, and he took most setbacks philosophically. However, when war was declared in 1914, he turned his back on the awkward moments of his social life by joining up.
He lost an arm in 1917. That took him out of the war, but not back into his old job. A one-armed man was not too useful to builders. He picked up temporary work from time to time. Not until five months ago did he click for a permanent job when, after working on a temporary basis in the UK Club, the manager took him on as a fully-fledged member of the kitchen staff. It was not the kind of job he had hoped for at the beginning of his working career, but a job was a job these days, and this one at least kept him physically active. With his small pension and his wage, he was content for the time being. Like many other men, he was waiting for the country’s economy to improve. He even had a little money saved. He also had his father’s name, Cooper, given him by his mother.
‘Oh, can yer make us ’ot cocoa?’ asked Effel, the crackling fire a joy to her. ‘But yer only got one—’ She stopped and blushed. She couldn’t think how anyone could make cocoa with only one hand. ‘Orrice could do it for yer, mister,’ she said shyly.
‘Orrice?’ said Jim, removing his coat. They saw the pinned-up left sleeve of his jacket. Effel gulped. Orrice looked awkward. ‘Who’s Orrice?’ asked Jim, smiling.
‘Please, ’e’s Orrice and I’m Effel. ’E’s me bruvver and I’m ’is sister.’
‘Is that a fact?’ asked Jim gravely, hanging his hat and coat on the door peg. ‘Horace and Ethel?’
‘Orrice and Effel Wivvers,’ said Orrice.
‘I see.’ Jim accepted what everyone else did. ‘Well, I’ll see to the cocoa, Orrice, while you and Effel get your wet things off. Here’s something for you, Effel.’ He opened the door of a cupboard and took an old woollen dressing-gown off its hook. Effel received it shyly, hid herself on the blind side of the bed in her modesty, and began to undress. He filled a kettle from a pitcher and put it on the gas ring. In front of the fire, its coal beginning to glow, Orrice took his clothes off, standing to let the warmth caress his naked young body. Jim gave him a towel and he rubbed himself briskly down with it.
Effel, peeping, whispered, ‘Mister, could yer give me a towel too, could yer, please?’
Jim got a fresh one from the cupboard. He took his weekly wash to the laundry in Walworth Road, round the corner from Browning Street.
‘Coming, Effel,’ he said, and threw the towel. It sailed over the bed and landed on her. Effel was warmer. There was a fire burning and a kettle on the gas ring. And there was a nice man looking after them. So Effel almost giggled as the towel arrived on her head. She used it to take the damp from her body, then wrapped herself in the dressing-gown. It enveloped her, and it spread itself on the floor around her feet. Jim, putting cocoa into enamel mugs, saw her emerge from her hiding-place, a little girl in an old woollen tent, arms full of her clothes. Orrice had his short woollen pants back on, that was all.
‘Orrice, oh, yer naughty boy, standin’ like that not dressed,’ she said. ‘Yer got to excuse ’im, mister, we been walkin’ two days, we been everywhere, lookin’ an’ walkin’, an’ all down the market too where a man on a stall let Orrice ’ave some oranges what ’e ’ad to make good. I ‘spect ’e’s tired, so yer got to excuse ’im lookin’ rude.’
‘Crikey, she’s talkin’,’ said Orrice to the fire.
‘That’s good for all of us, talking,’ said Jim, ‘but not too loud, of course.’
‘Oh, no,’ breathed Effel, blanching at the thought of going back into the cold wet night because of loud talking.
Jim made the cocoa and put in a little milk from the can.
‘Effel, lay your clothes over the fender,’ he said, ‘then you can both drink your cocoa. And while you’re drinking it, tell me all about yourselves. I know you must both be very tired, it’s well after midnight, but I think I’d like to know a little about you before we get you tucked down.’
‘Yes, mister,’ said Orrice. He and Effel received the hot cocoa gratefully, and they sat on the rug in front of the fire to drink it. He looked again at Jim’s empty sleeve.
‘Our dad was in the war,’ he said.
‘And I look as if I was too, do I?’ asked Jim.
‘Was yer?’ asked Orrice.
‘We all were, weren’t we, in our different ways?’ said Jim.
Orrice, relishing the hot cocoa, said, ‘I dunno about that, mister. I mean about what everyone did in the war, except—’ He thought about what to say. ‘Except most people still got both their arms.’
‘Oh, there are thousands worse off than me,’ said Jim. He sat down. ‘And it’s you two I want to hear about. So tell me.’
They told him their story. Jim did not need to own great perception to sense the heartbreak. It was not only in the loss of both parents, it was also in their realization that their only relatives, Uncle Perce and Aunt Glad, could not permanently house them. But many aunts and uncles had children of their own, problems of their own, and a depressing lack of money. Jim could not condemn Uncle Perce and Aunt Glad. Nevertheless, he could understand why the heartbreak of the boy and girl was the more acute. He himself had been spared that kind of anguish, for at the age of three he would probably have suffered more from bewilderment than anything else. It was not until he was several years older that the sad moments had come, and with them a longing to have known his mother and father.
Lily Downes had filled in many blanks for him. When he left the orphanage he was given his birth certificate. That told him what Lily told him. Mother, Betsy Margaret Miller, spinster. Father, John James Cooper, bachelor. He often thought that one day he would go to his mother’s birthplace, the village of Elderfield in Hampshire, and see if he had any relatives there. Something must have happened to the few personal possessions she had at the time of her death. Letters and so on. He had nothing of hers, not even a photograph.
He fully understood why Orrice and Effel did not want to go to an orphanage. Every kid sensed that life at an orphanage was of a regimented kind. And there was no institution that could give this brother and sister what their parents had given them. He suspected they might have been a rough and ready couple, but affectionate for all that. Cockneys were typically of that kind, large-hearted and with great family loyalties.
What to do with these kids, what to do about them? Jim knew what officialdom would expect him to do, but he took all officialdom with a pinch of salt. He had little time for rules and regulations that were supposed to be for the good of people, but in the main made things easier for those who administered them from the offices of town halls, county halls, government departments and institutions.
‘Well, tomorrow we’ll have to see about things,’ he said.
‘Mister, you been swell,’ said Orrice, ‘and me an’ Effel don’t want to be no trouble. Yer real swell, takin’ us in for tonight, and we don’t want yer to go to no more trouble than that. Yer won’t tell no-one we’re running away, will yer?’
‘No, I won’t tell, Orrice, cross my heart,’ said Jim, but that was a promise that might be difficult to keep.
Effel whispered in her brother’s ear.
‘Mister,’ said Orrice, ‘Effel wants to know are yer really goin’ to let us sleep in a bed tonight?’
‘Yes, in this one,’ said Jim, ‘and I think it’s time you kipped down now.’
A minute later they were in the bed, Effel wearing the old dressing-gown, Orrice his woollen pants. They fell asleep almost at once. Jim settled for the fireside rug, with a chair cushion for a pillow. After his years in the Army he could sleep anywhere. A fireside rug and a cushion represented relative luxury. All the same, he lay awake for a while, thinking about what alternatives there were to an orphanage. Effel and Orrice slept in bliss, Effel dreaming she was sailing through warm billowing clouds of fleecy white, and Orrice dreaming of squashy oranges.