Miss Pilgrim did not accompany Jim and the children on their outing to Brighton. She had too much embroidery work on hand. Despite the rent she received, she still needed the extra income, for she was no more than solvent. She had very little to call on for a rainy day. She shared with the people of Walworth the strain of being as poor as a church mouse. She could not afford new clothes, and her wardrobe remained a well-preserved one. It was fortunate that in Walworth she could shop economically and well for the necessities of life, and she was a familiar figure to the market stallholders.
She was not turning out as much embroidery as formerly. She did not seem to have as much time. There were thieves about in the shape of her lodgers, who stole hours every week from her. She put her embroidery aside for an hour every evening, except at the weekends, in order to improve Horace’s diction. She put it aside frequently for Mr Cooper. She fretted at her slide into self-indulgence. Worse, at the fact that she was yielding so much of her privacy. But the burden she had taken on when accepting lodgers was of her own making, and she must endure it.
Of course, the time would come when her lodgers would leave. Mr Cooper would realize that if his wards were to have any kind of future, it should not be in Walworth lodgings. He must marry, he must give the children a mother, and give them all room to breathe in a rented house. He had affection for his manager’s daughter, Miss Keating. He really must begin to think seriously about her.
Miss Pilgrim’s teeth snapped a thread.
Effel turned in her bed, sighed, snuggled beneath the bedclothes and drifted into contented sleep. Orrice lay sound asleep beside Jim, the boy dead to the world. It was the last Friday of Jim’s holiday, and he had taken them to Hampshire again. They had met his grandmother, who had heaped apples and sweets on them, and been ever so nice to their guardian. Then they had had a picnic in the country, and a ramble in the afternoon.
While the kids slept the sleep of the contented and weary, Jim slept in fits and starts. Something was happening to his life. Something was not right with his life. Something was missing. He had the kids, he had things of his mother’s and new memories of her, he had comfortable lodgings, a steady if modest job, and a landlady whom he could not fault, even if she was a perfectionist in many things. He also had grandparents and the affectionate friendship of Molly. But there was still something missing.
He sat up. His nostrils twitched. There was an acrid element in the air. Silently, and without disturbing Orrice, he slipped from the bed in his flannel pyjamas. He opened the door and moved out on to the landing. The darkness of the hall and stairs was faintly broken by flickers of light. Smoke was rising from the hall. From the top of the stairs his startled eyes saw the cause. Against the front door was a heap of burning rags, the flames feeding on what he could smell, paraffin. By their light he saw a long rag depending from the letter-box, with flickering fire creeping up it. Doorpaint was peeling. Jim ran back into the bedroom, took his old, hard-wearing trenchcoat from its hook, ran down the stairs in his bare feet and into Miss Pilgrim’s kitchen. He plunged the coat into her scullery sink and turned on the tap. He flooded the coat, picked up the heavy, sopping garment, ran back into the hall and smothered the burning mass, using his one hand and his body. A tongue of flame, escaping the onslaught, caught his hand and scorched it. He moved, he extinguished the little burst of fire, plunging the hall into darkness, except that the doorpaint was beginning to burn. He lifted the soiled coat and killed the little running flames.
A door opened and Miss Pilgrim appeared, a lighted candle in its holder lifted high in her hand. Her hair was loose and flowing, and she was clad in a long white cotton nightgown. She gasped at the scene.
‘Mr Cooper – oh, my heavens, what’s happening? What is all that, and that smell, and that foul smoke?’
Jim dropped his coat over the smoking mass.
‘Someone tried to bfurn your house down, Miss Pilgrim.’
‘Look at you – wait.’ She turned on the gas and lit the hall mantle with the candle. The hall glowed with light. She paid no heed to the scarred front door or the covered heap of blackened rags. ‘Come into the kitchen.’
Jim took a look at his soaked trenchcoat lying heavily over the mass. Escaping smoke was lessening. He followed Miss Pilgrim into the kitchen. She lit the mantle there.
‘There’s a mess to clear up,’ he said.
‘Never mind that for the moment. Look at your hand. Go to the scullery sink and run cold water over it.’
‘It’s just a slight burn.’
‘Please don’t argue. Come.’ She went to the scullery sink and turned on the tap. Jim placed his hand under the cold running water. It eased the burning sensation at once. She pushed back the sleeve of his pyjama jacket. ‘Let your hand stay there for three minutes. Clear cold water is the best immediate antidote, did you know that?’
‘Some people use cold tea. In the field hospitals during the war, the medics used ointment and bandages.’
‘Probably as they did during the Crimean war,’ said the unflappable Miss Pilgrim. ‘Mr Cooper, thank you for what you’ve just done. The children haven’t woken up?’
‘No, and I hope they won’t. Someone stuffed a hell of a lot of paraffin-soaked rags through your letter-box on to your mat, and set fire to them with a long rag that was already alight, of course. It could only have been Mrs Lockheart. You’ll have to face it, she’s off her rocker.’
‘Well, you aren’t, Mr Cooper, you have a great deal of good sense. Thank goodness the fire woke you up.’
‘I happened to be awake at the time. I smelled the stuff.’
‘God sometimes takes care of us, and is sometimes indifferent. Who can blame Him, when so many of us are such wretched creatures? But this time, you were His instrument of care.’ She turned the tap off and looked at his hand. ‘There, we’ve saved it blistering. Do it again in a couple of minutes, then we’ll see if it needs covering up. I do not cover ordinary burns up myself.’
‘I’ll go and look at that mess, to make sure it’s out.’
‘I’ll do that. You stay here.’ Miss Pilgrim went and inspected the charred heap. When she returned she said, ‘Your coat is ruined. I shall buy you a new one.’ It would cost what she could not really afford, but there could be no question of Mr Cooper paying for it himself.
‘But you’re insured against fire, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course. All the contents.’
‘Then the insurance company will pay. Also for the cost of making good any damage. That’ll be for the landlord to settle, through his insurance.’
‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘I can’t be myself not to have thought of that.’
‘About Mrs Lockheart, you’ll have to do something,’ said Jim.
‘That poor woman is a mental case, Mr Cooper. She has been in an asylum for years. She’s out now, obviously, but is still not quite sane.’
‘Not quite sane? She’s a lunatic.’
‘Come, Mr Cooper, don’t raise your voice, you’ll wake the children.’ Miss Pilgrim turned the tap on again. ‘Let’s try some more cold water.’
Jim placed his hand under the stream and smiled at her.
‘There aren’t many like you, are there?’ he said.
‘Like me? What do you mean?’
‘That my admiration for you is total.’
‘I thought it wouldn’t be long before your nonsense made its entrance.’ She turned the tap off and inspected his hand again. ‘There, I’m sure we’ve nothing to worry about with that. Hold still.’ She went into the kitchen, opened a dresser drawer and came back with a large piece of cotton wool, which she used to dab his hand dry. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘I am proud of you, Mr Cooper, and consider myself fortunate to have you as my lodger. Now you may return to your bed.’
‘As your lodger, might I point out I’m not a small boy, Miss Pilgrim?’
‘I’m glad you’re not,’ she said. ‘Small boys are terrors. Luckily, Horace is an exception. Yes, go up now, Mr Cooper, I’m very grateful that you saved us all, but you have your work to go to in the morning.’
‘I’ll clear the mess up first, I’ll dump it outside.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Pilgrim, ‘I am not going to have it on my doorstep for everyone to look at in the morning. I’ll get a bucket and carry it out to the dustbin at my back door.’
‘I’ll put a glove on,’ said Jim, ‘and if you’ll give me your coal shovel and the bucket, I’ll see to it. If anyone’s to go to bed, it’s you. Off you go.’
Miss Pilgrim, of course, was quite against taking orders from her lodger, and in the end they cleared up the mess together, Jim wearing a protecting glove. Before he went up, he elicited from Miss Pilgrim a promise to speak to the vicar about Mrs Lockheart. She refused to go to the police, but she agreed to ask the vicar for his help. Someone must contact the Asylums Board. The vicar had the right kind of authority to do that.
The next evening, Jim cleaned up the door, rubbed it down and repainted it. Orrice and Effel wanted to know what had happened, and why there was a new doormat, and Jim got away with a reference to an accident involving paraffin.
In her compulsive growing attachment to the children and their welfare, Miss Pilgrim kept a watchful eye on them during the rest of their holidays. The summer went, brief autumn followed, and winter arrived, with its damp and its fogs. The country, struggling to recover from the war, braced itself to fight the hardships of winter. Alice went to and from school wrapped in a warm cosy coat and a woollen hat, and Jim bought warm coats for Orrice and Effel. Alice could not be detached from her growing friendship with Orrice, and Orrice found he could not be detached from his protective role as Effel’s brother or Alice’s sweetheart. Mr Hill kept an encouraging eye on Orrice’s abilities, and Miss Forster did her best with the awkwardness of Effel.
Jim took Molly out on occasions, but did little or nothing, relatively, to advance his cause with her. He knew himself incapable of asking her to take on Orrice and Effel as well as his illegitimacy. Her father, George Keating, was a man of the old school, despite his general geniality.
He arrived home one evening in early December suffering a headache and little bouts of feverishness. He had a bad night, and when he crawled out of bed the next morning he was a sick man.
Miss Pilgrim, in her kitchen and at her breakfast, looked up as knuckles rapped on her door.
‘Come in,’ she said. She might have sighed at this continuing invasion of her privacy, but her voice was quite welcoming.
Orrice showed his face, a worried face.
‘Please, Miss Pilgrim, could you come?’ His diction showed definite improvement. ‘Could you, please? It’s Uncle Jim, me and Effel don’t think he’s very well.’
‘Well, we can’t have that, Horace, can we? Is he in bed?’
‘No, Miss Pilgrim, ’e’s on the floor, ’e just sort of folded up. Could you come and look at him?’
Miss Pilgrim did not reply. She came swiftly to her feet, picked up her skirts and ran up the stairs. Orrice, following on, saw yards of white lace. Jim was lying beside his bed in his pyjamas. His body was racked with shivering, his eyes closed, his breathing erratic.
Miss Pilgrim pulled the bedclothes far down. Effel stood silently watching, upset and helpless.
‘Horace, will you help me, will you take hold of his legs while I lift his shoulders? We must get him into the bed.’ Miss Pilgrim spoke urgently. Orrice stooped and took a firm hold of his guardian’s legs. Miss Pilgrim, bending, put her hands under his shoulders, to his armpits. ‘Ready, Horace? Now lift at one go.’
They lifted him and placed him on the uncovered sheet. Quickly, Miss Pilgrim drew the bedclothes up over him and tucked them in on her side. Orrice tucked them in on the other side.
‘Please, ain’t he very well?’ asked Effel.
‘No, Ethel, I’m afraid he isn’t,’ said Miss Pilgrim. She felt Jim’s forehead, and was appalled. He was on fire. ‘Horace, who is his doctor?’
‘Doctor? He’s not been to no doctor since ’e found me and Effel, Miss Pilgrim.’
‘Then will you run and get Dr McManus in the Walworth Road?’
‘Oh, I know ’im, Miss Pilgrim, I’ll run all the way.’
‘Yes. Don’t worry about school for the moment. Tell him he must come, tell him the message is from me. Go, Horace, be as quick as you can.’
The boy rushed away. Out of the house, he ran fast through the cold, wintry morning.
Effel peeped worriedly at her guardian. Jim was burning but shivering, his mind bursting in his thumping head, his awareness of the presence of Miss Pilgrim a vague, elusive thing of running fire. She hurried downstairs and came up again with two blankets. She laid them over the bedclothes. She felt Jim’s hand. That too was alarmingly hot.
‘’E’s only a little bit ill, ain’t ’e?’ asked Effel anxiously.
‘We’ll see what the doctor says, child. There, you go off to school. Have you had breakfast?’
‘Don’t want none. ’ave I got to go to school?’
‘Yes, you must, Ethel,’ said Miss Pilgrim. It was better for the girl to be out of the way. ‘It will please your guardian if you make no fuss, and please me too. Horace will join you when he comes back. Everything will be all right with the doctor here.’
‘We can come ’ome dinnertime?’
‘Of course, just as you usually do.’
‘A’ right,’ said Effel, and went to school reluctantly, thinking about what had happened to her mum and dad when they’d been taken ill.
Orrice ran all the way back from the surgery. He found Miss Pilgrim seated beside the bed in which his Uncle Jim lay shivering and restless.
‘’E’s comin’, Miss Pilgrim, the doctor. I said I come from you, I told him about Uncle Jim being on the floor all shivery, like, I told him we put ’im in the bed. He’s comin’, Miss Pilgrim, only I ran back to tell you, like. Is Uncle Jim a bit better?’
Miss Pilgrim saw the boy’s worry and concern. Mr Cooper had won himself a place in Horace’s affections. She silently prayed for both of them, and for Ethel.
‘That’s splendid, Horace. I’ll let Dr McManus in. You go off to school. Ethel went a little while ago.’
‘Yes, Miss Pilgrim.’ Orrice hesitated. ‘Can’t I stay? I can make ’ot lemonade, if yer like. I can do things like that.’
‘I’ll see to that, Horace. You go to school. I’m sure your guardian will be better when you come home for your dinner.’
‘I wouldn’t like—’ Orrice stopped.
‘We’ll see, Horace, we’ll see. Thank you for going for the doctor. Run off to school now.’
Orrice went even more reluctantly than Effel, but he shut from his mind the thought that having lost their parents they might also lose the man who had saved them from an orphanage.
Dr McManus made no bones about the fact that the patient was already in crisis. Miss Pilgrim put a hand to her throat.
‘Crisis?’
‘How long has he been sick?’
‘I don’t know how long he’s been as bad as this. He was at work yesterday, and made no comment to me on his return in the evening.’ Miss Pilgrim bit her lip. Mr Cooper had made a habit these last two months of putting his head into her kitchen and saying hello to her every evening on his return from work. He had not done so last night. Horace had told her later that his Uncle Jim had a headache and had dosed himself with a Beecham’s powder. ‘But he did tell Horace he had a headache.’
Dr McManus frowned. Vicious flu was sweeping the country. It had galloped up on this man. It could do that. It could give someone a bad headache and shivering fits one day, and kill him the next. Or take its time to be fatal.
‘He’s in extraordinary fever, Miss Pilgrim. Perhaps I should arrange to get him to hospital.’
‘No.’ Miss Pilgrim was swift and emphatic. ‘I will nurse him. I have nursed Chinese people in fever, and was doing so when I was sixteen. I will take your instructions, doctor. He’ll only be one more patient among the hundreds already in hospital. Let him stay where he is. That is, if you think I’m competent to do as much for him as a hospital can.’
‘You know I think you fully competent,’ said Dr McManus. ‘I’ve brought tablets and medicine. Give him two tablets every—’ He thought. ‘Every two hours, and one tablespoon of the medicine in between. Keep him fully covered. Don’t worry about food, but you can pour as much liquid into him as he’ll take.’
‘Fresh hot lemonade?’
‘Excellent. Then keep your fingers crossed, Miss Pilgrim.’
‘It’s as bad as that?’
‘You’ll know by midnight. I’ll look in again this evening. Oh, take two of the tablets yourself, and give one each to his wards. They’re a preventive as well as a cure, although as a cure they’ve been known to fail. I have to tell you that. He’s your lodger?’
‘He is my friend, Dr McManus.’
‘He’s a privileged man, then. Oh, one more thing. If you find it difficult to get him to drink the liquids, use a teapot.’
‘A teapot?’
‘Put the spout into his mouth.’
‘That is so practical, doctor.’
‘I thought you’d like the idea. Good luck.’
‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’
Orrice and Effel ran home from school at dinnertime. Not to see what Miss Pilgrim was giving them for the meal, but to see how their guardian was. Miss Pilgrim came down to let them in and assured them she was doing everything for him that the doctor had advised. She was sorry not to have prepared a hot meal for them, only sandwiches. They were first to swallow a tablet each, they would find them on the table beside their plates, and drink water to wash them down. Then, when they had eaten their sandwiches, they could come up and see their guardian for a moment.
She said nothing about how worried she was. Her lodger seemed worse by the hour, his fever racking him, his shivering unabated. He kept coming to and staring at her out of eyes hotly bright with fever.
She went up to him again, while the children obediently did as she had requested. Effel made no fuss at all about taking the tablet, although she didn’t know what it was for. Orrice, sharp of mind, said it was so they didn’t catch no flu themselves.
They went up when they’d finished their sandwiches. Miss Pilgrim was sitting beside the bed, a sponge in her hand, a bowl of cold water resting in her lap. They watched as she applied the sponge to their guardian’s forehead. They couldn’t think why she was doing that when they could see he was shivering. But his face did look very hot and flushed. He opened his eyes.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, his voice dry and husky.
‘It’s us, Uncle Jim,’ said Orrice, ‘it’s Effel and me.’
‘I’m wiv Orrice,’ whispered Effel uncomfortably.
‘Orrice and Effel, Orrice and Effel.’ Jim’s voice wandered. ‘Well, I never, Orrice and Effel. Where’s our angel?’
‘She’s sittin’ next to you, Uncle.’
‘She’s got a sponge,’ said Effel.
Jim sang croakingly, ‘Angels come to funny places, some of them with dirty faces.’ New shivers beset his aching body. ‘Not Miss Pilgrim, though, not—’ His voice wandered away and his eyes closed. Effel ran out, going into her bedroom. Orrice followed her. Effel was crying.
‘Don’t cry, sis.’
‘Our dad did that,’ she sobbed, ‘our dad said funny fings when ’e was ill.’
‘Our dad won’t let Uncle Jim die, Effel. When you’re in ’eaven, you can do things for people that’s down here.’
‘We won’t ’ave no-one again, no-one,’ sobbed Effel.
They did not want to go back to school for the afternoon classes, but Miss Pilgrim was gently persuasive, and they went in the end. She did what she could for their guardian, she was constantly at his bedside, and she watched him fighting the fever. She gave him the tablets and the medicine at the prescribed times, and she got him to drink the fresh lemonade she made at intervals. He gave no trouble about that. She helped him sit up, she put the glass to his lips and he gulped the warm liquid like a parched man.
She sponged his fiery brow and she kept his restless body covered up. His skin was dry and burning. She knew he was in crisis, that unless she could help him break the fever he would be gone by morning.
The thought distracted her. There was a moment when she found it unbearable and fled downstairs to the kitchen, and to the sink, where she laved her face with handfuls of cold water. She paced the kitchen, her petticoat swishing and rustling, her distraught state made worse by a sense of angry helplessness. She might once have said such anger was a sin, for it was an anger at church and God.
She could not remain long from his bedside. She found herself running up the stairs to resume her watch. And as the time went by she saw him becoming worse. He was in incoherent delirium on occasions. She suffered for him, for what his racked, burning and shivering body was doing to him. But she persevered, she persevered in her watching brief and her ministrations. Sometimes his shivering was distressingly uncontrollable. At other times he tried to throw his coverings off. She kept them tightly around him.
When Orrice and Effel came home from school, she felt there was a pause in the worsening condition. He did not seem so racked. He was quieter. He was still very hot, but not so restless. She asked the children what they would like to eat. They could have supper, not just tea, she said.
‘Please, I don’t want nuffink,’ said Effel.
‘I’m not hungry, neither,’ said Orrice.
‘I don’t mind a drink of tea and a biscuit,’ said Effel.
‘I don’t mind that, neither,’ said Orrice. ‘Miss Pilgrim, would you like a cup of tea? I can make it.’
‘Thank you, Horace.’ Miss Pilgrim felt exhausted from her day-long watch. ‘You’ll be careful with the kettle, won’t you?’
‘Uncle Jim seems a bit better, don’t yer think?’ said Orrice hopefully. ‘D’you think he might like some tea too?’
‘Yes, Horace, we’ll try that, shall we? It can do no harm. It’s more liquid.’
Orrice gladly got on with making the tea. Effel stayed in her guardian’s bedroom with Miss Pilgrim. The little girl sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his dry hair, his dry, hot face and his closed eyes.
There was a knock on the front door.
‘Will you answer it, Ethel?’ asked Miss Pilgrim.
Effel went silently down to open the door. Molly Keating smiled at her.
‘Hello, Ethel. Is your Uncle Jim in?’
‘Yes,’ said Effel.
‘Only he hasn’t been at work today, and I wondered what had happened to him.’
‘’E ain’t very well,’ said Effel, and Molly saw the child’s unhappy look.
‘Is it the wretched flu, Ethel? Shall I come up?’
Effel led the way up. Moments later, Molly was in shock. Miss Pilgrim kept the children out of the bedroom while she explained the patient’s condition and told her of the doctor’s visit and prescription.
‘Oh, my God,’ breathed Molly, ‘all he had yesterday was a headache, he said.’
‘He’s now suffering a particularly vicious type of influenza, Miss Keating, it’s put him into a critically feverish condition which I pray will break.’
‘It must break,’ said Molly, ‘he’s someone we can’t afford to lose. God, he doesn’t deserve this. Look, you’re exhausted, and it’s showing. Go and rest for a while and I’ll sit with him for a couple of hours.’
‘I would rather continue,’ said Miss Pilgrim, ‘I’m really more worried than exhausted, and there’s the tablets and the medicine. I am in the way of administering them. If you’re agreeable, would you care to sit with the children? I think they need a grown-up with them, to keep them occupied. Mr Cooper, I know, would be grateful for that.’
Molly was unhesitating in her response.