Two for Three Farthings

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘I know that, I ain’t daft,’ said Effel.

  ‘We could sleep on a pew,’ said Orrice.

  ‘A’right,’ said Effel tiredly.

  They went in. The darkness of the church seemed to make it like a vast cavern of mystery, black with night. Effel clutched her brother’s hand. Orrice made a decision.

  ‘Let’s go ’ome, sis. There won’t be no-one there now. We got the alarm clock, we can ’ave it go off at six and creep out before anyone sees us. Come on.’

  Effel accompanied him gladly. She forced her weary legs to make the journey along the Walworth Road. Late trams ran by, and there were some lights in addition to street lamps. They both watched out for coppers, Orrice keeping to himself the worry that Aunt Glad might have locked the front door of the house. Much to his relief she hadn’t. The latchcord was in place, and the door opened when he pulled it. They went in. Their home seemed cold and lifeless, as if no-one belonged to it any more. But their beds were rapturous to them. Orrice first found matches and a candle so that he could set the old alarm clock. Then he looked in on Effel by the light of the candle. She was fast asleep in her bed. She’d taken her boots off, and that was all. She’d slipped into bed with everything else on. Orrice went to his own bed and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  He was up the moment the alarm went off. He couldn’t get Effel up. He woke her, but he couldn’t get her to move. The warmth of the bed and its familiarity were something she was reluctant to give up. He went downstairs and put the kettle on. The gas ran out after a minute, and he put a penny in the meter. Then he made a pot of tea, and took a cup up to his sister. There was still a little milk and sugar in the larder. He woke Effel up again, and she greeted the hot tea with instant bliss. He managed to get her out of bed after that and made her wash at the scullery sink, using hot water from the kettle in a bowl, and he had a good wash himself.

  They crept out of the house just before seven, after they’d eaten some of their bread. The morning light was growing, and they hastened up the street to the Walworth Road before anyone saw them.

  They spent the day in and around East Street market. The market offered them scenes and sounds that were comforting and familiar, and it also offered them crowds in which to hide from bobbies. Orrice said they’d best start looking for an empty house in the streets on the other side of the Walworth Road when they’d had some hot Bovril and toast. Effel liked toast. The day was overcast, with a threat of rain and a slightly chilly breeze, and Effel was in need of something hot. Orrice took her to Toni’s Refreshment Rooms at ten o’clock. Toni’s dark eyebrows lifted ferociously when he saw them. Maria cast a smile.

  ‘You kids, what-a you want this time, eh?’ asked Toni.

  ‘’Ow much is two ’ot Bovrils and two slices of toast?’ asked Orrice.

  ‘Bovril? Bovril? What-a you think, I run a hospital? And what-a you two kids doing? You don’t-a go to school?’

  ‘Effel’s ’ad measles,’ said Orrice, which she had, a year or so ago. ‘I’ve ’ad mumps.’ Which he had, two years ago. ‘Effel’s still poorly, mister. ’Ow much is the Bovril an’ toast?’

  ‘Crazy kids, go away,’ said Toni.

  ‘Shush, shush,’ said Maria, and went through a door at the back of the counter. Orrice and Effel waited hopefully, Toni prowled about, served a customer, and prowled about again. Maria reappeared with a tray, on which stood two mugs of steaming Bovril and two slices of buttered toast, the toast created under the grill of her gas oven in the upstairs kitchen. Toni smacked himself on the forehead at his wife’s weakness.

  ‘What-a you up to, eh? We don’t-a serve Bovril or toast. You crazy too?’

  ‘Shush, shush,’ said Maria again, placing the tray on the counter.

  ‘Cor, you ain’t ’alf a sport, missus,’ said Orrice. ‘’Ow much, if yer please?’

  ‘Penny each Bovril,’ said Maria, ‘penny for two toasts. You like?’

  ‘You betcher,’ said Orrice, fishing for three pennies.

  Toni tore his hair.

  ‘I give up, I retire, I don’t-a like going broke.’

  Orrice paid Maria, and he and Effel carried the Bovril and the toast to a table. Orrice returned for the sacks. Toni watched out of dark, fiery eyes. Maria smiled and patted his arm. Toni grinned. New customers came in. Orrice and Effel devoured the toast and drank the Bovril. They lingered over it, savouring its heat and flavour.

  When they were ready to go, Effel scuttled out with her sack and it was left to Orrice to smile and say thanks.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Toni, ‘but don’t-a you come back again.’

  ‘Nice kids,’ smiled Maria. ‘Come back when you like, eh?’

  ‘Women, what-a you think of women, eh?’ growled Toni. ‘Barmy, eh?’

  ‘Nice, she is,’ said Orrice, ‘like our mum.’

  Maria’s smile beamed.

  Orrice and Effel went to the stallholder selling dates and oranges. His mound of dates was smaller, his mound of oranges glowed. He put on a straight face for the boy and girl. Orrice asked for half a pound of dates.

  ‘Yer sure that’s all yer want, me young cock sparrer? Yer sure you don’t want me stall and the shirt off me back?’

  ‘No fanks, mister, just a penn’orth of dates. The uvvers done Effel good yesterday, she’s better today, ain’t yer, sis?’

  ‘Ain’t,’ said Effel.

  ‘Gawd ’elp us,’ said the stallholder, ‘you’ve come to cough ’ooping cough all over me dates, ’ave yer?’ He bagged the fruit, weighed it, and handed it to Orrice. ‘You tell yer sister she’s goin’ to get me nicked for selling dates with ’ooping cough. Right, let’s see yer copper coin, sunshine.’

  ‘’Ere y’ar, mister.’ Orrice paid his penny. ‘Mister, we gotter go callin’, could we leave our sacks under the stall till we come back?’ Orrice had realized that carrying the sacks around all day was a bit daft.

  ‘I knew you’d come for more’n dates,’ said the stallholder. ‘What’s in the sacks? Bombs?’

  ‘Course not, we ain’t Bolshies,’ said Orrice. ‘It’s just fings we’ve collected.’

  ‘All right, shove ’em under.’

  It was a relief to unburden themselves and to go freely in search of a roof for the forthcoming night. They covered streets on the other side of the Walworth Road. Orrice showed revived optimism, but Effel soon became morose. They did see one place, but its windows were boarded up and so was the door. After two hours they went back to the market, where they ate hot faggots and pease pudding in a shop that specialized in providing this favouite cockney repast. The succulent meal cost Orrice and Effel sixpence. Orrice said living was expensive when you were running away, they’d best just have bread and marge for their tea later on. He thought he ought to look for a job. Wearing long trousers, people might think he was fourteen. Effel didn’t think it was much good getting a job when they hadn’t got nowhere to live yet. Orrice said they’d do some more looking, and if they still couldn’t find nowhere they could sleep at the house again, they could creep back in when it was dark.

  It rained for a while during the afternoon. That brought Effel’s spirits low. Orrice tried to cheer her up, but secretly he was feeling discouraged, not only because they hadn’t got a roof, but also because there was nothing to do except walk about. Normally he liked walking about, he liked shops and markets and lots of people, but it wasn’t the same when he didn’t have a mum and dad to go home to. And he hadn’t been able to find anyone who wanted him to run errands.

  The rain finally stopped, they retrieved their sacks before the market closed down, and went to Browning Gardens to eat bread and marge. They sat on a bench and Orrice cut slices from what was left of yesterday’s loaf.

  ‘Yer cut it all fick,’ complained Effel.

  ‘But we got to eat well, sis. Fin slices ain’t goin’ to do us much good. There y’ar, look, I put lots of marge on that slice. An’ we can have some dates after.’

  ‘A’
right,’ said Effel.

  Later, when it was dark, they entered their old street again. Much to Orrice’s bitter disappointment, this time the door was locked. Effel gave a muffled wail of anguish. Orrice supposed Aunt Glad had been round again to look for them and had removed the latchcord when she left.

  They decided to go to St John’s Church again. Effel was worn out, Orrice carrying on in determined fashion. They’d be all right in the church. It might be a bit awesome, but it would provide shelter. And they’d be out of the way of grown-ups. Grown-ups would ask questions. So would bobbies.

  It began to rain again on their way. They hurried. A glimpse of a bobby in Larcom Street sent them scurrying on to Browning Street, Orrice carrying both sacks at this stage, and Effel nearly falling over in her weariness.

  At midnight it was raining hard, and the rain was chill. They were huddled together in the doorway of a house in Morecambe Street. With the rain was an April wind, and the wind blew the rain into their faces. They were wet, cold and very tired, and every so often a sob shook Effel. Orrice cuddled her and she put her cold face in his shoulder. Orrice was uncomfortably sure he’d let his sister down by not providing her with a roof.

  They thought, of course, of their home and their mum and dad. They thought of the warmth of the kitchen fire, and the blissful comfort of their beds. They thought of the sounds of their dad getting up at five in the morning to go to his work in Covent Garden, and of snuggling rapturously down knowing they could go back to sleep and not get up themselves till eight, when their mum would have hot porridge ready for them. Orrice thought of his dad’s hearty, manly strength, and Effel thought of her mum’s warm, capacious bosom whenever she needed a comforting cuddle.

  Orrice knew they couldn’t stay where they were. The rain kept gusting at them inside the shelter of the shallow doorway. The street was silent, every house in darkness. Rain skittered over the street surface in the light of a lamp-post.

  ‘Orrice.’ Effel gulped back a sob. ‘We got to go somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, we best go to the church, even if we do get wetter on the way,’ whispered Orrice, ‘we could—’ He stopped as they heard slow and deliberate footsteps. Effel, shivering, clung tightly to her brother. Orrice watched. In the light of the lamp he saw a figure on the other side of the street, a figure in a cape and helmet, and the cape was wet and shiny with rain. The local bobby was on his midnight beat, making measured progress, his police lamp in his hand. Because of the street lamp, Orrice was sure he and Effel would be seen, even from the other side. But the bobby passed by. Orrice waited before whispering again. ‘Effel, let’s go to the church, we could get dry and put uvver clothes on.’

  Effel, at the mention of the church, said with all the pathos of a mourning heart, ‘Oh, I wish I was in ’eaven wiv our mum and dad.’

  ‘Sis, yer shouldn’t say that, Mum an’ Dad wouldn’t want yer to, they wouldn’t want yer to die yet, and you ’ave to die before you can go to ’eaven. Come on, let’s go now. It ain’t far, it’s—’ He stopped again, hearing other footsteps, different in their rhythm. They were the quick footsteps of someone hurrying to get out of the rain.

  It was a man. He came out of the gusting rain, and he caught them before they could move as he turned in at the doorway.

  ‘Good God, what’s this? Who are you, and what’re you doing here?’

  Their hearts sank.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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 h
ead. 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.