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Epps's Cocoa

  Mooney's Biscuits

  Mama Peevey sat on the low stool by the door, just inside for rainy days, out on the step when the day was bright. James leaned against her knee for years, it seemed, with Toby Dog leaning on him, until Lizzy and then Rose took his place.

  "Halloo there!" Mama would call to every passerby, and always get a call back. She'd chuckle, and pat a handkerchief against her neck, or her bosom, where he stared in wonder at the size of it. Nothing like his own skimpy chest, rib bones announcing themselves like so many tin soldiers.

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  James felt his insides wailing, preparing to leave the cottage and shop. She wasn't his born-from mother, but she was the only mother he'd ever known.

  WHAT THE PEEVEYS HAD BEEN TELLING JAMES ALL ALONG:

  In London every building is as big as a church .

  In London James will eat meat every day .

  In London James will have a bed all to hisself .

  In London James will have new shoes every year and brass buttons on his jacket .

  In London there is a queen. (Lizzy wanted more than anything to meet Queen Victoria and be adopted as a princess, so it was her who added that bit.)

  They'd had a hundred goodbyes and boohoos all week--at breakfast, dinner, suppertime, prayer time, and every minute in between. One or the other of them would be leaking about how it was the last bun he'd be eating out of that oven or the last taste of potato soup sprinkled with chives from Mama's garden or the last time there'd be a boy in the house, how it'd be them still together and him far away... one mournful reminder after the next until he put fingers into his ears and held his breath, hoping his eyeballs would pop out.

  Finally, Mama Peevey said he'd done his last chore. He was to take Toby Dog outside and say goodbye to Martin. James was more than six but his friend Martin was nearly eight, so he was bigger. He lived over the road

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  with two brothers even bigger than him. He had a real mother, and a stepfather named Bart who Martin called Fart but only with his brothers and James. Having all those biggers around, Martin thought he knew everything.

  Lizzy had been stuck on James like a shadow all day, so she was following close when Martin said, "Hey, last chance to hit the cabbages." They stood side by side at the edge of the porch to see who could pee furthest into the garden, and it was Martin, like always, being bigger.

  "That's nasty," said Lizzy.

  She wouldn't let Rose come outside to look. There was a struggle with the door and fingers got pinched and more whimpering and what Mister called bellyaching. Martin and James sneaked off and sat on crates next to the shed, whistling some, but quiet after a bit, watching evening coming. The sky was smudged with pink between the gray clouds.

  "Last night I listened," said Martin. "When I was in bed. My mother said something maybe you want to know."

  "You shouldn't listen to her," James told him. "Your mother is an old gossip, my mother says."

  "She's not your mother."

  "I know that."

  "She had another boy."

  "I know that. Is that your secret? I know all about Arthur. He died when we were babies. Turned blue, he did."

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  "There's a part you don't know." Martin picked up a stick.

  "What?"

  "When Arthur died, Mrs. Peevey was brokenhearted, my mother said. Cracked right in two, my mother said. She was going to pretend to the London hospital that it was you who died."

  "What?" said James. "What do you mean?"

  "She wanted to tell them it was the orphan baby who died. So she could keep you. She was that miserable, losing Arthur. She just wanted to have you for always, and to tell them a lie."

  James's head was wobbly as if he'd been smacked with Mister's big hand. He sat very still, taking in a long breath in case a sob burped out.

  "So, you know why she didn't?" Martin was digging with the end of his stick, spraying dirt over their toes.

  "Stop that," James told him, shaking his foot. "Why didn't she?"

  "Mister Peevey said no. He said the money was needed."

  "The money?"

  "They get money for you. Don't you know anything? They get al low ance, my mother calls it. To pay for what you eat and your clothes." He poked the stick into another hole, grinding it in.

  James looked down at his trousers, patched with Mama Peevey's tidy stitches. "But now I'm going anyhow," he said. "Tomorrow."

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  "That's right," said Martin. "Now they lose you and the money. But this way, at least, they had al low ance till you were six."

  "But ..." James rubbed a new worn spot above his knee. "The other way they could have kept me forever, saying I was Arthur."

  "Your dad wanted the money."

  "He's not my dad."

  "Yeah, my mother says Lord knows who your dad might be, but at least he must have been a handsome blighter. She was blabbing all this to my auntie Molly last night when I was in my bed. But then they talked about baking raisin bread, so I went to sleep."

  In the morning, James tried to chew a hunk of bread while Mama Peevey dressed him as if it were Sunday. Around his neck she hung the cord with a band dangling from it, his number pressed deep into the tin: 847229. Rose had one too, but she wouldn't be needing it for nearly four years.

  Mama Peevey looked at James and tilted her head and clucked her tongue. "Ah, the curls on you," she said. "You should have been a girl. With those eyelashes? You'll be a heartbreaker, mark my words."

  He didn't think being a girl was anything to wish for and a heartbreaker didn't sound so excellent either, so he wasn't surprised when Mister stuck his nose in.

  "What does he want to be a pretty boy for? He'll be better off knowing how to fight."

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  "He's only six!" she said.

  "More than six," said James.

  "Six?" said Mister. "And never had a bloody nose?"

  "Don't you dare!" said Mama Peevey, jumping up in a hurry. And Mister laughed, pretending to land his fist on James.

  "Never had a black eye? That'll change at the big school in London, you mark my words. You pick your friends with care up there," said Mister. "You'll want to be giving black eyes, not getting them." And out he went to watch for the cart.

  "Make me a nice cup of tea, will you, Jamie?" said Mama Peevey. "It'll be the last I get till the girls are growed two or three years."

  They sat on the bench by the table, waiting for the kettle to boil, her stroking James's hair with her fingers, counting the minutes of his very last hour.

  "I want to stay with you," he told her.

  "I've got nothing pretty to say," she whispered. "No way to fix things." Tears rolled across her freckled cheeks. James hid his face in her lap so he couldn't see. He couldn't ask her, either, about what Martin had said.

  Then Rose woke up, just what they hadn't wanted, and started her bleary-eyed mewling. Mister scooped her up, pressing her mouth to his shoulder. He pushed Mama and James out into the street where the cart was waiting, sent from the Foundling to bring them in. James winged a pebble toward Martin's window but it didn't get there, just fell with a thip in the dust.

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  They were three to start: the driver, Mama Peevey, and James. They picked up more foundlings along the way, but it was only them at dawn, peering back from the joggling seat, waving goodbye to Rose and Mister till they blurred with the road.

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  MARY 1876 Telling About That Margaret Huckle

  My mam and our dad knew each other all their lives in the village, meaning from being children up till sixteen when they began to walk out and, I'll guess, lie down as well. They were married two years and lost a baby and then had me when Mam was twenty years old.

  I didn't think about love, not till later, not till I were so blighted myself. I suppose my parents loved each other as much as they'd time for, with a swarm of children and Dad's vegetables and Mam's scrubbing and sewing, and all of it crowded i
nto our little house. There weren't the spats or blistering words as I've heard elsewhere. We'd got too much work for such bother.

  But that were long ago. Now we had Her.

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  "Her face is bumpy," said Davy. "Like she's saving currants in her cheeks for later."

  "Her nose too," said Thomas. "More bumps than nose."

  "Yellow," said Small John.

  "I wish she were pretty," said Davy.

  Pretty? Call a rotting potato prettier. Call a turnip with fungus on it prettier.

  Not safe to say out loud, true facts like that. Little boys take words and carry them like so many treats, to sprinkle on other ears. That were the lesson I learned in our crowded cottage and in our lane brimming with chatterboxes: Never say anything you don't want said again.

  That Margaret Huckle liked us mum. She hadn't any babies of her own, remember, she didn't know yet how a supper table could be, bursting with questions and spillage and jokes and fussing. She expected the grace, For-what-we-are-about-to-receive-may-the-Lord-make-us-truly-thankful-Amen, and then quiet, perhaps the clink of a knife or steady obedient chewing until the next grace, Thank-you-for-these-blessings-we-remain-in-service-O-Lord.

  "Are you not going to send these hollering imps to the wall? John Finn, are you not? Then I shall!" And up she'd get, porridge stick in hand, ready to raise welts.

  "Ah, now, Maggie dear," our dad would say on a good day, putting a hand on her arm, patting-like. "They're a bit rowdy, I see that, but they're children. Let's finish here and I'll take them to task later."

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  That were if his knees weren't aching or his back weren't pinching or his hands weren't raw from digging. On those days he'd be so weary that he didn't notice the uproar all around him and just sat with his jaw grinding away at whatever it met until Margaret Huckle began her tirade.

  "Are you that deaf, John Finn, that you don't hear the devils howling at your own table? Are you deaf on top of dirty?"

  He'd raise his face, surprised, it seemed, to find us there. He'd tug on his sleeves, knowing what offended, trying to cover his knuckles, as gray and grubby as roots, as knotted and gnarled. Up he'd look, suddenly hearing our noise. He'd see the furrows in his wife's potato face and he'd snarl, "Shut it!"

  My brothers would shut it in an instant, wiggling their bottoms back to sitting on the bench, Small John catching his breath with a whimper. Only Nan would set off wailing, scared by the bark, and that were my chance to catch her up and leave the cottage with a shawl around us both, as if bringing peace to Margaret Huckle's evening were my greatest wish.

  We'd go walking, Nan and me, and I'd sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" while we looked up at the sky strewn with silvery dots. I'd look up, anyway. Nan only cared to look at me and tap her teeny fingers at my chin or blink or sometimes chuckle, out there with the swirling night breeze in the lane.

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  We'd go back in eventually, and I'd tuck Nan into her cradle that were half an ale keg, really, that our dad put rockers on. He'd made it for Thomas but it still were sturdy; only been repaired once, after they'd piled in together for a pirate ship tossing on a stormy sea.

  I'd wash the boys' faces and make them do their own hands. I'd daub the worst dirt off the hems of things. I'd hear their prayers and polish their little white nubs of teeth with a soft cloth, Margaret Huckle not knowing to do any of it, and her new husband, John Finn, depending on me since Mam.

  The boys were good at night, unless Small John peed the mat, but even then the others'd just sleep while I peeled off his wet shirt and laid down dry flannel or papers as best I could.

  "They're like unbroken animals," Margaret Huckle said, gleamy wee eyes like beetles in a tub of bread dough. "Never trained right, and what chance do I have this late in the game? If they'd been mine ... well ... there'd be plenty different...."

  When I heard her slandering Mam and me, it made my teeth sharpen up like a hedge clipper.

  "They only misbehave when they're mistreated," I said. "They're boys."

  "Filthy boys."

  "Getting muddy is like eating supper, just a part of the day." And what difference does it make to you? As I'm the one doing the washing?

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  I had no practical idea for how to change our lot, except for wishing it would change. My wishes were about Her breaking a leg and suffering unspeakable pain before the infection set in, so her limb got swelled and festering before it were chopped off with rusty shears. And then she'd die, of course, and not a one of us missing her, not even our dad.

  I never once imagined it would be me leaving instead, me being forced to abandon the little ones to go somewhere so lonely and dismal that I'd be sick, aching for home, and find myself wondering if that Margaret Huckle were really so ugly? Or were I making up stories?

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  JAMES 1884 Arriving Back

  The Foundling Hospital looked like a mighty fortress. All the stories about London houses were true, it seemed, seeing those brick walls climb up toward the sky at the end of a driveway so long you'd expect Queen Victoria herself at the end of it. Mama Peevey squeezed James's hand as the cart trundled its rickety way through the gates.

  "We're like mice," he said. "And that's the dragon's cavern."

  "Brave mice," she said, but her eyes were drippy and neither of them was brave. There was a man in a tight black coat at the top of the stairs, peering down.

  "A male charge?" His voice came out like dull taps. "Leave him in the room to the left, madam. You proceed to

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  the offices on the right, where you will complete a report in accordance with the regulations...."

  Mama Peevey nudged James through the door on the left and stepped away. Suddenly he could scarcely see or hear for the hot sting in his eyes and the drumming in his ears. He was in a place wider and taller than he'd ever seen indoors. A line of boys, most of them five or six like him, stood fidgeting, with several more sitting on a bench by the wall. Every one of them was wearing a nightshirt over drawers.

  An older boy swooped over, as big as Martin's brother Wes. Unlike the small boys, he was wearing a funny brown suit with a red waistcoat. James didn't dare look at him, really, except to see his chin was dotted with pimples, also like Wes.

  "They come off," he said, pointing.

  The big boy meant his clothes. There, in front of everyone. Mister had said his second shirt wouldn't be needed, but James had not considered what that meant.

  He couldn't feel his own fingers groping to lift his shirt. His heart clamored like the wheels of an ice cart. Bare-naked mouse , he thought. Without even fur . James was all the way naked, naked , before the big boy finally handed over a nightshirt and pants and snatched the bundle of old clothes.

  "And don't go pissing the bed," he said. "This is all you'll have till we've got a suit to fit." He carried James's belongings out into the hallway, while James scrambled into the

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  new ones, ducking his hot face low as he could. What if he did piss the bed? What did that boy go saying things like that for? What horrible thing would happen next?

  There was a man wearing a shirt with no waistcoat or jacket, showing big blurs of sweat under his arms, huffing a little with every breath. He'd have been grim enough, just standing there, but he was holding a pair of scissors twice the size of Mama Peevey's sewing shears, and he was wielding the blades upon the heads of one boy after another, set on a stool in front of him.

  "I want my da!" someone cried, and that started a chorus all over the room.

  "Mama!"

  "Take me home!"

  "I want my da!"

  James was fixed upon those scissors. They trembled with every piercing whine. The barber's feet shuffled in the grass of mingled hair: russet, golden, chestnut, jet.

  Did the Peeveys know about this? Did they know the truth about what was waiting for him? Did they knowingly tell him those lies, or were they tricked too?

  His heart stopped it
s wild race and lay as sharp and heavy as a brick in his chest. None of that crying, none of those stranger boys could change anything, none of it would change the lie he'd been told about the glories of London.

  It came to be James's turn on the stool. The man's stink swished the air as he snipped. James squeezed his eyes shut, not daring to plug his nose. The room full of

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  whimperings faded behind the man's phlegmy little grunts. James's fingernails dug through the nightshirt into his legs so he wouldn't scream.

  "Done." The barber sent him, bald and patchy, to join the others on the bench.

  The boy next to James was jiggling like his sister Lizzy outside the privy, making the whole row jiggle along with him. James reached over to touch his knee. He stopped for a moment, darting James a wild look, before starting up again. The next boy came from the scissor man and plopped down. His face was sun-freckled but his scalp was white through the stubble.

  A fuss at the door, and the fostering mothers were herded in across the grand room for a final look. Was it half an hour since Mama Peevey had left him here? Only minutes more at most. The mothers had made their reports and were going outside into the sensible world. They would climb back into rickety carts, sit on splintered seats with cursing drivers, and journey home alone.

  Mama Peevey held James's shirt, his patched trousers, his stockings. Her gaze wavered back and forth, scanning the crowd of identical boys in white nightshirts. They'd sprung up, calling out "Mama," every one of them. James was waving madly, but so were all of them. She glanced his way but she was weeping and didn't pause, not knowing him without his dark curls. As she was led out, she pressed the wool of his shirt against her whole face, as if it were still on his back, as if she were giving him one last sniff.