The Boy Who Watched, Then Wove

[POV SWITCH: Mrs. Cole, Caretaker]

Richard Russo arrived just after harvest time last year, when the city still twitched at every air raid siren and ration books wore thin as tissue. I've kept Wool's through all manner of children, runaways, thieves, half-starved waifs with eyes bright as hunted rabbits. Richard was... none of those. He stepped into my office with his cap in hand and that battered satchel at his side, neat as you please, voice low and calm. Too calm, for a boy who'd lost everything.

He didn't weep, didn't tremble, only answered my questions with clipped honesty. Parents dead, house emptied, not a relative left to take him. When I signed him into the ledger, it felt more like inscribing a ghost.

I half-expected trouble later, sometimes it's the quiet ones who steal from the larder or bully the smaller boys. But instead, he kept to himself, eyes always moving, mouth set in a line that seemed older than his years.

Over the weeks, that stillness turned into something else. He rose before any bell, washed carefully, and never stank of sweat or damp clothes like the others. Took to helping with the little ones, tying shoelaces, wiping dirty noses, and showing patience most grown men lack. He never made a show of it either. If I praised him, he'd only shrug, eyes darting off like he was embarrassed to be caught caring.

By the time Colonel Anderson's papers came through, Richard had become almost a fixture, one of those rare boys you trust not to start fires or nick coins from the pantry jar. Signing him over felt like handing off our strongest pillar. But I reckon he deserved better than Wool's ever could give.

[POV SWITCH: Martha, Caretaker]

I've been at Wool's near fifteen years, ever since my first husband passed. Seen plenty of children come and go, many who tried to test me, mouthy brats who thought themselves cleverer than the likes of me. I expected much the same of Richard that first day. He stood too still, eyes sharp, like a fox sizing up a henhouse. I braced myself for sly tricks.

But it never came. Oh, he was watchful all right, always seemed to be taking the measure of things, me included. Yet he didn't complain about chores, didn't squabble for extra bread. By the end of the first month, he was doing small kindnesses that saved me hours. Carrying the slop pail without being told. Picking up pins when my old back had me wincing. Once I caught him teaching Sam how to patch a sock, using neat stitches, even neater than mine, given my thick fingers.

It warmed me, though I'd never say it to his face. I've buried enough people I cared for. Easier to keep the fondness tamped down.

Still, the day he left with Colonel Anderson, stood there straight-backed in that old coat of his, shaking my hand proper, I nearly let slip a tear. Nearly. I settled for pressing a little packet of barley sweets into his palm, told him to mind his shoes. Small things, but small things are what life runs on.

[POV SWITCH: Danny, Orphan]

When Richard first came to Wool's, I thought maybe he was one of them bad boys what hides sharp bits under their pillow. He didn't grin or shove or nothin', just sat on his bed like it were a chair for a king, real still. Wouldn't even look at us much. It made my tummy twist up, 'cause usually when boys are quiet like that, they end up being mean later.

But Richard never did nothin' bad. He didn't pull hair or nick your bread. One time, I was tryin' so hard to tie my boots that my fingers got all red and stingy, and he just came over, crouched right down, and tied 'em so fast like he'd done it a million times. Didn't even huff at me.

Then he patted my shoulder, gentle, like my mum used to. I wanted to follow him everywhere after that, so sometimes I did. He'd show us how to do funny sit-ups that made our bellies burn, and said it would make us strong if we kept at it. I like bein' strong. Makes me feel like if someone tried to grab me in the dark, I could maybe kick 'em right in the shin and run off.

When he left with that soldier, I was real sad. But he winked at me on the way out and said, "Keep up the mornings, Danny." So I've been tryin'. If he comes back, I wanna be able to show him how many push-ups I can do without makin' my arms shake.

[POV SWITCH: Lottie, Orphan]

When Richard arrived last autumn, I pegged him straightaway for trouble, not the noisy sort who scrapes knees and breaks windows, but the quiet kind that bides its time. He watched everything. The halls, the meals, who pinched extra bread, who lied. Never said a peep about it either. I know that look. It's the same I wear sometimes when I'm sewing in the corner, listening for what no one wants to say out loud.

Funny thing was, he never turned it cruel. Most boys who get that clever twist mean. Richard didn't. Instead, he started picking up littler ones when they fell, showing them how to mend socks or hush their sniffles so Martha wouldn't bark at 'em. I saw him slip the last of his potato to that tiny redhead Tommy once, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Didn't look around for praise either. That's what struck me, it was all just done, like breathing.

Girls at Wool's don't have much reason to trust boys. They pinch your plaits, call you nags, and hide dead things under your pillow if they fancy a laugh. But I'd trust Richard with anything. Even my little sister, if I had one. He never once gave me reason to flinch.

When he left, it was like someone'd taken the last good lamp out of a dim room. But he said he'd keep close, promised he'd look out for us still. I believe him. Richard's the sort who doesn't say what he doesn't mean.

[POV SWITCH: Mr. Ellery, Junior Solicitor]

I walk to my office near Lincoln's Inn every morning, mostly out of habit and thrift, though truth be told, I enjoy watching London rub the sleep from its eyes. War's made everything grey and anxious, but there's still something stirring in the streets at dawn: shop girls balancing crates, paperboys shouting like their throats were made of brass, even a cat or two braving the kerb. It feels oddly alive.

That's how I first noticed Richard. A boy perched on the rail outside my building, battered satchel at his feet, cap tugged low. At first, I thought he was there to beg; there are plenty who do these days. But when I offered him a shilling out of awkward pity, he blinked, like I'd insulted him, and said, quite solemnly, "Actually, sir, I was hoping you might explain the difference between a patent and a simple copyright."

I laughed, I'll admit it. Couldn't help it. Then felt ashamed of myself, seeing how his face stayed perfectly steady, eyes dark and expectant. So I stood there on the pavement, briefcase dangling, giving a ten-minute lesson on the rudiments of intellectual property law to a boy who couldn't have been more than nine.

That wasn't the end of it. Every week or so, he'd find me again. Sometimes nearer Temple Bar, sometimes right by the little flower stall on Chancery Lane. Always with new, sharper questions. What made a patent lapse? How long did it protect you before the design entered the public domain? Could a minor hold shares in a private company outright, or must it be held in trust? He'd memorised phrases from some pamphlet or news sheet, rolling them over his tongue like boiled sweets.

It was astonishing. I've worked with barristers twice his age who lacked that crisp precision. But it was more than mere cleverness; there was something hungry about it. A bright, banking fire that made me both concerned and strangely hopeful.

I gave him spare copies of my old legal reviews. Made sketches in the margins to show him timelines and case precedents. By February, I found myself lingering on my walks, half-hoping to see that cap and those solemn eyes waiting for me.

When I learned from Mr. Rupert Anderson, over a chance club luncheon, that he'd formally adopted the boy, it almost felt right. The child needed someone in his corner. Someone who could give him a roof and legitimacy for whatever remarkable things I suspect he's plotting.

Because if ever I've met a boy destined to change the world by sheer force of will, it's young Richard Russo. Either way, I've tucked his name in my mind. There's good sense in keeping close to futures that burn that bright.

[POV SWITCH: Rupert Anderson, Adoptive Father]

I thought my days of being needed had ended the day they folded the Union Jack over my boy's coffin. Two years now since Charles fell in Italy. For three years before that, I stood at my wife's bedside, watching her slip away by soft degrees. Afterwards, life pared itself down to habit, morning walks, solitary chess, letters from old comrades I read twice, then tucked away in drawers.

It was on one of those walks that I first met Richard. A thin boy with hollow cheeks and a battered cap too large for his head, studying the chessboard in Hodges' window like it might unlock the whole world. When he noticed me watching, he nodded, small, polite, and asked what I thought of a particular move. No awkward fumbling. No child's brag. Just curiosity, plain and earnest.

So we played. At first, I half-indulged him, expecting a bit of naïve bluster. But he learned quickly, with sharper lines each time, and little traps that forced me to concentrate. I began to look forward to those quiet hours over the board. To the questions he sprinkled in, about law and property, yes, but also about things like why men obey orders, or how courage differed from simple duty. They weren't the sorts of things boys usually wondered, yet it never struck me as cunning. More… hungry. For understanding. For solid ground.

By spring, he'd found ways to turn those games into longer talks. On park benches, along the river, even once outside my own modest gate. At first, I wondered if he was simply lonely, only to realise how much I was. His company didn't erase the empty chair at my table, but it did soften the shape of it.

He told me bits of his history by inches. A house empty, a mother taken by slow illness, no brothers or sisters left to shoulder the weight. When he finally spoke of wanting to build something, to patent a fastening he sketched for me on scrap paper, eyes lit with shy conviction, I didn't see a boy plotting. I saw someone trying to carve a place for himself in a world that had already robbed him of so many.

The day I signed the adoption papers, I almost expected to feel awkward. I hadn't imagined I would feel… steadied, as if I'd been drifting off balance for years and hadn't noticed until something quietly righted me. Watching him write out "Richard Anderson Russo," my surname nestled beside his, it didn't mend the old griefs. Nothing could. But it threaded a small, unexpected stitch through them.

Now and again, I do catch that deeper look in his eyes. A private calculation, maybe, or simply the wary habit of someone who's had to fend off the dark a bit too often. But it doesn't trouble me. Whatever hard steel he carries inside, it's wedded to a startling sort of care, the way he checked on my cough last month, or thanked me for each small courtesy as though it cost me dearly.

I'm not fool enough to think I've saved him. If anything, he's given my quiet, echoing days shape again. A purpose that might just outlive us both.

And if the world tries to swallow him the way it swallowed so many, I expect it'll find more fight there than it bargained for.

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The second task has been updated subtly. For anyone interested, you can go back to Chapter 31, A House of One.

Hey readers. I have ideas of what I want things to be for his second task. Obvious, given the title, but I'm including this here in case any of you have ideas that you think would be well-suited. Again, just comment here.