4 ideas
Willie arrives bruised, illiterate, and wetting the bed, then flourishes under Tom's care until his mother summons him back to London. Tom goes looking for him and, with police help, finds him chained under the stairs beside his dead baby sister, then takes him home and eventually adopts him.
Care flows in both directions. Willie's needs for school, books, clothes and company force Tom back into the village's shared life: he returns to church, the organ, and his neighbours after decades of grief-driven withdrawal. The adult who agreed to rescue the child is rescued by the obligations the child creates.
Willie's bedwetting, flinching, and bracing for beatings are not defiance. They are accurate predictions learned from a home where every mistake brought punishment. Tom answers each mistake with calm, practical routine, washing the sheets and giving him chores, instead of the expected blow. Repeated disconfirmation of the child's predictions, not reassurance in words, is what slowly rewrites them.
Willie's mother frames her cruelty as religious discipline, calling him sinful and wicked, and gives him a belt for Tom to use. To outside authorities her piety reads as moral seriousness, not danger. Because righteousness supplies the justification, the abuser feels virtuous and the child believes he deserves it, which keeps the harm invisible and self-sustaining.