Little Exiles

‘He’s called George,’ Jon interjects.

She goes on. ‘I would like to hear it from him.’

George tries to look at the woman, but instead he looks back at Jon. Jon’s eyes flare. It is an unspoken command, the kind Peter might make, but George is silent still.

‘I’m Jon!’ Jon announces. ‘Jon Heather …’

The woman breaks from George and ponders it casually. ‘There was a Jon at the start of this row,’ she begins. ‘Jack is short for Jon, is it not?’ She seems pleased with this deduction. ‘Yes,’ she goes on, ‘I believe Jack would suit. How old are you?’

Jon answers almost before the question is finished. The word seems to have a magical effect on George, for suddenly he spins around.

‘I’m ten too,’ he pipes up.

‘Very well,’ the woman replies. ‘Across the yard and bear left. Each boy must follow the boy in front.’

Jon ushers George forward. In front of them, the hall is already emptying. At the threshold, framed against red dirt, Judah Reed stands watchfully. The sky, once a rolling blue expanse, is paling as evening approaches.

Side by side, they step out. The boys ahead are banking left, away from the yellow motorbus. There is a sweet smell in the air, and birdsong in the branches of trees Jon has never before seen.

The engine of the motorbus fires, chokes out exhaust and draws away.

George freezes, eyes drawn after the bus. ‘Are we going the same way?’

Jon pushes him on. Along the verge of the dirt track there sits a collection of other vehicles. A ramshackle wagon already has a gang of six boys piled into its open back, with a single dog standing proudly among them. Dark and sandy, with deep drooling jaws, it is not like any of the mongrel street dogs of Leeds. Behind that, another utility truck is being loaded.

‘Stop that dallying, you pair of scuttlers!’ a gruff voice bawls out. ‘It’s getting dark already …’

A burly man shoos them towards the rear wagon like a dog might herd sheep. George is the first to run. Jon holds his ground only momentarily longer, George’s hand suddenly pressed into his own. Settling in the wagon, they are greeted by the snout of the sandy dog and silent hellos from the boys already on board.

‘Here,’ one of them finally begins, ‘take this.’ His fist is bunched around a small green apple, which he tosses to Jon. Jon takes a bite; the fruit is sour, and he passes it to George.

‘See,’ the boy says, ‘we’ve reached the Promised Land.’

The wagon engine begins to hum. A final trio of boys push their way aboard, bustling others out of the way as they scrap for a seat.

‘You’ll have to do better than that, boys,’ Judah Reed declares. Jon turns to see him striding out of the outhouse. His black robe billows behind him – but, for the first time, he is wearing heavy brown boots that reach almost to his knees. ‘You wouldn’t want to be walking all the way on those sea legs, would you?’

Judah Reed strides to the back of the wagon, plants one leg firmly on the platform and lifts his hands as if he is miming pushing at a wall. The boys try and make room, but there is little to be found. In the end, they pile on top of one another, like cattle in a truck ready for the abattoir. Judah Reed climbs aboard, drawing the gate shut behind him. On his haunches, he hammers a closed fist against the bumper and the wagon kicks into gear. At first it sluices on the uneven ground, but soon the driver has hit the road.

‘Boys to be farmers,’ he begins. Somewhere behind them, a cheer goes up. ‘And girls to be farmers’ wives,’ he beams, looking back at Jon. ‘Son, this is the beginning of something for you and your sorry sort.’ The wagon leaves the last of the houses beyond, and as far as Jon can see there is only red earth and scrub. In the fading west, he can still hear the shrieking of seabirds. ‘This earth will give up its bounty to you, if only you leave that old world behind. But let even a scrap of those streets stay in you, and it will eat you alive …’

Judah Reed spreads his arms wide, as if he might embrace every boy on board. ‘Boys,’ he says. ‘Welcome home.’

It is difficult to judge distance, without houses and snickets to guide the way. To Jon, it is almost as if they are back at sea, sailing across an ocean of scrub. Some distance out of town, the wagons turn from the highway and branch away from the ocean – and, so Jon believes, away from England itself. The scrub thins, until they sail above pastures of sand where only outcrops of coarse grass grow. Soon the roads grow rutted and worn, until there is hardly any road there at all.

On occasion, one boy whispers something to another. They point out distant rises of red, a strange creature flattened by a tyre, a single tree, capped with a bulbous crown of thorns.

‘Jon …’ George whispers. He ferrets in Jon’s pocket until his fingers find the map Peter left for them. He wants to draw it out, but Jon clenches George’s wrist as tightly as he can.

‘But how will we find our way back?’

Jon looks back along the trail. The other wagons are still rattling behind, but other than that there is no mark by which he might know if they are in one place or another.

‘Peter will know …’

The road starts to slope, and they sail into what appears to be a shallow canyon. The scrub grows thicker again, nourished by cool shadows, and they see birds for the first time since the coast: chattering yellow parakeets, of the kind wealthy boys might once have been given as pets. Deeper into the canyon, they see a waterhole between two hummocks of land. Other birds flap in the shallows, scattering when the wagon rattles through.

They rise out of the canyon, and below them the scrub rolls on. High above, they can see the violet night on the eastern horizon. And, if ever there was a sign that they are no longer on the same earth, here it is: it is not night and it is not day and yet, up in the sky, the sun and moon hang together, two great orbs beached above reefs of cloud.

‘George,’ he whispers. ‘George!’

His head jolts, and he follows Jon’s gaze.

‘It’s the same moon, isn’t it, George?’

George is dumb for only a moment. Then he nods. ‘That’s what Peter said,’ he agrees. The words seem to soothe him – but, all the same, he closes his eyes so that he has to see no more.

Jon must have fallen asleep too, for a sudden lurching of the wagon jolts him awake. It is dark all around. He scrambles to sit upright, George hunched in a ball beside him. There are trees on either bank, but they are stumpy and only half in leaf, the canopy of a fragrant forest so low that Jon can see for miles around.

‘We’re nearly there, boy.’

Jon wheels around, crashes against the side of the wagon. ‘Nearly where?’

The wagons bank left. There are shapes in the darkness, silhouetted creatures that bound away from the convoy.

‘There,’ says Judah Reed, a wistful tone in his voice. Carefully, still grasping the rim of the wagon, he kicks his way through the curled-up boys to reach the cab.

The wagon suddenly drops down a ledge in the track. The jolt stirs the boys around Jon. George scrambles around, uncertain in which strange world he has awoken.

‘Jon,’ George begins, forgetting to whisper. ‘What is it?’

In front of Jon, Judah Reed hammers the roof of the cab and the driver barks out. Seconds later, the truck’s horn blasts, three short sharp sounds. They thunder around a narrow bend in the track – and there, for the first time, Jon sees lights in the undergrowth.

There is a clearing coming, harrowed land with little cauldrons of fires stirred at its fringes, as if to keep the desert wilderness at bay. As they near, the boys around Jon become more alert.

The wagons slow, banking hard so that their headlights sweep across what appears to be a ruined village. On the other side of the barren expanse there sits a collection of shacks, raised on stilts above the desert floor. Between them, causeways have been carved in the scrub – and, beyond that, the first of a row of sandstone buildings sits.

The wagons stop, and Judah Reed vaults to the ground. At first, the boys are resistant to follow, so Judah Reed reaches in and palms the first boy onto the ground. He stumbles to his hands and knees in the sand, scrambling aside just in time to avoid the other boy who comes tumbling after.

‘Don’t fall on your knees,’ whispers Jon. He does not know why it is important; it seems like something Peter might have said – and, for the moment, that is good enough.

‘What?’ George asks. He will be the next to go; Judah Reed is already barking his name.

‘Just don’t let him push you over,’ says Jon. ‘I’ll be right behind.’

Jon slides from the back of the truck, reaching back just in time to whip his cardboard suitcase with him. He presses a hand into the small of George’s back, and together they scurry away.

‘What is this place?’ whispers George.

A boy beside them grunts. ‘End of the world, little George,’ he says. ‘You’ll be wetting that bed forevermore now.’

The boys gather along the fires. Behind them, the desert writhes – but, ahead, it seems, worse things are stirring. Boys have spilled out of the tumbledown shacks. Some of them are carrying lanterns. There are girls, too – though, at first, Jon does not recognize them as such. They all wear short trousers and ragged shirts, the girls in dresses that stretch to their ankles. They all have bare feet, and hair that has grown into great matted tassels.

From the night, a man in black strides forward, clasping Judah Reed’s hand in his own. Then, suddenly, the women who met them at the docks are crying out shrill orders. The new boys form a long rank in front of the fires and, one after another, are dispatched into the shacks.

‘Your suitcase, young sir …’

Jon clings tightly to the suitcase, and does not breathe a word. In there: his English clothes, his precious book – the only things he has left from the other world.

The woman does not ask twice. She cuffs him around the ear, a blow that stings more than he had anticipated – and, as he is righting himself, prises the suitcase from him. George gives his up more easily. She slings them back into the ute, where a dozen others are piled.

The woman whistles out, and a clot of barefoot boys scamper between two of the shacks. Jon pauses, but one of the boys takes him by the wrist. He resists, but not for long. Soon, he is clattering after them, along a narrow lane with tall banks of scrub. One of the boys whispers something, but Jon does not hear. He looks back, finally gives up the fight when he sees George being swept along behind.

They go deeper into the compound, past a square where a well, heaped high with stones, is set into the ground. The shacks here are darker, but groups of boys lounge on their steps.

‘How many?’ one of the boys hunched on the step asks.

The boy beside Jon shrugs. ‘I reckon thirty, all told. They had girls in one of the trucks.’

The other boy nods, as if this news pleases him.

‘What have we got here, then? Two little ones?’

‘I’m ten!’ Jon pipes up. When he elbows George sharply in the chest, George repeats the words, just as he has been told.

‘Yeah, settle your shit down,’ the older boy grins. ‘We don’t much like new boys, but it’s not you to blame for that. We’re on the same side here, all of us except Ted over there. You just pick on him if you ever feel the need.’

One of the other boys mutters a string of curses.

‘I’m only joking, Ted.’

‘I’ll joke you in a minute!’

The older boy tips Jon a wink. ‘He always says things like that. We haven’t yet worked out what he means.’ He stops. ‘Up you get, then. There’s an empty bed in the bottom corner. You two might have to top and tail it. Village muster’s at dawn, so you’ve got …’ He looks up at the chart of stars. ‘… about four hours, I reckon.’

Jon is the first to venture past the boys, up the steps into the wooden shack.

They enter a bare cloakroom, where hooks line the walls but nothing hangs. The smell in the air is at once familiar and horribly unreal. If George has forgotten it, Jon has not; he can still remember the first night he walked into the dormitory of the Children’s Crusade back home, the smell of damp and piss that permeated the place.

Beyond the cloakroom, the new dormitory stretches to the furthest walls. Something dark scurries across the boards – a rat, or whatever other little creatures live in this far flung world. Banks of beds line each wall, simple wire frames raised at the head like a hospital stretcher, so that there is no need for a pillow. There are boys in each, but few of them are sleeping. They grumble as Jon and George stumble on, finally finding a vacant bed in a corner where the floorboards squelch miserably underfoot.

George rolls onto the bed. There is only one sheet, but he wraps himself in it tightly, as if hopeful he will disappear.

‘George,’ Jon whispers, jumping on the bed alongside his friend.

George looks up, pudgy face drawn.

‘Yes?’

Jon does not know why he thinks of it, but he cannot stop himself now. ‘What was your mother like, George?’

‘I don’t remember,’ says George lightly, as if it is the most terrible thing.

Jon squints at him.

‘But I wish she was here.’ He offers some of the sheet to Jon. ‘Jon,’ he whispers, wary of the wild boys shifting around them. ‘Do you have it? Do you still have Peter’s map?’

Jon reaches into his short trousers and pulls out the page of the atlas. It means nothing any longer, just a few scribbles on a part of the coast they could not find again, even if they spent their whole lives trying. All the same, he stretches it out and, in the preternatural gloom, he and George study its contours.

‘That’s where we’ll find him,’ says Jon. George’s eyes widen. ‘He’ll be waiting for us there.’

Jon lies down in the bed, curled around George. The sounds of boys wheezing, the chatter of creatures in the scrubland, the endless desert where there is nothing to run to and no one to hear you cry – this, then, is his new world. He says his prayers to unknown stars and wakes, the following morning, to an alien sun.

V

‘There once was a boy who ran away. He ran as far as he could run, and when he could run no more, he burrowed down into the baked red earth. When he could not burrow any further, he curled up and slept – and, when he woke, he found little droplets of moisture on the walls of his den. He stayed there through the day, and the following night as well, rooting up worms and grubs for his dinner, lapping at the water that seeped out of the earth. And, in that way, he decided, a little boy could live.’

George likes this story. He has heard it three times already, but there is something in it that troubles Jon. All the same, he stays at George’s side while the boy continues. Breakfast is almost over – and though Jon cannot bear spooning the slop into his mouth, he knows he will be aching by the afternoon without it.

One of the cottage mothers drifts by, trailing rank perfume behind her. Some of the littlest boys, four or five years old, are bickering in the corner of the stark breakfasting hall, and she glides towards them. Moments later, one is lifted by his ear and taken to the front of the hall, where a corpulent man in black, his face full of jowls, receives him and carries him out of the hall. On the dirt outside, Judah Reed is waiting.

‘The little boy spent every day and night in his den. He did not grow up like the boys who did not run away. He couldn’t grow a single inch bigger, because his den wouldn’t let him. The seasons came and went without him seeing another living soul but the grubs he ate – until, one day, he heard the song of a kookaburra chick, lost in the desert …’

It is always the sound of the kookaburra that brings the smile to George’s face. Neither he nor Jon know what a kookaburra is, or what it looks like, but for George it is enough to imagine this otherworldly creature coming to the runaway’s help. There might still be friends to be found in this red and arid land.

Jon’s spoon clatters in his tin plate, but the sound is quickly drowned out. The corpulent man in black is back, clanging the hand-bell, and he parades up and down the long trestle table. The little one who was taken away is nowhere to be found.

‘Eat up, George. You’ve got to get going.’

The story will have to be finished another day. Jon pats George on the back and scurries out of the hall. The sun is already up, but the heat is not yet fierce. The boys here say that this is winter – though Jon can remember winter well, so it must be just another of their tricks. He leaps over the soft earth where the kitchen sinks empty out and takes off at a run.

The dairy is at the other end of the compound, over fields that, come the spring, the boys here will be tilling. He is running barefoot, but it no longer hurts; it took less than a day before his shoes were wrestled off him. At the head of the sandstone buildings – where Judah Reed himself lives – he vaults a fence and takes off across the field. In the scrub that surrounds, the youngest boys of the Mission are out on village muster, collecting up the kindling that will be used to stoke the boilers tonight. Jon spies a little one he knows as Ernest on the very fringe of the field, where the fields back onto a low forest of thorns. Ernest waves at him; some of these younger boys can barely say a dozen words. Left alone on their daily forage, they grow languages of gestures and grunts.

‘You’re late, Jack …’

Jon careers into the dairy. The old herdsman, McAllister, who comes in from the cattle station to check over the goats, lurks at the back of the barn – but Jon manages to slip in unnoticed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jon begins. ‘I came as fast …’

‘Ach,’ the boy spits, wrapping his fists around the teats of the next she-goat in line. ‘I couldn’t care less, long as I don’t have to squeeze your share of these udders.’ He uncurls his fingers from a teat and, dripping with warm milk, reaches out to grasp Jon’s hand. ‘Name’s Tommy Crowe,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jack.’

‘My name’s Jon.’

The boy named Tommy Crowe smirks. ‘You got a familiar voice on you,’ he finally says. ‘Where’d they ship you in from?’

‘England,’ Jon shrugs, kicking his bucket into place.

‘I could’ve figured that one. There’s some lads from Malta came once, but you can tell them a mile off.’ He pauses, pinching out a squirt of milk as he ponders this problem. ‘Isn’t it … it’s somewhere in Leeds?’

Jon nods.

‘I knew it. Second I clapped eyes on you, I said to myself – Tommy, I said, that lad’s got Leeds written all over him.’ He tweaks a teat and shoots a warm spray of milk straight into Jon’s face. ‘I’m from the old place myself!’ Tommy Crowe goes on. ‘Well, never spent hardly a month there, if I’m to be truthful about it. They shipped me over almost as soon as they could. Just made sure there was none of them nasty U-boats still sharking around, and packed us all off. There was a bunch of us, got evacuated out into the dales, and when we come back – bang! Nothing to come back to. I must have been about seven. Had myself a giant family – brothers and sisters, half-brothers, cousins who were brothers, brothers who were sisters. Almost every kind of family. Then …’ He shakes his head, grinning at the absurd tale. ‘I thought some of them might wind up here too, but I haven’t seen them since we were in that Home. Maybe they ended up somewhere worse – what do you reckon?’

Tommy Crowe must be thirteen years old, though he appears much older. He has a pointed chin like some comicbook hero, and sharp eyebrows that rise villainously, so that there is always something contrary about the way that he looks.

‘You done with that bucket yet?’ Tommy asks. ‘You can’t mess around in here, Jack the lad! McAllister’s known to take a riding crop to a boy for a bit of spilt milk …’

Jon looks over his shoulder. The old man McAllister is kneeling now, pressing his forehead to the face of one of the billy goats in its stall.

‘What’s he up to?’ Jon asks.

‘He’s eyeing up which ones are for the block,’ Tommy Crowe grins. ‘You won’t know how to slit a throat yet, will you? Lad, you’re going to love it. Nothing quite like it when that kicking stops!’

He flashes Jon a grin and, buckets dangling from shoulders, elbows and wrists, lumbers out of the door.

In the red dirt outside the barn, Tommy Crowe stops. When Jon hurries after, he sees him, leg raised on an upturned pail, surveying the untilled fields. The smallest boys are ferreting around in rabbit holes in the undergrowth beyond. The rabbits have long been driven from those warrens – even rabbits grow wise to the habits of hungry boys – but it is a ritual among the little ones to set traps, just in case. Rabbits, it is said, are English – and this is a magical thing to the boys of the Mission.

One of the boys has strayed further than the rest, has almost disappeared into the shadow of the eucalyptus trees that grow in strange clumps, their many trunks opening out like the petals of a flower. At last, he drops down a ridge between two low, sprawling trees, so that only the top of his head can still be seen.

‘Here,’ Tommy Crowe says, ‘give me that bucket.’ Jon does not know how to ladle another bucket into Tommy’s arms, but somehow he slides it into the crook of an elbow. ‘You’d best be after that boy,’ he says. ‘Have you seen what they do to boys they think might run away?’ He pauses. ‘I’ll stall McAllister if he shows hisself …’

Scrambling between the rails of a fence strung with barbed wire, Jon scurries over untilled earth, finally reaching the bank of red earth where the little ones are camped out. The eldest and most brave dumps his collection of kindling at Jon’s feet and smiles eagerly, like a dog that has brought back a pigeon to its master.

Jon clambers over the bank, kicking dirt into the mouth of one of the rabbit holes. Behind him, the boys suddenly shout out, chattering animatedly at this transgression. Over the bank, Jon can just see the silhouette of the boy skipping from one tangle of roots to another.

It is Ernest. Jon calls after him, and though he half-turns his head, he does not stop. When Jon has almost caught him, he slows, trots cautiously three steps behind. The little boy slows to a dawdle and they plod on together, coming to a spot where a pool of light spills through the trees.

‘It just goes on and on,’ says Ernest, his tone one of wonder. ‘It doesn’t end.’

Jon looks down. There is a look like fear on Ernest’s face, but it is wrestling for space with a burgeoning grin.

‘I thought there’d be a fence,’ he begins, watching Jon turn in bewildered circles, trying to seek one out. ‘Maybe there’d be a wall. A big old wall with spikes and locked gates.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘But there isn’t a wall,’ he says, taking a seat between two huge roots. ‘Isn’t it the weirdest thing? You could just walk and walk forever.’

Jon reaches a barrier of tussocky grass and pushes through, feeling the jagged curtain fall shut behind him. He feels, for a moment, like a storybook knight, fighting through walls of thorns to rescue the princess trapped on the other side – but when he emerges he sees only the same shadow wood going on forever.

There is rustling behind him and he turns, expecting to see Ernest creeping through on hands and knees. The creature that emerges is something he has not seen before. It is only two feet tall, the bastard offspring of a kangaroo and hare. Tiny black eyes study him cautiously, and then it bounds away.

Jon pushes back through the thicket – but on the other side Ernest is nowhere to be seen. He starts, wonders if he has come back the same way at all, or whether the forest has, somehow, turned him around, stranding him only a short walk away from the Mission.

Then, he hears voices, shrill cries of delight. After long months of waiting, the boys of the Mission have finally trapped a rabbit.