Little Exiles

‘You were talking in your sleep,’ George says, indignant.

‘What did I say?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must have heard something.’

‘We’re going to be late!’

Jon blinks the sleep out of his eyes, bewildered that he might have slept so soundly, and looks around the dormitory. All of the other boys are gone.

‘You shouldn’t have waited for me, George. Now you’ll be for it too …’

‘I can’t go out on my own, Jon Heather, you know I can’t.’

They are fortunate, this morning, that their cottage mother is not feeling particularly vicious. When they emerge, blinking into the sun, she is drinking tea from a dainty cup, and simply waves them on with a withering gaze. All the same, Jon knows, she won’t forget it. They’ll have to be doubly careful for the next few days.

In the breakfast hall, Judah Reed is taking a register. He does not have a roll call of names, so instead barks out ages, and every boy of that age must then go to a certain corner of the room. Then he begins to count.

‘Remember,’ George whispers. ‘I’m ten too.’

‘Is there,’ Judah Reed proclaims, ‘a boy named Peter here?’

George’s eyes light up. His head swivels, like an owl’s, to find Jon’s.

Across the room, nobody raises their hand.

‘Does he mean our Peter?’

Judah Reed must hear, for his gaze falls on George and hovers like a hawk.

‘Shut up, George.’

‘David?’ Judah Reed calls.

This time, a little one raises his hand, but Judah Reed quickly dismisses him as too young.

‘Must have gone to the stations,’ Jon hears Judah Reed mutter. ‘Do we have the right number?’ The cottage mother beside him nods. ‘Very well.’

Once the head-count is complete, Judah Reed rings a hand bell and breakfast begins. Jon watches as he shares whispered words with two other men in black, and a particularly serpentine cottage mother. They sit together at the head of the hall, and two girls from somewhere else in the Mission bring them a tin tray piled high with bacon, eggs, and a jug filled with orange juice.

‘I was number one,’ says George, considering the bowl of dry hash he has collected.

‘Don’t you think …’ Jon’s thoughts are too fast for his words to keep up. ‘There isn’t even a list.’

‘So?’

‘The boy in the dairy, he reckoned Judah Reed doesn’t even know his name …’

‘I don’t think he knows mine.’

Jon Heather thinks: better keep it that way, George.

‘Eat up,’ he says, remembering, dimly, that first morning in the Home, the fat boy with porridge pumping out of his ears.

George pokes some of the food into his gullet, but the taste is horrific; it must be the scrapings from the bottom of a pot. After a few attempts, he perfects a way of poking it to the back of his throat, so that he barely tastes a thing, but by that point the hand bell is clanging.

‘Dairy for me today,’ says George. ‘I’m going to sneak a suck of milk.’

Jon should have thought of that. ‘Tell Tommy I said …’ Jon falters. ‘Hey, George,’ he says, as they traipse after the other boys into the morning light. ‘You do what Tommy tells you, OK?’

‘You don’t need to badger me, Jon Heather. You’re not Peter, you know.’

After they have parted ways, Jon joins a rag of other boys outside the sandstone huts. There are boys of all ages here, only the very youngest spared and sent off for village muster, and Jon finds a spot to stand among them, not too close to the front and not too close to the back.

‘What is it today?’ asks a little one next to him.

Jon Heather only shrugs.

They seem to stand there, in a useless clot, for an age. The coolness of morning evaporates, to be replaced with a dull, insistent heat. Finally, Judah Reed and another man in black appear from the dormitory shacks. They have, Jon knows, been carrying out inspections, making mental notes of which boys have failed to make their beds, or which boys have sneaked banned treats and trinkets under their mattresses. Once, a boy was found to have been saving chunks from his evening stew to have as a midnight supper. He had to make a trip to Judah Reed’s office and wasn’t allowed dinner for five nights straight, in order to teach him a lesson.

Judah Reed approaches and the boys part to let him through. Without looking back, he makes a simple gesture and, snatching a shovel from its prop against the wall, begins to march. As one, the boys follow. Jon tries to catch the eyes of a bigger boy beside him, giving him a questioning look – does anybody

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