The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

I wonder who Music Maker is singing to, in the trees? He is not singing to his lost girlfriend, because she is not there. I think he is singing to the Old Man, and I think the Old Man does not mind religion.

  I wonder if those two bits of songs, Bed is too small for my tired head and How can I keep from singing? are things, like my name, that my parents gave me? I wish I could remember more.

  * * *

  The girls make daisy chains in the summer and wear them like crowns round their heads, or like beads round their necks. They make them for each other, and it is a sign of friendship. Once a group of girls, all giggling and pink, gave me a daisy chain because they said I was sweet, and I wore it round my neck. Little Bear said I was a sissy, but Big Bear told him to leave me alone. “You’re only jealous,” he said to Little Bear.

  “Me, jealous of a daisy chain!” said Little Bear.

  “No, jealous because the girls like Giorgio,” said Big Bear.

  “Oh, girls!” said Little Bear. “Yuk!”

  It is a strange thing about boys and girls. While they are kids they do not much like each other, but when they are growing up they like each other a lot, and make shelters together, and sometimes have babies with a lot of screaming.

  The grown-ups wear beads made out of wood or dried berries, and sometimes they have plaited threads round their wrists and sometimes they have shiny necklaces in colours which are too bright to be real, which they get from the market in Winchester. I asked Skye once how they get them, and she said, “Oh, they beg, borrow or steal.” I can see how you can beg or steal from the market. I once stole a bottle of drink, when I was in the city with Dylan, and his mum did not know, but when I tasted it, it made my mouth hot and it was bitter, so I emptied the liquid down a drain, and Dylan has put the bottle upside down outside his tent, to show that the tent is his turf and nobody can go in without saying the password.

  I do not see how a person could borrow from the market, though. I have tried to think how it would work. I can sort of picture how it would be. Let us say, I really liked a pair of socks I saw on a market stall. There are always socks for sale and they have bright colours and pictures of strange creatures which Skye says are cartoon characters, and I would very much like a pair of socks like that. So, I go up to the stallholder and he says, “Can I help you?”

  Then I pick up the socks I like best, and I say, “I would like to borrow these, please.”

  Then how would it go? I do not think the man would say, “Certainly, young man. How long would you like to keep them?” I think he would tell me to scram, and maybe he would use some of the rude words we sing in our song about the police.

  A few people have metal necklaces and rings. I think metal is cool. The word metal is grey but in real life metal can be silver or gold or bronze, and it is usually shiny, but on damp winter days it goes dull and then it is tarnished. The Music Maker has a metal chain which he wears round his neck, and on it there is a cross with a man stuck to it. Usually the Music Maker wears it inside his shirt because it is to do with religion, and religion causes a lot of trouble, but I have seen it quite often, if it is summer and he takes his shirt off, or if we go swimming in the early morning in the river, before the posh boys start practising in their boats. I am very interested in that chain and the cross and the man stuck to it, because I have something like that, too. Well, not quite like that, and anyhow, mostly Skye keeps it for me because she says it is important that I do not lose it, and boys will be boys. Skye says I was wearing it when she found me. It is a grey metal chain which shines if Skye breathes on it and rubs it with a piece of rag, and the thing that hangs from it is like a cross inside a letter Q. (Q is a beautiful colour: a shiny blue or green, like we see on kingfishers in the springtime.) The cross inside the Q does not have a man stuck to it. It is just plain, and it is the part that shines best when we polish it with our breath, because it is flat and easy to rub. Skye does not know what the sign means, of a cross and a Q fixed together. I worried for a while that it was to do with religion, and that my mum and dad were involved in religion and were causing a lot of trouble. I would not want to come from a mum and dad who caused trouble. But Skye says she has never come across this sign before and we should not jump to conclusions. She keeps the necklace with the cross and the Q in a little leather bag, in with her stuff, but if she goes away she gives it to the Old Man or to Walking Tall, in case she does not make it back.

  * * *

  So that makes three things which my mum and dad gave me before I lost them: my name, some words from songs, and a necklace which I will wear when I am older but not yet, because boys will be boys. Three is a special number, everyone says so, but Skye says they gave me lots of other things too.

  “Everything we are, when we start out,” said Skye, “comes from our parents.” She said this when I told her that my mum and dad had given me three things. “Your dark hair and your brown eyes come from them, and your good brain, and your long legs (which she tickled, like she often did), and the shape of your fingernails. It all comes from your parents.”

  When I thought about that, I could see it must be true. One of the girls has a mum with dark brown skin, and the girl, who is called Firefly, has brown skin too, although not as dark as her mum. Big Bear and Little Bear both have fattish sorts of faces although they are not fat boys, and their mum has a round face too, and lots of smiles.

  “So, if I found my mum and dad,” I asked Skye, “would I be able to recognise them, because they would look like me? And would they know I was their boy?”

  But Skye said it was not as easy as that. “If you knew they were your parents,” she said, “you would probably see the likeness, but not if you just saw them across the street.”

  This is quite a disappointment to me, because I have a sort of dream that I think about at night as I am going to sleep, when I see two grown-ups in Winchester, across the road by the Guildhall. They would be holding hands and looking for me, because I had lost them, and they would see me and call, “Giorgio!”, and run across to the flats where there was once an old bus station and hug me. But it seems that this is unlikely, if what Skye tells me is right.

  There is a strange thing about the words mum and dad. Well, really it is just the word dad. These are words which crop up often, every day, and they are always the same colours, the way words are. Mum is a reddish word with smooth edges, and dad is a pattern of black and blue. But when I think about my dad it is quite a different colour. The words my dad are surprising, bright green and shiny, and I do not know why that is.

  * * *

  When I was still very small there were a lot of people living on the Hill, and some others who lived on the nature reserve. Skye says the nature reserve is a gamble because it is so close to the city and people like to walk there. “It’s too easy for the cops, too,” she says. “They just park where the feeding station used to be and they’re in. Whereas,” and she looks around at our camp, “nobody wants to come up here anymore, and we would see the police from miles away.”

  It makes me feel safe to think that we would see the police when they were still a long way away, then we would run and hide and none of us kids would be put into care, and none of the adults would go to labour camps or to prison. Sometimes, though, we do go to the nature reserve, up to the far end, as far away from the buildings of the town as we can get. We just do that when we have intel that some official body is going to clean up the Hill. Intel means intelligence, and it is a whitish word. Our intel comes from Scott who knows a girl who works in the city offices. Once, when we went back to the Hill, we found that they had recut the maze and put a sign up at the bottom of the Hill telling people the maze was up there. Some of the grown-ups turned the sign around so that it pointed explorers who wanted to see the maze in quite a different direction, and we were all careful to come up the Hill the back way so that there was no track for people to follow, and we did not have any trouble.
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  Now that I am a bit bigger, there seem to be fewer people living up here. I ask Skye about it, and she says I am old enough to understand now, and she takes me and Little Bear, who I am playing with, and we sit on the bank of the earthworks and she tells us what is happening.

  “Do you remember what government is?” she asks, to begin with.

  I know that it is a brown word, but I cannot quite think what it means. Little Bear is probably younger than me (except we do not know how old I am), but he knows. “I think government is the people who make laws and boss us around,” he suggests.

  Skye laughs. “Pretty much!” she agrees. “Well, the government of this country does not like people like us.”

  I know that is true. “We are the Scum of the Earth,” I say, proudly.

  Skye laughs even more and hugs us both. “Indeed we are!” she says, sounding very happy about it.

  “Why don’t they like us?” I ask. I think we are pretty cool people.

  “It’s hard to explain,” she says. “Partly it’s because we are poor. Partly it’s because we don’t see the world like they see it. Sometimes it’s because we’ve criticised the government and the government hates to be criticised.”

  I think about that. “But if they don’t like us because we’re poor,” I wonder, “why don’t they give us money, and we would be rich!”

  “Ah, now, there you have it!” says Skye. “Governments get their money from the people they rule. They make them pay a bit every month. It’s called taxes. If the rulers want to help the poor they have to put up the taxes, so that people who are not poor have to give the government a bit more every month. And the people who are not poor don’t like that.”

  Little Bear says, “I would not want to pay taxes, if I had any money.”

  Skye laughs again. “Exactly!” she says.

  I do not think Skye’s answer gets to the real problem. “But governments boss people around!” I point out. “People don’t want to go into care or into labour camps, but they still have to go. Why don’t they just make people pay more taxes?”

  “Because, Giorgi my boy,” says Skye, and puts her arm round me, “there are a lot of people who are not poor, and if the government makes them pay more taxes all those people could gang up together and get rid of the government, and choose a new one which did not make them pay more.”

  We all sit there on the bank and watch the cars humming along on a road a good long way away. The cathedral bells start ringing, and a ladybird sits for a while on Skye’s skirt then flies away.

  “So where have all the other people gone,” I ask, “who used to live here?”

  “Ah, yes, that’s where we started,” says Skye. “Well, boys, they haven’t all gone to the same places. Some of the grown-ups are in labour camps and some of the children are in care.”

  I shiver at the dreadful thought of care. Little Bear says, “And where are the others?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” says Skye. “The others have mostly gone to the north, and a few to the west.”

  “Why?” I know about north and west, but I do not see what Skye is getting at.

  “To the north,” explains Skye, “a long way to the north, there is another country. It’s called Scotland. And in the west, across the sea, is a country called Ireland. If people can get to those countries they can start a new life, and get jobs, and live in houses, and the children can go to school, and everyone can see a doctor if they’re ill. So then they feel happier.”

  Little Bear says, disgusted, “But they’d have to pay taxes!”

  Skye laughs again and ruffles Little Bear’s hair. “Out of the mouths of babes…” she says, which makes no sense at all. Then she adds, “They can say what they really think in those countries. They know they will never be put in a labour camp, and their children will never be taken away from them for being feckless, and be put into care. They feel safe. That’s why they go.”

  We all sit on the bank some more and give the matter some thought. After a while I say, “If I found my mum and dad I’d like to live with them in a country where we could say what we wanted, and go to school, and not be put into care.” I think a bit more, and look up the Hill, where I can just see the thatched roof of one of the shelters, and the blue-grey smoke from a fire. “But I don’t think I’d want to live in a house,” I add. “I like our shelters.”

  “You wouldn’t want to live in a shelter in Scotland,” laughs Skye. “It gets pretty cold!”

  So now, if people leave the Hill and don’t come back, I think of them living in houses in Scotland and Ireland, and I wonder how they like living in buildings, and whether they miss those of us who have stayed behind.

  * * *

  I am sitting in our shelter now, thinking about all this. Skye is helping Martha and Dragon’s Child make our evening meal, which will be pot-luck stew, made out of loads of different things they gleaned last night. Dragon’s Child has her baby strapped to her back and so she has to stay out of the smoke. She is cutting up vegetables. Skye is stirring the pot. The Professor is sitting a little way away, drinking tea and reading a book. She has to peer at it very hard to see the words because her eyes are not what they were.

  I am thinking about finding my mum and dad, and going to live, with them, in Scotland or Ireland. Since the conversation about the things they gave me, and how I might not just recognise them across the street, I have started to wonder whether I need to do something in particular to find them. I have just been learning about clues in our classes. A clue is a sort of sign, not a sign made deliberately, more an accidental sort of thing. For example, when the first crocuses come, that is a clue that winter is nearly over, and if a nearly grown-up boy and girl hold hands and kiss a lot, that is a clue that soon another baby might come into the camp. I have been thinking that although my parents gave me lots of things (like the shape of my fingernails, which is not at all a useful gift), they gave me three definite, proper clues about who they were. I do not know where to start, with the bits of songs, or with the necklace and the Q with a cross and no man stuck to it, but I could start with my name. So, I think I will go on a quest, like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table who used to live in the Great Hall in Winchester, and who left their table behind when they went away, and I will find my parents by following up the clues.

  Chapter 2

  My Name

  I do find the Old Man a bit scary. He wears camouflage trousers and a grey cap, and he has a long grey beard, and long grey hair which he puts in a ponytail tied up with a black shoelace. Except on the hottest days of summer, the Old Man wears a sort of blanket with a hole in the middle for his head, and there are things sewn onto the blanket – small pieces of coloured cloth and little bits of embroidery, making signs, and a coin with a hole in it which comes from another country a long way away. He does not say much. If we kids ask him questions he usually tells us to go and ask one of the grown-ups, so there is not a lot of point in us going to see him, but every now and then one of the adults will look at something we have done in our classes, or something we have made, and they will say, “Go and show the Old Man.”

  Then we have to go up the Hill beyond the last shelter, which is where Big Bear and Little Bear live, into the trees beyond where the girls play, and we have to call, “Old Man! Old Man!”

  Usually we hear a sort of grumpy noise and it comes from the ring of logs in the middle of the trees, where the Old Man has his fire and where grown-ups sometimes go to discuss important things that are not for little ears. Sometimes, though, the Old Man is by the maze. He grows some plants there, to use for medicine or tea, and to make good smells.

  Then we have to say, “Skye told me to show you this,” or “The Music Man told me to say my nine times table to you,” or whatever it is.

  Then the Old Man looks very seriously at the thing we have made, or he listens very gravely while we
recite our tables, and then he says something quite short and nice, like “Well done, Giorgio,” or “I couldn’t do that when I was your age.”

  It is a great privilege to be sent to see the Old Man. Round the fire at night mums say to dads things like, “Firefly was sent up to show the Old Man her poem today,” and then Albi, or whoever the dad or the partner is in that case, says, “Wow, Firefly. Well done! May I see it too?” and everyone round the fire smiles and is pleased.

  Once Big Bear was sent to see the Old Man for something quite different. He had not learnt a good thing or created something original; he had pushed Limpy over the earthwork and Limpy had fallen a long way and bumped his head. Walking Tall gave Big Bear a huge telling-off and said he must not pick on people smaller than him, especially not someone with a handicap, but Big Bear was angry and said that Limpy kept pushing in on our game (which was true) and that he used bad words (which I think was not true – anyhow, I had not heard them). When Walking Tall found that Big Bear was really not sorry, he told Florence, who is Limpy’s mother, that he couldn’t get through to Big Bear and that he was going to go and see the Old Man.

  We all watched as Walking Tall climbed the Hill and went into the trees. Big Bear said, “He can’t do nothing. Let’s get on with our game.”

  But Little Bear, Dylan, Mikki and a couple of others who were there at the time were not so sure, and we did not feel like going on with the game at all, so we all sat in a row on the earthwork that Big Bear had pushed Limpy over, and waited to see what would happen.

  After a while Walking Tall came back down the Hill and headed straight for us. “Right, Big Bear,” he said, his voice all serious, “the Old Man wants to see you, NOW!”

  We all jumped because Walking Tall does not often sound angry, and Big Bear got up without any further arguing and walked up the Hill with Walking Tall until they reached the trees, then he went on, on his own.