He was gone a long time, and we had a lesson about the bones in our bodies, before Big Bear came back. We learnt how Limpy had been hurt by the stick a policeman carried, when he was still a babe in arms and his dad had taken him on a demonstration, and how he had been allowed no medical care because his dad was unemployed and was a militant socialist, and if they had gone to the hospital Limpy would have been put in care. Limpy showed us what he can do and what he cannot do with his bad leg, and he let us feel the big, bony lump just below his knee, and we all thought he was a bit of a hero.
Then Big Bear came back down the Hill, and he had definitely been crying. He came straight up to us, and said without any prompting, “I’m sorry, Limpy. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
And Limpy said, “That’s okay.”
Then the guy who was taking our lesson, whose name I have now forgotten, said, “Do you mind this crowd calling you Limpy? You must have another name, don’t you?”
And Limpy groaned, and said, “Yeah, Blessing! I’d rather be called Limpy!”
In bed in the shelter I asked Big Bear what had happened on the Hill with the Old Man, and Big Bear said, “I’m not talking about it.”
So I asked, “Did he hurt you?”
Then Big Bear sort of snorted under his blanket and said, “No, don’t be silly. He’s a good guy, the Old Man. A really good guy.” And that is all he would say.
* * *
Because of the incident with Big Bear and Limpy, it is a really hard decision to go and see the Old Man. To be honest, it is taking all my courage, even though Big Bear says the Old Man is a good guy, and he should know.
I would rather question someone else, really. I tried Walking Tall, who I am staying with while Skye is away, and he just said, “I’m sorry, Giorgio, that’s not really my field of expertise.” Then I asked Music Maker and he said, “I don’t think you’re old enough to start all that sort of thing, yet. Give it a year or two.” I even asked Dragon’s Child, who was sitting in the sun playing with her baby, who had no clothes on, and who was sucking her toes, but Dragon’s Child said, “I didn’t go to a proper school either, so I don’t know how you would do a thing like that.”
So now I’m climbing the Hill to find the Old Man, who I think will know what to do.
I am in the shade of the trees now. It is special up here, a sort of quiet place. You can hear the wind in the leaves and you can hear a plane flying overhead, making pollution, and there are birds singing. In the summer the leaves ripple in the breeze, but they all fall off in the autumn, and the wind howls in the branches, but the Old Man is always here.
“Old Man, Old Man!” I am shouting, standing quite close to the maze so that he can hear me whether he is sitting on a log by his fire, or tending his plants.
At first there is no reply, and I am just beginning to wonder whether, for once, the Old Man is not here, when suddenly here he is, right in front of me, just a few feet away.
“Hello, Giorgio,” he says. He knows all our names.
“Hello, Old Man,” I reply, looking down at my feet and wondering whether this is a good idea.
“You want to ask me a question,” says the Old Man. I have not told him that, he just knows.
“Yes.”
“Come and sit down,” he says, and we go to the log circle where the fire is, and he stirs up the wood with a stick and hangs a billy can over the flames to heat up some water.
I do not say anything. He makes a sort of sign with his hand, that I am to sit down, and then he just gets on with making his herb tea.
When he is done he passes me a tin mug smelling of mint, and drinks some of his own, and still he does not say anything, and nor do I. I am not frightened, but I am shy.
Then he says, “You are thinking about your parents.”
“Yes,” I agree, and we sit there some more.
“It is hard for a boy not to know where he comes from,” says the Old Man.
“Yes,” I agree.
Again, we are quiet, then he asks, quite kindly, “What is your question, boy?”
I hope he will not think I am silly. I say, “My parents gave me my name. Giorgio. I want to know why.”
The Old Man looks as if he is thinking about that. I think I had better make my point more clearly. The Old Man is very quiet, but it does not feel cheeky for me to go on.
“Skye says that names are important. Perhaps I am named after my dad, or my grandpa, or someone who was important to my parents.”
“Ah, yes,” says the Old Man. “Skye is right.”
Again we are silent. A rabbit hops into the clearing with his nose twitching and then hops out again.
“So,” says the Old Man at last, “you think if you can find out why your folks called you Giorgio, you would be one step closer to finding out who they were?”
“Yes,” I agree, and wait.
“It is a big task,” says the Old Man. “And you are still a small boy.”
I think about that. “Small boys like to have mums and dads,” I say.
The Old Man chuckles.
“Let’s start with the possibility that they named you after someone important,” he says. “Perhaps you need to find out about all the famous people called Giorgio. And George too, because that’s the English word for Giorgio. How does that sound?”
I think about it, and finish my tea. The Old Man is not in a hurry. He stirs his fire and puts some more wood on it. Then he says, “Skye will be back the day after tomorrow. She will be able to help you.”
I go back down the Hill and Big Bear says, “Where have you been?”
I say, “I went to see the Old Man.”
Big Bear says, “You didn’t!” but I can see on his face that he knows I did.
* * *
Sure enough, two days later Skye is back in the camp.
When Skye goes off on her journeys she takes a backpack and a walking stick, and when she comes back she sometimes brings people with her, although not so much nowadays, and she sometimes brings interesting things and even gifts for people. This time she has brought a teenage girl who has dark black hair and a tattoo on her very white arm, and a book which she tells us is an atlas.
They build a shelter for the girl with the black hair near to the shelter where Dragon’s Child and Sputnik live with their baby, who does not have a proper name and is just called Baby Girl. I think that it is a good name for now, but that Baby Girl will not approve of her name when she is as big as me, only when I say as much to Dragon’s Child she says, “She can choose her own name then.” That seems fair enough to me, except that Skye told me that your name is a gift your parents give you, and I think Baby Girl has a right to that gift too.
I am not very interested in the teenage girl, and I think it is weird that she has a tattoo. Usually it is only old people who do that to their skin. Skye says that it was a fashion a long time ago. I am interested in the atlas, though. It is a big book, really heavy to carry around, and it has maps on every page, of all the countries in the world. Skye says it is a little out of date. It shows that Greece is still in the European Union but they have left now, like we did, although they have not joined up with the USA, which is good, because joining the USA is a retrogressive step. Retrogressive means going backwards, and it is a maroon word, but if I look at it for a long while in my head it loses its colour. Skye says I might grow out of seeing these colours, and if I do, I think the process might start with retrogressive.
The grown-ups say we will have lessons about other countries now, since we have the atlas, and us kids are quite excited. Firefly wants to know all about Jamaica because her grandmother came from there, and Big Bear, Little Bear and I want to know about Scotland and Ireland, in case we go to live there sometime, and are free to say what we think, and have to pay taxes. Nobody wants to learn about the USA because people always say that they ha
ve trodden on our country with a Big Boot, but Skye says, “All the more reason why you should learn about them,” and Walking Tall reminds us that people are just people and we should not judge others by what their governments do. “After all,” he says, “our government puts people in labour camps and in care, and we wouldn’t want to be judged by that, would we?”
What with all the excitement about the atlas and the girl with the tattoo, and with building a new shelter, and with having chocolate spread for dinner, brought back by Skye, we do not have time to talk about my ideas until we go to bed.
* * *
Our shelter started off as a tent a long time ago. It was orange and green, with a zip to close the door, and strings called guy ropes to stop it from blowing away if it was windy on the Hill. The good thing about the tent was that we could take it down and put it up again somewhere else, like on the nature reserve, but there were bad things too. When I was little there was plenty of room for Skye and me, and it was comfortable knowing she was right next to me. But as I started to grow bigger we found it harder to fit ourselves in, with Skye’s backpack and my toys. Also, the zip broke, and then rain started to come in at the far end, where our feet went at night. So then lots of people in the camp did a rebuild. A rebuild is when we enlarge or mend someone’s shelter. They took the guy ropes away and they cut and then lifted the orange and green material, which is called canvas, so that it all became the roof. They put sticks and plastic down the sides and they put thatch on the roof, and rows of sticks along the sides, so that from the outside it looks like a wooden shelter, but inside you can still see the orange and green canvas.
Inside, Skye made a sort of partition with some red patterned cloth which does not go with the orange and green, like the words Wednesday and Thursday do not go together. Wednesday is brightly coloured in spring greens and yellow, a bit sparkly, and Thursday is a very dull maroon colour, almost brown, which is ugly. I sleep on one side of the red cloth and Skye sleeps on the other, so we have our own rooms but I can still hear her snoring at night, and she knows if I have a nightmare and can just reach out and touch me. Another good thing about our rebuilt shelter is that we can both sit up in it, so when the weather is bad we can stay inside without having to lie down.
We are in our shelter now and it is quite late. Skye has been telling the others about things that are going on in other parts of the country and people have been talking about whether the government will fall. Skye says not, because it is propped up by the Americans, but Walking Tall says the Americans cannot last forever.
I am in my sleeping bag with my clothes folded under my head to make a pillow, and Skye is doing something to her hair. I am just settling down to sleep when Skye says, “Did you go and see the Old Man, Giorgi?”
I turn over onto my back so that I can see the ceiling of the shelter, which looks black in the dark, not orange and green.
“Yes,” I tell her. “This morning.”
Skye says, “That was very brave of you! Do you want to tell me about it?” Then she says, “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”
Of course, I do want to. I tell her about my conversation with the Old Man, and about my need to find out about important or famous people called Giorgio and George.
Skye thinks for a bit, and I hear her wriggling into her sleeping bag. She puts her walking boots outside the shelter because they smell, and says, “I hope it doesn’t rain tonight.” Then, when she is settled, she says, “I am proud of you, Giorgi!” I hear her turning over. “You can start tomorrow,” she says. “It will be a proper bit of research.”
She starts to snore before I go to sleep, and I like the sound. I say the word research to myself and it is a mixture of reds, like the tiles on a roof. Then I go to sleep too.
* * *
The grown-ups – Skye, Walking Tall, the Professor and Spanner-in-the-Works – talk over breakfast about my research. Walking Tall thinks all of us kids, once we can read and write, should do some research, and the Professor thinks that this is a good idea, but she wrinkles up her nose. “Honestly,” she says, “it’s good for kids to follow up their interests, but how can they? They need reference materials, a device or two and access to the internet…”
Little Bear and I are eating the last of the chocolate spread on stale crackers which were left outside Little Bear’s shelter. His mum says to Skye, “Do you think they should be eating that stuff for breakfast? It’s not very good for them.”
But Skye says, “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.” Then she looks in the jar and says to us, “Leave the rest for Big Bear.” Big Bear is still sleeping because he went gleaning with Walking Tall last night.
The Music Maker walks past. He has his guitar on a strap round his neck, and I think he is going up into the trees to sing to the Old Man.
“Morning all!” he says, and touches his forehead as if he is wearing his hat. “This all looks very convivial.”
Little Bear picks up his wooden knife, which he made last summer, and is about to take some more chocolate spread, but Skye puts her hand over the jar and says, “Big Bear’s!” Then she says to the Music Maker, “We are talking about the kids’ next project.”
Music Maker squats down in the gap between the Professor and Walking Tall. He says to me, “Chocolate spread? For breakfast? The Lord have mercy on your body!” Then he says to the grown-ups, “I thought they were going to study countries? I was all up for teaching them about California in the ’60s.”
Skye laughs. “Flower power?” she says, which does not make any sense to me.
The Professor says, “Giorgio here wants to find out about his name. We thought they could all do some research of their own, but there’s the problem of resources…”
“Ethnographic work,” says the Music Maker.
We all look at him. He might as well have spoken a different language.
He explains. “Sociologists do it,” he says. “Instead of using books, they study groups of people, first-hand. Our kids can start their research by interviewing people here, in the camp.”
Everyone is quiet for a moment, thinking about that. The Music Maker says, “Anyhow, I need to be off,” and he stands up and heads up the Hill.
The Professor says, “That’s a good place to start, you know,” then she adds, “although it’s not ethnography.” I wonder whether it is always comfortable to know as much as the Professor knows.
Skye says to me, “Would you be happy to start there, Giorgi? You could ask each person about any famous Georges or Giorgios they might have heard of. Someone right here might have a clue about your parents, without even knowing it!”
I have finished my last chocolate-coated cracker and am feeling a bit too full. I take a swig of water from one of the glass bottles that the People Who Must Be Saints leave for us near the bottom of the Hill. “I need to be able to write it down,” I say. “Or I might forget.”
The Professor looks angry, but not with me. “Honestly,” she says, “what sort of country would deny its children simple reading and writing materials? It makes me want to—”
Walking Tall puts a hand on the Professor’s arm. “Not now, and not here,” he says quietly, looking at us kids. Big Bear has come out of their shelter and joined us by the fire. He is holding the nearly-empty jar of spread and sticking his finger in to scoop out the chocolate, then eating it straight off his finger without spreading it on the crackers.
The Professor goes, “Hmph!” and uses her stick to help herself stand up. She walks down the Hill a bit and round, to the place where her shelter is built. Her floaty black scarf has come half undone from around her neck, and it blows behind her in the breeze.
“It’s going to rain,” says Spanner-in-the-Works, who is good at telling the weather.
Skye says to me, “We’ll see about getting you all some notebooks.”
“And pens?” I a
sk.
“And pens,” agrees Skye.
* * *
Dylan, Little Bear and I went into a shop in Winchester once, not long ago. It is a shop in the High Street which is also a post office, for buying stamps and sending parcels. The shop assistants do not like us to go into their shop. They say we are Little Buggers who will steal anything we can lay our hands on. It was a Saturday and lots of people were going in and out of the shop, so they did not see us. It was late August, and in September all the kids whose parents are not feckless go back to school. The shop was full of stuff for the rich parents, who are not feckless, to buy for their rich kids, who may go to school whenever they want. Everything was brightly coloured: pens, notebooks, little boxes and bags for putting pens and pencils in, rubbers and pencil sharpeners and plastic things for stapling paper together, loads of things. There were shelves of devices for going onto the internet to find things out and to send emails, in many different colours and sizes, with 50% off on one whole stack full. I do not know if we are Little Buggers, because I do not know what that means, but we do not steal everything we can get our hands on. Skye says that in an ideal world we would not steal at all, but “needs must,” she says, which means that if you are feckless, and you have no benefits and no rights, you do not get much choice.
So I am sort of hoping that Skye will turn up, today or tomorrow, with coloured notebooks and pens like the ones we saw, to help us to do our research. In the meantime, Music Maker is going to teach us about California in the 1960s, which is a lesson with lots of music in it, and some singing. We have to have our lesson in the shelter that the bikers left behind, when the Old Man said that they could not smoke pot here and they would have to go. It is a large shelter but it only has walls on two sides because they did not finish building it. We use it mostly when it is raining, as it is now.
The Song of the Lost Boy Page 3