The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  Vishna knows about lots of Georges, and the ones she knows seem very interesting. She says that there was a George who had his last name as George and his first name as Lloyd. He was a good bloke who tried to make it so that everyone in the country, rich or poor, could see a doctor or get medical treatment whenever they needed. Vishna tells me that this system lasted for years and years, and only ended after we left Europe and Scotland left us, and we joined up with America and they did not like socialised medicine. So now, after all those years, the feckless people like us can no longer see doctors unless, Vishna says, we have the cash in our hands. She says that Lloyd George must be turning in his grave, and I laugh, because I can imagine being in a cemetery in the night-time, and all the earth on top of Lloyd George starts moving, like blankets when you turn over in the night.

  It seems that Lloyd George was a very good man. Altogether, the Georges in my research book seem more good than bad, and I am pleased about that, although I am no closer to finding out about my mum and dad than when I started.

  * * *

  I climb into my sleeping bag, thinking Tomorrow night I will be sleeping next to Little Bear. Skye has been round all the campfires talking to people. She will try to find out about their friends and relatives who are not feckless, to see if they are doing all right, and she will make contact with Useful People. When she has finished doing the rounds, she climbs into her sleeping bag.

  “Goodnight,” I say.

  “Aha!” says Skye, “You’re still awake!” Then she says, “Giorgi, what would you do if I didn’t come back?”

  I think about that. The thought of Skye not coming back makes me feel sad and lonely, but I say, “I suppose I would live at Little Bear’s.”

  “And you would be good, and do what Walking Tall told you, and be polite to Little Bear’s mum, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And you would tell the Old Man if you had problems, and not bottle them up?”

  “Yes,” I say again, feeling very uncomfortable inside.

  “And you would be very, very careful if you went down into the city, and not cross the police or be cheeky to people in the street?”

  “Yes,” I agree again. “If you didn’t come back I’d be really careful. But I want you to come back.”

  “Me too,” says Skye, and we both go to sleep.

  * * *

  Then it seems about ten minutes later, although you cannot tell because time is different when you’re asleep. Suddenly Skye and I both wake up at exactly the same moment, because there is a huge crash right over our heads, and a flash of lightning, and another crash followed by a long, continuous rumble.

  “Uh-ha!” I say to Skye. “A thunderstorm!”

  “I should say!” says Skye, and pulls the red curtain back so that I can see she is sitting up in bed. “Pretty close, I would say.”

  I am not frightened of thunder. It is just nature’s way of clearing the air, one of the bikers once told me. Skye is not frightened either, but she is concerned. “We haven’t dug a trench round Vishna’s shelter,” she says. “I hope it doesn’t rain too hard.”

  Usually when we build a new shelter we dig a trench round the top and the two sides, so that if water comes rushing down the Hill it will not pour into the hut, but instead will follow the ditches either side of the shelter and go off down the Hill without making someone drenched through and through. When we put up Vishna’s shelter, the ground was very hard because although it had rained when Spanner-in-the-Works went gleaning for our research books, it has actually been a very dry summer.

  No sooner has Skye said this than it starts to rain. It rains really, really hard. We can hear it on the thatch of our roof, and quite quickly we can hear the water gurgling in our trench, and Skye says, “I’d better go and check out the damage.”

  “Can I come?” I ask, but just then there is another big crash of thunder, and Skye does not hear me. I get out of my sleeping bag anyhow.

  The best thing to do, if it is raining really hard, is to go around the camp barefoot. Feet are easier to dry than shoes and less likely to slip on wet grass. If we do not have anything to keep out the rain we wear black bin liners, but I have a waterproof jacket which I wear on top of my sleeping shorts. I follow Skye out of the shelter.

  Everyone seems to be awake. There are children crying but also talking in excited voices. There are grown-ups checking their own ditches and putting bin liners over places where their thatch is not keeping the rain out, and Skye is climbing the Hill towards Vishna’s shelter. Walking Tall is already there with his big spade, digging a ditch for all he is worth. Big Bear is helping him.

  Nobody seems to be bothered that I am out of my shelter. Big Bear shouts to me over the thunder, as if I am a grown-up, “Oh, hi, Giorgio. Can you clear that muddy patch so that the water flows more easily?”

  So I take a sort of trowel that he gives me, and I follow behind Walking Tall. Walking Tall digs a deep ditch with his big spade, but the bottom of the ditch is rough. I take out all the mud that gets churned up by the water that is trying to catch up, all the while, with Walking Tall’s spade, and I heap the mud beside the ditch on the side away from the shelter. Quite quickly the job is done and the water is pouring down the Hill.

  We all stand up and Walking Tall says, “Wow!”

  Big Bear and I high-five each other, because Vishna’s few possessions have been saved from a soaking.

  Skye looks across the valley towards the city, and shouts, “This is quite a storm!”

  We all stand there in the pouring rain. The sky is cracking and rumbling enough to make you deaf, but it is the lightning we are looking at. It seems just to go on and on, flickering over the city and over the Hill, sometimes like a big flash, sometimes like a sparky line of light, dancing over the city.

  Big Bear screams, “Dad, I think the cathedral’s been hit!”

  But Walking Tall shouts, “Oh, it’ll be okay. They fit lightning conductors.”

  The rain keeps pouring down. In our camp children are looking out of their shelters. Nobody can go to sleep through this, we think. Then Big Bear’s mum yells, “Has anyone seen the Professor?” and no one has, so she goes to check.

  She comes back a few minutes later, squelching over the soaking grass in her bare feet, and says with a laugh in her voice, between crashes of thunder, “Sleeping like a lamb!”

  Then we all settle down, here and there, in our shelters or in the big tent left by the bikers, and we watch the storm. I think of Music Maker’s mighty thunder song, and I understand that thunder really is mighty, and it makes me feel joyful, sitting with Skye, watching the lightning.

  * * *

  The storm seems to be going away several times, and then comes back. “It’s circling around,” says Skye, and that makes it sound like an animal, a living creature who wants to attack us. After a bit, though, despite the amazing lightning and the crashing and banging, I start to feel sleepy again, and I lean against Skye and I go fast asleep.

  And when I wake up, it is over.

  It is quite late in the morning. I can tell from where the gleam of the sun is. It is not a clear, bright sun; it is watery, behind vapour in the sky.

  The camp is busy. People are rethatching roofs and clearing out ditches. Some are rebuilding fireplaces. All the fires must have gone out in the night, but Dylan’s dad has relit theirs, and other people are walking across to their shelter with bits of dry wood, to carry fire back to their hearths. They stop at Dylan’s shelter for a while and drink tea, and a few people smoke fag ends and everyone chats in quiet voices. There are no classes today because there is too much rebuilding to do, and Skye says she will not go for a couple more days, until everything is shipshape.

  Skye has only just relit our fire and there is no hot food yet. I sit in my sleeping clothes on a damp log and eat crisps from a packet that the Pe
ople Who Must Be Saints gave us a night or two earlier, and drink water from a bottle. Then I check my George Pearson notebook. It is still dry, just a bit crumpled because I keep it under my sleeping bag at night.

  The Professor comes over, leaning on her walking stick, with her black scarf knotted round her neck like a big, floppy tie. She is wearing her glasses round her neck too, on a piece of thread which Vishna plaited for her, so that she does not lose them again.

  Skye stands up when the Professor approaches.

  “Morning,” she says.

  The Professor eases herself carefully down onto the highest log, using her stick to balance. Skye goes to help her, but the Professor says, “No! No! I’m all right. I’m not an old lady yet!”

  I think she is not quite telling the truth, because she is actually quite old, but I do not say so.

  The Professor says, as she settles herself, “Well, would you believe it? I slept through the whole storm!”

  “I know,” says Skye, laughing. “We went to check on you.”

  “Thank you kindly,” says the Professor. Then she says to me, “How’s the research going, young Giorgio?”

  I am surprised that anyone is thinking about research after such a momentous storm, but I say, “Good, thank you.”

  The Professor puts her glasses on. She asks, very politely, “May I see?”

  I go back into the shelter and pull my book out from under the sleeping bag. I pass it to the Professor, turned to the first page where it says my goals and my methodology.

  She reads my notes carefully, peering a bit because I have small handwriting and the Professor’s eyes are not what they used to be. When she has read it all, she says, “The part about Lloyd George is interesting. Who told you that?”

  “Vishna,” I say.

  The Professor looks pleased. “Vishna is a very interesting young lady,” she says. “Or she will be, when she grows out of all that adolescent angst.” Then she says, “Ask her to tell you about Giorgio Armani. He should be part of your research.”

  Skye says, “Tea, Professor?” but the Professor is struggling to her feet.

  “Not now, not now!” she says. “Places to go. People to see.”

  Then to me she says, “It’s time you were up and dressed, Giorgio. Cultivate a little discipline!”

  Skye winks at me behind the Professor’s back. I think she is right, and go into the shelter to find my red shorts and my black T-shirt with the hole on the shoulder. They are my favourite day clothes.

  * * *

  By snack time things are getting back to normal. Spanner-in-the-Works has gone around to each shelter and has asked, politely, whether they need any help putting things to rights. Ditches and trenches have been redug and bits of black binliner are having new thatch put over the top of them. The fires are lit and there is hot food for those who want it. Vishna has built her own hearth now, so that she no longer needs to share with Sputnik. Sputnik is mostly eating at Walking Tall’s fire now, anyhow. He and Little Bear are doing quite a lot of the cooking, which Little Bear’s mum says is interesting, and Little Bear is writing all the recipes down in his research book ready to report back to us.

  I ask Little Bear how he’s enjoying his project. He says, “Well, it’s good.” Then he says, “Did you know that grown-ups cry?”

  I did know that. I had heard Sputnik crying the night Dragon’s Child had taken Baby Girl away, and I had seen tears in Skye’s eyes when Music Maker had sung ‘My sweet Lord’.

  “They’re only human,” I say, and feel very grown up myself.

  Little Bear says, “Sputnik talks about Dragon’s Child and Baby Girl a lot. He says, ‘Dragon’s Child taught me how to cook this and I had hoped I’d be making this for Baby Girl, one of these days.’ And he cries. And I don’t know what to do.”

  I think about that. I used to cry when Skye went away, and Little Bear’s mum used to cuddle me, but I was just a little one then. I think about grown-ups crying, and what we should do. I have no real experience.

  I say, “Didn’t your mum cry when Justin, your real dad, went away? What did you do then?”

  Little Bear says, “Mum didn’t cry. She said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ and she took us to a burger place in town and spent the very last of our money, and then we came up the Hill to live here.”

  I find that interesting, but not helpful in thinking what to do when grown-ups cry. I think of the night Dragon’s Child left, and the way the other grown-ups behaved round Skye’s fire, and I say, “Perhaps you should just pat Sputnik on the back?”

  Little Bear looks at me as if I’m crazy. “He’s six foot tall!” he says.

  * * *

  Now that we have had our snacks, the grown-ups are making plans. Skye says, “Perhaps we should go down into the city to see how things are there?”

  Little Bear’s mum says, “Why? They don’t care how things are for us!”

  Then she catches the eye of Walking Tall who is giving her the same sort of look he would give one of us if he caught us dropping rubbish in the camp. “Well!” says Little Bear’s mum, “it’s true!”

  Walking Tall says, “There were two families in the nature reserve last week. It’s very low-lying. We ought to check on them, too.”

  “I think they’re weed smokers,” says Vishna. “I know a couple of them.”

  “Well, then, they can’t come here,” says Skye, “but we can still help them. If necessary.”

  Spanner-in-the-Works says, “There might be some good gleaning, too. If people were flooded.”

  “Let’s go and see,” says Skye.

  I say to Little Bear, “Shall we go too?”

  Little Bear says, “They won’t let us.” Then he says, “Me and Dylan are going to dig a paddling pool, so that if it rains again we can paddle in it. You can help us, if you want.”

  I think this will not work. The Hill is chalk beneath a thin layer of earth, and the water will just drain away. I do not say so, though. Instead I say, “I’m going with the grown-ups,” and I put my trainers on, because if people see you with bare feet in the city they will think you are feckless, and put you in care.

  * * *

  I think that really Skye would not want me to go into the city today, but most of the adults who are going have already left. Vishna is talking to the Professor, who cannot manage the walk anymore, so I say as she leaves the Professor’s fire circle, “Can I come with you?”

  Vishna looks a bit doubtful. She says, “Do you think Skye would mind?”

  I say, “Yes, but I really want to go and look at the city after the storm.”

  Vishna laughs. She says, “Did you get up and help dig the trench round my shelter in the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, I think I owe you,” says Vishna. “But if I say run you run, and if I say hide you hide. At once. Without any questions. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agree, and we set off, a good ten minutes behind the others.

  * * *

  It is always exciting to go down into city. It is a bit dangerous, and it is quite strange, because it is hard to know what people are thinking and what they really mean when they ask questions. Most people are just busily going about their business. Some look as ragged as we do, or even more so, and Skye says those are the JAMS. JAMS are people who are just about managing. They are not feckless, and so they are better than us. Their kids go to school and they can see doctors if they are ill, but Skye says that they always feel, at any moment, as if they might fall through the cracks.

  “They hate us more than anyone else,” says Skye, “because when they see us, they see what they might become.”

  Skye tells me often, “When you walk around in the city, hold your head up. Walk tall. Look as if you have every right to be there. People are easily taken in.”

  V
ishna and I walk alongside the river to get to the city. At first it is meadowland, with people going for walks with their dogs, and Vishna says, “Good afternoon,” very politely, and they look a bit surprised but they smile, and say, “Good afternoon,” back to us. This is because Vishna is acting as if we are respectable, and not Scum of the Earth.

  We walk past the Bishop’s Palace and through the gardens, still staying right by the river, until we get to the old, narrow bridge where they put traffic lights not long ago. Everywhere we go, we see signs of the storm. It seems worse down here in the city than it was up on the Hill, and that is strange, because surely we were closer to the thunder and lightning than they were?

  There seems to be destruction everywhere. “Destruction and mayhem,” says Vishna, and mayhem is a new word for me, a lovely blackberry red, and I say it to myself as we walk along. Mayhem, mayhem everywhere! The river, by the bridge with the new traffic lights, is lapping onto the footpath, and you can tell from the wet grass that it must have come much further up than that. There are bits and pieces washed up on the path, and people taking photographs and looking amazed. We turn left to the statue of King Alfred, and everything looks normal until we look into the Abbey Gardens and see big pools of water on the grass. The shops underneath the flats where the old bus station used to be all have their doors open, and people are sweeping mud and dirt out into the street.