The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  “Any plans for today?” asks Vishna. She is rooting around in an old biscuit tin where we keep food, and bringing out cereal bars which, I suspect, might have been stolen.

  “It’s half term,” I remind her. “I’m going into Winchester to look at churches. I’m going to try to find my symbol.”

  “I’ll walk down with you,” says Vishna, and pours blackberry tea into three mugs. “I want to look behind the art college union building, and talk to Fruit Man.” She unwraps two cereal bars and puts them on a plate, then she crouches at the entrance to the Professor’s shelter. “Knock, knock!” she says. “Professor, it’s morning. I’ve brought you some breakfast.”

  * * *

  Down in the city everything looks a bit drab. It is one of those cold, grey days when people keep the lights in their houses on all day long, and everyone who owns a coat (unlike me) seems to be huddled down into it. Only the teenagers look carefree. There is a group standing by the Guildhall. They are wearing camouflage jackets with the old Confederate flag on cloth badges on the shoulders, although you can tell they are English by their accents. You see that symbol everywhere nowadays. They are not really doing anything, just hanging around and talking loudly. They give Vishna a sort of look as we walk past, and one of them whistles, but they ignore me.

  Vishna heads off towards the art school and I walk on up the High Street, looking at the Halloween displays in the shop windows and feeling good. Nobody even glances at me. They are all hurrying this way and that, trying to get out of the cold. A small child, holding the hand of a grown-up, drops a mitten, and I pick it up and run after them. “Excuse me,” I say, and hand it back.

  “Thank you,” says the woman. She looks too old to be the child’s mother. A grandparent, I suppose, caring for her grandchild while the mother is at work.

  The church under the arch is already unlocked, and the lights are on inside. It looks very welcoming. I know a lot of tourists like to go to this church, and there is a box at the entrance asking for donations to help with the upkeep. I am tempted to try and take the money out. We could really use some cash. But the thought that I am in a church makes me pause, and then I realise that anyone walking past might see me. Instead I just go in, and sit on a chair, and look around.

  I know now that the table at the front is called an altar; the Professor has been teaching me these things, although I am not sure of the point of altars. They are to do with sacrifices, I think, but Christians do not make sacrifices. I think perhaps they did in the old days, when Christianity was just taking over from other religions. There is a cross on the altar, but there is no image of Jesus on the cross, which should mean the church is Protestant. I think, I’m learning! Then I feel a little bit sad, because it was not that long ago that I heard Skye say, They’re learning something new every day. It seems like such a long time since I saw Skye.

  There are other crosses around, if you look carefully. The books at the back, with poems in them, have crosses on the covers. The big bible on a stand has a cross on the cover, and the cloth bookmark has a cross on it too. None of the crosses have a Jesus on them, and none of them have a Q.

  Some visitors come in and look around. One of the men has picked up a leaflet about the history and is reading it rather loudly to the rest of the group. I sit quietly and wait for them to go. Then one of the women pats me on the shoulder and says, in a strong American accent, “Sorry to have disturbed your meditations, young man.” Then off they go.

  Of course, I have not been meditating. I have been listening to their words, and thinking about the deep red colour of medieval, which is a word they use a lot, and waiting to have the church to myself. Outside, people are bustling around, coming and going past the glass doors, but nobody is paying any attention to me. I stand up and go to the side of the room, where there is a rather muddled pile of old-looking books. This church is very clean and neat, a comfortable sort of place, and it is odd that this ramshackle heap of books should be piled here. I look through them, but there is nothing of interest to me.

  The next church on my list is quite different. It is a pop-up church. It appeared last summer, where a clothes shop used to be. In the windows, where there used to be male figures without heads one side of the door, and female figures without heads on the other, all wearing trendy clothes, there are now posters and books. The posters say encouraging things, like The Lord knows what you need before you ask Him, or Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. There are pictures of smiling children and teenagers on these posters, and family groups where everyone has very white teeth. Most of the posters don’t have crosses on them, but a few do. I stand and look in the window at all the pictures of happy people and think they look like advertisements for health insurance.

  A man comes out, smiling and looking pleased to see me, as if he and I are friends.

  “Good morning, young man,” he says. “Can I be of any help to you on this fine day?”

  I look up and down the High Street. It does not look as if anybody else thinks it is a fine day. Still, I like his cheerfulness. I say to him, “I’m interested in finding out more about the cross.”

  The man looks really, seriously, taken aback. “My goodness!” he says. Then, “Well!” He looks as if someone has taken his breath away, the way Limpy looked after Big Bear pushed him over the earthworks. He gulps, then he says, “Perhaps you would like to come in?”

  Inside it is set out like a sort of café, with small round tables and easy chairs, all facing towards the rear of the shop. There, on the back wall, there is a cross, large and flat with no Jesus on it, but with flashing lights draped round it. Below the cross is a table which, I think, could be an altar or it could just be a useful piece of furniture.

  The man says, “Would you like something to drink?” and he brings out a bottle of fizzy drink from a cupboard to one side. I know about that stuff; Skye told me. She said it is bad for you, that it rots the teeth and makes you hungry for sugary food. I say, “Please may I just have water?”

  The man puts the bottle away, but he does not give me any water. I realise that he is not quite sure what to say to me.

  I think I will help him. I say, “I’m doing a project for school, about symbols. I have found that the cross is a very important symbol, with lots of different meanings.”

  “Oh no!” says the man. “It only has one meaning. It means salvation. It means eternal life. It means never having to worry about your sins, or about hell, or about the future. It means joy and peace and knowing right from wrong.”

  I say, “That sounds like quite a lot of meanings.” Then I think some more, and I say, “But I never worry about my sins, or hell, or the future.” The last part is not quite true because I do worry a little, when I wake up in the night sometimes, about being put into care, but of course I do not tell the man that.

  The man has gone quite red. “Well, you should worry about those things!” he says.

  Now I am muddled. He has just told me that the cross is a symbol to tell me I do not need to worry! I wonder if the man is quite clear in his head about the meaning of the cross. Anyhow, I need some clarification. I say to the man, “What is hell?”

  Until that moment I had just thought it was a rude sort of word. People say, “Go to hell!” if they do not like you, but I have never considered that it might be a place where I might actually go.

  “Oh, dear!” says the man. There is sweat on his forehead now, and he tugs at his shirt collar. I am not trying to be difficult, but obviously the man is finding my questions hard to answer. “Hell is the place where all sinners go, when they leave this mortal life,” he says.

  “But…” Did not the man say, a few minutes ago, that because of the cross we did not need to worry about hell?

  The man gulps. He says, “You have to be born again. You have to give your life to Christ. You have to lay all your sins at the fo
ot of the cross, and you will have eternal life.” A sort of relief shows on the man’s face. He has obviously said what he wanted to say, although, in fact, it has made no sense at all to me. I vaguely wonder whether the table underneath the flashing cross is the place to lay your sins, but that does not make sense either. I do not think sins are things that you can put down and pick up.

  I do not feel as if I am getting anywhere. The man has sat back in his chair, as if he is waiting for me to answer. I wonder what he wants me to say.

  Then I see that the man is wearing a small badge on the lapel of his slightly shiny suit jacket. It has a shape like a fish, with a cross inside it.

  I say, “What does your badge mean?”

  The man looks down at his lapel, and it makes him have not a double chin, but a triple one. He smiles, as if I have asked a good and easy question. He says, “The fish means Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour, and the cross means I am saved.”

  I vaguely wonder what he has been saved from. Did he grow up in care? Did somebody put him in a labour camp? But the interesting thing is that there is a cross, a plain cross like the one on my symbol, inside another symbol. I ask him, “Is the fish a secret symbol?”

  “It was once,” says the man, “when Christians were persecuted. But not now, of course.”

  Now, I think, we are getting somewhere. This man seems to know the sorts of things I am trying to research, even if his explanations are rather confusing. I say, “And what would a cross inside a letter Q mean?”

  The man’s face goes rather blank. “Oh,” he says, “there is no such symbol as that.”

  It seems the man cannot help me any further. I stand up. “Thank you for answering my questions,” I say. “I will write it all in my project.”

  I start to walk towards the door. “Wait a minute!” the man says. He reaches to the shelf where the fizzy drinks are kept and brings out a little booklet, the size of a library card, with cartoon characters on it. He says. “Why don’t you read this? The best thing a young person can do is to give his heart to Jesus!”

  The booklet is called Now or Never. I say, “Thank you,” and leave the shop. As I go I hear the man say to himself, “Praise the Lord! A real lost sheep!”

  * * *

  Vishna has apples and a cabbage in her bag, along with two very dented tins containing baked beans. I meet her, quite by accident, in the High Street, and we walk back the long way, round the Hill and past the public footpath, to our secret track. We are being careful to leave and arrive by different routes, so that we do not leave evidence of too much coming and going. Our shelters are well hidden, even from this angle. The only clue that there are people living there is a thin wisp of smoke from our fire, and on a grey day like this I do not think anyone would notice it, unless that person was really looking for signs of life, and perhaps not even then.

  The path we are using winds in and out of the brambles. We have to look where we are going, because the thorns hook on to our clothes, and it is slippery underfoot. That must be the reason that we do not see the Professor until we are right into our tiny clearing.

  She is lying on the ground, looking crooked and very still. Her tall log has fallen over, and there is a mug half filled with blackberry tea standing on a stone.

  We both rush towards her. “Professor!” calls Vishna, and bends down to look at her face. Then she stands up again, very slowly. “She’s dead!” she says to me. “The Professor’s dead.”

  I kneel down beside the old lady. I do not believe Vishna. I shake the Professor’s shoulder, and I say gently, “Wake up, Professor! Wake up!”

  Her head rolls a little, sideways. Her eyes are open and there is a little smile on her face. For a second I think she is playing a trick on us, but she is not blinking. Vishna reaches down and brushes her eyes closed.

  “Why did you do that?” I say, and I am angry. I shake the Professor’s shoulder again. “Wake up! Wake up!” I cry.

  She does not move. She cannot wake up. She is dead.

  I stand up and look at Vishna. Vishna is crying, big tears rolling down her face. She sobs, “We shouldn’t have left her alone! She died all alone out here, and nobody was with her! Oh, Giorgi!”

  I am crying too. We just stand there next to each other, and neither of us knows what to do.

  Finally, Vishna says, “Let’s put her back in her shelter, then we ought to go and find the Old Man.”

  * * *

  The Old Man is tending his herbs, although nothing much grows at this time of the year. We rush towards him, saying, “Old Man! Old Man!”

  He stands up and looks at us, very calmly. He says, “How nice to see you.” It makes me feel silly for crashing into the Old Man’s turf like this. I say, “Old Man, the Professor is dead!”

  His face still looks calm. He takes a deep breath. Vishna is standing beside me now, the tears still pouring down her cheeks. He says to Vishna, “Is this true?”

  Vishna nods. She says between sobs, “We just came back from the city. She was lying on the ground, by the fire. She’s dead.”

  The Old Man brushes the earth off his hands and says, “Let me see.”

  We all walk back through the copse and Vishna points to the Professor’s shelter. “We put her back in there,” she says.

  The Old Man bends down and looks in. Then he kneels, the way he does when he is tending his herbs, and looks at the Professor more closely. He mutters something to himself, and then he comes out backwards and slowly stands up again. He is smiling.

  “She died happy,” he says.

  Neither of us answers. He says, “She died with a smile on her face.”

  I know this to be true. I do not feel quite so bad about her being all alone. I wonder what she was smiling about.

  Vishna says, “Old Man, what are we going to do?” She is crying much more than me, and I think how much she loved the Professor, and how much the Professor must have loved her.

  The Old Man says, “We are going to go and have a snack and a hot drink. Then we are going to dig a grave for the Professor.” He smiles gently at the two of us. “Actually,” he says, “you are going to dig the grave, because my earth-shovelling days are over!” He starts to walk towards the big fire circle in the middle of the trees. Over his shoulder he says, “And when Skye comes back, today or tomorrow, we are going to have a funeral.”

  * * *

  We eat the Old Man’s food for our snack. He gives us hot oatmeal with bits of apple on top, and the food is comforting. It is strange to be eating with the Old Man, but rather pleasant. We drink bitter tea made less bitter with drops of honey, and Vishna stops crying and talks quite a lot to the Old Man about the Professor. The Old Man just nods and smiles, and says things like, “That is so,” and “Absolutely”. All the while he looks interested. After quite a long time Vishna begins to talk less quickly and more quietly. Then she stops altogether. “I’m sorry,” she says to the Old Man. “She was one of the wisest people I have ever met.”

  The Old Man smiles. “I’m glad you knew her,” he says. Then he looks at me. “I’m glad you both knew her. But now it is time we did the last loving acts we can do for her. Time to get digging!”

  We make the grave just outside the large fire circle. It is hard work because underneath a thin layer of earth there is chalk, some soft and a bit green, but some white and hard. We chip away at it all afternoon, until the early autumn dusk makes it hard to see. Then the Old Man says, “We’ll finish it tomorrow.”

  So we go back to our shelter, and Vishna makes vegetable stew with a sort of dumpling, and we eat an apple each. Then we jog up to the trees and back a couple of times to get our circulation going, and scramble into our sleeping bags while we are still warm.

  “Goodnight, Professor,” says Vishna as she wriggles down into her sleeping bag, on her side of the partition.

  “Goodnight, Profess
or,” I echo.

  * * *

  It is Skye who wakes us up. I am dreaming about Little Bear. In my dream, he is running and running, and I am trying to catch up with him. He has some cake in his hand, and I want it, but he will not share it with me.

  Then a voice says, “Wake up, sleepy heads! Tea and cake for breakfast!”

  And there is Skye. She is wearing a new jacket that I have not seen before, but everything else about her is so familiar and normal that it feels as if the last few weeks have not happened at all. She is smiling into the tent, just the way she did when we lived in the larger camp on the other side of the Hill.

  I say, “Skye, the Professor’s died.”

  Skye says, “Yes, I know.” Then she says, “She died quickly and easily, I think. She would have wanted it like that.”

  We sit around the fire and eat our breakfast, and at first we just talk about the Professor, but then we start telling Skye about the other things that have happened while she has been away. I have not even told Vishna about the man in the pop-up church, and when I try to describe what happened both of them start to laugh, and they cannot stop. “That poor man!” gasps Skye, and I think it is unfair. I was polite to him all the time, and it is not my fault if he talked in circles!

  * * *

  We have the funeral after our snacks. We wrap the Professor up in a blanket and then in the fur coat, and Skye and Vishna lower her very gently into the grave. The Professor did not have any religious beliefs, and none of the rest of us pray either, so the Old Man says, “From the earth we came, and to the earth we return the body of our dear friend, the Professor.”

  Vishna adds, “May she rest in peace,” and she is crying again.

  Then we pile the soil and the lumps of chalk back into the hole, and the Old Man asks Vishna and me to stamp all over it. “It needs to look quite normal,” explains Skye, and she scatters a few ashes from the fire on top of the grave and puts dead leaves and bits of twig around. I think that in a few days you will not be able to tell that a body has been buried there.