The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  Vishna says, “I hate to think of the Professor out here in the cold.”

  Skye says, “It isn’t the Professor. It’s just an old body that she has left behind.”

  I wonder if the Professor still exists somewhere, in a new body, or perhaps as a being without a body. I do not ask, though, because how will any of them know?

  Then Vishna and Skye make a meal at our hearth and bring it back to the big fire circle, where we share it with the Old Man, and Skye tells us the news, and gives us presents.

  “Well,” she says, “the best news first, I think?”

  Vishna says, “No, let’s hear the bad news first and get it over with!”

  But Skye says, “There isn’t really any bad news, just good, better and best.”

  Then she fishes a letter out of the pocket of her new jacket. She says, “The Bears are safely in Scotland. They are not going to live in Edinburgh, as I was expecting, but in a croft out on one of the islands. Last I heard, they had already applied, and it seems certain they will be accepted. It’s a chance in a lifetime. Perfect for them. Giorgi, I’ve got a letter from Little Bear for you.”

  She passes it across. It is dark by now so I cannot read it, but I am happy that Little Bear is safe and was not caught and put into care.

  Vishna says, “They’ll love it in a croft! It won’t be so different from living here!”

  I think, Tomorrow I’ll find out what a croft is. Croft is a comfortable word, light green with flecks of brown. It is similar to turf, and I think it has to do with belonging.

  Skye goes on, smiling a little as she tells us more. “That’s the best news. Firefly and her parents are safely across the border but they don’t know where they’ll go yet. The Music Maker phoned me from Aberdeen. He played a gig in a pub and they liked him, but he wants to move on, further north maybe, to live in a smaller community. That’s the better news.”

  “So, that just leaves the good news,” I say.

  “The good news,” says Skye, looking across the circle at me, “is that Limpy and Florence got in really easily. They asked for asylum on their way in, and when the immigration people heard how Limpy was injured they started the process at once. It will take time, but I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

  “What about Sputnik and Scott?” asks Vishna.

  “And Dylan and his dad?” I ask.

  “Ah,” says Skye, and glances sideways at the Old Man. “I can’t say too much about them yet. But nothing has gone wrong. It’s just that… well, it’s just that there’s no news yet.”

  “But there are presents!” she says. She hands two packages across the circle, a really bulky one for me and a large envelope for Vishna.

  “You first,” says Vishna, so I open the paper carrier bag and pull out a heavy camouflage jacket. It is similar to the ones the teenagers were wearing, although the cloth badge is on a pocket. It is lined with some sort of padding and it has a zip and Velcro at the front.

  “Put it on!” demands Vishna, so I take my gilet off and pass it to Vishna, then put on my present.

  It feels wonderful. The sleeves are a bit too long and the jacket goes almost down to my knees, but it is warmer and softer than any coat I have ever worn. “Oh, thank you!” I say to Skye, and dash across the circle to give her a hug.

  The Old Man is looking at Skye with raised eyebrows. Skye smiles. “No,” she says, as if she is answering a question. “Bought legally with a contactless card, by a well-wisher!”

  Vishna says, “Nobody will ever guess Giorgi is feckless when he’s dressed like that!”

  Skye smiles. “I had thought of that,” she says. “But our well-wisher was more concerned about the weather.”

  The Old Man says, “My goodness, Giorgio, you look so grown up!”

  Skye smiles, “He has changed almost beyond recognition in the last six months.”

  I feel embarrassed. I say, “What is your present, Vishna?”

  She opens the envelope, tilting it so that the firelight shines on the documents she pulls out. There is a small, dark-coloured booklet, a little cover for it which might be leather – it is hard to tell by firelight – and a plastic envelope. For a moment Vishna looks confused.

  Skye crosses the circle to sit on the log next to Vishna, on the other side from me. She takes the booklet and opens it to show Vishna whatever is printed on that page. “Your new passport,” she says, “with a visa giving you the right to enter Europe and re-enter England for up to five years. You are Violet Blair, an art student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. If the authorities check, there really is a place for Violet, deferred while she engages in personal research.”

  Vishna does not say anything. She looks at Skye, then she looks across at the Old Man, then she looks back at the document in her hand.

  “But…” she says.

  Skye says, “You want to be in England right now, I know. But five years is a long time. We think this passport will stand up to scrutiny, and it’s a way of escape, if you need it. You don’t have to use it.”

  I say, “Do I have a way of escape, Skye?”

  She says, “Just tell me when you want to go, and it’ll be a done deal.”

  Vishna is still looking at her new passport. “What about fingerprints,” she says, “and iris recognition?”

  “All sorted,” says Skye. “Someone hacked the art school records here. Your information was all held on a database, along with some rather uncomplimentary comments about your attitude towards authority!”

  I say, “What’s in that envelope, Vishna?”

  She looks surprised to see me sitting next to her, as if she has completely forgotten I am there. She pulls the two plastic edges of the envelope apart and takes out a small wad of bank notes. “Euros,” she says. “Do they still use them?”

  “Oh yes,” says Skye. “For small transactions.”

  Vishna still looks stunned. She slowly fits the passport into its cover and puts it in the back pocket of her jeans. Then she takes it out again. “I need to keep it somewhere safe,” she says.

  “We’ll sort that out tomorrow,” promises Skye. “And now, let me tell you about the Scottish border official at the Liddersdale crossing…”

  We stay up and talk until very late. The colours of our words flicker and burn around the fire circle, and we laugh a lot, and cry a little when we talk about the Professor. From the woods we cannot see the city, but Vishna and I jog once round the earthworks to get our circulation going before we go to bed, leaving Skye and the Old Man to talk about whatever it is they discuss alone. All the street lights in the city are off but we can see blue lights flashing part way up the hill opposite, that leads to the hospital.

  “I hope that’s not a raid,” says Vishna.

  “Perhaps they’re just arresting burglars,” I say, but I am glad we are on our Hill, not down in the city.

  * * *

  Skye says she can only stay for a couple of days. She moves into the Professor’s hut, but I stay in our shelter with Vishna. Skye has her usual backpack, and apart from her new jacket she seems just the same as ever. Before she came back it had begun to feel as if the encampment on the other side of the Hill had been years ago, but now it feels quite recent and I find myself thinking much more about Little Bear, Dylan, Limpy and Firefly.

  I read Little Bear’s letter at breakfast time, sitting by the fire wearing my new jacket and feeling snug and warm despite the cold wind. It is quite a short letter, but he sounds happy. He starts by saying, We made it! and then tells me about the croft they hope to take over. I discover that a croft is like a small farm, and that they think they will mostly have sheep, but some chickens too. He tells me, Big Bear and I will go to a proper school, but Walking Tall won’t have to pay any taxes until we have made some money. Then he says, We might have to choose different names but Walking Tall and the refuge
e people are hoping to persuade them to allow us to keep our real names. He ends his letter, Wish you were here! and for a few minutes I wish I were there too.

  Then I think to myself, Giorgio, you need to find your parents! I picture me living in a croft next door to Little Bear with my mum and dad. My dad would be tall and strong, and my mum would look a bit like Vishna and would have brown hair and eyes like me, because we all come from Italy originally. Of course, I know this is just a dream, but it reminds me of why I have stayed behind.

  So when Skye says, “What are you two going to do today?” I say, “I want to go into the city and do some more cross research,” and Vishna says, “I’ll come with you.”

  * * *

  There is a church near the top of the city, where they serve coffee in the mornings. It is the United Church, but I do not know who or what it is united with. I think I will look at the crosses there and then maybe go to the cathedral. Skye tells me you have to pay, and also says that I might want to buy a drink at the United Church, so she gives me some dollar coins.

  The group of teenagers we saw before are by the Guildhall again. This time they look at Vishna first, then they notice me in my camouflage jacket and they say “Yo!” and high-five me. A traffic warden is standing there, stopping private cars from parking in the taxi places, and he smiles at the boys the way that nobody ever smiles at feckless people, but all he says is, “Now, stay on the pavement, you lot! We don’t want any accidents.”

  When we get to the place where the street narrows, and the teenagers cannot hear us, Vishna says, “That jacket is really perfect, isn’t it?” And I say, “Yes!” and feel happy and safe.

  Vishna heads off for the rear of the art school cafeteria, to do some gleaning, and I walk up to the church. At first, I think there are no crosses at all on the outside of the building, then I notice that their sign is on the glass of their doors, and I feel a bit excited. It is a plain cross with no Jesus, but there is a circle around the place where the two pieces of the cross join, and the whole thing is in a shape which is almost like a rectangle, with cut-off corners. So now I have seen a cross in a fish and a cross in a rectangle. It makes me feel as if I might find a cross in a Q at any moment.

  I follow other people in, to the place where they are selling hot drinks and cakes. Most of the people seem either fairly old, or younger than me. I queue up, and when I get to the table I say, “May I have some water and a bun, please?”

  The woman serving says, “Wouldn’t you like some squash? Or hot chocolate? It’s a cold day.” So I settle for hot chocolate (it is a little bit lumpy) and a bun with very pink icing on it.

  There are people sitting at all the round tables. It feels quite different from the pop-up church. For one thing, there are lots of people here, and for another thing, nobody looks religious. They are just ordinary people, drinking and eating and talking quite loudly. There are a few chairs lined up against the wall, and I sit there, out of the way, and look around. Once again, I see a few crosses. Well, two, to be exact, and they are absolutely plain.

  Two ladies and a man are sitting at the table nearest to me, the man facing in my direction. His coat is unbuttoned, and I can see that he has spilt food down his jumper. I think he is a bit deaf, because he talks loudly to the women and does not seem to realise that I can hear him.

  “There’s a lad all on his own over there,” he says.

  The two women turn their heads to look at me. “He’s not doing any harm,” says one, and turns back to their table.

  “When we had children,” says the elderly man, “we didn’t let them wander around the town on their own.”

  The other woman says something I cannot hear, then the man speaks quite loudly again. “I blame the government. Women should be at home looking after their children! All this talk about fecklessness is nonsense! Why should women be obliged to work while their children are small?”

  The quiet woman says something else and puts her hand on the arm of the man. The other woman says, “Best not to say things like that in public, Marcus!”

  The man says, grumpily, “Don’t be ridiculous! Do you think they’re going to put me in a labour camp, at my age?”

  The two women look around anxiously. One of them meets my eye and smiles nervously. I grin, in a way that I hope says, “I don’t mean you any harm,” and then I get up and leave. As I squeeze past their table I say, “My grandpa says the same thing!” and all three of them look relieved and smile at me.

  * * *

  The newsagents where the post office is located has put up a screen and it shows news headlines and advertisements. Today they are forecasting a cold half-term week, and advertising careers in the military. I spend a couple of minutes looking at a film of very fit and happy young adults going over an obstacle course, then I cross the precinct by the Butter Cross, past St Lawrence’s Church and across the green to the cathedral. I pay my ten English dollars and go inside.

  I have been into the cathedral only once before. Skye took Dylan and me there one Sunday afternoon, when we were caught in the rain and Dylan did not have a coat. We could not wear our bin bags in the city because it showed us up as being feckless. We had only gone just inside the door because of the barriers that stop people from wandering around without paying. This time, thanks to the money Skye has given me, I have a printed ticket with a drawing of the cathedral on it, and half price stamped on it in red letters because I am still a kid.

  I walk slowly all the way down one side of the seats, looking at all the plaques on the walls, at the notices on boards, and at the stonework itself. I do not bother to read the memorials or inscriptions, because I am really only interested in finding a Q with a cross in it. Behind the table which is an altar there are ancient-looking tiles on the floor, but you are allowed to walk on them, and some quite modern-looking paintings. There are all sorts of crosses, all over the place. Some have Jesus hanging on them and some do not. Some have two cross pieces, but most only have one. Several of them have circles around the place where the two cross pieces meet, and for a moment I think that one of these is a Q, but then I realise it is just a circle, like lots of others that I have seen.

  When I have explored all down one side and up the other, I walk along the passage between the seats in the middle. Other people are just sitting on chairs looking forward. One woman seems to be kneeling down with her head in her arms. A man in a black robe is answering questions that a group of visitors are asking. Nobody pays me any attention. I start to count all the crosses I can see, but stop when I get to twenty. I wander over to the bookstall by the door, hoping to see a book or a leaflet about crosses, but I only see guidebooks and postcards. The woman asks me if she can help me, but I just say, “No, thank you,” and leave. I do not want to get into another conversation about sins and hell, and all those things that the man in the pop-up church tried to explain.

  There are lots of ways back to the Hill from the cathedral. This time I walk past the hotel, under the car parking space and then under an arch which leads to a little back street. I have been here lots of times before and I am not really thinking about where I am going. All the houses in this street are joined together, and I wonder whether that is so with crofts on Scottish islands. It would be fun to have a bedroom next to Little Bear’s, so that we could knock on the walls at night, or even talk to each other. Then I think that walls are usually made of bricks or stones, so perhaps you cannot hear through them, and I think it would be strange not to be able to hear the person on the other side of the partition breathing at night. It gives me a lonely feeling.

  After a short while the buildings stop. There is a high, solid, wooden gate, and next to it a noticeboard. Someone has stuck a notice up at some time, but someone else has tried to tear it down again, so that all I can read now are the words silence and peace. Above the gate are the words Friends’ Meeting House. The wood of the gate is broken, as if someone has
tried to smash it with something heavy, and I can see through. Inside there seems to be a wild garden, very overgrown and sad-looking in the damp October weather.

  There is nobody in the street. I look up and down but there are no dog-walkers, nobody pushing a buggy, nothing. I lift the latch and creep into the garden, closing the gate as quietly as I can after me.

  There is a huge house to my right, with plants growing up the side of it. One of the downstairs windows has been broken at some time, and someone has put a piece of wood over it, I suppose to keep the rain out. There is graffiti on the wood, and on the white front door. Fuck of it says, and in my mind I change it to say Fuck off before I correct myself too. It is rude, and it should not say anything at all!

  The building seems to be deserted. One of the windows upstairs is either open or broken, and a curtain is flapping against the outside wall. I try the door, ignoring the spray-painted instruction, but it is locked. I follow the path round the building to see more boarded-up windows at the back.

  There is a large garden and a wooden hut, and a little stream runs though the garden. I wonder who the friends were, who used to meet there, and why they had a special house for meeting in. What was wrong with coffee shops and each other’s homes?

  Everything is overgrown. The grass is long and tangled, and a prickly branch from a rose bush stretches across the paved footpath. I think I will just walk up to the end of the garden, and then it will be snack time, and I will go back up the Hill. But as I walk under a tree on the lawn, I think I see something move to my left. I see that there is a second wooden building in among the trees, and I am sure I have seen a person duck down, out of sight, in the winter greenery. I stand still. Nothing moves. I am beginning to think I have made a mistake, when I hear a sneeze. There is no doubt about it. Someone is there.