He does not look back again until they reach the bushes where they last stumbled to a halt. He rests back, in the palm of one of the eucalyptus trees. It hardly seems to matter, anymore, whether they push further or not. They might be anywhere in the world.
‘Do you want to go back?’ he asks.
Ernest shrugs. ‘Do you?’
Jon Heather says, ‘I just want to see the fences. They’ll be at the edge of the wood.’
He takes off. Bolder now, he begins to run. Behind him, Ernest is still — but, moments later, he too begins to fly, whooping as he dodges an outgrowth of low boughs.
The trees are sparse and, for a time, grow sparser, so that soon they can see the sky darkening above, stars beginning to twinkle in the endless expanse. Then, at once, the trees disappear. Ahead of them, nothing but undulating redness.
‘No fence,’ whispers Ernest. There is fear in his voice, but there is awe too. They are looking at something beautiful yet terrible, evil and alive.
Jon Heather stutters to a stop. The sun must have disappeared suddenly, while they were in the shadow wood, for not even its red fingers touch the horizon. ‘It can’t be far,’ he trembles.
They bound across a world of low bushes and branches, unworldly things that seem to have been pruned into spidery shapes by a malevolent gardener. The sky is vast above them and the world is vast around.
Finally, a stitch in his side, he stops. Ernest catches him up, and then drifts on. ‘Maybe we missed it.’
‘We can’t have,’ says Jon.
‘We might have come through a gate. One they left open …’
The stitch in Jon’s side is severe. He presses his hands to it and crouches down. Ernest must be mistaken, either that or a fool. The men in black would never leave a gate wide open for any old boy to wander through. In Leeds, there were big black bars, with latches and locks and chains, all encased in ice.
‘Maybe it’s this way,’ says Ernest. He wanders on a few steps, and then a few more.
As his footsteps fade, Jon looks behind. Though he can still see the border of the shadow wood, he cannot see beyond. Perhaps the wood itself is supposed to be the fence that should be keeping them in. In the summer, its walls will close and its traps will be sprung, but in the winter, the cracks appear and a boy might slip out.
His eyes are lingering on the shadow wood when he hears Ernest cry out. To his later shame, he freezes, cannot even turn around.
‘Come on, boy,’ begins a deep, throaty voice, one Jon does not know. ‘You’ve come far enough.’
‘I …’
It is Ernest, floundering for words. Jon Heather sinks into the dust, feels something scuttle over the tips of his fingers.
‘Let’s be having you, boy. It’s almost dark.’ The man’s voice seems to soften. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell him you were out before dark. It’s worse if you’re caught after.’
Now there are footsteps again. Jon scrabbles sideways, desperate not to be in their path.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ernest begins, somewhere in the gloom. ‘I wanted to … see the fences.’
They are almost upon Jon now. He crouches, listens for a footfall, and darts forward. In that way, a few yards at the time, he tracks back towards the Mission. The shadow wood is fading in front of him, swallowed up by the gathering night.
‘I promise I …’
Ernest, Jon hears, has started to cry.
‘Save the tears, boy. It isn’t so bad. I could have left you out here, after all. It’ll be over soon, and then you can be a good boy again.’ He stops, the footsteps suddenly still. ‘But I can’t listen to your blubbering, boy.’ His voice hardens, yet it is barely a whisper. ‘So stop your crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.’
Jon cannot bear to hear Ernest swallowing his tears, so he hurtles forward. He takes huge strides, desperate not to be heard, leaping over the plain until the scrub starts to thicken around him.
He is almost at the edge of the plain, the eucalypts ranged in their ragged frontier in front of him, when he feels crunching under his feet. He stumbles. At his feet, there is a little cairn of bones: scrub chicken, if he is not mistaken. They are, he sees, not very old at all. He crouches down to peel a wing bone from his heel, and sees that the ground is scuffed up around him, as if some animal has made this its nest. But animals, Jon Heather notes, even Australian animals, don’t stop to build cairns out of their kills.
He might wonder about it further, but he hears them again: the man in black, and Ernest’s little voice drowned out underneath. They might be anywhere behind him; the voices seem to curl from every direction, borne on flurries of desert sand. Perhaps, he begins to think, the men in black are their own kind of fence, watching out for boys slipping through to pick them up in the nothingness beyond.
He crashes back through the shadow wood. Things skitter in the trees, but he pays them no mind. He only scrambles on, overjoyed to see the orbs of the border fires burning in the Mission beyond.
The darkness is almost absolute when Jon Heather crashes back into the Mission. On the opposite side of the untilled field, the dairy sits empty but for the goats milling within. Further on, the first wave of boys is already emerging from the dining hall, bellies full of gristly goat. Jon hangs at a distance and sees George among them, hands shoved in pockets, head tucked into his chin. He wants to call out, run over and fling his arms around the fat boy, but instead he looks over his shoulder. Other figures have emerged from the shadow wood now: the man in black, with Ernest propelled in front of him. If Ernest has been crying, Jon cannot see. He waits until they pass, and then waits longer. He does not have to follow to know where they are going, but he follows all the same. Soon he is standing at the centre of the Mission, where the column of sandstone huts marks a big cross. The man in black takes Ernest through a door, and then they are gone.
‘Jon Heather, you missed dinner!’
Jon turns to see George gambolling towards him.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, why did you miss your dinner?’
Jon wants to tell him. There’s nothing out there, George. There’s only more nothing, as far as the eye can see — nothing in the north and nothing in the south and nothing in the east and nothing in the west. That’s why they brought us here — a nothing place for nothing people.
He wants to say all of this, but he cannot. He could never describe the yawning terror of standing there, knowing that, even if you ran and ran, you wouldn’t get any further away. There isn’t a boy who would believe it if he didn’t see it for himself.
‘What happened to your hands?’ George suddenly asks.
Jon looks down. It still looks as if he is wearing scarlet gloves.
‘It’s nothing, Georgie. I was working.’
‘It’s nearly bedtime, you know …’
Jon feels his feet rooted to the spot. ‘I’ll be along, George. I’ll catch you up.’
George folds his arms. ‘What are you up to?’
‘It’s …’ Jon turns, feigns a big smile. ‘I didn’t finish my work,’ he lies. ‘They say I can’t go to bed until it’s done, or I’ll have to go for Judah Reed.’
George’s lips curl. ‘Rotten old Judah Reed,’ he whispers, conspiratorially. ‘Can’t I help?’
Eventually, George is convinced and scurries for the shelter of their dormitory. It would not do, he knows, to be caught out after dark, not with cottage mothers and men in black drifting around, looking for lurkers.
Now that he is alone, Jon is suddenly afraid. He hears, dimly, one of the cottage mothers rounding up little ones as if they are stray chickens, clucking after them as she forces them up into their shacks. They will come for him soon enough, demanding to know why he has not also retired. If he was missed at dinner, somebody will know; somebody will ask questions, and he doesn’t know what he’ll say.
Once silence has settled over the Mission, he hears the faint sound for which his ears have been stra
ining. He drops to his haunches, eyes fixed on the sandstone door, and tracks along the wall, trying to discern the exact spot from which the noises come.
Somewhere, in there, a boy is crying. It is, Jon Heather knows with a terrifying certainty, Ernest who is making those sounds.
The noise comes in fits and starts. Ernest bleats out, and then there is silence; Ernest screams that he is sorry, and then he is still. Every time Jon thinks it is over, it comes again, and soon he begins to notice a pattern in the sound, a rhythm, as if Judah Reed is a conductor and Ernest his orchestra.
Then, without warning, the sounds just stop. Jon listens out for them, realizes that he desperately wants to hear. As long as Ernest is crying, at least he knows Ernest is still alive. Yet now there is only silence: dull and absolute.
Suddenly, the door twitches and opens. Jon springs to his heels, ready to dart into the stretching shadows, but he is too late. Ernest appears before him, the man in black hovering above.
Judah Reed has a hand on each of the little boy’s shoulders, and he ruffles his hair as he sends him on his way. ‘You’ll be a good boy,’ he says, gently leading Ernest down the step and onto the bare earth. ‘Good boys make good men.’
Ernest walks forward, stiff and deliberate. His head is down, but still he seems to see Jon staring. Now, his steps grow longer. He is, Jon understands, trying to run, but something is stopping him. Dumbly, Jon watches him go.
When Jon looks back, Judah Reed has come closer, to fix him with a curious gaze.
If you were clever, Jon Heather, you would run yourself. If you were as clever as you think you are, you might have hidden in the shadow wood while the man in black escorted Ernest back into the Mission — and then, safe in the knowledge that the lookout was gone, you could have carried on running into the big bleak nowhere.
Judah Reed looks down at him, along the line of his crooked nose. ‘Let me see your hands,’ he says.
Jon could not resist, even if he wanted to. A force he does not know compels him to stand up, and he finds his hands coming out of his pockets, his fists unfurling to reveal those blood-red palms.
Judah Reed crouches and takes Jon’s hands, one at a time, in his own. It seems as if they are both wearing gloves: Judah Reed’s, monstrous and leathery; Jon’s, tiny and red.
‘It was a very good goat,’ says Judah Reed. A smile blossoms on his face. ‘You did a very good job. You fed the whole Mission. I hope you are proud.’ He pauses. ‘Are you proud, boy?’
There is a look in Judah Reed’s eyes like fire, a look that tells Jon: there is only one answer to this question. Being ashamed, he sees, is not an option. So he nods, because nodding is all he can do.
‘Some of the boys in this Mission could learn a thing or two from you. Australia will be grateful that you came.’
‘It won’t come off,’ blurts out Jon. His inside crawls, for surely he should be petrified, surely he should want to take flight — but, strangely, he finds that he wants to be here. It is the most peculiar sensation. There are a thousand things he wants to ask. It is, he realizes, only Judah Reed who really knows the way across the big bad nowhere and back to England. ‘I scrubbed and scrubbed but it wouldn’t come off.’
Judah Reed says, ‘It never does,’ and, smiling, returns through the sandstone door.
VI
Two days later, Judah Reed leads them in a Sunday service and, afterwards, they are permitted to write letters. In the assembly hall, Jon finds a seat at a long trestle table, and begins to dream of an opening sentence. At the far end, one of the cottage mothers looming on his shoulder, George wriggles onto his stool and stares, puzzled, at his paper.
Jon throws a look around the room and sees, for the first time, that none of the older boys of the Mission have come. He wonders why they do not care about writing to their mothers — and then he feels George’s sticky hand on his shoulder.
The little boy is standing beside him, stubby pencil in his fist.
‘You’ll have to sit down, George. If one of them sees …’
‘What can I write, Jon?’
Jon shuffles over, offering George half of his stool. Eagerly, George flops down, almost upending Jon.
‘Will I write to the Home, do you think?’ he wonders. ‘Or Peter?’ He stops. ‘Where would I write to Peter, do you think?’
Jon looks into George’s expectant eyes, recalls vividly that morning in the Home when George was crying behind the chantry.
‘You can write to my mother, if you like.’
Jon lifts the pencil out of George’s fingers and pushes it back in, the right way round.
‘What will I say?’
‘I don’t know, George. It’s your letter.’
‘Can I have a look at yours?’
Quickly, Jon wraps his arm around the page. Isn’t it enough that he’s sharing his stool and his mother, without George having to share every single word?
Bewildered, George mirrors the action around his own page.
‘I might tell her about being a sailor,’ he decides, and promptly breaks the point of his pencil.
While George is scratching away, Jon ponders every word. This letter has to be perfect. The perfect line could send his sisters scurrying halfway across the world. He sketches sentences lightly, using only the very tip of his pencil, and when it does not sound right he starts again, pressing harder this time to disguise what went before. He wonders if he should tell her he is well. He wants to tell her — but perhaps she might think he is better where he is, and not come for him at all. He wonders if he should tell her how terribly they live, how there is no food but the food they forage and butcher, how Judah Reed might appear at any moment to take boys into his study for a beating — but he does not want to upset her; she does not deserve that.
At last, Jon decides that he will tell the truth, without any fancy. His mother will surely appreciate that.
He writes each letter perfectly, just the way she always liked.
Dear Mother,
There has been a dreadful mistake, and I am in Australia. I know you did not mean this for me, because you love me, but the men from the Children’s Crusade say we have to be Australian boys. I promise, mother, I am forever your English son.
I know home is hard and there is not money until my father comes home. I promise I will help. I’ll be eleven soon, and then I can find work, in a shop or on a bike. Or I can come and clean houses with you. I wouldn’t be a nuisance. I don’t need Christmases and I don’t need birthdays and I don’t even need a Sunday dinner. I’ll have bread and gravy.
I’m sorry I made it so you had to give me away. But anything bad I’ve done or anything bad I’ve said, I haven’t meant a thing. I want to be good for you. I love you and I love my sisters, and I’d love you wherever we lived, even if we never go back to the old house.
I’ll be your best boy, if only you come and take me back. I’ll get you anything you want — and, mother, if I haven’t got it, why, I’ll go for and get it.
I am your son who loves you,
Jon (Heather)
It fills one side of the paper and, rearing back, Jon is tremendously proud. He suddenly thinks of what Peter might have said if he had seen such a letter, and inwardly he cringes. This is nothing of Peter’s business. Peter is gone, and Jon can think whatever he wants.
He glances at George, who has made a mess of one side of his paper and started again on the reverse. His letters are big and crude, but he has made more words than Jon thought possible.
You will be ever pleased to know Jonn looks after me like my one brother. Its not the same as peter but he is in deed a very good boy. He promises I can live with you when we are to get back in England
Jon wants to rip the paper away — and perhaps George senses it, for he shifts his body around and the words are gone from sight. It is better this way. Let him think whatever he wants — but there will not be room for him at the old house.
Some of the boys have finished their letters an
d, sealing them diligently, hand them to the cottage mother sitting at the front of the hall. On the other side of the hall, Jon spies Ernest, creasing his page and carefully lettering an address on front.
‘I’ll catch you up, Georgie …’
Jon sees Ernest almost at the cottage mother’s desk, and scurries around the long table to catch up. Ernest seems eager to avoid him, for he is almost at the door by the time Jon’s hand lands on his shoulder.
‘I’m …’ Jon does not know what to say. ‘… sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I didn’t …’ All his words have failed him. He does not know what to say sorry for, but for some reason he can picture himself with a stick in his hand, beating Ernest over and over. ‘I just got scared.’
Ernest shrugs. ‘I didn’t tell, you know. They were sure they’d seen me with another boy, but I said I was on my own.’
Jon nods, dumbly. ‘Did it … hurt?’ he finds himself asking.
‘He had a hockey stick.’
A curious sensation spreads, like warmth, across Jon’s stomach, up his chest and down his arms, as if he has too much energy, as if he should jump up and sprint in circles. He remembers Judah Reed telling him he ought to be proud, and realizes what the feeling is: guilt, not for letting Ernest be beaten, but for something else.
They stand, neither one really looking at the other, complicit in some secret.
‘You write to your mother too?’ Jon begins.
‘Every month, ever since I came.’
Jon cannot bear to ask how long that has been. Nor can he bear to ask the question that floats in the air between them, daring to be voiced. If Ernest has been here for years, if he has written a letter diligently each month, why, then, is he still here?
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I told her about the fences.’ Ernest tucks his head down, shuffling away as if embarrassed by what he is about to say. ‘I told her she can come and get me almost any time she wants —’ cause if there’s nothing keeping us in, there’s nothing keeping her out.’
Little Exiles Page 9