Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  All he wants to do is see that road — so he takes off, one step at a time. After a few paces, he looks back. He has come further than he thought; the shadow wood now squats some distance away. It does not beckon him back. He sets out again, his steps growing longer. Now he is bounding, taking great leaps like a deer, his arms spread wide to feel the rush of air and dust against his chest.

  Ernest said that the road wound its way into the sunset. He tries to figure the route, recalling the way the evening redness bleeds over the dairy and untilled fields. When he is certain he is going in the right direction, he keeps careful watch for some loitering man in black or some old bastard like McAllister there to do their bidding. Yet all he can see is a lone cow, standing dumbly there in the light of the moon. Jon watches it for a while, intrigued that there are cows, too, at the ends of the earth. Poor brute — it too must have been shanghaied onto a ship and sent across the sea.

  When he finds the road, it is almost by accident. The earth gives way underneath him, and he topples forward, catching himself on scrub that clings to a shallow bank. Really, it is not a road at all, certainly not like an English road with black tar and white paint. It is only a different kind of earth, packed hard and cleared of coarse grass. All the same, Jon marvels at it, dancing out into the middle and then back again, dodging imaginary buses and trucks. He knows, without a doubt now, that he has come further than he and Ernest came, that tonight nobody saw him slipping over the imaginary line.

  He begins to sing. He does not know the words, only the tune, something his sisters used to warble when they sat him on their knees. If he can keep that song in his heart, then his sisters will not be able to disappear. He begins to march, bellowing out the song, absolute in his conviction that nobody in the world can hear.

  He has never been more alone in all of his life. He has never felt so elated.

  He wheels on the spot, turning back in the direction he believes the Children’s Crusade must lie. ‘Judah Reed!’ he bellows. ‘I’m gone! I’m going home!’

  He finds a chunk of dry bread in the pocket of his overalls, something he had stuffed there at breakfast. He rests, for a moment, on a bulb of springy branches and chews on it. Shapes flitter in the darkness on the banks of the road, and he watches them go.

  Through the night he runs, in fits and starts, halfway between the scrub and the stars. So featureless is the night that, though he can see spidery shapes in the starlight, he cannot tell how far he has come. He begins to think that he is running on the spot, play-acting. If he has gone anywhere at all, it is only because the world is turning underneath.

  And suddenly the dream is a nightmare. He is running, running, running — but he is getting nowhere at all. Judah Reed has him by the collar. Judah Reed has him dangling in the air. His legs are kicking like a dervish, but he cannot tear himself away.

  A lump forms in his throat — he wants to be sick. He stops dead, pirouettes. After he has turned three times, he no longer knows which way is running away and which way is running back. On his haunches, he looks up at the sky, remembering how, in We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, the boys and girls could tell where they were by the constellations above. Yet these stars are treacherous; even if Jon Heather knew things like that, these stars are different from the ones with which he grew up. When they twinkle, they are mocking him, telling him, this is not your home; without the men in black, you cannot survive.

  He tries to pick a direction, but whenever he steps out, something stops him. He cannot bear the thought that, like last time, he might be running back to the Mission. At last, he begins to feel the cold. It is not like the winter that had England in its grip when they left the Home, but he is aware, for the first time, that he is wearing nothing but his Crusade clothes, still damp from when he plunged them into the trough. He picks a direction and runs again, idling between bursts, but finds that it doesn’t warm him up.

  He shivers. Up ahead, where the road banks — who knows in which direction — there is a cavity in the ground. It is, perhaps, the only thing Jon has truly seen all night, a deep depression where the scrub hangs down and the starlight shadows are dark. Jon stops and stares. Then, he remembers …

  There once was a boy who ran away. He ran as far as he could run, and when he could run no more, he burrowed down into the baked red earth …

  Jon’s legs carry him there without having to be commanded. The earth will look after him now. He sinks into the den, and finds that it fits his body perfectly. He will rest here for a while. He is not giving up. He will rest and then, refreshed, be on his way.

  Jon is asleep almost instantly, too soon to see the morning redness rising in the east.

  VII

  Cold, spreading like disease, wakes him. He does not want to admit what has happened, so he lies there, very still, until he begins to shiver. Then, popping open one eye at a time, he risks a look at the bed alongside his own. It is still empty, and the very sight fills him with horror. He counts slowly — one, two, three — and peers again. The sack pillows are still crammed under the sheets, so that any curious cottage mother might be tricked, but there is no denying it any longer: the fat little boy is all alone.

  He will have to sort this mess out himself.

  He drops, very quietly, onto the floorboards. His nightshirt is sodden but, curiously, there are patches of his pants that remain dry. He pats down his mattress, feels for the damp patch, and whips off the sheet. Bundling it at his feet, he heaves until the mattress is turned over and pauses to catch his breath.

  It’s been so long since this happened. Probably even weeks. He didn’t wake up like this once on the Othello, not when there was Peter in the cabin, telling him not to be such a big girl with that old grin on his face. Last night, though, all he could think about was petting that billy goat gruff, lugging bits of its body up to the salting shed and breathing in the tangy moistness that came up off its pieces. Maybe, he reasons, that’s why he’s slipped up — but no man in black here could ever understand.

  He turns. Low sun is shining over the compound, and soon the dawn bells will ring. He will have to work fast.

  If he is lucky, the cottage mother will not be awake. He rips off his nightshirt, crams it in with the bundle, and finds another shirt from the stash under his bed. By some strange mercy, they are all bone dry. Once he is dressed, he hurries through the beds and ducks out of the dormitory. There is no light on in the neighbouring sandstone building where the cottage mother lives, but, all the same, he crouches low as he scuttles to the laundry house beyond.

  Inside, all is still. It is a stone outhouse, lined with great barrels and racks, with a pit sitting in the centre from which a deep channel rises to a water pump. The girls from the other side of the compound will be arriving after breakfast — but dawn has barely broken, so there must be time yet. He finds the barrels where the soiled sheets go — but, when he peers inside, they are empty. If he leaves his sheets here, somebody will know.

  He stops, turns in circles, his mouth working like a fish as he realizes that, for the first time in his life, there is nobody who might tell him what to do. There is nothing else for it. He will bury them in the woods today, when he is out on village muster, an eight-year-old left to wander with the toddlers. If ever they’re found, nobody will be able to tell if the wicked culprit is even still part of the Children’s Crusade. It will be a perfect crime.

  By the time he creeps back out of the laundry, the compound is starting to wake. Through two of the sandstone rows he sees a man in black flitter by. Floundering back into shadow, he bites down hard on his tongue and has to stop from squealing out. It is not Judah Reed himself, only one of his acolytes.

  He has lingered too long already. There is a back way out of the laundry, and he plods towards it, suddenly out of breath. The coast, at last, is clear. Hitching the sheets up, he thunders across the earth as fast as his stubby legs will carry him.

  By the time he reaches his dormitory he is puffing hard — but at le
ast he has not been seen.

  He has gone only two steps through the door, blinking into the gloom, when he sees the face in front of him: not the cottage mother, not Judah Reed, but a bigger boy, thirteen years old. He looms ahead like a solid stone wall, a barbarian in short trousers with scabs on his arms.

  The bigger boy looks down, casts a quick glance back to see the bed stripped bare. ‘George,’ he begins, with a carefully crafted grin. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been bad again?’

  Jon is dimly aware of a steady rolling, as if he is still at sea and all of the Mission has been a bad dream. He can feel the sun beating down, baking the grit smeared across his face.

  Beneath him, an engine hums.

  He opens his eyes to see the desert rushing in all directions. Somewhere, something yaps, but Jon cannot see a thing. He has been wrapped in a blanket — and suddenly it seems to be smothering him. He kicks and punches until it flies away, landing in a heap at his side.

  He peers around. He is in the back of a wagon, exactly the same as took them from the boats all those weeks ago. He cannot see any real road along which they are rushing, just a snake of earth as barren and red as everything else.

  He reels to the edge of the ute. The wheels kick up clouds of dust that he can track for miles behind. They jolt over a patch of uneven ground, and the dust rushes up to make him gag. Eyes streaming, he sinks back down.

  From the blanket, a tiny yellow dog watches him curiously. Then, as uncertain of its own footing as Jon, it nudges forward, pushes him with a snout smeared in sand.

  Slumped against the back of the wagon, Jon can see two people in the cab. The driver is an old man with wrinkled red skin, in a singlet and canvas hat. The other, one arm dangling out of the window, is the blackest man Jon has ever seen. He, too, is wearing only a singlet, with thick hair that hangs in heavy coils.

  Suddenly, he is immeasurably afraid. He reaches out, thinking he might wrap himself back in the blanket and shut out the baking world, but instead the yellow pup waddles into his hands. At least with its heart beating in his lap, he can bottle up the fear.

  When they have driven for what feels like forever, the desert’s lonely silence is broken by shrieking birds, and Jon opens his eyes to see the lush greenery of a watering hole. The scrub is taller here — real trees, just like the ones back home! — and there is even colour, reds and yellows in the branches that, he realizes, are the birds who mock the passing truck. On the other side of the watering hole, they slow and turn left, following another trail. On their right, there is no desert: there is grass.

  Jon throws off the blanket and the pup and peeps over the edge of the ute. He has not seen grass like it in what feels like a lifetime. He has seen coarse reeds and tussocks of plants that clearly think they are grass — but this is as lush as the parks he used to know. The world is opening up. He sees three men on horseback cantering over the grassland, a little shack with tents arranged around — and, at last, a farmhouse, built like some grand English manor, sitting at the end of the trail.

  The truck wobbles through a gap in the fence, turns a tight arc, and judders to a halt. Off-balance, Jon crashes to his knees. When he gets back up, he hears the cab doors slamming and the tread of boots as the men clamber out.

  The sun is still low, and when he squints up he cannot see the face peering, curiously, into his own. When he cups his hand to his eyes, he sees that it is the black man from the cab, shaking his head and hawing.

  Jon feels certain he ought to understand, but there is hardly a word that he recognizes. The man grins, seemingly pleased, and throws Jon a gesture that even he can understand, ordering him to get off the truck. It is the last thing Jon wants to do — but he is so relieved at finally understanding that he has clambered to the ground before it even crosses his mind to protest.

  The black man reaches over his head, whips the dog up, and plants it on the earth at Jon’s feet.

  ‘You’re all up and awake then, are you now?’

  Jon turns. The wagon’s driver is sidling up to him from the other side of the truck, a belt laden with hammers and wrenches slung around his waist. He is wearing jeans and heavy boots and sweat shimmers all over his skin.

  ‘Aw,’ he says, ‘don’t look at me like that, cobber. If we hadn’t ’ve been driving down that road, you could’ve been carrion by high noon.’ He pauses. ‘Look, you’d best tell us your name. We won’t go misusing it. You’ve got my honour.’

  Jon remains silent.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ the man replies. ‘I seen more meat on a dead heifer in the Dry than on you, boy. We’ll get you cleaned up, get you some tucker. Booty back there’s gone to see if he can rouse up Cormac. He’s got history handling your lot.’ He pauses, but Jon just stands there. ‘Well, what’re you waiting for? Go on — hop it!’

  The man lifts a mountainous tool, slings it nonchalantly over his shoulder and ambles towards the veranda. Halfway there, he looks over his shoulder. ‘Do I have to sling you over me shoulder as well?’

  This time, there is enough menace in the voice for Jon to follow.

  Inside, there is a large kitchen, with two big ovens and huge pans, big as cauldrons, hanging above. Along one side, there sits a row of pantries; on the other, a window looks out of the back of the house, where three horses are drinking from a trough. Above them, there looms a tall tower, a giant water tank sitting on stilts.

  The man leads Jon through the kitchen, and into a yard over which the roof extends. Jon can see the black man again, saddling one of the horses. Swiftly, he swings onto its back and pulls it around.

  ‘Here,’ the other man begins, dumping a bucket at Jon’s side and opening a pump against the wall. The faucet sputters, before a jet of water erupts and rattles around the bucket like gunfire. ‘You clean some of that muck off you. Booty’ll be back before you know it. Then we’ll get this whole mess righted out.’

  The water is icy cold and, instead of soaking himself in it, Jon drops and drinks greedily. When he looks up, the little dog is again at his side. It rises on hind paws to take a drink, but can’t reach. Accepting defeat, it looks at Jon with big, wet eyes.

  ‘Here you go,’ Jon says, cupping his hands together. ‘It isn’t your fault, is it?’

  When they have drunk their fill, Jon curls up in the shade. It gets hot quickly. Every now and again, he ventures beyond the shade — but the sun beats him back, like some relentless marauder. On occasion, when he threatens to run straight into the furnace, the man reappears from the house and calls him back. Once, he brings him a plate with strange meats on it, tough things that Jon has to turn over and over in his mouth before he can swallow, and a mug of tea thick with sugar. The man says his name is Richardson, but still Jon won’t give up his own. He says please and thank you, but that is all. His mother would be proud that he has not forgotten his manners.

  A little while later, he hears another engine, and creeps around the edge of the house. Scrub chickens run wild along the fence, and they scatter at his approach, squawking in a pantomime of panic.

  Another ute has pulled up, an older vehicle reamed in red dirt. There is a black man sitting in the back, but Jon cannot be certain if it is the same man who rode out on his horse. As he watches, the driver swings out of the cab, wearing a grubby white shirt and wide-brimmed hat.

  The man named Richardson welcomes the driver, shaking him by the hand. Jon can see their jaws working, but he can’t hear a word. He supposes they are talking about him, and suddenly the man named Richardson guffaws. It is like a knife in Jon’s side.

  He turns on his heel, scurries back to the shade at the rear of the ranch. Splashing water over his face, he manages to get rid of some of the concrete dust that has worked itself into his skin. Then, he snatches up a pebble — heavy, perfectly round — and secretes it in his palm. The pup noses forward to sniff at his closed fist, but he harries it away. ‘Don’t you go telling!’

  The man named Richardson rounds the corner; then, only a yard behind,
comes the stranger. He is tall, with big round shoulders and, though he is not old, he has thick white whiskers.

  ‘Here the feller is,’ Richardson grins. ‘Spritely little thing, when he’s not dozing in some fox hole …’

  Foxes, Jon notes. They have rabbits and foxes on this side of the world.

  ‘This here’s Cormac Tate,’ Richardson begins. ‘He’s gonna get this straightened out good and proper — and then we’ll be shot of you forever!’

  This is obviously a great joke, for both Cormac Tate and Richardson slap each other on the back. Then Richardson turns. ‘Make sure he ain’t here when the foreman comes back, Tate. I don’t care what you do with it, just get rid …’

  As Richardson departs, the man named Cormac Tate circles Jon at a distance, picks up an empty bucket, turns it upside down and takes a seat. He is just on the edge of the shade; the sun shines brilliantly behind him and Jon has to squint to look into his eyes.

  ‘I’m not gonna hurt you, lad,’ Cormac Tate begins.

  His voice is light and — Jon’s heart soars! — it is English. Perhaps it has a strange twang to it — but it is at least as English as those haughty cottage mothers back at the Mission.

  ‘You run away from the farm school, right? The Children’s Crusade?’

  Jon’s fingers stroke the pebble in his palm.

  ‘You can tell me, lad. There’s no love lost between me and that lot in there.’ He pauses. ‘Why don’t we start by shaking hands? That seems a good old English way to start …’

  Cormac Tate extends a hand as big as Jon’s head. Tentatively, Jon shuffles forward and puts out his own. As he takes hold of the giant fingers, the pebble drops to the ground and rolls away, set upon by the pup. Cormac’s eyes are drawn that way, but if he knows Jon was harbouring a weapon he doesn’t let it show.