Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  At the door, Jon stops. His knees seem to buckle, as if he can go no further. He crouches and lays the boy he is carrying at his feet. Then, he reaches out with a fist and raps his knuckles on the door.

  The lights have been on for some time. He does not have to wait. Indeed, it is almost as if somebody on the other side has himself been doing the waiting.

  The door opens and Judah Reed stands there, framed in the light. Below him, Jon shakes.

  ‘Mr Reed,’ he says. ‘I need your help.’

  Judah Reed looks up, over Jon’s head, at the faces watching him from every corner of the darkness.

  ‘Very well, Jon,’ he says, and welcomes him and Luca inside.

  There is a hole where bad boys are sent — and in that hole they must sit and ponder why they are so rotten, why they are so different to all the good, dependable boys who work so hard as part of the Children’s Crusade. There is no light. There are no books or toys or games to play, nothing with which they might while away the hours. There is only the thinking.

  Jon Heather is in that hole, a sandstone abode with no windows and only a small porthole of a door, for three days and three nights. There is bread and there is broth, but there is nothing else. And, in that darkness, he does not think about his badness. He does not think about the apologies he will have to tender to Judah Reed, to his cottage mother, to every other boy in the Children’s Crusade. He thinks only: I am good and I am right and my mother loves me, even if she had to send me away. And if, in this upside-down world, rightness can be punished, then I’ll be punished again and again. I’ll make my apologies, but I’ll know that I’m lying. I’ll make believe and pretend, but I won’t let it change me.

  Because they do want to change him, to make him believe he’s bad — so rotten he needs their help to become a proud Australian boy. This place changes little boys and girls so much that their mothers might never recognize them. All you have to do is look at George. In here, George has friends. They worship him. He smiles and sings. He isn’t the same boy Jon found back at the Home. And Tommy Crowe — surely he isn’t the same Tommy Crowe who first came here. But Jon …

  Jon stops. It doesn’t have to be that way. He’s got his rules. He can build more. All of these other boys, they’ll change, for better or worse — and if their mothers should ever see them again, they’ll look down and wonder: is this really my little boy? Did I really hold him when he was a baby? But if Jon works hard, obeys his rules, learns new ones, perhaps he can stay the same as ever he was. Then, one day, he might meet his mother again, and find that she still loves him.

  On the day that he is released, he is taken to Judah Reed’s office and given six of the best with the end of a stock whip, for his impertinence in escaping from his ropes. After it is done, he shakes Judah Reed’s hand, and is told that he is also to be rewarded for his good deed in bringing Luca back to the Mission. The Children’s Crusade, it seems, is nothing if not fair. He is awarded a new smock, a glass bottle of something called Sarsaparilla, and two days’ rest from work.

  Outside — a good, cleansed boy — he swaps his clean smock for some boy’s old one and gives the bottle of Sarsaparilla to the nearest little one he can find. Fortune is a strange thing, and the boy who gratefully takes the fizzing drink is Ernest. Jon tells him never to go for walks in the wood, and slopes past. Ernest nods. He might even understand. Even looking at something as dangerous as a world without fences can land you in trouble.

  He finds Laura in the laundry rooms, where once she would help hide George’s midnight upsets. He does not need to talk to her for long, because it is a simple thing: he tells her he cannot be her friend anymore. If he is her friend, one day they will be good friends, and then the men in black will see them, and then Jon will be punished again. And, if Jon is punished again, a little piece of him won’t be the same any more, and his mother might not recognize him when, finally, they find each other.

  Laura looks at him, puzzled, but she says nothing more. She goes back to beating the sheets — but this time she beats more fiercely.

  In the dairy, Tommy Crowe is milking the goats. Jon takes a pail but doesn’t sit down — it would hurt too much.

  He nods at Tommy.

  ‘It’s OK, Jack the lad. I’d do it again.’

  They sit in silence for the longest time.

  ‘Tommy,’ he says. ‘What happened to the …’ He wants to say wild boy, but it wouldn’t sound right. ‘… boy I brought in?’

  Tommy squeezes his last teat with a flourish. ‘They took him away, Jon.’

  ‘To a hospital? A doctor?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Jon Heather does not ask anything further. He knows where else Luca might have been sent. The Crusade home in New South Wales. Any of the other Missions in any of the other four corners of the Earth. A hole six feet under the ground. The only place he knows he won’t have been sent is home.

  Jon nods, slowly, and turns to leave.

  ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t listen to me, Jon Heather,’ Tommy whispers, so quietly he can barely be heard. ‘Knowing how not to get in trouble … it’s not the most important thing, is it?’

  Jon pauses on the threshold — and then he is gone.

  Outside the bedwetters’, the boys are taking a break from filling one latrine and excavating another. Jon stands at a distance. The younger man in black is among them, but he is not dressed in black. Instead, he wears brown overalls and big thick gloves. The boys, it seems, have found a nest of bees. There were once hives kept just outside the compound, hardy things that roamed far and wide for desert flowers. Perhaps that time is coming again.

  Jon finds George among the little ones, sitting cross-legged with a tin cup full of water.

  As Jon approaches, George scrambles to his feet. It is almost as if he is going to flee. A gang of little ones spring up with him, as if they’re his infantry, ready to repel the intruder.

  ‘Jon,’ George stammers, ‘Jon, you’re all right!’

  Jon nods. He wades among the little ones. Over George’s shoulder, the man in black has seen him, but only nods and smiles. Jon thinks deeply, and returns the gesture.

  ‘Jon,’ George whispers. ‘Come here …’

  They leave the gathering of little ones, but cannot drift far. At the edge of the dormitory shack, George starts ferreting in the folds of his clothes — and Jon notices, for the first time, that he is wearing leather shoes, too big but tied up tightly.

  George sees Jon looking. He flinches, like a rabbit under a hawk.

  ‘It’s only because I’m doing the bee-keeping,’ he begins. ‘We’ve got a hive and I’m … I’m learning it, Jon. So we can have honey.’

  Jon realizes, with a pang, that he is not jealous of George’s boots. The very idea seems ridiculous to him. Boys with boots stand out.

  George produces a sheet of paper, once crumpled but straightened out and folded neatly away. One side of it is shiny and coloured: the waxy wrapper from a packet of biscuits. On the other side, there is writing.

  George’s lips twitch, as if he is thinking about smiling.

  Jon takes the wrapper. At the bottom, Peter’s name is scored in with the nib of a pen running out of ink.

  ‘I didn’t see him,’ George begins, bouncing up and down. ‘He must have sneaked in through the wood. One of the little ones brought it. Peter gave him a biscuit.’

  Most likely he came looking for news of Rebekkah, Jon thinks. I broke my promise on that too — but I’ll break a thousand more promises before I get back home.

  ‘He says …’ Jon reads the words. He can even hear Peter’s voice welling up inside him. He realizes he isn’t going to hear that voice for a very long time. ‘They’ve run away,’ he begins. ‘Him and Cormac Tate. But …’ And this is just like Peter, exasperated at the lodestones around his neck, but refusing to have it any other way. ‘He’s going to wait for us. He’s going to be there, when we’re bigger boys, when we get out.’ He has scrawled down the name
of a roadhouse that Cormac Tate knows, and Peter promises to be there on a certain date, in the deep dark summer of December, in the year of 1956. ‘He remembered my birthday,’ Jon breathes. God damn you, Peter. You really are a friend.

  ‘It’s my birthday too,’ whispers George, eager to join in. ‘Remember?’

  Jon is silent. He feels, suddenly, a dozen pairs of eyes boring into his back. ‘You didn’t ask me,’ he begins. ‘About Judah Reed and the wild boy and what happened out there.’

  This time, the flinching is too obvious to disguise as a shrug or a simple tic. George throws a look to his left, a look to his right. His face scrunches up. Jon has seen this before — he saw it before he even knew George’s name, hidden behind the chantry at the Home in Leeds — but, a year and more later, George is learning to control it. He has almost swallowed it — but he’s still not good enough. At last, his tears break and his face flushes a disgusting scarlet red.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jon,’ he sobs. He reaches out, fat arms desperate to be cuddled. ‘Jon Heather, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to run away. I didn’t want to be on my own. And … please say something, Jon. Jon Heather, I’m sorry …’

  Jon backs away. Looks at George. His new boots are polished. His teeth are clean. Over his shoulder, the man in black is waiting, carrying two bee-keepers’ veils.

  ‘You told on me …’ he breathes.

  ‘Jon, please …’

  ‘George, please tell me you didn’t tell …’

  ‘I thought you were going. Like Peter. I thought you were leaving. Just because I’m a bedwetter, Jon, and I thought …’

  George barrels forward. If he gets there fast enough, he thinks, Jon won’t be able to say no; he’ll have to hold him, and that will make it all better.

  Jon Heather steps back; George crashes down, all blubber and bone.

  Jon turns and begins to walk away. Three steps later, he turns back. ‘I would never have gone,’ he says. ‘Not without taking you with me.’

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘I didn’t even haze you,’ Jon whispers. ‘They hazed me for it, but I wouldn’t even pretend to hit you, George.’

  Jon wants nothing more than to walk over, take those boots, tell this boy he’s mollycoddled that now he’s on his own. There he is, already lying on the floor. All he’d have to do is stride over, put his foot into his ribs. ‘I gave you my mother. You wrote her a letter …’

  George stands and stares. ‘Jon, please?’

  Jon reels back through the year he has spent here. It can’t change you, he tells himself. You swore it. You’re going to go home, the same little boy who got snatched away. What, he asks himself, would that little boy have done?

  ‘It’s OK, George,’ he says finally. The fat boy’s arms are stretched out and, mechanically, he steps into them. ‘Five years, Georgie boy. We can do five years, can’t we?’

  The words are flat, without emotion, but if George understands, he doesn’t let on.

  He sniffles against Jon’s smock. ‘I’m sorry, Jon. I didn’t want to do it.’

  Jon hisses, softly, into George’s ear. ‘If you don’t stop saying sorry, I’m going to stop believing it …’

  George pulls back, nods urgently and dries his eyes. A thick globule hangs out of his nose. It might be the most hateful thing Jon’s ever seen.

  ‘Watch out for those bees, Georgie boy,’ Jon says, a perfect imitation of the way things used to be. ‘They’ll want to sting you, every last one.’

  Throwing a vague wave over his shoulder, he turns and walks away.

  X

  In the middle month of summer, in the year of 1956, a lone figure hitches along the Mullewa back road. He doesn’t seem much of a threat to the shearer who picks him up — but, although the boy’s invited to ride up-front, he prefers to sit in the back of the ute, huddled under a canvas with his cardboard suitcase tucked under his legs. It’s how he was brought into this world, he says, so it may as well be the way he rides out.

  The boy leaves the shearer outside the little township of Black Rock, a rabble of a town where shearers and station blacks come to waste their time. Somebody said there was gold here once, but that somebody was lying. He tramps the three miles into town from the junction alone and, when he’s sure he’s found the right place, pitches a stone at the upstairs window.

  Three rocks later, a white-whiskered face peers out.

  ‘You made it!’ he grins. ‘Our boy Pete’s been rabbiting about it for weeks. Some of the hands bet against it, but Pete always put a lot of truck in you. Just in time for Christmas as well! Wait …’ He pauses. ‘Is something wrong down there?’ He retreats inside the window. ‘I’ll wake him up.’

  Jon does not have to wait long. Lights flare in the downstairs hall and Cormac Tate, still only half-dressed, steps into the night. Behind him, a dark-skinned lady in a bathing robe nods, surly, at him. Jon gets the impression this is her house, that she brooks his midnight intrusion only because of Cormac Tate.

  ‘Pete’s in the top left,’ Cormac says. ‘Just getting his gear on.’ He stops. ‘Well, go on! Damn lad’s been waiting on you best part of five years!’

  Jon walks up a creaking stair, sees a door ajar and spilling lantern light onto the landing. Gently, he pushes through. At the bed, a wiry man with dirty red hair is hobbling into his jeans. A girl, long and blonde, lies in the sheets beyond.

  Peter has filled out since Jon last saw him. His skin, still red, no longer seems burned, and he wears an untamed beard.

  ‘Jon Heather!’ he beams. ‘As I live and breathe!’

  He flings his arms absurdly wide to receive Jon — but, as he does so, his jeans fall back to his ankles and riding boots. He hangs there, ridiculous, until Jon submits to the hug.

  ‘This here,’ says Peter to the girl in bed, ‘is my old pal, Jon Heather. Not the oldest, but damn near. A fellow refugee from sunny Blighty.’ The girl nods, vaguely unimpressed. ‘Come on, Jon, let’s give a lady some privacy. She needs her beauty sleep.’

  Together, they step into the hallway. Cormac Tate blinks up the stairs and shakes his head.

  ‘Get some clothes on, Pete! The rest of my life is gonna be an anticlimax …’

  He disappears, muttering something about beer and tea.

  ‘Who’s that, Peter?’ Jon asks, gesturing at the bedroom door.

  ‘That’s Orla. She’s my girl.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Peter checks a clock hanging against the wall. ‘About another two hours,’ he says. When he sees Jon’s face puzzling, he claps him on the back. ‘It’s a joke, Jon Heather. I known her about a year. We see each other when me and Cormac pass through.’

  ‘Look, Peter, there’s something I …’

  ‘So?’ Peter begins. ‘We all set? Little George waiting downstairs, is he? Not so little anymore, I shouldn’t think. Shit, look at you, Jon Heather! You growed up on me! Didn’t anybody ever teach you to cut your hair? George lose that gut of his yet?’

  Jon hesitates. He has rehearsed this next part time and time again, but even in his head he’s never got it right. But, just like those letters he once wrote to his mother, letters that never received reply, these words have got to be perfect. Anything less, and the world will surely come crashing down.

  ‘Peter, that’s the thing,’ he says. ‘Peter, George isn’t coming.’

  Cormac Tate drives. He and Peter bought the wagon together, fixed her up from scrap, but tonight Cormac won’t let Peter near the wheel. He’s surly and he’s silent, and that means he doesn’t care what he’s doing. Knowing their luck, he’d run into a roving ’roo, and then the adventure would end only minutes after it was supposed to begin.

  They drive through the night. It is still dark when they round the old farmhouse where Peter and Cormac once worked, still dark when they pass the Mission track with its legend hanging above. Cormac brings the wagon around, as if he might skirt the Mission and stop outside that patch of scrubland Jon Heather has always
called the shadow wood, but Jon reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. He guides the wagon to a stop.

  ‘You’re right, boy,’ Cormac Tate begins. ‘We don’t have to go sneaking about anymore. They’re not going to go snatching you back now.’

  Peter clambers out of the ute, slams the door before Jon Heather can follow. ‘You coming, Cormac?’ he snaps, craning back through the window.

  Cormac looks dead ahead. ‘Not me, Pete.’

  ‘Snow on the Nullarbor, right?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Peter is already under the sign when Jon catches him up. The scrub parts, and in front there stand wooden shacks, each shouldering a little sandstone abode. Further on, where the dormitories part, an oblong sandstone building stretches back. There are fields, hemmed in by scrub, and cauldrons of fire stirred at the edges, like this is a camp for soldiers forced to winter away from home.

  ‘This way,’ Jon says.

  He leads Peter around the dormitory that he lived in for six long years. Dawn is almost upon them, and there are boys shifting inside. A cottage mother drinks from a dainty china cup outside one of the buildings. Jon guides Peter out of her sight — and there, at the very ends of the Mission, stands a sandstone house newer and bigger than all the rest. Of all the places in the Mission, it is the only one with two storeys, the only one with a grand wooden veranda, a swing in which a man in black might rest from the baking sun. There is a big wooden door, whose every contour Jon Heather knows, because he whittled it himself. There is even glass in the windows, and a steep pitched roof with attic space and a balcony sitting below.

  They linger in the shadows between two dormitories and watch.

  The door opens, and shadows move beyond: the men in black, preparing for morning prayers. One by one, they emerge into dawn’s eerie light.

  Peter flinches. Jon reaches out, steadies him with a hand.

  ‘What happened here, Jon Heather? What did you do?’

  This much, Jon has been expecting for a long time. Nothing has ever been George’s fault. ‘I guess I didn’t do a thing,’ he replies.