Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  He thinks: you want and you want and you want — and then, when you get back home, you keep on wanting.

  ‘Do you want to …’

  ‘Go back home?’ asks Jon.

  ‘I don’t think I’d like it if you went back home, Mr Heather.’

  ‘Charlie boy,’ says Jon, ‘we’re in this mess together.’

  They begin to wander back through the warehouses, over the rise, back to the kerb where they left the car.

  ‘You’ve got to pick and choose, I suppose,’ says Jon. ‘Try and forget the nasty bits and remember the good. You don’t have to forget your friends. You don’t have to forget George. But Judah Reed and old McAllister and hazings and …’ He stops. ‘Well, it’s OK to forget those.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a lie though, isn’t it? Just picking and choosing?’

  ‘But only a little lie. You’re allowed to tell little lies.’

  High on the kerb, they meet Captain Matthews by the Mini.

  ‘We’re here now, Charlie boy. We’ve got to make a good fist of what we’ve got in England.’

  Captain Matthews opens the door — Charlie is to be allowed to ride up-front — and ruffles his hair.

  ‘That’s what they told us to do in Australia, Mr Heather,’ Charlie says as he climbs in. ‘Why was it so wrong in Australia but OK here?’

  It is not right that such a childish question should be able to crush a grown man.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Jon, and slides into the back seat.

  When they reach Charlie’s street, Captain Matthews slows the car to a crawl, letting the boy chatter with Jon, listing the things they both know from that faraway world. If Jon were to tell his friends from work where he has been, they would screw up their eyes and look at him as if he is bereft of all sense: a man, they would say, should not enjoy the company of schoolboys; not a real man. But fuck it: Jon Heather knows he isn’t a real man. He’s got more in common with this lonesome little boy than he does with those men he goes drinking with, who talk about football and girls. This boy is more his family than his nephew or his sisters or even his own mother.

  Before Charlie has clambered out of the car, a porch light flares, the door flies open, and a man barrels out. ‘Inside!’ he barks.

  Charlie does not even have time to say goodbye before he is bustled through the gate of the yard to find his mother.

  The man has his hands on the car door before Jon can spring out.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Captain Matthews says. ‘We found your boy …’

  ‘Has he been with you all this time? His mother was worried sick …’

  ‘He’s fine,’ says Jon, standing. ‘He just wanted …’

  ‘Look, we’re grateful. We thank you. Is that what you want to hear? You saw him right out there, and you saw him right until he could get back to us. But that’s all.’ He stresses the last word like an oath. ‘We don’t want you coming round here. All you do is remind him. We want him to forget.’

  Jon’s eyes find the man’s. He had wanted to stay silent, but he can’t do it. ‘He won’t forget. The more you forbid him, the more he tries, the more it’ll still be there. You can’t stop it from having happened. He’ll end up hating you for it.’ Jon breathes out. ‘He’ll end up hating himself.’

  The man’s hand falls away. Perhaps it is only the rain driving him back, but Jon thinks something else has softened too.

  ‘He’s home now … Isn’t that enough?’ With a lingering look, Jon drops back into the car. ‘You can never really go back home.’

  ‘But … where does that leave us, Mr Heather?’

  Jon slams the door shut, squints up through the window and driving rain. ‘With a little boy to love,’ he says, as if it were the most obvious thing on earth.

  Past his stepfather, Jon sees Charlie on the doorstep. Headlights illuminate the boy, his mother’s hand balanced delicately on his shoulder. Charlie wears an odd half-smile.

  ‘And you, Mr Heather?’ Charlie’s stepfather asks. ‘Where does that leave you?’

  Jon Heather uncrumples the letter from George and spreads it out on the back of the seat in front. Rain trickles through the window to smudge the words: a little girl on her way back home. First there was one; then a second; perhaps it really can be as the wild boy once dreamed: the real Children’s Crusade, leading children back to the place they belong.

  ‘I think there’s only one thing good enough for me,’ he says, and the car rolls down the road.

  Christmas, a little boy once knew, is a time of miracles and a time of family.

  On Christmas morning, Jon Heather leaves the bedsit early, his swag bag packed with presents. The streets, half given over to students from the colleges, are empty and he walks alone.

  He reaches his mother’s street. Neighbours shriek their Christmas tidings to each other above his head, and by the time he reaches the door he has received a flurry of good wishes himself. When he thinks of Australia now, there is only one Christmas he remembers. Christmases with scrub turkey in the Mission, Christmases with Peter out in the bush, Christmases in prison with countless Aussie brawlers crooning ‘Silent Night’ — all of them are forgotten; he thinks only of Broome.

  This time, he knocks. It is Benjamin who answers. He stands there, frozen, as if terrified Jon might be about to produce a Christmas rabbit and kill it on the doorstep. Then he scampers back inside, shouting for his mother. Samantha appears soon after, a glass in hand.

  ‘Jon,’ she says, ‘we didn’t know if you’d …’

  She dangles an arm around his shoulder and whisks him through into the front-room, where a table has been set. There are three children here today, though who the other two are Jon Heather does not know. At the sink in the kitchen, his mother turns. She trembles, rips off rubber gloves, dumps them, without looking, into a tray of potatoes.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Jon …’

  Today they do not talk about Australia. Today nobody asks, are there bush blacks? Are there kangaroos? Are the stars different on that side of the world? Today there are presents.

  At the tree, before dinner, Jon Heather empties out his swag. He has never bought presents before and admits, as the awkwardly wrapped packages cascade around, that he had absolutely no idea what he should buy. There are bottles of brandy, smelling salts, a picture frame without a picture.

  When it comes to Benjamin’s turn, there are only two packages left in the swag. The boy must have forgiven him for murdering all those helpless bunnies, because he inches forward on his knees, peering into the swag bag as if it is some bottomless well where treasures might be found.

  ‘Can I?’ he asks.

  Jon hesitates before nodding. He had come here thinking that both presents were for the boy, but now he knows better; he lifts up the swag in such a way that Benjamin can reach only the first. Eagerly, he rips open the paper to find a model plane.

  ‘Is it like the one that brought you from Australia?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ Jon laughs. ‘It’s like the ones that dropped bombs all over this city.’

  Dinner is a round of crackers being pulled and carols being sung. Jon Heather does, at least, know Christmas carols, even if the tunes seem dull and pompous to his ears. He remembers Christmas pudding from being a boy and watches, incredulous, as everybody wolfs it back; he has never tasted a more disgusting thing in his life — and Jon Heather has eaten his fair share of uncooked kangaroo.

  After dinner, the children play. Jon stands at the window and watches. In the street, wrapped up in mittens and scarves, Benjamin flies his model plane, even though it is still in its box. Jon looks at his feet, the open swag that’s lying there, the unopened present within.

  It has, he decides, been altogether better than the last time he came to this house. There has been no screaming. There have been no tears. And yet — that is all it has been.

  ‘Mother,’ he says, taking up the swag. ‘It’s been … a pleasure.’

  His mother and sisters
stop their chattering as he goes to the door. One after another, they leap up and cover him in kisses.

  ‘You’ll come again?’ his mother asks.

  Jon Heather nods, returning her hug. Yes, he’ll come again. One day, he hopes, he’ll even want to.

  Once he has reached the end of the street, he begins to run. He kicks his legs wildly, skids in the slush, careens until he is running in the shadow of the moor. Soon his legs are heavy, but still he ploughs on. He is running, now, like a man who doesn’t care: a drunkard who, summoning some hidden reserve of strength, wills himself home. Over the broad thoroughfares he goes, along terraces where Christmas lights are strung, round the curve of a green where patches of snow still glow across the grass.

  At last, he slows. He counts the houses until he is certain he has the right one. Then he gazes up: there are lights hanging in the window and, through net curtains, a Christmas tree lit up with baubles. It has already been Christmas on the other side of the world, he remembers. For them, Christmas day has been and gone. He pictures them gathered at Black Chaparral, at Broome, at Rebekkah’s home in Kununurra.

  He thinks of the little boys at the Mission at Christmas: toys whittled out of wood and scrub turkey for dinner. He thinks of George, alone in the sandstone huts.

  On the doorstep, Jon Heather opens his swag and produces the present. He knocks on the door, watches it pull back to reveal Charlie’s beaming face. Without a word, he hands over the gift. In seconds, the boy has torn off the paper. And there, soft and springy in Charlie’s hands, is a toy kangaroo, shiny black eyes, a curious joey peeking out of its pouch.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Heather,’ he beams. ‘Did you …’ He pauses. ‘… want to come in? I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. Not after …’

  Christmas, a little boy once knew, is a time of miracles and a time of family.

  After all of these years, it turns out the little boy was right.

  On the 20th of January in the year of 1966, Jon Heather makes the long march into Chapeltown, where the Home waits like a sleeping giant. On the step, two boys are rubbing sticks together but not making any fire. He sees Captain Matthews’ Mini parked beneath the overhang of the very same window he used to look out of at night.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ pipes up one of the boys.

  ‘Looking for a friend,’ Jon Heather replies.

  He expects a familiar face when he knocks at the door, but not this one. The man introduces himself as Martin.

  ‘It’s been a long time, Jon Heather,’ he says.

  Jon nods — though, in truth, he cannot place the face or the name.

  ‘George is here?’

  ‘He got in last night.’

  Martin takes him to the office where George is sorting out Judah Reed’s cabinets and shelves. He expects memories to rampage at him as he walks that familiar hallway, but there is nothing. All the same, he walks the corridor with a horrible emptiness. It was easy when there was Judah Reed to hate. You could lie in bed and imagine him coming to lead you away for a beating. You could remember being tied up to a tree and told to take your medicine. It was easier, too, to imagine you were trapped in Australia, fighting the valiant fight to put right what they did wrong. That way, you had a story and you had to give it a happy ending — or else perish in the attempt. Now it is different: you’ve got your happy ending; all you have to do is find a way to live with it.

  Jon stops at the open door, reaches out and knocks. He sees that the office is not nearly as big as he remembered it. Up on the wall, the tapestry of the Children’s Crusade still hangs — but it seems a silly thing now, a stupid patchwork.

  Paunchy George Stone is straining over a box when Jon appears, his sleeves rolled up and his cheeks ruddy red.

  At first, they only mutter hellos. Then, propelled by some unseen hand, Jon launches forward and throws his arms around George, pulling back only when the fat man starts to splutter into his shoulder.

  Embarrassed, George stares at his shoes.

  ‘Where is she?’ asks Jon.

  ‘She’s playing with some of the little ones,’ George replies. ‘Captain Matthews is with her.’

  ‘And?’ Jon holds out a scrap of paper for George to take.

  ‘Is it far?’ George asks, reading the address. ‘I don’t know Leeds very well, Jon …’

  ‘Nowhere’s very far in England, Georgie boy. Take a few short steps and you’re off the end of the map.’

  George stands. ‘It’s hellish good to see you, Jon Heather.’

  ‘Hellish good? You’ve been seeing something of Peter, haven’t you?’

  George bounds to the desk, lifts up a little cardboard suitcase and ferrets inside. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘I brought them for you …’

  He hands over a stack of photographs: wheat farms and vivid blue skies; sand the colour of rust and beaches of untarnished white. In the first, Pete and Maya Slade stare into the camera, with their baby between them. It is somewhere at the back of Black Chaparral, the height of summer.

  ‘I’ve got more,’ George begins. ‘I mean, if you want them …’

  And there she stands: the girl from the Old Arabia. Pete and Maya Slade are with her, sitting together on the old dirt oval. Dog has his head resting in her lap.

  Jon Heather’s eyes glimmer oddly, so that George knows something is wrong. He has the photograph between forefinger and thumb and suddenly it starts to crease, as if he is holding on to it too tight. ‘When was this?’ he asks.

  ‘This Christmas,’ says George. ‘It’s a place called Broome. Peter had it in mind to visit, on the way up to see his sister. Said it was a place you went, back when you were …’

  ‘She looks …’ He wants to say she does not look real, but he thinks: she was the only thing I wanted to be real in the whole bastard country. Instead, he settles for ‘older’.

  George creeps around him, so that he can peer over Jon’s shoulder, try and see exactly what Jon sees in the picture.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Jon whispers, ‘when I came back to the Mission, when I was thinking … I could stay?’

  George nods.

  ‘She was like that, George. It felt the same with her. I could have stayed and been happy with her. I almost did.’

  ‘Jon Heather, you’re kidding yourself! You? Happy? Without coming back here?’

  Jon takes the photograph, folds it to put it in his back pocket. He is about to hand the rest back when George stops him.

  ‘Pete said you were to keep this one.’

  Jon takes the second photograph. It is an ordinary thing, red rocks and azure water, and it takes him a moment to understand what he is looking at. It is Anastasia’s Pool, the head of Cable Beach. Megan is not in the shot but she is surely the one holding the camera; Jon Heather can see a shadow, and he is certain it is her.

  On the rocks at the pool’s edge there sits an open suitcase. He has to squint, but now he is certain: that suitcase once belonged to him. Inside there are piled the books he dragged from one end of the country to the other. He can make few of them out — but, sitting on top of the pile, there peers out a torn dustjacket, children clambering off a train stranded in snow.

  Jon turns the photograph over. On the back there is writing. It is made up like a postcard, a line drawn neatly down the middle with a stamp at the top — ‘Australia, 13c’, with a black and white seabird strutting across the frame — and, beneath that, a simple address: Jon Heather, ENGLAND!!! The last word is written in big bold letters and underlined. Somebody, it seems, was excited to write the word.

  Jon knows it is Megan’s hand. On the left side of the postcard she begins:

  I read them, Jon. Every last one.

  George sees a strange smile burst onto Jon Heather’s face. ‘What is it, Jon?’

  ‘It’s a telephone number.’

  He turns the photograph back over, sees the books lying there: a little piece of England in the great vastness of Australia; a little piece of the real Jon Heather left behind in Bro
ome.

  ‘That’s all?’

  Jon Heather thinks: that’s everything.

  George rounds the table and leaves the office. Jon, still soaking in the image, committing the number to memory, is slow to follow.

  The reception hall is cluttered with boxes, but they clamber over them and climb up the stairs. The dormitory where they once slept is empty but for two boys, one lying at either end. Jon pauses in the doorway and says hello. The closest boy has his head buried in a comic book, but he looks up when Jon appears, as if he is expecting somebody else.

  He realizes he has been standing there too long; George is almost at the other end of the corridor.

  ‘Georgie boy,’ he calls out. ‘Are they being sent over?’

  ‘Some of them, Jon Heather. I’m trying my best. I’m making them all keep notebooks, just the same as Charlie. I’m keeping names and addresses like Judah Reed never did, every scrap of information I can find. But …’

  ‘It’s not easy, is it?’

  George stops, shuffles awkwardly. ‘Thank you, Jon Heather.’

  ‘It’s just something Peter said to me. You’re older and it doesn’t have to be perfect anymore …’

  ‘I’ll get some of them back home, Jon, I promise. But there’ll be others …’

  Jon nods, thinking suddenly of those aboriginal girls with Pete and Cormac Tate. ‘You make sure you stay in that Mission, Georgie. I wouldn’t trust any other bastard to do it right.’

  Through a door at the end of the corridor, a group of boys and a single little girl sit ranged around an old man who reads from a book of fables.

  ‘Her grandmother thought she had been adopted,’ Jon whispers, eyes finding the girl.

  George breathes deeply. ‘So did my mother,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘She’s in London. We’ve … spoken. I was afraid, Jon.’ His eyes, jittery already, refuse to meet Jon’s.

  ‘Go to her,’ says Jon. ‘See her.’

  ‘I might not like what I find.’

  Jon says, ‘You might not hate it either.’

  ‘Not yet, Jon Heather. Not while there’s work to do …’ In the room, Captain Matthews looks upwards involuntarily. He nods at George and begins to close the storybook, battling off a chorus of cries. ‘I’ve got to go back to the Mission, Jon. I can’t leave them alone. I could use your help in England, but … You could have it all. If it’s England you want, if it’s Australia, it’s yours.’