The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  I hesitate. I think this might not be a good moment to do research with Sputnik. But he sees me standing there, and he says, “Hi, Giorgio!” in a perfectly normal voice, so I say, “Hi!” back and sit down on one of the log seats by their fire.

  Sputnik says, “Don’t worry about Dragon’s Child. She’s had a tough time, you know. She never had a mum and dad.”

  “What, never?” I say, wondering how Dragon’s Child could have come into the world without a mum and dad.

  Sputnik says, “She grew up in care. She didn’t get any love. Now she doesn’t know how to love Baby Girl.”

  “Anyhow,” he says, patting Baby Girl on her back and then rocking her up and down in his arms, “what can I do for you?”

  “I’m wondering,” I say, getting straight down to it, “whether you remember any famous Georges? Or Giorgios? For my research.”

  “Well now, let me think,” says Sputnik. “My best friend at school was called George, but he wasn’t famous.”

  “Did you go to school?” I am amazed. “Aren’t you feckless?”

  Sputnik laughs, then says to Baby Girl, who is asleep and cannot hear him, “Did you hear that, Baby Girl? This boy, here, thinks I may not be feckless!”

  Then he says to me, “Giorgi, boy, I’m as feckless as they come!”

  I think this needs to be followed up. I always thought that being feckless was a thing you were born into, like being English, or being foreign. I say, “So when did you become feckless? After you finished school?”

  Sputnik looks away, rocking Baby Girl gently and frowning a bit.

  Then he says, “I was sixteen. I had two years left of school. My brother Joe was eighteen, just taking his Senior Baccalaureate. My dad worked for the council and we had a house and a car. Mum worked in the library.”

  He goes quiet. I think he has forgotten I am there. After a bit I prompt him, “Then what?” I ask.

  Sputnik looks back at me and sighs. “Then they outsourced all the council jobs,” he says. When he sees that I do not understand, he says, “They asked a private company to do the work, for much less money. They offered my dad his job, exactly the same job, for the minimum wage, and Dad wouldn’t do it. He said it was a matter of principle.”

  Baby Girl is sucking her thumb very noisily, still asleep. Sputnik looks down at her and says, “Look at that!” and kisses her forehead. Then he goes on:

  “So Dad tried to find other work, but it was all really badly paid. We were trying to live off Mum’s money and pay the mortgage, and there just wasn’t enough. Mum went to the feeding station by the river until they closed it down, and Joe took a night-time job as a guard out by the American base, and fell behind with his studies. Then we were evicted from our house.” Sputnik looks at me, and explains, “Thrown out.”

  He is frowning as he remembers. His voice goes quiet and gruff. “They said my dad could have found work but he was too picky, so we weren’t eligible for any benefits. They put him in a labour camp so that he would learn social responsibility. Joe joined the army, so he is not feckless. Last I heard, he was out in the Caribbean. Mum and I went to live in a shelter – not a shelter like ours, here, but a shelter for homeless people. Then the shelter people said that Mum was not looking after me in a responsible way, so I would have to go into care. So I ran away. And I have been feckless ever since.”

  I think Sputnik’s story is very sad. “So where are your mum and dad now?” I ask.

  “Heaven only knows,” says Sputnik. “That was years ago.”

  I go back to the George who was Sputnik’s best friend at school. “Didn’t your friend try to help you? Your friend George?”

  Sputnik suddenly looks more cheerful. “Oh yeah!” he says. “He did. He helped me to run away. He hid me in his garage for three weeks without his parents finding out, and brought me food, and gave me some of his clothes. But then the counsellor at school started asking him lots of questions about where I might have gone to and whether he had heard from me, so I moved on.”

  “So would you say your friend George was a good bloke?” I ask.

  “Oh yes!” says Sputnik. “The best.”

  Baby Girl is beginning to wriggle and cry. “She wants feeding,” says Sputnik. “I’d better go and find Dragon’s Child.” He gets up and walks off round the Hill in the direction Dragon’s Child went earlier.

  I go back to our fire. There is nobody there. I start a new page, and write Sputnik’s friend George. Then I write down all the things Sputnik told me. I think that Sputnik’s friend can have nothing to do with me being called Giorgio, but on the other hand it is good to know that this George, like George Harrison, was also a good guy. I am beginning to think that my name is a good name to have.

  Then Walking Tall calls us all together to have an English lesson, and I tuck my notebook under my sleeping bag and go to their fire, where we will do creative writing until snack time.

  * * *

  I am in my sleeping bag, but Skye, Walking Tall and Little Bear’s mother are sitting round our fire, and I can hear them talking. They have gleaned a bottle of wine and they are passing it round from one to another, drinking straight out of the bottle and laughing quite a lot. They start talking about us kids. Little Bear’s mum says, “They’ve been singing that blessed song all day!”

  “Which song?” asks Walking Tall, who left the Hill right after our English lesson and only came back, with the bottle of wine and some other stuff, just before dinner.

  “‘The Tax Man’,” explains Skye. “Music Man taught it to Giorgio and Little Bear this morning. Now all the kids are singing it.”

  Everyone laughs. It is strange, the way adults are amused if we do things, but they would not be amused if grown-ups did the same things. Still, it is nice.

  Then I hear a sort of odd, muddled noise and several people taking at once. I hear Skye say, “Sputnik!” and Walking Tall’s woman say, “My God, what’s happened?” Then Walking Tall says, “Is it Baby Girl? Is she ill?”

  I hear Sputnik. It is his voice, but it sounds strange. “She’s gone! She’s gone!” he says, and I hear that he is crying.

  “Sit down, mate,” says Walking Tall, trying to sound calm but sounding a bit panicked all the same.

  “Who has gone?” asks his woman, Little Bear’s mum, almost at the same time.

  “What do you mean, gone?” asks Skye.

  “I can’t bear it,” says Sputnik, and he is really crying, like Limpy cried when he was pushed over the earthwork.

  Skye says, sounding really calm like the Old Man if he has to consider a falling-out between two people in the camp, “Sputnik, can you tell us what has happened?”

  Sputnik is sobbing. I can hear him. I wriggle up in my sleeping bag, closer to the door of the shelter, so that I can see what is happening. They are all black and yellow shapes in the firelight. I see Walking Bear put an arm round Sputnik. Skye and Little Bear’s mum are standing up, as if they are getting ready to do something right now.

  Sputnik says, still sobbing, “Dragon’s Child. She’s taken Baby Girl away.”

  “What?” they all say, not believing it. I feel a sort of bump in my chest as my heart suddenly beats harder.

  “I should have seen it coming!” says Sputnik.

  Skye says, “Where has she taken the baby, Sputnik? Do you know?”

  I think Sputnik must have nodded. I cannot see a lot because the fire is dying down and it is a black night. Then he says, “They’ve gone to the mother and baby clinic at the hospital.”

  “What?”

  “Why?”

  “But…” Nobody can quite believe it.

  “Was Baby Girl ill?” asks Little Bear’s mum, sounding confused.

  “N – no,” sobs Sputnik. “She’s taken Baby Girl there so that they will put her in care!”

  Everyone goes very quiet. Fo
r the first time, I notice the crackling of the fire. Then Little Bear’s mum says, “My God!”

  Again, everyone is quiet. Sputnik says, at last, “I should have seen it coming.”

  “What happened?” asks Skye, quietly. I stick my head right out of the shelter so that I can hear everything. The grass is wet with dew.

  Sputnik is also talking quietly, as if he is talking to himself. “She really wanted that baby,” he says. “She thought it would make us a proper family. But when Baby Girl was born she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to raise a child. I told her I would help her. I told her it was easy, we just had to love her, but Dragon’s Child – she was not so sure.”

  “We were all here to help,” says Little Bear’s mum.

  Sputnik says, “She thought she would hurt Baby Girl. She thought that one night, if Baby Girl cried, and if I was not there, she would hit Baby Girl, and make her slow, so that she couldn’t learn anything.”

  “Why did she think that?” asks Walking Tall, sounding perplexed.

  It is Skye who answers. “Because she grew up in care,” she says, and she sounds bitter. “She never saw children being brought up with love. She saw children being hit and abused, or just left alone to fend for themselves. She never learnt to trust her own judgement.”

  Sputnik says, “That’s right. The stuff she told me…”

  I think Little Bear’s mum starts to cry. “That poor baby,” she says, and I do not know if she is talking about Dragon’s Child or Baby Girl.

  “That’s why she wouldn’t let me choose a name,” says Sputnik. “I wanted to call her Morning Star but Dragon’s Child said the chances were someone else would give her a different name by the time she was three. She never believed we could keep her.”

  Walking Tall asks, “When did she go?”

  Sputnik answers, “While I was out gleaning with the lads. Earlier this evening.”

  Walking Tall says, “She will already be at the office, then. All the offices for the feckless are open in the evenings. There’s no point in trying to do anything tonight.”

  Sputnik cries some more.

  Walking Bear says, “Come on, mate, let’s you and me go for a walk. Right?” Then he picks up the bottle they were passing around before this horrible interruption, and waves it in the air at the others, and puts an arm round Sputnik and leads him away into the night.

  Soon Skye climbs into her sleeping bag.

  “What will happen to Baby Girl?” I ask her.

  “Goodness, are you awake?” she says. “Did you hear all that?”

  “I did,” I say.

  Skye says, “It’s a tragedy, but perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I am surprised,” I say.

  “Yes, I suppose you are,” says Skye. Then she says, “If children grow up without being loved it damages them for the whole of their lives. They don’t know how to love, or how to behave. So then they do things that hurt other people – and that hurt themselves, too.”

  I think about this.

  “Will the care people hurt Baby Girl?” I want to know.

  “I hope not,” says Skye. “Not intentionally.”

  “Accidentally?” I ask.

  “Yes, probably,” says Skye, sounding very sad.

  I think for a bit.

  “What will they do to Dragon’s Child, Skye?” I want to know.

  Skye sighs and turns over so that I know she is facing me, on her side of the partition. She reaches through and strokes my hair. “I think they will put her in a labour camp,” she says.

  * * *

  It is hard to get on with our research next day. Little Bear has to have a new grown-up to help him, now that Dragon’s Child has gone. Nobody quite knows who to ask, but then Sputnik says, sort of quietly, “I can cook. My mum taught me. Shall I help Little Bear?” and everyone looks pleased, and Walking Tall says to Sputnik, “Atta guy!” which means something I don’t understand, but which is good.

  I learnt a lot from talking to Sputnik the day before, and I am glad I spoke to him when I did, because I suspect he might not have been so happy talking today. He is helping Little Bear but he does not look as if he is thinking about his words, or about cooking. I am sure he is thinking about Dragon’s Child and Baby Girl, who should really be called Morning Star. I wander round the camp thinking about who to ask next. Walking Tall and Skye go together to talk to the Old Man about Dragon’s Child and Baby Girl, and later Walking Tall goes back up the Hill with Sputnik, while we kids are learning maths with Dylan’s dad, who used to teach it in a proper school until they thought he was subversive. It is Dylan’s dad who first showed me that numbers are magic, and I like it when he teaches us, although Big Bear says it is too hard.

  After the maths lesson, when we generally have snacks (which the Professor calls lunch), I decide I will question Dylan’s dad for my research. We are all sitting round Dylan’s fireplace although their fire has gone right out. Big Bear is practising chords on the Music Maker’s guitar, and the dark-haired girl who arrived with Skye last time she came home is sitting with Sputnik because Sputnik is sad.

  I ask Dylan’s dad the usual question about whether any famous Georges or Giorgios spring to mind, and Dylan’s dad says, “Mm, unfortunately, yes!” He tells me about two American presidents, father and son, and about the things they got up to. He makes them sound like very evil men. Then Spanner-in-the-Works says, “Mind you, they were fairly elected.”

  Walking Tall says, “They were certainly elected, but whether it was fair or not…” and Dylan’s dad tells me all the ways Americans have managed to stop black people from voting, all through the ages, even though they are equal to everyone else and America is supposed to stand for equality.

  “Can we vote?” I ask, because I know what voting is but I have never thought about being able to vote for a president, or a prince, or a prime minister, or whoever rules us.

  And Dylan’s dad says, “No, not us!”

  “In the old days we would have been able to,” says Walking Tall.

  “Would we, though?” asks Spanner-in-the-Works. “I mean, could people of no fixed abode vote? I know prisoners couldn’t.”

  “Good point,” says Dylan’s dad in a way that said, I don’t really want to discuss this. Then everyone – all the grown-ups – tell me bits and pieces about the George Bushes, for me to write down in my research book, and then we start talking about wars and there seems to be nothing else to say about George Bush Senior or George Bush Junior, so I go and write it up. Then Little Bear and I invent a new game with Limpy called Gleaning, where we try to take things from other people’s fire circles, and we play until the shadows are long and Sputnik calls Little Bear to come and help him cook dinner.

  * * *

  I would have known that Skye was getting ready to go away, even if she had not told me. She goes up to see the Old Man more often, she has sorted out her walking boots, and Little Bear’s mum has asked me to pass her my dirty shorts and pants, so that she can wash them with Big Bear’s, Little Bear’s and Walking Tall’s. She takes them all the way down to the bottom of the Hill, to the river, and washes them there, early in the morning before the dog walkers come or the posh boys practise their rowing. When Little Bear’s mum does my clothes washing it means I am a part of their family.

  I am continuing with my research. People have told me about lots of different Georges, and I am beginning to think it must be quite a common name in the world where people have two names, a given name and a family name. I am told there is a King George but he lives in Washington DC, which is in America, for half the year, and in Buckingham Palace in London for the rest of the time. He is our king but the Americans like him to live in their country as a sign that we are all one now. Someone tells me about a famous and excellent football player called George Best who lived a long time ago, and for a day
or two Little Bear and I play football on the grass below the maze. The Hill, however, is not a good place for playing football because the ball keeps rolling down towards the river and is only stopped by the earthworks. Also, we do not know the rules, and our ball keeps losing its air and going flat.

  The girl with the dark hair, who arrived here with Skye, has a given name and a family name. Like Sputnik, she was not born Scum of the Earth, but has only just become feckless. She tells me she was at the art school by the park, and that she got fed up and just walked out. At first she uses a lot of very bad words, worse words than the ones we sing in our song about the police. Then Skye takes her up to see the Old Man, and she is there for a long time, and when she comes back down she is sorry about the rude words, and does not say them as much anymore, and if a rude word slips out she says, “Woops!” and covers her mouth with her hand. Her given name and her family name are Cheryl Matthews, but Skye tells me she will get a new name soon, when she is ready.

  “Could she go back to the art school, and not be feckless, if she wanted to?” I ask Skye.

  “Perhaps,” says Skye, who has a map spread out on the grass and is looking at it carefully.

  “Why did she start to be feckless?” I want to know.

  Skye looks up from her map. “To be honest, Giorgi, I don’t think she is feckless, not in the real sense of the word. She’s damaged. But then, that’s the way it goes.” She looks at me and smiles, and says, “You’re too young to understand all this, Giorgi. Don’t worry about it. Cheryl will be okay with us, for a while.”

  I see Cheryl talking to Sputnik. The day after Dragon’s Child left, when she sat with Sputnik, I thought she wanted to be his woman, and I thought, Not a chance! Sputnik loves Dragon’s Child. Then I noticed that when the Professor lost her glasses and could not see to read her books, it was Cheryl who looked all over the Hill, and then found them just where the Professor had left them, by her fire. I think she is someone who preserves things, which means she stops them from going bad. Someone taught us, once, that there are creators, preservers and destroyers. Each is important, and each has a little of the other two in them. So when I go and see the Old Man about my research, I say to him that I think that Cheryl is like the person in the myths, the preserver, and that perhaps her new name should be Vishnu. The Old Man smiles and says, “Vishnu is a man’s name.” Then he says, “Leave it to me,” and after he has talked to her, she is called Vishna, which sounds female, and she is my friend although she is grown up.