The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  I sit on the bench next to her. “How did you know I was there?” I ask.

  She takes a bar of chocolate out of her bag. It is quite large, but she snaps it in half and gives me a whole portion. She just breaks off one square for herself and pops it into her mouth before answering.

  “I’ve got boys of my own,” she says.

  “In Sweden?” I ask. “How many?”

  “Three,” she says. “Do you like the chocolate?”

  The chocolate is not as sweet as our chocolate, and it has ginger in it, and something else I cannot identify. It is very good indeed.

  “I do,” I tell her. “How old are they?”

  “Eleven, seven and three,” she says. “None of them is as good at sneaking up on people as you.”

  I think about that. “Do people in Sweden need to be good at sneaking up on people?” I ask.

  She laughs. “No, not at all!” she says. “It is just a game!” Then she asks, “Do you need to be good at sneaking up on people?”

  I stall, using the last of my half of the chocolate as a reason not to answer at once. It could be a trick question. Still, the truth is we do not really have to be good at sneaking up at all, we have to be good at hiding, or at looking like different sorts of people than we really are, so I say, “No, it’s just a game too.”

  I decide that she is quite a pretty lady. She is not young but she has a kind face, and she seems content just to sit there, not asking me loads of questions. She eats another square of chocolate then gives the rest to me. “I’m just at that age,” she says, “where a middle-aged woman starts to put on weight.”

  I say, “Do you miss your boys when you’re away?” I am thinking of Skye. I asked her once whether she missed me on her travels and she said, “All the time.”

  “I don’t go away that often,” says the journalist. “Amar, that’s my husband, is editor of a magazine in Sweden, where we live. I write a column each month, working mostly from home.” She smiles sideways at me. “He earns enough for all of us, really.”

  “You’re a long way away now,” I point out. “Your boys will miss you. And Amar.”

  “This is an exception,” she says. She has quite a strong accent but her English is easy to understand. “Something I’m doing partly for myself.”

  I nearly ask her why she is interested in homeless people and the feckless, but just in time I remember that she does not know I have any connection with Skye, and probably it would be best to keep it like that. So instead I say, “What are you doing? Why is it for yourself?”

  She takes a deep breath and says, “You are a very inquisitive boy!” She chuckles. “In Sweden they tell us that your education, here in England, is designed nowadays to stop you asking too many questions. It doesn’t seem to be very effective!”

  “Oh,” I say, “I’m not typical.”

  The woman is quiet again. It is beginning to get a bit murky, the way it does at this time of the year when the evenings are closing in.

  “Do you have a name?” asks the woman. I am surprised. Even Baby Girl had a name, although of course it was only temporary.

  “Everyone in England has a name!” I tell her. “Don’t they in Sweden?”

  She laughs quite loudly. “Yes!” she says. “Yes, they do!” Then she stops laughing. “I meant, are you willing to tell me your name?”

  Of course, I am not. I think quickly, and remember Vishna calling me Edward when the attendance officers were suspicious of us. I say, “Edward Pearson.”

  “Nice to meet you, Edward Pearson,” says the woman, holding out her hand to shake mine. “I’m Liliane Saker.”

  “You are the first Swedish person I have met,” I say. “What is the thing you are doing, just for yourself?”

  The woman says, “Well…” as if she is deciding what to tell me, or how to explain. Then she says, “Amar and I are first-generation Swedes. We always looked up to the UK – the country that used to include England – and if the chance had been there we might have settled here, rather than Sweden. Then everything here changed, and we hear such terrible things… I think, it could have been us. Deported. Or in labour camps. It could have been my boys.”

  I say, “They wouldn’t put your boys in labour camps. They’d put them in care.”

  The woman continues as if I had not interrupted. “There are so few opportunities for reporters to visit this country now, then the PON, that’s – oh, that’s just a sort of journalist governing body – they had an invitation to send a reporter here to see for ourselves how much press freedom there is in England. Because Swedish papers were saying there is not much. So I applied, and they placed me here, in Winchester, at the university School of Journalism.”

  I think about that. I say, “I always thought journalists were based in London.”

  The woman smiled sadly. “You always thought correctly!” she says. “They’ve put us all in backwaters. I’m here, one of my colleagues is in a town called Hereford, and another is in Hull. We can’t really see anything that is going on.” She frowns, then seems to cheer up. “Still,” she says, “I like my students, and I’m doing a bit of independent researching of my own, which turns out to be fascinating. And it’s only for one semester.”

  She looks at me again. It is really getting dark now. She says, “I don’t suppose you know much about homeless people, do you, Edward Pearson?”

  I jump up, off the bench. I say, “It is nearly dark! I should be home for my tea. My mum will kill me,” and I run down the track towards the exit.

  I hear her calling, “Edward!” but I do not look back. I am just a bit afraid that she has guessed what I am.

  “Edward!” I hear her calling again as I round the corner. “I’ll be here, on this bench, most days at this time…”

  I do not respond. I do not pause. The volunteer man has gone from the entrance. I slow to a casual walk and stroll along the road towards the pizza place that flooded in the storm. My heart is beating hard. When the road narrows I look behind me. She is not following me.

  When I get back to the shelters Skye says, “Oh, there you are!” Then she says, “Oh, Giorgio, look at your shoes!”

  I say, “Sorry, Skye,” and feel relieved that she does not ask me any more questions.

  * * *

  Vishna is not sure if she wants to go north with everyone else. Well, not with everyone, because of course they will go in small groups, by different routes, with different people helping them. She says to me, as we sit by the Professor’s fire while the Professor sleeps, “You know, Giorgi, I’ve never been this free before. I’m sort of sad to give it up so soon.”

  “They say you’re free in Scotland,” I point out. “Isn’t that why they’re all going?”

  “Mm.” I can tell Vishna is not convinced. Then she says, “Skye thinks I could go to art school there, perhaps in Glasgow. Pick up where I left off.”

  She does not sound too keen. “Wouldn’t that be good?” I ask. “You might become a famous artist one day.”

  Vishna rubs her eyes and flicks her hair away from them. It is getting quite long and straggly, but it looks good if she plaits it, and it shines with almost blue lights in it when it is newly washed. She says, “I’m not quite sure…”

  The Professor gives a snort in her sleep. She is sitting up straight but her head keeps falling forward and her mouth is open.

  Vishna says, “It doesn’t seem quite right – escaping so soon, and then having a normal life. I feel I ought to be doing something for my country, not running away from it.”

  I think about that. It sounds good, but “What could you do?” I ask.

  “That’s the problem,” says Vishna, slowly.

  * * *

  The Old Man wants to have a serious talk with me. Skye passes on the message, and I walk up the Hill into the trees and find him piling up wood in a low,
thatched shelter by the fire. It is his wood store, and he is stocking up, ready for the winter.

  “Help me with these, will you, Giorgio?” he says. Someone, probably Sputnik or Spanner-in-the-Works, I think, has been chopping up wood into useable sizes and it just needs to be piled up under the thatch. It is a very organised woodpile, with the small bits for kindling on one side and really large pieces at the other side. It looks like a lot, but I know from experience that you can get through a great deal of wood in one fire circle in a very short time, once the winter sets in. It has been a problem, getting enough wood, for a couple of years, and the men and bigger kids have had to go a long way to stock up. Nobody other than the Old Man has been stocking up this winter, of course.

  I say, “Who will help you glean enough wood when this is all gone?” Then I say, “I will!”

  “Thank you,” says the Old Man. “And we must think about the Professor too.”

  I realise that if I am here on the Hill, alone with two old people, I could have quite a lot of responsibility. I find myself hoping that Vishna does stay, so that she can help.

  We sit by the fire and drink bitter tea. The Old Man dribbles a little honey into mine when I screw up my face at the taste, and that improves it quite a lot.

  “Skye tells me you really are staying behind,” says the Old Man.

  “I am,” I agree.

  “You are quite young to be on your own,” points out the Old Man.

  “Yes.” Skye said the same thing, but I have made up my mind.

  “You are staying so that you can search for your parents,” says the Old Man. He hands me a biscuit. It is the sort that Little Bear’s mum makes.

  “Yes.”

  “So, what are you doing to find them?” he asks.

  I swallow the last bite. I am feeling a bit guilty. “Well…” I say.

  “You were going to research crosses, if I remember rightly,” says the Old Man.

  I feel a bit guilty. I have talked to the Music Maker and to the Professor, and I have made some notes, but that is about the limit of my research.

  The Old Man sits forward on his log. He has put his mug on the ground and clasped his hands between his knees. He says, “You don’t have all the time in the world, you know, Giorgio.”

  I wonder what he means. Does he think my parents might be in trouble somewhere, or dying? Does he know something I do not know?

  He says, “Skye is letting you stay now, because we think it is safe. Relatively safe. But if something were to happen to the Professor and me… or if things were to get even tougher… If they were to decide to do a final clean up, like they did in Kent… You would just have to leave, you know. There would be no option.”

  I see that he is right. I see that finding my parents is not a game, like pretending to be an anti-terrorist and creeping up on the journalist.

  I suppose I look worried. The Old Man smiles. He says, “I’m just saying, you need to keep going with your research. It’s all a bit strange, with the others preparing to leave, but you must not be distracted. Focus on your investigations. Remember, that’s why you are not going with them.”

  * * *

  Sputnik, Scott, and his girlfriend who is not feckless, are leaving tonight. We do not know they will be going so soon until they come around to all the fires and say goodbye to everyone, and say they will see them soon, north of the border. Skye knew they were going, and how, but she did not say anything because if nobody knows, she says, nobody can accidentally let the cat out of the bag.

  I say to Skye, “Now Sputnik will never find Dragon’s Child and Baby Girl.”

  Skye says, “That train left the station weeks ago,” and I think she means that all hope of that family being reunited is long gone.

  I ask, “When is Little Bear’s family going?” But Skye does not answer. Perhaps she does not know, or maybe she thinks it is better if I do not know. Instead she says, “You could still change your mind, Giorgi, and go with them. If you wanted to. It will be quite lonely here soon.”

  I say, “No, thank you. I need to find my mum and dad.”

  Skye sighs. “Yes,” she says.

  * * *

  The next day I decide it is time to resume my research. I do not think there is much more I can learn from the people who are left in the camp. I say to Vishna and the Professor, “I need to go down to the city to use the library.”

  The Professor says, “Have you ever been in a library?”

  Vishna says, “Well, it’s a Saturday, so schools are out.” She means that I won’t arouse suspicion, the way I did when the school attendance people started looking oddly at us.

  The Professor asks, “Are you back on your crosses?” Then she says to Vishna, “He won’t know how to use a computer.”

  Vishna laughs. “Professor,” she says, “they haven’t called them computers for ages!” To me she says, “I’ll come with you and show you how to use an information droid.” She grins at the Professor. “I think I still have my library card!”

  * * *

  The library is in a wide old street with lots of restaurants, opposite a church. There are steps up to the main doors. Vishna has a plastic card in her hand with her old name on it. I have my George Pearson notebook and two of the pens that came in the orange box.

  Vishna walks confidently towards the row of information droids. A notice says, All users of the DeVs are required to check in at the desk.

  I whisper to Vishna, “What’s a DeV?” and she says, “It’s just short for device. Come on, let’s check in.”

  We walk across to the desk. There is a woman in a knitted waistcoat and a man with a jumper with the flag of the Alliance on it, both wearing Volunteer badges, a pile of books, and several droids in charging cradles. The woman looks at us and smiles.

  “Identity cards, please!” she says, cheerfully.

  “Oh, bother!” says Vishna, looking at her library card. “I’ve picked up the wrong card!”

  She places the library card on the desk, so that the friendly volunteer can see it.

  “Oh, that’s all right, dear,” she says. “As long as you’re already registered here. What about your little brother?”

  I have never had an identity card, because you have to register with someone to get them, and they would put me in care. I put my George Pearson notebook on the desk and pretend to feel in my pockets for a card. The woman looks at the notebook.

  “Oh, you go to St Mark’s, do you?” she says, and beams at me. “My grandson went there. He loved it. They’ve moved to Oxford now.” She sighed. “I miss them,” she says.

  “I’ve lost my identity card,” I say. I am thinking, They will turf us out now.

  But instead the woman says, “Well, we don’t really need your ID if you go to St Mark’s. They will have done all the checks. And your sister here is already a member of the library.” She smiles at us both again. “So, how can I help you?”

  Vishna says, “My brother’s doing a project about symbols and logos. We want to look up crosses on an information droid. May we do that?”

  “Of course you can, dear!” says the woman, and passes Vishna a card. “You’ll know how it works.”

  “Of course,” says Vishna, and smiles at the woman. “Come on,” she says to me. “You’ll have all your homework done by lunchtime at this rate!”

  As we settle at the table and slot in the card to wake up the android, we hear the volunteer man say, “You should really have insisted on seeing their IDs, you know.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” says the woman, sounding a bit disgruntled. “You can see at a glance that they come from a respectable family!”

  * * *

  We have two hours free on the android, which is more than enough. We look up cross symbol first, and there is a mass of information but no mention of crosses in the letter Q. Then Vishn
a suggests we do a search stating Cross in Q, and we find lots of pictures of different crosses, but none at all with the letter Q around the cross.

  “Perhaps it was a secret society,” whispers Vishna.

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all,” I whisper back. I am very disappointed. I thought information droids could tell you absolutely anything.

  “Perhaps it has been blocked,” suggested Vishna. Then she says, “We ought to print something out, to look convincing.”

  We find a page with the title Christianity and the New Alliance. It is all about the Christian values demonstrated by our two countries, the United States and England, and there are lots of different crosses to illustrate it.

  “Perfect!” says Vishna and asks very politely, “May we print this out?”

  The woman is having her break so it is the man we have to speak to. He says, “Up to five pages for free, then 50 cents a page.”

  We print out the first two pages, say “Thank you” to the man, and leave.

  When we get outside Vishna looks around to see if anyone is watching us. Then she screws up the pieces of paper and puts them in the litter bin by the bus stop.

  “Such rubbish!” she says, muttering more to herself than to me. “The Alliance doesn’t demonstrate any Christian values at all!”

  Then she cheers up. “Oh well,” she says, “while we’re in the city we might as well have a milkshake!”

  * * *

  The camp looks really strange when we arrive home. The large bikers’ shelter has been taken down and the wooden poles have been removed. All that is left to show that it was ever there is a small pile of black bin-bag plastic, weighed down with a piece of wood, and worn patches in the grass. Firefly’s shelter has gone, and Limpy’s has had all the thatch removed. Big Bear and Little Bear are helping to carry all the wood from dismantled huts up to the trees. I expect they will add it to the Old Man’s winter fuel supply. The earthworks look bigger without the shelters standing close to them, and not as friendly, and our fire circle seems to be out in the middle of nowhere now that Sputnik’s shelter has gone.