The Song of the Lost Boy

by Maggie Allder

  Then we hear the big wooden gate opening. Immediately everyone has his or her eyes open. For a moment, I am sure, we all think that there is going to be a raid.

  Gracie shouts, “Mummy!” and runs to the front door, which cannot be opened, and then runs the other way, out to the kitchen.

  A whole crowd of people come in through the gate. There are men and women, and two of the women and one of the men are carrying little ones in their arms. In the meeting room everyone starts to talk and laugh, and there is a bustle of people at the door to the kitchen, all wanting to meet the newcomers. Some grown-ups are crying. Even Vishna is crying, and we do not know these people!

  It is like when we used to have birthday parties up on the Hill. People spill out into the small, dark room at the front of the building and stand talking and laughing in the kitchen, and in the meeting room itself, which is usually so quiet. Everyone seems to be hugging everyone else. Gracie has been picked up by a tall man with dark rings under his eyes and a pair of glasses with one piece of glass cracked, and a woman is stroking Pixie’s hair and talking to Percy. Will is getting more mugs out of a cupboard. We were not expecting this many people, and were not prepared. I do not know these people, so I go to help Will.

  I say, “So, they’re back at last!” because although it is a silly comment to make, I do not know what else to say.

  Will does not answer at once. He has a strange look on his face, sort of stressed, and although he says, “It’s good, isn’t it?” the colours of his words are dark and bleak.

  Just then the tall man comes over and reaches across the counter where Will and I are preparing to serve drinks. The man is still holding Gracie, who has her thumb in her mouth, but he has a spare arm. He puts his hand on Will’s head and says, “Son, I am more proud of you than I can possibly say.”

  Then Will stops still, with a teaspoon full of coffee halfway to a cup, and seems to sort of freeze. Then he drops the spoon with a little clatter and bursts into tears.

  In no time the man is round our side of the counter. He holds Will up close against him and pats and strokes his hair, and says, “My son! My son!”

  I get out of the way. Someone, one of the returnees, says to me, “Hi, I’m Madge.” It is an old lady, and I know I should be polite, but I am watching Will and his dad, and Gracie in their dad’s arms, then Pixie having her hair stroked by her mum, and I feel a big, empty feeling, like a hollow inside me. So I just say, “Hi!” to the old woman and then rush out through the kitchen door and across to the children’s room. I sit upstairs on the sleeping bags and I cry, and I think that I will never have a mum or a dad, and I wonder what will happen to me.

  Much later, Vishna comes across to find me. She says, “They’re going to have a Meeting for worship now, for Thanksgiving. Do you want to come?”

  But I say, “I just want to go home.” So we leave the city and climb the Hill, and I do not want a snack. I lie on my sleeping bag and feel cold, and I think that there is nobody in this world that I really belong to and nobody to say they are proud of me, and I wish I had not lost my parents, and I wish my parents had not been Quakers who got themselves disappeared and left me behind to be Scum of the Earth.

  * * *

  After that I will not go to the Quaker Meeting anymore. Vishna still goes, every Sunday morning. While she is away, I sit in our shelter and feel angry. The Old Man asks me, “Do we need to have a talk, Giorgio?” but I just say, rather rudely, “No, we don’t.” When Vishna says, “Will says hi,” I do not answer. When she says, “They’re fixing up the Meeting House; it looks quite different now,” I say, “Who cares?” I am more or less all right if we keep away from the subject of the Quakers, and we do some good after-Christmas gleaning and have a feast of ready-meals which are only just past their sell-by dates, and which are supposed to go in a microwave but taste really good the way Vishna cooks them. Despite that, though, I am unhappy all the time. It feels as if I have eaten a stone and it has got stuck in my tummy.

  Then one day I am sitting by our fire feeling angry, and Vishna has gone to the Quaker Meeting, and I am feeling annoyed with the rain, and the cold, and the mud, and with Skye because she has not been back for ages, and with the Old Man because he looks at me with that concerned expression, and generally I am angry with the whole world. Then I hear voices, and it is people coming closer, talking to each other, and one of them is Vishna, and the other one is Will.

  When they arrive at the fireside Vishna says, stating the obvious, “I’ve brought us a visitor.”

  I do not look at Will. I say grumpily to Vishna, “It’s not safe to bring visitors here. Now we’ll have to move.”

  Vishna says, “Giorgi…” Then she stops. She says to Will, “So anyway, this is where we live. I won’t be a minute…” and she goes off up to the copse where the big fire ring is, as if she has something important to do, although I’m sure she has not.

  Will sits down on the log opposite mine. He says, “Wow! This is cool! I can’t imagine living like this, all the year round. It’s like an adventure.”

  I do not look at Will. I poke the fire and I say, “It isn’t an adventure to be Scum of the Earth, and feckless, and to have no mum and dad. It’s just cold and wet and muddy.” And then I think a bit more, and I say the thing that has been nearly in my mouth to say ever since the Sunday after Christmas when the Quaker grown-ups came back. “It’s lonely.”

  And then I start to cry.

  Perhaps Little Bear would have known what to do if I had cried, but back when the big camp was here I did not have much cause for crying, and anyhow there were always grown-ups around to pick us up and patch us up in those days. Perhaps it is because he has two sisters, but Will knows just what to do so that I do not feel stupid and I do not feel I ought to get a grip. He moves across and sits on my log, next to me, which is quite a tight squeeze, but friendly too. He puts an arm round my back and for a bit he does not say anything, not a word.

  So there we are, me all hunched over and crying, and Will with his arm round me, and the wind blowing and little flurries of rain falling on us.

  Finally Will says, very kindly, “Giorgio, would you mind crying inside, because it’s beginning to rain quite hard!”

  Then suddenly it seems funny, and I do not exactly stop crying but it turns itself into laughing without me doing anything, and I say, “Oh! I’m sorry!” and we go into the shelter out of the wet, and we are both almost laughing.

  Will says, “It must have been tough for you, when all the parents came back and you still don’t have yours.”

  I say, “It’s silly of me, really.” Then I think it really is silly of me. I say, “I don’t remember them at all. I can’t be missing people I would not recognise if I saw them in the street, can I? And I’ve got Vishna and Skye, and the Old Man. I think they all love me.”

  Will says, “Vishna told me about Skye. She’s like your adopted mum, isn’t she? Who’s the Old Man?”

  So then I explain, and we talk about the camp which used to be here, and Will tells me about moving back into their proper house now that their parents have returned, and about not telling the teachers in his school about why they were away for so long because nobody wants the school to be suspicious about whether Will’s family are good citizens. And after a while Vishna comes back and says to me, “I promised Will a snack,” and I say quite cheerfully, “Let’s make dampers,” and the stone has gone from my tummy. Then Will asks, “Do you have a silence before you eat?” and Vishna says, “That’s a good idea,” and as we sit by the fire for a few seconds of silence the pink colour of welcome comes into my mind, and I know that next Sunday I will go to the Quaker Meeting again because, as Vishna said, I sort of belong there.

  * * *

  When Skye comes back, a couple of evenings later, she finds Vishna and me sitting by our fire talking about Swallows and Amazons. We have been trying to read it tog
ether, sometimes with me reading aloud and sometimes Vishna, but really it is the wrong time of year for reading books. We have had several quite dark days and they have been cool too, so we have needed to be on the move. If we were not feckless, and lived in a house like Will, we would have electricity. Will has told me that he and Pixie read to themselves every evening before they go to sleep, reading from proper books, not droids, because Will’s mum says it is best to be screen-free for an hour at least before sleep. Gracie cannot read very well yet, although Will says she pretends she can, so their mum or dad read her a short story each evening. “Sometimes,” Will says, “if Gracie can’t go to sleep, they sing songs to her.”

  I ask, “What do they sing?” and my heart gives a sort of thump, but Will says, “Oh, you know. Kids’ stuff. Like ‘Hush Little Baby, Don’t You Cry’ or ‘Sleep, Little Baby, Sleep’.” I have never heard of these songs, and I am disappointed, but I am glad to know that Quaker parents sing to their children, because I hope that I started to learn Bed is too small for my tired head and How can I keep from singing? in the same way.

  Anyhow, as we do not have electricity, and it is too dark to read aloud, Vishna and I have started making up a sort of alternative story, which we have called Robins and Blackbirds. Each night, when we are in our sleeping bags, one of us has to make up the next chapter, taking over from where we left off the night before. In our story there are four Robins: Will, Pixie, Vishna and me. The Blackbirds do not yet have names. When Skye arrives we are trying to think what they might be called, and making up more and more silly names, and laughing very hard.

  Skye says, “Now, that is a sound I love to hear!” and she opens the door to the Professor’s shelter, which now has the plaque I made for Skye for Christmas hanging on the post in front. She dumps her backpack just inside and asks, “I don’t suppose you’ve got any water on the boil, have you?” which is another way of saying, I’m dying for a cup of tea! So we all drink tea, and we tell Skye about trying to find names for the Blackbirds, and she says that they should be called Fred, Bert and Bill, and we all laugh because the names are so old-fashioned.

  Then, of course, Skye has news to tell us, and she wants to know what we have been doing. I tell her that long trousers are all very well but that they easily get muddy on the Hill, and then, if I wash them, they are impossible to get dry at this time of the year. And I tell her that Will sometimes wears shorts, even in the winter.

  Skye says, looking at Vishna, not at me, “So, you’re still going to Meeting, then?”

  Vishna glances sideways at me. She does not want to say anything I might not want Skye to know. Then she says, “I have been. Giorgi has been taking a short break.”

  But I want to tell Skye the truth. I say, “I felt sad and angry when Will’s mum and dad came back, and I still haven’t found mine. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  Skye says, “Oh, Giorgi…” but of course there is nothing else to say after that.

  Vishna says, helping me, “But you’re working on that, aren’t you, Giorgi?” and I feel grateful to her, because working on that could mean a lot of different things, and I cannot explain to Skye what I do not quite understand myself.

  Skye says, “Well, we are nearly over the worst of the winter now,” and I am not sure what her words have got to do with what we have been talking about. I think she really means, “Okay, Giorgi, we don’t need to talk about your mum and dad if you aren’t ready.” Then she says, “Let me tell you about Little Bear, and all the family.” So we hear about Walking Tall bringing them all to Edinburgh for Hogmanay, and Little Bear wearing a jacket exactly like mine, and Big Bear finding a girlfriend who has lived on Shetland all her life, and how they keep chickens but so far they have not laid any eggs, and how Little Bear’s mum has been given a recipe for the best fruit cake in the world, and how they had all seen the Swedish journalist’s article and Little Bear had given a talk to his class about when he used to live on the Hill, and how Little Bear has already got a Scottish accent. And I think that one day, when I have found my mum and dad, I will go to Scotland too, because I really miss Little Bear.

  Then Skye tells us that she has really only popped in for one night, to check on us and to have a word with the Old Man, and tomorrow she needs to be somewhere else by midday so it will mean another early start. Then she goes across to the Old Man’s shelter for her word, and I say to Vishna, “Thank you,” because she saved me from having to explain. And Vishna just says, “You’re welcome,” not, Thank you for what? and that shows how much Vishna always seems to understands about what is going on.

  * * *

  It actually feels good to be going to the Quaker Meeting again. I wake up early, when it is still quite dark. The afternoons always start to lighten up before the mornings, of course. We are long past the shortest day now. That was before Christmas, before Will’s parents came home. I lie in bed listening to our wind chimes making a woody clonk, click, hum outside the shelter, and a noise which is probably the Old Man moving around in his shelter. You can hear things quite differently with your ear right down on the ground. I think that I am going to sit in silence, and I wonder whether I will see the colours today. I wonder whether anyone will stand up and talk, and whether it will be the Goodness helping me along my way. I wonder whether Will will remember to bring a torch, so that Vishna and I can read Swallows and Amazons before we go to sleep. I wonder whether anyone will have made muffins. I am ready to go before Vishna has even plaited her hair, and I feel like running down the Hill, although that is not wise if you want to keep your long jeans free of mud.

  There is no lookout in the road. Instead, someone I do not know is standing at the open gate, shaking hands with people as they arrive. Vishna says, “The Quakers are not a banned organisation. Once that article was published and the Canadians and Europeans started asking awkward questions, they had to ease up.” Then she says, “Hello!” to the shaking-hands woman, who says, “Hello, Vishna, hello there!” in return. Vishna adds to me, talking a little over her shoulder because I am behind her, “A reporter from Around Europe was here a couple of weeks ago, standing in the street taking photos. Winchester Meeting is a little bit famous!”

  Then we go inside.

  The large meeting room feels quite different. They have mended the broken window so it is not boarded up anymore. Someone has taken all the newspaper off the other window. I do not know whether the electricity had been cut off, before, or whether they just avoided using the lights because they did not want to attract attention. Anyhow, now the lights on the walls are on. Instead of a candle on the table someone has put some holly twigs with red berries in a jug, and there are books arranged around the leaves. There are two circles of chairs instead of one, an inside and an outside circle, and for a moment it feels like a different place, and I do not know where to sit. Then I see Will in a corner by the window and he gives a little sign, which means Sit here! So I go and join him, and it feels like my Meeting again.

  It is different, though. There are more people, and Will or Pixie are not in charge anymore. It makes them seem younger. Gracie is not in the room at all. It takes me a long time to settle down, although I see that Vishna is engrossed in the silence almost at once. She is sitting sideways on to Will and me, and it is the first time I notice how beautiful she is.

  Several of the grown-ups talk. Their words have colours, but they are the ordinary colours that words usually have. The silence in between is plain, but I do not mind. I have a content feeling. I am thinking that I know a beautiful person who is like a sister, and I have a friend I am sitting next to, and Skye pops in, even just for one night, to check up on us, and the Old Man is always there. Then the golden light of the Goodness shines gently and I nearly feel like crying, but I do not. So I sing in my heart the words, Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.

  * * *

  Then, during the notices after the Meeting, Percy says that there will be a Me
eting in the home of Will’s mum and dad. It will be on the following evening, and everyone is welcome to a bring-and-share supper. I do not know what that is, but Vishna does. They held one a few weeks earlier to welcome all the grown-ups back from prison. This one is so that we can all be given more information about the national picture, and one or two of the adults want to talk about their experiences of being locked up. Some people from other Meetings in the area might come too.

  I say to Vishna, who is drinking hot water and eating an ordinary biscuit (no muffins today), “What did you take to the last bring-and-share?”

  She says, “I didn’t take anything. I didn’t go. I couldn’t see how I would get there, and anyhow, all our food except our fruit and veg is past its sell-by date, and I didn’t think I could just take some carrots!”

  Will overhears. He says, “You can come, even if you don’t bring any food. There’s always too much.”

  When he has turned to talk to the old lady, Madge, Vishna says, “We can’t go, Will. I don’t like the idea of sponging off the Quakers, and anyhow, how would we get there? It’s a really long walk from the Hill to Harestock.”

  I see that this is true. Harestock is on the other edge of the city, past the hospital and the old prison, past the houses and school they built around the time of the New Alliance, and past the big, private hospital which the Americans and the rich people use. It would take at least an hour to walk there, and it would look odd. The police might stop us to find out why we were out and about in the evening, and want to see our IDs, and I would end up in care. All to go to one bring-and-share supper.

  Then Will’s mum comes over and says to Vishna, “I hope you will come tomorrow evening?”

  Vishna looks embarrassed. She says, “I don’t think we can, but thank you for inviting us.”