Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  ‘I like your stories, Peter.’

  Now they look expectantly at Peter, as if waiting for a bedtime tale.

  ‘My sister, Rebekkah, she reckoned it was a broken heart. On account of the fact my father didn’t come back. Dead in India, they said, but he wasn’t even fighting. He was on a motorbike and it flipped. He used to ride one even before the war, and my mother always hated it. She said I went on it once, but I don’t remember. Then there’s a letter in the post and it says he was killed in action, but it wasn’t really action and it wasn’t really killed. It was just an accident, and my mother wasn’t the same after that.’

  ‘So she kicked the bucket!’ chirps George.

  Peter doesn’t mind; he simply nods. ‘Sometimes that’s all it is, I suppose. There one day, gone the next. So Rebekkah and me, we tried to muddle through, but there was a neighbour who kept coming round with bits from her rations, and eventually she cottoned on. Rebekkah begged and begged, but it didn’t work. They sent a man with a briefcase, and then we had to put some things in a bag. I thought we were going to be together, but they sent Rebekkah to a place for girls, somewhere called Stockport.’ Peter pauses. He is hanging his head, so that Jon can barely make out his face. ‘So then that’s it. Children’s Crusade and …’

  ‘How long?’ whispers Jon.

  Peter shrugs, but it is a pretend shrug, as if there is something he wants to hide. ‘I can’t remember. Four years, I suppose … five months. A few days.’ He hesitates. ‘Nine days. You want the minutes and hours as well?’

  There is a gentle pattering on the tarpaulin, rain beginning to fall across the ocean. Soon, outside, Jon hears the scampering of feet as people head for shelter.

  ‘Peter,’ says George. ‘I feel sick again.’

  ‘The ship’s hardly moving, George.’

  ‘It’s not the ship. It’s my insides. They’re turning somersaults.’

  When they emerge, the decks are almost empty, every man, boy and girl heading for their cabins. The rain now comes in sporadic bursts. Jon looks up. He wonders: was it a storm like this that waylaid my father? Is that why they really put me to sea? Or is it something worse?

  ‘What if my mother didn’t come for me because …’ His voice trails off — for, along the length of the ship, towards the prow, he has seen the spindly black figure of Judah Reed, crouching above a collection of little ones.

  Jon reaches out, as if to take Peter’s hand. He does not know he is doing it until it is too late. Peter shakes him off, gives him a furrowed look.

  ‘Come on,’ says Jon.

  If Judah Reed cannot catch him, he cannot tell him his mother has died. If it is true, Jon does not want to know. Quickly, he takes off, lifting the door back into the bowels of the boat.

  Peter and George hurry after.

  ‘Where are we going?’ George puffs.

  Jon Heather thinks: somewhere they can’t find me.

  Soon, in the depths of the ship, they are hopelessly lost. Peter demands that they stop as he paces a passageway, trying to get his bearings. Jon swears that he could find the way back to deck simply by listening to the creaking of the ship, but the doubt in his voice is all too plain, and suddenly George starts to blubber. A sharp slap on the back quells him, but after that he waddles nervously in Peter’s wake, complaining of being hungry and thirsty and afraid of the dark.

  ‘Can you be shipwrecked if the ship isn’t wrecked, Peter? What if we get shipwrecked down here?’

  ‘It’s not shipwrecked if the ship isn’t wrecked, George.’

  ‘We could still starve. It’s worse than a desert island, Peter. We couldn’t even find a coconut to drink.’

  At last, a staircase presents itself, and they emerge into a new passageway, where bright lights shine and a thick red carpet covers the wooden boards. There is a new smell here, of collecting dust and paraffin lamps, and the air feels dry. Jon follows the smell to the end of the passage, and pushes at the doors there, so that they open just a crack. Pressing his eye to the hole, he takes a deep breath and looks over his shoulder.

  ‘What is it, Jon?’

  Jon turns and pushes the doors apart. In the room beyond, the walls are lined with books. Tables are heaped high with newspapers bound in string. A dozen lamps line the walls, and big pipes run between the bookcases, radiating heat.

  ‘You’ll have read all these books, will you?’ asks Peter, punching Jon on the shoulder.

  Jon peers right and left. Surely there is no man alive who might have read every one of these books. They stretch from ceiling to floor, long shelves protruding from every wall to form alcoves in which a boy might hide away. Some of them are bound in leather with embossed titles: The Natural Laws of Navigation, Colonies of the Cape, and many more. Others are ragged storybooks with crumpled or missing covers.

  Peter starts ferreting in a box, while George waits dumbly at the door.

  ‘Here,’ Peter says, tossing him a comic with the silhouette of an American detective on front. ‘You liked this one when we were at the Home.’

  ‘Are you going to read it to me, Peter?’

  ‘Later. You look at the pictures for now.’

  Beaming, Jon disappears into the shelves. The books are older here, with names he recognizes but cannot pronounce. There is a little reading area, where two ornate chairs face each other across a low table. Stretched out between them, there sits an enormous clothbound book. On the front, in golden letters, are the words An Atlas of the World.

  Jon pores through the pictures. There are always maps of villages and dales in the storybooks he loves to read, but never before has he seen a map so vast. He sees oceans with names he has never heard, the shores of the Americas and Africa, the endless expanses of white at the fringes of the world. He traces the names of countries with the tip of his forefinger, but no matter how hard he searches he cannot find England. His eyes are drawn inexorably down, and he sees the scorched yellow mass that is Australia, sitting so lonely and remote.

  He wraps his arms around the book and staggers to the entrance of the library. Peter is sitting cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by comics.

  ‘I’ve never seen these ones,’ Peter says, holding one up with a flourish. ‘Dustbowl comics. They’ve come all the way from America, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m keeping these.’

  ‘You can’t keep them!’ George gasps.

  ‘Some other boy’ll just keep them if we don’t, George. Don’t be such a stickler.’ Peter looks up. ‘What’ve you got there, Jon boy?’

  Jon flops down beside them. ‘It’s an atlas. Maps of the world …’

  ‘They had a big thing like that at the first Home I was in. Showed everywhere that was British, with little Union Jacks all over.’

  ‘Peter,’ Jon wavers. ‘I don’t know where we are.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon fix that.’ Peter snatches the book and tears it open. ‘How dumb can you be, Jon Heather? A few days out of England, and you’re lost already!’

  Peter peers down at the great map of the world in the centre of the book. His finger hangs delicately over Africa, then circles its way through the Middle East.

  ‘There we are, Jon Heather. England!’

  Jon cranes to look down Peter’s finger. ‘It’s tiny,’ he says, eyes flitting back to the sprawling mass of Australia.

  George, too, crawls over to Peter’s side, and peers at the world in his lap. ‘Will we be together,’ he says, ‘on the other side? Everyone from the Home, back in the same place?’

  When Peter looks up, Jon catches the look of unease in his eyes.

  ‘What do you care?’ he grins, fighting down whatever he has felt. ‘You hate all those boys. They’re rotten to you.’

  George whispers, ‘But I still want them to be there …’

  Peter considers it. ‘Yeah,’ he scoffs, snapping the map shut, ‘we’ll be together, all right. All us boys of the Children’s Crusade. It’s going to be a grand adventure.’

  Jon Heather spends lon
g hours trying to judge by his atlas which shores they are passing, imagining in which of these strange lands his father might be lost. When the rains come, he hides again in the lifeboat, still clinging to his maps. Oftentimes, George crawls in after him, to listen to stories, or puzzle over why Peter always wants to sit with the girls from the girls’ home, or else to just sit in silence, watching Jon read.

  Today, however, Jon has been alone, with only his thoughts and maps to keep him company. When the rain has passed over, he wriggles back onto deck. There might be land on the horizon, or it might only be a trick of the light. He holds tight to the atlas and scuttles back below deck.

  In the cabin, Peter is reading one of the dustbowl comics for the hundredth time. On the front, two horsemen stand in front of a rampaging wall of dust in which the title, Black Chaparral, is picked out in dirt. In the bunk beside him, George is twisted in the blankets, naked to the waist. His skin is red, as if some unseen birthmark has spilled over and spread.

  Jon stops. ‘George, what …’ His voice trails off, unable to find the words to describe this horror.

  Over the top of his comic-book, Peter glares. Only a second later, Jon knows why — for, suddenly, George’s eyes scrunch tight, his lips part, and his face is flushed with waves of slobbery tears.

  ‘Jon Heather, for someone who doesn’t stop thinking, you don’t ever think!’ He flings the comic down, rolls out of bed, and goes to give George a sharp slap on the back. ‘What did I say, George?’

  ‘There, there …’ George replies, between mouthfuls of air.

  ‘Not that part,’ Peter interjects. ‘What did I say’s wrong?’

  George looks up at Jon, with eyes ruddy and red. ‘It’s only a heat rash.’

  ‘A heat rash?’ Jon gasps. ‘Peter, you can’t possibly … Georgie boy, get out of bed.’

  The fat boy’s eyes flicker. It is as if he’s been told to leap off a cliff, and is finding the idea strangely tempting. ‘Peter says I should have my rest.’

  ‘Come on!’

  First, George must wait for Peter’s permission. Peter, eyes drifting back to his comic, slumps back into his sheets, refusing to even look up — so, taking his cue, Jon marches over and takes a pudgy hand in his own. The redness is here too, staining the backs of his fingers in wild, webbed patterns.

  It takes a few tugs to get George out of bed, but when he understands that Peter isn’t going to rebuke him, he duly follows Jon out of the cabin. Turning away from the stairs that would take them to deck, they follow a labyrinth of passages.

  ‘It has to be somewhere,’ Jon says.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘He’ll have a cabin, just like ours. Just like those dead halls in the Home …’

  At last, Jon knows he is near. The cries of the children are faded now, and in a doorway left ajar he sees a desk, a pot of pencils, a little calfskin Bible. At the end of the passage, a door is propped open and there, at a chair inside, sits Judah Reed.

  Jon does not dare cross the threshold, so instead he reaches out with his free hand and knocks, softly, at the door. When Judah Reed does not turn around, he knocks again. He means it only to be a little louder, but judges it badly; now, he is hammering at the door. The sound startles George, whose hand tenses in his own.

  Still, Judah Reed does not turn around. Instead, he lifts a hand, one finger stiff to indicate they must be patient, and concludes whatever he is writing. Then, at last, he looks over his shoulder.

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

  ‘Very well,’ says Judah Reed.

  Jon moves to take George into the room, but quickly Judah Reed stands and strides towards them.

  ‘How can I help, Jon?’

  Bemused, Jon shuffles back, so that George is in full view. When even this does not do the trick, he steps behind and pokes George in the small of the back, driving him forward like a particularly truculent ass.

  Judah Reed looks George up and down. ‘Put him to bed,’ he says, and promptly turns back to his study.

  ‘But …’ Jon bolts forward, making George clatter against the wall. ‘Isn’t there medicine? What about a doctor?’

  Judah Reed’s lips begin to curl. ‘I can’t take that to the ship’s doctor. Be sensible.’

  ‘He’s …’

  ‘Causing a bother?’

  For the first time, Judah Reed crouches down. Now he looks George in the face, his golden jowls pock-marked, his blue eyes cold. He lifts a brown hand and, turning it over, presses it against George’s brow. George shudders, wants to reel back. He felt that hand once before. The man had stroked his head, just as he was telling him the news: she’s dead, little one. I’m afraid your mother loved you very much, but now that’s gone.

  ‘He’s burning, isn’t he?’

  ‘Bring him back if he starts raving. We can’t have another mess like last time.’ Turning to go back into the cabin, he looks over his shoulder. ‘I mean raving. Speaking in tongues. Thrashing around. Until then, young man, you’ll have to belt up. Your mother and father aren’t here now, so you have to be a big boy.’

  ‘My mother’s dead!’ George suddenly pipes up. ‘You told me so yourself!’

  ‘You see,’ Judah Reed says, ‘you’re not really so sick after all.’

  When they get back to their cabin, Peter is still sprawling on his bed. He has been lingering over the last page of his comic — though, Jon notes, he’s now holding the thing upside down, as if he has had to quickly snatch it up and pretend he’s been reading it all along.

  ‘Well?’ says Peter.

  Jon doesn’t utter a word, just ushers George back into bed.

  ‘Told you so,’ Peter goes on, snapping the comic shut. ‘Never take a poorly kid to one of those men in black, Jon. They’d just as soon put you to sleep like any old street dog.’

  Swaddled up in his sheets, George gives a startled look and buries his head under his pillow.

  Now there is nothing but long days of empty ocean, a week when the wind fails to fly, another when no boy can sleep for the lurching of the ship and the nightmares it creates — of boys tossed overboard, starving to death in the bellies of whales.

  Soon, the boys begin to linger below deck throughout the long days, for in the open they must gaze into the endless blue, unable now to distinguish between backwards and forwards, the old world and the new. It is worse, they say, than the endless days locked in the Home. At least, then, there were walls through which they wanted to break. Out here, there is only the ocean, stretching in all directions, absolute and indefinite. Once upon a time, they sat in the chantry and learnt that they were being sent to Australia, for sunshine, oranges, milk and honey — but nobody told them how far they would travel. Nobody dared to tell them that the world was so vast.

  Peter crashes into the cabin, breathless but beaming.

  ‘You two best gather your things up,’ he begins.

  ‘What is it, Peter?’

  ‘It’s land, George.’

  They scramble onto deck. The word has spread quickly, and from every portal the passengers pour. They squabble their way to the highest sun-deck, but even there they have to fight to reach the balustrade.

  Out there, the endless azure expanse is broken by a thin red line.

  ‘I don’t like it, Peter.’

  ‘Tough, little friend. This is it. We got there in the end.’

  They linger on the sun-deck throughout the day — and, although the red line hardly thickens, by dawn the next morning they can clearly see different contours in the land. The next morning, the sun rises somewhere beyond the continent, spilling vivid colours: bloody reds and yellows, vermilion light bleeding into the ocean.

  Fists rain at the cabin door. When Judah Reed barges in, only Jon is there; Peter and George have long since been awake, watching the terrible continent growing in size.

  ‘Come now,’ Judah Reed intones. ‘We’re going ashore before dusk. You’re to dress smartly. Nobody will let the new world down
like they did the old.’

  Judah Reed disappears. Moments later, Jon can hear his fists raining at other cabin doors along the corridor.

  He pulls his cardboard suitcase out from underneath his bunk. In the suitcase there is a smart set of clothes, short trousers and a shirt, a necktie — so that every boy might look diligent as he enters the new world. There is even a pair of black shoes.

  As Jon wriggles into these unusual garments, he pauses. He struggles with the necktie, though Peter has repeatedly shown him how, and finishes by cramming it into his pocket. Then, feet uncomfortable in new shoes, he finds his copy of We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, wraps it in a bundle of his old clothes and forces it into the empty suitcase. As he leaves the cabin, he catches his reflection in a looking glass. His brown hair is longer than he has seen it before. Even his own mother would barely recognize him.

  Out on the main deck, the parties are gathering. Jon can see the first boats rowing out. They fill the water between the Othello and the port. Against the redness, there sits a low, sprawling township, whitewashed walls sitting around a single stone tower.

  A bigger boy paws his way through the crowd and claps an oversized hand onto Peter’s shoulder. ‘Judah Reed’s looking for you,’ he says.

  At Peter’s feet, George looks up like a startled rabbit.

  Peter grapples through a group of schoolgirls to look down on the fore-deck below. Down there, Judah Reed stands before the elder boys of the Children’s Crusade. Behind him, a contraption winches another boat level with the deck, and a seaman barks out orders.

  Peter shrugs, hoists George to his feet. ‘Time’s up, little fellow. We’re shipping out.’

  George is reluctantly rising when the bigger boy doffs him on the shoulder and presses him back down. ‘Not you,’ he says. ‘It’s only bigger boys in the first run.’

  Peter looks back over the rail. As if drawn to him, Judah Reed looks up and makes a single commanding wave.

  Peter turns to Jon. ‘How old are you?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m ten,’ Jon begins.