Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

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СКАЧАТЬ bat, he slopes across and finds a small hollow behind the chantry, where old furniture is piled up and blankets gather dust. It is cold in here, but Jon huddles up to leaf through the pages of his storybook. So engrossed is he that he does not, at first, register the portly figure who uncurls from a nest of dustsheets.

      Suddenly, eyes are upon him. When he looks up, the chubby boy is standing in front of him, holding out a crumpled blanket as if it is both sword and shield. He is shorter than Jon remembers, with hair shorn to the scalp but now growing back in unruly clumps. His lips are red and full, and the bottom one trembles.

      ‘I just want to …’

      Jon scrambles up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he begins. ‘I didn’t know anybody came here.’

      The fat boy shrugs.

      ‘You’re George.’

      The boy squints. He seems to be testing the name out, turning it over and again on his tongue. Then, head cocked to one side, he nods.

      ‘There’s a boy up there, said he was looking for you …’

      At that, the boy seems to brighten. ‘That’s Peter,’ he says. ‘He said he’d come soon.’

      Jon shuffles against the stack of chairs, as if to let the boy past.

      ‘You don’t mind if I stay? Just a little while?’

      Jon shrugs, sinks back into his blanket.

      ‘I come here before stories sometimes.’

      Jon falls into his book, but he has barely turned a page before he hears the boy strangle a bleat. When he looks up, torn out of some countryside adventure – Jon has never seen the countryside, and marvels that people might live in villages on hills, climbing trees and boating on lakes – the boy is too slow to hide his tears. There is a lingering silence, and Jon returns to his tale: two boys are scrambling to moor a boat as fog wreathes over the Fens.

      Again, the boy chokes back a sob. This time, Jon looks up quickly. Their eyes meet. The boy strangles another sob, and then rushes to mask the fact that he has been crying. For a second, his eyes are downcast; then, by increments, he edges a look closer at Jon.

      At last, Jon understands. The boy wants his crying to be heard. ‘What’s the matter?’

      The boy shrugs oddly, his round shoulders lifting almost to his ears. ‘What’s your name?’

      Perhaps he only wants to talk – but, if that is so, Jon cannot understand why he is cowering in this cranny at all. ‘I’m Jon.’

      George gives a little nod. ‘There was a Jon when old Mister Matthews brought me here. He was one of the bigger boys. He wasn’t here for long.’

      ‘He went home?’

      George shakes his head fiercely. ‘I think the men sent him somewhere else.’

      Jon considers this silently. There might be no more than six or seven men in black roaming these halls, but somehow it feels as if they are everywhere all at once. They are quiet men who speak only rarely, unless it is to lead the boys in prayers or summon them to chores – yet when a boy has done something wrong, been tardy in making his bed or been caught whispering after lights out, they have a way about them, a gentle nod that they give. Then, a boy must go to a corner and wait to be dealt with. He might find himself running laps of the building, or locked in the laundry. The other boys say that he might find himself in one of the dead rooms with his trousers around his ankles and red welts blooming on his bare backside. One night, a boy was caught chattering after dark and taken from the dormitory, only to come back an hour later with the most terrible punishment of all. ‘They’re writing to my mother,’ he said, ‘to tell her I’m happy and don’t want to go home …’

      Surely, Jon decides, it is these men in black who are keeping him here. They have cast an enchantment on his mother, another on his sisters, and have raised up walls of ice around him.

      ‘What’s in your book?’

      Jon inches across the floor, thick with dust, and holds the cover up so that George might see.

      ‘Peter used to read stories to me when they put me here …’

      ‘How long have you been here?’

      ‘It was before the summer. There was snow in May!’

      Jon is about to start spinning the familiar story so that this fat boy might hear it as well, when somewhere a bell begins to toll.

      There comes a sudden flurry of feet. Jon crams the book under a stack of chairs. At his side, George is infected by the panic and, knees tucked into his chin, rolls up into a ball.

      The footsteps grow louder. Then, a short sharp burst: somebody calling George’s name.

      ‘George,’ the red-haired boy says, loping into the hollow with the air of an exasperated schoolteacher, ‘there you are …’

      George unfurls from his bundle, throwing a sheepish glance at Jon. ‘I’m always here, Peter.’

      The red-haired boy follows George’s eyes. ‘This one been pestering you, has he?’

      Jon shakes his head.

      ‘He’s bound to pester someone, aren’t you, George?’ says Peter.

      George eagerly agrees.

      ‘How are you doing, kid?’

      The fat boy shuffles his head from side to side.

      ‘They told him about his mother last night. He told you about his mother?’ asked Peter.

      ‘My mother’s coming back for me,’ Jon begins. He does not know why, but he proclaims it proudly, as if it is an award he has striven for and finally earned.

      ‘Yeah,’ Peter says, slapping George’s shoulder so that the little boy stumbles. ‘That’s what George here thought as well. But they called him into the office last night and told him she wasn’t ever coming back. She’s dead, George. Isn’t that right?’

      George nods glumly. It occurs to Jon that, though tears shimmer in his eyes, he is thrilled to hear it announced so plainly by Peter.

      ‘Me,’ says Peter, ‘I been here longer than George, longer than lots of these boys. My mother’s been cold in the ground for almost forever. My sister’s with the Crusade too, but they shipped her off to a girls’ home in Stockport, so it’s not like I’m ever seeing that one again.’ He exhales, as if none of it matters. ‘So the one thing you got to understand, kid, is that whatever’s coming up for you, it isn’t Sunday roasts and trips to the seaside.’

      In the hallways outside, the bells toll again.

      ‘Come on,’ says Peter, ‘you don’t want to know what happens to boys who skip their stupid vespers …’ Peter scrambles past, out into the hall.

      Momentarily, Jon and George remain, sharing shy glances. Then, Jon moves to follow.

      George reaches forward and СКАЧАТЬ