Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

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СКАЧАТЬ striding to the chantry doors and stepping beyond. ‘I’m afraid, Jon Heather, that the old world doesn’t want you anymore.’

      ‘Jon!’ George tumbles out of bed as Jon steals back into the dormitory. ‘Jon, where have you been?’

      It is dark in the dormitory, but moonlight glides across the room as, somewhere above, snow clouds shift and come apart.

      ‘Get back into bed, George.’ Peter swings out of his bunk, biting back at some snipe from one of the bigger boys lounging above. He goes to George’s side and, an arm around his shoulder, ushers him back to his cot.

      ‘But I just want to …’

      ‘Jon doesn’t want to hear it,’ Peter whispers. ‘Not now.’

      As Peter is tucking the sheets in around George, batting back his every question, Jon trudges the length of the dormitory and finds his own crib. It is just as he had expected: the blankets are gone and only the pillow remains.

      ‘Jon, what did they say?’

      Peter lopes out of the shadows, rests his foot on the base of Jon’s bed. Sitting at its head, Jon realizes he is still kneading the postcard. It is creased now, and the ink has smeared his fingers.

      He offers it up. When Peter takes it, he cannot make it out – but, nevertheless, he seems to know.

      ‘They took us in the chantry and sat us down. They say it’s a paradise, waiting for boys like us, fresh fruit for breakfast and crystal lakes full of fish – that we’ll all grow up to have big ranches and families and everything boys could ever want.’ He pauses. ‘Jon, there’s something else, isn’t there? What did Judah Reed say?’

      From down the row, someone barks at them to shut up. Peter lets loose with a volley of his own, and the silence resumes.

      ‘He said we were being rescued,’ Jon begins. ‘But – but I don’t need to be rescued, Peter.’

      Peter relaxes, sits beside Jon.

      ‘I know what you’re going to say, Peter. But I saw her letter. He made me read it. And …’ He takes the pillow into his lap and beats it. ‘There’s still my father. It will all be OK when my father finally comes home. But if I’m not here, he’ll never find me. I’m not like you, Peter. I’m not like George. I’ve got …’ He trembles before saying it, but he says it all the same. ‘… people who love me.’

      Peter stands. ‘There’s every one of us in here just like you,’ he says. ‘Every one of us had a mother and a father who didn’t come back.’ He turns, kicks along the row to find his bunk. ‘We’re the same in this hole,’ he mutters, ‘and we’ll be the same on the other side of the world.’

      Peter slopes back into the shadows, but Jon is not ready to let him go. Leaping up, he screws up the postcard and hurls it after the retreating silhouette. ‘You want to go!’ he thunders. ‘You’re happy to be going!’

      The silhouette hunches its shoulders and turns around.

      ‘Peter?’ comes a voice.

      ‘You go to sleep, George,’ Peter whispers. He stalks back up to Jon, lands a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘You upset him over this, and I’ll throw you overboard the first chance I get. I’m not happy, Jon, and I’m not sad. This place or some other place – it just doesn’t matter to me anymore.’ There is fight left in Jon, but suddenly he softens; his shoulders sink and he tries to squirm back. ‘There isn’t any escaping from it. We were marked for it the second we came through those doors.’

      Jon curls up on his bare mattress and reaches into the slats for his beloved book. It is too dark to make out any of the words, but it doesn’t matter – he knows it by heart. In the story, a gang of friends drift out to sea aboard the old Goblin and land, at last, on some foreign shore. There, among the alien faces, is the one they clamour for: their errant father, who takes them safely back home. Jon flicks quickly to those pages – as if, even in this darkness, he might breathe it in.

      Something shudders at the end of his bed, and he reaches out to see a blanket suddenly lying there. On the other side of the dormitory, Peter slumps onto his bed and pulls an overcoat around him with a grunt.

      ‘Thank you,’ Jon whispers – but there is no reply.

      Jon does not sleep that night. He lies awake, listening to the fitful snores of the other boys. In the small hours, he suddenly remembers the great brick arch through which he first entered the home, the stone inscription that was hanging overhead. At last, he understands what it means.

      It is as the boys of the Home have always understood: the childsnatcher does not come in the dead of the night. He does not creep upon the stairs. He does not lurk beneath the bed, clutching a sack in which to stash all the little boys he carries away. He comes, instead, in a smart black suit, with a briefcase at his side and papers in his pocket. He crouches down and calls you by your name – and, once you take his hand in your own, you will never see England again.

      III

      They set out from a dock in Liverpool. It is as far from home as Jon has ever been, but now even this foreign city dwindles on the horizon, lost in mist from the sea.

      They call it the HMS Othello. It has ploughed through countless wars, but now it is bound to a different journey. Below deck, the boys sleep three to a cabin. After the dormitory, it is a luxury to which none of the boys are accustomed.

      After lights out on the first night, there comes a gentle rat-a-tat at the cabin door. Peter swings out of bed and whips the portal open. Still clinging to the cardboard suitcase they have each been issued with, there stands George.

      ‘Can I sleep in here, Peter?’

      There are three bunks in the cabin, Jon curled up in one, no doubt pretending to sleep; some other boy in the other. Peter shakes him until he stirs. ‘Hop it, Harry,’ he says. ‘We need the bed.’

      Muttering some incomprehensible complaint, the boy trudges out of the room.

      As he goes, George creeps through the door and finds the bunk warm and inviting. ‘Thanks Peter.’

      ‘Don’t thank me,’ Peter says. ‘Just go to sleep.’

      There is only a moment’s silence. Between them, Jon hears George begin to speak. Then, thinking better of it, he holds his tongue. Two more times he tries to be still, but it will not last long.

      ‘What is it, George?’

      ‘I didn’t like the way the ship was moving. It feels like we could tip right over.’

      Jon hears Peter’s sharp intake of breath, decides Peter is about to admonish George, and scrambles upright in bed. ‘I don’t like it either …’

      ‘You can hardly walk,’ George goes on. ‘One minute you’re in the middle of the hall, the next you’re up against the wall. Nothing looks right.’

      Peter rolls over, drawing the bedsheets over his head.

      ‘It’s only Judah Reed can walk without stumbling,’ George says. ‘Why СКАЧАТЬ