Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

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      Jon clings tightly to the suitcase, and does not breathe a word. In there: his English clothes, his precious book – the only things he has left from the other world.

      The woman does not ask twice. She cuffs him around the ear, a blow that stings more than he had anticipated – and, as he is righting himself, prises the suitcase from him. George gives his up more easily. She slings them back into the ute, where a dozen others are piled.

      The woman whistles out, and a clot of barefoot boys scamper between two of the shacks. Jon pauses, but one of the boys takes him by the wrist. He resists, but not for long. Soon, he is clattering after them, along a narrow lane with tall banks of scrub. One of the boys whispers something, but Jon does not hear. He looks back, finally gives up the fight when he sees George being swept along behind.

      They go deeper into the compound, past a square where a well, heaped high with stones, is set into the ground. The shacks here are darker, but groups of boys lounge on their steps.

      ‘How many?’ one of the boys hunched on the step asks.

      The boy beside Jon shrugs. ‘I reckon thirty, all told. They had girls in one of the trucks.’

      The other boy nods, as if this news pleases him.

      ‘What have we got here, then? Two little ones?’

      ‘I’m ten!’ Jon pipes up. When he elbows George sharply in the chest, George repeats the words, just as he has been told.

      ‘Yeah, settle your shit down,’ the older boy grins. ‘We don’t much like new boys, but it’s not you to blame for that. We’re on the same side here, all of us except Ted over there. You just pick on him if you ever feel the need.’

      One of the other boys mutters a string of curses.

      ‘I’m only joking, Ted.’

      ‘I’ll joke you in a minute!’

      The older boy tips Jon a wink. ‘He always says things like that. We haven’t yet worked out what he means.’ He stops. ‘Up you get, then. There’s an empty bed in the bottom corner. You two might have to top and tail it. Village muster’s at dawn, so you’ve got …’ He looks up at the chart of stars. ‘… about four hours, I reckon.’

      Jon is the first to venture past the boys, up the steps into the wooden shack.

      They enter a bare cloakroom, where hooks line the walls but nothing hangs. The smell in the air is at once familiar and horribly unreal. If George has forgotten it, Jon has not; he can still remember the first night he walked into the dormitory of the Children’s Crusade back home, the smell of damp and piss that permeated the place.

      Beyond the cloakroom, the new dormitory stretches to the furthest walls. Something dark scurries across the boards – a rat, or whatever other little creatures live in this far flung world. Banks of beds line each wall, simple wire frames raised at the head like a hospital stretcher, so that there is no need for a pillow. There are boys in each, but few of them are sleeping. They grumble as Jon and George stumble on, finally finding a vacant bed in a corner where the floorboards squelch miserably underfoot.

      George rolls onto the bed. There is only one sheet, but he wraps himself in it tightly, as if hopeful he will disappear.

      ‘George,’ Jon whispers, jumping on the bed alongside his friend.

      George looks up, pudgy face drawn.

      ‘Yes?’

      Jon does not know why he thinks of it, but he cannot stop himself now. ‘What was your mother like, George?’

      ‘I don’t remember,’ says George lightly, as if it is the most terrible thing.

      Jon squints at him.

      ‘But I wish she was here.’ He offers some of the sheet to Jon. ‘Jon,’ he whispers, wary of the wild boys shifting around them. ‘Do you have it? Do you still have Peter’s map?’

      Jon reaches into his short trousers and pulls out the page of the atlas. It means nothing any longer, just a few scribbles on a part of the coast they could not find again, even if they spent their whole lives trying. All the same, he stretches it out and, in the preternatural gloom, he and George study its contours.

      ‘That’s where we’ll find him,’ says Jon. George’s eyes widen. ‘He’ll be waiting for us there.’

      Jon lies down in the bed, curled around George. The sounds of boys wheezing, the chatter of creatures in the scrubland, the endless desert where there is nothing to run to and no one to hear you cry – this, then, is his new world. He says his prayers to unknown stars and wakes, the following morning, to an alien sun.

      V

      ‘There once was a boy who ran away. He ran as far as he could run, and when he could run no more, he burrowed down into the baked red earth. When he could not burrow any further, he curled up and slept – and, when he woke, he found little droplets of moisture on the walls of his den. He stayed there through the day, and the following night as well, rooting up worms and grubs for his dinner, lapping at the water that seeped out of the earth. And, in that way, he decided, a little boy could live.’

      George likes this story. He has heard it three times already, but there is something in it that troubles Jon. All the same, he stays at George’s side while the boy continues. Breakfast is almost over – and though Jon cannot bear spooning the slop into his mouth, he knows he will be aching by the afternoon without it.

      One of the cottage mothers drifts by, trailing rank perfume behind her. Some of the littlest boys, four or five years old, are bickering in the corner of the stark breakfasting hall, and she glides towards them. Moments later, one is lifted by his ear and taken to the front of the hall, where a corpulent man in black, his face full of jowls, receives him and carries him out of the hall. On the dirt outside, Judah Reed is waiting.

      ‘The little boy spent every day and night in his den. He did not grow up like the boys who did not run away. He couldn’t grow a single inch bigger, because his den wouldn’t let him. The seasons came and went without him seeing another living soul but the grubs he ate – until, one day, he heard the song of a kookaburra chick, lost in the desert …’

      It is always the sound of the kookaburra that brings the smile to George’s face. Neither he nor Jon know what a kookaburra is, or what it looks like, but for George it is enough to imagine this otherworldly creature coming to the runaway’s help. There might still be friends to be found in this red and arid land.

      Jon’s spoon clatters in his tin plate, but the sound is quickly drowned out. The corpulent man in black is back, clanging the hand-bell, and he parades up and down the long trestle table. The little one who was taken away is nowhere to be found.

      ‘Eat up, George. You’ve got to get going.’

      The story will have to be finished another day. Jon pats George on the back and scurries out of the hall. The sun is already up, but the heat is not yet fierce. The boys here say that this is winter – though Jon can remember winter well, so it must be just another of their tricks. He leaps over the soft earth where the kitchen sinks empty out and takes off at a run.

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