Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

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      ‘I’m …’ Jon does not know what to say. ‘… sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I didn’t …’ All his words have failed him. He does not know what to say sorry for, but for some reason he can picture himself with a stick in his hand, beating Ernest over and over. ‘I just got scared.’

      Ernest shrugs. ‘I didn’t tell, you know. They were sure they’d seen me with another boy, but I said I was on my own.’

      Jon nods, dumbly. ‘Did it … hurt?’ he finds himself asking.

      ‘He had a hockey stick.’

      A curious sensation spreads, like warmth, across Jon’s stomach, up his chest and down his arms, as if he has too much energy, as if he should jump up and sprint in circles. He remembers Judah Reed telling him he ought to be proud, and realizes what the feeling is: guilt, not for letting Ernest be beaten, but for something else.

      They stand, neither one really looking at the other, complicit in some secret.

      ‘You write to your mother too?’ Jon begins.

      ‘Every month, ever since I came.’

      Jon cannot bear to ask how long that has been. Nor can he bear to ask the question that floats in the air between them, daring to be voiced. If Ernest has been here for years, if he has written a display diligently each month, why, then, is he still here?

      ‘What did you tell her?’

      ‘I told her about the fences.’ Ernest tucks his head down, shuffling away as if embarrassed by what he is about to say. ‘I told her she can come and get me almost any time she wants – ’cause if there’s nothing keeping us in, there’s nothing keeping her out.’

      They walk together out of the assembly hall. Sundays are supposed to be spare days, no work and no worry, but it doesn’t feel that way to Jon. Boys are gathering with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Some of them, it seems, have already found a way to cause mischief, and a strident cottage mother is hauling them by their ears to a waiting man in black, a creature much older than Judah Reed, with hands wrinkled like oversized gloves and a deep stoop that makes him look like a tortoise.

      Ernest comes close, breathing out words Jon cannot hear.

      ‘What?’ asks Jon, tilting his ear.

      ‘I saw a road,’ whispers Ernest. ‘When he got hold of me to march me back, I looked up …’ He pauses. This, it seems, is much more magical than a world without fences. ‘It had a bank on both sides and … there it was. Like a river without any rain.’ His face dares a smile. ‘Tyre marks in the dust. There was a glass bottle on the edge, like someone just threw it there.’

      ‘There’s somebody out there …’

      ‘I saw it. They can’t stop me having seen it.’

      Jon Heather stops. He looks at his hands, no longer bloody, except where the blood has worked into the crevices around his nails. ‘Where?’

      ‘Into the sun,’ says Ernest. ‘We should have been running into the sun.’

      That night, sleep will not come. Jon imagines his display, winging its way to England. Over glittering oceans it goes, through tropical monsoons, around the cape of India, taking up with a flock of migrating birds who will keep it company all the way back to English shores. It is night when it arrives in the old town, but it roosts with those same birds in the gutters of one of the old terraces, diving down to find his mother as soon as morning comes.

      She will hold that display dear to her. Jon knows it. Perhaps she will write a display of her own – but it will only be her emissary. She will be following soon after.

      If he wasn’t so certain of the fact, perhaps he might be dreaming differently tonight. He pictures coming through the scrub again, the lone wallaby skittering out of his path, and seeing nothing but the bush rolling on. The world had never seemed so huge as it did then. His mind’s eye rolls on, and he sees Ernest, dangling from the arm of a man in black, the pair of them silhouettes against the dying light. Beyond them, Jon can see nothing but the undulating red plain – but Ernest can see more.

      Somewhere, out there, there is a road.

      He closes his eyes, ignores George’s pleas for a story, and pictures it snaking back to the sea. A road can lead you anywhere. A road can even lead you back home.

      ‘Jon Heather, you lazy sack! We’re going to be in trouble!’

      Jon wakes, to feel fingers grappling with his foot, trying to haul him out of bed. There is a moment in which he might be anywhere in the world, but then he remembers. Fear grips him and he rolls over – and it is only then that he realizes it is George, not some haughty cottage mother, urging him to rise.

      ‘You were talking in your sleep,’ George says, indignant.

      ‘What did I say?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘You must have heard something.’

      ‘We’re going to be late!’

      Jon blinks the sleep out of his eyes, bewildered that he might have slept so soundly, and looks around the dormitory. All of the other boys are gone.

      ‘You shouldn’t have waited for me, George. Now you’ll be for it too …’

      ‘I can’t go out on my own, Jon Heather, you know I can’t.’

      They are fortunate, this morning, that their cottage mother is not feeling particularly vicious. When they emerge, blinking into the sun, she is drinking tea from a dainty cup, and simply waves them on with a withering gaze. All the same, Jon knows, she won’t forget it. They’ll have to be doubly careful for the next few days.

      In the breakfast hall, Judah Reed is taking a register. He does not have a roll call of names, so instead barks out ages, and every boy of that age must then go to a certain corner of the room. Then he begins to count.

      ‘Remember,’ George whispers. ‘I’m ten too.’

      ‘Is there,’ Judah Reed proclaims, ‘a boy named Peter here?’

      George’s eyes light up. His head swivels, like an owl’s, to find Jon’s.

      Across the room, nobody raises their hand.

      ‘Does he mean our Peter?’

      Judah Reed must hear, for his gaze falls on George and hovers like a hawk.

      ‘Shut up, George.’

      ‘David?’ Judah Reed calls.

      This time, a little one raises his hand, but Judah Reed quickly dismisses him as too young.

      ‘Must have gone to the stations,’ Jon hears Judah Reed mutter. ‘Do we have the right number?’ The cottage mother beside him nods. ‘Very well.’

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