Little Exiles

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.

Peter kicks George until he gets his attention. ‘You heard that, George? You tell them you’re ten too.’

Peter begins to stride away, but Jon hurries after. ‘Peter,’ he says. ‘You’re going to be there, aren’t you? When we get to the harbour …’

Peter shakes Jon away. ‘How in hell do you think I’d know?’ he snaps. ‘You make sure he tells them he’s ten, Jon Heather. And you look after the sorry little bastard if they’re about to split us up. Promise it, Jon.’

Jon nods. ‘OK,’ he says, ‘I promise.’

From the balcony, Jon watches the bigger boys being shepherded onto the boat. Slowly, they are winched out of sight. Moments later, the boats emerge from the shadow of the Othello. From on high, Jon fancies he can see Peter sitting in the prow of the boat, heroic as some proud Viking figurehead.

He does not notice at first, but suddenly George is standing beside him, his arms wrapped around two cardboard suitcases. ‘Peter left his behind,’ he whispers, clinging tightly to the second case.

They set it down and open it up. Inside, there are no old clothes, no trinkets carried over from the old world. There is only a single sheet of paper, torn raggedly out of some book. It is a page from one of the atlases, the empty continent with every city and river marked upon it. In the west, somewhere south of a little town named Dongara, Peter has scrawled a giant cross – but this is no treasure map for pirates.

‘We’ll give it to him on shore, won’t we, Jon?’

Jon folds up the paper and stashes it in the pocket of his stiff jacket. ‘I think he meant it for us, Georgie boy. So we can find our way back.’

A call goes up from the fore-deck, Judah Reed hollering out for the other boys of the Children’s Crusade.

‘All the way back, Jon?’

Jon nods. ‘All the way home, George.’ He looks at the sky. ‘One day …’