Little Exiles

George is dumb for only a moment. Then he nods. ‘That’s what Peter said,’ he agrees. The words seem to soothe him – but, all the same, he closes his eyes so that he has to see no more.

Jon must have fallen asleep too, for a sudden lurching of the wagon jolts him awake. It is dark all around. He scrambles to sit upright, George hunched in a ball beside him. There are trees on either bank, but they are stumpy and only half in leaf, the canopy of a fragrant forest so low that Jon can see for miles around.

‘We’re nearly there, boy.’

Jon wheels around, crashes against the side of the wagon. ‘Nearly where?’

The wagons bank left. There are shapes in the darkness, silhouetted creatures that bound away from the convoy.

‘There,’ says Judah Reed, a wistful tone in his voice. Carefully, still grasping the rim of the wagon, he kicks his way through the curled-up boys to reach the cab.

The wagon suddenly drops down a ledge in the track. The jolt stirs the boys around Jon. George scrambles around, uncertain in which strange world he has awoken.

‘Jon,’ George begins, forgetting to whisper. ‘What is it?’

In front of Jon, Judah Reed hammers the roof of the cab and the driver barks out. Seconds later, the truck’s horn blasts, three short sharp sounds. They thunder around a narrow bend in the track – and there, for the first time, Jon sees lights in the undergrowth.

There is a clearing coming, harrowed land with little cauldrons of fires stirred at its fringes, as if to keep the desert wilderness at bay. As they near, the boys around Jon become more alert.

The wagons slow, banking hard so that their headlights sweep across what appears to be a ruined village. On the other side of the barren expanse there sits a collection of shacks, raised on stilts above the desert floor. Between them, causeways have been carved in the scrub – and, beyond that, the first of a row of sandstone buildings sits.

The wagons stop, and Judah Reed vaults to the ground. At first, the boys are resistant to follow, so Judah Reed reaches in and palms the first boy onto the ground. He stumbles to his hands and knees in the sand, scrambling aside just in time to avoid the other boy who comes tumbling after.

‘Don’t fall on your knees,’ whispers Jon. He does not know why it is important; it seems like something Peter might have said – and, for the moment, that is good enough.

‘What?’ George asks. He will be the next to go; Judah Reed is already barking his name.

‘Just don’t let him push you over,’ says Jon. ‘I’ll be right behind.’

Jon slides from the back of the truck, reaching back just in time to whip his cardboard suitcase with him. He presses a hand into the small of George’s back, and together they scurry away.

‘What is this place?’ whispers George.

A boy beside them grunts. ‘End of the world, little George,’ he says. ‘You’ll be wetting that bed forevermore now.’

The boys gather along the fires. Behind them, the desert writhes – but, ahead, it seems, worse things are stirring. Boys have spilled out of the tumbledown shacks. Some of them are carrying lanterns. There are girls, too – though, at first, Jon does not recognize them as such. They all wear short trousers and ragged shirts, the girls in dresses that stretch to their ankles. They all have bare feet, and hair that has grown into great matted tassels.

From the night, a man in black strides forward, clasping Judah Reed’s hand in his own. Then, suddenly, the women who met them at the docks are crying out shrill orders. The new boys form a long rank in front of the fires and, one after another, are dispatched into the shacks.

‘Your suitcase, young sir …’

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