Little Exiles

‘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.

The dairy is at the other end of the compound, over fields that, come the spring, the boys here will be tilling. He is running barefoot, but it no longer hurts; it took less than a day before his shoes were wrestled off him. At the head of the sandstone buildings – where Judah Reed himself lives – he vaults a fence and takes off across the field. In the scrub that surrounds, the youngest boys of the Mission are out on village muster, collecting up the kindling that will be used to stoke the boilers tonight. Jon spies a little one he knows as Ernest on the very fringe of the field, where the fields back onto a low forest of thorns. Ernest waves at him; some of these younger boys can barely say a dozen words. Left alone on their daily forage, they grow languages of gestures and grunts.

‘You’re late, Jack …’

Jon careers into the dairy. The old herdsman, McAllister, who comes in from the cattle station to check over the goats, lurks at the back of the barn – but Jon manages to slip in unnoticed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jon begins. ‘I came as fast …’

‘Ach,’ the boy spits, wrapping his fists around the teats of the next she-goat in line. ‘I couldn’t care less, long as I don’t have to squeeze your share of these udders.’ He uncurls his fingers from a teat and, dripping with warm milk, reaches out to grasp Jon’s hand. ‘Name’s Tommy Crowe,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jack.’

‘My name’s Jon.’

The boy named Tommy Crowe smirks. ‘You got a familiar voice on you,’ he finally says. ‘Where’d they ship you in from?’

‘England,’ Jon shrugs, kicking his bucket into place.

‘I could’ve figured that one. There’s some lads from Malta came once, but you can tell them a mile off.’ He pauses, pinching out a squirt of milk as he ponders this problem. ‘Isn’t it … it’s somewhere in Leeds?’

Jon nods.

‘I knew it. Second I clapped eyes on you, I said to myself – Tommy, I said, that lad’s got Leeds written all over him.’ He tweaks a teat and shoots a warm spray of milk straight into Jon’s face. ‘I’m from the old place myself!’ Tommy Crowe goes on. ‘Well, never spent hardly a month there, if I’m to be truthful about it. They shipped me over almost as soon as they could. Just made sure there was none of them nasty U-boats still sharking around, and packed us all off. There was a bunch of us, got evacuated out into the dales, and when we come back – bang! Nothing to come back to. I must have been about seven. Had myself a giant family – brothers and sisters, half-brothers, cousins who were brothers, brothers who were sisters. Almost every kind of family. Then …’ He shakes his head, grinning at the absurd tale. ‘I thought some of them might wind up here too, but I haven’t seen them since we were in that Home. Maybe they ended up somewhere worse – what do you reckon?’

Tommy Crowe must be thirteen years old, though he appears much older. He has a pointed chin like some comicbook hero, and sharp eyebrows that rise villainously, so that there is always something contrary about the way that he looks.

‘You done with that bucket yet?’ Tommy asks. ‘You can’t mess around in here, Jack the lad! McAllister’s known to take a riding crop to a boy for a bit of spilt milk …’

Jon looks over his shoulder. The old man McAllister is kneeling now, pressing his forehead to the face of one of the billy goats in its stall.

‘What’s he up to?’ Jon asks.

‘He’s eyeing up which ones are for the block,’ Tommy Crowe grins. ‘You won’t know how to slit a throat yet, will you? Lad, you’re going to love it. Nothing quite like it when that kicking stops!’

He flashes Jon a grin and, buckets dangling from shoulders, elbows and wrists, lumbers out of the door.

In the red dirt outside the barn, Tommy Crowe stops. When Jon hurries after, he sees him, leg raised on an upturned pail, surveying the untilled fields. The smallest boys are ferreting around in rabbit holes in the undergrowth beyond. The rabbits have long been driven from those warrens – even rabbits grow wise to the habits of hungry boys – but it is a ritual among the little ones to set traps, just in case. Rabbits, it is said, are English – and this is a magical thing to the boys of the Mission.

One of the boys has strayed further than the rest, has almost disappeared into the shadow of the eucalyptus trees that grow in strange clumps, their many trunks opening out like the petals of a flower. At last, he drops down a ridge between two low, sprawling trees, so that only the top of his head can still be seen.

‘Here,’ Tommy Crowe says, ‘give me that bucket.’ Jon does not know how to ladle another bucket into Tommy’s arms, but somehow he slides it into the crook of an elbow. ‘You’d best be after that boy,’ he says. ‘Have you seen what they do to boys they think might run away?’ He pauses. ‘I’ll stall McAllister if he shows hisself …’

Scrambling between the rails of a fence strung with barbed wire, Jon scurries over untilled earth, finally reaching the bank of red earth where the little ones are camped out. The eldest and most brave dumps his collection of kindling at Jon’s feet and smiles eagerly, like a dog that has brought back a pigeon to its master.

Jon clambers over the bank, kicking dirt into the mouth of one of the rabbit holes. Behind him, the boys suddenly shout out, chattering animatedly at this transgression. Over the bank, Jon can just see the silhouette of the boy skipping from one tangle of roots to another.

It is Ernest. Jon calls after him, and though he half-turns his head, he does not stop. When Jon has almost caught him, he slows, trots cautiously three steps behind. The little boy slows to a dawdle and they plod on together, coming to a spot where a pool of light spills through the trees.

‘It just goes on and on,’ says Ernest, his tone one of wonder. ‘It doesn’t end.’

Jon looks down. There is a look like fear on Ernest’s face, but it is wrestling for space with a burgeoning grin.

‘I thought there’d be a fence,’ he begins, watching Jon turn in bewildered circles, trying to seek one out. ‘Maybe there’d be a wall. A big old wall with spikes and locked gates.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘But there isn’t a wall,’ he says, taking a seat between two huge roots. ‘Isn’t it the weirdest thing? You could just walk and walk forever.’

Jon reaches a barrier of tussocky grass and pushes through, feeling the jagged curtain fall shut behind him. He feels, for a moment, like a storybook knight, fighting through walls of thorns to rescue the princess trapped on the other side – but when he emerges he sees only the same shadow wood going on forever.

There is rustling behind him and he turns, expecting to see Ernest creeping through on hands and knees. The creature that emerges is something he has not seen before. It is only two feet tall, the bastard offspring of a kangaroo and hare. Tiny black eyes study him cautiously, and then it bounds away.

Jon pushes back through the thicket – but on the other side Ernest is nowhere to be seen. He starts, wonders if he has come back the same way at all, or whether the forest has, somehow, turned him around, stranding him only a short walk away from the Mission.

Then, he hears voices, shrill cries of delight. After long months of waiting, the boys of the Mission have finally trapped a rabbit.

Jon follows the voices back to the field. Some of the little boys are already kindling a secret fire; they will sleep well tonight, on bellies full of wild rabbit instead of the usual mutton and bread. Beyond them, Tommy Crowe is laden down with another yoke of pails, striding heroically out of the dairy.

Jon rushes to help him, remembering suddenly the threat of Mr McAllister – but all that day, and long into the night, he cannot forget the lesson of the scrub. It is a thought too terrifying to share with George or any of the other boys, something only he and Ernest might understand: in this prison, there are no walls.

That night, George is already tucked up in bed when Jon reaches the dormitory. Since the second night, they have slept in different beds, but George ordinarily sits at the foot of Jon’s, listening to stories Jon can remember from books. Soon, he will have to start changing them, bit by bit, to keep them fresh. No matter how much George asks, he does not want to start telling the stories they hear from other boys in the Mission – kookaburras befriending boys hiding in holes, jackeroos and jolly swagmen. Jon does not want his head filling with Australian stories, not if it means losing some of his own.

Jon slinks past George’s bed as softly as he can but the covers buck and a fat little head pops out, like a grub from its knot in the wood. Jon presses his finger to his mouth and George nods eagerly. It isn’t rare for one of the cottage mothers to hear boys chattering after lights-out and turf every one of them into the night so that the cold might teach them some manners.

The floorboards around the bed are still acrid where George had his accident three nights before. It was the first time he slipped up since they came here, but at least the boys in the nearby beds were understanding. Some of the others would surely have told tales.

‘You been to the latrine, George?’

‘I hate it when you call it that,’ George answers.

In truth, it’s hardly a latrine. It’s a shallow ditch the boys are meant to dig out, but rarely do.

‘I’ve been,’ George nods. He hates going there, but there’s a special dormitory on the compound’s edge where the bedwetters go, and he’d rather go to the latrine a hundred times a day than have to sleep there.

‘I’m cold tonight, Jon.’

‘This is winter, little George. It won’t get much colder than this.’

‘I miss the proper winter.’