Little Exiles

‘Is he hurt?’

‘Judah Reed came round,’ the bigger boy says. ‘Told him his mother’s kicked it.’

Jon opens his mouth but does not have any words.

‘Don’t know why he’s making such a fuss. He got a piece of cooking chocolate out of it. More than I got when they broke it to me. I got a pat on the head.’

The little boy lets out another cry but, when Jon goes to him, he only buries himself in his sheets.

Sitting on the end of his bed, Jon hears footsteps outside, and looks up to see Judah Reed himself standing in the open door.

‘I believe this is not your cabin,’ he says. The ship suddenly lifts, but in the passageway Judah Reed does not even stagger. ‘Well?’

Jon nods, swings down, and makes to leave. In the doorway, he has to squeeze past Judah Reed himself. He smells of honey and charcoal soap.

‘What happened to his mother?’ Jon asks, remembering his own, the way she held his hands as she passed him the letter and took off up the road.

Judah Reed’s blue eyes look immeasurably sad. ‘I believe she was … consumptive,’ he says, and steers Jon on his way.

In the morning, the waters have changed, reflecting the pale blue vaults overhead. Around them, the ocean glitters. There are landmasses on the horizon, hulks of earth gliding in and out of view. As Peter leads George and Jon onto the highest deck, they dare not look out at the vast oceans that stretch into the west, gathering instead at the port side of the ship and pointing out proud headlands and outcrops of rock.

Jon tells them about the boy from last night. He was not, it seems, the only one. Last night, Judah Reed stalked the passageways below deck, leading boys off to some office deep in the belly of the boat, palming a hunk of chocolate or toffee into their hands and telling them: your mother is dead; your father is gone; you’re our little one now, and we won’t do you wrong. It was, one of Peter’s friends tells them, like a nursery rhyme, one they then had to repeat: my mother is dead; my father is gone; I’m your little one now, and you won’t do me wrong.

In a launch at the stern of the ship, they find lifeboats, each stacked on top of the other. Finding a way into the first is simple enough – all they have to do is crawl under a lip of wood and work their way beneath a stretch of tarpaulin – but it does not feel the same as Jon thought it would. Sitting in the prow of the boat, with an oar latched either side, it does not feel like escape. He hears George approaching, crawling on hands and knees, and Peter following after, straining to contort his bigger body through the gap. He only has to look at George’s face, breaking into a beam, to understand: like everything else that they share, this is just make-believe. He could spin a story of stealing this lifeboat and rowing back to England to find his sisters and wait again for his father, but that is all it would be – a fairy story to delight the fat boy.

‘What is it, Jon?’

George is trying to pluck one of the oars from its clasps.

‘Do you think Judah Reed’s finished telling boys their mothers have died?’ he asks, looking over George’s head to where Peter crouches.

‘I don’t know …’

‘Only, why did he tell them when they got on board? Why not back in the Home, like he did for George?’

Suddenly, George remembers. His hands stop prying at the oar, and he shoves them in his pockets. ‘I didn’t even get a hunk of chocolate.’

‘He’d have come for me last night, wouldn’t he, Peter?’ Jon’s voice rises helplessly. ‘If she really was …’

He does not have to finish the words. Peter nods, but it does not convince.

‘What happened to your mother, Peter?’

Now even Peter has his hands shoved in his pockets. ‘You don’t want to hear that silly old story,’ he says, shuffling from foot to foot. ‘Does he, George? He doesn’t want to hear that dreary old thing.’

‘I like your stories, Peter.’

Now they look expectantly at Peter, as if waiting for a bedtime tale.

‘My sister, Rebekkah, she reckoned it was a broken heart. On account of the fact my father didn’t come back. Dead in India, they said, but he wasn’t even fighting. He was on a motorbike and it flipped. He used to ride one even before the war, and my mother always hated it. She said I went on it once, but I don’t remember. Then there’s a letter in the post and it says he was killed in action, but it wasn’t really action and it wasn’t really killed. It was just an accident, and my mother wasn’t the same after that.’

‘So she kicked the bucket!’ chirps George.

Peter doesn’t mind; he simply nods. ‘Sometimes that’s all it is, I suppose. There one day, gone the next. So Rebekkah and me, we tried to muddle through, but there was a neighbour who kept coming round with bits from her rations, and eventually she cottoned on. Rebekkah begged and begged, but it didn’t work. They sent a man with a briefcase, and then we had to put some things in a bag. I thought we were going to be together, but they sent Rebekkah to a place for girls, somewhere called Stockport.’ Peter pauses. He is hanging his head, so that Jon can barely make out his face. ‘So then that’s it. Children’s Crusade and …’

‘How long?’ whispers Jon.

Peter shrugs, but it is a pretend shrug, as if there is something he wants to hide. ‘I can’t remember. Four years, I suppose … five months. A few days.’ He hesitates. ‘Nine days. You want the minutes and hours as well?’

There is a gentle pattering on the tarpaulin, rain beginning to fall across the ocean. Soon, outside, Jon hears the scampering of feet as people head for shelter.

‘Peter,’ says George. ‘I feel sick again.’

‘The ship’s hardly moving, George.’

‘It’s not the ship. It’s my insides. They’re turning somersaults.’

When they emerge, the decks are almost empty, every man, boy and girl heading for their cabins. The rain now comes in sporadic bursts. Jon looks up. He wonders: was it a storm like this that waylaid my father? Is that why they really put me to sea? Or is it something worse?

‘What if my mother didn’t come for me because …’ His voice trails off – for, along the length of the ship, towards the prow, he has seen the spindly black figure of Judah Reed, crouching above a collection of little ones.

Jon reaches out, as if to take Peter’s hand. He does not know he is doing it until it is too late. Peter shakes him off, gives him a furrowed look.

‘Come on,’ says Jon.

If Judah Reed cannot catch him, he cannot tell him his mother has died. If it is true, Jon does not want to know. Quickly, he takes off, lifting the door back into the bowels of the boat.

Peter and George hurry after.

‘Where are we going?’ George puffs.

Jon Heather thinks: somewhere they can’t find me.

Soon, in the depths of the ship, they are hopelessly lost. Peter demands that they stop as he paces a passageway, trying to get his bearings. Jon swears that he could find the way back to deck simply by listening to the creaking of the ship, but the doubt in his voice is all too plain, and suddenly George starts to blubber. A sharp slap on the back quells him, but after that he waddles nervously in Peter’s wake, complaining of being hungry and thirsty and afraid of the dark.

‘Can you be shipwrecked if the ship isn’t wrecked, Peter? What if we get shipwrecked down here?’

‘It’s not shipwrecked if the ship isn’t wrecked, George.’

‘We could still starve. It’s worse than a desert island, Peter. We couldn’t even find a coconut to drink.’

At last, a staircase presents itself, and they emerge into a new passageway, where bright lights shine and a thick red carpet covers the wooden boards. There is a new smell here, of collecting dust and paraffin lamps, and the air feels dry. Jon follows the smell to the end of the passage, and pushes at the doors there, so that they open just a crack. Pressing his eye to the hole, he takes a deep breath and looks over his shoulder.

‘What is it, Jon?’

Jon turns and pushes the doors apart. In the room beyond, the walls are lined with books. Tables are heaped high with newspapers bound in string. A dozen lamps line the walls, and big pipes run between the bookcases, radiating heat.

‘You’ll have read all these books, will you?’ asks Peter, punching Jon on the shoulder.