Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

Judah Reed had to tell him …’ Jon’s voice dies. ‘… that his mother died.’

      Jon drops from his bed and, keeping his eyes fixed on the splinter of light under the dormitory door, crosses from one bank of beds to the other. When he reaches the latecomer’s bed, the boy turns suddenly, so that he does not have to see Jon’s approach. Undeterred, Jon gets very close and whispers, ‘What happened?’

      When the boy does not reply, Jon tries again. He reaches out, puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, as if he might force him to turn. Suddenly, the boy does just that, wheeling out with a clenched fist to catch Jon on the side of the face. Jon’s ear burns, and he staggers back. The boy brings his fists up to his face, forming an impenetrable wall – but before the wall closes Jon has time to see eyes swollen and red. These are not the tears any boy might shed at bedtime. Here is a boy who has cried himself dry, summoned up strength, and sobbed himself senseless again. Tonight’s whimpers are only the distant echoes of something else.

      ‘Judah Reed just wouldn’t believe,’ he says. ‘I told him everything, and he said I was making it up.’

      Jon creeps back to his own bed, hauls himself up.

      Beside him, George is feigning sleep, but one eye pops open. ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘Is it his mother?’

      ‘No,’ says Jon absently, his mind somewhere else. ‘He … had an accident. Out on morning muster. He fell and …’

      ‘There isn’t a doctor here, is there, Jon Heather?’

      ‘No,’ says Jon. ‘Not for miles and miles around.’

      Across the dormitory, the boy gives a great wet breath, and then he is silent.

      Dawn. In the breakfasting hall, Judah Reed appears to have quiet words with some of the bigger boys, and then ghosts on, nodding at each gaggle of little ones in turn. When the bell tolls, Jon is the first out of the breakfasting hall, barrelling through the Mission until he spies the dairy buildings ahead. A shock of parakeets rise from the branches of the shadow wood, and he watches them cascade over. He wonders if they know what is lying on the other side. If he were a boy in one of those sorry Australian stories, he would probably stop and ask them.

      In the dairy, Tommy Crowe is waiting, while McAllister shuffles in the recesses of the room, whispering sweet promises to the goats.

      ‘There was a boy in my dormitory last night,’ Jon says, sitting down to take a teat in hand. ‘Came in long after lights’ out, with one of the cottage mothers. He wouldn’t say what was wrong.’

      Tommy Crowe nods thoughtfully, rounding off a pail and shuffling another one into place.

      ‘I heard there was honoured guests back at the Mission. Maybe it was that. They haven’t been round for a while. If you ask me, they’re rock spiders, every last one.’

      Jon is struggling to produce any milk this morning, but at last a warm jet ricochets around the bottom of his pail. ‘Are they poisonous?’ he asks, picturing these savage monsters stalking the shadow wood.

      ‘Jack the lad, wake up!’ Tommy laughs. ‘A rock spider isn’t a spider. It’s …’ He pauses, not certain how to explain it. In truth, he is not certain where he heard the words. ‘It’s friends with Judah Reed and the rest. They come by sometimes, to take kids on outings, off to proper farms, show them how the Australians do it, or … Sometimes they get to go to a town. They have ice cream. They look in shops. That sort of thing.’

      Jon tries to picture it. ‘Do they … adopt us?’ He does not say what he wants to say – I can’t be adopted, Tommy; I still have a mother – because, suddenly, he knows it for nonsense.

      ‘I think they took one or two lads once. One little lad called Luca. And a bigger one. I don’t remember his name. They brought that Luca back, though. I don’t think they liked him much.’ Tommy Crowe pauses, mindful of McAllister prowling behind them. ‘Look, Jack the lad, if there’s one thing you should know, it’s … keep your head down. Don’t go with an honoured guest.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I don’t know, Jack, but isn’t it funny? A day out with ice cream and big fat steaks and all the lemonade a boy could drink … but, once they’ve been, nobody ever wants to go out again. Some things just aren’t what they promise.’

      Jon Heather knows that well enough. Australia was supposed to be a land of milk and honey, kangaroos taking them to school and plates piled high with treats. Now, he looks up, out of the dairy doors, at nothing but flurries of dust and wild little boys picking up sticks.

      ‘Come on, Jack the lad, I’ve got a special treat for you today! McAllister’s done his numbering, and we’ve got ourselves a billy to slaughter.’ Tommy Crowe grins at him sincerely, proud to be sharing this prize. ‘You ever killed a goat before?’

      The question is so absurd that Jon is lost for words. Until only a few days ago, he hadn’t even seen a goat. He’d seen rats and cats and dogs, even a fox one night, ferreting through the dustbins on the terrace – but, for Jon Heather, cows and sheep and horses and goats are as much a fairytale as unicorns and serpents.

      ‘Is it … difficult?’ Jon asks, desperate to fill the silence.

      ‘It doesn’t have to be. You can do it nicely, if you’re good.’

      At the back of the dairy, one billy goat has been separated from the rest. Tommy Crowe wanders over to the stall, and the goat approaches him tenderly. Crouching down, he cups its bearded jaw and strokes its brow.

      The old man McAllister rears up from a neighbouring stall. Up close, Jon can see that he really isn’t that old after all, no older, perhaps, than Judah Reed. A fat black moustache hangs over his top lip, and his eyes hunker below bushy brown slugs.

      ‘He’ll cook up nice,’ McAllister says. ‘You showing this little one how it’s done, are you, Tommy?’

      Tommy Crowe nods.

      ‘Reckon he’ll chuck up?’

      Tommy laughs, secretly shooting Jon an apologetic look. ‘Wouldn’t be normal if he didn’t.’

      At once, McAllister’s face darkens. ‘Just make sure he doesn’t chuck up all over that meat. It’s what you bairns got to eat. It all goes in the pot, chuck-up and all.’

      After McAllister wanders out of the dairy, Tommy Crowe turns to Jon. ‘Let’s get started,’ he says. ‘You get round the back. He’s bound to kick if he gets a whiff of what we’re doing, so just watch out. I saw a boy break his ribs that way, once. He couldn’t go in his dormitory after that, so they had him locked up with one of those cottage mothers.’ Tommy shakes his head. ‘He’d have been better in the bush.’

      It is Jon’s job to get around the back of the goat and force it from the stall. This is easier said than done and, in the end, Tommy Crowe has to leash the billy with a rope and tug him out onto an expanse of bare earth.

      Tommy hands Jon the rope and shoots back inside to collect the killing knife. Alone now, Jon Heather watches the goat. It does not try and run, but simply drops its head instead, chewing contentedly on a clump of coarse yellow grass.

      Its eyes are tiny, lost behind tufts of grey and white, but Jon thinks he can see deeply into them. Once, he had dreamed of having a pet dog. He would tame it and train it and take it on walks in the terrace, and call it his very best friend. A goat, he thinks now, would have done just as well.

      ‘Here you go, Jack the lad,’ says Tommy, reappearing from the dairy. ‘Take hold of this. I’ll tell you when it’s time.’

      Jon finds the knife already in his hands. It is smaller than he had imagined, with a short handle and a longer blade that curves back against itself. Tommy has others stacked up – one with jagged teeth like a saw, one a huge cleaver sitting on a wooden shaft – and he circles the goat gently, cooing at it all the while.