Little Exiles. Robert Dinsdale

barely has time to finish the final words when the doors on the other side of the yard open. Beyond them, he sees children – short and tall, young and younger still, more children than he has seen in his life – and, above them, wrapped in long robes, a man in black.

      The man gestures to him. ‘Jon Heather,’ he intones, his voice old and feathery. ‘We are so very glad that you have found us.’

      II

      ‘That little one’s still in bed,’ a voice, full of mirth, whispers.

      ‘Might be he froze in the night.’

      The first voice pauses, as if weighing the idea up. ‘He’d have a better chance of not freezing if you gave him back his blanket.’

      Once the voices have faded, Jon Heather opens his eyes. In truth, he has been awake since long before the morning bell, just the same as every last one of the mornings he has been here. At night, long after lights out, he forces himself to stay awake for as long as he is able, just so that they might not take his sheets, but even so, he wakes every morning to discover that his sleepiness has betrayed him, that he’s been sucked under, that now he’s shivering on a bare mattress with only the ceiling tiles to shelter him.

      Once he is certain the dormitory is empty, he squirms back into yesterday’s clothes – they are two sizes too big, hand-me-downs he was given once he had worn out the clothes in which his mother sent him – and ventures out of the room. If you are careful, you can walk the length of the landing without your head once peeping above the banister rail. It is a long passage, and overlooks a broad hall below. Along the row, there are other dormitories and, at the end, the cell where the returned soldier who leads them in games sleeps. Jon Heather steals past each doorway, mindful of other stragglers, like him, trying to avoid the stampede.

      At the top of the stair, he stops. Here, the stairs cut a switchback to the entrance hall below. Standing at the top, he gets a strange sense of things out of proportion, of the downstairs world drawing him in. He pauses, fingering the banister for balance. Through a gap between the rails, he can see the big double doors through which he first came, holding up his mother’s letter like a petition. He has stood here every morning, waiting for her face to appear at the glass, or else for his sisters to come, raining their fists at the door and demanding his return. So far: stillness and silence, more terrifying than any of the dreams that have started to taunt him.

      The hall below is stark, with a counter at the front like an old hotel. At the doors stand two of the men in black, conversing in low whispers. The elder is the man who first welcomed Jon to the Home. Wizened like some fairytale grandfather, he wears little hair upon his head. Beside him, another man listens attentively. Somehow, his skin is tanned by the sun, a stark contrast to the pallid men who shuffle around this place.

      Jon wants to wait until they have passed before descending the stairs, but presently the elder man turns, sunken eyes falling on him.

      ‘The bell,’ he says, ‘was more than fifteen minutes ago.’

      Jon, wordless, shrinks back, even though he is a whole staircase away from the man.

      ‘Breakfast. No exceptions.’

      The men in black leave the hall along one of the passages leading deeper into the building. These are hallways along which the boys are forbidden to go, and all the more mysterious for that. At the bottom of the stair, Jon listens to their footfalls fade, and wonders how far the sprawling building goes.

      Now, however, he is alone.

      He can hear the dull chatter of boys in the breakfasting hall, which joins the entrance hall behind the counter, but something pulls him away, draws him towards the big double doors. The glass windows on either side are opaque, barnacled in ice, so that the world beyond is obscured. He stands, tracing the pattern of an icy crystal with his index finger, before his eyes fall upon the door handle. Then, suddenly, his hands are around it. At first, that is enough – just to hold on to the promise of going back out. Yet, when he finds the courage to turn the handle, he finds it jammed, locked, wood and steel and glass all conspiring against him.

      Jon Heather pads into the middle of the entrance hall and turns a pointless pirouette.

      Breakfast is the same every morning: milk and oats. Sometimes there is sugar, but today is not one of those days; there will be no more sugar until the boy who wet his bed and secretly changed his sheets is discovered and punished. By the time Jon Heather arrives, most of the boys are already done eating – and, because they are not allowed to leave the hall until the second bell sounds, they are now contriving games out of bowls and spoons. They sit at long tables, skidding bowls up and down, crying out the names of famous battles of which they have heard. One boy, who has not been quick enough in wolfing down his oats, has found his bowl upended and perched on top of his head like a military cap. The oats look like brain matter seeping down his cheeks.

      ‘Just get it off your head, George, before one of them old bastards sees.’

      ‘It’s hot …’ the fat boy trembles.

      ‘More than mine was,’ says the lanky, red-haired boy beside him, shoving his bowl away. ‘Look,’ he whispers, out of the corner of his mouth, ‘you can eat up what’s left of mine if you like. Just don’t make me have to take that thing off your head for you.’

      ‘I wish you would, Peter. It’s getting in my hair.’

      The lanky redhead groans. His head drops to the table for only an instant, before he sits bolt upright, swivels and helps the younger boy lift off his new helmet. ‘I’m never going to hear the end of this from the other boys …’

      ‘It’s in my ears, isn’t it?’

      The older boy digs a finger in and produces a big clot of porridge. ‘You want me to wipe your arse as well, Georgie boy?’

      Jon Heather must walk the length of the breakfasting hall to get his porridge from the table at the front. When he gets there, all that is left are the congealed hunks at the bottom of the pan – but this is good enough; it’s a tradition for each boy to hawk up phlegm into the pot as he takes his portion, and most likely it didn’t sink this far. Besides, Jon isn’t hungry. He carries a metal bowl back to a spot at the end of the table and pretends to eat.

      Two months. He is only staying a short two months. His father has surely endured much worse, locked up in some jungle camp for years on end.

      ‘You’re new,’ a boy, tall with close hair and sad, sloping eyes, begins, flinging himself onto a stool opposite Jon.

      Jon does not know how to reply. ‘I am,’ he says – but then the second bell tolls, and he is spared the onset of another inquisition.

      During the day, there are sometimes lessons. The men in black sit them down in the chantry, which squats on the furthest side of the entrance hall, and give them instructions in morals. Mostly, this means how to be good, but sometimes how to do bad so that good might prosper. This, the men in black explain, is a difficult decision, and to shy away from it would be the Devil’s work. When there are not lessons, the boys are left to their own devices. Often, the men in black disappear into the recesses of the Home, those strange uncharted corridors in which they study and live, leaving only a single man to prowl among them, making certain that the boys have made the best of their lessons and are growing into straight, moral young men. Today it is the sun-tanned man in black. Periodically, he appears in the doorway to summon a boy and take him through long lists of questions – What is your age? How long have you been here? Are you an adventurous sort, or a studious sort? – before propelling him back to his games.

      Jon is hunched up in the corner of the assembly hall, listening to bigger boys batter a ball back and forth, when the sun-tanned man appears. He seems to be counting, with little nods of his head, eyes lingering on each boy in turn. Every so often, his face scrunches and he has to start again, as the gangs the boys have formed come apart, scatter, and then reform. In the middle of the shifting mass, Jon Heather