The Exiles

by Hilary McKay

  At last the bottoms of the bowls began to appear.

  ‘Good-oh!’ exclaimed Big Grandma without even giving them a chance to breathe. ‘Toast there, here’s your eggs. Who can eat two?’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe all together.

  ‘Come on then!’ Big Grandma ordered. ‘We’ll race: one for each of you and two for me. A prize for the winner!’

  ‘What?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘Wait and see! Eat and see!’

  ‘You’ll win,’ said Rachel. ‘It isn’t worth it.’

  ‘All right, a prize for the first and second to finish. I’ll say “Go”.’

  ‘I’m not ready,’ Phoebe shouted. ‘Someone take the top off! I can never get the tops off!’

  With one swoop of the bread knife Big Grandma sliced the top off Phoebe’s egg.

  ‘Ready, steady, GO!’ she roared, and Rachel and Phoebe attacked their eggs, breaking away bits of shell with their fingers and swallowing whole.

  ‘Finished!’ they panted almost together.

  ‘Well done!’ applauded Big Grandma, clapping violently. ‘A prize for both of you!’ She passed them each a fifty pence piece and they beamed with delight.

  ‘Now,’ she ordered, ‘eat up the toast. Quick, quick, before it gets cold! Marmalade on the sideboard.’

  Rachel and Phoebe started stuffing toast, all thoughts of dog food and Frosties forgotten.

  Ruth began to shell her egg very slowly. Naomi said, ‘I don’t usually eat breakfast.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Big Grandma replied, ‘you’ll be hungry by teatime.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Naomi unguardedly.

  ‘We’re going on a picnic,’ Big Grandma explained.

  ‘Well, we’ll be taking food then, won’t we?’ said Naomi reasonably.

  ‘Taking food?’ cried Big Grandma, gobbling toast as if she was starving. ‘I can’t be bothered with food on a picnic! The less to carry the better. Stoke up now, while you’ve got the chance.’

  ‘One of the rules of this house,’ Big Grandma announced when breakfast was finished and Rachel had been thumped on her back several times, ‘is: Those Who Eat Least Wash Up.’

  ‘What do you do when you’re on your own?’ asked Ruth crossly.

  ‘That,’ replied Big Grandma, handing her an apron and a pile of dirty plates, ‘you will never know.’

  Ruth washed and Naomi dried while Big Grandma organised the picnic. This simply meant putting a large bottle of orange squash and a few misshapen paper cups into a very shabby bag she called her rucksack.

  Rachel and Phoebe, who had escaped to the garden to avoid being made to help, came running back in to ask what they should take with them.

  ‘Buckets and spades?’ suggested Phoebe.

  But Big Grandma said no, they weren’t going to the seaside. All they needed, she told them, were comfortable shoes and her trusty rucksack.

  ‘Shall I put it in the car?’ asked Rachel, wishing to seem useful, but Big Grandma replied that they would be walking not driving, and would take it in turns to carry the bag.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Naomi suspiciously.

  ‘Up there,’ answered Big Grandma, looking out of the window towards the huge green rounded hill that rose two and a half thousand feet from sea level into the blue midsummer sky.

  Big Grandma’s house was built on a hillside above the village. Looking out of the front windows across the fields you saw the station, the village shop with the pub opposite, and all the houses about it, and then the sea. Far out to sea on a clear day you could see the Isle of Man, a pale blue silhouette floating on the horizon.

  The picnicking expedition set off in the opposite direction to all this, across the steeply sloping field behind the house and through the Fell Gate onto the path that wound by bracken and harebells, by bilberry and heather, up to the heights where nothing grew but thin grass and lichens, and finally to where nothing grew at all, a landscape of wind and bare rock.

  Some hours later Naomi collapsed onto her hands and knees and crawled the last few yards to the great cairn of flat stones that marked the summit. Rachel and Phoebe, who had arrived sometime before, were already running backwards and forwards with lumps of slate, intent on building a rival heap of their own.

  ‘Look what somebody’s done,’ called Rachel. ‘We’re making one too. Come and help!’

  Big Grandma, apparently unaffected by the climb, opened her trusty rucksack and passed around cups of lukewarm orange squash and a packet of extra-strong mints.

  ‘I brought a little something,’ she explained kindly, ‘since you had such small breakfasts. Take two, Naomi, most refreshing! Pass them on to Ruth, she looks quite pale!’

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Ruth bravely from the slab of rock on which she had wilted. ‘It’s just my feet and knees and back and legs and stomach and chest and head that aren’t.’

  Big Grandma poked Naomi in the ribs with her walking stick. ‘You aren’t enjoying yourself,’ she accused.

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’ asked Naomi ungratefully.

  ‘To show you my empire,’ replied Big Grandma with a melodramatic flourish of her walking stick, which Rachel very luckily just managed to duck.

  ‘It’s not yours,’ contradicted Phoebe, as Rachel moved prudently out of range. ‘What about the Queen? It’s hers!’

  ‘The Queen,’ Big Grandma told her sternly, ‘lives nowhere near here!’

  Ruth looked around her at Big Grandma’s empire, wave upon wave of purple hills inland, and a sea of silver and blue and shadowy grey shoals.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ she said inadequately.

  ‘Very,’ agreed Naomi, thinking how swiftly her legs had changed from feeling like jelly to feeling like stone. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Go back,’ answered Big Grandma airily. ‘What else? Stay here? Can if you like. Last one down gets the tea!’

  ‘No wonder, no wonder,’ grumbled Ruth and Naomi as they staggered back down the mountain.

  ‘No wonder Uncle Robert ran away!’

  The first day was nearly over. Rachel and Phoebe were helping Big Grandma wash the tea things. Try as they might they had not been able to eat as much as Ruth and Naomi, especially Naomi. Big Grandma’s kitchen sink was set between two draining boards, and Big Grandma was putting washed cups and plates alternately on each board so that they could race. Rachel had already broken a saucer.

  Ruth and Naomi’s room, at the front of the house, shone with a gold and orange light that poured in through windows that faced the evening sun. Naomi was lying on her bed, finishing the last of the books that they had brought from home. When they left they had each been allowed to choose two books and this scheme had been a dreadful failure. The selecting of the books had been desperate work.

  Phoebe had decided on an enormous colouring book, and also a story about a rabbit named Nicholas who lived, unnaturally, in a hollow tree. In spring this animal watched the flowers grow; in summer he spoke once, briefly, to a bee; in autumn he observed the falling of the leaves; and in winter, with the first deep snow, he put on striped pyjamas and went to bed.

  And died of boredom, thought Naomi, discarding Nicholas.

  Rachel’s contribution was a book of Russian folktales. Somehow, nobody had ever been able to read this book; it might have been written in the original Russian for all the progress anyone ever made. As well as this Rachel had brought a Bible, this being the only other book she owned that she had never read.

  Ruth had chosen a natural history book, beautifully illustrated, but containing few words, and also a cheerful little paperback, of which they were all very fond, which dwelt, in unflinching detail, upon the nutritional habits of man-eating tigers.

  In a last minute panic, Naomi had grabbed The Treasure Seekers. Everyone, even Phoebe, knew this book so well that they could recite whole chunks of it, but still, at least the book was rereadable. But not indefinitely. Naomi sighed, and slung it under the bed to jo
in Nicholas. She was left with the awful choice of Bridge For Beginners, which she had been led to believe was an interesting game for four (if only she could understand the instructions), or plunging, straight after a large meal, into the grisly charms of the tigers.

  At that moment the door was kicked open, and Ruth arrived bearing a heap of cookery books.

  ‘All I could find,’ she reported, dumping them on the nearest bed. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. Big Grandma’s in quite a good temper though; she said she’d find us something better.’

  ‘As I have,’ remarked Big Grandma, materialising in the doorway in her usual unnerving manner. She carried three large volumes with her, and she dropped two of these on top of the cookery books.

  ‘Let me know when you’ve finished them, and I’ll find you something else,’ she said blandly, disappearing in the direction of Rachel and Phoebe’s room.

  ‘The Annotated Shakespeare,’ read Ruth and Naomi in despair. Naomi had the Tragedies and Romances, and Ruth the Histories and Poems. Rachel and Phoebe, as if in recognition of their youth, had the Comedies to share.

  ‘I’ve tried reading Shakespeare before,’ said Naomi. ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘It must be possible,’ Ruth didn’t sound very convinced, ‘plenty of people do. I expect you get used to it.’

  ‘What’re the cookery books like?’

  Ruth inspected them critically. ‘Very greasy. Finger-marks all over and the covers coming off!’

  ‘I’ve got to read something,’ Naomi said, and followed by Ruth she staggered down to the kitchen to find Big Grandma.

  ‘Children’s books?’ asked Big Grandma, rolling the words like a curse. ‘What on earth would I be doing with children’s books?’

  ‘Well, from when Mum, and er …’ Naomi remembered that Uncle Robert wasn’t to be mentioned.

  ‘Your children,’ supplemented Ruth hurriedly, ‘any of their books from when they lived here?’

  ‘Any your mother had worth keeping she took back for you people,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Surely you have them at home?’

  ‘Yes, but what about Uncle Robert’s?’ asked Rachel tactlessly.

  ‘Oh, Rachel,’ wailed her three sisters, but Big Grandma didn’t appear to care whether he was mentioned or not.

  ‘I don’t recall what happened to Robert’s books. There couldn’t have been very many. He wasn’t a great reader. Most of his things went for jumble, I seem to remember, and I got rid of a lot of his personal rubbish. I suppose there might have been the odd book amongst it.’

  ‘What sort of personal rubbish?’

  ‘Oh, comics, papers, pictures and projects from school,’ said Big Grandma casually.

  ‘How’d you get rid of it?’

  ‘Bonfire, I expect. The usual way.’

  ‘She’s just talking like that to sound brave,’ whispered Ruth to Naomi, while Rachel burst into tears at the thought of her own mother stirring a bonfire on which smoked all that she owned.

  They watched in silence as their Brave Big Grandma mopped Rachel rather firmly with the kitchen towel.

  ‘Children are beastly when they’re over-tired,’ remarked Big Grandma.

  ‘So’re old ladies,’ commented Phoebe.

  Sensing that perhaps Big Grandma would resent this remark, and not wishing to be involved in any trouble, Ruth and Naomi vanished back to their bedroom. Phoebe stood her ground however, and was rewarded by a comradely grin from her grandmother.

  ‘What is the matter with Rachel?’ Big Grandma asked her.

  ‘She’s only gone a bit mad,’ explained Phoebe. ‘It doesn’t matter. She often does. So do they,’ she jerked her head towards the staircase. ‘So does everyone, I think.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Big Grandma.

  ‘Except me,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Go to bed,’ said Big Grandma.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Late in the night, carrying in one hand her nightly glass of whisky, and in the other an armload of books from her secret supply, Big Grandma climbed the stairs to bed. For a few minutes she paused outside the doors of her granddaughters’ rooms, listening as they groaned in their sleep, climbing mountains in their nightmares.

  Discipline is what they need, she thought as she paused on her way, discipline … Naomi stirred and moaned, … fresh air and exercise … Rachel heaved a sigh that was almost a sob … a little hard work … Phoebe in her sleep turned suddenly onto her stomach and pushed her head under the pillow … and concluded Big Grandma, no skulking in corners reading books all day! Then she went into her bedroom, leaving Ruth, who had suddenly jerked upright, staring into the dark with startled, still-dreaming eyes.

  ‘ “Owing to circumstances beyond our control”,’ read Big Grandma, ‘ “Naomi and me cannot walk this morning. Please get a doctor”.’

  Rachel and Phoebe, unlike their big sisters, had retained the use of their legs despite the mountaineering of the day before, and so had been commissioned to deliver this message.

  ‘Do your legs hurt too?’ Big Grandma asked them, honestly sorry to find that she had exhausted her grandchildren on their very first day.

  ‘Very much,’ said Rachel.

  ‘But we can still walk,’ added Phoebe, who was proud of this fact.

  ‘Well, stagger back and give this to Ruth,’ ordered Big Grandma, scrawling, What is this I have found in my fridge? on the back of the note delivered to her, ‘and tell Naomi I’ll be up to wash and dress her in five minutes.’

  The prescription worked very well. Ruth read Big Grandma’s reply and suddenly remembered the large sheep’s skull that she had stuffed, wrapped in a plastic bag, beside the butter in the bottom of the refrigerator. The day before she had noticed several similar relics scattered on the fell-side, and had decided, in the interests of natural history, to make a collection of them.

  ‘All such items,’ remarked Big Grandma, handing her a bucket when a few minutes later she hurried into the kitchen to retrieve her parcel, ‘are to be soaked in Jeyes fluid, dried on the lawn, and stored in the garden shed. You owe me at least a pound of butter, and you can clean the fridge after breakfast. Where’s Naomi?’

  ‘I’m here,’ said Naomi, who, not liking the idea of being dressed by Big Grandma, had managed to lever her aching legs out of bed. ‘Don’t your legs ache too?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Big Grandma complacently.

  ‘Didn’t they ache the first time you went up that mountain?’ persisted Naomi.

  ‘I don’t recall. I remember feeling rather tired the day I carried your mother up …’

  The girls stared at her in astonishment and disbelief.

  ‘When she was a baby of course.’

  ‘Oh,’ said everyone rather flatly.

  Big Grandma spent the morning inventing sitting-down jobs for her guests. Every time Ruth and Naomi sneaked off to read a few more recipes, or Rachel and Phoebe began another quarrel over the colouring book, Big Grandma appeared before them, bearing a new occupation. Potatoes were scraped and lettuces washed. Dandelions were extracted from the lawn. Kitchen drawers were hauled out of their sockets and carried outside for the victims to put in order.

  ‘Quick,’ said Rachel, when lunch had been eaten and washed up and they had all returned to the garden. ‘Let’s run away somewhere before she comes out with any more jobs.’

  ‘I couldn’t run anywhere,’ said Naomi, who was recovering from the previous day much more slowly than the others, ‘but I don’t mind if you go off without me. You could go to the village and see if that shop sells any books. Ruth could say she was going to buy more butter, that would be a good enough excuse.’

  ‘Better still just to go and not say anything at all,’ said Ruth. ‘I know where there’s a map, I found one this morning, but what about you?’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Naomi. ‘Buy books and magazines and comics, anything to read. And crisps and chocolate. And train timetables, just in case. And ask if there’s a library nearby. Some bananas would be nice …
’

  Naomi watched them go and then returned to her bedroom where she proceeded to arm herself with all three volumes of The Annotated Shakespeare.

  ‘It’s gone strangely quiet,’ said Big Grandma, pouncing on her as she staggered back down the stairs.

  ‘They’ve gone to the shop to buy that butter.’

  ‘Leaving you with nothing to do?’ questioned Big Grandma. ‘Or perhaps not,’ she continued, noticing Naomi’s burden.

  ‘I’ve got lots to do,’ agreed Naomi. ‘All these books to read. I thought I’d take them into the garden.’

  ‘I suppose it will take you quite a time to get through them?’ asked Big Grandma, with, Naomi thought, a wistful note in her voice.

  ‘Hours, probably,’ said Naomi, hurrying outside.

  Big Grandma’s garden was large and cheerful, usefully equipped with seats and lurking places, and edged with borders of bright flowers. The grass was very long and lumpy, not at all like the smooth green square in the Lincolnshire garden. There were daisies and buttercups and docks growing in it, and it was difficult to tell where the actual flowerbeds began because the lawn seemed to run right in to them, strangling all but the most vigorous plants.

  A Big Grandma-ish sort of place, thought Naomi, who long before she had finished her volumes, or indeed the first book, or in fact the first play, or, in truth, the first page, had had as much as she could bear of Shakespeare. A little bored, and worrying that her legs would seize up again if she sat still very long, Naomi wandered off to explore the rest of Big Grandma’s garden.

  Behind the beech hedge she found fruit trees and a greenhouse with tomato plants and shallow boxes of seedlings waiting to be planted out. Further on was a vegetable patch. Peas were growing there, attached, as Naomi rightly guessed, to real pea plants (a sight she had never seen before). There were many other things also that she didn’t recognise; everything growing in nice straight rows, like writing on a page. At the strawberry bed Naomi halted in amazement, for dozens of them sparkled there, bright red under the dark green leaves. At home they had always been the rarest of fruits, bought for Sunday Tea in summer, and eked out with ice cream. The smell of them, sweet and spicy in the warm sunshine, enticed Naomi to her knees, and there, bewitched, forgetting all possible consequences, she began to gather them.