by Hilary McKay
‘Not yet,’ whispered Naomi.
Graham snored.
‘Now!’
Very slowly and carefully they got to their feet and tiptoed away until they were out of danger of disturbing their guide.
‘We’ll find the cave ourselves,’ said Naomi. ‘I’m tired of being shown the way to everywhere.’
‘What about adders?’ asked Rachel.
‘Fairy stories,’ replied Naomi. ‘Same as gold and diamonds and pearls!’
‘Adders always get out of the way anyway,’ said Ruth. ‘It says so in my book.’
Slowly they began to make their way towards the quarry face. Elder bushes had grown up since it had been abandoned, and everywhere brambles trailed over the ground like tripwires. Phoebe started picking blackberries and putting them in her handbag.
‘Millions of flies,’ said Ruth. ‘Oh! Look!’
‘What?’
‘Just behind that dark tree.’
It was hard to believe they had been so close without seeing it. A huge, black, wedge-shaped hole split into the quarry wall straight in front of them. There was a narrow stream pouring out of it, with a gravelly path running alongside.
They peered inside. It was much bigger than they had expected, and much darker. Near the opening, ferns and mosses glowed green against the wet walls. The gravel path led the way confidently inside for a few metres, but then faded in a black blur. There was a continuous ring and tinkle of drops falling from a height into deep water.
‘Oh, no!’ said Rachel, backing away.
‘Oh no what?’
‘I’m not going in there.’
‘Well, the rest of us are,’ answered Ruth. ‘You can wait here if you like.’
‘Come on! Hurry before Graham comes and starts bossing us about,’ urged Naomi.
‘Bother!’ exclaimed Ruth suddenly. ‘Bother, bother and blast! I left the torches. They’re back with Graham.’
‘Who wants torches?’ asked Naomi. ‘Phoebe’s got candles, but let’s not light them straight away. Let’s wait until we’ve seen it properly in the dark.’
Carefully, she began to lead the way inside, with Ruth and Phoebe following. They noticed the cold almost immediately, and the dense musty smell of wet rock and windless air. Echoes shadowed their footsteps and voices. The distance between themselves and total darkness diminished until it was just an arm’s reach away and then it grew too much for them to challenge any longer, and all three of them came to a halt. It was a relief to turn round and see the distant triangle of light that was the entrance of the cave and the small dark shape of Rachel, hovering uncertainly in the background.
The candles, slimy and dripping with squashed blackberry juice (‘Like lumpy blood,’ remarked Naomi, wishing to add a little more to the general atmosphere), were extracted from Phoebe’s bag.
‘Come on, Rachel,’ called Ruth, and echoes repeated the invitation over and over again.
Naomi lit the candles while Phoebe held them steady and their flames burnt straight and clear, the light reflecting off the walls and the pool of water that filled the end of the cave. The sight of them glowing in the darkness enticed Rachel along the path at last.
‘Is it safe?’ she asked.
‘Safe?’ questioned the echo in a very frightened voice.
‘Do your owl calls,’ ordered Naomi.
Rachel had one musical accomplishment. She could cup her hands and blow inside them, and produce a deep wooden fluting sound, quite unlike any owl heard in real life, but very impressive.
Squatting in the circle of candlelight, resting her elbows on her knees, Rachel began to blow.
The space around them filled with sound.
‘More,’ whispered Naomi. ‘Louder!’, and Rachel blew and blew on her hands and sent echoes peeling and droning and humming off the shining candle-lit walls. Graham found them crouched round the ring of flames like four witches, all hypnotised by the throbbing reflections of Rachel’s melancholy notes.
‘Pack it in!’ shouted Graham, shocked by the eeriness of the sounds. ‘You’ll call something up, howling away like that! Come on out! You could freeze in here!’
‘You give me the spooks,’ he complained as they joined him in the sunlight. ‘I close my eyes a minute, and I wake up to that horrible sound and you sitting there like one o’clock half struck …’
‘What?’
‘Like them old hags in that play we did at school …’
‘Which play?’
‘He means Macbeth,’ Ruth said. ‘We did it too. Beastly Shakespeare again. Eye of newt and whatsit of whatsit and all the perfumes of …’
‘Appleby,’ finished Graham smugly, to show he knew things too.
‘Appleby?’
‘It’s a bit north of here. They have a horse fair every summer. Appleby Horse Fair. Dead famous. I don’t know about perfumes. I s’pose there’s bound to be a Boots … What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ruth, felled by laughter against the quarry wall. ‘What’ll we do next? Not go home.’
‘You might like to sneak off somewhere,’ suggested Graham bitterly. ‘I was going to show you a special place but I don’t know if I will do now.’
‘What place?’ asked Naomi. ‘Come on, Graham, don’t start sulking!’
‘Will if I like.’
‘Please oh please oh please,’ said Rachel.
‘Huh!’
They waited patiently.
‘I’m looking at it,’ said Graham, without moving a step. ‘Upstairs, I call it. You missed seeing that anyway!’
Everyone stared in the direction he was facing.
‘Can’t see anything,’ said Ruth, at last. ‘Are you still looking at it?’
‘Who’s clever now?’ asked Graham triumphantly. ‘You just follow me. I’ll show you.’
He led them behind the elder tree that screened the cave, and pointed upwards. Above the lowest part of the opening, separated by four or five metres of slaty quarry face, was a second, smaller cave. A steep path, rather like a broken stairway, led diagonally up to it.
‘That’s upstairs,’ said Graham. ‘I never showed that to your gran. I never showed anyone before.’
‘Why are you showing us then?’ asked the honoured few.
‘I just am,’ said Graham. ‘I thought you’d be interested. Are you coming up?’
‘After you,’ said Ruth politely, although Rachel and Phoebe were already scrambling above her.
‘I’ll go last,’ said Naomi, who was developing a strange tingling sensation in the soles of her feet.
Ruth and Graham followed Rachel and Phoebe up the path. It was so solid and the steps so evenly placed that despite its narrowness they could walk up without needing to use their hands.
‘I cleaned it up,’ remarked Graham. ‘Took out all the loose bits and weeds and made it firm. Shove up a bit,’ he added to Rachel, who was perched at the top step swinging her legs over the drop.
A broad ledge spanned the upper cave’s entrance which, unlike the huge cavern beneath them, was very small, not high enough to stand up properly and only a few yards deep. The afternoon sun shone straight in and filled the cave with light. It was like sitting in a swallow’s nest.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ asked Graham proudly. ‘Better than that old hole downstairs.’
‘Does no one ever come to the caves but you?’ asked Ruth.
‘Not that I know of. Except that time I brought your gran. And my brothers used to, but they don’t bother any more.’
‘You can see for miles,’ remarked Rachel, gazing out to where blue rims of sky and water met each other and the Isle of Man lounged small and blue against the sea’s horizon. ‘There’s that island! Did you know that Ruth’s going to swim there, all the way?’
Ruth hoped that Graham would exclaim that the idea was impossible, and perhaps know of people who would prevent her even trying, but he was still too full of picnic and sunshine to be useful.
‘Is that right?’ he
asked without much interest. ‘Have you told your gran?’
‘Not yet,’ said Ruth. ‘Do you think I should?’
‘Mmm,’ said Graham, so casually that Ruth wondered if swimming trips to the Isle of Man were so common in this part of the world, that they had become hardly worth remarking on at all.
‘When’re you going to teach Naomi to drive a tractor?’ she asked, changing the subject.
Graham sighed. ‘I asked my dad about that and he said we weren’t insured.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘If she came off and got killed or something it would.’
‘Oh.’ Ruth hung over the edge to peer down the cave’s stairway and check how Naomi was taking this news. She could see her halfway up, standing with her back to them.
‘Come on, Naomi,’ said Ruth, dangling over the brink like a stringy Rapunzel.
‘I can’t,’ said Naomi.
For a long time Graham and Ruth and Rachel and Phoebe sat in the cave saying things like: ‘Even Rachel did it!’ and ‘It’s dead easy, just shut your eyes!’ and ‘Have you hurt yourself?’
‘What?’ asked Naomi, who hadn’t heard a word.
‘Shall we come down and give you a hand?’
‘Don’t come near me,’ said Naomi. ‘You’ll knock me off.’
She was stuck, too frightened to move. She refused to turn round to move upwards, and she dared not go down. Halfway up the climb she had glanced casually down and completely lost her nerve.
They began to get impatient.
‘Hurry, Naomi, it’s getting late!’
‘None of us can get down while you’re blocking the way!’
‘Why not let someone come and show you where to put your feet?’
‘We can’t just stay here, Naomi!’
Eventually they gave up trying to reason with her.
‘She’s cragfast,’ diagnosed Graham. ‘Same as the sheep get. I never heard of person being cragfast before. I’ll have to climb round her and get her down from the bottom.’
‘You can’t,’ pointed out Rachel. ‘She won’t let anyone touch her.’
‘I’ll not touch her.’
‘You’ll fall,’ warned Ruth. ‘Better let me see if I can get round her – I’ve got longer arms than you.’
‘I’m doing it,’ said Graham stubbornly. ‘It’s not much of a drop, anyway.’
Swinging himself over the ledge he climbed back down to where Naomi was stuck.
Naomi screamed in a whisper without moving.
‘Stand still!’ said Graham, balanced on the edge, swung one leg into space and a moment later jumped right past Naomi, landed on the step beneath, and half fell, half ran, all the way down the rest of the slope until he reached the bottom, landing on all fours.
Ruth and Rachel and Phoebe clapped.
‘Get your stick,’ suggested Ruth, but Graham was already running for it. It made a sort of outside banister rail for Naomi, with Graham holding one end in front of her, and Ruth just behind holding the other.
All the way down Naomi made whimpering sounds, and when she reached the bottom she cried. Usually nobody ever saw Naomi cry, but now she cried in public, very messily because she hadn’t got a handkerchief. She didn’t care who saw her, and she wouldn’t be hugged.
‘Stop fussing me,’ she ordered, so they ignored her as best they could until the tears turned into more commonplace sulks, when they collected the picnic things and set off home.
‘Really, Graham!’ exclaimed Big Grandma when she saw them. ‘Do you know how long you’ve been? Your mother’s been ringing for you! Where’s Naomi? Have you left her behind? And why did Rachel and Phoebe rush off?’
‘They’re in the kitchen washing blackberries out of the handbag,’ explained Ruth, ‘and Naomi went off down to the garden.’
‘Problems?’ asked Big Grandma.
‘I’ll be off,’ said Graham hurriedly, collecting his bike.
‘I think,’ said Big Grandma, as she watched him cycle away down to the village, ‘I’ll go and find Naomi. The burning smell is shepherd’s pie. It’s been in the oven too long. We’ll have to scrape the top off. Go and set the table, Ruth, and get Rachel and Phoebe to wash their hands. Can you manage that?’
‘Of course,’ said Ruth, and went and announced the burnt shepherd’s pie to her sisters. Rachel hurried to the cupboard under the sink to count the dog food tins.
‘How many?’ asked Phoebe.
‘Three. We can eat it.’
‘What if she bought some new tins and cooked it with them?’
‘She’d use the old ones first.’
‘Suppertime,’ announced Big Grandma to Naomi, pretending not to notice that Naomi was washing her face in the watering can. ‘Do you think you could pick me some tomatoes out of the greenhouse, please.’
Naomi sniffed and turned away.
‘Very well, I’ll do it myself. Even though I’m very tired and nearly eighty years old!’
‘You’re only seventy!’
‘Seventy is a difficult age,’ said Big Grandma, speaking more to herself than Naomi. ‘Your joints get stiff and you’ve read all the good books and everyone expects you to be a dear old lady.’
‘No one expects you to be a dear old lady.’
‘Praise be,’ said Big Grandma. ‘What happened?’
‘I got stuck on the rock and couldn’t get down.’
‘I wish I could dig over that patch where the cabbages were,’ said Big Grandma. ‘I believe I mentioned it to you before?’
‘Do you want me to do it this minute?’ asked Naomi. ‘In the dark?’
‘Tomorrow would do. What else did you get up to out there with Graham?’
‘Rachel hooted in the cave and scared him. Phoebe crawled down a badger’s hole.’
‘Tell on, tell on,’ urged Big Grandma, giving Naomi the tomatoes to carry and leading the way back to the house.
‘Graham fell asleep with his mouth open. He snored. Ruth found more bones for her collection, but they’ve still got stuff sticking to them.’
‘Dear heavens,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Quick, Naomi, I can’t run. Don’t let her put them into the fridge!’
‘What you have to do with bones,’ explained Ruth ten minutes later when they were all sitting round the table, consuming pie and tomatoes as if they hadn’t eaten all day, ‘is bury them in an anthill (if you can find an anthill) and then the ants eat all the smelly meaty bits off.’
‘How long does it take?’
‘Several months, my book says so. Will you dig them up when they’re done and post them to me, please, Big Grandma?’
‘Certainly not!’ said Big Grandma.
CHAPTER TEN
It was morning. Just. A bare grey light seeped in through the windows, into the rooms where Phoebe, Rachel, Ruth and Big Grandma lay fast asleep, and Naomi stood wide awake and dressed. Outside it was either very misty or drizzling with rain; it was difficult to tell which from indoors.
It’s rain! thought Naomi as she got outside and felt it.
But she went anyway, and far sooner than she had expected, she was on the open hillside.
Naomi’s thoughts were swinging between two daydreams. One was of herself, dead, and her family being stricken with guilt. The other was of herself, alive, and all the people cheering who had been rescued from sheer rock faces in howling gales by the one and only Naomi Conroy, heroine of the hills and Blue Peter gold badge winner for bravery. Not that she wanted a Blue Peter gold badge of course, but she would enjoy donating it to the school bazaar. That would make their eyes stick out.
Past the badger setts (no badgers about), and on into the quarry and up the path to the big cave. It was very quiet, and the rocks and slopes still clutched the last dim blurs of night around them. There was no wind, nothing but grey light and misty, soaking rain. Here was Graham’s precious staircase. The way he’d gone on about it, thought Naomi, you’d think he’d personally gnawed it out of the rock face with his teeth. In a couple
of minutes she reached the top and glanced round the upstairs cave. Very boring indeed.
Well, I’ve been here! thought Naomi, and she stuck the notice she had brought with her, NAOMI WAS HERE, in the middle of the cave and put a stone on the top to stop it blowing away.
Then she started back.
‘It’s easy,’ she said aloud, standing at the place where the day before the awful panic had first begun. ‘Easy,’ repeated Naomi, and made the mistake of looking down.
Jump!
The ragged bramble bush tangle of the quarry floor below lurched, as Naomi stared at it.
‘Oh no oh no oh no,’ she begged, but it was too late. It had happened.
Just jump.
It swayed, she thought. No, I swayed. And now Naomi was clutching hard onto the wet rocky side of the path. ‘It’s too high. I can’t get down.’
Jump then, suggested the voice again. The little inside voice that haunts high places and sheer drops.
‘Relax!’ Naomi told herself, with her eyes screwed tight shut. ‘It’s easy! You climbed up all right!’
She felt herself slip and opened her eyes in alarm. The world seemed to be heaving and swinging. She couldn’t see properly.
Hold on, she thought. Mountain Rescue will find you!
Her hands shifted on the wet slate and a bit broke off. Then her knees caved in. Then, with a huge feeling of relief, she fell.
It should have been noisy, falling like that, not so quiet. There should have been trumpets and shrieks and sirens, and huge explosions, but there was only a crack and a bramble-muffled bump. Then there was Naomi, too scared to move because she had heard the crack and didn’t know what had broken. Nevertheless, through everything else she felt faintly triumphant. She was glad to be down.
Gradually, like a hedgehog unstartling, she began to uncurl.
Not my legs, she thought as she felt them move. Not my back, or I’d be dead. It must be an arm.
Opening her eyes she sat up and felt a dreadful yank on her left side. She looked down and quickly looked away again.
Her left hand had suddenly betrayed her. She had never put it in that outrageous position in her life. For a minute she thought she might start screaming, but then a golden thought arose and saved her. They’d get an awful shock when she got back and showed them. She pictured their faces and hoped they’d all faint. She even managed a bit of a grin, a very small one though, and it nearly turned into something else.
