The Exiles

by Hilary McKay

  With her faithful, untreacherous right hand she picked up her left, put it in her jacket pocket, recovered from the shock of the pain, stood up, was sick on her right foot, and walked home.

  ‘Here she is,’ announced Phoebe, who had been staring through the kitchen window, as Naomi trudged up the garden path.

  ‘She’s not still upset about yesterday, is she?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘She doesn’t look as if she is. She just looks …’

  ‘Furious,’ finished Phoebe, as Naomi stamped into the room.

  ‘I’ve broken my arm,’ said Naomi.

  ‘Why?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘Look at you!’ snapped Big Grandma, before Naomi even had time to get properly into the house. ‘You’re absolutely soaked! And I wish you children would learn to wipe your feet before you come inside! Well, don’t just stand there! Go and find some dry clothes!’

  ‘I’ve broken my arm,’ said Naomi.

  ‘What for?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘I can’t be bothered with arguing,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Go and get changed, and be quick about it if you want any breakfast!’

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve broken your arm?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘It’s broken. I broke it,’ said Naomi wearily. ‘Can’t you even understand that?’

  ‘Is it still raining?’ asked Rachel. ‘I think I’ve left my diary outside.’

  ‘You haven’t really broken your arm, have you?’ asked Ruth. ‘Neither of them look broken to me.’

  ‘Well, I have.’

  ‘Don’t just sit there, Naomi,’ exclaimed Big Grandma, impatiently joggling the chair into which Naomi had collapsed. ‘Go and take your wet things off! You’ve been told enough times!’

  ‘I’ve broken my arm,’ repeated Naomi. ‘I heard it crack. Do something.’

  A whirlwind of sweet tea, phone calls, aspirin, hot water bottles, hysterics (by Rachel), blankets, and conflicting orders swept through the kitchen. Worn out and bad-tempered Naomi sat in the eye of the wind, untouched by the storm that was swirling Big Grandma and her sisters in twisted circles about the house. Then, at the sound of a car door slamming, the wind suddenly stopped. Naomi and Big Grandma were gone, with nothing left of them but some cut up pieces of jacket sleeve lying on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Do you think it hurt?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘It made me feel sick,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m glad I’m going to be a mopper. I used to be going to be a nurse.’

  ‘You’d make a lovely nurse,’ commented Ruth, ‘screaming your head off every time you saw a patient! Nurses see much worse things than that!’

  ‘I like seeing it,’ remarked Phoebe. ‘I’d like to watch them cut it open and nail it back together again too.’

  ‘They sew it, not nail it.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Rachel with her fingers in her ears.

  ‘They sew the skin and stuff,’ replied Phoebe, ‘and they nail the bones, and then they plaster it up. I’m going to go to a hospital and watch one day. I think it would be lovely.’

  Naomi, on her long walk home, had taken some comfort in the thought that the twenty-mile journey to the hospital would be accomplished in a large, light-flashing, siren-blaring ambulance. Big Grandma, who would also have appreciated the charms of such a journey, understood her disappointment, and tried to make it up to Naomi by driving as excitingly as possible.

  ‘To my mind,’ she remarked, swerving round a pot-hole and hooting vigorously at two sparrows squabbling in the gutter, ‘the National Health Service, our National Health Service, lacks, these days, a certain glamour!

  ‘They have become,’ she added, aiming for a cyclist and not missing him by very much, ‘blasé!’

  A fly hit the windscreen and she put the wipers on double speed to clear it off.

  ‘Give birth to quins,’ she continued, ‘receive a brain transplant, contract rabies perhaps, and you might arouse a little bit of interest. Mere human agony however, such as you are experiencing now, they regard as routine. Not worth the comfort and convenience of an ambulance!’

  Glancing sideways she saw that Naomi’s face was so white and tight and miserable that she couldn’t speak.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ said Big Grandma gently.

  ‘No wonder they call it a waiting room,’ commented Naomi, some time later. ‘They should call it a waiting and waiting and waiting room!’

  ‘Those who do not perish from their injuries,’ said Big Grandma in a bossy voice, ‘will certainly die of old age!’

  At that moment a nurse in a white coat who Naomi recognised from the X-ray department, stuck her head round the door and called, ‘Naomi Conroy?’ She caught Naomi’s glowering eye and smiled cheerfully.

  ‘You’ve broken your arm.’

  Naomi rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

  ‘We realised that, dear,’ said Big Grandma.

  ‘We’ll call you in a minute,’ added the nurse, smiled again and disappeared.

  Big Grandma and Naomi counted the minutes and when it came to forty-two Naomi was taken away to be stretched and pulled into a plaster cast.

  ‘We find quite a lot of children enjoy this part,’ remarked the doctor untruthfully, for Naomi did not hold back on flinching and screaming whenever she felt the need.

  ‘Why?’ asked Naomi. Now that her arm felt more securely attached she was suddenly conscious of her wet muddy jeans, her unbrushed hair, her tear-streaked face and chopped-up jacket. She must look even worse than usual. Why did he shake his head as he scribbled his notes? What was he writing about her?

  ‘You can get your friends to sign it for you,’ he suggested.

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ said Naomi, and she said it quite rudely, because that was the best way to talk to people who treated you like a small, pathetic child.

  It worked; he sat back and looked at her. ‘Well, you’re all fixed,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I’ll just sort you out the bill.’

  ‘The bill!’ screeched Naomi, and he burst out laughing and said. ‘Joking! Only joking. Jumped off a cliff! What a daft thing to do at eight o’clock in the morning!’

  ‘It was much earlier than that,’ said Naomi, with as much dignity as she could manage, and he roared again as if she had said something very amusing, and ushered her out of the room.

  Big Grandma had spent a dismal morning, restraining Naomi, helping her count the red, green and white tiles on the floor and calculating the percentage cover of each, and reading and solving all the problems on the problem pages in the magazines. Left alone, she had mentally redesigned the waiting room and had added hammocks and a bar and was just choosing the drinks when Naomi, equipped with plaster and painkillers, re-entered the room.

  ‘All things come to those who wait,’ she remarked, heading immediately for the door.

  ‘I tried to hurry,’ said Naomi, pathetically but loudly, ‘but I had to stay while the doctor made a lot of jokes about people with broken bones.’

  There was a murmuring sound from all the people in the waiting room who had, or suspected they had, broken bones.

  ‘Poor little girl,’ remarked the white-coated nurse to the doctor as he left to call up the next of their victims.

  ‘Poor little girl my … foot!’ said the doctor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rachel asked Ruth as she met her staggering from the garden with an armful of roses and marguerites.

  ‘Getting ready for Naomi. Come and help.’

  Together they proceeded to ransack the house, going through every room in turn and removing anything that might be useful to a bad tempered person with a broken arm.

  ‘What about Big Grandma’s bedroom?’ asked Rachel. ‘Do you think she’d mind? I’ve only been there once and she chucked me out.’

  ‘This is an emergency,’ said Ruth, and marched boldly through the door, and Rachel followed after her, looking around.

  ‘No books,’ she said, ‘and nothing to eat. Nothing to play with that Naomi would want … What’s that door?’r />
  Ruth, who had been eyeing up the bedside rug in a speculative way, asked in surprise, ‘What door?’

  ‘This one.’ Rachel pulled aside a green velvet curtain that was almost hidden behind the shadow of the wardrobe.

  ‘That’s a window.’ Ruth bent down to pick up the rug and knocked over a bowl of pot-pourri, scattering flower petals on the floor.

  ‘No, it’s a door, but it’s locked.’ Rachel tugged at the handle. ‘It must lead out into nothing though. Into the air. Unless Big Grandma’s got a ladder for getting out at night.’

  Ruth came to investigate. Then she peered out of the window on the other side of the wardrobe.

  ‘It must go into the garage,’ she announced. ‘She must have had an upstairs room built when she had the garage made. And that door is where a window used to be. I wonder what she keeps in there?’

  ‘It’s too dark to see anything,’ said Rachel with her eye to the keyhole.

  ‘Well, we haven’t time now anyhow,’ said Ruth. ‘Come and help me get this stuff up off the floor. They’ll be back soon – they’ve been hours and hours already. What’s Phoebe doing?’

  Phoebe was writing a letter home which simply stated: We hav run ot of muny.

  She was doing the kisses when the car pulled up and Naomi, half doped with painkillers, staggered out of the back. Sisterly enquiries filled the air.

  ‘What bone did you break? Did you see the X-ray? Would you recognise one like it only coming off a sheep?’

  ‘Did you have a nice time? What did you have for dinner?’

  ‘Did they nail it? Did they nail it?’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Naomi, pulling a bundle of screwed up magazines from under her jacket and handing them to Ruth. ‘Pinched them,’ she explained, heading wearily for the stairs. ‘Tell Phoebe to shut up.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said everyone to Phoebe.

  ‘I’ve got everything ready,’ said Ruth proudly, leading the procession up the stairs.

  ‘Very nice too,’ commented Big Grandma when she saw the invalid room that had been prepared during their absence. Two glasses, one full of orange juice, the other full of flowers, stood beside Naomi’s bed. Ranged on the floor within easy reach was all the reading matter they possessed, including Shakespeare and Phoebe’s colouring book, as well as plate of cheese sandwiches, a half-eaten bar of chocolate (Rachel’s idea), and a rather too obvious bucket.

  ‘You could have made my bed,’ said Naomi ungratefully.

  ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,’ commented Big Grandma. ‘And what’s my rug doing in here, may I ask? I suppose you’ve been rifling through my room. I’ve told you to keep out of there. Is nothing sacred?’

  ‘Why’ve you locked the door that goes into the top of the garage?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘To keep you out,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Why else? Anyway, I suppose I’d better have Ruth’s bed tonight, and she can have The Rack and a sleeping bag in Rachel and Phoebe’s room.’

  ‘What’s The Rack?’ asked Ruth suspiciously, but it turned out to be only Big Grandma’s way of describing a camp-bed.

  Deep in the night Naomi lay staring into the dark, listening to the windy sound of Big Grandma’s breathing. Her arm hurt very badly. The tablets must have worn off. Her left hand was throbbing.

  They’ve put the plaster on too tight, she thought, and remembered a girl at school who had kept an elastic band round a finger until it went cold and black.

  ‘Gangrene,’ said Naomi out loud.

  Big Grandma gave a sudden snort and woke herself up.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I was just wondering if I had gangrene.’

  ‘No,’ said Big Grandma firmly, ‘you haven’t.’

  ‘I have rotten luck.’

  ‘You surely can’t want gangrene.’

  ‘I meant falling off.’

  ‘That was just vertigo. Fear of heights. Nothing to do with luck. Nelson had it too.’

  ‘I thought he had sea-sickness.’

  ‘And vertigo,’ said Big Grandma. ‘The poor man had both. Think yourself lucky. Go to sleep.’

  Naomi lay silent for a while, listening to the sounds of the house; slow creaks and unknown rustlings and the whispering of the ash tree with the night wind in its leaves.

  ‘Why did Uncle Robert run away?’

  ‘He was bored, I expect. It was all a long time ago. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Do you think about him?’

  ‘Not very often,’ said Big Grandma, truthfully but rather unmaternally. ‘He joined the Navy. He’s quite all right.’

  Naomi ate one of her cheese sandwiches. It tasted horrible.

  ‘D’you mind if I put the light on and read?’

  ‘Very much indeed,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Try counting sheep jumping over a gate.’

  ‘I don’t know what sheep look like jumping over a gate. I didn’t know they could jump.’

  ‘Try it.’

  Naomi tried it for a few minutes. ‘They keep bashing their knees,’ she said eventually. ‘Big Grandma?’

  Big Grandma dragged herself awake again.

  ‘D’you think this house is haunted? Ruth does.’

  Big Grandma made an enormous concession, recognising that if Naomi didn’t have something to take her mind off her broken arm she was quite liable to lie awake and talk all night.

  ‘I suppose it might be a little bit haunted!’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Perhaps a bit,’ repeated Big Grandma grudgingly. ‘In a manner of speaking. A rather flamboyant manner of speaking, and not strictly true.’

  ‘What by?’

  Big Grandma’s imagination failed her. ‘All sorts of things. Go to sleep.’

  Naomi, suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion, lay quietly conjuring ghosts to haunt Big Grandma’s house. Strangely enough, all the dim white spirits turned, as she watched them, into sheep. Sheep that ate dog food. Sheep with aching knees and legs in plaster. She fell asleep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The morning post brought Mr Conroy’s letter from Lincolnshire. The ten pound note fell out as soon as they ripped open the envelope.

  ‘They’ve started sending my money,’ said Phoebe, very pleased. ‘At last!’

  Rachel, who had been sitting on the end of Naomi’s bed chewing up the last of the cheese sandwiches, made a hasty grab for the ten pound note. It came in half.

  ‘Mind my plaster,’ said Naomi from the pillows, where Big Grandma had ordered that she stay. ‘Anyway, it’s Ruth’s swimming to the Isle of Man money.’

  Ruth came in at that moment. ‘Big Grandma says you’re not to get up until she says so.’

  ‘What, not even to go to the toilet?’ asked Rachel and Phoebe in chorus.

  ‘What, not even to go to the toilet?’ called Ruth over the banisters.

  ‘Yes, of course to go to the toilet!’ shouted up Big Grandma, grinding her teeth.

  ‘But you can to go to the toilet,’ added Ruth, reappearing in the bedroom.

  ‘I already have,’ said Naomi. ‘Look! Dad’s sent your Isle of Man money!’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Ruth, not very hopefully.

  As proof, Rachel and Phoebe unprotestingly each handed her half of a ten pound note. They were very pleased to think she was going to swim all that way.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ruth sadly. ‘Oh, well, I better do it this afternoon then. Might as well get it over with.’

  ‘Don’t forget to send us postcards before you get the boat back,’ said Naomi.

  ‘I shan’t be able to go buying postcards in a swimming costume,’ protested Ruth.

  ‘Wear your shorts and a T-shirt to swim over,’ said Naomi resourcefully, ‘and they’ll dry off in the sun as you look for a post office.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘Make sure you eat a lot of dinner. To give you strength.’

  ‘What’ll you tell Big Grandma when she asks where I am?’

  ‘We’ll just say you’ve gone
for a swim,’ said Naomi. She seemed to have thought of everything.

  Mrs Conroy, far away in the Lincolnshire garden having five minutes peace from a house full of builders, reread Naomi’s latest letter. Their father was right, she thought; they certainly did sound happier. They should get his letter today, and her own, forbidding the list of enterprises that Naomi had described, tomorrow.

  Tomorrow.

  Panic seized her and she rushed into the house and dialled Big Grandma’s number.

  ‘Answer, answer, answer,’ she prayed, having awful visions of Ruth in the middle of the Irish Sea, equipped with her father’s ten pound note for the boat home.

  ‘Where’s Ruth, Mother?’ she shouted frantically when Big Grandma finally came to the phone.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ asked Big Grandma. ‘Ruth? I don’t quite know at this moment. She said this morning she was going swimming …’

  ‘Oh no. Oh no,’ said Mrs Conroy.

  ‘But I think she might still be up in Naomi’s room,’ continued Big Grandma, wondering if her daughter had gone mad, and if so whether she ought to mention Naomi’s broken arm.

  ‘Tell her,’ shouted Mrs Conroy, ‘not to swim to the Isle of Man! Not to! Go and tell her now!’

  ‘I can’t think what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Just tell her! Go now. Please go now!’

  Better not to mention Naomi’s arm, thought Big Grandma. Better perhaps to humour her.

  ‘I’m sure she has no thought of doing such a thing,’ Big Grandma said as soothingly as she knew how. ‘But I’ll go up and tell her and then I’ll get her to ring you back.’

  She found Ruth busily engaged in sewing a ten pound note in a plastic bag to the inside of her shorts. Naomi was studying a map in the back of an old diary they had found in the shed.

  Rachel and Phoebe sat on the window seat gazing out towards the horizon with their mouths already hanging open with admiration.

  ‘Looks about forty miles,’ she heard Naomi say cheerfully. ‘But the tide’s going out. That’ll help a lot.’