The Exiles

by Hilary McKay

  She wished they didn’t only come out at night.

  She wished she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

  ‘Come badger watching with me?’ she asked Naomi later that day, when she had faced the idea of going alone and turned it down as impossible.

  ‘No thanks!’ said Naomi emphatically.

  Ruth approached Phoebe, who wasn’t lacking in courage of the stubborn, pig-headed kind.

  ‘I’m too busy,’ said Phoebe. That morning she had taught Big Grandma the art of fishing in a bucket, and in return, that afternoon Big Grandma had given her in a crash course in the game of chess. Phoebe had liked it so much that Big Grandma has magically produced a book of chess problems. Together they set out the pieces and pondered their next moves.

  ‘Much too busy,’ said Phoebe.

  Rachel agreed to come, but her price was too high.

  ‘I haven’t got that much money,’ said Ruth. ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, I can’t come then,’ said Rachel.

  Towards the end of the day Ruth found herself heading for her last resort: Graham’s house. Perhaps Graham would spend an evening badger watching with her. It was worth asking, anyway.

  The Brocklebanks’ kitchen door was standing open and there was a horrible noise coming from inside. It could have been bagpipes, but somehow it was more rasping; there was something horribly violinish about it, and the tune reminded Ruth of a song she didn’t like, although she couldn’t remember its name.

  ‘Do be quiet, Graham,’ Ruth heard Mrs Brocklebank say. ‘I can’t hear myself think!’

  Ruth knocked at the open door, but nobody noticed. Mrs Brocklebank was ironing a great heap of screwed-up blue denim. Graham’s grandad was sitting at the table rattling a pair of teaspoons. Graham was astride a chair the wrong way round, bright red in the face, and blowing and blowing into a large mouth organ. His eyes were shut tight.

  ‘We are the music makers,’ shouted Graham’s grandad when he saw Ruth in the doorway. ‘That’s poetry that is, but you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know how to play the spoons either, I doubt?’

  Graham’s mother swiped Graham across the head with a pair of jeans and he opened his eyes and stopped blowing. ‘Come in, Ruth,’ she called, ‘and I hope you’ve come to take him away! Goodness knows we’re not musical in this house, but that noise is more than flesh and blood can stand!’

  ‘Hello,’ said Graham, busily shaking the spit out of his mouth organ. ‘Did you know what I was playing?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Ruth admitted. ‘I recognised it but I couldn’t remember the name.’

  ‘See,’ said Graham to his mother, ‘I told you it was a real tune! “Amazing Grace”!’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Beautiful!’ Graham’s grandad shouted. ‘You should learn “Moonlight and Roses”, and then I could sing along! Moonlight and ro-wer-ses,’ he wailed in his loud, flat, tractor-engine drowning voice, ‘Reminds me, a yew! and the lass can play the spoons!’

  While they quietened Graham’s grandad, Ruth explained about the badger watching and how she didn’t really want to go by herself.

  ‘I can’t come,’ said Graham at once. ‘I’ve too much on here.’

  ‘You’ve nothing on here!’ said Mrs Brocklebank. ‘Of course you can go. If I don’t have some quiet my head will split. And you can walk your grandad back to his cottage on the way.’

  Graham growled a bit at this, but stopped when his mother said he could do the ironing if he liked instead. They set off as the colours of sunlight were fading from the fields, Ruth carrying a basket full of provisions for Graham’s grandad to take home, Graham slashing at the grasses along the way with his stick, while his grandad told Ruth all the gruesome old stories that his family had heard so many times before.

  It was slow work, walking along with Graham’s grandad. He couldn’t pass a field without stopping to look over the gate, and everyone they met halted to speak for a minute. The light was becoming greyer and greyer, and the top of the fell was hidden in a swirl of cloud.

  ‘I’ll not climb it agen,’ Graham’s grandad said, looking up at it. ‘I done my share of climbing. Used to race to the top we did, running. Been up it in all weathers.’

  ‘Snow?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Snow?’ Graham’s grandad said. ‘Snow, ’ail, ’urrycane, blizzard. Two weeks of blizzard we ’ad once, and I climbed it every day. ’Arf the village did.’

  ‘A plane crashed up there,’ Graham told Ruth. ‘They saw it against the snow, and they could see people moving about but then the weather changed.’

  ‘Who’s telling?’ asked Graham’s grandad crossly. ‘I am! Blizzard arrived and when we’d waited and they never come down to the village we went to look for them. Thought they might have got a bit of shelter among the rocks or summat. Folks were up there looking every day.’

  ‘Did you find them?’

  ‘Two weeks later. Froze stiff. Terrible. They’d tried to crawl down. Should have stayed with the plane; we’d have found them a lot sooner. Too late by the time we did.’

  They had reached Graham’s grandad’s cottage at last. He stood by the gate, looking up at the fell.

  ‘Good luck to you,’ he said. ‘You’d not get me on the fell at night. And if you don’t believe what I’ve told you, you ask your gran. Many a thing I’ve told her that no one else believe and she’s said, aye, she read of summat like that in the past. Your gran’s got a grand collection of books over-by; you’ve no call to stay ignorant while you’re there!’

  He took his basket of food from Ruth and opened the gate. ‘I’ll not ask you in,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to be away. I ’ope you come to no harm.’

  They watched him go in and close the door. A light was switched on inside and shone through the window into the little cottage garden.

  ‘So do I,’ said Graham gloomily.

  ‘So do you what?’ Ruth brought her thoughts back from Big Grandma’s mysterious books to the present problems of the evening.

  ‘Hope we come to no harm.’

  ‘You know we can’t go now!’ said Ruth (and Graham sighed with relief). ‘Not after all that! Your grandad! Are his stories true?’

  ‘Some of them. Too many.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ruth, taking advantage of the moment of companionship between them, ‘Big Grandma told you not to say anything about her books?’

  Graham grinned.

  ‘And she’s stuck them in that little room over the garage to stop us getting them?’ pursued Ruth.

  ‘Surprised it stopped you,’ remarked Graham.

  ‘She’s got it locked.’

  ‘Surprised that stopped you too,’ said Graham. ‘Anyway, I’m going to get back home before it gets any darker.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Ruth and set off at a run for the comforting, only slightly haunted shelter of Big Grandma’s house.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘Graham’s grandad told me, and Graham admitted it,’ reported Ruth. ‘Big Grandma has hundreds of books and she’s hidden them from us all summer. They’re in that room over the garage. It’s such a waste. Even if we got in now, we’d never have time to read them all. We’re going home in less than two weeks.’

  ‘Much less than two weeks,’ said Naomi, counting days on the kitchen calendar.

  ‘What d’you mean, going home?’ asked Phoebe, showing as usual her amazing ability to ignore basic facts of life. ‘I’m not. Not until I’ve seen Big Grandma’s books anyway.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ agreed the new, independent (sometimes) Rachel. ‘And I want to go back to the cave and see where Naomi fell.’

  ‘Thanks very much!’

  ‘And where she was sick on her foot,’ continued Rachel, ‘and I want to visit Mrs Brocklebank again. She said I could.’

  ‘I haven’t seen the badgers yet.’

  ‘I haven’t dug that bit where the cabbages were.’

  ‘How could you with a broken arm?’

  ‘I could if I wan
ted to.’

  ‘We ought to get Big Grandma goodbye presents,’ said Ruth. ‘After all, she hasn’t been that bad. Except about the books. D’you think we could manage to get a look at them before we go? Just to see what we’ve been missing?’

  ‘We’ll never get everything done.’ Naomi was still studying the calendar. ‘And I’ve got to go back to that awful hospital the day before we go, to get my arm checked. Graham should have told us earlier about the books. We could have arranged something if we’d had a bit more time.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘P’raps we could’ve picked the lock. We could’ve bought lock-picking tools if we’d known. Too late now; we’ve spent all our money.’

  ‘We don’t know how to pick locks anyway, so what use would they have been?’

  ‘Obviously,’ Naomi was withering, ‘obviously you get instructions with them when you buy them. Anyway, it’s too late now.’

  ‘We ought to climb the fell once more.’

  ‘And make another bonfire and cook dinner.’

  ‘We could invite Big Grandma.’

  ‘My lettuces and radishes are still too small. They’ll never be ready before we go.We ought to start doing things much faster.’

  The last days of the holiday, like fairy gold counted in the sunlight, disappeared as fast as they were numbered. The shining wealth of summer that had been theirs to squander dwindled to a few dull-gleaming days. Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe began to spend them with the distraught recklessness of those who see the end of the world. A day was ransomed to climb the hill, and a morning to revisit the scene of Naomi’s accident.

  ‘Where did you fall from?’

  ‘There, in the middle.’

  Naomi watched as her sisters and Graham climbed up, ran down, stood on the step from which she had fallen, closed their eyes, let go of the rock, did it backwards, hopped on one leg, tickled Rachel, shoved Phoebe, tried to startle Graham into jumping and distracted Ruth with imaginary badgers. It was as they had imagined, impossible to fall. They marvelled.

  ‘Look, I’m doing it on tiptoe, leaning outwards, with my eyes crossed. Tell me a joke, someone!’

  ‘Oh, come down,’ said Naomi crossly, ‘and I’ll show you where I was sick.’

  ‘Looks like any other grass to me,’ said Rachel, disappointed.

  ‘Now, if we run all the way back,’ said Ruth, ‘we’ll have time to go swimming before tea.’

  They ticked things off their list of what they must do, and added more at the bottom.

  ‘Big Grandma,’ said Ruth, one desperate evening, ‘will you come badger watching with me?’

  ‘Certainly,’ agreed Big Grandma cordially, ‘nothing I’d rather do.’

  Three evenings later there was a sound in the bracken and a glimpse of black and white in the moonlight.

  ‘Was it worth it then?’ asked Big Grandma as they tiptoed home.

  ‘A thousand times,’ said Ruth. At that moment of happiness, if Ruth hadn’t been Ruth, and Big Grandma hadn’t been Big Grandma, they might have hugged each other, but instead they exchanged a brief, smiling glance. Ruth wondered, slightly guiltily, if, in view of Big Grandma’s kindness, she should still to be plotting to raid her books, and decided that she should. Big Grandma wondered, also slightly guiltily, if, in view of Ruth’s shining-eyed gratitude, she should hand over her library, and decided that she shouldn’t.

  ‘Big Grandma came badger watching with me,’ Ruth told Graham the next day. ‘We saw them twice! Twice! You should have come.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Graham sceptically. ‘I think your gran must be cracking up at last.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to the beach with us yesterday? I told your mum to ask you specially,’ Rachel demanded. ‘We cooked dinner there again.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t come,’ said Graham.

  ‘It was good,’ Rachel told him. ‘Big Grandma drove us down with all the stuff so we didn’t have to carry it.’

  ‘She sat on a cushion,’ put in Phoebe, ‘and ate everything we cooked and said it was lovely.’

  ‘What did you do for her?’

  ‘Scrambled eggs and sardines and stewed plums. And we bought it with our own money.’

  ‘Crikey!’ said Graham. ‘She must be cracking up!’

  ‘Two more days left,’ said Naomi one morning, and the thought was so dreadful that they changed their currency and got forty-eight hours instead.

  ‘Time to do ninety-six short things,’ said Ruth.

  ‘How long will it take you to pack those bones?’ demanded Naomi.

  Ruth, who between cutting the grass and painting a farewell picture of a badger for Big Grandma, was trying to reduce three large carrier bags which she couldn’t lift, into one small bag that she could (without abandoning any of the contents), shook her head and said she didn’t know.

  ‘Well, hurry up with them! Have you checked if that door’s still locked?’ For several days the girls at every chance, had sneaked into Big Grandma’s bedroom to test the lock of the storeroom door.

  ‘Tried it about an hour ago.’

  Naomi sighed and stared critically at Ruth’s picture. ‘Why are you painting it anyway? She doesn’t like things like that. Think of that whole box of ornaments she gave to Graham for his shooting practice.’

  ‘She’ll like this.’ Ruth put down her brush to ram a handful of loose vertebrae into a skull. ‘What are you giving her? Have you thought of anything?’

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to do for a goodbye present,’ said Naomi cautiously, ‘but I won’t be able to tell you what it is until I’ve done it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  In case I can’t, thought Naomi. ‘What about my lettuces and radishes?’ she asked aloud.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They’re just not growing,’ said Naomi sadly. She had given up the daily drenching of their roots with Baby Bio. It seemed to make no difference. Instead she turned her attention to the rough patch of ground where the cabbages had been. It looked awful. The earth was all weedy and lumpy. Naomi couldn’t forget how the night before she’d broken her arm, Big Grandma had said, ‘I wish I could dig over that patch where the cabbages were.’

  Now Naomi regretted not having returned that night and dug it in the dark. She supposed Graham would do it, when they were gone, and perhaps Big Grandma would say, ‘I thought Naomi might do that, but of course she couldn’t, not with a broken arm.’ Then she, Naomi, who had always managed to carry out Big Grandma’s gardening challenges, would have failed.

  There was a scholarly group gathered beneath the damson tree. Rachel, seated as if for inspiration on a stack of Shakespeare (Histories and Poems, Tragedies and Romances, Comedies), was editing and amending her diary which she had finally decided to bestow on Big Grandma.

  ‘Will you miss me when I’m gone?’ she asked Big Grandma.

  Big Grandma paused and put down the potato she was peeling, made a move on the chessboard that stood between herself and Phoebe, checked the amount of peas her opponent had shelled, and answered, ‘Possibly.’

  Naomi arrived to say, with a definite note of panic in her voice, ‘It’s only forty and a half more hours now. This time next week, do you know where we’ll be? School! And this time the day after tomorrow we’ll be nearly back home. It’s half past three. It’ll be dark in less than five hours and there won’t be time to do anything tomorrow; I’ve got to go to the hospital. How can you all just sit there? Don’t you know how fast it’s going—’

  ‘Naomi, stop!’ commanded Big Grandma.

  ‘And there’s still something I’ve got to do,’ said Naomi, and she gazed worriedly down the garden.

  Evening came with a sunset of flame and scarlet over the sea. Big Grandma, thinking it might be calming, drove them down to the beach to watch it. The sky was fire-coloured in the West, pale green overhead, and blue with stars in it above the hills. ‘This time in two days’ time,’ said Rachel mournfully, ‘Mum will be tr
ying to make us go to bed.’

  ‘In our new pale pink bedrooms,’ added Phoebe, remembering the latest phone call from Lincolnshire. ‘My most unfavourite colour.’

  ‘Pale pink bedrooms,’ repeated Big Grandma callously, ‘which will just match your pale pink cowardly little characters. What’s happened to your courage? Packed it?’

  Pale pink cowardly little characters, thought Naomi, alone and watchful in the middle of the night, and she got out of bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ whispered Ruth across the dark.

  ‘Nothing. D’you think Big Grandma’s asleep?’

  ‘I heard her come up half an hour ago. Why? Why are you getting dressed?’

  ‘Ssssh.’

  ‘Tell me where you’re going.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Naomi, who didn’t quite understand herself. ‘Anyway, I haven’t got time. Not far.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Just to the garden if you must know.’ Naomi opened the bedroom door and peered cautiously out. All the lights were switched off, and except for the sound of Big Grandma’s windy breathing, the house seemed quiet.

  ‘Bye,’ whispered Naomi, and padded in her socks down the stairs. In the kitchen she pulled on a pair of Big Grandma’s wellington boots, found the torch that was kept beside the fuse box, wrapped her plaster in a carrier bag, and went out into the black, waiting garden. By torchlight she chose the largest spade in the garden shed.

  It was astonishingly difficult. Naomi had been prepared for hard work, and a certain amount of awkwardness, but she had never thought it might be actually impossible. For a start, her torch kept falling over. It wouldn’t stand so that it shone on the bit she was trying to dig, and she didn’t think she could manage in the dark. And anyway it was difficult to dig with a broken arm. First you balanced the spade on the bit you want to cut. Then you trod on it with one foot, to get it firmly into the ground. Then, keeping your plaster out of the way of hitting the handle, you jumped on top of the spade, so as to press it right in. After that you stood on the ground and leant on the handle to lift up the spadeful of soil. Then, with your good arm low down on the shaft, and your broken one across the top to balance it, you raised the spadeful of earth, turned it over, and dropped it into the place where it had been. And that was one dig.