by Hilary McKay
Naomi dug one dig and she thought she might as well give up. After five more spadefuls she thought perhaps she was getting the hang of it, and then, after a few more she decided she wasn’t after all, and what was worse, she fully expected to break her arm again any minute. But she still went on digging.
By the time Ruth found her she had dug a row and a half and had just finished calculating that there were probably eighteen and a half still to go.
‘You look awful – all hunched up in the torchlight, swearing and cursing,’ said Ruth.
‘Go away.’
‘Look at those slugs and worms coming out,’ remarked Ruth. ‘I bet they’re hypnotised by the light.’
Naomi, ignoring her, painfully and slowly finished the row.
‘Shall I hold the torch?’
‘That’s right,’ said Naomi bitterly, ‘you do a bit of work too. I’ll dig and dig with my broken arm and everything and you stand there and hold the torch.’
‘All right,’ said Ruth.
For a long time Ruth stood shining the torch on the edge of Naomi’s spade.
‘Seventeen and a half rows to go,’ said Naomi, ages later when she had discarded the carrier bag on her arm as being much too clumsy to work with.
‘Nearer thirty,’ said Ruth.
Naomi moved the spade one width along the row, balanced it, stepped on it, jumped on the top, heaved up the earth and turned it over. ‘Thirty!’ she said. ‘It can’t be!’
‘Stop and work it out yourself.’
‘I can’t stop.’
Slowly the glow of torchlight traced Naomi’s weary progress to the end of another row.
‘Let me have a go,’ said Ruth.
‘No. It’s my goodbye present. I’ve got to do it.’
‘It’s freezing just standing here.’
‘Well, go in then,’ said Naomi, not looking up.
For a long time the garden was quiet except for the wind in the ash tree, and the squelch and tumble of Naomi’s spade. Suddenly the circle of torchlight wavered wildly and shot across the garden.
‘Hold it steady.’
‘I think I fell asleep.’
‘Go in then.’
‘All right.’
Naomi found herself alone and furious with the hopeless torch. Coward! she thought. Coward and traitor! I’d have stayed with you!’
She was so angry she forgot how tired she was. She forgot to move the torch. She dug in the dark, thinking of Ruth warm in bed, while her sister toiled alone in the miserable Cumbrian wind, in the pitch dark, miserable, Cumbrian garden.
The row was finished, and the next, without Naomi noticing them pass. All her thoughts were taken up with Ruth. It would have been better if she’d never come down at all, rather than come to abandon her broken-armed sister in her time of need.
‘Cup of tea!’
There was Ruth, standing on the path, dressed in all she possessed, holding a mug of tea in each hand.
‘Tea?’ asked Naomi, limp with gratitude. ‘I thought you’d gone back to bed.’
The tea was boiling hot and very sweet. Ruth had poured it into the two pewter mugs that usually stood on the mantelpiece in the kitchen. They held a pint each, which was why she had chosen them. Both were very dusty and there happened to be a stray button in the bottom of Naomi’s, but such things presented no problems in the dark.
‘I feel like I’ve come alive again,’ she said, tipping the dregs and the button out onto the ground and picking up the spade.
‘Shall I do a bit?’
‘No thanks.’
‘I’ll hold the torch then.’
‘Okay. What time was it when you came out?’
‘Half-past twelve.’
Slowly, but certainly, they could just see that the patch of turned earth was widening. After a long, long time Naomi asked, ‘Do you think I’ve done a third yet?’
‘Easily. More like half. Please let me help.’
‘No thanks,’ said Naomi, digging like clockwork, hardly feeling her arms or legs or stiffening back. She had passed the stage of aching.
‘Cold?’ she asked Ruth deeper in the night when she could look back and know she was much more than half way.
‘I’ve got a hot water bottle up my jumper.’
Naomi dug on. Once again the torchlight skidded across the garden and she heard Ruth stumble on the path. Then Ruth woke up again and held the torch steady. ‘You’ve nearly finished,’ she said in surprise to Naomi. ‘I didn’t notice how far you’d got.’
‘I’m trying not to look behind me.’
Spadefuls of night inched slowly through the garden.
‘Last row,’ said Naomi.
Ruth held the torch ceremoniously high.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Five to three.’
They crept through the kitchen and upstairs, crawled out of their clothes, and fell, unwashed, into bed and sleep.
The last day dawned bright and horrifying.
‘How many hours now?’ asked Rachel at breakfast, a melancholy meal of porridge and sardines, well suited to the depression of the day.
‘Twenty six.’
‘Had we better start turning them into minutes?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘This is the unhappiest day of my life,’ said Rachel.
‘You haven’t had it yet,’ replied Big Grandma impatiently.
‘I have a premo-what’s its name, when you can tell something’s going to happen before you start,’ explained Rachel, and later on she was to say to her sisters, ‘You’ll never ignore my premo-what’s its names again!’ (‘We will,’ said Naomi in reply.)
Big Grandma, preoccupied with packing and train times, seemed not to notice the traces of the night’s happenings, tea leaves in the pewter mugs and tired grandchildren. Mrs Conroy was to meet the girls at Crewe, where they would change trains, and Big Grandma didn’t approve of this.
‘They’re perfectly capable of making the journey alone,’ she told Mrs Conroy, but Mrs Conroy replied that they were perfectly capable of anything, and therefore she would be happier meeting them.
‘Fancy having to waste half the day at the hospital,’ grumbled Naomi.
‘Good grief, I’d forgotten!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘How on earth did you get that plaster into such a disgusting state?’
‘We’ve got to be back in time for going to tea with Graham as well,’ Naomi reminded her, ignoring the question of her plaster.
‘The Good Riddance Tea,’ said Rachel.
Phoebe alone didn’t join in the conversation, sitting remote and preoccupied at the end of the table, staring into her bowl of porridge and brown sugar. A sardine was lying in solitary state on the top.
‘Hurry up, Phoebe,’ urged Big Grandma. ‘You put it there so you can eat it!’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked her sisters, noticing her unusual quietness for the first time.
‘Nothing,’ said Phoebe, tranquilly eating the sardine with the face of one who sees visions.
‘Something’s the matter with Phoebe,’ said Naomi as they sat in the garden later that morning. ‘She’s stopped reading chess problems and she’s stopped fishing in a bucket. She just walks round smiling.’
‘Who cares?’ asked Ruth. ‘You know she doesn’t live in the same world as everyone else. D’you know she’s started talking about her Christmas List Money again? Offered me twenty pence when we got home to wash her some socks yesterday.’
‘She’s insane,’ said Naomi. ‘Anyway, carry on writing. Put, “You have bent my elbow too much; you have put the plaster on too tight; you have put it on too high; you have put it on too thick so it is very hot and itches”.’
‘Is it drying yet?’ asked Big Grandma.
‘Not too bad.’
Big Grandma had resourcefully emulsioned the cast with a bit of paint left over from the kitchen walls. It was now white (with a touch of apple green) and Naomi, clad only in her swimming costume (until t
he paint dried), was dictating a list of complaints which she intended presenting to the doctor when she met him that afternoon.
‘Very hot and itches,’ repeated Ruth, scribbling away.
‘ “It is not properly waterproof; it is coming to bits at the ends; white is not a good colour for plaster casts; I do not think you have set the bones straight”.’
‘Don’t say that,’ advised Ruth, ‘in case he breaks it and sets it again.’
‘Miss it out then, go on to the waiting. Put, “I had to wait too long to see you; the waiting room is very boring; the painkillers you gave me did not work very well; I think it should have mended by now”. That’s all.’
‘What about his stupid jokes and what you thought about the nurse and not getting an ambulance?’ suggested Ruth.
‘I don’t want to make him angry,’ pointed out Naomi. ‘I’ll just read that list out politely to him and leave it on his desk when I go so that he can look at it whenever he needs to.’
‘What rare and graceful tact,’ commented Big Grandma, who was torn between the desire to see the doctor’s reaction when Naomi presented her document and a more prudent (but less exciting) instinct to remain discreetly in the waiting room.
The plaster was dry by mid-morning.
‘It looks quite nice,’ said Ruth, ‘except where the herring gull juice keeps showing through.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Rachel, coming up to them and going away again.
‘Goodbye,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Come back! Where are you going?’
‘To see Mrs Brocklebank.’
‘Now?’
‘Before lunch. She said I could go when I liked.’
‘That doesn’t mean you can turn up for every meal,’ Naomi pointed out.
‘Quite so,’ agreed Big Grandma. ‘You can go when you’ve had your lunch here, but not before, and I’m sure she’ll be busy this afternoon as it is, so don’t outstay your welcome.’
‘What’s that?’
‘When they say, “They’re going to be missing you at home”,’ explained Naomi, ‘and ask if you’ve said you’re going to be so long, and take you outside and show you the front garden.’
‘Why?’
‘To get you out of their house.’
‘Why’d they want to do that?’ asked Rachel, completely confused.
‘Because they’re sick of you and they want you to clear off,’ explained Ruth, ‘but they’re too polite to say so.’
‘Oh, it’s a waste of time trying to teach Rachel manners,’ remarked Naomi.
‘We’ll have to do it someday.’
‘I’ve got manners,’ said Rachel belligerently.
‘All right, you’ve got manners,’ agreed Ruth. ‘Just not very good ones. Why didn’t you finish getting dressed this morning?’
‘I am dressed.’
Ruth and Naomi looked wearily at each other and Naomi explained: ‘That was manners for, “Why didn’t you get washed?” ’
‘And brush your hair,’ added Ruth.
‘And tie it with another ribbon,’ said Naomi. ‘You’ve chewed all the colour out of the ends of that one.’
‘And tuck your T-shirt in, or leave it out, one or the other.’
‘And clean your teeth.’
‘I’ve cleaned them,’ said Rachel triumphantly.
‘That’s right,’ encouraged Big Grandma, ‘you stick up for yourself! I’ve never known toothpaste vanish the way it does in this house!’
At this remark Rachel disappeared guiltily upstairs. She had a very private game in which toothpaste wasn’t toothpaste, but peppermint cream. She ate quite a lot of peppermint cream toothpaste during the night.
It was a lonely afternoon for Ruth, with Naomi at the hospital and Rachel scraping out cake bowls with Mrs Brocklebank. Phoebe had disappeared soon after Big Grandma had driven away. Like an aimless daylight ghost Ruth wandered the empty house saying her goodbyes to the old-fashioned rooms, the views from the windows, the grandfather clock with the seagull painted face, stopped for a quarter of a century at five past nine.
‘Not a very restful time for it to stop,’ Naomi had once remarked, and, ‘Would you like me to mend your clock?’ Ruth had asked.
‘Not at all, I like it how it is,’ Big Grandma had replied.
‘But it doesn’t tick.’
‘It does when I want it to,’ and Big Grandma had swung the pendulum to make the old clock tick.
‘She likes to control everything,’ Naomi had grumbled. ‘Even the time.’
Ruth, passing the clock and patting it in farewell, remembered the conversation, and how Big Grandma had glared at Naomi and said, almost defensively, ‘Anyway, some of its insides are missing!’
Rachel’s return from the Brocklebanks’ was marked by the familiar crash of falling china as she ferreted through the larder for something to eat.
‘Do you know where Phoebe is?’ asked Ruth, running downstairs from Big Grandma’s bedroom where she had been saying a wistful goodbye to the locked storeroom door. ‘What have you been crying about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Rachel. ‘Anyway, I haven’t. What have you been crying about?’
‘Nothing. That door’s still locked – I’ve just checked. And I’ve tried picking the lock like Naomi said, but it only bends the screwdriver.’
‘Perhaps there’s something in the shed we could use,’ suggested Rachel hopefully.
Ready to try anything they set off to ransack the garden shed and there discovered Phoebe. She was sitting on an upturned bucket, a large book open across her knees, and a large, complacent smile across her face. Here was one Conroy at least who had not been crying.
‘Where did you get that book?’
They seized it from her and examined it: The Little Bookroom. ‘Anne, with love from Mother’, was written inside.
‘I haven’t seen this before!’
‘It must have been Mum’s!’ and ‘How did you get in there?’ demanded Ruth fiercely, for it was perfectly plain where the book had come from.
‘Found the key!’
‘How? Why didn’t you tell us?’
Phoebe was beginning to look uncomfortable. ‘I was going to tell you.’
With great difficulty they dragged the story from their disgraceful little sister. Even Rachel was shocked.
‘Spying through keyholes,’ declared Ruth, ‘is disgusting! You know it is!’
‘It was only till I saw where she put the key. I knew she must lock it up at night; she was reading in bed once when I went to the bathroom. I went back in the morning but her book wasn’t there any more, so I guessed. So I watched through the keyhole. What else could I do? I couldn’t think of any undisgusting ways!’
‘Where’s the key now?’
‘In her glasses case.’
‘Come on –’ Ruth and Rachel were running back up the garden path to the house ‘– we’ve just got time for a look before they get back!’
‘I thought you said it was disgusting!’ Phoebe arrived panting in Big Grandma’s bedroom as Ruth fitted the key in the lock.
‘Well, it’s too late now, you’ve done it.’ Ruth pushed open the door and they fell down a step into a shadowy room, lit only by one small window which was half obscured by piled boxes. The walls were the same raw pine and breeze block as the garage below, and the floor was rough bare planks, but the books – stacked in heaps and over-flowing boxes, a few scattered, open and face-down– the books were a wealth and glory. They had time for one awed glance around, and then the sound of Big Grandma’s car engine sent them flying back into the bedroom, where they replaced the key and skidded down the stairs to saunter as casually as they could to meet the travellers. Fortunately, Big Grandma and Naomi were in such high spirits, having utterly vanquished Naomi’s doctor with their list of complaints, that they noticed nothing unusual about the others.
‘He didn’t say anything,’ Naomi told Ruth, as they changed to go to Graham’s Good Riddance tea. ‘He just sat there with his mouth ope
ning and shutting. I think he was ashamed. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Last night,’ began Ruth, and explained what Phoebe had seen the night before.
‘I thought I heard someone creaking about!’ exclaimed Naomi, ‘while I was waiting to get up to do the digging! Go on, then what?’
Ruth related the events of the afternoon.
‘We only had time to just look in before you came back. There must be hundreds.’
‘And we’re going tomorrow!’
‘Yes.’ In the excitements of the discovery the girls had almost forgotten it.
‘I wish …’ began Ruth.
‘I know,’ said Naomi.
‘It’s not just the books,’ said Ruth, ‘it’s everything.’
‘I’m too sad to eat,’ Rachel told Mrs Brocklebank at tea time. Graham looked astonished and Big Grandma burst out laughing.
‘Try just nibbling then,’ suggested Mrs Brocklebank kindly, and Rachel, with great courage, nibbled her way through three slices of cheese and mushroom pie, several ham sandwiches, chocolate mousse and lemon cake.
They talked about the summer and when they would come back.
‘Never,’ said Ruth dolefully. ‘Not unless Mum and Dad get another five thousand pounds from somewhere.’
‘Why are you all so fed up?’ asked Graham.
‘We’ve only got fourteen and a half more hours of summer,’ Rachel explained.
‘You can eat a fair bit in fourteen and a half hours,’ said Graham callously.
‘Graham’s going to miss you,’ said Mrs Brocklebank.
‘I’m not,’ said Graham going bright, bright red.
‘Well, I’ll be coming back to marry him anyway,’ said Rachel, a surprise announcement that shocked the whole table into absolute silence.
‘Bed, bed, bed,’ said Big Grandma when they got back, but she was interrupted.
‘We’re going to give you our goodbye presents,’ said Ruth, ‘in case there’s no time in the morning.’
‘Presents?’ asked Big Grandma.
‘Because we’ve had a nice time,’ explained Rachel, ‘even with nothing to read.’
