by Hilary McKay
Big Grandma didn’t even flicker at this enormous hint. She could have given in then, but she didn’t.
‘Well, let’s get at these presents,’ she said cheerfully.
The parcels, carefully wrapped in birthday paper bought with the last of Ruth’s swimming to the Isle of Man money (‘Good job I didn’t go,’ she said), stood waiting for Big Grandma on the kitchen table.
There was a spare chessboard from Phoebe, cheerfully, if unconventionally chequered in green and yellow, and a note with it saying, I hav rit som more chess in the bak of yor book.
A watercolour of a badger, most lovingly painted and framed in cardboard. Big Grandma gazed at it in astonishment; she had been completely unaware of the fact that Ruth could paint.
A battered and greasy notebook, the meticulous record of a summer’s good eating, right up to date with Chapter Forty One: The Good Riddance Tea.
‘That’s what you were scribbling at under the table!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘Big Grandma,’ she read on the very last page, ‘You are a very good cook.’
‘Thank you, Rachel,’ said Big Grandma.
There were no more presents, but there was a piece of paper which said, Mine is down the garden. I hope it is all right. Love, Naomi. Big Grandma went outside and viewed, by the dwindling light of the torch, Naomi’s goodbye present. She stayed there a long time and when she came back she said, ‘Good grief, Naomi!’
And then she made them go to bed. Pausing on the stairs, Ruth gave her one last chance.
‘Aren’t there any books we could borrow just for tonight, just to help us get to sleep because it’s so awful?’
But Big Grandma had held out for too long to mellow all at once.
‘Get out the Shakespeare,’ she suggested, smiling. ‘That’ll send you off!’
There was a desperate meeting in Ruth and Naomi’s room.
‘We can’t possibly go without one proper look.’
‘No.’
‘I almost wish we hadn’t found where the key was.’
‘You made me tell you,’ said Phoebe.
‘Don’t you ever, ever spy through keyholes again.’
‘Anyway, what are we going to do? D’you think we could creep in? Just to look?’
‘When she’s asleep? We couldn’t put a light on.’
‘There isn’t one anyway,’ said Phoebe. ‘I looked before.’
‘The torch battery is nearly flat from last night. Are there any candles left from when we went to the cave?’
‘There’s three in the red handbag under my bed. I was saving them to take home.’
‘Matches?’
‘I’ve got matches,’ said Ruth.
‘It’s lucky she sleeps so heavily.’ Naomi had already made full use of this fact several times that holiday.
‘It’s because of her bedtime whisky,’ said Phoebe.
‘So when she’s asleep …’ said Ruth.
‘We’ll go and look, just for a little while. We won’t light the candles until we get in. We’ll have to find the key in the dark.’
‘What if she wakes up?’
‘We’ll just have to explain.’
‘It’s a funny way to spend the last night,’ whispered Ruth as she and Naomi slid out of bed.
‘No funnier than last night was, really. I can hear her snoring; you get the key while I fetch the other two. Have you got those matches?’
A few minutes later a goblin procession passed silently through Big Grandma’s bedroom; three scraggy forms, clad in tattered pale clothing following the beckoning finger of a small and quaking figure outlined against a dark doorway. Once inside, they pushed the door silently behind them until it almost closed, and stood with thumping hearts until the steady sound of Big Grandma’s snoring gave them courage enough to light the candles and begin their exploration.
For a long time (‘It must have been hours,’ said Rachel the next day), they crouched in the flickering candlelight, soundlessly unpacking and repacking the boxes of forbidden books.
Natural history! exclaimed Ruth to herself. Two whole boxes! Many were old, with gold edged pages and black and white engravings. Beautiful! thought Ruth. I could have tried to copy them. And there were several new ones, full of photographs, the sort of books that Ruth had often pored over in bookshops and at last reluctantly returned to the shelves when the assistant glared too hard.
Naomi, haloed like an angel in the golden light of her candle, was wandering through Big Grandma’s collection of local history, looking up places she knew and had heard of, and discovering old churches and stone circles that she might have visited if she had known of them in time. Phoebe, sharing her candle and half asleep, turned page after page of storybooks that had belonged, some to her mother and some to Uncle Robert. Occasionally their names were in the front, together with long addresses, which ended with: Planet Earth, The Milky Way, Space. Phoebe remembered the delight with which Ruth and Naomi had conjured up the very same address, and marvelled that her mother and uncle had thought of it too.
Rachel, in the darkest corner of the room, rifled through comics more than thirty years old; comics with names she had never heard of and prices she couldn’t believe. Gradually she became aware of a change about her, and looking up, saw her sisters staring at each other with tense, listening faces and wide open eyes. Big Grandma had stopped snoring.
There was a long pause of frozen stillness, and then they heard her turn in bed, and the snoring begin again, but their nerve was broken, and with silent panic they put down their books, crept on stiff and aching legs to the door, and scurried in fright back to their beds.
‘Did she hear us?’ whispered Rachel.
‘No. She’s still asleep. Go to sleep yourself.’
‘What about the door?’
‘I think Ruth closed it,’ whispered Naomi, pushing her little sisters into bed before departing, completely exhausted by the activities of the last two days and nights.
‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered to Ruth as she crawled beneath the bedclothes, but Ruth, still clutching the key to the storeroom door was already too near dreaming to bother answering. Naomi pushed her head under her pillow and tried to forget her sins, and was soon lost in a nightmare where she had to dig the cabbage patch all over again, and it took even longer than the first time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ruth woke, as she quite often did, to find herself sitting bolt upright, staring into the grey light of dawn, cold with fear from some slow fading dream. There was a pain in her right hand, and looking down she realised for the first time that she was gripping something hard. The storeroom key. She had forgotten they had ever been there, but now memory returned to her. How many hours had she been asleep? she wondered. It was still almost dark, but it would soon be morning she supposed. And it was the last morning; tonight they would be back in Lincolnshire, hundreds of miles from the hills and running becks and seascapes of Cumbria. Ruth abandoned all heroic thoughts of returning the key before Big Grandma woke up, and lay down to sob. A minute later she sat up again, and knew what had woken her. Smoke. She sniffed again. Definitely smoke. It smelled stronger lying down, but even when she sat up again it was still there. Reaching under the bed she pulled out the candle stump she had stowed after the escape from the storeroom, half expecting it to be still smouldering, but it was completely out. Peering across the room she could see Naomi’s, lying on the bedside rug beside the dark heap that was her best dress. What had Rachel done with hers?
Rachel’s candle had been forgotten. For a while it had stood gallantly upright by the pile of comics in the deserted room, and then it had slipped and fallen sideways so that the wax dripped hotly onto the open pages Rachel had left behind. A little later the flaming wick spluttered in the pool of candlegrease and the paper began to burn.
Slowly, because there was very little draught in the room, the comics charred and glowed, red in the centre, smoking but hardly flaming. All the same, by the time they were reduced to white,
harmless ashes, the wooden floor was alight. And then the fire was hot enough to burn cardboard, and then books.
Big Grandma’s sleep grew deeper and deeper as the smoke curled through the cracks around the door which Ruth had very fortunately closed as they left. Except for an occasional quiet crack as the new timbers of the garage split and burnt, the house was silent. Even the snoring had stopped.
By the time Ruth reached the door there was a blue haze of smoke hanging across the floor of Big Grandma’s room and Big Grandma herself, despite being leapt upon, shaken, and screamed at by her granddaughter, only muttered in her sleep and refused to wake up.
‘Is she dead?’ Naomi arrived coughing at the doorway, fending off Rachel and Phoebe who crowded behind her.
‘Doped by smoke, I think,’ panted Ruth, and together she and Naomi, taking an arm and a leg each, bumped Big Grandma out of bed and tugged her unceremoniously out onto the landing where Rachel and Phoebe, in the mistaken apprehension that she was on fire, poured tooth-mugs of water on her until she revived.
‘Get her and the kids downstairs,’ ordered Naomi, ‘while I phone for the fire brigade,’ and she closed the bedroom door and flung herself down the stairs, followed more slowly by Ruth, struggling to keep Big Grandma upright without losing sight of Rachel and Phoebe.
‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Big Grandma as they lowered her onto a kitchen chair.
‘The house is on fire,’ Phoebe told her gravely, but rather tactlessly under the circumstances. Big Grandma promptly complicated the situation by passing out.
‘Is she dead?’ It was Rachel who asked the question this time.
‘Fainted, I think. Help me prop her against the wall. Look, she’s coming round. Look after her while I find Naomi.’ Ruth dashed out of the kitchen again leaving Rachel trying to force Big Grandma to drink milk out of the milk jug while Phoebe reassured her by saying, ‘It’s all right – only the upstairs is on fire. Ruth and Naomi are sorting it out.’
‘Are the fire brigade coming?’ Ruth bumped into Naomi in the hall.
‘Be here any minute,’ Naomi replied. ‘It was awful. At first I couldn’t remember the address or anything. Is Big Grandma okay? Where are the kids?’
‘They’re all in the kitchen. Rachel and Phoebe are looking after her!’ Ruth spoke over her shoulder as she ran back up the stairs and Naomi followed after her, half guessing what she was going to do.
Ruth paused for a second at Big Grandma’s bedroom door. ‘I’m just going to try and get out some of her books. You stay here. You’ve got a broken arm.’
‘So what?’
‘So keep out.’ Ruth plunged through the blue smoke to the storeroom door and yanked it open. There was a bang like an explosion as the sudden rush of air fanned the slow fire into roof-high orange flames, and for a fraction of a second Ruth stared into a glare that was to stay in her nightmares for years. Then, with Naomi’s weight behind her, she crashed the door shut again and heard the floor of the storeroom fall through into the garage, and felt the old house shake as the garage roof tumbled down on top.
Down in the kitchen Rachel and Phoebe felt the crash and rushed to the foot of the stairs, calling for their sisters.
‘Something awful’s happened,’ said Rachel, as if something awful had not been happening for some time already.
‘I’m going up to see.’ Phoebe started up the stairs, and Rachel called, ‘Wait for me!’ and came running up behind, and there were Ruth and Naomi walking very slowly across the landing.
The sight of their little sisters stirred them back in to action.
‘You’re supposed to be looking after Big Grandma,’ yelled Naomi, turning Rachel round and running her back down the stairs.
‘What about her books?’ screamed Phoebe, trying to dodge under Ruth’s arm. ‘You know it’s all my fault!’ Ruth grabbed her round the waist and carried her, protesting, back into the kitchen.
The village arrived before the fire brigade, and even before they got there the fire was out, extinguished under the weight of the garage roof. Mr Brocklebank, up before dawn to start the milking, had seen the glow of fire on the hillside, and arrived with Mark and Peter at the kitchen door at the same moment as the girls staggered wearily in from the hall.
‘I don’t think she’s hurt or anything,’ Ruth said as she saw them go to Big Grandma. ‘She was all right a few minutes ago.’
‘She’s been drinking milk and swearing,’ said Rachel.
‘I’m fine,’ Big Grandma looked up and spoke for the first time as Mrs Brocklebank and a frantic Graham dashed into the kitchen, ‘What about … ?’
‘The girls are all here,’ reassured Mrs Brocklebank, with her arms round as many of them as she could hold.
‘What about my books?’ asked Big Grandma.
There was a shocked silence from the Brocklebanks, but not from Ruth and Naomi, nor Rachel and Phoebe. They stared at her in anguish, because they understood.
The fire brigade came and soaked the smoking ruins of the garage with hundreds of gallons of water. ‘Looks like you got off lightly,’ they said, ‘Nobody hurt and the fire hasn’t touched the old house.’
The police arrived, and, after hearing the story of how the fire had started, one of them remarked, ‘Somebody must have been watching over you last night. You’ve been very lucky.’ He got in his car to drive away, and then remembered something and came back to Ruth.
‘Never, never open a door on a fire,’ he said. ‘Haven’t they taught you that at school?’ and when Ruth shook her head, ‘Well, I’m telling you now! Promise!’
‘Yes, promise,’ she said humbly. He was a nice man, but Ruth had already learned his lesson earlier that morning and had no intention of doing it twice.
The doctor said, ‘Might have been a tragedy.’
‘It is,’ said Big Grandma.
‘Rubbish!’ The doctor had seen real tragedies and knew the difference. ‘Nothing that a good night’s sleep and the insurance won’t cure! Do you want a sedative?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘You’ve got some smashing little lasses there,’ he told her as he left.
All that morning, while people from the village cleaned the house, aired the rooms, took away smoky sheets and curtains to be washed and replaced them with fresh ones (some even from their own homes), stacked the tiles from the garage roof, brewed endless cups of tea and brought huge supplies of food, Big Grandma had to listen to the same remarks.
‘Chap that put that garage up put it up to fall down.’
‘Good job he did, bit of luck you hadn’t put the car in last night!’
‘And you little lasses got your gran out of bed and down the stairs! You saved her life there, you know!’
‘And one of you rang for the fire brigade!’
‘And then the big ones went back to try and get the books she keeps on about!’
‘And the little ones went to help them!’
‘But it was us that started it!’ protested Rachel through her tears. ‘It was my candle!’
‘It was me that got the key.’ Phoebe couldn’t look up for shame.
‘It was all of us,’ said Naomi.
‘And now we’ve burnt her books!’ and Ruth began sobbing again.
Mrs Brocklebank had telephoned the Conroys to say the girls wouldn’t be home that day after all, but would come on the following morning’s train. Now she returned to hug them again and say, ‘Get a good night’s sleep tonight, and go home smiling tomorrow! I’ve never heard so much fuss about a few books! Where’s Graham’s grandad got to?’
Graham’s grandad was telling Big Grandma comforting stories of great fires he had witnessed. They all ended in far greater calamity than Big Grandma had experienced, and were full of idiots who kept their life savings in sacks of paper money stuffed behind the stove, lit lanterns in stables and then got drunk and kicked them over, stacked their hay green, and smoked pipes in bed. ‘Didn’t even find their bones,’ Mrs Brocklebank he
ard him say as she came to fetch him home.
Graham lingered for a last few words.
‘I’ll not be seeing you before you go,’ he said. ‘That Sunday train leaves right early, and Mum says there’s been enough fuss. I’ll keep an eye on your gran.’
‘Thanks.’
‘She should have let you have them books in the first place.’
‘Don’t say that, she might hear you.’
‘Not bothered if she does. And I’ll see you next year.’
‘She’ll never let us come back. She really does hate us now.’
‘Will you write to us?’ asked Phoebe.
Graham, who would have cheerfully promised to rebuild the garage and bring Big Grandma to her senses, looked horrified at the proposal, but, as usual, found himself unable to refuse his friends’ unreasonable requests.
‘I don’t know. I might. If you write first.’
‘Yes.’
‘If I can think of anything to put. If I get time.’
‘All right.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
They watched him cycle away, saw him turn and wave, and heard him shout something over his shoulder.
‘What’s he say?’
‘Said he wasn’t marrying Rachel though,’ said Ruth.
‘I don’t suppose he wants to now,’ said Rachel sadly.
Nobody even smiled.
‘We’ve got to go in,’ said Ruth. ‘We’ve left her on her own too long as it is. We’ll have to try and say sorry.’
‘I think I heard her crying,’ said Naomi. ‘I’m sure she was when Mrs Brocklebank took her up.’
‘She was,’ Rachel nodded. ‘I saw her, and she saw me seeing her. I couldn’t help it.’
The door that had opened into the dark little storeroom filled with a lifetime’s collection of books now looked straight out onto the fellside, showing a picture of gold and purple heather and green waves of bracken. Big Grandma had opened the door, and now sat on her bed gazing silently through, while tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Big Grandma,’ said Naomi, ‘we’ve come to say sorry.’
‘Very sorry.’
