The Exiles at Home

by Hilary McKay

  ‘We must be quiet!’ whispered Toby, nodding across to the armchair where Emma lay sleeping, almost obscured by cushions and rugs. Creakingly, he rose and shuffled across the room to blot out Emma altogether with another piece of blanket.

  ‘Bring your pictures,’ he told Naomi, and led her to the ice-cold kitchen. Naomi followed, after tiptoeing across the room to see that Emma had not been extinguished completely by her coverings. Toby sat at the kitchen table and carefully spread the paintings out before him.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’ asked Naomi.

  ‘Very bright and pretty,’ said Toby eventually, ‘but to be honest, my dear . . .’ he glanced up and saw Naomi’s face.

  ‘If you’d ha’ brought me these,’ he continued, ‘say, twenty, twenty-five years ago I’d have snapped these pictures up, and should Emma have wanted a garden so bad like she suddenly do now, I’d have planted the lot!’

  ‘Good,’ said Naomi, ‘but what about now?’

  ‘Twenty-five years ago,’ said Toby firmly.

  ‘I wasn’t here twenty-five years ago,’ said Naomi impatiently, ‘I was minus thirteen!’

  ‘Emma and me was seventy each,’ Toby told her mildly. ‘I tell you frankly, my dear, these roses and trees take such a time to grow, you wouldn’t believe.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Time you wouldn’t believe,’ he repeated, as Naomi bundled the pictures together and marched towards the door.

  ‘Well, why’d you want a gardener, then?’ she demanded.

  ‘What we need is fast flowers,’ continued Toby, producing a pencil and a bit of paper from the kitchen drawer. ‘Fast flowers! Straight from the packet and up in weeks! Annuals, you can scatter them anywhere and they flower all summer. What about that?’

  ‘S’pose it’s your garden,’ said Naomi ungraciously, ‘but I’d grow roses and honeysuckle and stuff.’

  ‘So would I,’ agreed Toby, ‘so would I. But you write these things down for me now. Six-week stocks and them nasturtiums that climb everywhere and poppies aren’t fussy, and them big blue morning glory things that grow up quick and bright, you make a list and nip into town for the seeds and bang ’em in and there we are.’

  ‘What about Ruth’s pictures?’ asked Naomi, at the end of an afternoon spent choosing the fastest, brightest, toughest seeds in the seed catalogue.

  ‘Emma would love a look at them,’ said Toby.

  ‘Even though it won’t look like that?’

  ‘It will still look grand, just grand another way.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Naomi, who was beginning to understand.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Ruth had arrived to meet her and was waiting impatiently at the garden gate. She pounced on Naomi as she came out.

  ‘He wants the garden packed full of flowers as soon as he can, any old flowers, so long as they’re there. He liked your pictures but he said they would take too long.’

  ‘What’s he done with them, then?’

  ‘Stuck them up on the kitchen wall.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ruth, as disappointed as Naomi had been, and she did not say anything else as they cycled home together.

  ‘S’pose it’s his garden,’ she admitted grudgingly, as they wedged their bikes into the garden shed. ‘Did you get paid?’

  Naomi pulled a ten pound note from her pocket. ‘Three for me and the rest for seeds to get us started. I’ve got a list. I said I’d get them after school. But . . .’ Naomi paused.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Naomi, looking very worried, had hunched herself down on to the lawn-mower.

  ‘Their bungalow,’ she explained. ‘It’s freezing cold in the kitchen and dismal in the living room and everything’s old and bare. There’s nothing cheerful except your pictures, and Toby and Emma are old too. He can’t bend down and they walk so slowly . . .’ She stopped speaking and stared at the ten pound note. ‘I don’t think they can afford me. I don’t like taking it.’

  Ruth lowered herself into a spidery corner, full of trowels and cobwebs and gnawed her knees in thought.

  ‘It’s all right for you. The Collingwoods are rich!’ said Naomi.

  ‘Too rich,’ said Ruth gloomily. ‘They’re going away for Easter. Italy! Before it gets too crowded! No money for three weeks! And fancy taking Peter to Italy! What a waste! It’s not fair.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead with Peter in Italy,’ said Naomi.

  ‘Neither would I,’ agreed Ruth, cheering up. ‘And you know if Toby and Emma want a garden, they have to pay someone. Might as well be you. Anyway, a pound an hour is very cheap, I bet. You cost less than the seeds!’

  ‘S’pose I do.’

  ‘When I can, I’ll come and help you and we’ll still only be a pound an hour and they’ll get even more money’s-worth!’

  Ruth scrambled to her feet and pulled Naomi out of the lawn-mower box. They trudged indoors, shedding cobwebs and grass cuttings all over the kitchen.

  ‘Where have you been, to get like that?’ asked Mrs Conroy.

  ‘Sitting in the shed.’

  ‘Sitting in the shed!’ repeated Mrs Conroy, ‘and Rachel has just come home covered in dog hairs and says she’s been sitting in Josh’s basket . . .’

  ‘Only for a minute,’ interrupted Rachel.

  ‘It only took a minute! Upstairs, all of you, and take the clothes brush! Where’s Phoebe disappeared to?’

  ‘Here,’ said Phoebe from beneath the kitchen table, where she had been studying Big Grandma’s reply to her letter.

  Dear Phoebe,

  Your train is worth more than ten pounds so if you break it you will be the loser. Therefore, until you have exhausted all possibilities do not break the train. At the moment the train and your money are both safe. I explained your difficulty to Graham and he suggested that you fish down the slit with very sticky chewing gum. He said Good Luck! Let us know how you get on!

  Love from Grandma (Big)

  Big Grandma’s letter was as plain as Phoebe’s had been obscure, and Graham had very kindly drawn a picture to illustrate how to fish with chewing gum. As a result, an afternoon’s fishing had left Phoebe dreadfully entangled, and with no money at all to show for it. Mrs Conroy, regarding her hands with disgust, ordered her upstairs with her sisters.

  ‘Naomi, turn the taps on for her and make sure she doesn’t touch anything!’ she called after them, ‘and make her wash in cold water: hot just makes chewing gum stick worse! I told you to take no notice of that letter, Phoebe! Your grandmother is ridiculous!’

  Rachel, waiting her turn for the bathroom while Ruth brushed grass cuttings off Naomi, saw something fall from Naomi’s pocket and pounced, but a moment too late.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ she asked, as Naomi stuffed the ten pound note back into her jeans. An awful suspicion seized her and hastily she clasped her front and was reassured to find her Post Office book still there. Over the weeks it had softened and moulded so comfortably to the shape of Rachel’s stomach that she could no longer feel it. It couldn’t be hers, so whose was it? ‘It’s out of Phoebe’s train!’ she guessed suddenly.

  ‘WHAT!’ exclaimed Phoebe, shooting, bright red and dripping, from the bathroom.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Naomi, allowing Phoebe to examine the note. ‘Look, yours was folded into squares; this one’s nearly new. Anyway, how would I have got it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Phoebe, suddenly gloomy. ‘Chewing gum doesn’t work.’ She pulled out Big Grandma’s letter and looked at it again. ‘How will I know when all possibilities have been exhausted?’

  ‘Course you’ll know,’ said Rachel, surprised to find herself for once the cleverest, ‘your train will be all smashed to pieces!’

  Toby was rather astonished the next Saturday to see that his gardening staff had suddenly doubled in size.

  ‘Ruth’s just come to read,’ Naomi explained, unloading a heap of library books from her bike basket. ‘We went to the library and got all these g
ardening books, so I’m going to garden and she’s going to read the instructions.’

  ‘You’re a bright lass to think of that,’ Toby told her approvingly. ‘There’s the key to the shed, where you’ll find the tools. I must go and get Emma started.’

  ‘Started?’

  ‘Wrapped up, like, to come out and see you. She’ve been looking at those pictures you made all week.’

  He disappeared indoors, leaving Ruth and Naomi to explore the shed, select a spade and bucket, and begin the task of giving Toby his money’s-worth.

  ‘Preparation of the ground,’ read Ruth, sitting on the upturned bucket. ‘The ground should be made ready during the winter months . . .’

  ‘Too late,’ said Naomi, ‘skip that bit.’

  ‘Liming and fertilizing . . .’

  ‘I don’t know what that is, so you’ll have to skip that as well.’

  ‘Preliminary digging . . .’

  ‘We haven’t got time.’

  Ruth turned the pages until she came to ‘Laying out a seed-bed, nursery beds and Accelerated seedling production’.

  ‘I’m not bothering with rubbish like that,’ said Naomi, busily pulling weeds from around Roger’s grave. ‘Find where you put the seeds in.’

  ‘It’s three chapters,’ said Ruth, finding it and settling comfortably on her bucket to read. ‘It begins, “One of the advantages of outdoor seed-beds is that they can be prepared and sown by semi-skilled staff . . .” ’

  ‘What a cheek,’ exclaimed Naomi. ‘Semi-skilled! Skip that bit!’

  ‘ “The land must be free from weeds, especially the perennial kinds, such as nettles . . .” ’

  ‘I’m freeing it,’ said Naomi, sitting down hard, as a dandelion unplugged rather quickly. ‘Go on a bit!’

  ‘ “If drainage is not good . . .” ’

  ‘Skip that, we couldn’t do anything about it anyway.’

  ‘ “Autumn sowing”, might as well skip that. What a useless book; I’ve skipped nearly all of it! You bash out the lumps while I pull the weeds up, that’ll be twice as quick!’

  By the time Toby and Emma appeared, they had finished one border and were ripping open packets of cornflowers and poppies and scattering the seeds.

  ‘Save the marigolds for Roger,’ Naomi reminded Ruth, ‘and I bought some runner beans out of my own money, to climb up the wall behind him.’ Emma, sitting on the chair Toby had brought out for her, nodded approvingly. ‘Nice and bright,’ she said, ‘but shallow-rooted! I don’t forget!’

  ‘No,’ said Naomi, extremely surprised.

  ‘I was one of the first Girl Guides, you know,’ Emma continued, ‘I should never have left! You were right!’

  ‘I was one of the last,’ said Ruth cheerfully.

  ‘One of the last?’

  ‘Well, I got thrown out!’

  This remark startled Emma so much that she looked several years younger.

  ‘Got thrown out?’ she repeated.

  ‘For bandaging,’ Ruth told her. ‘We had to do bandaging and I bandaged someone’s legs together and bandaged them to the table . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’ whispered Naomi.

  ‘Well, it was only Egg-Yolk Wendy,’ said Ruth unrepentently, ‘and when I’d bandaged her to the table she went on and on so much I bandaged her mouth shut . . .’

  Naomi glanced up from her weeding to see how Emma was taking these remarks and then bent down again, reassured. Emma, sighing and bowing on the kitchen chair, appeared to be laughing.

  Two weeks later the garden was transformed, dug and weeded and planted with seeds. Already, with not a single leaf or seedling showing, it looked a very different place from the neglected patch that Naomi had first visited. Between pocket money and Peter and gardening, Joseck’s money had been earned twice over.

  ‘We ought to keep the spare money for next month,’ said Ruth.

  ‘We needn’t,’ said Naomi airily, ‘we can always earn more. The Collingwoods will be back in a couple of weeks and that garden will always need gardening.’

  It was too tempting; it was so long since they had had any money to spend. The shops were full of Easter eggs; in one you could wait while they iced a person’s name on the egg of your choice. Egg-Yolk Wendy, clutching the unfortunate Gavin by the arm, was waiting in the queue.

  ‘Gavin’s getting my name put on an egg,’ she told them, smirking.

  ‘Poor you,’ remarked Ruth ‘can’t you stop him?’

  ‘Not very kind of you, Gavin,’ added Naomi.

  ’I suppose,’ said Ruth, ‘it’s nothing actually to be ashamed of.’

  Wendy let go of Gavin’s arm and looked at him uncertainly. Gavin, hovering on one leg in the doorway, glanced at his rescuers with sudden hope.

  ‘We’ve come to get one done for our little sisters,’ explained Ruth. ‘Rachel’s too old really, but she only sulks if she doesn’t get the same as Phoebe.’

  ‘She’s immature,’ said Naomi, but Wendy had already disappeared.

  Ruth moved to the front of the queue and said, ‘We want one egg with Mum and Dad on it please, and another with Rachel written on one half and Phoebe on the other.’

  ‘It’ll look all wrong in the box.’

  ‘They won’t care about the box,’ said Naomi cheerfully. ‘And one of those little pink rabbits with Gavin on please!’

  ‘We don’t normally ice rabbits,’ said the girl, ‘but I’ll do it anyway for a favour! That poor lad! I was watching through the window. She counted his money and dragged him inside!’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Naomi as they walked home, ‘if they have Easter in Africa.’

  ‘Well, they have Christmas.’

  ‘They must have, then. Look! There’s Gavin and Wendy! Give me that rabbit!’

  Ruth handed it to her, and distracted Wendy by the simple remark, ‘Your hair’s growing out at the roots,’ while Naomi planted the rabbit in Gavin’s school bag, where it was discovered with rage and suspicion by Wendy the next morning.

  ‘I bet they don’t have chocolate Easter eggs though,’ continued Naomi as if no interruption had occurred. ‘I wonder if Joseck’s got our letter yet? I wish they didn’t take so long to get there.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s reading it now,’ said Ruth, guessing exactly right.

  Dear Ruth and Naomi,

  I am glad to be your friend.

  Here are the answers to your questions.

  I have one brother. He works with my father. I have no sisters, but a little cousin, Mari.

  The animals we have are six goats and the chickens. In the hills there are deer and small cats and foxes and others I have not seen. The books I read are about many things. Science and other countries and sports. Here it not cold, like you have, but we have a fire at night sometimes. What are you doing in your country? Here we have already harvested beans. The boys in my class play football and Mari comes to play too. She is too small and we say no but she still comes.

  I am very happy to have your letter.

  Your friend in Kenya, Joseck

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rachel and Phoebe woke up at five o’clock on Easter morning and discovered, to their huge delight, that the Easter bunny had left his presents on the end of their beds.

  ‘Which will never happen again,’ said Mrs Conroy, later that disastrous day.

  ‘We were all right,’ pointed out Rachel.

  Between five o’clock and half-past six that morning, Rachel and Phoebe consumed three large chocolate eggs, one packet of marzipan ducks, one packet of peppermint cream rabbits, three bananas taken from the kitchen for no good reason that Rachel could give, two hard-boiled eggs, painted pink with their names on, and two cooking apples, raw, because they were thirsty. Strengthened by their efforts, and finding there was nothing left to eat, they went to see how Ruth and Naomi were getting on.

  Naomi was lying very curled up on the edge of her bed, clutching the pillow with one hand and looking strangely pale.

  ‘Happy Easter!’ said Rac
hel, bouncing on to her feet, ‘thanks for your Easter egg; we ate half each. Here’s yours from me, home-made at school.’ She pulled an oily parcel from her dressing gown pocket. ‘It’s made of coconut ice. We could do six little ones or one big one so I did you one big one! And Phoebe made one for Ruth.’

  ‘Where’s Ruth?’ demanded Phoebe. ‘She didn’t find her Easter egg. I hid it for a surprise for her up Old Teddy’s jumper and I’ve just looked and it’s still there!’

  ‘She must have slept with it all night,’ remarked Rachel. ‘Is it squashed?’

  ‘Just a bit melted!’

  Naomi had unwrapped her parcel and was gazing at a large greyish egg, splashed all over with paintbox-red dots.

  ‘We decorated them last night,’ said Rachel complacently. ‘Taste it!’

  Naomi broke off the smallest possible crumb.

  ‘Hurry up, it’s lovely!’

  ‘In a minute!’ snapped Naomi, so fiercely Rachel and Phoebe stared in surprise.

  ‘She’s in a mood,’ said Phoebe, and when Ruth pushed the door open and collapsed on to her bed, she asked, ‘Are you in a mood too?’

  ‘Shut up. Go away,’ said Ruth, and pulled her pillow over her head. Naomi pulled it away again to ask, ‘Were you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ve eaten all our Easter stuff,’ Rachel told Ruth. ‘We had a feast; we didn’t mean to, but then it didn’t seem worth stopping so we ate the hard-boiled eggs and ducks and rabbits that Big Grandma sent, to finish!’

  ‘Look under Old Teddy’s jumper, Ruth,’ said Phoebe. ‘I’ve put a surprise!’

  ‘Something in this room smells disgusting,’ said Ruth, not listening. ‘Really sweet and disgusting, I’ve been smelling it all night.’

  Phoebe lost patience and banged Old Teddy down on Ruth’s stomach so hard that he laid an egg, damp and rather hairy. It was suddenly too much for Ruth.

  ‘Where are they?’ asked Mrs Conroy, coming in a few moments later to see what all the noise was about.

  ‘Both in the bathroom,’ Rachel told her.

  ‘What have they been eating?’

  ‘Nothing, well, Naomi ate a bit of the Easter egg we made her. Ruth wouldn’t even look at hers, she shouted, “Get it out of my bed! Get it out of my bed!” and ran to the bathroom, and then Naomi ran after her!’