The Exiles

by Hilary McKay

  ‘I told you we’d lose it,’ said Rachel.

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I knew we would anyway.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ demanded Ruth. ‘We could have put a mark or something. What’s the good of saying you knew we’d lose it when it’s lost?’

  ‘Naomi will know where it is,’ said Phoebe hopefully. ‘She chose the place to dig. Let’s go home and get her.’

  Naomi was still gardening, planting out the last of the lettuces.

  ‘They don’t look like lettuces to me,’ commented Ruth. ‘I bet they’re weeds and it’s one of Big Grandma’s jokes. Why are you doing it anyway?’

  ‘Because I want to,’ Naomi answered. ‘Look where you’re treading! You’ve squashed that one flat already.’

  ‘It’s only bent. I just knocked it. Stop digging for a minute, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it if someone trod on you and then said you were only bent!’

  ‘I wouldn’t care. Listen. Do you remember where we buried the cooking things yesterday?’

  ‘Of course I do. Anyway, we left that handle sticking up.’

  ‘It’s not sticking up now,’ said Ruth sadly. ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’

  ‘Big Grandma says it’s dinner time,’ shouted Rachel, running down the garden path to find them. ‘And that boy Graham’s come to visit and Big Grandma asked him to stay and he’s telephoned his mum and she says he can. But come quickly. I can’t stop Phoebe being awful to him and I thought you said we’d got to be nice because of his books!’

  Ruth and Naomi immediately, hurried to the rescue and found Graham laying the table in the kitchen as if he had lived there all his life. He took no notice of Phoebe, who was pulling her face into a pig-like expression, and making grunting sounds. Ruth and Naomi looked at each other and then at Phoebe, and the next thing she knew she was lying on the living room floor, gagged with a tea towel.

  ‘Listen, you horrible brat!’ whispered Naomi. ‘You behave! We want to borrow his books for one thing.’

  ‘And find out if he can remember where we were yesterday,’ added Ruth.

  ‘If you don’t stop being so awful,’ threatened Naomi, ‘we’ll take you away to somewhere and abandon you.’

  ‘Nod your head if you’re going to behave,’ ordered Ruth.

  Phoebe nodded, pulling awful faces, and the tea towel was removed.

  ‘Pigs,’ she said.

  Graham was mixing salad when they returned to the kitchen.

  ‘How does Graham know where everything is?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘He often spends a day up here with me,’ explained Big Grandma. ‘He helps me in the garden. Put that tea towel aside for washing, Ruth. It won’t be fit for anything now. I hope you did a good job with it,’ she added, looking at Phoebe as she spoke.

  In spite of the good job done on Phoebe the meal wasn’t a great success. Phoebe sulked, and Big Grandma suddenly remembered why they had gone down to the beach that morning.

  ‘I take it you found my belongings?’ she asked them.

  ‘They were just where we left them,’ said Ruth truthfully.

  ‘We left them there for next time,’ added Rachel bravely.

  ‘I want them back,’ said Big Grandma. ‘They’ve lost my frying pan, Graham, and they think I’m a fool. What do you make of that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Graham.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Big Grandma, ‘and I think they had better be careful!’

  ‘You said you could remember,’ accused Phoebe.

  ‘Well, I can’t now,’ snapped Naomi, staring helplessly around the beach.

  That day a battle began in which Big Grandma attacked, demanding her property, and Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe skulked, evaded, lied, and finally starved. Big Grandma chose the weapons, and the weapon she used was hunger.

  For three mornings running Big Grandma gave them raw potatoes and bacon for dinner, to take down to the beach and cook.

  The first day they ate sweets from the shop until they felt sick, smuggled the potatoes into the garden shed, and found, to their great surprise, that they couldn’t bring themselves to throw the bacon away. In the end Ruth took it to bed with her, and later crept downstairs in the dark and sneaked it back into the fridge.

  The second day the shopman said he’d been asked not to sell them so many sweets, and they got very hungry, although not hungry enough (they discovered) to enjoy eating raw potatoes. That day the bacon went to a black and white collie dog, chained to a gate with a barrel for a kennel.

  ‘It’s not wasted if he eats it,’ said Ruth, unwrapping the package. The dog took the bacon politely in his mouth, and they waited eagerly for him to swallow the evidence, but instead he spat it out, sighed deeply, and appeared to go to sleep.

  ‘Perhaps he’ll bury it,’ said Ruth hopefully.

  On the third raw bacon day they realised that they would have to ask for outside help, and they hung around the village waiting for Graham. He didn’t turn up, and eventually they got so hungry they decided they would have to go to the house where he lived and ask for him. Ruth and Naomi were unable to force Rachel and Phoebe to do this, so they had to go themselves.

  ‘Two young lasses for our Graham,’ shouted a man into the house when he heard their request. He winked at them as Graham came out. ‘Didn’t know you were courting, Graham!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Graham. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘You, of course,’ said the man, slapping him on the back and winking again at Ruth and Naomi as he left them.

  It was very difficult to explain to Graham exactly what they wanted him to do. ‘You never did!’ he kept repeating as they told him the story of the buried cooking things. It seemed he couldn’t believe that anyone could be so foolish, and he couldn’t help letting them see how much he admired Big Grandma’s resourcefulness. In the end, however, he consented to walk down to the beach with them, and ten minutes later was looking very pleased with himself as the saucepan, frying pan, bucket and all its contents reappeared on the beach. Phoebe, who had been very rude indeed about Graham’s ability to help them, was so impressed she smiled at him.

  ‘Would you like to stay to lunch?’ asked Ruth, feeling it was the least they could offer.

  ‘Had mine,’ said Graham. ‘Shouldn’t mind another one though,’ he added as his natural curiosity overcame his fear of poisoning.

  ‘We didn’t bring the matches,’ discovered Rachel.

  ‘I’ve got some,’ said Graham, feeling more and more like a hero every minute, and then he knew the best way to light a fire, and how to bake tomatoes by threading them on sticks, and had a knife so sharp it cut and trimmed those sticks with the utmost ease. By the time they had finished he had forgotten they were enemies, and was enjoying himself very much. Graham was the youngest in his family, and didn’t often have an admiring audience. After he had told the girls everything he knew about campfire cooking, he went on to everything he knew about sheep dog training, together with instructions on how to manage a flock of sheep. When he paused for breath Naomi asked him about tractors and that started him off again. Rachel fell asleep on the warm sand and Phoebe wandered off to look for treasure, but Ruth and Naomi, who had much more stamina, needed things explaining about quad bikes. When he finally said that he had to go, they thanked him for saving them from starving.

  ‘And telling us about the sheep and your dogs,’ said Ruth.

  ‘And tractors,’ agreed Naomi, a bit wistfully. She would like to have driven a tractor.

  ‘Good thing you had matches,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Any time,’ said Graham the heroic, ‘any time you need anything. Ask.’

  ‘Could you lend us some books?’ said Naomi, asking at once, and very suddenly. ‘Any old books would do, just something to read?’

  ‘Books?’ asked Graham startled. For a few seconds he couldn’t imagine why they wanted books; he himself had almost forgotten such dismal scho
ol day things existed. ‘What for?’ he asked, and then suddenly remembered Mrs Sayers’ description of her granddaughters. Too many books, she had explained, were one of the chief causes of the girls’ inability to behave with any common sense. She planned that summer to reform them.

  ‘Books to read,’ explained Naomi as patiently as she could.

  ‘Well,’ said Graham, unsure of what to do. After all, he didn’t want to reform anyone, he wanted to carry on being a hero. ‘Well, I’ll have to ask Mum. She’s a great one for reading. See you now.’

  With that he turned his gallant back on them and escaped as fast as possible.

  ‘Did we worry him?’ asked Ruth. ‘He seems in an awful hurry.’

  ‘He didn’t want to be roped into carting this lot back,’ guessed Naomi, looking round at the heaps and heaps of things that needing carrying up the hill.

  ‘It’s going to be awful,’ said Ruth, but in the end it wasn’t because Big Grandma appeared with the car saying she happened to be passing.

  ‘Passing what?’ demanded Rachel, since even she could see that the road was a dead end that led to nowhere but the beach.

  ‘She was being nice,’ said Phoebe, ‘weren’t you, Big Grandma?’

  ‘Perish the thought!’ said Big Grandma, cheerfully.

  ‘You are sometimes nice,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Oh am I?’

  ‘You think we can’t tell,’ said Phoebe. ‘But we can.’

  ‘Oh can you?’

  ‘You are being nice NOW,’ said Phoebe accusingly. ‘You’re smiling!’

  ‘Never!’ growled Big Grandma, and she drove them back doing scary James Bond sound effects round all the corners.

  ‘Home,’ said Rachel with satisfaction, when they finally arrived, and for the first time ever it really did feel a bit like that. Like coming home.

  ‘Anyone who likes,’ said Big Grandma, ‘can wash my car.’

  So that was what they all did next.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Graham didn’t rescue them with books. Not unless three grubby magazines dumped on the front doorstep, with a note saying, Mum doesn’t want them back counted as books. Ruth discovered them, and she took them into the garden, where Naomi was weeding radishes and not letting anyone help.

  ‘Three old lady magazines!’ said Naomi, when she saw them. ‘He didn’t even try.’

  ‘He tried a bit,’ said Rachel, disappointed but fair, and Phoebe added, ‘Perhaps farms don’t have books.’

  ‘Phoebe,’ said Ruth impatiently. ‘He lives in a house. Not out in the fields with the sheep. A house, with doors and windows and tables and …’

  ‘I know what a house is,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Well then,’ said Naomi. ‘Face it. Ruth’s right. He just couldn’t be bothered.’ Neither she nor Ruth could imagine a house without books, anymore than a kitchen without plates, or school without desks. She thumbed through one of the magazines with a grubby hand.

  ‘It’s nearly all about knitting!’ she said crossly. ‘Not even a problem page, and all the quizzes are filled in.’

  ‘And there’s no books coming from home either!’ said Ruth. ‘Too heavy to post! They’ve got plenty of money.’

  ‘They’re spending it all,’ said Naomi. ‘They’ll probably have nothing left by the time we get back.’

  ‘We ought to save these until we’re nearly going mad,’ decided Ruth. ‘At least they’re better than cookery books and Shakespeare.’

  ‘I am nearly going mad,’ said Naomi. ‘Pass me another – this one’s useless.’

  Squatting in the radish row, and hunched on the stony path, Ruth and Naomi read their entire summer’s supply of literature in just under an hour.

  ‘If I was prime minister,’ said Ruth, very forcefully, ‘I’d make there be libraries in every town and every village. I’d make it the law.’

  Big Grandma, who had been half listening while she picked runner beans, paused to look across at them.

  ‘Very expensive,’ she remarked, ‘building libraries in every village.’

  ‘They needn’t be built,’ said Naomi crossly. ‘They could be in places already there. Shops and churches and empty rooms in schools. Pubs. Barns on farm. Railway stations.’

  ‘And where would the books come from?’

  ‘Everybody in the country would have to pay for a book every year. Or two books if they were rich. And no books if they were poor.’

  ‘And the librarians?’

  ‘Same as the books,’ said Naomi.

  ‘What if nobody wanted these libraries?’

  ‘They would,’ said Ruth. ‘Anyone would, if they’d paid for them and they were there. Besides, you could make another law. To say everyone in the country has to read a book every week. There’s laws about driving cars and sending people to school and not pinching things; there’s millions of laws. If I was prime minister I’d just make another. About books.’

  ‘Well, I’d vote for you,’ said Big Grandma cheerfully.

  ‘You!’ exploded Naomi. ‘You haven’t got any books!’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘All those beautiful useful cookery books! The complete works of Shakespeare, annotated and illustrated! Of all the graceless remarks I have heard this summer … !’

  She didn’t finish the sentence. Instead she collected her basket of beans and stalked off down the garden path leaving them bursting with indignant replies.

  ‘Now she’s furious,’ commented Ruth, but Naomi, more observant, said, ‘No she’s not; she’s laughing.’

  ‘Bonkers, mad, raving old nutter,’ said Ruth, and they both agreed about that.

  If they couldn’t read, they could write. It wasn’t the same, but it worked a little. It was words on paper, at least.

  Dear Everyone,

  We got your postcards thank you, so this is a nice letter like you said to send. They are all saying, Naomi, write this for me if you are writing to Mum because they are all too busy (they say). Ruth says it is true that we cannot have read every one of Big Grandma’s books, but didn’t you know no one can read Shakespeare? We have read all the cookery books. Ruth says not to worry about Rachel’s clothes because Big Grandma has started taking them off her when they are terrible. Phoebe wears clean ones all the time, anybody’s, not just hers so you don’t need to encourage her.

  It is quite good on the beach. We’ve been in the sea a lot and you know how well Ruth can swim, well yesterday she swam right out so far she was invisible. We waited quite a long time until we thought she wasn’t coming back and we were just packing up to go home when we suddenly saw her. She was a bit soggy and she couldn’t walk very well, but when she could breathe she said: I swam half way to the Isle of Man. England was on one side and the Isle of Man was on the other and they looked both the same size so it must have been half way. We told Big Grandma who was cross (as usual) (about some bones under Ruth’s bed) and she said: Why Did You Come Back? Ruth said next time she wouldn’t. But it would be lovely if she could swim all the way, only it is too far to swim there and back (she says). If you sent the money she could do it and get a boat back.

  We have met a boy called Graham. He’s going to teach me to drive a tractor.

  It was awful here when it was raining but it’s a lot better now. But Big G. is still a slave driver. Rachel and Phoebe are chopping off each other’s heads with the firewood axe.

  Love, Naomi

  Naomi finished this well-intentioned but alarming letter to her parents and turned to see what her sisters were doing.

  ‘Are we having a nice time?’ asked Rachel, looking up from the diary which she had recently begun to keep.

  ‘You’re supposed to write your own ideas in a diary,’ Ruth told her, ‘not everyone else’s. I wish you’d let me see it. Why don’t you?’

  ‘It’s secret.’

  ‘It’s going to be yours and Naomi’s shared Christmas present,’ explained Phoebe.’Rachel told me. I’m having a nice time. You can put that in if you li
ke.’

  All by herself Phoebe had acquired a new hobby. It was her own invention, nobody had helped her, nobody but Phoebe would even have thought of it. You filled a bucket with water, tied a bit of string on the end of a stick, held the stick over the water, and there you were. Fishing in a bucket. The total hopelessness of the activity was very soothing. It was the perfect sport. It was all about the pleasure of the moment. There were no winners or losers with fishing in a bucket, there were no rules, and it wasn’t possible to cheat. The fisher in the bucket could do things that ordinary fishermen only dream of. They could stir the water vigorously with their fishing rod and do no harm at all. They could carry their bucket to any more convenient site. As a last resort they could chuck the whole lot away, in favour of another bucketful.

  Phoebe’s sisters said she was mad. Phoebe, dreaming over her bucket, didn’t care.

  Rachel was writing a diary of the summer holiday. At first she had considered the idea of going back to January, when most diaries begin, but she had decided not to bother. Anyway (owing, no doubt, to the fact that she had not kept a diary), she couldn’t remember anything that had happened in January.

  ‘The First Day’, she wrote at the top of page one, and carefully underlined it. Her pencil, tooth marked right down to its point, bit into her fingers as she thought backwards in time until she reached the tins of dog food she had discovered under the kitchen sink. Were they still there? And what if they weren’t? There had been more than one steak pie served in the house since they’d arrived, and Rachel had always eaten her fair share, more if she could get it. What if they had been dog food pies after all? Shoving her diary under the hedge, Rachel hastened to the kitchen to check.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Naomi who had followed her into the house.

  ‘What are you doing yourself ?’ questioned Rachel, and she paused searching in the dog food cupboard to watch as Naomi carefully ran the hot tap over the corner of her mother’s envelope.

  ‘Nothing.’ Naomi peeled off the stamp, positioned it carefully on her own envelope, and hammered it firmly with her fist.