The Exiles at Home Read online

  The snow stayed until almost the end of the holidays, prolonging the atmosphere of Christmas. With each fresh day of sunlight and snow showers and each night of frost and stars, the feeling of other-worldness increased.

  ‘This is the best Christmas ever,’ declared Rachel, who had been out from dawn to dusk, pulling a cargo of snowballs up and down the street. ‘How long do you think the snow will last?’

  ‘We’ve had snow in May before now,’ said Mr Conroy.

  ‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘I’m driving back to Cumbria tomorrow! Anyway, the temperature’s been rising all day and the weather forecast said rain for tonight.’

  The forecast proved to be correct. By morning the snow had gone, washed away by a combination of rain and Rachel’s tears. Big Grandma recruited her granddaughters to help with her packing.

  ‘Stay a bit longer,’ Ruth urged. ‘Stay till spring!’

  ‘Imagine how your poor mother would feel, if I did,’ replied Big Grandma. ‘Come and sit on this suitcase lid!’

  ‘She likes having you! We all do.’

  ‘Bounce!’ ordered Big Grandma. ‘That’s right. Now the other side. Where’s Naomi?’

  ‘She’s checking that your oil and tyres and lights are all right.’

  ‘Does she know how? Perhaps we’d better go down and supervise. Ruth, you can carry that, and that, and that, and those, and hook a finger round this little bag and check under the bed before you come.’

  ‘Do you have to go?’ Naomi, very oily and windswept, met Big Grandma in the hall. ‘Martin says the oil’s all right, and three of your tyres and one of your lights.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The outside one.’

  ‘Good enough for me,’ said Big Grandma cheerfully, ‘I’ll be home before dark. Cheer up, Naomi, you can have your room back! No more squirming on a camp-bed, being moulted on by the Christmas tree. Not that your bed is much more comfortable; it’s got a terrible sag!’

  ‘You could sleep in Ruth’s for a change,’ suggested Naomi.

  ‘It’s got loose legs,’ said Ruth, staggering up under a load of Big Grandma’s possessions, ‘but you can have it if you like. The legs only come off if you turn over quickly.’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Big Grandma. ‘At my age such novelties lose all their charm! It seems very quiet this morning. Where are Rachel and Phoebe?’

  Rachel was lying on the back seat of Big Grandma’s car, being dismal. ‘Everything nice is ending,’ she complained to Phoebe. ‘First it was the end of Christmas Eve, then Christmas Day and Boxing Day, then the end of the turkey and the Christmas cake, then the end of last year. And now it’s the end of the snow and Big Grandma and tonight it will be the end of the holidays!’ She frowned at her feet, resting on the inside roof of the car among a pattern of small black footprints. ‘Look, my trainers are all worn out! Nobody cares!’

  ‘I wish I had the keys,’ said Phoebe, sitting in the driver’s seat. ‘Naomi never checked the horn. I’ll be legal to drive in only ten years,’ and she pushed in the clutch and put the car in gear. ‘First, second, third, fourth, reverse. All I need are the keys!’

  ‘Big Grandma says you have to help pack!’ Naomi arrived and dumped a cardboard box full of books on Rachel’s stomach. ‘So you can open the car door when you see me coming with more stuff.’

  ‘Get that box off me, then,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Ask Phoebe,’ said Naomi, and dashed back through the gusty rain into the house.

  ‘It’s going to be hard getting your Christmas lawnmower in,’ Ruth said to Big Grandma. ‘Shall I take the tinsel off it?’

  ‘Certainly not, I like it very much. Help Naomi carry it out!’

  ‘Phoebe!’ croaked Rachel from the back seat, under her box of books. ‘I’m suffocating! I’ve fainted. I can feel my head going black!’

  ‘Here come Ruth and Naomi with the lawn-mower,’ remarked Phoebe, climbing out to open the boot.

  ‘Mind the tinsel,’ ordered Naomi, ‘Big Grandma wants to keep it. Look at your disgusting trainers, Rachel! You’ve piggled holes in both of them and you’ve paddled mud all over the roof!’

  ‘I didn’t piggle!’ said Rachel indignantly, unfainting for a moment. ‘They wore! Get this box off me!’

  ‘Phoebe will. We’re busy!’ said Naomi, and headed back to the house where Ruth was complaining to Big Grandma. ‘I wish I was going with you. There’s nothing to do here.’

  ‘You must think positively,’ said Big Grandma. ‘You girls have too easy a life, that’s your trouble! You’ve got bicycles and legs and brains, you ought to be able to entertain yourselves! You’re an unenterprising pair!’

  ‘You know it’s boring here!’

  ‘I haven’t been bored,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Put those two bags in the car, Ruth.’

  ‘How do you tell broken ribs?’ asked Ruth, on returning.

  ‘Tickle them,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Don’t forget my wellingtons, Naomi.’

  Ruth and Naomi together removed the box from Rachel’s stomach and tickled her broken ribs. Rachel screamed, but sat up quickly.

  ‘Told you they weren’t broken,’ said Naomi.

  ‘How do you know?’ demanded Rachel.

  ‘You’d be writhing in agony by now if they were.’

  Rachel writhed a bit, hoping to make her sisters feel guilty, but they had all disappeared indoors. She followed them and writhed again in front of Big Grandma.

  ‘Do you itch somewhere?’ asked Big Grandma.

  ‘It’s my broken ribs,’ Rachel told her crossly, as they all trooped outside.

  ‘Must be painful,’ said Big Grandma. ‘I’d better be off.’ She kissed Mrs Conroy. ‘Say goodbye to John for me, and don’t stand out here in the rain. Goodbye, girls! Be astonishing and good and brave. It’s been lovely; I’ll ring when I’m home.’

  She tooted her horn, and was gone.

  Damp and disconsolate, they trailed back into the house.

  ‘I don’t feel like going back to the ordinary world,’ grumbled Ruth.

  ‘What ordinary world?’ asked Phoebe.

  CHAPTER TWO

  School began the next morning and the Conroy house filled with chaos.

  ‘You have had weeks,’ complained Mrs Conroy to Naomi, ‘to pack your school bags and put PE kits to be washed, never mind homework . . . did you have homework? Now . . .’

  There was an enormous crash, followed by screams and tears, the sound of them shaking the whole house. Mrs Conroy groaned and ran; Ruth came in from the garden, listened briefly, said, ‘Oh,’ and began grating cheese for Broken Beak the blackbird; Phoebe looked up from her cereal and murmured, ‘Rachel.’

  ‘Fallen down the loo again,’ agreed Naomi, as the yells became more and more deafening. ‘Who put the butter right under my elbow? What gets butter off?’

  ‘Tar,’ answered Ruth, adding chopped raisins to the cheese, ‘or is it butter gets tar off? I don’t know. Do you think I’ve got enough food here to last him all day?’

  Naomi and Phoebe looked at the heap, considering.

  ‘There’s still a few dried-up mince pies he could have,’ said Naomi, ‘if Rachel hasn’t . . . gosh, listen to her!’

  ‘All right, Rachel !’ they heard their mother shout. ‘You won’t fall down the hole!’

  ‘Get me out! Get me out!’ Rachel continued to howl.

  ‘Do you think she could go down the hole?’ asked Phoebe. ‘Or not?’

  ‘Not,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Oh,’ said Phoebe, sounding very disappointed.

  Naomi scribbled a last random answer to her holiday homework. Ruth dashed into the garden to take Broken Beak his supplies and to shout to Martin-next-door, who was outside with Josh, ‘Martin! Make the bus wait for me and Naomi if we’re late.’

  Martin nodded, looked towards the house, grinned and asked, ‘Rachel again? I heard a lot of squealing.’

  ‘She’ll be out now, Mum went up to her,’ said Ruth, and rushed back in
.

  By standing on the lavatory and leaning carefully out of the bathroom window it was possible to see right along the road to the bus stop before theirs. It was Ruth and Naomi’s school-bus-early-warning system. They could do this quite easily, but Rachel had to stand on tiptoe and she never remembered to close the lid.

  ‘You Big Ones shouldn’t make her to do it,’ Mrs Conroy said crossly, down in the kitchen with Rachel in fresh socks. ‘It ruins her slippers and she might hurt herself! Not to mention the bathroom floor!’

  ‘They didn’t make me,’ said Rachel, ‘Naomi’s paying me. I’m saving up.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Things for my sledge,’ said Rachel vaguely.

  ‘You’re a disgrace,’ Mrs Conroy said. ‘You all are. And you’re going to be late again. Look at the time and none of you ready!’

  ‘I am.’ Phoebe remarked. She wore Rachel’s gloves and Naomi’s scarf and in her school bag was Ruth’s packed lunch. She dodged behind her mother when her sisters all pounced to ransack her.

  ‘The bus!’ ordered Mrs Conroy, pushing them out of the way. ‘Ruth, Naomi! Run!’

  They ran, out the house and along the street, racing towards the bus stop where Martin-the-good stood with one foot on the kerb and the other on the bus, very much annoying the driver, but doing as Ruth had asked.

  ‘I can’t manage this every morning,’ he grumbled, when the girls finally arrived. ‘It’s a really stressful way to start the day!’

  ‘We know. You are good. Tomorrow we’ll do it for you.’

  ‘You never will.’

  ‘One day anyway . . .’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘You are . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to keep saying it.’

  ‘Good.’

  Martin sighed. He couldn’t help it. He had no choice. He was good.

  The school bus gathered speed and overtook Rachel and Phoebe as, at snail’s pace, they plodded along the road to their primary school with their mother. Rachel and Phoebe waved excitedly. Ruth and Naomi pretended not to see them. Martin, who was kind as well as good, waved back.

  All along the bus, people were seated in pairs, copying each other’s homework. In the back seat, Egg-Yolk Wendy, the Charity Monitor, sat eating Gavin’s packed lunch.

  ‘Gavin’s my new boyfriend,’ she called along the aisle to Ruth. ‘I got him at the weekend!’

  Gavin stared at his knees in shame. Wendy unwrapped his chocolate biscuit and bit it in half.

  ‘Gavin, you idiot!’ said Martin. ‘Why’d you let her?’

  ‘I didn’t want it anyway,’ mumbled Gavin, referring to his biscuit.

  Ruth, sitting next to Naomi, gazed out of the window and felt strange. Sort of floaty and light and unencumbered. It was such an unusual feeling for a grey January day, that she could not understand it and wondered why. They were half-way to school before she realised.

  ‘I’ve forgotten my school bags,’ she announced, suddenly panic-stricken, ‘and my PE kit! Let me off! Let me off!’ she shouted to the driver.

  The bus screeched to a halt.

  ‘Somebody sick?’ called the driver, ‘If so, get out!’

  ‘It’s no good stopping,’ Naomi told him. ‘It’s too late now!’

  ‘Good Lord in heaven,’ said the driver. ‘If I have to clean this bus again. What a way to earn a living!’

  ‘And I’d even done my homework,’ Ruth said sadly, ‘no one will ever believe me!’

  Martin realized that the driver thought Ruth had been sick, and kindly wobbled up to the front of the bus to explain.

  Wendy, seeing that the journey was going to take longer than usual, thought she might as well eat Gavin’s apple but she said, ‘Do you like apples, Gav?’ before she bit into it.

  ‘Not much,’ said Gavin, too late to say anything else.

  The driver wondered about asking for a transfer.

  ‘How am I going to get through the day?’ Ruth asked Naomi as they arrived at school. ‘Why are you staring like that?’

  Naomi, looking at the sister properly for the first time that morning, demanded, ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look what you’re wearing!’

  Ruth looked down and there, tucked neatly into her school skirt, was her pyjama top. There was nothing underneath it, and no tie or jumper on top to disguise it.

  ‘Didn’t you wash this morning?’ asked Naomi, slightly shocked.

  ‘Of course I did! I must have put it back on again! Why didn’t you notice before? Why didn’t Mum? Why didn’t Martin, even? Why didn’t anyone?’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Naomi. ‘Pink with teddy bears! You couldn’t have chosen worse!’

  ‘I didn’t choose.’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to button up your blazer and wrap your scarf round tight,’ said Naomi.

  This Ruth did, and it worked fairly well until PE, when there was no way of hiding the pink teddy bears any longer. With no PE kit she couldn’t go outside to play hockey with the rest. Instead, she was sent to the library, a dim, chilly room, with a borrowed pen and scrap paper, and instructions to make a list of all she had forgotten that day and would remember the next. It was a long list, but not as long as a double PE lesson. Ruth looked around for something to do and decided that it was so cold, she’d collect all the books on Africa. She took them away to a dark corner beside the newspapers and tried to warm herself up by reading them. She spent all afternoon there and went home shivering. Mrs Conroy looked at her very suspiciously and put her to bed.

  ‘They’ve got it next door, too,’ she said. ‘Mrs Collingwood was telling me. The baby went down with it yesterday. Martin’s had it so she’s hoping for the best!’

  ‘Had what?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Doesn’t mean a thing, I told her,’ continued Mrs Conroy. ‘They catch it twice, as often as not. You’ll perhaps feel better when the spots come out!’

  ‘What spots?’ demanded Ruth.

  ‘Hanging round there all Christmas, borrowing that dog is what’s done it,’ said Mrs Conroy. ‘I must get downstairs; I’ve left cakes in the oven.’

  ‘Asking for what?’ Ruth called after her departing mother.

  ‘Trouble!’ Mrs Conroy called back to her. ‘Lie down and go to sleep!’

  It was Ruth’s third chicken-pox day; she was white with red dots. Her mother, saying she was less trouble in bed than out, was holding her captive in her bedroom. It was very lonely and she was glad when Naomi came in.

  ‘Mum’s been going on about our bedroom being a mess,’ Naomi remarked. ‘She sent me up to look at it.’

  ‘It’s only a mess in patches,’ said Ruth. ‘Bits of it are still tidy. I’m glad you came up. I wanted to ask you to do something for me.’

  ‘I’m too busy.’

  ‘You don’t know what it is yet!’

  ‘Much too busy to do anything,’ said Naomi firmly, ‘especially if I’ve got to clear all this up by myself!’

  ‘It won’t take any time, hardly. And this room doesn’t need clearing up, there’s still lots of tidy patches.’

  ‘Mum says I’m not allowed to upset you because of your temperature, so perhaps I’d better leave the mess anyway.’

  I am upset already, Ruth thought, and aloud she asked, ‘Naomi, will you get the post for me? I’m scared something might come for me and Mum or Dad’ll get it first.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Naomi. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Only written a letter, but I don’t want Mum or Dad to know. Couldn’t you grab the postman and get anything that comes for me?’

  ‘Funny I never noticed before,’ said Naomi, still gazing at the ceiling.

  ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘How tidy is it?’

  ‘Will you get the post for me, then? You’re not listening!’

  ‘I am. Tell me what the letter’s about. Is it about something disgusting, like those bones you collected last summer? Is that why Mum and Dad
can’t know? When did you send it, anyway?’

  ‘That awful first day at school, when I had to go to the library instead of PE. It was freezing cold, so I got out all the books on Africa to see if reading them would warm me up. And I looked at the newspapers from last year, and in that one that Big Grandma has, there was an advert.’ Ruth watched Naomi’s face out of the corner of her eye. ‘It said that for only ten pounds a month you can sponsor someone in Africa to go to school, and they write to you and you write back to them . . .’

  ‘I’d pay ten pounds a month not to go to school,’ remarked Naomi.

  ‘So I filled in the form,’ continued Ruth, ignoring her, ‘and sent off the money straight away.’

  ‘You’re nuts!’ said Naomi, suddenly waking up. ‘Anyway, what with?’

  ‘A pen from the lost-property drawer.’

  ‘I meant, what money?’

  ‘Big Grandma’s ten pounds,’ said Ruth, sighing. ‘You have to send the first month’s money and fill in a form to say you’ll sponsor whoever it is for at least a year, and say that you’re over eighteen.’

  ‘Well, you’re not!’

  ‘I know. But I ticked the box to say I was.’

  ‘So they’re going to write to you, and you have to send off ten pounds every month? And you’ve started it already!’ said Naomi, astonished.

  ‘I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. Or it wouldn’t be, if I had any money. But I can’t tell Mum, she’d be furious about me saying I was eighteen. So would Dad. They’ll say it isn’t honest!’

  ‘Well, it isn’t,’ said Naomi virtuously. ‘Anyway, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Just get the post, that’s all. Until I can get up again.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ agreed Naomi, ‘but it’s all I’m doing to help!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  For the next few days Naomi watched the post for Ruth, hanging round the gate until the postman came, and then volunteering to take the letters inside.

  Waiting for the post made Naomi even later than usual for the school bus every morning. The driver grumbled at Martin, who every morning heroically kept one foot on the kerb and the other on the bus. Wendy got very indignant and protested to Ruth that it made her late for everything. Even Gavin, the mildest of people, confided in a whisper to Martin that it gave his compulsory girlfriend more time than ever to eat his packed lunch. Martin passed on this complaint, together with several of his own, and Naomi in turn reported them all to Ruth, who was still confined in their bedroom, quite poorly but recovering slowly.