The Exiles

grey shoals.
    ‘It’s very nice,’ she said inadequately.
    ‘Very,’ agreed Naomi, thinking how swiftly her legs had changed from feeling like jelly to feeling like stone. ‘What do we do now?’
    ‘Go back,’ answered Big Grandma airily. ‘What else? Stay here? Can if you like. Last one down gets the tea!’
    ‘No wonder, no wonder,’ cursed Ruth and Naomi as they staggered down the mountain in Big Grandma’s glorious wake, ‘no wonder Uncle Robert ran away!’

    The first day was nearly over. Rachel and Phoebe were helping Big Grandma wash the tea things. Try as they might they had not been able to eat as much as Ruth and Naomi, especially Naomi. Big Grandma’s kitchen sink was set between two draining boards, and Big Grandma was putting washed cups and plates alternately on each board so that they could race. Rachel had already broken a saucer.
    Ruth and Naomi’s room, at the front of the house, shone with a gold and orange light that was pouring in through windows that faced the evening sun. Naomi was lying on her bed, finishing the last of the books that they had brought from home. When they left they had each been allowed to choose two books and this scheme had been a dreadful failure. The selecting of the books had been desperate work.
    Phoebe had decided on an enormous colouring book, and also a story about a rabbit named Nicholas who lived, unnaturally, in a hollow tree. In spring this animal watched the flowers grow; in summer he spoke once, briefly, to a bee; in autumn he detachedly observed the falling of the leaves; and in winter, with the first deep snow, he put on striped pyjamas and went to bed.
    ‘And died of boredom,’ thought Naomi, discarding Nicholas.
    Rachel’s contribution was a book of Russian folktales. Somehow, nobody had ever been able to read this book; it might have been written in the original Russian for all the progress anyone ever made. As well as this Rachel had brought a Bible, this being the only other book she owned that she had never read.
    Ruth had chosen a natural history book, beautifully illustrated, but containing few words, and also a cheerful little paperback, of which they were all very fond, which dwelt, in unflinching detail, upon the nutritional habits of man-eating tigers.
    In a last minute panic, Naomi had grabbed The Treasure Seekers . Everyone, even Phoebe, knew this book so well that they could recite whole chunks of it, but still, at least the book was rereadable. But not indefinitely. Naomi sighed, and slung it under the bed to join Nicholas. She was left with the awful choice of Bridge For Beginners , which she had been led to believe was an interesting game for four (if only she could understand the instructions), or plunging, straight after a large meal, into the grisly charms of the tigers.
    At that moment the door was kicked open, and Ruth arrived bearing a heap of cookery books.
    ‘All I could find,’ she reported, dumping them on the nearest bed. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. Big Grandma’s in quite a good temper though; she said she’d find us something better.’
    ‘As I have,’ remarked Big Grandma, materialising in the doorway in her usual unnerving manner. She carried three large volumes with her, and she dropped two of these on top of the cookery books.
    ‘Let me know when you’ve finished them, and I’ll find you something else,’ she said blandly, disappearing in the direction of Rachel and Phoebe’s room.
    ‘ The Annotated Shakespeare ,’ read Ruth and Naomi in despair. ‘A. L. Rowse.’ Naomi had the Tragedies and Romances , and Ruth the Histories and Poems . Rachel and Phoebe, as if in recognition of their youth, had the Comedies to share.
    ‘I’ve tried reading Shakespeare before,’ said Naomi. ‘It’s impossible.’
    ‘It must be possible,’ Ruth did not sound very convinced, ‘plenty of people do. I expect you get used to it.’
    ‘What’re the cookery books like?’
    Ruth inspected them critically. ‘Very greasy. Finger-marks all over and the covers coming off!’
    ‘I’ve got to read something,’ Naomi said, and followed by Ruth she staggered down to the kitchen to find Big Grandma.
    ‘Children’s books?’ asked Big Grandma, rolling the words like a curse. ‘What on earth would I be doing with children’s books?’
    ‘Well, from when Mum, and er …’ Naomi remembered that Uncle Robert was not to be mentioned.
    ‘Your children,’ supplemented Ruth hurriedly, ‘any of their books from