The Exiles

red under the dark green leaves. At home they had always been the rarest of fruits, bought for Sunday tea in summer, and eked out with ice cream. The smell of them, sweet and spicy in the warm sunshine, enticed Naomi to her knees, and there, bewitched, mesmerised, heedless of all possible consequences, she began to gather them.
    Much later a blackbird screamed and broke the spell and the sun went in – not behind a cloud, but behind the huge shadow of Big Grandma. She was standing behind Naomi holding a sack and a large, shiny-pronged fork.
    Naomi’s life – past, present and unthinkable future – passed in the traditional manner before her eyes. What was the sack for, she wondered, and also the very dangerous looking fork? Could she really, as seemed only too apparent, have eaten an entire bed of strawberries? And what did Big Grandma propose to do?
    ‘I am going to dig some potatoes for tea,’ announced Big Grandma, ‘and I would be grateful if you would come and pick them up for me.’
    ‘I’ve eaten all the strawberries.’
    ‘So I see,’ agreed Big Grandma with no apparent emotion. ‘Did you enjoy them?’
    ‘Yes, but they’re all gone,’ said Naomi, thinking with relief that Big Grandma was probably angry, but not dangerously so. ‘I don’t know what to do about it now.’
    ‘Potatoes,’ ordered Big Grandma, walking over to a patch of bushy plants. ‘Too late for anyone to do anything now you’ve eaten them. I don’t see what you can possibly do about it.’ She stuck her fork into the ground and lifted up one of the plants. ‘Not at this late stage.’ She shook the plant and threw it aside and Naomi stared in surprise to see a number of large, pale-skinned potatoes scattered on the ground.
    ‘You can pick them up,’ ordered Big Grandma, and obediently Naomi began to put them in the sack while Big Grandma stirred through the dusty earth where they had grown and uncovered more.
    ‘Rather a grovelling job,’ Big Grandma paused to watch Naomi scrabbling through the earth at her feet.
    ‘Rather a dangerous looking fork,’ said Naomi.

    Despite the fact that from the time they left the house, Ruth, Rachel and Phoebe could see the whole of the village, and even distinguish the particular white house that was the village shop, Ruth was determined to make full use of her map. Every time the clearly defined footpath crossed a stile or turned a corner Ruth fished it out, laboriously located their position, and after much twisting and turning made the path marked on the map line up with the one they were following. Then she would point triumphantly in the direction in which they were to proceed. By this means they reached their destination without once getting lost.
    The shop was peculiarly lacking in everything they wanted. It had no books, no comics, no toys, no crisps, and no ice cream, the man said, until Thursday. He was a small, ginger-haired man, very awkward, and he stood wringing his hands and blushing redder and redder as the list of what he did not sell was revealed to them. Eventually they bought chocolate, some dreadfully expensive butter, and three very vulgar postcards (those being the only sort he sold) which Phoebe insisted upon for her schoolfriends. All the while they were making their purchases two old ladies and an ancient man scrutinised them with great care and commented freely upon their observations.
    ‘They don’t look like their mother.’
    ‘Or their poor grandmother.’
    ‘Pity.’
    ‘Aye, she were bonny in her time. Good of her to have them. More than I’d want to do.’
    ‘They look a right handful.’
    ‘They looks,’ said the old man loudly, ‘like that miserable, useless, nowt of a lad of hers!’
    ‘Robert was a nice lad,’ said one old lady.
    The old man examined the price of a packet of biscuits, snorted, and remarked, ‘Robbery!’
    ‘They look like they’ve been poorly, all scrag, poor lasses!’
    ‘We’re not!’ snapped Ruth indignantly.
    ‘Bit of a temper, that one!’
    ‘All the same at that age.’
    ‘Robbery!’ shouted the old man, who had lost interest in the girls, ‘No wonder they all goes to the snooper markets!’
    ‘Forty-seven pence isn’t much,’ said Rachel, examining the label he was thumping with his thumb.
    ‘Not much!’ he exclaimed. ‘They used to be thru’pence a pound!’
    ‘They didn’t,’ said Phoebe belligerently. “What’s ‘thru’pence’ anyway? Stop poking me with them!’
    Ruth, realising