The Exiles

bye sweetheart, Mum and Dad XXX

    Naomi’s was rather more terse:

    Naomi! What a letter! I’m sure you did mean to sound nasty! Hope the weather is better and you have cheered up again. Do make sure the little ones change their clothes, if Grandma does not notice. She says you have been quite good, so perhaps a lot of your letter was exaggerated! I hope so! Write us a nice one!
    Love and kisses, Mum and Dad

    Ruth read:

    Dear Ruth,
    Daddy and I did laugh at your letter! A suitcase for your bones! I’m sure you haven’t read all Grandma’s books! Anyway, books are far too heavy to post! Do help Rachel and Phoebe about clothes, etc. I have said the same to Naomi. Glad to hear you are helping so much.
    Love and kisses, Mum and Dad

    ‘She’s not sending any books,’ Ruth passed her card over to Naomi and took Rachel’s to read.
    ‘She seems worried about your clothes,’ commented Big Grandma, ‘which is not surprising. Still, you all know where the linen basket is, so I shall leave what you wear to your own consciences.’
    ‘Our clothes are all the same,’ said Ruth, ‘clean and awful or dirty and awful. Show me your postcard, Naomi.’
    ‘S’private,’ said Naomi.
    ‘So is mine,’ Rachel remarked, ‘but you all went and read it.’
    ‘Because we knew you had nothing to hide,’ Big Grandma told her.
    Phoebe listened in silence while her postcard was read aloud to her, and later, while the others were washing up, she inspected the correspondence again, and carefully turned the brown paper envelope inside out. Eventually she was forced to conclude that her parents had once again forgotten to hand over her money. How they could forget, Phoebe found difficult to imagine. She remembered it all the time. She sought out Naomi for advice.
    ‘What d’you think has happened to it?’
    Naomi was inspecting a pair of shears in the garden shed, snapping the blades together with a professional air.
    ‘Stand still while I see if these are sharp enough.’
    Phoebe obligingly stood still while Naomi sheared off a few curls.
    ‘Sharp as sharp,’ Naomi said. ‘They’ve prob’ly spent it.’
    ‘’Course they haven’t. Give me a go.’
    Naomi handed over the shears and turned her back. ‘Only a bit then, like I chopped off you.’
    ‘I can’t reach. Bend down.’
    Naomi bent down and Phoebe sliced off an extremely large hunk of her hair.
    ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Naomi, grabbing the handful as it fell. ‘That’s ten times what I chopped off you.’
    ‘My hand slipped.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got to give me another go to make it fair. Stand still in case I slice your ears.’
    Phoebe clutched her ears in delicious horror while Naomi opened the shears to their widest extent and then snapped them suddenly shut as she glimpsed Big Grandma coming down the garden path.
    ‘Have you done it?’ Phoebe let go of her ears and opened her eyes.
    ‘No. Buzz off quick. Here’s Big Grandma!’
    Phoebe buzzed off by way of the broad bean rows, while Naomi hastily stuffed strands of hair into a bag of potting compost and tried not to look guilty. She always felt guilty when she met Big Grandma in the garden. Big Grandma had a hold over Naomi, and she had it because Naomi had eaten all the strawberries. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, so Naomi would wander down to the vegetable garden and stare at the plundered plants, willing more berries to grow and ripen. They never did. It was the end of the season for strawberries; those had been the very last. Always after Naomi had stared at the strawberry bed her attention would be caught by other things: raspberries and loganberries, peapods and radishes. And then Big Grandma would appear from nowhere and, whether Naomi was guilty or not, she always felt herself turning a bright, incriminating red.
    Big Grandma never said, ‘You ate the strawberries and trampled the plants into the ground.’ She never exclaimed, ‘Caught you at it!’ when she came across Naomi with her mouth full of raw carrot, or in the act of sampling the redcurrants. What she would say was, ‘I wish I could get my parsley weeded.’ Or, ‘How about raking all those potato tops together and putting them on the compost heap?’ and Naomi would find herself in for another spot of hard labour.

    This time Big Grandma merely remarked that the edges of the lawn needed clipping and that she had two dozen young lettuces in the greenhouse that needed planting out before they got too