The Exiles

missed seeing that anyway.’
    Everyone stared in the direction he was facing.
    ‘Can’t see anything. Are you still looking at it?’
    ‘No,’ replied Graham. ‘I’ve got my eyes shut now!’
    ‘Be like that then,’ said Naomi crossly. ‘See if we care!’
    ‘Who’s sulking now?’ asked Graham triumphantly. ‘You just follow me. I’ll show you.’
    He led his suitably humbled party behind the elder tree that screened the cave, and pointed upwards. Above the lowest part of the opening, separated by about twelve feet of slaty quarry face, was a second, smaller cave. A steep path, rather like a broken stairway, led diagonally up to it.
    ‘That’s upstairs,’ said Graham, once more the knowledgeable guide. ‘I never showed that to your gran. I never showed anyone before.’
    ‘Why are you showing us then?’ asked the honoured few.
    ‘I’m soft-hearted,’ said Graham. ‘Are you coming up?’
    ‘After you,’ said Ruth politely, although Rachel and Phoebe were already scrambling above her.
    ‘I’ll go last,’ said Naomi, who was developing a strange tingling sensation in the soles of her feet.
    Ruth and Graham followed Rachel and Phoebe up the path. It was so solid and the steps so evenly placed that despite its narrowness they could walk up it without needing to use their hands.
    ‘I cleaned this up,’ remarked Graham. ‘Took out all the loose bits and weeds and made it firm. Shove up a bit,’ he added to Rachel, who was perched on the top step swinging her legs over the side.
    A broad ledge spanned the cave’s entrance which, in comparison with the huge cavern beneath them, was very small, not high enough to stand up properly and only a few yards deep. Only the very back of the cave was in shadow. The afternoon sun shone straight in and filled the cave with light. It was like sitting in a swallow’s nest.
    ‘Good, isn’t it?’ asked Graham proudly. ‘Better than that old hole downstairs. You can see for miles.’
    ‘Does no one ever come to the caves but you?’
    ‘Not that I know of. Except that time I brought your gran. And my brothers used to, but they don’t bother any more.’
    ‘What did she want to come for?’
    ‘Why shouldn’t she?’ asked Graham reasonably.
    Rachel, gazing out to sea to where the Isle of Man lounged small and blue against the horizon, remarked, ‘That’s where we’re going to swim to.’
    ‘Ruth is,’ corrected Phoebe.
    Ruth hoped that Graham would denounce the idea as impossible, and perhaps know of people who had died in the attempt, but he was too full of picnic and sunshine to argue.
    ‘Oh aye?’ he said, and added that he could not swim.
    Ruth tried to comfort herself with the thought that perhaps swimming trips to the Isle of Man were so common in this part of the world, that they had become hardly worth remarking on. If that were the case it would certainly take away from the glory of the achievement. Always supposing she succeeded.
    ‘When’re you going to teach Naomi to drive a tractor?’ she asked, changing the subject.
    Graham sighed. ‘I asked my dad about that and he said we weren’t insured.’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    ‘If she came off and got killed or something it would.’
    ‘Well, she wouldn’t. Anyway, what difference would it make if she did?’
    Graham had asked his father more or less the same question and not understood the answer.
    ‘Perhaps we mightn’t be able to claim for a new tractor.’
    ‘Oh.’ Ruth hung over the edge to peer down the stairway and see how Naomi had taken this news. She could see her halfway up, standing with her back to them.
    ‘Come on,’ said Ruth, dangling over the brink like a stringy Rapunzel.
    ‘I can’t,’ said Naomi.

    For a long time Graham and Ruth and Rachel and Phoebe sat in the cave saying, ‘Can’t you just turn round and come up?’
    ‘It’s dead easy, Naomi.’
    ‘Have you hurt yourself ?’
    ‘Even Rachel did it!’
    ‘Are you mad about something?’
    ‘What?’ asked Naomi, who hadn’t heard a word.
    ‘Shall we come down and give you a hand?’
    ‘Don’t come near me,’ said Naomi. ‘You’ll knock me off.’

    After about an hour, during which Naomi had not moved a muscle or spoken one rational sentence, they began to get impatient.
    ‘Look here, Naomi, it’s getting late!’
    ‘None of us can get down while you’re there!’
    ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
    ‘Why not let someone come and help you?’
    ‘Don’t come near me,’ said