The Exiles

Naomi.
    ‘Well, we can’t just stay here!’
    Eventually they gave up trying to reason with her. She refused to turn round to move upwards, and she dared not go down. An hour and a half ago she had glanced casually behind her, lost her nerve, and not moved since.
    ‘She’s cragfast,’ diagnosed Graham. ‘I never heard of someone being cragfast before. I’ll have to climb round her and get her down from the bottom.’
    ‘You can’t,’ pointed out Rachel. ‘She won’t let anyone touch her.’
    ‘I’ll not touch her.’
    ‘You’ll fall off,’ warned Ruth. ‘Better let me see if I can get round her – I’ve got longer arms than you.’
    ‘I brought you here,’ said Graham, thinking of his fifty pence an hour and feeling responsible. ‘It’s not a big drop anyway.’
    Swinging himself over the ledge he climbed back down the path to the place where Naomi was stuck.
    Naomi screamed in a whisper without moving.
    ‘Be careful!’ chorused Ruth, Rachel, and Phoebe, as Graham stood with one foot on the outside edge of the rock, and swung his other leg into space.
    ‘Stand still!’ said Graham to Naomi, although standing still was all she had been doing for nearly two hours. A moment later he jumped right past her, landed on the step beneath, pushed himself off with his hands as he hit the quarry side, and half fell, half ran, down the steps to the bottom, landing on all fours.
    ‘Glad I cleaned that path up,’ he said.
    ‘Get your stick,’ suggested Ruth, but Graham was already running for it. It made a sort of outside banister rail for Naomi, with Graham holding one end two steps in front of her, and Ruth one step behind her holding the other. Then, with Ruth pushing encouragingly in the small of Naomi’s back, while Graham steadied her in case she stumbled, they got Naomi down the staircase.
    All the way down she made whimpering sounds, and when she reached the bottom she cried. Usually nobody ever saw Naomi cry – if she did it at all she did it alone and nobody knew anything about it. This time, however, she cried in public, very messily because she hadn’t got a handkerchief, and she didn’t care who saw her.
    Not knowing how to deal with a weeping Naomi made everyone very uncomfortable, and so they ignored her as best they could, running up and down the staircase to fetch forgotten items from the cave, and then returning for one last look. Finally, when Naomi’s tears showed signs of turning into mere commonplace sulks, they collected the picnic things and set off home.

    ‘Really, Graham!’ exclaimed Big Grandma when she saw them. ‘Ten and a half hours you’ve been gone, and your mother’s been ringing up for you!’
    ‘Call it ten,’ replied Graham generously. ‘Oh no, call it nothing! It’s all right, Mrs Sayers!’
    ‘A bargain’s a bargain,’ said Big Grandma, pushing something into Graham’s hand that Ruth caught a glimpse of.
    ‘Is that for coming with us?’ she asked in surprise.
    ‘What an idea!’ answered Big Grandma. ‘You must think I’ve money to waste! Where’s Naomi? Have you left her behind? And where did Rachel and Phoebe rush off to?’
    ‘They’re in the kitchen washing out the handbag, and Naomi went off down to the shed.’
    ‘Problems?’ asked Big Grandma.
    ‘Well,’ said Graham diplomatically, ‘I’ll be off.’
    ‘I think,’ said Big Grandma, as she watched Graham cycle away down to the village, ‘I smell a whiff of trouble in the air.’
    ‘I smell burning,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s coming out of the kitchen!’
    ‘That’s your tea,’ Big Grandma told her. ‘Burnt shepherd’s pie. We’ll have to scrape the top off. Go and set the table while I fetch Naomi.’

    ‘Shepherd’s pie,’ said Ruth to Rachel and Phoebe in the kitchen, and Rachel hurried to the cupboard under the sink to count the dog food tins.
    ‘How many?’ asked Phoebe.
    ‘Three. We can eat it.’
    ‘What if she bought some new tins and cooked it with them?’
    ‘She’d use the old ones first.’

    ‘Suppertime,’ announced Big Grandma to Naomi, pretending not to notice that Naomi was washing her face in the watering can. ‘Pull me a couple of lettuces please. And get some tomatoes out of the greenhouse.’
    ‘Don’t worry!’ said Big Grandma, when Naomi only sniffed and turned away. ‘I’ll do it myself. I’m only nearly eighty!’
    ‘You’re only seventy!’
    ‘Seventy is a difficult age,’ said Big Grandma, speaking more to herself than