The Exiles

to herself.
    ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t understand,’ thought Phoebe.
    However, when they reached the beach even Rachel and Phoebe were slightly shocked to see Naomi struggling, one armed, into her swimming costume.
    ‘She said not to get your plaster wet,’ pointed out Rachel.
    Ruth and Naomi ignored her. They were doing something with plastic bags and elastic bands.
    ‘Hope it works,’ said Naomi.
    ‘Plastic’s waterproof,’ Ruth answered, ‘and they haven’t got any holes in, I’ve checked. Anyway, what would happen if it did get wet?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Naomi, thinking hard. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen people with broken legs out in the rain.’
    ‘She said “Behave yourselves”,’ said Rachel when she realised what her sisters were doing.
    ‘She said “Wash your feet”,’ said Naomi. ‘So shut up and go and wash ’em.’
    ‘And she said “have a nice time”,’ added Ruth. ‘So shut up and go and have it.’

    Mrs Brocklebank, Graham’s mother, stood gazing at her dining room table with pride. There were sandwiches and cakes and roasted chickens’ legs and bowls of fruit and tomatoes. There was a big apple tart, cut up into slices, and a trifle and a lemon cake with whipped cream on top. There was nothing that could not be eaten one handed.
    ‘Won’t be enough there,’ said Graham, coming in. ‘That Rachel could eat all of that by herself.’
    ‘You do talk some rubbish,’ said his mother, laughing. ‘They none of them look as if they’d ever had a square meal in their lives!’
    ‘You wait and see,’ Graham told her. ‘Great platefuls they eat, and it doesn’t have to be anything special either. I’ve seen them eat raw potatoes and burnt bacon like it was Sunday dinner!’
    ‘They must be half-starved,’ said Mrs Brocklebank.
    Graham’s grandad, who always came to tea on special occasions, was sitting listening. Sometimes he wouldn’t speak all day, but then he always made up for his silence on other days, by shouting. He always shouted, he was deaf, except when it suited him to hear. Now he shouted, ‘They must ’ave worrums!’
    ‘Do be quiet, Dad,’ said Mrs Brocklebank. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that. It’s not nice!’
    ‘Mittering and muttering,’ shouted Graham’s grandad. ‘I can’t ’ear you!’ and he fell silent again, staring at the table. Some days he could be very awkward.

    ‘It’s gone soggy at the top,’ said Naomi.
    ‘It’ll dry.’
    ‘I’m stuck.’ Naomi writhed inside her half-on dress, trying to force her plastered arm through the sleeve.
    ‘You should have dried before you got dressed,’ Ruth said as she stuffed her sister into her clothes. ‘Now you’re covered in white stuff.’
    ‘So’re you!’
    Navy blue, while an excellent colour for not showing dirt, was a dismal failure when it came to concealing damp plaster of Paris smears. Scrubbing at the marks with a wet handkerchief dipped in sea water only made them worse.
    ‘You’ll get into trouble,’ Rachel remarked.
    ‘Stop standing on Phoebe’s dress,’ Ruth ordered, ‘and put your own on. Where is it?’
    Phoebe was rubbing sand from between her toes. ‘It blew away,’ she said.
    ‘It blew away,’ repeated Phoebe to her three ferocious sisters.
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘I don’t know, I didn’t watch.’
    ‘You can’t watch something blowing away and not watch where it goes to.’
    ‘I can.’
    It was difficult to spot a pale pink dress on a pale gold beach on a windy, sun-glarey day. They spent some time looking until Rachel solved the problem by grabbing Phoebe’s dress and squeezing in to it. Faced with the prospect of arriving at an unknown house for tea in only her knickers and sandals, Phoebe suddenly remembered in which direction the dress had blown, and after a short search they fished it up out of a rock pool.
    ‘Do I look all right?’ asked Rachel, when they had wrung it out and put it on her.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said Ruth, looking at her doubtfully.
    ‘Oh, well, what?’
    ‘I wish we’d brought a comb,’ said Naomi.

    Mrs Brocklebank was not a vain woman. Because she had invited people to tea, she did not expect them to dress up for the occasion. For herself, she didn’t bother much about fashion; she believed in being neat and comfortable. It took a good deal to shock her, but Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe, all looking neither neat nor comfortable, managed to do it by walking up her drive.
    ‘And their hair’s all wet!’ she