The Exiles

they look awful?’
    ‘They had lovely manners,’ said Mrs Brocklebank, stunning Graham into complete silence.

    ‘I didn’t know we’d been here so long,’ remarked Naomi as they trudged back up the hill to Big Grandma’s.
    ‘Is it soon time to go home?’ asked Phoebe. ‘Why? I’m not going. Or I’ll go home and get my money and come back. With some books.’
    ‘We haven’t done hardly anything yet,’ said Ruth. ‘I wish I’d swum to the Isle of Man now. And I still haven’t seen any badgers.’
    ‘What was Mrs Brocklebank going to say about Shakespeare and cookery before she walloped Graham?’ wondered Naomi.
    ‘We haven’t eaten the dog food yet,’ said Rachel. ‘We haven’t found out what’s through the door in Big Grandma’s bedroom—’
    ‘What door?’ interrupted Naomi.
    ‘One we found when you were at the hospital. It goes into the top of the garage. We forgot to tell you about it.’
    ‘We can’t go home,’ continued Rachel. ‘It’s school when we go back!’
    This appalling reminder caused deep gloom among her sisters. Earnestly each one began to pray the holiday and weekend prayer of the Conroy girls.
    ‘Please God let the school burn down. But let the hamsters and gerbils be rescued. (And the stick insects.) Amen.’
    Rachel broke the silence first.
    ‘When I grow up,’ she announced as they neared Big Grandma’s, ‘I bags Graham to marry. I’ve bagged him now so don’t forget. And,’ continued Rachel, ignoring her sisters’ rude remarks, ‘I will have the farm and all the animals and Graham’s grandad and Mrs Brocklebank will live with us and do the cooking.
    ‘And for breakfast every day,’ said Rachel, cheering up tremendously at the thought, ‘for breakfast every day –’ Rachel, whose aspirations to matrimony were of a gastronomic rather than romantic nature, rubbed her stomach in anticipation ‘– I will have mushrooms, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, eggs, pancakes, honey and trifle, and for lunch …’

Chapter Twelve
    The summer was passing. It was almost half over. During the weeks in Cumbria the girls had lost track of time. In the beginning it had seemed as if they were destined to an endless exile, the objects of Big Grandma’s contemptuous mercy. No one had been able to stop thinking of all the money that was being wasted at home. Then, gradually, the view from the house became familiar. Big Grandma’s cooking stopped tasting like an outsider’s cooking and became ordinary. Strangers stopped peering at them to see who bore the most resemblance to their much-pitied grandmother. Graham had stopped watching them for signs of madness.
    ‘Mother,’ said Mrs Conroy on the telephone to Big Grandma one day, ‘what on earth are the girls talking about when they say they have no books to read?’
    ‘They haven’t,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Simple as that.’
    ‘Good gracious!’
    ‘I told you they read far too much. Pure escapism. Just as bad as smoking or alcohol; they were addicted. I’m curing them,’ explained Big Grandma, conveniently forgetting the large doses of literature she indulged in herself.
    At that moment Phoebe came charging into the hall, demanding to speak to her mother, and so Big Grandma had no time to explain that almost her only preparation for her granddaughters’ visit had been to pack up every one of the several hundred books she owned in cardboard boxes and pile them up in the storeroom above the garage. Graham, who had helped carry out this operation, had been sworn to secrecy, and tastefully arranged pieces from an old dinner service now filled the empty bookshelves. The only things that had been forgotten were the cookery books in the kitchen, but once they had been exhausted her granddaughters had been forced to cease escaping for long and unhelpful periods down their literary boltholes. Lately she had allowed herself to think that her weeks of effort were being rewarded. The long quest for something, anything, to read appeared to be almost forgotten. Not that there wasn’t still a long way to go …
    ‘Good morning,’ said Big Grandma, coming into Ruth and Naomi’s room early one bright day. ‘Where’s Naomi?’
    ‘Down the garden.’ Ruth inspected her jumper carefully, found the label that should go at the back, turned it round, and put it on back to front.
    ‘Ruth,’ said Big Grandma impatiently, ‘you would make a good ostrich!’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Just because you personally can no longer see the