The Exiles

Ruth.
    It happened that so far Big Grandma had not beheld this sight, Phoebe having instinctively pursued the sport with some caution. Today, however, she sat in a patch of sunlight clearly visible from the kitchen window. Big Grandma, who could find reason for self-congratulation in having lettuce measuring and dead bird boiling protégées, could by no amount of wishful thinking discover anything praiseworthy in fishing in a bucket. Nor could she bear the sight of such futile occupation.
    ‘Whatever are you doing, Phoebe?’ she asked, hurrying outside.
    ‘Fishing,’ Phoebe dreamily replied.
    ‘Oh well,’ said Big Grandma, remembering that after all Phoebe was only six. ‘I suppose it’s harmless enough.’
    ‘Fishing and thinking,’ said Phoebe.
    ‘Well, at least you’re thinking,’ said Big Grandma. ‘That’s something anyway. And far be it from me to ask what thoughts you find so entrancing.’
    ‘I’m thinking about money.’
    ‘Money?’ asked Big Grandma. ‘At your age? Do you often think about money?’
    ‘Always when I’m fishing,’ Phoebe told her.
    ‘Then you can just stop fishing at once,’ ordered Big Grandma firmly, ‘and come inside with me and I will find something more suitable to occupy your mind!’
    Rachel had been wondering as she watched Big Grandma. Suppose she too indulged in a little discarding of unwanted items. As soon as she was left alone in the kitchen she burrowed under the kitchen sink, hauled out the three dusty, damp-labelled, ominous tins of dog food, and stowed them away in the dustbin, beneath a good deep layer of the family’s ex-wardrobe. Then, feeling extremely successful and brave and free for ever of the worry of eating dog food, she sauntered off to find her sisters.

    Ruth and Naomi sat upwind of the unsavoury brew in the tincan and glared disapproval at their little sister.
    ‘What have you done?’ demanded Ruth, for it was plain that the nonchalant, swaggering Rachel had done something very unusual.
    ‘Chucked away the dog food.’
    ‘What if she notices?’
    ‘She won’t.’
    ‘You said that when you cut your dress up and she did and you told her we made you.’
    ‘You’re not telling her that this time,’ said Naomi.
    ‘I don’t want to. And I’ll tell her myself only I’m waiting till after the dustmen come in case she gets the tins back out again.’
    Such sudden independence was too much to argue with. Ruth and Naomi sat silent.
    ‘You ought to be grateful to me,’ said Rachel, poking the fire and nearly dislodging the tin can.
    ‘You’re not to mess about with fires,’ remarked Ruth automatically.
    ‘Shall if I like,’ said Rachel cheerfully. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
    ‘BECAUSE YOU’RE STILL TOO YOUNG!’ shouted Ruth and Naomi together.
    ‘I’m going,’ said Rachel getting to her feet with dignity, ‘because it smells here!’ And she went.
    ‘Good old Rachel,’ said Ruth, not entirely cheerfully. ‘Not that Big Grandma would have cooked that stuff anyway. It was just a joke.’
    ‘We’ve been training Rachel to do something like that for years,’ answered Naomi, ‘but it still feels funny now that she has.’
    ‘Anyway,’ said Ruth, looking on the bright side, ‘it will be nice not to get the blame for everything she does wrong. Go on with what you were saying before she came.’
    ‘I’ve been thinking about that room over the garage. There’s only one thing I can think of that she’d bother locking up in there.’
    ‘Books?’ asked Ruth, who had also been considering the matter.
    ‘That’s what I thought. Oh God! Your tin’s fallen over!’
    Ruth dived through the reeking smoke to rescue the contents of the tin. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ she said, gloomily inspecting them.
    ‘No, and it stinks,’ said Naomi. ‘And you’ve put the fire out. Natural History always sounds nice and clean in books; I don’t know why yours always is so disgusting.’ She poked at the cooling tin disparagingly, tipped it sideways, and got herring gull juice all over the plaster.
    ‘I don’t know what you see in it all,’ said Naomi.
    Alone, Ruth buried Graham’s present in the compost heap. Interesting Bones had, for the moment at least, lost some of their charm. A proper naturalist, she knew, would be dealing with live animals, and she had seen very few of these. The small garden in the dusty street of the red brick town where Ruth had spent her life offered very limited opportunities for the