The Exiles

I,’ said Graham.
    ‘I’m ’avin’ a cup of tea first.’
    ‘So’m I,’ said Graham.
    However, they did finally set off only an hour later, Ruth carrying a basket full of provisions for Graham’s grandad to take home, Graham sulking and slashing at the grasses along the way with his grandfather’s walking stick. Already the colours of the sunlight were fading from the fields.
    Graham’s grandad’s cottage stood at the far side of the village, on the road up to Big Grandma’s house. It was his habit to stop at the farm with his daughter and her family until he couldn’t bear their fussing and worrying any longer, and left for his own house. After a few days alone he would get bored and feel the need to aggravate somebody again, and then he would move back to the farm. The only thing that slightly marred his old age was that everyone in his family, in the whole village for that matter, had heard time and again the stories he was so fond of telling, and irreverently took them all with about a shovel full of salt. Ruth didn’t though. The lass didn’t know any better.
    ‘See that track running round fell and up ower topside?’ he asked. ‘Know what we call that? Corpse pad!’
    He waited for Ruth to digest this information.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘When this village didn’t ’ave no churchyard corpses was took up that track for burrying in the village ower the way. They ’ad their churchyard, see? ’Course,’ he added thoughtfully, stopping to gaze over a gate at a flock of curly horned sheep, ‘course you could burry a corpse where you liked in them days. Nobody said nowt. Folks used to like a churchyard though.’
    Graham took out his mouth organ and, sitting on the gate, began to play his unholy version of ‘Amazing Grace’.
    ‘How’d they get the … dead people up there?’ asked Ruth. ‘It’s very steep.’
    ‘Strap the coffin on a pony’s back,’ explained Graham’s grandad.
    Ruth thought of a coffin strapped on a pony’s back. Surely it would stick out over the tail.
    ‘Longways or crossways?’
    ‘Crossways,’ answered Graham’s grandad, somewhat surprised at such a sensible question. ‘Ponies ’ated the job. Knew what they were carrying. Run off, some of them, coffin and all.
    ‘Never come back, some of ’em,’ he went on. ‘Some folks reckon they’re still there. See ’em wandering about at nights, like, still strapped to the coffin!’
    Graham had stopped playing and was listening to the story. He glanced up at the fell, and looked across at Ruth, but he did not say anything. Neither did Ruth. The three of them turned and continued walking towards the village. Graham’s grandad was talking about badgers now. He was telling Ruth about a day, seventy something years ago, when he’d been only a lad. He’d been sent out to the hen house one evening to see what the hens were making such a fuss about. Graham’s grandad had opened the door very quietly to catch whatever it was unawares, and he’d seen two badgers. ‘One lay on its back in middle of the floor, while t’other were bringing eggs in ’is mouth and piling them up on ’is mate’s belly!
    ‘Great big ’eap there was piled up,’ Graham’s grandad continued.
    ‘Gets bigger every time he tells it,’ Graham said aside to Ruth.
    ‘Great big ’eap of eggs! Dozens! What about that then?’
    ‘What happened?’ asked Ruth.
    ‘In finish,’ Graham’s grandad said, ‘badger on floor said ’twere enough …’
    ‘Said it?’ shouted Graham in triumph. ‘You never said they could talk before!’
    ‘Never said they could now!’ Graham’s grandad bellowed. ‘I know what I see though! When ’twere enough badger that were collecting eggs cop ’old of t’other and pulled ’im away! Pulled ’im clean through the ’ole they dug to get in!’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I stood staring a bit and then I run off for me dad but by the time ’e come back with the gun badgers were gone, eggs were gone, nowt left but the ’ole! Badgers is clever!’
    ‘Certainly are,’ commented Graham, ‘not many animals can talk!’
    His grandad ignored him. ‘Knew some badgers once,’ he said. ‘Great fat ones they was …’ and off he rambled with another story.
    It was slow work, walking along with Graham’s grandad. He couldn’t pass a field without stopping to look in it, and everyone they met halted to speak for a minute. The light was becoming greyer and greyer, and the top of the fell was hidden in a