The Exiles

swirl of cloud.
    ‘I’ll not climb it agen,’ Graham’s grandad said, looking up at it. ‘I done my share of climbing. Used to race to the top we did, running. Been up it in all weathers.’
    ‘Snow?’ asked Ruth.
    ‘Snow?’ Graham’s grandad spat. ‘Snow, ’ail, ’urrycane, blizzard. Two weeks of blizzard we ’ad once, and I climbed it every day. ’Arf the village did.’
    ‘A plane crashed up there,’ Graham told Ruth. ‘They saw it against the snow, and they could see people moving about but then a blizzard came.’
    ‘Who’s telling?’ asked Graham’s grandad crossly. ‘I am! Blizzard came and when we’d waited and they never come we went to look for them. Thought they might have got a bit of shelter among the rocks or summat. Folks were up there looking every day.’
    ‘Did you find them?’
    ‘Two weeks later. Froze stiff. Terrible. They’d tried to crawl down. Should have stayed with the plane, we’d have found them a lot sooner. Too late by the time we did.’
    They had reached Graham’s grandad’s house at last. He stood by the gate, looking up at the fell.
    ‘Good luck to you,’ he said. ‘You’d not get me on fell at night. And if you don’t believe what I’ve telled you, you ask your gran. Many a thing I’ve telled her that no one else believe and she’s said, aye, she read of someat like that or whatever. She’ve a grand collection of books, you’ve no call to stay ignorant while you live up there!’
    He took his basket of food from Ruth and his stick from Graham and opened the gate. ‘I’ll not ask you in,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to be away. I ’ope you see nowt of them ponies.’
    They watched him go in and close the door. A light was switched on inside and shone through the window into the garden.
    ‘So do I,’ said Graham gloomily.
    ‘So do you what?’ Ruth brought her thoughts back from Big Grandma’s books to the present problems.
    ‘Hope we see nowt of them ponies.’
    It was already only too obvious to Ruth that they were not going to see anything of the badgers that night. The fell seemed full of coffin laden ponies and crawling corpses.
    ‘Scared?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Oh, well, I am. I’m not going.’
    Graham sighed with relief.
    ‘’Spose,’ said Ruth, taking full advantage of the moment of companionship between them, ‘she told you not to tell us anything about her books?’
    Graham grinned.
    ‘And she’s stuck them in that little room over the garage to stop us getting them?’ pursued Ruth.
    ‘Surprised it stopped you,’ remarked Graham.
    ‘She’s got it locked.’
    ‘Surprised that stopped you too,’ said Graham. ‘Anyway, I’m going to get off back before it gets any darker. Or,’ he added most heroically, ‘do you want me to take you home first?’
    Highly offended, Ruth declined his offer and set off at a run for the comforting, only slightly haunted shelter of Big Grandma’s house. Graham sighed with relief again and turned towards the village. Through the window Graham’s grandad watched them go their separate ways. Then he switched on his electric fire and turned up the television so that all the people were shouting at each other. It had been a good day he thought, and he had a delicious feeling of having stirred up a bit of trouble there at the end. It made him feel young somehow.

Chapter Thirteen
    ‘Graham admitted it,’ reported Ruth. ‘They’ve been there all summer. Even if we got in now, we’d never have time to read every one. We’re going home in less than two weeks.’
    ‘Much less than two weeks,’ interrupted Naomi, counting days on the kitchen calendar.
    ‘What d’you mean, going home?’ asked Phoebe, exercising as usual her amazing ability of discounting basic facts of life. ‘I’m not. Not until I’ve seen Big Grandma’s books anyway.’
    ‘Neither am I,’ agreed the new, independent (sometimes) Rachel. ‘And I want to go back to the cave and see where Naomi fell off.’
    ‘Thanks very much!’
    ‘And where she was sick on her foot,’ continued Rachel, ‘and I want to go and see Mrs Brocklebank again. She said I could.’
    ‘I haven’t seen the badgers yet.’
    ‘I haven’t dug that bit where the cabbages were.’
    ‘How could you with a broken arm?’
    ‘I could if I wanted to.’
    ‘We ought to get her goodbye presents,’ said Ruth. ‘After all, she hasn’t been that bad. Except about the books. D’you think we could manage to get a look at them before we go?