The Exiles

bit?’
    ‘No thanks.’
    ‘I’ll hold the torch then.’
    ‘Okay. What time was it when you came out?’
    ‘Half-past twelve.’
    Slowly, but certainly, they could just see that the patch of turned earth was widening. After a long, long time Naomi asked, ‘Do you think I’ve done a third yet?’
    ‘Easily. More like half. Let me do a bit.’
    ‘No thanks,’ said Naomi, digging like clockwork, hardly feeling her arms or legs or stiffening back. She had passed the stage of aching.
    ‘Cold?’ she asked Ruth deeper in the night when she could look back and know she was more than half way.
    ‘I’ve got a hot water bottle up my jumper.’
    Naomi dug on. Once again the torchlight skidded across the garden and she heard Ruth stumble on the path. Then Ruth woke up again and held the torch steady. ‘You’ve nearly finished,’ she said in surprise to Naomi. ‘I didn’t notice how far you’d got.’
    ‘I’m trying not to look behind me.’
    Spadefuls of night inched slowly through the garden.
    ‘Last row,’ said Naomi.
    Ruth held the torch ceremoniously high.

    ‘What’s the time?’
    ‘Five to three.’
    They crept through the kitchen and upstairs, crawled out of their clothes, and fell, unwashed, into bed and sleep.

    The last day dawned bright and horrifying.
    ‘How many hours now?’ asked Rachel at breakfast, a melancholy meal of water porridge and sardines, well suited to the depression of the day.
    ‘Twenty six.’
    ‘Had we better start turning them into minutes?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘This is the unhappiest day of my life,’ said Rachel.
    ‘You haven’t had it yet,’ replied Big Grandma impatiently.
    ‘I have a premo-what’s its name, when you can tell something’s going to happen before you start,’ explained Rachel, and later on she was to say to her sisters, ‘You’ll never ignore my premo-what’s its names again!’ (‘We will,’ said Naomi in reply.)
    Big Grandma, preoccupied with packing and train times, seemed not to notice the traces of the night’s happenings, tea leaves in the pewter mugs and tired grandchildren. Mrs Conroy was to meet the girls at Crewe, where they would change trains, and Big Grandma did not approve of this.
    ‘They’re perfectly capable of making the journey alone,’ she told Mrs Conroy, but Mrs Conroy replied that they were perfectly capable of anything, and therefore she would be happier meeting them.
    ‘Fancy having to waste half the day at the hospital,’ grumbled Naomi.
    ‘Good God, I’d forgotten!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘How on earth did you get that plaster into such a disgusting state?’
    ‘We’ve got to be back in time for going to tea with Graham as well,’ Naomi reminded her, ignoring the question of her plaster.
    ‘The good riddance tea,’ said Rachel.
    Phoebe alone did not join in the conversation, sitting remote and preoccupied at the end of the table, staring into her bowl of porridge and brown sugar. A sardine was lying in solitary state on the top.
    ‘Hurry up, Phoebe,’ urged Big Grandma. ‘You put it there so you can eat it!’
    ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked her sisters, noticing her unusual quietness for the first time.
    ‘Nothing,’ said Phoebe, tranquilly eating the sardine with the face of one who sees visions.
    ‘Something’s the matter with Phoebe,’ said Ruth as they sat in the garden later that morning. ‘She’s stopped reading chess problems and she’s stopped fishing in a bucket. She just walks round smiling.’
    ‘Who cares?’ asked Naomi. ‘You know she doesn’t live in the same world as everyone else. D’you know she’s started talking about her Christmas List Money again? Offered me twenty pence when we got home to wash her some socks yesterday. I sometimes think Graham’s right when he says …’
    ‘What?’
    ‘She’s cracked,’ continued Naomi. ‘Anyway, carry on writing. Put, “You have bent my elbow too much; you have put the plaster on too tight; you have put it on too high; you have put it on too thick so it is very hot and itches”.’
    ‘Is it drying yet?’ asked Big Grandma.
    ‘Not too bad.’
    Big Grandma had resourcefully emulsioned the cast with a bit of paint left over from the kitchen walls. It was now white (with a touch of apple green) and Naomi, clad only in her swimming costume (until the paint dried), was dictating a list of complaints which she intended presenting to the doctor when she met him that afternoon.
    ‘Very hot