The Exiles

and itches,’ repeated Ruth, scribbling away.
    ‘ “It is not properly waterproof; it is coming to bits at the ends; white is not a good colour for plastercasts; I do not think you have set the bones straight”.’
    ‘Don’t say that,’ advised Ruth, ‘in case he breaks it and sets it again.’
    ‘Miss it out then, go on to the waiting. Put, “I had to wait too long to see you; the waiting room is very boring; the painkillers you gave me did not work very well; I think it should have mended by now”. That’s all.’
    ‘What about his stupid jokes and what you thought about the nurse and not getting an ambulance?’ suggested Ruth.
    ‘I don’t want to make him angry,’ pointed out Naomi. ‘I’ll just read that list out politely to him and leave it on his desk when I go so that he can look at it whenever he needs to.’
    ‘What rare and graceful tact,’ commented Big Grandma, who was torn between the desire to see the doctor’s reaction when Naomi presented her document and a more prudent (but less exciting) instinct to remain discreetly in the waiting room.
    The plaster was dry by mid-morning.
    ‘It looks quite nice,’ said Ruth, ‘except where that egg mark keeps showing through.’
    ‘Goodbye,’ said Rachel, coming up to them and going away again.
    ‘Goodbye,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Come back! Where are you going?’
    ‘To see Mrs Brocklebank.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Before lunch. She said I could go when I liked.’
    ‘That doesn’t mean you can turn up for every meal,’ Naomi pointed out.
    ‘Quite so,’ agreed Big Grandma. ‘You can go when you’ve had your lunch here, but not before, and I’m sure she’ll be busy this afternoon as it is, so don’t outstay your welcome there.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘When they say, “They’re going to be missing you at home”,’ explained Naomi, ‘and ask if you’ve said you’re going to be so long, and take you outside and show you the front garden.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘To get you out of the house.’
    ‘Why’d they want to do that?’ asked Rachel, completely confused.
    ‘Because they’re sick of you and they want you to clear off,’ explained Ruth, ‘but they’re too polite to say so.’
    ‘Oh, it’s a waste of time trying to teach Rachel manners,’ remarked Naomi.
    ‘We’ll have to do it someday.’
    ‘I’ve got manners,’ said Rachel belligerently.
    ‘All right, you’ve got manners,’ agreed Ruth. ‘Just not very good ones. Why didn’t you finish getting dressed this morning?’
    ‘I am dressed.’
    Ruth and Naomi looked wearily at each other and Naomi explained: ‘That was manners for, “Why didn’t you get washed?”’
    ‘And brush your hair,’ added Ruth.
    ‘And tie it with another ribbon,’ said Naomi. ‘You’ve chewed all the colour out of the ends of that one.’
    ‘And tuck your T-shirt in, or leave it out, one or the other.’
    ‘And clean your teeth.’
    ‘I’ve cleaned them,’ said Rachel triumphantly.
    ‘That’s right,’ encouraged Big Grandma, ‘you stick up for yourself ! I’ve never known toothpaste vanish the way it does in this house!’
    At this remark Rachel disappeared guiltily upstairs. She had a very private game in which toothpaste was not toothpaste, but peppermint cream. She ate quite a lot of peppermint cream toothpaste during the night.

    It was a lonely afternoon for Ruth, with Naomi at the hospital and Rachel scraping out cake bowls with Mrs Brocklebank. Phoebe had disappeared soon after Big Grandma had driven away. Like an aimless daylight ghost Ruth wandered the empty house saying her goodbyes to the old-fashioned rooms, the views from the windows, the grandfather clock with the seagull painted face, stopped for a quarter of a century at five past nine.
    ‘Not a very restful time for it to stop at,’ Naomi had once remarked, and, ‘Would you like me to mend your clock?’ Ruth had asked.
    ‘Not at all, I like it how it is,’ Big Grandma had replied.
    ‘But it doesn’t tick.’
    ‘It does when I want it to,’ and Big Grandma had swung the pendulum to make the old clock tick.
    ‘She likes to control everything,’ Naomi had grumbled. ‘Even the time.’
    Ruth, passing the clock and patting it in farewell, remembered the conversation, and how Big Grandma had glared at Naomi and said, almost defensively, ‘Anyway, some of its insides are missing!’
    ‘None of our insides are missing,’ Phoebe had remarked cryptically.
    Rachel’s return from the