Ruth Conroy was thirteen and she was the eldest, which was sometimes difficult, with Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe, pushing from behind. If Ruth could have had one wish it would have been for adventures. Adventures in far-away countries, with exotic animals, and mountains and forests and white towns and red roads and blue seas and ice fields and bright colours and interesting people with stories to tell. Ruth had never been out of England, but she knew about these places because she had read too many books.
Next in the family was twelve-year old Naomi. Naomi lived one step back from real life, like a cat. Like a cat, she had many interesting thoughts, which she mostly did nothing about and kept in her head.
After Naomi came Rachel. Her life was mostly spent in the hard work of looking after Rachel. She did it as well as she possibly could, because somebody had to do it. If any of the Conroy girls were pretty, it was Rachel, not that anyone admitted it. Their father said they were all beautiful, and their mother said it wasn’t how you looked, but how you behaved, that mattered. Rachel knew they were both wrong, but it was no use saying it, because nobody ever listened.
Last of all, came Phoebe, who was six years old and did as she liked, as well as anyone could with three bossy big sisters in a very small house.
The Conroy girls went to unspectacular schools where they didn’t work hard, although they always regretted this when it came to school reports at the end of term.
The Christmas holidays began with the bringing home of school reports. Although these had been handed out in sealed envelopes with instructions to deliver them unopened, only Phoebe’s arrived home this way. Phoebe was so serenely detached from other people’s opinions of herself that the report on her term’s work held no temptation at all. When her mother read aloud: ‘Phoebe continues stubbornly to ignore all help and advice . . .’ she glanced briefly up from the letter she was writing and remarked, ‘Miss always says that,’ before continuing unruffled with her message to Father Christmas. For several weeks now, a great deal of Phoebe’s time had been spent this way.
Outdoors was rainy, but the Conroy family were lucky enough to have a real fire in their living room. Rachel was still in her school coat, enjoying the way the steam rose from her sleeves when she held them close to the heat. She had been watching as her sister wrote.
‘You should post it up the chimney,’ she said, as Phoebe began to add the usual row of kisses to the bottom of the page, but Phoebe preferred to leave her letters lying about where they could be discovered by her relations.
‘What about your report, Rachel?’ asked Mrs Conroy.
Rachel fumbled in her mitten for a while and then handed her mother a wet bundle of grey paper. She had dropped her envelope in a puddle on the way home from school in the hope of unsticking it. It had not only unstuck, it had disintegrated, the ink had run, and during its journey home squashed in the end of Rachel’s mitten, it had fallen to pieces. All that it was possible to read were the two words, ‘Rachel tries . . .’ Rachel brightened up tremendously at these words, so much more encouraging than she had dared to hope.
‘It could be short for “Rachel tries but fails”,’ Naomi pointed out.
‘Yes,’ agreed Ruth, ‘or, “Rachel tries to do nothing,” or “Rachel tries to drive me mad”!’
‘You’re just jealous,’ said Rachel, ‘because I’ve got a good report and you haven’t.’
‘No one ever gets good reports at our school,’ replied Ruth. ‘Mine was one of the best in the class, actually. We all opened them and looked.’
‘Yours is disgraceful,’ said her mother and read aloud, ‘ “Ruth’s work suffers from an almost total lack of planning. Her homework is rarely completed on time and she appears spend a great deal of the school day in a dream!” ’
‘What’s wrong with being in a dream?’ asked Ruth. ‘It’s a survival technique. Anyway, mine’s better than Naomi’s. Hers doesn’t even make sense!’
Naomi’s report had puzzled everyone. It said that Naomi was one of the worst-motivated boys in the class and made no real attempt at any subject except football. Mrs Conroy read it again and passed it to Big Grandma, who had arrived that day to spend Christmas with the family.
‘Frightful handwriting,’ commented Big Grandma cheerfully, who had once been a teacher herself. ‘Still, you must remember that it was probably written at dead of night by an exhausted, underpaid teacher, almost certainly driven mad by lack of sleep . . .’
‘So you don’t think we ought to complain?’ asked Mrs Conroy.
‘No!’ cried Ruth, Naomi, Rachel, Phoebe and Big Grandma added, ‘Perish the thought!’
‘Christmas is no time for complaining,’ agreed the children’s father, who had been listening in silence to the chatter. ‘Hey! Not there, Rachel!’
He was too late. Rachel, gathering together the fragments of her report, had wandered across the room searching for the magic words ‘Rachel tries’, and, having found them, sat down to gloat. She sat on the Christmas cake, newly iced and left to dry on the coffee table. Father Christmas, twelve reindeer, the North Pole and Rachel all sank together into a sudden valley of marzipan.
‘I’m not eating that now!’ remarked Phoebe, as Rachel ran wailing from the room, shedding tears and lumps of icing. A huge clean-up operation followed, during which Mrs Conroy forgot all about school reports. Ruth and Naomi took the cake away and resourcefully re-iced it.
‘Even better than before,’ said Ruth, and it was: a beautifully hilly landscape with Father Christmas and the reindeer now on cardboard skis. They sailed down the hillside beside a blue icing stream with chocolate button boulders.
‘Reminds me of home,’ said Big Grandma when she saw it. Home for Big Grandma was Cumbria, hills and streams and sheep. The girls had spent the summer there and Phoebe, remembering the sheep, rinsed three plastic lambs from her farmyard and stuck them into the icing snow.
‘Phoebe! They look grey!’ exclaimed her mother.
‘Sheep do look grey against the snow,’ said Big Grandma. ‘We have lambs in the village already. And snow on the tops of the hills.’
Naomi, thinking of the six weeks spent in the Cumbrian hills, felt suddenly homesick for them. Climbing on to the windowsill she drew the curtains behind her, shutting out the bright, noisy room. The garden was grey and full of deep shadows.
‘Snow!’ begged Naomi silently to the dark sky, and leaning her forehead against the cold window-pane, she peered hopefully into the garden.
Ruth slid round the curtains, guessed immediately what Naomi was wishing for, and asked, ‘Do you think it might?’
‘It’s all I really want for Christmas,’ Naomi replied. ‘I don’t know why it never does. It always snows in books!’
‘Look! There’s Broken Beak,’ said Ruth, as the tame family blackbird hopped out from under the hedge.
‘He should be in bed. A cat might get him.’
Broken Beak looked enquiringly at the house and then up at the sky.
‘He’s waiting for something,’ said Ruth.
She and Naomi gazed at the dark bundle of feathers, motionless upon the lawn. Magically, as they watched, a white star appeared on his black velvet back, and then slowly, in ones and twos, more snowflakes drifted down to balance on the blades of grass. Broken Beak gave a satisfied flounce of his feathers and disappeared back under the hedge.
‘It worked!’ exclaimed Naomi in delight. ‘That’s the first time ever I’ve wished a wish and it’s really come true!’
‘I wished it too. Is it going to stick?’
‘It looks like it might. It’s not melting anyway.’
‘Don’t tell the others yet, in case . . .’
‘No.’
‘Do you think Mum’s forgotten about my report?’ Naomi said, after a pause.
‘Ages ago. Why? Are you glad your teacher mixed them up? Do you think it would have been awful?’
‘I think,’ said Naomi cautiously, ‘that Mum might not have understood what the teacher was trying to say, even if she did get the right one. You know, they always have to write uncomplimentary things in case we get big-headed, but they never mean them. So they never could write what Mum wants to read, things like: “Naomi has worked very hard and done extremely well and is always polite and helpful”.’
‘No, they’d never write that,’ agreed Ruth, ‘because it simply isn’t true! They . . .’
‘Anyway,’ Naomi interrupted hurriedly, ‘the snow’s settling! That’s all that really matters!’
In the morning the ceilings were luminous with snow-light. Naomi and Ruth, who were sleeping on camp-beds in the living room so that Big Grandma could have their bedroom, rolled out at dawn to look at the garden. There they saw Phoebe, in her dressing-gown and slippers, marching solemnly across the lawn, admiring every footprint. Rachel was following her, stepping carefully into her sister’s tracks so as not to spoil the snow. In places it came up to their knees.
Ruth and Naomi watched as their little sisters bent and scooped handfuls of snow into snowballs and then stowed the snowballs in their dressing-gown pockets. ‘Hmm,’ said Ruth thoughtfully, and slid her bed across the room to barricade the door.
‘Just for ten minutes,’ she said, ‘until the snowballs melt or someone catches them.’
They waited until they heard giggling in the hall and saw the door handle turning slowly. After that, there was much heavy breathing and pushing on the door, whispered orders from Phoebe and then retreating footsteps and the sound of the fridge door being opened.
At breakfast time – which was late, with no bacon, because of the melted snowball floods in the fridge – Rachel suddenly announced, ‘All I want for Christmas is a sledge!’
It was the first time she had been able to think of a present, although for weeks her parents had been asking, ‘Isn’t there anything you really want, Rachel?’
‘Oh yes,’ Rachel had replied, ‘a real farm and a boat. Cows and sheep and horses and donkeys. One of those hot-air balloons!’ She had never thought of anything reasonable; until now, on Christmas Eve, with the roads deep in snow and more to come by the look of the sky, she had suddenly announced, ‘All I want is a sledge!’
‘Sorry, Rachel,’ said her mother, ‘no shopping on Christmas Eve. Not that I can think of anywhere we could find a sledge.’
‘What about Father Christmas?’ Rachel asked.
‘Father Christmas,’ said Phoebe, ‘isn’t true. Everyone knows.’
‘I should not care to say that,’ Big Grandma remarked. ‘Certainly tempting fate, on the twenty-fourth of December, to make rash remarks about the validity of Father Christmas!’
‘Reckless,’ agreed Mr Conroy solemnly.
‘At school,’ argued Phoebe, ‘everyone knows it’s just made up for children. And Rachel’s older than me! She’s nearly nine!’
‘And you are not yet seven and I am seventy-one,’ remarked Big Grandma, ‘so who is right?’
‘I only said what they say at school. Not what I think.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Mr Conroy.
‘Thousands of things,’ replied Phoebe.
That day the snow muffled all sounds. It slowed the speed of cars and walkers so that they were soft and heavy, like movements in a dream. It drew, with its whiteness, a clean blank page over the usual scribble of their lives.
‘Everything seems more real than usual,’ said Phoebe, but could not explain what she meant.
Martin-the-boy-next-door collected the girls to build a fort and dig paths, and his dog, huge golden Josh, chased snowballs down the street and snapped at falling snowflakes. Ruth waited until he wasn’t looking and then buried herself in the drift under the beech hedge but Josh, in seconds, sniffed her out and snuffled and pawed the snow away.
‘Josh, I love you,’ said Ruth as his hairy, anxious face peered down at her.
‘Josh is my favourite person,’ remarked Rachel.
Martin, who was often called Martin-the-good, felt suddenly Christmassy and said, ‘You can share him if you like. You can come round and borrow him.’
‘Forever, or just for the snow?’ asked Rachel, believing more and more in Christmas magic.
Christmas morning came, and Rachel got her sledge.
‘Who did it come from?’ asked Phoebe in disbelief, as Rachel stripped the wrappings away.
‘Father Christmas,’ said Rachel triumphantly.
’You see!’ said her father.
Naomi heard Big Grandma ask her mother the same question and the whispered reply: ‘John. All yesterday afternoon and half the evening with the wood he bought to make the new gate.’
‘Ah! I noticed he kept disappearing.’
‘He was out in the shed! I thought he’d freeze. He dried the varnish with my hairdryer at one o’clock in the morning . . . Oh, Naomi!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Naomi. ‘I didn’t think it was Father Christmas.’
Phoebe, who had kept a copy of her letter-that-should-have-gone-up-the-chimney sat under the Christmas tree methodically unwrapping and ticking things off. Rachel loaded her sledge with all her unopened presents and started tugging it across the room.
‘Oi! You’re running me over!’ said Ruth.
‘Aren’t you going to see what they are?’ asked Mrs Conroy.
‘Oh yes,’ said Rachel, and sitting down on her sledge, unwrapped them all saying, ‘Oh yes books, oh yes socks, oh yes a new bear . . .’
‘He’s got a zip in his back for pyjamas.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Rachel, not bothering to look. ‘Oh yes, chocolates!’
‘Look in the envelope!’
‘Oh yes, money as well! And a school thing . . .’
‘It’s not a school thing, it’s a Spirograph. It draws lovely . . .’
‘Oh yes,’ said Rachel and dumped all her presents back on her sledge and started pulling it across the room again.
After unwrapping some clothes, a few books and some chocolates from Big Grandma (with ten pound notes attached) Ruth and Naomi gloomily watched Rachel and Phoebe as they were gradually submerged in an ocean of wrapping paper, until Phoebe, glancing out of the window, exclaimed, ‘Someone’s been mucking up our snow!’ Then they rushed outside and followed huge black sooty footprints to the garden shed and found two new bikes labelled ‘Ruth’ and ‘Naomi’, one red, one green, shiny beyond their wildest dreams, and with tinsel round the handlebars.
‘Don’t think we’ve ever had a better turkey,’ Mr Conroy remarked at dinner-time.
‘Free range,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Makes all the difference!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rachel.
‘They wander round free,’ explained Mr Conroy, ‘they lead more natural lives!’
Phoebe, who had eaten an enormous dinner, despite having consumed chocolates all morning, stared in horror at the turkey.
‘That turkey,’ she announced, ‘is dead! Dead!’ she repeated. ‘A dead animal.’
‘Is it?’ asked Rachel.
‘Yes, and that’s its corpse!’
‘Phoebe, really!’ said her mother, but Phoebe could not be stopped.
‘Corpse!’ she continued. ‘I’ve eaten dead corpse!’ and she rushed off to the bathroom. When she emerged, pale and clammy, she announced, ‘I’m a vegetarian!’
The snow stayed until almost the end of the holidays, prolonging the atmosphere of Christmas. With each fresh day of sunlight and snow showers and each night of frost and stars, the feeling of other-worldness increased.
‘This is the best Christmas ever,’ declared Rachel, who had been out from dawn to dusk, pulling a cargo of snowballs up and down the street. ‘How long do you think the snow will last?’
‘We’ve had snow in May before now,’ said Mr Conroy.
‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Big Grandma. ‘I’m driving back to Cumbria tomorrow! Anyway, the temperature’s been rising all day and the weather forecast said rain for tonight.’
The forecast proved to be correct. By morning the snow had gone, washed away by a combination of rain and Rachel’s tears. Big Grandma recruited her granddaughters to help with her packing.
‘Stay a bit longer,’ Ruth urged. ‘Stay till spring!’
‘Imagine how your poor mother would feel, if I did,’ replied Big Grandma. ‘Come and sit on this suitcase lid!’
‘She likes having you! We all do.’
‘Bounce!’ ordered Big Grandma. ‘That’s right. Now the other side. Where’s Naomi?’
‘She’s checking that your oil and tyres and lights are all right.’
‘Does she know how? Perhaps we’d better go down and supervise. Ruth, you can carry that, and that, and that, and those, and hook a finger round this little bag and check under the bed before you come.’
‘Do you have to go?’ Naomi, very oily and windswept, met Big Grandma in the hall. ‘Martin says the oil’s all right, and three of your tyres and one of your lights.’
‘Which one?’
‘The outside one.’
‘Good enough for me,’ said Big Grandma cheerfully, ‘I’ll be home before dark. Cheer up, Naomi, you can have your room back! No more squirming on a camp-bed, being moulted on by the Christmas tree. Not that your bed is much more comfortable; it’s got a terrible sag!’
‘You could sleep in Ruth’s for a change,’ suggested Naomi.
‘It’s got loose legs,’ said Ruth, staggering up under a load of Big Grandma’s possessions, ‘but you can have it if you like. The legs only come off if you turn over quickly.’
‘No thank you,’ said Big Grandma. ‘At my age such novelties lose all their charm! It seems very quiet this morning. Where are Rachel and Phoebe?’
Rachel was lying on the back seat of Big Grandma’s car, being dismal. ‘Everything nice is ending,’ she complained to Phoebe. ‘First it was the end of Christmas Eve, then Christmas Day and Boxing Day, then the end of the turkey and the Christmas cake, then the end of last year. And now it’s the end of the snow and Big Grandma and tonight it will be the end of the holidays!’ She frowned at her feet, resting on the inside roof of the car among a pattern of small black footprints. ‘Look, my trainers are all worn out! Nobody cares!’
‘I wish I had the keys,’ said Phoebe, sitting in the driver’s seat. ‘Naomi never checked the horn. I’ll be legal to drive in only ten years,’ and she pushed in the clutch and put the car in gear. ‘First, second, third, fourth, reverse. All I need are the keys!’
‘Big Grandma says you have to help pack!’ Naomi arrived and dumped a cardboard box full of books on Rachel’s stomach. ‘So you can open the car door when you see me coming with more stuff.’
‘Get that box off me, then,’ said Rachel.
‘Ask Phoebe,’ said Naomi, and dashed back through the gusty rain into the house.
‘It’s going to be hard getting your Christmas lawnmower in,’ Ruth said to Big Grandma. ‘Shall I take the tinsel off it?’
‘Certainly not, I like it very much. Help Naomi carry it out!’
‘Phoebe!’ croaked Rachel from the back seat, under her box of books. ‘I’m suffocating! I’ve fainted. I can feel my head going black!’
‘Here come Ruth and Naomi with the lawn-mower,’ remarked Phoebe, climbing out to open the boot.
‘Mind the tinsel,’ ordered Naomi, ‘Big Grandma wants to keep it. Look at your disgusting trainers, Rachel! You’ve piggled holes in both of them and you’ve paddled mud all over the roof!’
‘I didn’t piggle!’ said Rachel indignantly, unfainting for a moment. ‘They wore! Get this box off me!’
‘Phoebe will. We’re busy!’ said Naomi, and headed back to the house where Ruth was complaining to Big Grandma. ‘I wish I was going with you. There’s nothing to do here.’
‘You must think positively,’ said Big Grandma. ‘You girls have too easy a life, that’s your trouble! You’ve got bicycles and legs and brains, you ought to be able to entertain yourselves! You’re an unenterprising pair!’
‘You know it’s boring here!’
‘I haven’t been bored,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Put those two bags in the car, Ruth.’
‘How do you tell broken ribs?’ asked Ruth, on returning.
‘Tickle them,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Don’t forget my wellingtons, Naomi.’
Ruth and Naomi together removed the box from Rachel’s stomach and tickled her broken ribs. Rachel screamed, but sat up quickly.
‘Told you they weren’t broken,’ said Naomi.
‘How do you know?’ demanded Rachel.
‘You’d be writhing in agony by now if they were.’
Rachel writhed a bit, hoping to make her sisters feel guilty, but they had all disappeared indoors. She followed them and writhed again in front of Big Grandma.
‘Do you itch somewhere?’ asked Big Grandma.
‘It’s my broken ribs,’ Rachel told her crossly, as they all trooped outside.
‘Must be painful,’ said Big Grandma. ‘I’d better be off.’ She kissed Mrs Conroy. ‘Say goodbye to John for me, and don’t stand out here in the rain. Goodbye, girls! Be astonishing and good and brave. It’s been lovely; I’ll ring when I’m home.’
She tooted her horn, and was gone.
Damp and disconsolate, they trailed back into the house.
‘I don’t feel like going back to the ordinary world,’ grumbled Ruth.
‘What ordinary world?’ asked Phoebe.