Black Rabbit Hall Read Online Free PDF Page B

cotton on its left-hand corner by Mad Mary in the village. I think there may be more than one apron, but they are all identical so I don’t know. Whenever I think of Peggy, I think of that apron, the way it makes you notice her small, unlikely waist, then balloons over her tummy and wide hips, like the festive roof of a circus tent. Barney likes to hide in it.
    It’s no secret that Peggy loves Barney best, treating him to the forbidden jelly babies that she squirrels high up on a shelf in a battered tea tin. He reminds her of Little Lionel, she says, the youngest of her brothers. (Peggy is the eldest of eight, brought up in the teeniest, wonkiest cottage, like a gingerbread house made by Kitty at Christmas,five miles down the coast.) But it’s also because Barney sticks daisies into her springy mat of frizzy brown hair – it’s so dense the flowers never move – and slouches against her calves while he walks ladybirds from one finger to another. Peggy’s calves are huge. But her feet are tiny so her legs suddenly swoop in at the ankles, like one of her nozzled icing bags. You’d think she’d fall over, but she doesn’t.
    ‘Barney!’ Peggy says, pretending to be cross with him. ‘Was that you?’
    Toby slings a protective arm around Barney’s shoulders. ‘Oh, come on, Peggy. There’s no mark on the laundry.’
    ‘Not this time.’
    Daddy is walking towards them now, shadow long and leggy, the sun a tinned peach half behind him. I wonder how it’s going to play out. He lifts his chin, scratches his throat. ‘What’s going on here?’
    Peggy’s little silver crucifix swings on its chain in the dip of her neck. Barney holds his breath. Toby kicks his legs.
    ‘Everything’s just fine, Mr Alton,’ Peggy calls over her shoulder, giving Toby a sharp look as she walks back into the house.
    Not much ever happens.
    ‘Well, that’s just perfect timing, isn’t it?’ Momma stands up, gazes approvingly at Kitty. The wind fills her white blouse, like a sail. ‘There. Sand brushed out. Plaits. Ribbons. Pretty as a picture.’ She turns to Daddy. ‘Isn’t our Kittycat a beauty, Hugo?’
    Daddy circles his arms around Momma’s waist, dips hisnose to her neck and smells her like a flower. ‘Just like her mother.’
    Momma rests her chin on his shoulder and they stand like that on the terrace for a moment, swinging slightly, like they’re being rocked by the wind. I look away. When they’re like this, it’s like nothing exists but them, and I glimpse the people they must have been in that unbelievable pre-history before I was born. Probably, Toby and I came out of an intimate moment like this. We all did. Barney, I know, was ‘a happy accident’ – I overheard Momma and Daddy talking late at night once – and Kitty born to be company for him, as there’s such a big age difference between the top and bottom of the family. ‘The bookends,’ Daddy says. Last year Matilda offered a more detailed explanation – courtesy of her big sister, Annabel, the one who got expelled from Bedales – about what causes such ‘happy accidents’. It makes me feel strange to see my parents like this now, knowing all the things I know.
    ‘Did you find our little squatters then, Hugo?’ asks Momma. Boris flumps down at her feet, panting.
    ‘Gulls.’
    ‘Oh, I was hoping for a nest of pterodactyls.’
    ‘It’s a bother, Nancy. We’re going to have to get someone up there.’
    ‘But who can blame them wanting to nest at Black Rabbit Hall?’
    Daddy laughs, a low, rich laugh that could only come from a tall man.
    ‘Now, Mr Alton …’ Momma takes off Daddy’s hat, leans forwards until the tip of her neat nose touches his.No one else would dare do that. It feels like the rest of us have to knock to enter. Just like we must do at the library door when he’s working. He works a lot. This is because the family fortunes never recovered from the crash of 1929, Grandpa’s death duties or his fondness for the casinos of