Castle Of Bone by Penelope Farmer Read Free Book Online

bedroom floor, his sister Jean turned uncharacteristically perhaps the wildest of them all, rushed away downstairs, returning a little later with raisins, dried beans, a box of salt, and a jar of meat extract with a bull’s head on its label. “Well you can ditch that for a start,” said Penn.
    Hugh took the raisins from her hands. They were actually muscatels, in a three-cornered box, very wrinkled and dried up. He put them into the cupboard and closed the door on them just as his mother walked in, panting a little from the climb up four flights of stairs.
    She stood in the doorway shouting. She wore a brown cotton skirt with a split in one seam and the hem halfway down the same side. Her hair must have been newly washed the way it flew out from her head, with a blur of little lights round the edge of it. She never had the smooth, the polished look, that Hugh thought other people’s mothers had.
    And there they were: Hugh standing by the cupboard, with his hand on the catch; Jean, flushed and unusually rakish and untidy-looking, holding a box of best sea salt; Penn leaning nonchalantly against the window, his body distorting a beam of light; Anna sitting on Hugh’s unmade bed, holding the little fir-tree from which she plucked needles and crushed them between her fingers – Hugh’s nose caught wafts of their small strong pungencies. His mother looked oddly at Anna, looked at her twice, but did not speak, as if she could not quite analyse why what she saw was strange. Then she swept across the room and pulled open the cupboard door.
    “Grapes, Grapes .”
    “I bought them,” Hugh said hastily.
    “Come buy,” said Penn, “all fresh, all sweet.”
    “Who’ll buy . . .” Jean’s voice started on a high note, split, fell into helpless giggles. They were particularly lush, fat, purple grapes, lying on a heap of wood shavings. Hugh’s mother ate three before letting fly at Hugh again.
    How could he have had the cupboard since Sunday (Saturday, muttered Hugh) and not put anything away in it? How could he have such a mess in his room? What were grapes of all things doing in his cupboard? (she ate another three). As she went on Hugh’s anger mounted, was beginning to match hers, until he saw Penn giggling ostentatiously behind her back, then he turned his anger, bent it against Penn, let most evaporate in a single glare.
    But when, her rage faltering, she had gone, they all fell on and devoured the bunch of grapes. And all, including Hugh, lay round the floor giggling hysterically.
    “You must admit it’s a problem,” Penn said finally.
    “What problem?” asked Hugh, suspiciously.
    “To have a cupboard you can’t use as a cupboard. If you put all your clothes away as your mother said, you’d be nude; you wouldn’t be decent to go in the street. So what are you going to do? She’s bound to come back again.” They all collapsed once more at the thought of Hugh’s nakedness.
    “Oh I’ll hide them; stuff them away somewhere and keep the cupboard shut; then she won’t know it’s empty.”
    “You can’t get away with it for ever,” said Jean.
    “Well we’d better make some effort to tidy now.” Penn climbed to his feet, brushing himself down. “No more cupboard, not for now. All hands to clearing up the place. Get up, Anna, you lazy little beast.”
    Anna had been lying under the window on her back, with her eyes closed. She did not stir at first when Penn poked her with his foot. Then slowly and deliberately she opened her eyes wide, and a moment later raised herself on an elbow. She must have been lying on that hand. Its skin had taken on the ridges of the worn cord carpet.
    “Get up, lazybones,” said Penn. “Get up and help.”
    Anna giggled. “It’s not my room. I’m not going to.”
    “You are, you know.”
    “I’m not, you know.”
    “You jolly well something are .” Penn grabbed her under the armpits and began to heave. She left him all her weight and annoyed, he grew rougher,