The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

Author:John Boyne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780385678919
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2013-01-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Little Miss Kirribilli

Eleanor was coming back from her walk with Captain W. E. Johns when she ran into the postman on the street. He handed her a parcel from a bookshop, a letter from Henry’s school, and Barnaby’s latest postcard. She read the letter first—apparently, Henry had been getting into fights over the last few weeks—and then hesitantly began to read the postcard. She could feel the blood draining from her face as she recognized her younger son’s tone and felt an ache inside her unlike any she had ever felt before.

It had been weeks now since she had walked across the Harbour Bridge with Barnaby, and the events of that day were rarely far from her mind. There were moments when she thought she had done the right thing, because, after all, he was the most willful little boy who absolutely refused to change, but then, just occasionally, she wondered why it was that she had been unable to love him exactly the way he was. After all, she had always taken pride in the fact that she was a normal mother with an entirely normal family, but was it normal to do what she had done?

Across the street she saw Esther Frederick-son getting out of her car with her seven-year-old daughter Tania in tow.

“Oh, hello, Eleanor,” cried Mrs. Frederickson, turning round and waving an enormous trophy in the air. “First place!” she declared triumphantly. “Little Miss Kirribilli, just like her three elder sisters before her. And her mother!”

Eleanor smiled but couldn’t bring herself to go over to congratulate Tania or Esther. The Little Miss Kirribilli contest brought up nothing but bad memories for her. When Eleanor was a girl, she had won the title of Little Miss Beacon Hill, and she’d hated all the fuss and attention that had gone with the crown. Her mother had been Little Miss Beacon Hill too, and from the day Eleanor was born, she’d used her daughter as if she was a dummy in a training school for makeup artists and hair stylists, covering her face with lipstick and rouge, piling her hair up in ever more extravagant bundles on her head, forcing her to walk up and down with her hands on her hips until she had perfected what Mrs. Bullingham, Eleanor’s mother, described as her “signature walk.”

“Now remember,” she instructed her daughter when she was only five years old and entering her first beauty pageant. “If the judges ask you what you want most in all the world, what do you say?”

“That I want to work in a kennel,” said Eleanor. “And I want to rescue as many unwanted dogs as possible and find them good homes to live in.”

“World peace!” cried Mrs. Bullingham, throwing her arms in the air. “Heavens above, child, how many times have I told you? The thing you want most in the world is world peace!”

“Oh,” said Eleanor. “Of course. Sorry. I’ll try to remember.”

“And if they ask you who your best friend is, what do you say?”

Eleanor thought about it; this was an answer that changed quite regularly.

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