by Rumer Godden
A small saucepan and frying pan hung side by side: ‘I can make a pan fried cake.’ There were china ornaments and a doll vase of the plastic flowers Kizzy thought so beautiful. A twig broom stood in the corner. ‘We didn’t need a dustpan. We just swept dust outside, but we did need a bucket.’ There was a small bucket, ‘There’s . . . everything,’ whispered Kizzy.
The wagon in the firelight threw its shadow on the grass – a child-size shadow; the lamplight shone through the windows in the dusk. Kizzy gave a long sigh, a sigh of happiness. ‘It’s mine.’
Chapter Six
The Court had been hearing a case of damage at the village school by ‘two young hooligans’, said Mr Blount and, ‘As we are all here again,’ said the Chairman, ‘tell us – the traveller child, Kizzy Lovell, is she happy and well?’ and he asked, ‘Miss Brooke? Mr Blount?’
‘Would you like me to leave while you discuss her?’ asked Miss Brooke.
‘There isn’t anything to discuss,’ said Mr Blount. ‘Kizzy is well and putting on weight. She seems to conform now without any difficulty, though she keeps to herself – that’s perhaps because of an unfortunate episode after school . . .’
‘What episode?’ Mrs Cuthbert, who was there representing the School Board, was instantly alert.
‘It seems some of the children set on her, the girls . . .’
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t my Prudence . . . and, may I ask, why were we not told?’
‘Mr Fraser thought it better to let the children settle it themselves – which they have done,’ and before Mrs Cuthbert could speak again Mr Blount went hurriedly on. ‘Kizzy can read now. Miss Brooke has been coaching her in the holidays and evenings. She is beautifully kept. I feel, sir,’ he said to the Chairman, ‘Miss Brooke should be congratulated; it might all have been most difficult.’
‘It isn’t finished yet,’ said Miss Brooke. Indeed, Mrs Cuthbert spoke to her afterwards.
‘I didn’t say this in the courtroom because I didn’t want to shame you, Olivia, but I don’t believe you are making such a success of that child. If there’s another opportunity, I shall feel bound to speak.’
‘Is that a threat?’ asked Miss Brooke, smiling.
‘Olivia Brooke! As if I would threaten, but that little girl is too solitary.’
‘I quite agree.’
‘Then why do you let her be? The fact is, Olivia, you have become possessive. That’s what I meant when I said a single woman shouldn’t take a child. Possessive.’
‘What do I do?’ asked Miss Brooke.
‘Keep her away from everybody – except the House, of course. If any of us ask her out you won’t let her come, never let her ask any child near.’
Miss Brooke’s lips twitched. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice, Kizzy,’ she had said some days ago, ‘if you invited some of the girls to see your orchard and wagon?’
‘It would be horrid.’
‘Just one or two,’ coaxed Miss Brooke.
‘No.’
‘They would be fascinated.’
‘No.’
‘Think of showing them the Kezia china.’
‘No!’ – ‘And Kizzy got into a state worse than when I suggested asking them to the House,’ Miss Brooke told the Admiral. ‘Yet I feel I must try.’
‘Don’t,’ said Admiral Twiss. ‘Let her be.’
Clem had been allowed to see – ‘If you won’t tell,’ said Kizzy. ‘Promise not to tell, not even Elizabeth. Particularly not Elizabeth.’
‘I promise,’ said Clem.
‘Say “May I die if I lie”.’ Kizzy was fierce.
‘May I die if I lie,’ said Clem meekly.
‘But mean it. Mean it. Mean it,’ stormed Kizzy.
No one, absolutely no one was to know. ‘But there are some queer goings-on,’ said Mrs Cuthbert.
As soon as Kizzy came back from school, she and Miss Brooke would light her fire and boil the kettle. She taught Miss Brooke some of the gypsy ways with fires: ‘Set them going,’ said Kizzy, ‘with bits of torn paper, or twigs, dried leaves; put a match to them – Gran used her flint – then build a sort of little chimney with twigs, thin, thin twigs. That pulls the fire up and then you put on branches; apple and willow burns quick; Gran said oak is good and slow, but we never had any oak; chestnut is bad, it snaps. Sir Admiral sometimes gave Gran elm logs. Elm is best.’ Sometimes Kizzy fried her own bacon and sausages, roasted potatoes and apples but, even if Miss Brooke cooked it, always had her tea out there. Afterwards she would sit on her box or, if it rained, go into the wagon and light the little lamp. Miss Brooke would hear her singing and crooning to herself as she fed the fire or just sat dreaming, Chuff beside her. Chuff too had adopted the fire. Sometimes Kizzy brushed him, sometimes read the big print of her reading books; often she strung beads.
She had all the travellers’ love of ornaments and colours. Miss Brooke had given her a box of old beads and Kizzy spent hours stringing them into necklaces and bracelets. ‘She would go to school wearing six necklaces if I would let her,’ said Miss Brooke. Kizzy longed to have a ring – like the Admiral’s signet ring or, better, like one that Miss Brooke sometimes wore, with a moonstone and rubies.
‘O bring me back my gold,’
Kizzy would sing,
‘No gold ever ties me.
Bring me back my gold
’n the little diamint ring.’
From the upstairs windows Miss Brooke watched and listened.
As the weather grew colder, ‘Kizzy it’s time to come in,’ she would call from the window or garden door.
‘Just a little longer. The stars are coming out. There’s one enormous star; prob’ly it’s Gran,’ – Kizzy had a fixed idea that people turned into stars when they died – ‘Might be Joe,’ said Kizzy. It comforted her to think the star was Joe. ‘I do need a pony,’ she told his star. ‘You would be too big for the wagon but you could come along.’
Sometimes Miss Brooke found her asleep on the box or in the wagon’s bunk. Though Miss Brooke was slight, she was strong; she gathered Kizzy up, carried her indoors and upstairs and put her straight under the blankets into bed. Mrs Cuthbert caught her once. ‘Olivia! You’re too small to carry that great child up to bed.’
‘She’s not very heavy,’ and, ‘Don’t wake her,’ said Miss Brooke.
‘But bed without washing!’
‘She can have a bath in the morning.’
‘Bed in her clothes!’
‘She’ll have clean ones tomorrow.’
The clothes smelled of wood smoke but that was Kizzy’s familiar smell. ‘What has she been doing?’
‘Amusing herself.’
‘At this hour! And you let her.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Brooke.
‘As I said before, you have queer ways of bringing up a child.’
‘Is it too queer?’ Miss Brooke asked Admiral Twiss. ‘We are encouraging her in make-believe.’
‘Yes,’ said Admiral Twiss, ‘but make-believe is a good splint for a break, and a good many things have been broken for Kizzy.’
It was bonfire night. A huge bonfire had been built on the common. ‘’S’almost as tall as a house,’ said Clem. For weeks the older boys and girls had been trundling their guys in old perambulators and wooden handcarts round the village and even into Rye, wheedling money for fireworks. ‘Penny for the guy. Two pennies. Five pence,’ and now all the children were seething with excitement, except Kizzy.
‘You’re coming, Kiz?’ said Clem.
‘No.’
‘There’ll be fireworks,’ said Clem. ‘Not just our own but big fireworks: rockets and Catherine wheels – they go round and round with flashes – and golden rain – you put bombs on the ground and they make fountains. There’ll be crackers – back-a-rappers we call them. They chase you – and I got a whole packet of sparklers specially for you; you hold one in your hand and they go fizz in sparks. They don’t hurt you. And there’ll be stalls for hot dogs and toffee apples and candyfloss and we roast potat
oes.’
‘No.’
‘Why Kiz?’
‘They burn the guy. I don’t like that.’
‘Don’t be silly. He’s not real. It’s only fun.’
‘Fun! All of you against one.’ Kizzy said it bitterly.
‘Aw! Come on!’ said Clem. ‘Besides, it’s tit for tat. Guy Fawkes, he tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.’
‘Tit for tat.’ Kizzy liked the sound of that. ‘One day I’ll blow up the whole school.’
‘Then you’ll be a skunk,’ said Clem. ‘Lots of them have been kind to you, the boys, Mr Fraser, especially Mrs Blount – hasn’t she?’
Kizzy would not answer and, for the first time, Clem lost patience. He seized her by the arm and gave her a barley sugar twist, and not a gentle one. ‘Hasn’t she?’
‘Y-es,’ it was wrung from Kizzy.
‘Hasn’t Mr Fraser?’
‘Y-es.’
‘Haven’t I, and the boys?’
‘Y-es.’
‘Well then. Why?’
‘Them,’ said Kizzy briefly.
‘Look, Kiz,’ said Clem. ‘You have to make it up.’
‘No.’
‘You can’t go on and on.’
‘I can.’
‘You can’t,’ said Clem. You’ll see.’
Miss Brooke had meant to cajole Kizzy into coming to the bonfire with her, but when Kizzy came home it was to find her sick and giving involuntary little moans; the skin round her eyes was discoloured, ‘and you’re all yellow,’ said Kizzy alarmed.
‘It’s just one of my bad sick headaches,’ Miss Brooke managed to say. ‘It will be better if I lie down.’
Kizzy helped her upstairs to her quiet bedroom over the L, pulled back the counterpane and covered her with blankets. She made a cup of tea and carried it carefully up and brought Miss Brooke the pills she ought to have taken before. ‘Only I wanted you to see the bonfire.’
‘I like my own bonfire,’ said Kizzy and pulled the curtains. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Your tea . . .’
‘I’ll get my own tea – and feed Chuff.’
‘You ought to see the fireworks . . .’
‘Never mind them – unless they hurt your poor head. They’re only bangs,’ said Kizzy and soon Miss Brooke, who had been awake and sick most of the night, was in a deep sleep.
‘Only bangs,’ but, sitting on her box, Kizzy felt strangely forlorn and lonely; perhaps it was because Miss Brooke was not there, perhaps because of the excited voices coming from the common on the other side of the cottage, laughter and shouting and the sound of running footsteps. ‘Sparklers, crackers, back-a-rappers, golden rain,’ she whispered the magic-sounding words to Chuff and thought she caught a tang of gunpowder mingled with the smell of hot dogs on the air. She had half a mind to go to the front gate and watch.
When it was beginning to be dark a rocket whizzed into the sky and fell in a shower of stars that shone red as Miss Brooke’s rubies in the dusk; they were more beautiful than anything Kizzy had ever seen – the orchard had been too far away from the village for her to have watched fireworks. Another rocket went up, blue and green: ‘Sapphires ’n’ emeralls,’ whispered Kizzy to Chuff but Chuff, who disliked firework bangs, had run into the cottage. Kizzy went through the sitting room and out to the front gate.
‘Lizbeth,’ Clem coaxed his sister. ‘Go to Miss Brooke’s cottage and make Kizzy come and join us.’
‘You go.’
‘She won’t come for me – because of you girls.’
‘She won’t come for us.’
‘I believe she would if you asked her. Anyway, try. Go on, Lizbeth. You and Mary Jo.’
Elizabeth considered. ‘It would have to be Prudence.’
‘Prue’s the one she hates.’
‘That’s why,’ said Elizabeth, but was still doubtful.
‘Tell you what,’ said Clem. ‘If you make them go and Kizzy comes, I’ll give you my new pencil box . . . ’sides, you want to make it up. You know you do,’ and that was how three little girls met Kizzy at the garden gate.
Kizzy held the gate tight shut. ‘We haven’t come to fight,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Why have you then?’ Kizzy was breathing through her nose, again like a little dragon.
‘Fains, Kizzy.’ Prudence offered the truce and, ‘We came to ask you along to the bonfire with us,’ said Mary Jo, and, ‘Please come,’ Elizabeth pleaded.
For a moment Kizzy’s heart leapt, then the shell came down. ‘I got a bonfire of my own,’ she said loftily.
‘You couldn’t have, not like ours.’
‘Better than yours.’
‘Show.’
‘Private,’ said Kizzy.
‘Then we don’t believe you,’ said Prue.
Kizzy looked at them; her eyes flashed – ‘Black,’ Elizabeth told Clem afterwards – and she threw open the garden gate. ‘Come . . .’
‘Oh!’ ‘O-oh!’ ‘O-ooh!’ Elizabeth, Mary Jo and Prudence stood in the little orchard gazing at the apple trees with their rosy apples, the fire where the kettle was steaming, the lit wagon showing a glimpse of windows and curtains and china. ‘O-ooo-ooooh!’
‘It’s a wendy-house caravan,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Never seen anythin’ like it.’
‘And it’s yours?’
Kizzy nodded. She was swelling with pride. ‘You can go into the wagon if you like.’
Reverently they went up the steps and the bonfire on the common was forgotten.
‘Look at the little pillows!’
‘Real patchwork quilts.’
‘Why two bunks?’
‘So’s I can ask a friend to spend the night.’
‘Do you sleep here then?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Kizzy.
‘She lets you?’
‘When I like.’
‘Wish I could,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Maybe one day I’ll ask you.’
‘China’s right pretty,’ said Mary Jo.
‘It’s a hundred years old,’ said Kizzy. ‘Belonged to Kezia Cunningham at the House,’ and she boasted, ‘I’m called after her.’
‘Then Admiral Twiss made this for you?’
‘Yes, he’s a friend of mine.’ Kizzy felt she was getting bigger and bigger.
‘But you need a pony,’ said Prue.
‘The pony hasn’t come yet.’
‘You’re going to have a pony!’
‘Make you some tea if you like.’ Kizzy thought they had better stop talking about the pony. ‘Kettle’s boiling,’ which drew their attention to the fire and, for the first time, Prudence criticized. ‘’S a very little fire.’
‘Has to be,’ said Elizabeth, ‘to match.’
‘She said it was big.’
‘It can be,’ said Kizzy. ‘I can make it as big as I like.’ Something inside her knew she was boasting even more, yet she went on, moving the kittle-iron and the kettle and throwing on armful after armful of wood.
‘Now you have put it out,’ said Prue.
‘Haven’t,’ and Kizzy went to the garage and brought out Miss Brooke’s spare tin of petrol.
‘Kizzy you can’t put that on it. Petrol’s dangerous.’
‘Stand back,’ was all Kizzy said.
She meant to sprinkle a few drops but the tin was heavy. Petrol gushed out and, ‘Kizzy!’ screamed Mary Jo as there was a bang and a flash of flame. Kizzy dropped the tin and jumped back as a sheet of fire came up. ‘How it didn’t catch her face I don’t know,’ said Elizabeth afterwards. In a moment there was what seemed a wall of fire with tongues reaching out towards the cottage; the thatch on the low eaves of the L caught at once, while the wind swept the fire upwards. Flames ran along the thatch and in a minute smoke began to come out of the upstairs windows. Chuff tore out of the house, his fur on end, and leaped, clawing, up the hedge.
The heat scorched the girls’ faces and, ‘The wagon! The little wagon,’ screamed Elizabeth over the noise of the flames but, �
��Never mind the wagon,’ Kizzy shouted back. ‘Olivia . . . Miss Brooke, she’s asleep in there.’ Before they could catch her, Kizzy had dodged round the flames and dived into the smoking cottage. Elizabeth screamed; Mary Jo began to sob, but Prudence was not Mrs Cuthbert’s daughter for nothing. ‘Run, Beth,’ she ordered. ‘Run. Get Clem. Get men.’
‘Better . . . ring . . . fire brigade,’ choked Elizabeth.
‘They would never believe children on bonfire night.’ Prue was cool, decisive. ‘Run!’ and Elizabeth ran, dodging through the sitting room, which was not yet alight, but leaving the door open, which fanned the flames; the sitting room began to fill with smoke but Prudence was still cool. ‘Mary Jo, come with me.’
‘In there?’
‘We got to. Got to get ’em out. Come on. Don’t chicken.’
As they came into the cottage, they heard faint cries. ‘We’re coming,’ shouted Prue but she did not, like Kizzy dash straight up the stairs. She ran into the kitchen, found two glass cloths and held them under the tap. ‘Tie this over your mouth and nose,’ she commanded, giving one to Mary Jo. ‘Tie it tight. Now come.’
‘Up there?’ Mary Jo quailed. ‘’S – moke.’
‘’Course. Come on.’
The stairs were a steep single cottage flight with a small landing at the top; smoke was billowing down them now, filling the sitting room. ‘Crawl,’ said Prue over her shoulder. They could hear Kizzy coughing and spluttering above them, then saw her frantically trying to pull Miss Brooke’s body through an open door. Smoke belched out from behind her and as Prue, on her hands and knees, got to them, Kizzy choked, doubled up and fell. In one swift movement, Prue grabbed her curls; Kizzy was light, easy to pull clear and Prue passed her to Mary Jo. ‘Throw her down the stairs.’
‘Throw?’ Their voices were muffled by the cloths.
‘Yes. Quick.’ Beyond Miss Brooke, Prue saw lumps of burning thatch fall through the ceiling, fire run along the ancient beams. ‘Throw her. Hurry!’