by Rumer Godden
‘Pneumonia!’ Mrs Blount felt guilty. ‘I knew she had no coat,’ she told Miss Brooke. ‘I knew and did nothing about it.’
‘Dear Mildred, that wouldn’t have given her pneumonia,’ said Miss Brooke.
For a while Kizzy did not know where she was, at Amberhurst House or anywhere else; she was too ill. There were days of pain and struggling for breath; Peters sponged her burning forehead and wrists with cool water, gave her sips of water or ice cream, but to her he was only a face that loomed near and went away. There were nights when she cried out or screamed in terror about Joe and the knacker . . . the wagon and flames . . . Boyo . . . Mrs Doe’s slap . . . and about school. The Admiral, who sat up with her, learned a great deal about school in those nights. ‘Diddakoi,’ cried Kizzy. ‘Gypsy gypsy joker, get a red hot poker . . . When’s your birthday? . . . bump bump . . . Don’t pull my hair – don’t, don’t!’ It rose to a shriek and the Admiral had to quiet her. He, Peters and Nat took it in turns to stay with Kizzy and it was amazing how gentle and thorough were those male hands that lifted her, changed her, tended her, but Kizzy did not know anything about it until she woke one morning when outside the sun was shining from a sky as blue as the quilt that covered her, and she found herself in a small room, sparsely furnished as old-fashioned rooms for children often were, a little shabby but with a fire burning that sent firelight up the walls. The wallpaper had a pattern of apple blossom, faded now so that it was only a suggestion but, in her haziness, it made Kizzy feel she was back in the orchard. Yet when she looked at herself, was it herself? Were these her own hands and arms and, as she looked under the bedclothes, her own legs? She was wearing a striped jacket and trousers and, I’m clean, thought Kizzy. She had a moment of panic, then Nat was there with his comforting horse smell. ‘’S’all right, you’re at the House,’ said Nat.
‘Joe?’ croaked Kizzy.
‘Safe and well and waiting for the buttercups. Now drink this,’ said Nat.
‘Who is going to look after her?’ asked Mrs Blount.
‘They are,’ said Miss Brooke.
‘Those three men!’
‘But how can they?’ and that was what the village asked. ‘How can they? Poor mite, in that great house,’ and, ‘Men can’t look after a sick child.’ Mrs Cuthbert said it positively, but the Admiral, Peters and Nat looked after Kizzy so well that Doctor Harwell had to agree she did not need a nurse. It was Peters who washed her and gave her a blanket bath every day, washing her with warm water and soap as gently as any woman, an arm or leg at a time, the rest folded in warm blankets; it was Peters who sent Nat into Rye to buy bath powder, a brush and comb and pyjamas. Nat bought boys’ pyjamas – he would not go into a woman’s or girl’s shop, but as Kizzy had never had any she did not know the difference. ‘I slept in my vest,’ she told Nat. Peters made her meals, bringing her soup or milk and honey in little cups, or a spoonful or two of jelly and, when her throat was sore, ice cream.
Kizzy was far too thin; ‘Underweight,’ said Doctor Harwell, ‘and under-nourished.’
‘Well, I can guess they lived on bread and tea.’ Admiral Twiss was vexed with himself. ‘Mrs Lovell had probably grown too old to cook.’
‘It seems the child wouldn’t eat the school dinners. Her teacher thinks the other children told her that hers weren’t paid for.’
‘Not only that,’ said Mr Blount, who had come up to the House about Kizzy. ‘She tore her meat with her fingers and that shocked them.’
‘I ought to have thought about food,’ said the Admiral. ‘I knew the child was there, but one scarcely ever saw her.’
Now Peters was building Kizzy up – in every way. ‘Drink this up, saucepot.’ ‘Now I don’t want a crumb left of that.’ He kept her room clean and polished, with a fire that burned day and night; when it was dusk Kizzy lay and watched the firelight flickering on the walls and ceiling. The fire made work; Peters had to carry coals up twice a day, ‘but an electric fire dries the air,’ said Peters. ‘Not good for her lungs.’
When he was busy, Nat came and sat with her. He rubbed her back – ‘Coo! your bones stick out like a chicken’s,’ said Nat – and told her stories of the horses he had looked after: of Royal who had run in the Derby and the Admiral’s favourite show hunter, Rainbird. ‘Best of all classes at Richmond. I’ll show you his cups and some of the rosettes when you are well,’ but even Nat’s stories were not as good as the Admiral’s, especially the one about Joe. He told Kizzy how Joe had been foaled – ‘Must be twenty-eight years ago. He’s one of the oldest horses I have ever seen,’ – foaled on a farm in Antrim, ‘which is in Ireland.’ How he had been trained as a hunter, lunged over fences and, as a five-year-old, been taken to Dublin for the Summer Show How he had been bought and travelled on the ferry to England, and of the cups and rosettes he, like Rainbird, had won. How, one day, Joe had put his foot in a rabbit hole and broken a bone in his fetlock, ‘so he couldn’t jump any more.’ Then how Kizzy’s grandfather had bought Joe in a sale and Joe had pulled the wagon along the country lanes in England, following the strawberry, hops and apple picking from Kent to Worcestershire and back again, but always landing up in the Admiral’s orchard to spend the winter, until at last he had stayed there all the time with Gran. It was a made-up story, of course, ‘But it might have been Joe?’ asked Kizzy. ‘It easily might,’ said the Admiral.
Every morning he would wrap her in the camel hair dressing gown and carry her to the window and Nat brought Joe, in his halter, on to the drive below. Then the Admiral would put Kizzy in a small rocking chair – she was allowed to sit up now – tuck a rug round her and Peters would bring their ‘elevenses’ on a silver tray, a mug of milk for Kizzy, coffee for the Admiral, and they would have them together. These days of convalescence were perhaps the happiest Kizzy had ever known. With Gran she had been content, but now she was radiantly happy until she had – ‘visitors’ said Kizzy.
‘I am Kizzy Lovell’s teacher. May I see her, please?’ It was Peters’ afternoon out and when the bell rang, Admiral Twiss answered the door. ‘You would never have been let in, else,’ said Mrs Cuthbert.
‘It isn’t curiosity,’ Mrs Blount told the Admiral quickly and, ‘What could I do but let her in,’ he told Peters afterwards.
‘Kizzy,’ said the Admiral when he had opened the bedroom door. ‘Your teacher has come to see you,’ but where was Kizzy? At the word ‘teacher’ she had dived to the bottom of the bed under the bedclothes. ‘School doesn’t seem to be popular,’ said the Admiral.
Mrs Blount was distressed. ‘I tried, indeed I did, but some of them teased her, children can be cruel. Perhaps if I had done what Miss Brooke said . . .’
‘What did she say?’
‘Try to make them interested in her, make her romantic . . . I thought it was rather nonsense at the time.’
‘Sounds more like sense,’ and the Admiral asked, ‘Is that the Miss Brooke who has just been made a magistrate?’
‘I never know how to place Olivia Brooke,’ Mrs Cuthbert had had to admit. It was annoying as, usually, given half an hour, she had people clearly and properly labelled, ‘as if we were all tidy glass jars,’ said Miss Brooke.
‘Glass jars? I never said that.’ Mrs Cuthbert was nettled. ‘And what do you think people are?’
‘More like caves to explore,’ said Miss Brooke. ‘Mysterious caves. One never gets to the end of them.’
‘Well, if anyone’s mysterious, Olivia, you are.’
Miss Brooke had bought the cottage and appeared in the village without any explanation; the village liked things explained, but Miss Brooke had seemed to be so busy making her new garden that she had little time to talk and, though Olivia, as they soon called her, was perfectly friendly, for all her probings Mrs Cuthbert had learned little more.
Miss Brooke was small and, ‘When you really look at her,’ said Mrs Cuthbert, ‘very plain,’ with a pale face and mouse hair twisted into a bun, but her hazel eyes were remarkable and deceived one into thinking her
pretty, which was odd as she did not seem to bother much about clothes and never went to a hairdresser. Mrs Cuthbert knew too that she had strange habits – Mildred Blount had told her how the supper things were often left unwashed because Miss Brooke wanted to listen to music, nor would she answer the door while it was going on. ‘Sometimes she doesn’t do a thing in the house but make her bed,’ Mrs Blount reported. ‘She goes straight out to garden.’
‘If it’s a fine day, why not?’ Miss Brooke asked, unperturbed.
‘She doesn’t seem to care a fig what people think,’ said Mrs Blount, ‘and yet she’s not proud. You couldn’t call her that.’
‘N-no,’ said Mrs Cuthbert.
Mr Blount was a staunch admirer. ‘Look how she took Mildred and me in while we were waiting for our house. Kindness itself.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs Cuthbert. The truth was that Miss Brooke had a poise for which Mrs Cuthbert could see no reason; she was obviously poor – the cottage was simple almost to bareness, ‘And she makes her own bread.’
‘I like making it,’ said Miss Brooke. She would bake and garden but would not sew or knit or join the flower-arranging classes for which Mrs Cuthbert was recruiting. ‘But you’re so fond of flowers, Olivia.’
‘In my garden, or in cottage bunches,’ said Miss Brooke.
She would take the most menial tasks at village gatherings, seeming to prefer washing-up behind the scenes to figuring on committees or meeting people – ‘Even when the Princess came to open the Hospital wing,’ said Mrs Blount – so that it was a shock to the village when Miss Brooke was made a Justice of the Peace. ‘They must know something about her we don’t,’ said Mrs Blount.
‘Still, I don’t understand it,’ said Mrs Cuthbert, who would dearly have liked to be a magistrate herself. ‘She’s so mousy and quiet.’
‘Perhaps it’s because she is quiet.’ That was the Vicar. ‘She listens and doesn’t interrupt.’
‘And lets you get a word in,’ said Doctor Harwell, who had wanted her on the Hospital Board. In fact, Miss Brooke could have been on several committees but, unlike Mrs Cuthbert, did not want to be. ‘The Court work is enough if I do it properly,’ said Miss Brooke, ‘and I like my house and garden.’
‘If you ask me, she’d rather talk to flowers than humans,’ said Mrs Cuthbert. The Admiral would have understood that; he would rather have talked to horses and, ‘She seems a wise person,’ he said now.
Mrs Blount blushed – it was almost as if he had called her unwise – and she turned to the little mound hidden far down in the bed. ‘Kizzy come out,’ she coaxed. ‘I have something for you. Something she ought to have had long ago,’ she told the Admiral. ‘It might have prevented this. I blame myself.’
Admiral Twiss stripped off the bedclothes, took Kizzy and sat her upright against her pillows. ‘Sit up at once,’ he said sternly. ‘Give your hand to your teacher and say “How do you do”. We don’t behave like this at Amberhurst.’
Kizzy reluctantly held out her hand; Mrs Blount took it and, watching the Admiral’s eyebrows, did not keep it but shook it politely and laid it down; then she put a big paper bag on the bed, a fresh bag with the name of a shop on it. ‘It’s a warm coat for you,’ she told Kizzy. ‘For you. It hasn’t belonged to anyone else. It’s new. Won’t you open it?’
‘Open it.’ The Admiral’s order was curt, as he might have spoken to a rating on the bridge of his flagship.
It was a duffel coat, new as Mrs Blount said, of soft, thick brown wool, with a hood and a plaid lining in scarlet and blue and polished wood toggles for buttons.
‘I can guess that you bought that with your own money,’ said the Admiral and Mrs Blount nodded.
‘I felt guilty.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’ The eyebrows and moustaches worked. ‘I believe you have just married, Mrs Blount, and are getting a new house.’
‘Yes,’ she blushed again. ‘We hope to move in next week.’
‘So you must need every penny, every moment. Very good of you to do this,’ said Admiral Twiss.
Mrs Blount had hoped Kizzy might smile, give a gasp of surprise and pleasure, but Kizzy did not open her lips; nor, when she had lifted the coat out of the bag, did she touch it again. ‘See, it still has the tickets on it.’ As Mrs Blount spread the coat on the bed, she sounded as if she were pleading.
‘Say “thank you”,’ said the Admiral to Kizzy.
‘Thank you,’ emotionless.
‘You can wear it when you come back to school,’ Mrs Blount said. Kizzy went still as a stone and, when Admiral Twiss had taken Mrs Blount away and Kizzy, listening, had heard her footsteps growing fainter down the drive, she took the duffel coat and threw it out of the window.
Peters found it on the drive and brought it in to the Admiral, who did not lam Kizzy as Gran had lammed her when she put Prue’s clothes down the apple tree. He told Peters to dry the coat, brush it and hang it up. ‘She’ll wear it by and by.’
‘Will I have to go back to school?’ Kizzy asked the Admiral.
‘Of course. When you are well.’
‘I am still ill,’ said Kizzy.
‘You are much better.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Don’t you want to get up?’
Kizzy thought. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay in bed till four o’clock, then get up and have my breakfast. When I go to bed at night I’ll stay there until four o’clock next day.’
As if the coat had sparked it off, ‘She can get up and dress now,’ said Doctor Harwell – but Kizzy could not, she had nothing to dress in. Peters had burnt her clothes – ‘That’s all they were fit for,’ – and thrown away her old boots. ‘Leakin’,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to buy her some clothes, Admiral Sir.’
‘You or Nat had better go into Rye.’
There was a silence, then: ‘Wouldn’t be much good in girls’ shops, Nat and I.’ Peters was decided. ‘And think of the gossip,’ – and for once the gnomes rebelled. ‘I know, sir,’ said Peters. ‘If you went up to London you could get everything she needs in one big shop and no one the wiser. Much better for Kizzy, sir,’ but Admiral Twiss, who had fought his way through with convoys to Russia in the war, been torpedoed twice and won the Distinguished Service Order, quailed. ‘Just jerseys and skirts, sir,’ Peters tried to encourage him. ‘Those pinafore things . . . I’ll measure her for you,’ said Peters helpfully, but the Admiral was still appalled. ‘Peters,’ he whispered, ‘What . . . what do they wear underneath?’
Peters made a chart in which a paper-doll Kizzy had her measurements laid out like a diagram for a ship, height, width, depth, and Admiral Twiss went to London and walked along Oxford Street looking at the shop windows, but there were so many filled with small girls’ clothes that he was bewildered. He knew where to get his shoes made, buy his hats, order his shirts, but this . . . At last he went to his tailor and ordered a jacket he did not need. Then, ‘Phipps,’ he said, ‘what’s the best place to buy children’s clothes?’
‘Rowe’s of Bond Street,’ said Phipps.
That was quite close, but when he found it the Admiral stood looking at the window for a long time: a model girl was wearing a pale blue coat with a velvet collar and white gloves; another had a yellow silk smock; they did not at all look like Kizzy There was, too, a little girl figure in riding clothes; Admiral Twiss admired the cut of the jodhpurs, the fitted tweed jacket showing a glimpse of white shirt and brown tie, the brown velvet riding hat. Must get Kiz a pony, he thought, then suddenly recollected she was not his. He looked at the blue coat again, shook his head and went away.
He took refuge at his barber’s and had a haircut though his hair did not really need one. ‘John,’ he asked the young barber. ‘You have children?’
‘Three, sir.’
‘Where do you buy their clothes?’
‘Marks and Sparks, sir. Marks and Spencers, that is – branches all over the place. Wonderful value they are. One of their biggest shops is in O
xford Street.’
It was a big shop. Admiral Twiss wandered up and down its aisles where the goods were set out on long counters or hung on rails. The shop was full and after Amberhurst seemed to the Admiral a nightmare of movement and noise; he was jostled and hustled, the lights dazzled him. He did find a rack full of children’s dressing gowns and it occurred to him that Kizzy ought to have a dressing gown of her own, that his was too large for her, but he could see no one to serve him. The Admiral was used to small exclusive shops where assistants, full of deference, sprang to meet him; he did not understand that he should search for what he needed and then find a salesgirl – added to which he did not really know what he should buy. After a little while he gave up, hailed a taxi, and went to his Club for lunch. ‘Luncheon and a stiff drink,’ said the Admiral. Then he caught the next train home.
‘Well, well,’ said Peters. ‘Probably have been the same meself No use sending Nat. We’ll have to ask that Mrs Blount.’
And have trouble with Kizzy? Besides, Mrs Blount would surely talk.’
‘It would be all over the village,’ and, ‘If we want that,’ said Peters, ‘better to ask Mrs Cuthbert.’
The Admiral was pondering. ‘There’s one woman who doesn’t talk,’ he said. ‘I will go and ask Miss Brooke.’
‘Two of everything?’ Miss Brooke asked in a businesslike way. ‘Or three?’
‘But is three enough? I buy shirts and socks in dozens,’ said Admiral Twiss.
