The Diddakoi Read Free

to him. In spring Gran warmed bunches of pussy willow at the fire to make the buds come out and Kizzy took them, not to the village but to Rye, and sold them
from house to house: palm and the first sticky-buds. Gran made baskets of willow twigs that bend easily and planted the baskets with primrose roots in moss and Kizzy sold those too; they were so
dainty people would buy them – and perhaps Kizzy’s brown eyes that Clem Oliver liked made a difference. In winter she sold mistletoe and holly.
    Gran could not make holly wreaths now, her hands were too shaky Kizzy’s too small, but they lived happily in the orchard. Gran kept the caravan while Kizzy was away and went
stick-gathering for the fire they lit and kept protected by a shelter of two sheets of corrugated iron, with sacks to keep out the wind. No one could build a fire like Gran; she sat on a bench, a
plank across two piles of bricks; Kizzy had a fish-box that had McPhail and Son, Aberdeen stencilled on its side, but it was sturdy, the right size for Kizzy, and when it grew warm from the
heat of the fire it gave out a sweet resin smell. They would eat their breakfast or supper there, sometimes a stew, but more often nowadays bread and butter, perhaps a spread of dripping.
Kizzy’s grandfather and father would have snared rabbits, sometimes a hare, even a pheasant to put in the pot; she had a dim remembrance of eating hedgehog – ‘hotchi-witchi’
Gran called it – but they had to manage without such things now though sometimes they had pan cake – cake fried in the frying pan. The black kettle sang on its hook, Gran’s
kittle-iron, and presently they would have a mug of strong tea, drinking it in the firelight, their backs protected with a sack and Joe tearing up grass, keeping as close to them as he could
get.
    Kizzy did not have toys, except an old skipping-rope that Gran had bought with some jumble – travellers are forever buying and selling things. Kizzy did not need toys when she had Joe. She
combed him with an old curry-comb and brushed his mane and tail; she would sit beside him in the grass, giving him buttercups, of which he was fond; if she lay down beside him he would sometimes
push her with his nose; the breath from his nostrils was warm, and now and again he would gently lick her face. A horse’s lick is clean to a traveller. ‘Well, they only drinks clean
water,’ Gran said. ‘Not like dogs’ – travellers keep their dogs apart – ‘Not let come into the wagons like “they” lets ’em into rooms –
covering everything in hair.’ To Gran, ‘they’ were ‘gorgios’, people who were not gypsy. Gran had no dog now, but Joe moved his big hairy feet carefully round the
campfire, always coming to see what they had for supper, always getting a crust of bread. Sometimes Kizzy climbed on the fence and called him and got on his back; it was so broad she could lie down
there too and feel him swaying, rippling his muscles as he moved, munching, across the grass. When the apples were ripe she would stand up on his back and reach him an apple; Admiral Twiss would
not mind: he kept apples in his pockets for his own satin-skinned colts and fillies. They were beautiful, ‘Yet I wouldn’ change you,’ Kizzy whispered to Joe, ‘not
ever.’ But there is never an ‘ever’; that February, getting off the bus, Kizzy had had two bunches of early palm and catkins left; Prudence Cuthbert’s house was near the bus
stop and Kizzy had knocked at the back door. She only wanted to sell her bunches; she had not met Mrs Cuthbert then – nor Prue.
    Mrs Cuthbert was a busy lady busy doing good to people, ‘whether they likes it or not,’ said the Admiral’s Peters. He knew Mrs Cuthbert well: ‘Always coming to the front
door to ask for this or that: flowers for the altar, vegetables for the Women’s Institute stall. Would Sir Archibald open the gardens for the Horticultural Society Week?’‘Nothing
to see,’ said Peters.