The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden Read Free Book Online

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,’