National Velvet (10 page)

    
After tea they did the muslins.

    
“Ironing's lovely” said Meredith. They had forgotten their antagonism to the frocks. The irons were hot and had polished shoes that slid over the steaming damp of the muslin surface. There were two irons and Meredith and Mally ironed while Velvet waited sitting by the cactus window. They used the supper table. The frail muslin hardened and blanched as the irons poked and slid, and Edwina made a racket in the room above looking for her blue leather belt. Father passed through the room in his gum boots. He had been hosing.

    
“They want a steak. Over at Kingsworthy. Got to be there before breakfast,” he said.

    
“Before breakfast!”

    
“That's what I said,” said father. The door shut.

    
“What sort of a cook wants a steak before breakfast?” said Mally, shooting the nose of her iron in among the front pleats.

    
“Man-eating cook,” said Edwina, standing in the doorway with her belt over her wrist. “Sucks 'em raw before she lights the stove.”

    
“It's Mr. Cellini's, Kingsworthy,” said Velvet. “He's got that chestnut we saw at the Show last year.”

    
“Don't fiddle with the cactus,” said Edwina. “The leaves break off.”

    
Velvet folded her hands in her lap. “Sir Pericles,” said Velvet. “He was called Sir Pericles, that chestnut. Won the novice's jumping.”

    
“I'll go with the steak,” said Meredith. “I'd love to. I'll go just as early as I wake, I'll creep out and get Miss
Ada. Mother could leave the steak on the table overnight.”

    
“Why couldn't we take it this evening?”

    
“Then they think it's to-day's meat.”

    
“But it will be, anyway!”

    
“Yes, but they think it's fresher if it comes tomorrow.”

    
“There!” Mally took her muslin dress and held it up by the puff sleeves.

    
It was stiff and fresh with ironing and almost stood by itself.

    
“It's like a paper bag,” said Velvet. “Seems a pity to wear it. D'you want to start, Edwina, or shall I start mine?”

    
“I'm only wearing the top of mine. I've cut it off.”

    
“Gosh! You
have?
You've been an' cut it?”

    
All the three heads were raised towards Edwina as she took this step into the future. They contemplated her for a second, then accepted her. Velvet got up and began to unroll her frock and lay it out.

    
“Ay . . . Merry. Look out! What's that . . . it's blood!”

    
Meredith shot one hand to her face. “It's my nose,” she cried from under her hand.

    
“It's dropped on the muslin. Get me a rag!”

    
“Here's the ironing duster! Hold your head off the dresses! Lie down on the cold scullery floor. It's brick.”

    
Donald appeared in the doorway from the street and
watched Meredith as she ran into the scullery holding the duster to her face.

    
“She hurt herself?” he asked.

    
“Her nose is bleeding,” said Velvet.

    
“I laugh when my nose bleeds,” said Donald.

    
“Your nose hasn't ever bled,” said Velvet briefly.

    
“I would laugh if it did,” said Donald, and went.

    
“Merry marked her muslin?” said Mrs. Brown, coming in from the scullery.

    
“Great drop,” said Mally.

    
“Put it under cold water,” said Mrs. Brown. “Not a touch of soap an' no hot. It sets it. It's Africa's made her nose bleed.”

    
“I'll go with the steak to-morrow then,” said Velvet. “There's the Fair an' all. She better keep still.”

    
“What steak's that?”

    
“Father said Mr. Cellini wanted a steak before breakfast.”

    
“Funny time,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“I'd like to go anyway,” said Velvet. “I might see the chestnut.”

    
That night, before the Fair, they went to bed early.

    
“Africa!” said Meredith, wildly and suddenly in the middle of the night. And slept again.

V
ELVET'S
dreams were blowing about the bed. They were made of cloud but had the shapes of horses. Sometimes she dreamt of bits as women dream of jewellery. Snaffles and straights and pelhams and twisted pelhams were hanging, jointed and still in the shadows of a stable, and above them went up the straight, damp, oiled lines of leathers and cheek straps. The weight of a shining bit and the delicacy of the leathery above it was what she adored. Sometimes she walked down an endless cool alley in summer, by the side of the gutter
in
the old red brick floor. On her left and right were open stalls made of dark wood and the buttocks of the bay horses shone like mahogany all the way down. The horses turned their heads to look at her as she walked. They had black manes hanging like silk as the thick necks turned. These dreams blew and played round her bed in the night and the early hours of the morning.

    
She got up while the sisters were sleeping and all the room was full of book-muslin and canaries singing. “How they can sleep!” she said wonderingly when she became aware of the canaries singing so madly. All the sisters lay dreaming of horses. The room seemed full of the shapes of horses. There was almost a dream-smell of stables. As she dressed they were stirring, shifting and tossing in white heaps beneath their cotton bedspreads. The canaries screamed in a long yellow scream, and grew madder. Then Velvet left the room and softly shut the door and passed down into the silence of the cupboard-stairway.

    
In her striped cotton dress with a cardigan over it she picked up the parcel of steak that had been left on the kitchen table and drank the glass of milk with a playing card on the top of it that Mrs. Brown had left her overnight. Then she got a half packet of milk chocolate from the string drawer, and went out to saddle Miss Ada.

    
In the brilliance of a very early summer morning they went off together, Miss Ada's stomach rumbling with hunger. Velvet fed her from a bag of oats she had brought with her up on the top of the hill. There were spiders' webs stretched everywhere across the gorse bushes.

    
Coming down over the rolling grass above Kings-worthy Velvet could see the feathery garden looking like tropics asleep down below. Old Mr. Cellini by a miracle grew palms and bananas and mimosa in his. Miss Ada went stabbing and sliding down the steep hillside,
hating the descent, switching her tail with vexation.

    
Velvet tied Miss Ada to the fence, climbed it and crept through the spiny undergrowth into the foreign garden. There was not a sound. Not a gardener was about. The grass-like moss, spongy with dew so that each foot sank in and made a black print which filled with water. Then she looked up and saw that the old gentleman had been looking at her all the time.

    
He had on a squarish hat and never took his eyes off her. He was standing by a tree. Velvet's feet went down in the moss as she stood. His queer hat was wet, and there was dew on the shoulders of his ancient black frock-coat which buttoned up to the neck; he looked like someone who had been out all the night.

    
Raising one black-coated arm he rubbed his lips as though they were stiff, and she could see how frail he was, unsteady, wet.

    
“What have you come to do?” he said in a very low voice.

    
“Sir?”

    
He moved a step forwards and stumbled.

    
“Are you staying? Going up to the house?”

    
“The house.”

    
“Stay here,” he said in an urgent tone which broke.

    
Velvet dropped her own eyes to her parcel, for she knew he was looking at her and how his eyeballs shone round his eyes.

    
“How did you come?” (at last). She looked up. There was something transparent about his trembling face.

    
“On our pony,” she said. “I rode. She's tied to the fence. There's some meat here for the cook, to leave at the back door.”

    
“Do you like ponies?” said the rusty voice.

    
“Oh . . . yes. We've only the one.”

    
“Better see mine,” said the old gentleman in a different tone.

    
He moved towards her, and as they walked he rested one hand on her shoulder. They walked till they came to the open lawns and passed below some fancy bushes.

    
He stopped. And Velvet stopped.

    
“. . . if there was anything you wanted very much,” he said, as though to himself.

    
Velvet said nothing. She did not think it was a question.

    
“I'm very much too old,” said the old gentleman. “Too old. What did you say you'd brought?”

    
“Meat,” said Velvet. “Rump.”

    
“Meat,” said the old gentleman. “I shan't want it. Let's see it.”

    
Velvet pulled the dank parcel out of her bag.

    
“Throw it away,” said the old gentleman, and threw it into a bush.

    
They walked on a few paces.

    
Something struck her on the hip as she walked. It was when his coat swung out. He looked down too, and unbuttoned his coat and slowly took it off. Without a word he hung it over his arm, and they walked on again, he in his black hat and black waistcoat and shirt-sleeves.

    
“Going to the stables,” said he. “Why, are you fond of horses?”

    
There was something about him that made Velvet feel he was going to say good-bye to her. She fancied he was going to be carried up to Heaven like Elisha.

    
“Horses,” he said. “Did you say you had horses?”

    
“Only an old pony, sir.”

    
“All my life I've had horses. Stables full of them. You like 'em?”

    
“I've seen your chestnut,” said Velvet. “Sir Pericles. I seen him jump.”

    
“I wish he was yours, then,” said the old gentleman, suddenly and heartily. “You said you rode?”

    
“We've on'y got Miss Ada. The pony. She's old.”

    
“Huh!”

    
“Not so much
old,
” said Velvet hurriedly. “She's obstinate.”

    
He stopped again.

    
“Would you tell me what you want most in the world? . . . Would you tell me that?”

    
He was looking at her.

    
“Horses,” she said, “sir.”

    
“To ride on? To own for yourself?”

    
He was still looking at her, as though he expected more.

    
“I tell myself stories about horses,” she went on, desperately fishing at her shy desires. “Then I can dream about them. Now I dream about them every night. I want to be a famous rider, I should like to carry dispatches. I should like to get a first at Olympia; I should
like to ride in a great race; I should like to have so many horses that I could walk down between the two rows of loose-boxes and ride what I chose. I would have them all under fifteen hands. I like chestnuts best, but bays are lovely too, but I don't like blacks”

    
She ran out the words and caught her breath and stopped.

    
At the other end of the golden bushes the gardener's lad passed in the lit, green gap between two rhododendron clumps with a bodge on his arm. The old gentleman called to him. Then he walked onwards across the grass and Velvet and the gardener's boy followed after. They neared a low building of old brick with a square cobbled yard outside it. The three passed in under the arched doorway.