National Velvet (17 page)

    
“He's quiet while I'm here,” said Velvet. “But I can't stay here all night. Where's father?”

    
“Gone down to finish the bills,” said Mi. “I thought he better.”

    
Later in the evening Mally swinging on the gate by the apple trees saw Jacob coming up the empty road.

    
“Bitches good?” she asked him, flinging him a block of lichen off the gate post.

    
“Succulent” said Jacob, making a half circle round her.

    
“Go an' tell Mi about it!” said Mally.

    
Jacob went, bowing and grinning. Mi walloped him and gave him his supper.

    
Later in the night the house was quiet, the piebald quiet (for he had Velvet in her nightgown sitting on his manger), the moon rose steadily. At two o'clock the moon began to sink. Mi came to the stable door and looked over the top. He wore his sleeping clothes, several old sleeveless jerseys, and a pair of shorts.

    
“Get to bed now,” he said. “I'll do a bit.”

    
Velvet lowered off the manger. “Here's six quarters left,” she said, pointing in the manger. “Give him a piece every time he seems restless.”

    
“What is it?”

    
“Apples,” said Velvet. “I bin feeding him bits all night.”

    
“You'll make him loose,” said Mi. “Where's the sacking pieces?”

    
“In the corner. An' ties. Ties off the hay bales.”

    
At five the sea was running up with a gale behind it and pounding in the sewer. The day broke in flashes of light and the elms soughed in the wind. The piebald's tail and mane were flung about as Mi led him out into the yard, his hooves bound up in sacking. Velvet met them in the road.

    
“How'd you wake?” asked Mi.

    
“An't bin asleep,” said Velvet. “I just heard the wind. Isn't he good!”

    
“Perisher,” said Mi.

    
“Oh, no,” said Velvet. “Oh, no. Wait while I get a bridle.”

    
She returned with a snaffle-bridle belonging to Sir Pericles, one which they had brought in to clean the night before.

    
“Gimme a leg up, Mi,” and he jumped her on to the warm, round back.

    
“Key of the field's behind the manger. Come up an' help me get Sir Pericles. I got to ride back on him.”

    
Mi walked beside her up the road to the field in the gale.

    
“Blowing awful up there,” he said, looking to the Hullocks.

    
“Seaweed's smelling like drains,” said Velvet, looking at the wild and shining east.

    
“ 'Tis drains,” said Mi, sniffing. “Lota nonsense they talk about seaweed. You had anything to eat?”

    
“No, I forgot.”

    
Mi grunted with disfavour. “Fer a sickly girl you give yerself something to do!” he said.

    
“An't sickly. M'wiry,” said Velvet. “Shove the gate wider. I'll stub my knee!”

    
Sir Pericles trotted down gladly, tail flying.

    
“Halter's under the stone in the corner,” said Velvet.

    
Mi picked it up. Sir Pericles came willingly enough. The two horses hustled clumsily through the gate.

    
“Good-bye,” said Velvet and went off across the reedy ditch, riding the piebald and leading the chestnut.

    
“Why don't you ride the other?” shouted Mi, but his
voice blew back into his mouth as he called into the gale coming off the sea.

    
He watched the horses go up the chalk road and break into a canter on the crest. His old mackintosh flapped on his bare legs and the wind tore at the roots of his red hair. “If she were a boy . . .” he said longingly to himself. With that light body and grand heart he would get her into a racing stable. He knew of many up North. He had friends here and there. She'd be a great jockey some day. Fancy wasting those hands and that spirit and that lightweight on a girl. “No more'n a skeleton,” he said. “An' never will be, likely. She'd ride like a piece of lightning. No more weight'n a piece of lightning.” He thought of her mother . . . and of his old father. “Velvet an' her. A feather an' a mountain. But both the same.”

    
Boom . . . went the sea on the cliffs. The savage blow came up the valley. Mi hated water. Brought up by the Channel trainer he had edged back inland as soon as he could. He couldn't stand the waves and the empty trough that sucked and soaked along the lip of the beaches. It turned his head, and he went up the village whenever he thought of the sea. “How she ever!” he thought, with his mind's eye fixed sharp on Mrs. Brown. Great, wallowing woman, half submerged, water pouring backwards and forwards over her shoulders, threshing across the water like a whale. A stormy dawn when she had landed. “Bet old Dan was pleased,” he thought. “Wasn't many swimming the Channel those days.”

    
His mind went back to Velvet. He too, like her, was longing to place his dream in history. This child, Velvet, was good for something.

    
He turned back to his bed, shivering, Velvet in his thoughts.

    
And hungry, sick, delicate, blown so that she could hardly breathe, Velvet in the grip of horses and of the gale went on across the blunt and unprotected Hullocks. Great skies slipped out of the folds, unfurled, and stood a thousand miles above her. The sight battered against unseeing eyeballs, was drunk into the marrow of something older than her brain. Flags and pennons and beacons waved above the high land as she sat below, thinking in slow brown drops of thought, sure of her future, counting her plans, warm in expectation, glorious butcher's Velvet, eyes cast down upon the moving shoulders of mortal horses.

M
I
raised thirty shillings for the gymkhana. He borrowed it from his girl for Velvet's sake. That is to say he treated love worse than he treated adventure.

    
“Your girl,” said Velvet, frowning in thought. “Which girl? Didn't know you had a girl.”

    
“Nor I had. Met her at the dance last night,” said Mi. “Pleased as Punch, she was. Lent me the money too.” So Mi behaved badly, and Velvet knew it. But neither she nor Mi cared when they set their minds firm.

    
On the day of the gymkhana, about mid-morning, it grew suddenly very hot and the rain came down in sheets. Inside the living room, polishing the bits, it was like the tropics. The girls' faces were wet. Rain came down outside on full leaves, making a rattle and a sopping sound. Everything dripped. The windows streamed. The glass was like glycerine.

    
“Oh, Lord,” said Mally, “oh, dear, oh, damn!”

    
“We've only two mackintoshes. Velvet's has stuck to the wall in the hot cupboard. Won't it rain itself out?”

    
“The grass'll be slippery. What about their shoes being roughed?”

    
“We've no money,” said Velvet, “for roughing.”

    
“If Mi had a file . . .” said Mally.

    
“A file's no good. You want nails in.”

    
“I'm sweating,” said Edwina. “Can't we have a window open?”

    
She opened the yard window and the rain came crackling in over the cactus.

    
“Hot's a pit in here!” said Mi, coming in from the yard and taking off his dripping coat. “The yard's swimming. Everything's floating.”

    
“Will they put it off?”

    
“The gymkhana? No, it'll be over soon. It's a waterspout. There's a great light coming up the way the wind's coming from. Your ma going to serve the dinner early?”

    
“Yes, at twelve,” said Edwina. “We better clear now. Put the bridles and things in the bedroom. Better father doesn't see too much of itl”

    
“He knows, doesn't he?” said Meredith.

    
“Yes, he knows, but he doesn't want to think too much about it.”

    
At dinner they had sardines instead of pudding. Mrs. Brown always served sardines for staying power. Dan had dropped them into her mouth from the boat as she crossed the Channel.

    
Donald considered his on his plate.

    
“I'll take your spines out, Donald” said Meredith.

    
“I eat my spines” said Donald.

    
“No, you don't, Donald. Not the big spine. The little bones but not the big one in the middle. Look how it comes out!”

    
“I eat my spines, I say,” said Donald firmly with rising colour, and held her knife-hand by the wrist.

    
“But look . . . they come out lovely!” said Merry, fishing with the fork. The spine of the slit sardine dangled in the air and was laid on the edge of the plate. Quick as lightning Donald, popped it into his mouth with his fingers and looked at her dangerously.

    
“I crunch up my spines, I like them,” he said.

    
“Leave him alone,” said mother.

    
“D'you eat your tails too?” said Merry vexedly.

    
“I eat my tails and my spines,” said Donald, and the discussion was finished.

    
At one the rain stopped and the sun shone. The grass was smouldering with light. The gutters ran long after the rain had stopped.

    
“Keep up on the hog,” said Velvet, as the horses moved along. “We don't want 'em splashed. Gutters are all boggy.” They were well on the way to the gymkhana, held in the football field at Pendean.

    
“We look better in our mackintoshes!” called Mally. “I'm glad it rained.”

    
“I'm steamy,” said Edwina. “Merry, you can wear mine. You'll look better.”

    
“I'm all right. I don't want it, thank you, Edwina.”

    
But Edwina was struggling out of her mackintosh. “You'll look better. You're all untidy. . . . Put it on!”

    
“I don't want it!”

    
“You're a bully, ‘Dwina,” said Mally. “You jus' want to get rid of it an' not sweat.”

    
They turned up a chalk road between a cutting and in a few minutes they could see below them the gathering of horse-vans in the corner of Pendean field, the secretary's flagged tent, white-painted jumps dotting the course, and a stream of horses and ponies drawing along the road below.

    
The soaking land was spread below them, and the flat road of the valley shone like a steel knife. Getting off their horses they led them down the chalk path between blackberry bushes, and in ten minutes of slithering descent they were at the gates of the gymkhana field.

    
“Competitors' passes,” murmured Edwina and showed their pasteboard tickets.

    
They picked out a free tree in the field and established themselves.

    
“Here's someone's programme!” said Mally. “Squashed and lost. Sixpence saved!”