National Velvet (28 page)

    
“It'll wear off. We'll put a drop of water to it so it won't look so yellow. Bend your head down, let's try.”

    
Mi had mixed a drop or two in the tooth glass, and painted it on below the white cropped hair. “It's that queer hair of yours is the trouble,” said Mi. “Look like an albino.”

    
“What's that?”

    
“Soft chaps. Soft-shell chaps, like eggs.”

    
“Gimme the cap an' le's look.”

    
Mi dived into the suitcase and pulled out a black silk cap. Velvet drew it over her cropped hair and well over her eyes.

    
“It's not too bad,” said Mi. “Not much hair shows. The brown of your neck's much better, but where'll I end it off?”

    
“Wash it round weaker an' weaker with water.”

    
Mi did his best.

    
Slowly the morning drew into wet daylight.

    
“Now I'm going out to the horse,” said Mi. “I got
him locked in an' I got the key. I'll pay the bill here. don't you move till twelve.”

    
“All that time?”

    
“You'll give yourself away if you put your nose out. At twelve jus' walk down with the bag an' walk out an' pop into the taxi.”

    
“What taxi?”

    
“He'll be waiting. He don' know nothing about you but he's a chap I used to know. He'll be here at twelve sharp waiting to pick you up. Ferret-faced chap but he's all right.”

    
“Where'll I find you?”

    
“He'll bring you to where I want you, near the Course. I'll have your dinner waiting for you.”

    
“Don' give me anything to eat, Mi. Not jus' before like that. I'll never stand it.”

    
“Not a ham sandwich?” said Mi, arrested at the door.

    
“Oh, my God,” said Velvet.

    
The morning drifted by. Velvet rose and became the little man. At twelve to the tick he walked sharply down the stairs carrying his suitcase. He had padded shoulders, a common suit, a dingy white shirt and pale blue tie, a brownish overcoat with a half belt and Mi's old Homburg hat spotted with oil.

    
The taxi was there, the little, man nodded and stepped inside. Under his coat he had an empty heart. He was crushed by delay and the rain.

    
The taxi took him through the mean streets for twenty minutes. It seemed impossible that so great a racecourse could lie buried in so mean a place. Suddenly
there was a clearing on the right, and gates. Like the clearing and the gates of a cemetery lying in the surf of a metropolis. The taxi stopped and the little man leant out of the window. Mi walked towards him from the corner of a fence.

T
HIS
was the North with its everlasting white railings. The stands were filling already. The Union Jack, Stars and Stripes, and Tricolour flew over the Grand Stand. The minor bookies under their stand-umbrellas had been in position since eleven. Their fantastic names were chalked on boards so that they looked like a fresh haul of fish in a market. “Special this Day! Bream . . . Ernie Bream . . . Alfy Haddock . . . Mossie Halibut . . . Duke Cod!” They were shouting and clattering and taking turns in gangs at the Snack Bar. Everything else was more or less awaiting the glory of the day. “Champagne Bar . . . Champagne only,” This was empty. Inside the dining-room the white
tables were spread and the knowing old waiters hung like old flies swarming in doorways.

    
The police had marched out in a dark stream an hour before and had taken up positions round the Course. There was a constable at every jump with a folded stretcher laid beside him, its rug within its folds. Each man had a red flag and a yellow flag with which to call his neighbour.

    
The Public was flowing in like a river.

    
The whole Course was blackening on the rim like a lake that has thrown up seaweed upon its banks. It had been black since daylight, but the seaweed was deepening and deepening, the track way was solid with life, the ten-shilling Stand at the Canal Turn was groaning, the Melling Road, which crossed the Course, from being an ivory band across the green became an ebony. Great passenger aeroplanes hummed over the stands and made their descent. A foreign king and queen arrived in Lord Sefton's box.

    
Tattersalls was like a thawed ice-rink. Pools had long appeared over the course. Thousands and thousands of people were wet, but not yet to the skin. And they hardly felt it.

    
The Changing Room for jockeys was warm and gay like a busy nursery. Jockeys' valets, with the air of slightly derelict family butlers, had been ironing in their shirt-sleeves since seven in the morning. Two large coal fires behind nursery wire-guards were burning briskly, and over the guards hung strips of colour. Gipsy silks were all across the long tables stretched down the
middle, and the valets ironed and pressed and swore and grunted and cleaned soft boots and hunted for odds and ends in their enormous suitcases, the travelling houses of their livelihood. Down one side of the room hung little saddles, touching little saddles. Below them saddlecloths, numnahs, girths. Below them on the boot boxes countless little boots. Brown boots with black tops so soft you could hardly walk in them. Boots like gloves that are drawn on to a child's ankle, and filled out with a child's toes. Boots as touching as the saddles.

    
Outside in the Weighing Room the hooded scales had been uncloaked and the Clerk of the Scales was already at his desk. The Declaration Counter had its pens and inks and its stacks of empty forms waiting to be filled.

    
In the hospital room the nurse put a few more coals, delicately with her coal pincers, on to the bright fire.

    
While the second race was being run Mi signed “Michael Taylor” at the foot of his declaration card, and paused a second higher up the card. “James Tasky” he wrote firmly. Then filled in the horse's name. He blotted the card and passed it into the box.

    
Then he went back to a little haunt of his.

    
“Now . . .” he said, half an hour later, crooking his finger in the doorway, and the little man picked up his suitcase and followed him.

    
“I'll take that,” said Mi huskily.

    
Mi hustled the little man in past the unsaddling enclosure to the holy stillness of the Weighing Room, and through the swing door into a corner of the Changing
Room, pushing him down on a boot-box overshadowed by hanging garments.

    
“They're nak . . .” gasped the little man, sitting down.

    
“Tscht!” muttered Mi, standing over him.

    
The jockeys' valets bustled here and there, grumbled, stumbled, fell over boots. Two of their charges with hard red faces and snowy bodies were standing naked by the nursery fireguard. Mi looked grimly down at the little man.

    
“Keep yer eyes on yer knees,” he muttered fiercely. And knelt to hold up the white breeches he had fished out of the suitcase.

    
“Who's your lady-friend?” said one of the naked midgets, turning round to warm his other buttock.

    
“Miss Tasky. From Russia,” said Mi without a flicker.

    
“Speak English?” said the midget, turning again like a chicken on a spit.

    
“No use wasting any dope on him,” said Mi. “Can't speak a bloody word. He's a Bolshie they've sent over. To pick the winnings!”

    
“You sim to be doing the lady-friend to the lady-friend all right?”

    
“Doin' what I'm paid for,” said Mi. “Times are ugly down South. I on'y jus' come up.”

    
“Well, of all the muck-rakin' cheek,” said the other naked midget scratching his stomach . . . “that's that Tasky's riding that out-a-condition, pot-bellied whisky horse I saw brought in last night. Turnin' the Gran'
National into a bloody circus!” and he cracked the end bone of his index finger like a pistol shot.

    
“Come on, Bibby, get dressed, do,” begged an austere butler. “Going to ride the National in your pink skin?”

    
As Bibby turned away Tasky stood up gently, black, pink sleeves, black cap, white breeches, little brown boots, black tops. Mi pulled the saddle, saddle cloth and numnah, off the iron bracket. “Sit down an' wait,” he said loudly as to a foreigner, pushed him back on the boot-box and stood over him.

    
Then, on the door opening, “They want you for the chair,” he said.

    
“Thought he didn't understand English,” said a voice.

    
“No reason why 'e shouldn't begin,” said Mi. “CHAIR, I said,” he yelled into Tasky's ear. “Come on!”

    
Outside in the Weighing Room all was quiet and regulated. “That's a toff,” thought Mi, seeing a tall man get off the chair. He was obviously a gentleman rider, a “bumper.”

    
“Weight?” said the Clerk of the Scales.

    
“Ten seven, near enough,” said Mi. “He don't speak no English, sir. Russian.”

    
Mi pushed the little man towards the scales. “Sit, can't you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Double up!”

    
Tasky sat in the chair and nursed his saddle.

    
“Ten six and eleven,” said the Clerk's assistant.

    
“Penny piece,” said the Clerk quietly, and dropped a small piece of lead into the weight flap.

    
“An' a half,” said the Clerk. In went another piece. The Clerk wrote carefully in his book.

    
“Get off,” hissed Mi. Tasky never budged.

    
Mi gave him a pull. “Job, sir, this is,” he said. “Seems more a nitwit than . . .” He bustled the little man out of the room, throwing his brown overcoat round his shoulders.

    
“Who's that?” said someone, opening the door of the Stewards' Room.

    
“The Russian, sir,” said the Clerk of the Scales, looking up at the Clerk of the Course.

    
The heavy, streaming daylight broke on them. The worst for Mi was over, the worst for Velvet to come.

    
“Keep in the crowd,” said Mi. “I got to go for the horse. Keep movin'. don't come out into the open. Don't rush at the horse when you see me lead him out. I got to go roun' and roun'. Wait till you see the others walk in to the Paddock . . .”

    
“Paddock?”

    
“Rails. There. Walk straight up to near me and stand by the bushes in the middle. I'll lead him up to you. I'll jump you up.”

    
“Jump me up?”

    
“Jump you. I gotta take yer knee an' jump you. Like the horse was too high fer you to get on. I'll take yer coat and I'll lead you out an' that's all I can do for you.”

    
“You going now?” said Velvet, small, small in voice.

    
“I'm going. an' I got togs. You'll see. White leading
rein an' all. Borrowed 'em off a head lad, friend o' mine.”