National Velvet (31 page)

A
LMOST
as soon as the ambulance was off the ground little breezes began to blow hither and thither bearing the fact. Without the name. A girl had won the Grand National.

    
A girl had won the Grand National. By the look of the stretcher “a slip of a girl.” By the memory of the crouching black and pink ant on The Piebald, again “a slip of a girl.” The news began to crack like gunpowder trailed to percussion caps. At each percussion cap an explosion. At each explosion men flung, hurled about their business.

    
The U.P. man on the roof of the Grand Stand went on with his telephoning (at two pounds a minute). He had laid his field glasses down now and was talking feverishly. “Urgent bulletin,” he said violently, “astounding rumours circulating track. Is winning jockey girl. We upchecking.” And a little later, in his shorthand Chinese, “Stewards' decision. Quiz moved London.”

    
As the ambulance turned into the Ormskirk Road the news had broken. It was flashing to London in waves of light, in waves of air. It was “breaking” on London. At first the smaller men flashed it, unscrupulous, out for speed at all costs. The graver men hung back. Verify, verify! It
couldn't
be. The serious sporting reporters, associated for a lifetime with the Turf felt it couldn't be. Almost . . . it had better not be. Such frivolity, but, God . . . what news! NEWS, sparkling, rainbow NEWS. London was disturbed, tickled, a few seconds before the graver men felt they could spring for it. Then they sprang. And the full blast swept down the lines and the airways. Like a whiff . . . the miraculous transmission of accurate, verified, imagination-shaking news. It could hardly be a scoop because before one could close the telephone box everyone knew it. But details . . . where was the girl? In a second, having delivered their blast on London, they turned like hounds after the girl. The ambulance was gone. Where? The Liverpool Central . . . Ah . . . The taxi rank was in the Ormskirk Road.

    
But once before the Liverpool Central had housed a Fame-Shaker. And the Resident Medical Officer was a grim fellow with yellow hair, blue eyes and set mouth. He had been through the war and he had been through that strange medical upbringing in a good Scottish hospital which gets into a man's bones and transmutes him for ever from common humanity. He was steady and wily and fine, and he could act as quick as news could flash. And for reasons of his own connected with his
attitude and their attitude towards truth and scientific thought he had a cold impatience of the Press.

    
The murmers surrounding Velvet came with her like raindrops on the ambulance. She had not long been wheeled into the Women's Accident Ward, and the Sister-in-Charge had hardly propped screens round her bed, before the Resident Medical Officer had mopped up the rumours, his curiously flat ears very wide awake.

    
“Be down from Aintree,” he thought, “in a jiffy.”

    
He found, actually, that they were already drawing up at the gates.

    
The Resident M.O. closed the ward doors and placed the constable who had come with the ambulance on duty.

    
The constable was not sure it was his right duty . . .

    
“Just a minute, Officer . . .” said the Resident M.O. swiftly, increasing the constable's rank and giving him a cold-water flash out of the blue eyes. “Not more than a second while we wheel her into a private ward. can't have the Press in round the bed. I think you'll find that's why you were asked to whip out of Aintree. Right ahead, Sister. 'Nother blanket over her . . . (
right
over her) when you get her on the trolley.”

    
Two white-coated men sped down the ward with a trolley.

    
“Over your face, girl, too, for a minute,” said the Resident M.O., leaving the constable at the door and going down the ward to meet the trolley. “It's all right. Want to get you into another ward. Quiet.”

    
A nurse sprang to push the double doors back onto their catches for the trolley to pass.

    
A Press Association man approached the M.O.

    
“Let the trolley pass,” said the M.O. abruptly. “Stand back. Operation case.”

    
The trolley passed swiftly out of view under the nose of bowler-hatted men who were arriving.

    
But the balloon of notoriety wasn't going to stay on the ground just because of the Principal M.O. The Press Bellows had now begun to blow and the balloon to lift.

    
Yet the little creature still lay snug like a kernel in the private ward of the Liverpool Central, with the door locked and a Sister giving her a blanket bath. Then in came tea on a tray, two meat sandwiches cut in triangles, a chocolate bun in a paper, a rice bun, a piece of plum cake and two slices of white bread and butter. Velvet snuggled down and began to wonder what next and what next and when the heavens were going to fall. And above all where was Mi?

    
Mi, rubbing down the piebald horse in the stables at Aintree, was bearing the brunt of everything. He was knee-deep in the Press; he was wanted in the Stewards' Room, he was wanted by everybody. Even the bookmakers would have liked to get at him.

    
“This horse won the National, ain't it? This horse 'as got to be rubbed down. I don't know a thing 'cept that I was hired to do over the horse. Hired at the last minute. Well . . . what? Well, if I'm wanted in the Stewards' Room I'll have to go. But this horse wants
rabbin' and rubbin'. Who's going to do it for me?”

    
There were plenty of offers. There were even men who had a nodding knowledge of him.

    
“Why, Mi, you old tout . . . Who's your lady friend? D'you mean to say you didn't know? What about the Changing Room? You pulled her breeches on, didn't you?”

    
“How was I to know? She got pants on, ha'n't she? A girl an' a boy they're that alike you gotter have the pants off to see? I on'y know she couldn't speak a word a' King's English, an' was s'flat's a pancake and as dumb's an oyster . . . Comin', Sir . . . Rub him well . . . Give his back-line a massage . . . under the saddle. Makes the blood flow . . . I'll be back in a minute. I got nothing to say to 'em. Stewards . . . My hat! . . . Comin', sir!”

    
In the Stewards' Room nothing could be got out of Mi. He was heavy-minded, obstinate and repetitive. Lord Henry Vile did not look as though he believed him, and finally it was decided to take his address and refer the inquest to London, at a special meeting of the National Hunt Committee. Mi gave his address as Post Restante, Lewes.

    
“Fishy sort of address,” said Colonel “Ruby” Allbrow, looking at him straight.

    
“I can't hide, sir,” said Mi, suddenly looking as straight back. “I'm known here to lots, an' I'm known there. The police'd lay their hands on me in a day 'f I was to monkey up.”

    
“And the horse?”

    
“Horse goes back to the owner, sir. Horse-box is coming for it to-night.”

    
“And not you?”

    
“Not me, sir.”

    
“And the owner's address . . . We have the owner's address, Mr. Gray?”

    
“Yes, we have the address,” said the official. “The owner must be behind it all, m'lord, if you'll excuse me interrupting.”

    
“Yes . . . that'll be looked into. Letter must be sent and so on. Who's going down to the hospital?”

    
A spasm crossed Mi's face. He opened his mouth but said nothing. Velvet alone in that hospital. 'S sick as a cat. But there were doctors an' all that. It'd soon be in the papers how she was.

    
Velvet lay in the hospital refusing her name. She and Mi had no plan beyond the winning of the Grand National. How should they? They had bitten off a piece of dream together, and like winged children accomplished it. Beyond, all was an uncharted sea. They had not had one glance at life after the winning.

    
Still by instinct she refused her name. The heavens were going to fall. Father was going to know, the village was going to know, Edwina was going to say sarcastic things because Teddy didn't like all the fuss. There was going to be trouble for her and Mi, though pure white glory for The Piebald. And the longer she kept her name secret the slower the trouble would be in coming. She lay and smiled wanly, and shook her clipped white head.

    
Indeed she wasn't pressed enormously to tell. The M.O. didn't care a rap about her name, and the Sister-in-Charge of her simply washed her and fed her and choked back her curiosity because she too had had a cold-water flash from the blue eyes of the hospital's Despot. The young doctor who had brought Velvet down had disappeared, but he came back later accompanied by Dr. Bodie from Aintree and the Clerk of the Course himself.

    
The M.O. stared at them with his curious look and told them quietly that they must not stay more than five minutes with the patient. The Sister was present at the interview. The Clerk of the Course asked formally for Velvet's name and address. Dr. Bodie blustered a little when Velvet sighed and said shyly she couldn't give it. The young doctor said nothing. He was more than thrilled whichever way the situation turned. At the end of five minutes the M.O. came himself to say it was time.

    
“Shock,” said the M.O. with a grudging apology in the corridor. “Very young.”

    
After they had gone the M.O. came back. “Sorry, I must have your name for hospital purposes,” he said, and he pulled the silver pencil out of his note-book.

    
Velvet looked up with confidence into the ledger of that secure face, and said at once “Velvet Brown,” and spelt the address clearly for him.

    
“Age?” he said.

    
“Fourteen. Nearly fifteen.”

    
“There'll be a doctor up to go over you in a few
minutes. Dr. Bodie tells me there's nothing broken.”

    
“I didn't fall off,” said Velvet. “I slid off. After the post. I couldn't feel my knees.”

    
“Feel any pain anywhere?”

    
“No, thank you. I could have got up, only my legs . . .”

    
“All right. Right. Enjoyed your tea?”

    
And the M.O. went, like an iron ghost, and the door closed invisibly behind him.

    
At five-thirty she had a drink of bromide and chloral, and twenty minutes later the gates of the world closed down on her while the second batch of posters in London and Liverpool and all the great cities of England, France, Germany, Italy . . . fell slopily off the printing machines, were baled up, dispatched, and, drying, fluttered at street corners and receded on the backs of newspaper cars. “Drama of Winner of National this afternoon.” “Unknown girl wins National.” (This paper thought the fact so first-rate that there was no need to attract by mystery.)

    
“Extraordinary affair at Aintree.”

    
“Piebald wins but disqualified. Rider found to be woman.”

    
Ten minutes later more posters . . .

    
“Girl winner in Liverpool Central Hospital.”

    
In the great cities of America the boys were calling “Extra!” and the Stop Press of all the papers shone in green, red, and blue ink. From France the
Intransi-geant
and the
Paris Soir
sent two men over in aeroplanes to Aintree. The Associated Press of America got
an all-clear interview with the Clerk of the Course. In Shanghai the first 3.30 flash had just caught the last editions of the morning
North China Daily News
. Rome and Berlin did not trouble themselves profoundly. The thing grew and grew and grew, and turned over on itself, and heaped itself up. People walked in the streets not knowing that the air quivered with question marks. The common air, not seeing or tasting or breathing any different, was heavy with one idea, one burden, an incoming wave of query into England. This questioning air, sweeping through impediment in a silvery attack, poured round flesh, wood, and stone till it found the wireless masts and there, settling and transmuting itself into something more possible to human understanding, became the word of man.

    
There was a pause. The queries massed like birds and waited. “We must know more!” cried every foreign agency and every newspaper.

    
“You shall know more,” soothed the deep voice of Reuter, sedate and cautious, before it ringed the world with its answer.

    
The reporters had been baffled at the Liverpool Central but Dr. Bodie was got at. Eager, in fact, to be got at.

    
He could not tell the rider's name but he described this and that, and after a while, the information having been looked over and binged up here and toned down there, and written almost all in most expensive plain language (that there should be no delay anywhere in decoding) Reuter sent round the world the following message . . .
“61610 Lead all stop Girl has won and lost Grand National stop Most sensational incident in Ain-tree history occurred to-day when discovered winning jockey mounted Piebald was young girl stop Since women jockeys unallowed compete National Piebald disqualified by stewards stop Girl fainted after passing post carried ambulance room on stretcher where sex discovered by doctor who states age between 14-16 years stop Faint due fatigue unserious injuries stop Girl who refused reveal identity rode under Russian jockey Taskys' name stop Stewards National Hunt Committee ordered fullest investigation stop For woman to complete National course regarded as one most extraordinary feats in annals British racing stop Drama mystery associated this amazing affair whipped up excitement feverpitch countrywide stop Result race now reads . . .” (and the names of the first three horses were given).