National Velvet (4 page)

    
“Jumped his whole length sideways,” said the tripper.

    
“They always do, here,” said Meredith, edging gently towards the horse.

    
“Why here?”

    
“There's a ghost in the ground. A horse ghost. Steams up mornings and evenings. Specially early when there's a dew drying off.” Her hand was within a foot of the reins, extended soothingly. The young man saw her intention and ran round the other side. The horse, startled, removed itself another length away.

    
“You mucked it,” said Meredith. “I must get on.”

    
Miss Ada got home first. Velvet was putting saltpetre on her girth-gall as she stood in the sunlight on the street by the front door. The saddle was pitched up on the railings. The front door was open and Mr. Brown,
bareheaded, was enjoying his after breakfast pipe.

    
“My girl,” he said when he saw Meredith, “yer fifteen, annt you?”

    
Meredith nodded and stood still before him.

    
“Seven years you've saddled that pony and put her bits of leather on her, and to this day you onny hang 'em round her like blind cords. She's got a sore'll take a week to heal.”

    
Miss Ada looked at Meredith with smug reproach.

    
“If it was canaries . . .” muttered Velvet, dabbing with a rag.

    
Meredith glowered at Velvet as she passed her to go in for her school books.

    
Inside the sitting-room Mi was telling Donald to get on with his porridge. It was cold porridge, turned out of a cup. There was a hole in the top and treacle was poured inside. Donald was laying a sap from the side in to the centre.

    
“You aren't eating what you cut out,” said Mi, cleaning a rat-trap with emery paper and the rust covering the cloth in showers.

    
“I am,” said Donald. But he wasn't.

    
“Donald done yet?” called Mrs. Brown. “I'm washing the plates.”

    
“He's fiddling,” said Mi.

    
Mrs. Brown came to the door. “You get down and bring that porridge in here,” she said as she rubbed a plate.

    
The sweetness of Donald's face remained unchanged.
He watched the treacle run out down the sap. “I dooon't . . .” he drawled.

    
Mrs. Brown gave no second chances. It was her strength.

    
She took Donald in one great arm and the plate of porridge in the other and removed him. The sweetness of his face was still unchanged.

    
“He'll never eat that,” said Meredith. “You're sitting on my atlas.”

    
Mi pulled it out from beneath him. “He never eats anything he's fiddled with,” said Mi, “because it's turned into something else in his mind. Hark to them hammering . . .”

    
“You'd never think, to look at the Green, that there'd be a Fair in twenty-four hours. Just a lot of old sticks and men hitting them in.”

    
“It'll be ready. You won't be though.”

    
“I'm just going. Last day. Holidays to-morrow.”

    
“All four hanging round the house all day. Life'll be a joke.”

    
“This bit a millet, Mi,” said Meredith, dragging a length out of the sideboard drawer. “Stick it in for the male, Mi,
please
. . . .”

    
“Them birds . . .” Meredith blocked the light in the doorway and was gone.

    
“Blast and blast and hell . . .” said Mi softly. He had caught his finger in the rat-trap.

    
“Hell,” said Donald softly in the doorway. His silver hair hung in a lock over his forehead. His eyes were
film-eyes and blue, with film-lashes. His platinum-blond, Hollywood head was set on a green jersey. His bottom was bare and his pants hung down unbuttoned.

    
“You've got off your pot!” said Mi threateningly. “Get on back.” Donald disappeared again into the inner room, his behinds gleaming like the white polish of two peeled and hard-boiled eggs.

    
Edwina went in to Worthing for a piano lesson. Mally, Meredith and Velvet waded through a last day of grammar and map reading behind the walls of the village school. The children's voices droned behind the windows and the hammering on the Village Green increased. At break the children watched the hammers from the corner of the asphalt yard. The greasy pole was up, the cokernut shies were up, there was a frail porch with “Welcome” written on it.

    
Marks for the term were read out, and prizes given. Malvolia got
Hiawatha
.

    
At home it was steak and kidney pudding for dinner and Mr. Brown poured in the boiling water through a hole in the suet. Velvet kept her plate in and swallowed whole. The kidneys went down like stones. Mr. Brown finished his
Meat Fancier
as he ate. Donald ate his meat well and said gently some six or seven times, “Is it castle puddings?” Nobody knew. His question was not insistent but soft. Sometimes he said it through his meat.

    
“Yer spitting, Donald,” said Mi.

    
“I
said
,” said Donald, dreamily. . . .

    
Mrs. Brown looked at him. “It is,” she said.

    
“You never used to tell
us!
” said Velvet.

    
“Times,” said Mrs. Brown, “I don't do what I always did.”

    
Malvolia cleared the plates. Mrs. Brown fetched in a city of castle puddings and a jam-pot full of heated jam. She served Donald, the baby, first. Two castle puddings and a dab of jam on the plate. He looked at his two puddings and began to examine them. He drooped his Hollywood head like a smiling angel.

    
“Fiddling again,” said Mi ominously. “You wanted 'em too much.”

    
“Yore putting it into his head,” said Mally.

    
Edwina walked in and put down her music roll and her hat. She pulled a chair up.

    
“Your bit's there,” said Mrs. Brown, “on the sideboard.”

    
“Guvner an' me we wash,” said Mi into his plate. “Funny how men wash for girls an' girls don' wash for men.”

    
“Anybody knows boys are dirtier than girls,” said Mally.

    
“Meybe. But grown men wash freer than women.”

    
Edwina sat down, ignoring criticism.

    
“Get on, get on,” said Mrs. Brown to Donald.

    
“I am gettin' on,” said Donald, and opened his mouth to show that it was full.

    
“Bin turning round and round,” said Mi. “Give a swaller.”

    
“Can't swaller,” said Donald, “ 'tisn't slidy.”

    
“Isn't he lovely!” said Velvet, coming out of a dream
quite suddenly and looking as though she had seen him for the first time. “Shall I teach you to ride, Donald?”

    
“You've put him off proper,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
Donald opened his eyes and struggled with his mouth. Then he leant over his plate and spat out the revolving mass. “Yes,” he said, when he was empty, “yes, when? Now?”

    
Mrs. Brown rose slowly, took her own empty plate away to the sideboard, moved calmly and without anger round to Donald.

    
“You'll finish alone,” she said, and gathered him up. Donald and his plate sailed into the back kitchen.

    
“Well, really, Velvet,” said Edwina.

    
“He doesn't care,” said Velvet. “Wouldn't he be lovely in the under six?”

    
“On Miss Ada?” said Mally.

    
“She's too wide really.”

    
“You want a little narrow thing like Lucy's Rowanberry.”

    
“Lucy never can find anyone small enough to ride Rowanberry anyway.”

    
“Could we start him, father?” said Velvet.

    
“Eh?” said Mr. Brown, struggling to leave his page.

    
“Teach Donald. So's he could be ready for the under six?”

    
“Under what?” said Mr. Brown. “The under what?”

    
“Gymkhana,” said Velvet. “The class for children under six. Six years.”

    
“Ask your mother,” said Mr. Brown, and returned to his page.

    
“Then that's that,” said Velvet, rising happily. “Can I get down?”

    
There was no answer.

    
“F'whatayave received thank God,” said Velvet to no one in particular, and disappeared into the kitchen.

    
“Did you give 'em that millet?” said Meredith suddenly.

    
“Forgot,” said Mi.

    
“F'whatayave received thank God,” said Meredith with a dark look at him, and shot from the room. Mr. Brown pushed back his chair.

    
“You girls said your grace?” he said, getting up.

    
“F'whatayave received thank God,” said Edwina. And the meal was finished.

    
The candle in the scarlet-painted candlestick was burnt low and had a shroud. The bottle-candle was high and gave a good light.

    
Spring and evening sky showed between undrawn cotton curtains.

    
Mrs. Brown sat on a stout mahogany chair before her dressing table, and Velvet knelt behind her unhooking her dress from neck to waist at the back. The dress was dark blue rep, built firm. It was like unhooking the strain on a shrunk sofa-covering. Hook after hook Velvet travelled down till at last she reached far below the waist. Then Mrs. Brown stood up and the dark blue dress dropped to the floor, leaving her in a princess petticoat like a great cotton lily. The strings of this,
untied at neck and waist by Velvet, disclosed her in bust-bodice, stays and dark-blue cloth knickers.

    
“The iodine's in the wall cupboard” said mother.

    
Velvet went to the wall cupboard and extracted the iodine from an army of bottles and jars.

    
“ 'N' the cotton wool,” said mother.

    
Velvet, behind her, undid the strings of the bust bodice. Got down to bedrock, she knelt and examined the wound.

    
“Mus' take your stays off, mother.”

    
Mrs. Brown rose and drew breath. Working from the bottom up she unhooked the metal fencework within which she lived, and sat down again. “Star out,” she said, staring through the window. The star was like a slip of silver tinfoil plumb between the hang of the curtains.

    
“M'm,” said Velvet, and she glanced at the star over her mother's shoulder. “Metal's worked right through the top of the stays and cut you,” said Velvet.

    
“Ought to get whalebone,” said Mrs. Brown, sniffing at her own economy.

    
“Yes,” said Velvet, “you ought. S'made a nasty place.” She dabbed the iodine on the abrasion caused by the jutting shaft of the stays. “Hurt?”