National Velvet (5 page)

    
“Stings,” said Mrs. Brown. The star winked and stuttered.

    
“Stick on a band-aid piece,” said Mrs. Brown. “Thur's a tin'n the cupboard.”

    
Velvet stuck the plaster on to the wide hard back.

    
Mrs. Brown glared at the star.

    
“Pray to God y'don't get fat, child,” she said.

    
Velvet sat back on her heels aghast.

    
“You can't
be
,” said Mrs. Brown, “what you don't
look.
”

    
“You can, you can!” said Velvet. “You
are,
mother!”

    
“Maybe,” said Mrs. Brown. . . . “But you gotter dig. You gotter know. You gotter believe.”

    
Velvet put her thin arms on her mother's shoulders and kissed her on the enemy fat. She winced at a sign of regret or weakness in the belovèd mountain.

    
“There's nothing,
nothing
you can't do, mother. You've got us all beat. Mi thinks you're Godalmighty. N'we all do.”

    
Mrs. Brown smiled in the glass. “Chut, child! Don't mount up in a torment. M'not grumbling. M'out of condition, but it came on me. I'm only saying . . . you poor, thin hairpin . . . KEEP thin! There's no song an' dance . . .” Mrs. Brown was bolting herself back into the fence. She stood upright.

    
“S'awful to grow up,” said Velvet.

    
“Nope,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“Why isn't it?”

    
“Things come suitable to the time,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
The thin slip, the quivering twig looked back at her mother.

    
“Lot o' nonsense,” said Mrs. Brown, “talked about growing up.” She stepped into her princess petticoat and drew it up. “Tie me,” she said. The candle in the red candlestick drowned itself in fat and went out. “Childbirth,” said the voice, gruff and soothing, talking
to the star and to the child (and the child knelt at the strings of the petticoat), “an' being in love. An' death. You can't know 'em till you come to 'em. No use guessing and dreading. You kin call it pain. . . . But what's pain? Depends on who you are an' how you take it. Tie that bottom string looser. Don't you dread nothing, Velvet.”

    
“But you're so mighty. Like a tree,” said Velvet.

    
“Shivery to be your age. You don't know nuthin'. Later on you get coated over.” (Silence, and the hypnotic night.) “S'a good thing to be coated over. You don't change nothin' underneath.”

    
“All the same it's awful to grow up,” said Velvet. “All this changing and changing, an' got to be ready for something. I don't ever want children. Only horses.”

    
“Who can tell?” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“I've got Me,” said Velvet, putting her thin hand across her breast. “I can't ever be anything else but Me.”

    
“You're all safe,” said Mrs. Brown carelessly, stooping with grunts to pull up her dress. “You got both of us, you
an
' me. Say your prayers now an' get along.”

    
“Not yet, not yet.”

    
“Say your prayers, I say. Down on your knees an' say your prayers. You go plunging off this time o' night, don't you? Getting into your bed all of a daze an' a worry. Say your prayers, I say!”

    
Velvet went on her knees in the middle of the floor. Mrs. Brown sat down, the dress in wreaths around her, and took a knife to her nails.

    
“Ah . . . v'Farver . . . ch . . . art'n'eaven,” mumbled the voice from the floor. The blue in the window had gone and the star had companions.

    
“. . . power n'a GloryamEN. Mother . . .”

    
“Yes.”

    
“You're all right, aren't you?”

    
“M'as good as living forever. Get on off to bed. N'I'm not comin' to say good-night. Father is.”

    
Velvet kissed her. “Come an' say good-night . . .”

    
“No, I'm not. Hook me up before you go.” Velvet nicked up the great line of steely hooks to the top.

    
“Now go.” Velvet went.

    
“Child gets all alight at night,” said Mrs. Brown to herself.

    
Velvet's head came back round the door.

    
“Good-night, mother—where you going?”

    
“Down the village.”

    
“What for?”

    
“Will you GO!”

    
Mrs. Brown went down the village with the key of the empty shop in her pocket. She had accounts to finish. The Hullocks rose above her in hoops into the sky. The stars floated in the olive glaze of the weedy pond. The boys and girls were hushed, black and still, against the doorways. Edwina stood like a statue at the cobbler's doorway as her mother passed, but her mother knew her.

    
“Growing,” muttered Mrs. Brown as she went on. “Poor lass has to hide it.”

    
The beautiful boy beside Edwina breathed again.
He was golden-haired, and trying for the police. He felt he had no real chance for Mr. Brown's Edwina, and he had no idea he was her first, her breath-taking first man.

    
“What'll Velvet . . . ?” murmured Mrs. Brown, looking a moment at the sky, and seeing Velvet's bony, fairy face. “What'll men say about my Velvet?”

    
The sound of hoofs striking on metalled road came out of the darkness, and down the street, all alone, galloped a horse. Bodies shot out of the doorways and shouts sprang from shadows. Something black and white and furious raced down the street. Mrs. Brown stopped and stepped off the pavement. With a striking of hoofs, sparks flying on the flints, a piebald horse, naked of leather, wild and alone, slid almost to his haunches and stood stock-still, shaking and panting. He lowered his head.

    
“A suitor for Velvet!”

    
A suitor for Velvet. The horse glared at Mrs. Brown. It had strange eyes, a white wall eye and one of darkest blue. The light from the corner street lamp swam in its eyeballs. It trembled and glared; then at Mrs. Brown's slowly extended hand, shook its neck with a shudder, half reared and, turning, galloped off up the street towards the Hullocks.

    
“That perishin' piebald from Ede's,” exclaimed a voice.

    
“That you, Mr. Croom?”

    
“Give me a turn,” said Mr. Croom. “That's the third
time this week that creature's got loose. Ede says he'll raffle him for the Fair. Wouldn't be a bad idea. Wonderful what you get for those raffles.”

    
While Malvolia and Meredith were undressing Velvet was driving her big toes with long pieces of tape. She lay on her back in bed, her knees bent, talking in a monotonous voice like a sleepwalker.

    
“Careful through the gate now. Mind now. Get on, Satin!” and she gave the side of her thigh a switch with a light twig she held in her hand. The long tapes ran through her fingers which she held on her stomach, and both her knees pranced up and down,—a restive pair of well-matched chestnuts in the shooting wagonette. With another switch and a spring forward the knees rose slightly in the air, were drawn back firmly by the reins, reined in, and stood still before the porch of the old castle. . . .

    
The door opened and Mr. Brown surveyed the spectacle of his youngest daughter, bare to the waist, her nightgown fallen on her chest, the bedclothes peeled to the floor, her eyes bright and her toes chained to her hands by tapes. Mally was cleaning her teeth in her drawers. Meredith was covering the bird cages.

    
“Mother says it's time,” he said, removing his pipe. “Ah . . . yer daft, Velvet.”

    
“I'm only allowed on Mondays. I've two minutes more.”

    
“Where'd you get it from I want to know? D'you other girls go driving nights a week?”

    
“I used to,” said Mally. “Now I'm bigger mother says I'll break the bed.”

    
“Where's the baize off the cages gone to?”

    
“Velvet's used it under Miss Ada's saddle. That time she got a sore back.”

    
“What's that you got on them?”

    
“It's Edwina's knickers she had for the party. They got burnt, drying.”

    
“Shame burnin' your good knickers. Canaries wake early with that thin stuff. Thought I heard 'em yesterday morning. Where's Edwina?”

    
“Be up in a minute. Just gone down the street a second.”

    
“There . . . I've finished!” said Velvet, fishing for the bedclothes from her bed. “The chestnuts hardly needed a rub down. They were cool. I've left the roan cob for to-night. He can stay out to grass.”

    
“Daft as a sparrow,” said Mr. Brown at random. “I doubt if a girl ought to be what you are.” Stooping, with his pipe in his mouth, he flung the bedclothes up on top of her, blew out the candle and made for the door.

    
“I'm not in bed!” said Mally.

    
“Then you ought to be,” said Mr. Brown. “Say your prayers.” And disappeared.

    
Velvet heard the cruelty and wild abandon of the iron feet and shuddered and sat up, excited. It was too late to move. The horse was gone. Gone into the sea?
Was it a horse? The bed clung round her like protecting arms.

    
“Did you hear it?” (from the bed beside her).

    
In three beds three bodies were upright. Edwina's bed was empty. Then, after the pause, the iron feet plunged back again, and too late all three were at the window. The door opened and the curtains blew.

    
“Edwina!”

    
“Yes. Hush.” Edwina was panting. She had flown up the street and up the stairs.

    
“Father put the light out?”

    
“Yes. What horse . . .”

    
“Did he say 'bout me not being here?”

    
“I daresay he thought you'd gone with mother. What horse . . .”

    
“Piebald. Ede's piebald. Let me . . .”

    
“Didn't know Ede had a piebald. How d'you know what . . . ?”

    
“Be quiet. Get back. I'm getting into bed.”

    
“Aren't you going to wash?”

    
“No.”

    
“TEETH?” said Mally, impressed.

    
“NO.”

    
“You bin with Teddy,” said Mally with satisfaction, getting back to bed.

    
“You shut up,” said Edwina. “Won't tell you about the horse.”

    
“Thur's nothin' to tell. Piebald horse. Farmer Ede's. Teddy's told you that.”

    
“Huh, an' near ran into mother!” snarled Edwina,
naked, pulling her dressing gown over the clothes tumbled on the chair.

    
“Mother? What's it done to mother?” said Velvet sharply.

    
“Mother was in the street,” said Edwina in a wasp's voice, pulling on her pyjamas.

    
“Touched her? Knocked her?” said Velvet, flashing out of bed.

    
“Keep your hair on,” said Edwina.

    
“Bitch!” sobbed Velvet and flew out of the door and down the stairs.

    
“Now you bitched yerself!” said Mally calmly. “Now they'll know you bin out with Teddy. You know well mother's not hurt.”

    
“Of course she isn't hurt. Should I be here!” hissed Edwina.

    
“Stringing Velvet off like a catapult! First, you go off with boys. Second, you upset Velvet. Third, you'll be found out. Fourth, Velvet'll be sick all night.
Sense,
haven't you?”

    
“Be . . . quiet . . .” said Edwina, in bed, in a dull strangled voice. “Meredith . . . Merry . . . Get her back . . .”

    
“What did the horse do to mother, ‘Dwina?”

    
“Sorta bowed to her. Slid to a full stop and hung its head and really sorta bowed to her. An' it reared and dashed back up the street home again. Get Velvet, Merry.”

    
Father was sitting looking at nothing in the livingroom.
He was just tipping his chair and swaying.

    
“Father!” said Velvet, scared, in the doorway, “is mother all right?”

    
“Fine,” said father without moving. He turned his eyes slowly.

    
In the shadow behind the sideboard sat Mi mending Jacob's collar.

    
“There's bin a horse down the street . . .” said Velvet uncertainly.