National Velvet (9 page)

    
“Yes, we heard,” said Mr. Brown who had come in. “Get up on your chair now. Here's your plate.”

    
“The meat's sour,” said Donald instantly, putting his nose to his meat,

    
“Poor lot those sheep,” said Mr. Brown. “It's the drought. Bit ribby, weren't they, Mi.”

    
“Dog bin racin' 'em,” said Mi.

    
“It's sour,” said Donald, giving his plate a push.

    
Mrs. Brown glanced over. “He's got capers put on his. Take them off, 'Dwina.”

    
“It's you that's sour,” said 'Dwina to him, getting up and stooping beside him. “Oh . . . Mother, he's spat at me!”

    
“Spit came out,” said Donald, a little anxiously.

    
“Fractious,” said Mr. Brown. “Sit down, ‘Dwina, and get on both. I heard Ede's going to raffle that piebald animal that got loose.”

    
There was no response. Everyone, thinking hard, ate silently.

    
“You oughter take a ticket, Velvet,” said Mr. Brown genially.

    
“We've all . . . we've all taken tickets,” said Velvet softly, unable to believe her ears. Mr. Brown's face changed. He had meant to make a joke.

    
“He'll be meat if you get him,” he said after a pause, and not genially at all.

    
Velvet's face flushed faintly.

    
“Cabbage is stringy,” said Donald, and created a diversion.

    
“He's possessed,” said Mr. Brown vexedly. The condition of the sheep had annoyed him.

    
Edwina and Mally cleared the plates and brought in gooseberry fool. Velvet fetched the milk pudding from the oven. They started with fresh life on the fresh food.

    
“Want you s'afternoon, Mi,” said Mr. Brown. The girls grew tense, and waited, spoons still.

    
“ 'Bout five,” said Mr. Brown, and the breath of anxiety was let out again, and the spoons moved on.

    
The chairs were pushed in. “F'whatweave received . . . thank God!” they said as one voice and fled.

T
HE
piebald cropped in just such a field, on just such a Hullock as Velvet had dreamed. There was the haze and the ship. Mi, Edwina, Malvolia, Meredith and Velvet stood in a row leaning against the cobbled wall. There was a long and watchful silence. The wild thyme smelt warm and looked pink. The sea lay below, not blue but dove-grey. The coping of the wall was hot and rough.

    
“Stands marvellous,” said Mi at length.

    
Another long appreciative silence.

    
“See his bone . . .” said Mi.

    
Mi made a click with the gap in his teeth and turned to look at Velvet. “What's that number of yours?”

    
“119.”

    
“Well, there!”

    
“What?”

    
“You ought to have a horse!”

    
The piebald looked up and saw them. Stared. Then cropped again.

    
“Seems quiet,” said Edwina.

    
“Huh. No knowing. Think he's under fifteen,' hands?”

    
“Think he's more,” said Velvet.

    
“See his white eye?”

    
They saw it. They saw everything. Their eyes, like birds' eyes, flickered over his startling patches of black and white. He was white in bold seas, and black in continents, marked in such a way that when he moved his white shoulders and his white quarters flashed, and his black body seemed to glide.

    
“Showy,” said Mi.

    
Velvet climbed the wall into the field.

    
“He'll be off!” said Mally warningly.

    
Velvet went among the hot grasses towards him. She knew him. She had already ridden him in her dream. He cropped, head towards her, but watched her coming. She walked steadily and straight and began to talk in low tones. He raised his head and looked at her as firmly as she looked at him. She paused. He walked several paces towards her with confidence. No quirk or tremor or snort of doubt.

    
“See that!” said Mi, hanging against the wall.

    
They saw Velvet pat him and run her hand slowly down his neck on to his shoulder.

    
“She'll be that upset now,” said Mi, “if she don't get him.”

    
Velvet moved away. The animal followed her, flashing and jaunty. He had a white mane, a long white tail, pink hooves, a sloping pastern, and he struck his feet out clean and hard as he walked.

    
“Isn't his neck thick?” said Edwina.

    
“Bit,” said Mi. “Bin gelded late.”

    
The piebald, whose desires were gone, had kept his pride. He walked after Velvet like a stocky prince. Thick-necked, muscular, short and proud. He left her a few paces from the wall, and stood looking, then turned and cropped quietly.

    
“Gotter be back,” said Mi.

    
Velvet hung a moment longer by the wall, then all five in silence turned downhill. There was a wild snort behind them and the thunder of feet.

    
“He's off!” said Mi, turning sharp. “It's set him off!”

    
The piebald had his white tail raised and his head arched like a Persian drawing. He was galloping down the field towards the corner.

    
“Stop! Stand! He's never going over that!”

    
The ground had dropped away so sharply at the far corner that the original builder of the cobbled wall, to keep his coping straight, had heightened the wall itself. It was five feet two at the end of the field, with a fine downhill take-off. The horse sailed over like a dappled
flying boat. It was a double spring. As he was high in the air he saw also to his hind feet and drew them up sharply.

    
“. . . AND to spare” said Mi quietly, nodding his head. “A horse like that'd win the National.”

    
“You don't mean it, Mi!”

    
“Gets his hocks under. Got heart. Grand take-off. Then when he's up
in
the air he gives a kind of second hitch an' his feet tuck up so he's on'y a body without legs. See him look before he took off? See his ears flitch forward and back again? You on'y got to sit on him.”

    
“Oh, Mi, why don't you ride?”

    
“. . . Got a nasty sort of look of Man-of-War too,” pursued Mi, unheeding.

    
“Who was Man-of-War?”

    
“Man-eatin' stallion,” said Mi.

    
“But a black and white horse like that doesn't look like anything to do with a race.”

    
“Ever hear of the Tetrarch?”

    
“No.”

    
“Looked like a rocking horse. Sorta dappled. Mr. Persse his trainer was. One mornin' he was sittin' eatin' his egg an' a stable lad rushed in an' screamed out, ‘That coloured horse can beat anything!' an' rushed out again.”

    
“And what did he win?”

    
“Didn't win anything so marvellous because they ran him as a two-year-old. But he sired twenty-seven thousand pounds!”

    
“How'd you know so much, Mi?”

    
“Used to read when I was up there,” Mi jerked his finger north, away from the sea.

    
“Why did the stable boy rush in?”

    
“ 'Cause he won, didn't he, in the gallops in the morning.”

    
“The piebald Tetrarch?”

    
“He wasn't piebald. Not even grey. He was coloured. Grey and roan and white. Mottled. They got him for a mascot. Just for a stable companion. And he brought them a fortune.”

    
They walked down the slopes, wrapped in the eternal drama of the last being first.

    
“An' Mr. Persse,” said Velvet, lifting her boy's face to the sky, “he rushed out?” She wanted to sit again over the breakfast table with Mr. Atty Persse. (The heavenly, escaping past—)

    
“He rushed out,” said Mi, warming, “and he said: ‘Where's that goddam boy? I'll wring his neck!' “

    
“Why?”

    
“He had a feel the boy was right.”

    
“Well, and . . .”

    
“When you gotta good thing you keep it dark, don't you! Not shout all down the passages and right through the kitchen an' go back runnin' an' grinnin' like a fathead to the stables.”

    
“Mustn't anybody know when you think you're going to win a race?”

    
“Money passes,” said Mi. “Fortunes. Thousands. Millions. It's like the City.”

    
“Do they race a lot in the North?” asked Velvet.

    
A landscape glittered behind her voice. There were icicles in it and savage fields of ice, great storms boiling over a flat countryside striped with white rails—a chessboard underneath a storm. Horses were stretched forever at the gallop. Tiny men in silk were brave beyond bearing and sat on the horses like embryos with their knees in their mouths. The gorgeous names of horses were cried from mouth to mouth and circulated in a steam of fame. Lottery, The Hermit, the great mare Sceptre; the glorious ancestress Pocahontas, whose blood ran down like Time into her flying children; Easter Hero, the Lamb, that pony stallion.

    
“Race?” said Mi. “
All
the time.” And Velvet knew she was right.

    
“If I won that piebald,” said Velvet, “I might ride him in the Grand National myself.”

    
“Girls can't ride in that,” said Mi contemptuously.

    
“Girls!” said Velvet, stopping still beside him so that they all drew up. “Who's to know I'm a girl?” She cupped her face in her two hands so that her straight hair was taken from it.

    
“ 'Tisn't your hair,” said Mi, and his eyes fell on her chest. “Flat's a pancake,” he said. “You'd pass. There's a changing room though.”

    
“What'd you undress for?”

    
“Change your day things for your silks.”

    
“But you needn't undress to your skin. You could keep the same vest.”

    
“It
could
happen . . .” said Mi. “It never has. You got to get your horse first.”

    
There was a silence as they walked.

    
“There he goes!” said Mi. The piebald was galloping below them, making as usual for the village. “Heavy galloper. Plunges as he goes.”

    
“He's lovely,” breathed Velvet, simply. They started to run. Below them they could see a sweeper at the entrance to the village wave his broom at the horse.

    
The piebald leapt round him and galloped on. He disappeared between the first houses on the street. Soon he was out again, driven away by men and boys whom they could see standing by the sea wall, and headed up the curve of the Hullocks again, still galloping, his white mane and tail flying.

    
“Carthorse and Arab in that animal,” said Mi, pausing to look. The piebald tired on the steep hill and slowed to a trot, then stood still. He looked over his shoulder at the village below him.

    
“He's homesick,” said Velvet suddenly. “He wants people. He hates it up there on that high field. Would he let me get near him?”

    
“Never while he's loose like that, an' after he's galloped,” said Mi. “Not worth the trouble. What about those muslins?”

    
“Come along,” said Edwina. “We've got to get them done. Don't keep staring at him, Velvet. He'll never belong to any of us, and if he did the Lord knows what father'd say!”