National Velvet (21 page)

    
She turned and saw Meredith coming towards her and the two watched the gulls idly, side by side.

    
“I could eat,” said Meredith, yawning.

    
“M'm,” said Velvet. She held the money bags.

    
After she had given Mi the forty shillings she had put three pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank. But Mr. Brown, pleased with the performance at the gymkhana, had given her five shillings. She had wanted to bank this too but there had been outcry among the sisters.

    
“Come on, Velvet,” urged Meredith. Velvet pulled out two shillings, and laid them in a crack on the top of the wall. One of the shillings she put back again.

    
“We'll have one between us.”

    
“Doughnuts?”

    
“We can't eat six doughnuts each.”

    
“We'll have,” said Merry, “one doughnut each, one candle-grease bun, one crunchie, one Mars . . .”

    
“I should be sick,” said Velvet decidedly.

    
“Perhaps sixpence between us is enough. One doughnut each, and one crunchie.”

    
“You go an' get them then. An' bring me back the sixpence.”

    
Velvet lolled happily on the hot wall, just tickled and touched awake by the idea of approaching food. The juices in her mouth got ready. An aeroplane flew over her head, spewing advertisements in smoke. She turned on her back with her shoulders over the wall to read what it wrote.

    
“Buy Nougat Nobs” she read, written across the pale blue seat of God.

    
“Did you see the aeroplane?” said Merry suddenly beside her. “I got Nougat Nobs instead of crunchies.”

    
“Well, you can have 'em,” said Velvet. “It'll bust my blessed plate.”

    
“Thanks,” said Merry contentedly, not protesting.

    
Meredith somnolent, loved her food, lived in dreams, loved her canaries, was inaccurate, incurable, and never quarrelled.

    
Standing against the sunny wall she had soon overeaten, and undid the ends of her hard leather belt. The screaming of the canaries never really ceased for Meredith. As she ate slowly her head was full of yellow wings. Dreadnoughts and Rollers and Hartz Mountain and mating. Mating was her preoccupation. If you mated a Hartz Mountain to a Roller . . . or a Yorkshire Dreadnought—what about the green streaks on the wings? Would they be increased if Mountain Jim were mated to Arabella? She leant back against the wall to ease her stomach and dreamt on. A child, when it has over-eaten, does not get a clouded brain.

    
In her mind the mating always took place safe and sure and certain, and with instant results. She saw a
long line of descendants almost simultaneously created. She felt the power of the Patriarch; looking down her family line, and rambling, slow and vague she told a story to herself. Her memory tracks were scored by the noise of their songs wherever she walked. Constantly she was eased by dreams and sensations of flight. Some day she would construct a real aviary, real trees inside the wire netting, and she herself would walk inside the bird house and call the birds off the branches on to her shoulders.

    
“Where's that sixpence?” said Velvet suddenly.

    
Meredith handed her fourpence.

    
“I got an extra two doughnuts,” she said. “I was simply frightfully . . .”

    
“What?” said Velvet.

    
“Hungry,” said Merry.

    
There was a long, sun-warmed, friendly silence.

    
“I wish I could eat like that,” said Velvet with a sigh.

    
“You're nearly the youngest. You're weak,” said Merry, fallacious tags of breeding in her mind. “You can breed a hen right out.”

    
“Mother's not bred out. Just look at her!” said Velvet, irking. “And Donald's not weak!”

    
“I shouldn't think strength matters,” said Merry, yawning. “It's guts.”

    
“Mother says I'll get over being sick,” said Velvet. How often had she had assurance from the calm and rocklike eyes. Above the paunchy cheeks eyes that held neither anxiety nor alarm. Mrs. Brown watched the growth of Velvet as God might watch a sapling's growth:
without concern, with unheeding conviction. She would grow, she would cease to be sick. Like Merry, if Mrs. Brown had been asked what her hope and expectancy in life was for Velvet she in her wordless way would have answered “guts.” It was what Dan Taylor had required of her, endlessly, all through the night. Against the tide too. Father must see to the fal-lals and the gold plates. She, Dan's Araminty, only wanted staying power.

    
“You weren't sick at the gymkhana,” said Merry. “I forgot to expect you to be.”

    
“I prayed an' prayed,” said Velvet.

    
“D'you think that's any good?”

    
“Not much. Because I always do it. But I don't dare leave it out.”

    
Merry flicked a grain of flint down towards Edwina's head. It missed. Edwina stretched herself in the sun below the wall and put her arms behind her head.

    
“Don't,” said Velvet. “She'll make a row. We're so comfy.”

    
“Pity she's getting a sort of enemy,” said Merry.

    
“It's because she's in love.”

    
“But why . . .”

    
“It just turns you. Like drink.”

    
In happy silence they watched the silver enemy below them, her ash hair pillowed on her coffee arms. Teddy looked at her like a gooby. She flung a word to him now and then, and the gramophone, pushed into a hollow in the cobbles, sang on. “It's lovely, that noise,” said Velvet dreamily, and licked the last stub of crunchie.

    
There was a sound of hooves behind them and three horses came round the corner from the livery stables, setting out for the Hullocks.

    
Merry and Velvet swung round and leant, backs to the sea, on the wall to watch.

    
“What's the matter with people who can't ride?” said Merry.

    
“Dunno,” said Velvet.

    
They watched the riders intently.

    
“Nothing's right,” said Velvet.

    
“Look as though they were kneeling,” said Merry. “Their knees are forward and their feet are back . . .”

    
“You can see miles away on the Hullocks,” said Velvet, half shutting her eyes. “They heave as the horse heaves. They have enormous legs, all loose.”

    
“It must be awful,” said Meredith, “to ride like that.”

    
The horses disappeared and sun and sparrows took their place.

    
“Must be awful,” said Velvet after a while, “to be a livery horse.”

    
Merry slid her feet further into the sunny dust. It rose in a roll round the toes of her shoes and she said nothing.

    
“It's not what they're born for.”

    
“What are they born for?”

    
“They're simply born,” said Velvet rather suddenly, “to try to get to know what one person thinks. Their backs and their mouths are like ears and eyes. That's why those horses move like that and hang their heads down from the wither like a steep hill.”

    
“What horses?”

    
“The livery ones. They've got broken hearts.”

    
“How d'you know?”

    
“Oh,” said Velvet, “I can see. It's like seeing the dead go by.”

    
“You once said you'd go in a livery stable when you grew up.”

    
“I could never go in a livery stable,” said Velvet.

    
The sun shone and warmed her, and Velvet was in a state of abeyance, of waiting. She was a pond which stood empty but was certain of the mysterious, condensing dew.

    
“I'm going home,” said Velvet, after a pause.

    
“I'm waiting here,” said Meredith.

    
Velvet left Meredith and slouched up the street. She looked in the shoe shop with an urge of heart. “Butcher's Velvet,” thought Mr. Ede, and crossed the street to speak to her.

    
“Piebald didn' do too bad at the Pendean,” he said, stopping and looking at the shoes. He was hardly prepared for the beaming eyes that turned on him. “He's beautiful, Mr. Ede,” said Velvet earnestly. “I hope you'll never feel bad you let him go.”

    
“Rough animal,” said Mr. Ede, embarrassed. “Bit mad p'r'aps. You done wonders to him. Wouldn't stay in any field of mine.”

    
“He's settled down nicely,” said Velvet. “He's a very boyish horse.”

    
Mr. Ede passed this over as fanciful. He thought she
looked queer too. Delicate and spiny. And all them teeth. In truth Velvet could look like a fairy wolf gone blond. She had this look as she turned back upon the shoes. Ede left her and Mi touched her on the shoulder.

    
“Looked up Weatherby's?”

    
“ 'Tisn't in the telephone book.”

    
“Just write ‘Weatherby's. Racin' experts. London,' ” said Mi. “Just ask for the rules of entry.”

    
“What'll I say?”

    
But Mi was in a hurry. He didn't know.

    
Her mind began its letter across tan and silver heels, plaid bedroom slippers and sea-shoes of canvas. She moved homewards, carrying disjointed words like broken crockery in a napkin.

    
The spaniels were sitting, sunning, round the door, Wednesday's joint disturbing them already. The bitch laid her nose from time to time to the bottom door-line and drew long breaths and rolled her yellow eyes. The chained house dog flew out silently, choked on the end of his chain and fell back.

    
The sitting-room was empty, mother in the kitchen. Velvet pulled her lesson books from the dresser drawer and found a sheet of foreign writing paper that had laid in the grammar book for months. The ink bottle was on the cactus shelf, the pen beside it.

    
She sat down and wrote swiftly for fear of being disturbed:

“D
EAR
S
IRS
,

    
“I am an Owner of a Horse. Please could you send me the Rules of entering for the Grand National Race?

“I am, Sirs, Your obedient Servant,

“V. B
ROWN
.”

    
There was a bit of blotting paper in the meat ledger, an envelope in the dresser drawer. In five minutes she was going back down the street with the letter and a penny for the stamp machine, the letter addressed according to Mi's advice.

    
She and Mi met at the midday joint. She whispered: “I've done it.”

    
“Written it?”

    
“An' posted it.”

    
He seemed surprised. She could not eat.

    
“I don't like cabbage,” said Donald.

    
He was not answered.

    
“I don't like it but I eat it,” he said, looking at Velvet.

    
“You're a marvel,” said Mally.

    
“Yes, I am a marvel,” said Donald. “I don't like cabbage, I don't like food, but I eat it. Velvet doesn't.”

    
This provocation blew over.

    
“Eat your food, Velvet,” said Mr. Brown after a suitable interval. “That plate sitting softer?”

    
“Much,” said Velvet. “But I'm not hungry.”

    
“I'm not hungry either,” said Donald, “but I eat my food. I eat it all up, even when I'm not hungry.”

    
“I don't like to see a great slice of English leg left like that,” said Mr. Brown. “If you can't eat it lift it back.”
The slice was returned to the dish. Velvet thought, as she chopped up her cabbage and hid it round her baked potato, that the box at the Post Office had just been cleared.

    
“You girls bin eating snacks?” said Mr. Brown, looking at Meredith's plate.

    
“I got gristle,” said Merry hurriedly, pushing with her fork, and dividing plot from plot.

    
“Doughnuts,” said Mrs. Brown placidly. “They look like it.”

    
“Pay for 'em or put 'em down?”

    
“Pay for 'em!” said Merry indignantly.

    
“I'll have no putting down,” said Mr. Brown. “Hand me that plate, Merry. You're behaving like a customer.”

    
Meredith got up and carried her plate to him.