National Velvet (23 page)

    
“What's England?”

    
“Us.”

    
“There's a pink bit and there's . . . LOOK, Donald . . .there's a . . .”

    
“D'you know” said Donald, looking at her with his earnest charm, “in my black socks I've got HOLES!”

    
“Goo!” said Edwina, laughing suddenly. “An' you haven't any black socks either . . .” And looking up she saw Teddy's face under the light of the lamp outside.
She was gone with the swoop of a moth through the door.

    
“Will you help me?” began Donald again, leaning towards Mally. Mally flicked a slice of wood towards him. “There's England and France in that bit.”

    
“What's France?”

    
“Over the water,” said Mally, chucking her thumb over her shoulder. “Over the sea.”

    
“I seen France once,” said Donald.

    
“No!”

    
“I seen France once an' all the houses were slipping down in the water.”

    
“Huh!” said Mi. “He doesn't know it's land. Thinks it's built on the Channel!”

    
“Bed, Donald,” said Mrs. Brown in the doorway.

    
“I'm busy,” said Donald. “We're all busy.”

    
“Get on, Donald,” urged Mi.

    
“Why do they have supper'n not me?” said Donald, feverishly searching for a piece of wood.

    
Lewes races had long gone by. Mi had made his arrangements. He had met a friend here and a friend there and had a talk or two and borrowed a bit, had his week's wages in advance from Mr. Brown, and finally had paid a visit to Croydon. Edwina didn't notice, Merry didn't ask, and Mally, her nose twitching, didn't know enough to go upon, though sometimes she prodded like a person prodding with a stick in mud who thinks a treasure can be seen.

    
One day Mi came to Velvet after supper. He whistled
her out of the living-room with a suck of his tooth and a cock of his eye. “Sign this,” he said in Miss Ada's stall, the private sitting-room of their lives. Miss Ada ate her bedding undisturbed.

    
“What is it?” said Velvet.

    
“It's a Clearance,” said Mi. “You put ‘James Tasky' here.”

    
He had his pen in his hand and a glass bottle of ink.

    
“Who's James Tasky?”

    
“He's you. He will be you in a post or two. Just ask me nothing. Sign what I say.”

    
Velvet wrote at the bottom of the paper “James Tasky,” balancing the paper on the lip of the manger. Mi produced three inches of blotting paper from his pocket.

    
“Now . . .” he said with satisfaction. “Now we post it . . . see? An' we get a licence . . . see? An' the real Mr. Tasky's not even in England. What a catch!”

    
“Where is he?”

    
“Being sick on the Baltic, I shouldn't wonder. He told me all about it. Horrible sea, the Baltic. Water's shallow and bumps on the bottom an' comes up again. How people can go in ships beats me.”

    
“We gotta have the name in by the second Tuesday in January,” said Velvet.

    
“Say that on the form?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“Well, we'll have it in. We've put our backs in this now, and our shirts an' all. What d'you call it? About that horse? Putting it what?”

    
“Putting The Piebald in history,” said Velvet. “I think of that whenever I feel giddy and it stops.”

    
“Well, I'm putting you in history. See? Like my old Dan put Araminty Potter. It's a foreseen thing. Like God might a thought of. Believe in God, Velvet?”

    
“Yes and no,” said Velvet. “Yes and no,” and sighed.

    
“Shouldn't have asked,” said Mi cheerfully. “Private. Come along now and get a stamp out of your mother for me. I'm done this week to a penny.”

    
Christmas came and went. The Piebald's muscles grew tauter. One evening in the first days of January, Mr. Brown took Edwina and Mally and Meredith to the pictures. Velvet would have gone but she felt shivery after tea. When they had left the house Velvet and her mother and Mi sat alone. Mrs. Brown did a patience, Mi cut a piece of cork to fit a bottle, Velvet did nothing, the wind howled round them, the carpet rose against the door. The spaniels lay heaped in Miss Ada's stall.

    
“Bus'll be near blown over,” said Mi. “They'll catch it going in.”

    
Mrs. Brown laid out another card. Jacob shivered and recrossed his delicate fore-feet.

    
Mi looked at Mrs. Brown as he cut his cork and knew the moment had come to include her. When he looked at her he saw a pillar of fire. He put aside the great dun-coloured coating, the enormous thighs, the shoulders which bore a pack of muscle like a yoke across them. He saw instead those mysterious qualities that made him say of any uncouth, unwieldy, unmanageable horse,
“He's got heart.” By heart he meant a heart that would stay.

    
“There's a horse,” he said, feeling his way to break the silence, “over at Pendean would carry you.”

    
“Never bin on a horse,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“Makes no odds,” said Mi indifferently—but he would not let the silence close again.

    
“Should tell yer ma f'l were you, Velvet,” he said in an odd voice. “Now's your minute.”

    
Velvet looked up. Mrs. Brown laid out her cards unmoved.

    
Velvet watched her own feet. “Piebald's fit,” she mumbled, “to run in the National.”

    
Mrs. Brown ruminated, laid down her cards. Said:

    
“What about it?”

    
“Thought of runnin' it,” said Velvet.

    
“You did?”

    
“M'm . . .”

    
“The Grand National with them jumps?”

    
“M'm. . . . Thirty jumps.”

    
“Stiff,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
Nobody spoke. Mi cut his cork. His fingers stuck and slipped. Velvet would never disobey her mother.

    
“What'll it cost?” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“A hundred pounds to enter. And money for a horsebox. An' me night's lodging. (I gotta see it).”

    
“What do you win if you win?”

    
“Oh,” said Velvet vaguely, “thousands and a cup. But it's not that, it's for the horse. Besides, if they find out they'll disqualify me. It's only for the horse.”

    
“What makes you think it can win?”

    
“It can.”

    
“Can it, Mi?”

    
“Shouldn't wonder?”

    
“Well,” said Mrs. Brown, and gathered up the cards into a neat pack. Her peasant's eye, half shrewd, half visionary, inspected the idea, and the features of her big face not stirring she moved her head with elephantine majesty. Then she rose and going to the sideboard took out a key from a drawer. She left the room and was heard above walking in her own.

    
Velvet closed her eyes. Her feet were cold.

    
“My feet are cold, Mi.”

    
“Keep still. Lie still.”

    
Mrs. Brown came back with a box, her lips moving as though she were talking to herself. Unlocking the box on the table she counted out money, old-fashioned money, gold—gold sovereigns.

    
Mi leant forward. Velvet sat up. Mi knew what they were.

    
“Your prize? What you won?” said Mi, quiet.

    
“Kept it,” said Mrs. Brown. “Thought I might. Thought I would.”

    
“Look at it,” said Mi. “Never seen such a thing since I was a lad.”

    
Mrs. Brown's thick fingers built castles with the coins.

    
“There's a hundred. Twenty fer expenses.” She looked straight at Velvet. “I gotta fancy, Velvet, that you pay your entry in this.” She tapped the castles.

    
“Pay in the gold itself?” said Mi.

    
“It'll bring you luck,” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“Weatherby's'll think it odd,” said Mi.

    
“You got a thing you sign?” said Mrs. Brown.

    
“Yes,” said Mi, and fumbled in his coat pocket.

    
Mrs. Brown took the blue form and read it,

    
“Not there,” said Mi, “that's the Grand Military. Next page. Top o' page seventeen. ‘Liverpool—continued,' it says.”

    
Mrs. Brown read in silence.

    
“Queer,” she said at last. “Queer thing. I had a feeling.”

    
“What?” said Mi.

    
“An' see there,” said Mrs. Brown, handing him the form and plunging her finger on it. “See what it says. ‘Sov. Ten sov. each. Fifty sov. extra.' There's the wording clear. They can't go back on it. You use them sovereigns. I had a fancy they'd come in.”

    
Velvet hung softly against her mother, putting her arms round her shoulders. Mrs. Brown took her suddenly on her lap. Mi was so affected he called Jacob into the yard. But before he went he hit his lips three times with his index finger at Velvet behind her mother's back. She stared at him vacantly and he shook his head and closed the door.

    
“Who'll tell father?” whispered Velvet.

    
“I'll tell your father,” said Mrs. Brown, rocking her.

    
Of this discussion Velvet heard nothing. When the battle was over she was given no more than the result. But in the deep of the night forces were involved that stirred Araminty Potter to love and to fury, and finally
to love again. In meeting a hard, but as it turned out a brittle, opposition from her husband, Araminty rose like a sea monster from its home. After her years of silence she grunted with astonishing anger, and William, powerless and exasperated, stung like a gnat upon a knotted hide. That something which was obstinate and visionary and childish bound Mi and Velvet and her mother together, and in the night Araminty, in doing battle for their dreams, fought too for her own inarticulate honour.

    
The difference ran to its end, they were shaken profoundly, and slept in friendship at dawn. Mr. Brown rose next morning, spiritually bruised, feeling that he was going to be made ridiculous, but acquiescent.

    
The first effect of this discussion was that The Piebald stood in Miss Ada's stall and Miss Ada found herself once more among the tools (which she shared at night with the spaniels). Velvet took her gymkhana money out of the bank to buy oats, and what she could not buy her mother saved from the housekeeping.

    
The horse was walked endlessly uphill. There was not a steep hill-surface for miles around that Velvet had not sought out and ascended. The faulty, pear-shaped quarters of The Piebald swelled with muscle. Clipped out, he shone blacker and whiter than ever, his long tail and mane washed in the vinegar suds from Edwina's hair-rinsings, his pink albino hooves scrubbed with a nail brush and polished. He grew to look like a newly-painted rocking horse, freshly delivered.