National Velvet (7 page)

    
Meredith measured her thumb joint. “Inch an' a half.”

    
“Whafor?”

    
“Hang my Roller cage.”

    
“Find a joist then. It's rubble and such in between.” Mi came to the doorway with the hammer and nails.

    
“D'you think . . . ?” began Meredith.

    
“No,” said Mi shortly. “You get into yer own hot water fer puttin' yer own nails in the house. Yer pa's down the village.”

    
“I know,” said Meredith. “S'why I'm hurrying.”

    
She disappeared with the hammer and nails, and Mi took down his shaving mirror and polished it with his handkerchief. He replaced a drawing pin or two on the corners of his series of “Grand National winners” pinned round the walls, and set the kettle on to his Primus that he might scald out his milk bottle.

    
Velvet and Mally appeared in the yard and hung about.

    
“Where's Merry?”

    
“Hammering,” said Mi.

    
Silence fell and the kettle hummed. Mally and Velvet looked with envy from the yard into the loose-box-bedroom.

    
“Wish I had a room of my own,” said Velvet. “So I could hang up pictures.”

    
Mi came to the door, and holding the milk bottle over the hole in the floor poured the scalding water into it.

    
“I've earned it,” said Mi when the last drop was in.

    
“Why?”

    
“Full-grown,” he said, and sucked the gap in his teeth. He looked at them, long and straight. They looked back.

    
“They're puttin' that piebald up to raffle,” he said at last, and yawned deceptively.

    
“Raffle!” said Velvet. “Raffle!” A pause. Then—“Anybody might get it?”

    
“Anybody with a shilling.”

    
“Cost on'y a shilling? You got a shilling, Mally?”

    
“Nothing at all.”

    
“Nor I've got nothing . . .”

    
“Oh, a shilling's easy got.”

    
“But we ought to have five. Donald ought to have a chance.”

    
“You'll never get five!”

    
“That's whur yer wrong,” said Mi. “I'll give you five. You kin pay me back in yer time. I got a tip from a perisher.”

    
“Oh, Mi darling! What perisher?”

    
“Togged-up perisher that was swanky and windy and couldn't sit his horse in his best suit.”

    
“What'd you do?”

    
“Fellow hired Belton's May Day and went out galloping.
Top boots, spurs and checks, an' a bowler with a string on it.”

    
“Where were you?”

    
“Just walkin'.”

    
“Oh, Mi! You were sitting behind the haystack with the ghost!”

    
“Had to sit somewhere.”

    
“Tell us . . .”

    
“I saw May Day go out. Galloped out. Perisher'd never heard of walkin' or trottin'. Half the sky was dancin' up an' down under ‘is bottom, so I legged up the other way an' come to the haystack.”

    
Pause.

    
“. . . an' he galloped round,” egged Velvet.

    
“I see him coming down towards the haystack, May Day blowy and sweaty an' the ghost waiting for them as jolly as a daisy.”

    
“Oh . . . Mi . . . YOU . . . SAW it.”

    
“IT? No, s'not my kind. It's a horse ghost. Per-isher was red in the face an' lumbering along. Toes pointin' down and not even clutching with his calves. Not clutchin' with anything. Heaving like a sack. Stock all out of place under his ear, having a high old seven and sixpence worth. . . . Whoop . . . went May Day when the ghost made a pass at her. Sprung right across the road an' the perisher fell
on
the ghost, far's I c'd see. Serve it right, too. Real vicious horse that must've been that got killed there. To have a ghost like that. Why, you can't miss making a bit in that place. Every hiring fellow that comes down from London
spins off at that haystack. You on'y got to sit behind it and pick up the bits.”

    
“They don't all tip you though.”

    
“Most do. This one give me five. Here you are!”

    
Mi pulled two half crowns out of his pocket and handed them to Velvet in trust for them all.

    
“Thank you awfully, Mi. I'll give it you back. Swear.” And she hooked both middle fingers over her index fingers and held them up.

    
“Witches' stuff!” said Mi contemptuously. “Keep yer word and don't crack yer fingers. And see this, Velvet, I'm a fool to do it. That piebald's as big a perisher's the fellow that tipped me the five. 'M going up to look at him this afternoon and likely I'll be sorry when I see his murdering white eye.”

    
“Can we come too, can we come too?”

    
“You got yer muslins to iron.”

    
“MUSLINS!” said Velvet, outraged.

    
“Yer ma's just wrung 'em out of the suds. I seen 'em. For the Fair.”

    
“I'm not going to wear MUSLIN,” said Velvet with a voice of iron.

    
“You'll wear what yer told,” said Mi placidly. “I'll slip up after dinner. Nearer one. I got them sheep at twelve. Sounds I won't get any dinner. See Donald . . .”

    
Donald was beautifully dressed in a fresh striped blouse and grey pants the length of a coat cuff. The insides of both ankles were fastened up with sticking plaster and his silver hair had just left the prongs of a
damp comb. The brown of his arms was a mixture of coffee and silk.

    
“Whur's the stinkin' ants?” said Donald.

    
“What's that?”

    
“A stinkin' ant jus' stung me.”

    
“Where'd it sting you?”

    
“On my thumb,” said Donald clearly, and held up his thumb.

    
There was no mark of any kind on the pink thumb.

    
“Say ‘stinging,' ” said Mally. “Ants don't sting. It was a wasp.”

    
“Go on,” said Mi. “Don't be s'old-fashioned. He'll say ‘stinkin' ant' till he says ‘stinging wasp' . . . and it'll all come natural.”

    
Mally looked down her nose at Donald. “You're soft, Mi,” she said. “You bin and killed something, Donald.”

    
“It wanted to be dead,” said Donald. “A very little ant.”

    
“Throwing the blame on the ant!” said Mally. “I thought as much!”

    
Donald made a pass with his foot. “Thur's another one,” he said. “They all want to be dead.”

    
“Nice excuse!” said Velvet. “Stop it, Donald!”

    
“Every one of those ants,” said Mally, taking a deep breath and blowing out her cheeks, “has got an aunt an' an uncle an' little brothers an' . . .”

    
“This one hadn't,” said Donald, and ran away.

    
“S'awful to be so pretty,” said Velvet, looking after him. “He's like an actress.”

    
“Actress my boot,” said Mally. “He's a common murderer”

    
“Likes to see things stop” said Mi. “Anybody's the same. You better go iron them muslins. Sooner you get them ironed sooner you see the piebald.”

    
“Be in towels yet,” said Velvet. “Mine was too short last summer. It'll look like a ham frill this.”

    
“Got to get on,” said Mi. “Frittering my morning away . . .” and disappeared.

    
“He won't go an' see that piebald without us?” said Velvet.

    
“What about the blasted muslins?” said Mally.

    
“Better go.”

    
“Here's Meredith! What's the matter, Merry?”

    
“Went down the street,” said Meredith. “Looking at the rooks' nests. Dropped a splodge. A rook dropped a splodge . . .” She was wiping her eye furiously with her dress. “Gummy,” she said. “S'gummy stuff . . .”

    
“Get in under the tap,” said Velvet. “It's lime. P'raps it's quicklime.”

    
Meredith ran blindly into the scullery holding her eye. The lime ran off at the touch of water.

    
On the scullery ledge was a board with four objects on it like babies in long clothes, old bath towels, used for keeping the best washing evenly damp. Mally cautiously undid the first.

    
“It's them,” she said, as though she had smelt a drain.

    
“What?” said Meredith.

    
“Muslin, ducky, for the Fair. Our muslins.”

    
“Muslin!” said Meredith, stiff with offence.

    
“Muslin,” said Mrs. Brown from behind with a soft and heavy certainty. “An' your white woolly pullovers on top. You'll be warm an' you'll be pretty. Get on upstairs and look over your stockings for holes.”

    
“STOCKINGS! We're not going to wear STOCKINGS!”

    
Mrs. Brown sat down on the scullery chair.

    
“We'll get it all over,” she said. “I'll run through it. You'll wear your long black Christmas stockings, WITH suspenders, fastened to them calico belts I bought you for the Christmas dance. You'll wear white petticoats that go with . . .”

    
“PETTICOATS!”

    
“Petticoats. That belongs to the dresses. (Or should.) You'll wear your muslins, an' your pullovers, an' your black lace shoes . . .”

    
“SHOES!”

    
“If you get a shock over everything, Velvet, you'll be ill an' you won't go at all. When you have muslins you have black shoes an' when you have black shoes you have stockings, or your heels rub . . .” (Edwina came through the street door.) “. . . an' you'll iron your muslins . . .”

    
“MUSLINS!” said Edwina in exactly the same tone as the others.

    
“We've been through all that,” said Malvolia. “Black shoes, black stockings, petticoats, suspenders, belts, pullovers. . . . P'raps you'd like to sit down an' rest ‘Dwina? Go on, mother. We're to iron our muslins when?”

    
“Father's at the bottom of this . . .” muttered Edwina.

    
Mrs. Brown reached for a long-clothes baby and unrolled it. “Damp yet,” she said, trying it to her cheek. “Soaking. They'll stay damp till the evening in the shade. You can iron them after tea. Go on and look over the stockings.”

    
Edwina, Malvolia, Meredith and Velvet passed through the little black door on to the stairs.

    
The canaries were singing and shouting in the breeding cages and the new wooden cage, recently put up by Meredith, hung insecurely and crooked from the nail she had borrowed.

    
“You got it up,” said Velvet.

    
“It's all soft stuff in that wall,” said Meredith.

    
“Nail's going to come out,” said Mally—and they pulled out the drawers to look over the stockings.

    
Edwina held up her calico petticoat and measured it against her willowy figure. “Dressed up in muslin!” she muttered.

    
“But I thought you liked dressing up,” said Mally.

    
Edwina made no reply.

    
“Not dressed up enough is your trouble,” said Mally.

    
“It's time I had . . .” murmured Edwina, preoccupied and searching in a drawer . . . “something . . . more . . .” and she found what she was looking for.

    
“I'll wear it over the muslin,” she said, holding up a tennis skirt of white flannel. “It's a bit yellow. I've got a blue leather belt somewhere.”

    
“You'll make us look like a lot of dressed-up babies,”
said Mally, half enviously. “And mother won't let you.”

    
“I'll slip it on last thing,” said Edwina. “Mother doesn't really care. It's father. The top'll look like quite a nice muslin shirt. I wish I could cut off the bottom.”

    
“Well, that's your trouble,” said Mally. “My goodness, I wouldn't dare.”

    
“Where's it kept?” said Velvet.

    
“I had it in this bottom drawer,” said Edwina. Velvet turned and stared at her. After a pause she cleared her mind. “I mean the piebald,” she amended.