National Velvet (15 page)

    
“I'll ride him quietly up and down the valley. We'll take Sir Pericles and change the saddles. His ought to fit the piebald. There's nothing wrong with the piebald, except that he hates being shut in square fields with walls. Or else he likes jumping walls. Where's the list?”

    
“There's the Threadneedle Race. That's me.”

    
“Who'll thread your needle?”

    
“Mother.”

    
“Then you'll have to tell her you're racing?”

    
“At the last minute. She'll do it. What is the fuss about racing? You've got to sit on and go round. It isn't even like a professional race, where they catch
their legs in yours, if you're an amateur, an' throw you off.”

    
“How d'you know?”

    
“I read about it in the Libra'y.”

    
“Where'd you get the penny?”

    
“On tick again,” said Velvet wearily. “There's an old book there on the National.”

    
“What National?”

    
“The Grand National,” said Velvet, with an undertone in her voice like a girl in love.

    
“The next's a Wheelbarrow Race,” said Mally, reading.

    
“We can't all do everything,” said Velvet, “because of the money. We must choose. Anyway, we've worked it out. We've eight half crowns.”

    
“Where?”

    
“I mean that's what we're going to borrow.”

    
“When's the closing day for the entries?”

    
“Friday,” said Velvet. “I must get the pound by then.”

    
“Bed yer ma says,” said Mi, putting his head in at the door of the stable.

    
In the dark, when the light was out, Mally remembered. “What was that parcel, ‘Dwina?” she asked.

    
“Hell!” said Edwina, settling herself angrily further into the clothes. “Not a minute by myself. . . .
Never
by myself!” she whispered into her pillow, and the tears of growth and self-pity heated her eyes.

    
Very soon they were all asleep, and the dreams waved like palm leaves over the room.

T
HE
sun poured down on the beach. The Hullocks blazed, hot and grey with burnt grass in the late gymkhana summer. Horses were everywhere, creeping over the dun hills, silhouetted on the skyline like plumes, plunging down the skyline to the sea. Donald came in to midday dinner, shoeless, with painted toenails.

    
“What's he got on his feet?” said Mally, Velvet and Meredith all together, with gimlet eyes and sharp voices. Donald climbed on to his chair and placed his ten scarlet toes on the table.

    
“ 'Dwina did me,” he said. He looked pleased.

    
“Where's 'Dwina.”

    
“Up in your bedroom.”

    
Down came Edwina, blowing on her last finger. She
held up her two hands, ten drops of deep crimson madder at the tips.

    
“The parcel!” she said tauntingly and with triumph. “Wet still. Don't touch!”

    
There was a silence.

    
“Have you got stuff to get it off?” asked Velvet in a cold voice.

    
“I'm not going to get it off.”

    
“It won't wear off . . .”

    
“It'll stay like that for three weeks.”

    
“Gymkhana's Friday week.”

    
“Well?”

    
“D'you think you're going,” said Velvet, “to ride Mrs. James with those red nails?”

    
“Why not?”

    
“Men have played polo on Mrs. James,” said Velvet, choking, “an' you . . .”

    
“Coming!” called Mrs. Brown from the kitchen, with the dish.

    
“Godamighty, look at the boy's feet! Who's dolled ‘m up?” said Mr. Brown from the street door.

    
“I got PAINTED feet,” said Donald with satisfaction. “ 'Dwina done it.”

    
Mr. Brown paused and looked at 'Dwina. He saw her nails and still he looked. She shuffled a little and took her seat at the table. Mrs. Brown came into the room with the dish of oxtail, glutinous, steaming, crusts of toast swimming.

    
Mr. Brown sat down and began to help the food. Mi slipped in and took his seat. Jacob caught the door on
his shoulder and squeezed in, squirming, as it closed. Mally, Velvet, Merry, everyone was silent. When the food was all around Mr. Brown observed that Donald's toes were one thing. Then he paused. Velvet waited, almost in pity, for what was to fall upon 'Dwina.

    
But father was strange. He only said, “I'm not against yer fingers, Edwina. Looks kind of finished to me. Yer getting on too. Time you worried about your appearance. Donald's toes is just silly.”

    
“What's he done to his toes?” said Mrs. Brown, eating.

    
Donald arranged them again upon the tablecloth. His mother looked at them and went on with her dinner.

    
“Looks like my garnets,” she remarked. “An' can you count 'em, Donald?”

    
So it was left to Velvet to undo Edwina. She clinched her spirit and knit it up again. When dinner was over she waited for Edwina in the bedroom where she knew she would come to look again at her bottle of nail varnish.

    
From the height of the window, beyond the canary cages, the immortal Hullocks browsed, burnished and lit, at two in the afternoon. Bowed like silver barrels they were set in rows endwise to the sea. Like pigs, like sheep, like elephants, hay-blonde with burnt grass. Velvet's mind stuttered like a small candle before the light and the height and the savage stillness of the middle afternoon. As she gazed her heart rolled slowly over, a wheel on which something is written. Edwina seemed to her small and distressed. The piebald horse, the light
of her mind, walked slowly across her imagination. She leant upon a cage. Merry opened the door and saw her.

    
“Looking at my canaries?” she asked, warmed to her marrow, like a mother whose baby is patted,

    
“No,” said Velvet, turning round. Then seeing Meredith's face—“I was at first, and then I looked outside at the Hullocks. We're going over to the piebald as soon's Mally's washed up.”

    
“What are you going to do about 'Dwina's nails?” said Meredith, and came towards the cages.

    
“Nothing,” said Velvet. “She can have her nails if she likes.”

    
“And ride Mrs. James?”

    
“If she likes to,” said Velvet. “It's a disgrace to us but she can.”

    
“I thought you minded so.”

    
Velvet said nothing. Then she poked her finger in at Mountain Jim. “Will he sit on it?”

    
“On mine he will!” said Meredith eagerly, and opened the cage door. Mountain Jim bowed and fluttered his wing tips. Then descended to her finger and twisted his layered neck and cocked his easy head.

    
“You like them better than the horses, don't you?” said Velvet wonderingly.

    
“Nobody else wants them,” said Meredith. “And they're small. They're like a doll's house.”

    
“Why, there's a new one!”

    
“Mi bought it for me,” said Merry in a small, touched voice, “because of Africa. This morning. That new mate got it for him.”

    
“What mate?”

    
“The plumber's mate. The boy with the glass eye. The cat got it an' it's got no tail, but Mi says rub it with oil an' it'll grow. Hair oil he says. He's going to give me a teaspoonful of his.”

    
“Does Mi use hair oil?”

    
“No, he doesn't use it, but he bought it.”

    
“Merry,” said Velvet, “nobody's thought what we're going to wear at the gymkhana.”

    
“Our knickers.”

    
“Yes,” said Velvet, pondering. “Yes, our knickers. Every other child will have jodhpurs. I suppose they'll
let
us ride? In knickers?”

    
“Oh, I should think so,” said Meredith, cleaning out the drinking pots with her finger. “Look at Butter bowing!”

    
Butter opened her wings and bowed from her perch.

    
“She can't make up her mind to go from perch to perch without doing that,” said Meredith. “She laid another useless egg this morning. Just drops them about.”

    
“Are you sure it's useless?”

    
“I put it in water an' it floated. It's sterile.”

    
“Does Mi say—”

    
“That's what Mi says. Float 'em. No good if they float.”

    
“Mi comin' with us to the piebald this afternoon?”

    
“It's such a long way to walk,” said Merry. “If only he would ride.”

    
“Nothin'll ever make him,” said Velvet. “He won't even talk about it.”

    
Donald came round the bedroom door with naked feet and painted toes. He carried a postcard in his hand. “You gotta postcard. From Aunt Em.”

    
“For me?” said Velvet.

    
“Sfer Meredith.”

    
Meredith took it. “She's at Brighton. Just her love . . .”

    
“Thurs a picture” said Donald. He looked at it. “What is it? It's a church.”

    
“No, it's a palace,” said Meredith, reading the printed inscription. “It's the Pavilion at Brighton. ‘Where George the Fourth lived,' it says.”

    
“Who's George a Fourth?” asked Donald.

    
“Was a king . . . lived in this palace.”

    
“Whur's he now?”

    
“Oh, he's dead. Ages ago.”

    
“Who died ‘im?”

    
“Nobody died him. He just died.”

    
“Well, whur's he now?”

    
“Well, dead, Donald. Like everybody. Everybody dies.”

    
“Why?”

    
“Well, they do. You will an' I will an' old people do.”

    
“Do what?”

    
“Die.”

    
“Who died that king then? Who died him, I say?”

    
“Velvet” said Meredith, exasperated. “You tell him. I got to finish these canaries.”

    
Velvet considered Donald with a mild expression. He was frowning. His lovely face was angry.

    
“Where's your spit bottle?” she asked.

    
“Ts'full,” said Donald, his whole face lighting with radiance. “I'll get it, shall I?”

    
“Yes,” said Velvet, “only hurry up.”

    
“You didn't do much,” said Merry.

    
“He didn't really want to know,” said Velvet. “He just wanted to be angry. Bin smacked or something downstairs. He knows all about death. Look how he trod on those ants.”

    
“Perhaps he didn't like a king being dead. A king's not like an ant. He's coming with his beastly bottle.”

    
Donald fell on the top step and his bottle was smashed. It had been the work of weeks. The stairs ran with spit and blood and tinkled with broken glass. The house was rent. Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Mi and all the sisters picked him up.

    
Mally cut her knee kneeling on the glass. Edwina read to Donald, who had to have a stitch in the ball of his foot. Mrs. Brown kept Merry to help her with the washing.