National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

Author:Enid Bagnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

“Thirty shillings is yours, Mi.”

“You’ll have to give me forty. I want ten to get me teeth out of pawn.”

“You put them in again?”

“I had to. Hadn’t nothing.”

“How is it they’re so valuable, Mi?”

“Mass o’ gold. My old dad got ’em done. He said, “You always got money on you if you got gold in your mouth.’ I can raise ten shillings on them most towns.”

“You whistle better without them.”

“Yes, I do,” said Mi. “Where’s that Jacob?”

It was the evening, before supper. They had turned the horses into the field after a good meal, and the piebald in with them. He had shown no sign of kicking. He trotted happily about among the new companions, his tail raised in an arch and his nostrils blown out with excitement. Velvet leant on the gate and Mi stood beside her. The others had gone home before them down the road, clinking the buckets.

“Sir Pericles was lovely,” said Velvet for the twentieth time. Mi was tired of grunting assent. The reddest sun that ever sank after a wet day went down behind them and sent streams of light through rushes and branches. Mi shaded his eyes to look for Jacob, that thorn in his side.

“Was The Lamb really only fourteen-two?” asked Velvet casually.

“Some say fourteen-two. Some say fifteen.”

“Smallest horse ever won the National, wasn’t he?”

“Won it twice.”

“You ever bin round there?”

“The course? Know every stick. Been on it hundreds a times.”

“What’s the highest jump?”

Mi gazed into the field. He stuck his chin towards the piebald. “He jumped as high as any to-day”

“I thought he did” said Velvet, low and happy.

There was a long silence. The fields rolled uphill, The hedge at the top of the field was indigo. Sir Pericles was cropping, like a tawny shadow against it. The piebald, disturbed and excited, cantered the length of the hedge, neighing. Sir Pericles looked up, kicked gaily at the empty air, and cantered too. Mrs. James rolled an eye and laid her ears back.

Evenings, after triumphs, are full of slack and fluid ecstasy. The air swims with motes, visions dip into reach like mild birds willing to be caught. Things are heavenly difficult, but nothing is impossible. Here stood gazing into the field in the sunset the Inspirer, the Inspired and, within the field, the Medium.

Under his boil of red hair Mi’s thoughts were chattering “Why not?”

And beside him Velvet looked, throbbing with belief, at her horse.

“Pity you don’t ride,” said Velvet at last.

“The rider’s all right,” said Mi mystically.

“What rider?”

“You.”

A pause.

“There’s jockeys from Belgium,” said Mi, following the insane thread of thought, “no one’s ever seen before. Who’s to know?”

“You think he could do it?”

“The two of you could do it.”

“Mi . . . oh, Mi . . .”

Pause.

“Who’d you write to? Fer entries.”

“Weatherby’s.”

“Where are they?”

“Telephone book. London somewhere.”

“Weatherby’s.”

There are evenings, full of oxygen and soft air, evenings after rain (and triumph) when mist curls out of the mind, when reason is asleep, stretched out on a low beach at the bottom of the heart, when something sings like a cock at dawn, a long-drawn, wild note.

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