National Velvet (30 page)

    
“They're coming on to the Racecourse . . . coming on to the Racecourse . . .”

    
“How many?”

    
“Rain, rain, can't see a thing.”

    
“How many?”

    
Down sank the fog again, as a puff of wind blew and gathered it together. There was a steady roaring from the Stands, then silence, then a hub-bub. No one could see the telegraph.

    
Mi, running, gasped, “Who's won?”

    
But everyone was asking the same question. Men were running, pushing, running, just as he. He came up to the gates of Melling Road, crossed the road on the fringe of the tan, and suddenly, out of the mist, The Piebald galloped riderless, lolloping unsteadily along, reins hanging, stirrups dangling. Mi burst through on to the Course, his heart wrung.

    
“Get back there!” shouted a policeman. “Loose horse!”

    
“Hullo, Old Pie there!” shouted Mi. The animal, soaked, panting, spent, staggered and slipped and drew up.

    
“What've you done with 'er?” said Mi, weeping, and bent down to lift the hoof back through the rein. “You let 'er down, Pie? What in God's sake?” He led the horse down the Course, running, his breath catching, his heart thumping, tears and rain on his face.

    
Two men came towards him out of the mist.

    
“You got him?” shouted one. “Good fer you. Gimme!”

    
“You want him?” said Mi, in a stupor, giving up the rein.

    
“Raised an objection. Want him for the enclosure. Chap come queer.”

    
“Chap did? What chap?”

    
“This here's the winner! Where you bin all day, Percy?”

    
“Foggy,” said Mi. “Very foggy. Oh, my God.”

    
Back in the fog a voice had spoken into a telephone. It had need only to say one word. All else had been written out beforehand. And in that very second in the offices of the Associated Press in New York men had taken off the message.

    
“Urgent Associated New York Flash Piebald Wins.” The one word the voice had said into the fog was “Piebald.”

    
Up went the red flag. The crowd buzzed. “What is it?” “Did he fall?”

    
“Must've hurt hisself jumping . . .”

    
“Fainted.”

    
“Jus' dismounted, the silly b . . .”

    
Dismounted before reaching the unsaddling enclosure. Objection. Up went the red flag. There was tenseness along the line of private bookies, pandemonium in the bookies' stand under the umbrellas, tight knots gathered round the opening to the Weighing Room, behind which was the Stewards' Room. Glasses were levelled from everywhere upon the board.
If a white flag went up the objection was over-ruled. If a green it was sustained. But the red remained unwaveringly.

    
“Taken him round to the hospital.”

    
“Stretcher, was it?”

    
“Jus' gone through where all those people are . . .”

    
The doctor had got back from his tour of the Course in his ambulance. Two riders had already been brought in and the nurse had prepared them in readiness for his examination. Now the winner himself coming in on a stretcher. Busy thirty minutes ahead.

    
“Get him ready, Sister.”

    
The winner lay unconscious wrapped in a horse blanket, his face mottled with the mud that had leapt up from flying hoofs.

    
“Looks sixteen,” said the doctor curiously, and knelt to turn the gas a little lower under the forceps.

    
“Bin boiling for twenty minutes,” said the Sister.

    
“Place full of steam,” said the doctor. “Been watching . . . ?” and he passed to the end cubicle.

    
“No,” said the Sister shortly to his back. She disliked the Grand National, and had waited behind the Stands to patch up the damage.

    
The constables with the stretcher placed the winner on the bed by the door, leaving him still wrapped in his blanket. They retired and closed the door. The Sister slipped a towel under the muddy head, and turning back the blanket started to undo the soaking jacket of black silk.

    
“Sister,” roared the doctor from another cubicle. . . . “No, stay where you are! I've got it!”

    
“Could you come here a minute?” said the Sister, at his side a few minutes later.

    
The doctor straightened his back. He had a touch of lumbago. “I'll be back, Jem,” he said. “You're not much hurt. Cover up. Yes?”

    
“Just a minute . . . over here.”

    
She whispered to him quietly. He slapped his raincoated cheek and went to the bed by the door. “Put your screens round.” She planted them. “Constable,” he said, poking his head out of the door, “get one of the Stewards here, will you.” (The roar of the crowd came in at the door.) “One of the Stewards! Quick's you can. Here, I'll let you in this side door. You can get through.” The crowd seethed, seizing upon every sign.

    
Mi crouched by the door without daring to ask after his child. He heard the doctor call. He saw the Steward go in. “Anyway,” he thought, “they've found out at once. They would. What's it matter if she's all right. She's won, the little beggar, the little beggar. Oh, my God.”

    
The Sergeant of Police was by the Stables. “Message from up there,” he said briefly to his Second. “Squad to go up to the hospital door. Row round the door. Something up with the winner.”

    
The police marched up in a black snake. The people fell back. An ambulance came in from the Ormskirk
Road and backed down the line of police. The red flag remained for a moment, then slowly the green flag mounted on the board. Objection sustained. A frightful clamour burst out in the Grand Stand.

    
In the Stewards' Room the glittering Manifesto looked down out of his frame and heard the low talk of this appalling desecration. A butcher's girl on a piebald horse had pounced up beside him into history.

    
“Got her off?” said one of the Stewards in a low voice.

    
“Just about. There was a bit of a rush for a second. She called out something as the stretcher was being shoved in. Called out she was all right . . . to somebody in the crowd. Good God, it's . . . I'm glad we got her off quick. The crowd's boiling with excitement.”

    
“How'd it get out so quick?”

    
“I dunno. Swell row this'll be. It'll have to be referred back to Weatherby's.” The Clerk of the Course came in. “Crowd's bubbling like kettles out there, Lord Henry. By Jove, it's the biggest ramp. How'd she pull it over!”

    
“Who's gone with her?”

    
“The doctor couldn't go. He's got two other men, one a baddish crash at Valentine's.”

    
“Well, somebody ought to 'a' gone. Find out Who's gone, will you?”

    
The Clerk of the Course disappeared.

    
“Tim's Chance wins, of course.”

    
“Yes, that's been announced. There's no question. The objection is sustained definitely here on the Course,
and the rest must be referred to London. There'll be a special of the N.H.C., I should think it might be a case for legal proceedings. Well . . .” (as the door opened) “did you find out who went with her?”

    
“A second doctor, Lord Henry. A young man Who's here very often. Friend of Doctor Bodie's. And a constable.”

    
“There should have been an official. Of course there should have been an official. What's the hospital?”

    
“Liverpool Central . . .”

    
“Isn't there a friend or relation with her?”

    
“Nobody.”

    
“Well, she called out to somebody!”

    
“The somebody's hidden himself all right. Well for him! She's quite alone s'far as we can make out.”

    
“D'she say anything?”

    
“Won't speak. Except that one shout she gave.”

    
“If my daughter'd done it,” said Lord Henry Vile, “I'd be . . .” He paused and stroked his lip with his finger.

    
“Pretty upset, I should think . . .”

    
“I wasn't going to say that,” said Lord Henry. “No.”