The Forest (112 page)

He had gone across, leading the pony, to collect it from Fritham on a sunny August day, taking his daughter with him. At Fritham, he had drunk a little cider, exchanged a few words with the landlord of the Royal Oak, and then, having loaded the pony, started back again very contentedly towards his home. Dorothy was dancing about in the sun. The smoked haunches of venison bumped against the pony’s flanks. They passed by a stony outcrop where some gorse was growing and he saw her go running in there like a wild thing. It had made him laugh.

When he heard her cry, he thought she must have fallen in some gorse, and calling to her to come in, he continued walking with the pony. He heard her cry again, and stopped.

‘It’s a snake,’ she cried.

An adder. There were harmless grass snakes in the Forest, but there were adders too. He ran back.

‘Was it a big one?’

She nodded and pointed at a hole in the ground a few yards away. The snake had already disappeared.

She pointed to the place on her leg. It was already starting to swell. He could see the marks left by the creature’s fangs. A bite from a large adder could be a serious matter for a young child. He felt for the knife he always carried.

‘Sit.’ He ordered. ‘See the pony?’

She nodded.

‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘Don’t take your eyes off it.’

She did as she was told. He cut. She tensed sharply, but didn’t cry out. He cut again. Then sucked, and spat, and sucked again. He could taste the venom, a sharp and spiteful taste.

He continued for a quarter of an hour. She was shaking like a leaf but never said a word. Then he put her on the pony and took her home.

It was on the way back that he realized he loved her more than his other children.

A wet February day: Mrs Albion, in a tight little closed carriage, bowled down the lane past Brook, carrying her secret package to her house. She was anxious to get home before her husband’s train steamed into Brockenhurst.

The windows of her carriage had fogged up, so she drew one down and stared out.

There are times in winter when it seems as if the whole Forest is turning into water. A misty haze enveloped the trees, clinging to the ivy-wrapped trunks of ancient oaks, seeping into the interstices of stricken branches, soaking into softening logs. The Forest floor was waterlogged. Huge puddles covered paths and greensward and leafy carpet, turning everything to a brownish, peaty slush. Above, below, in every direction, an all-pervading dampness seemed to be offering to sink into the soul. The Forest was often like this in the months of the old winter heyning.

She had just been to see her grandchildren. Colonel Albion and Minimus had never met again after their interview. The break was not exactly formal. If anyone
mentioned the Colonel to Minimus he just shrugged and said: ‘He shouts at me.’ If anyone was unwise enough to speak of Minimus to the Colonel, he said nothing, but his face began to go dangerously red. Perhaps Minimus sometimes felt a little weary of their stand-off; perhaps Albion a little sad. But still they did not meet. And there was no money.

Actually there was a little money. Mrs Albion was quite clever at gleaning small amounts from her allowance – enough to buy clothes and hire a maid – which she would pass to her daughter on her clandestine visits to the cottage near Fordingbridge. Not that her husband actually forbade her to go there, but she wisely hid her visits from him. If Colonel Albion saw his daughter in the street, which he scarcely ever did, he would give her a bleak nod, but would not stop to speak. He had never seen either of the two grandchildren who had since been born. ‘They are being brought up as godless heathens, keeping the lowest company,’ he had stated glumly. It was true, and it greatly shocked Mrs Albion, that neither Beatrice’s boy nor girl had been baptized. ‘No doubt,’ the Colonel concluded, ‘they will lead their lives accordingly. There is nothing to be done.’ He had been to see the family lawyer. The Furzeys were, in the best manner of the age, cut off. The Colonel’s eldest son had married since. He already had a child. The future of the family lay there. Most men in his position would have done the same. It was how families survived.

Beatrice’s children were fair-haired and pretty. Intelligent. Indeed, because their parents took such interest in these things, they were learning to read and write sooner than most. If they ran about the Forest, as her husband put it, like godless heathens, they seemed to thrive on the regime.

But the Furzey household was a mess. There was no denying it. The day before, the maid they employed could take it no more and had left. There was no nanny, no maid,
only a charity girl from an orphanage in Sarum who worked in the tiny kitchen. Beatrice had been wondering what to do. So Mrs Albion had felt rather pleased with her suggestion that George Pride’s daughter Dorothy should help out.

Beatrice knew the woodman well. The daughter was twelve or thirteen now. ‘I’ll go over there tomorrow,’ she had told her mother. Coming from the Pride household, Mrs Albion had no doubt she’d be a steady girl and a good influence upon the children.

Mrs Albion’s true mission that day, however, was more devious. She had never despaired of bringing the Furzeys back into the family fold, but she knew that it would have to be a long and carefully organized campaign. Her strategy today involved two acts of deliberate deception. The first had involved a request to her cousin Totton, her uncle Edward’s son, who lived in London. He had obliged and she had his letter with her. The second was the collection of the brown paper parcel that lay on the seat of the carriage beside her.

Colonel Albion was in a thoughtful mood when he arrived back home that evening. The day in London had proved to be more eventful than he expected and as soon as he arrived at Albion Park he hastened to give his wife the news.

‘Gladstone’s resigned! The government’s fallen.’ The news was grave indeed.

It wasn’t that he cared for Gladstone so much; but the implications for the Forest were important.

‘There’s no doubt, it seems, that he will lose the elections,’ the Colonel reported. ‘That means, you know, that we lose our protection.’

It was a technical, constitutional point, but an important one. The Resolution in the House of Commons that had forbidden the making of any new inclosures was only binding on the present Parliament. When the Commons met again after the election, it would be a new Parliament.

‘You can be quite sure that the Office of Woods knows that, too,’ he said grimly. ‘We can expect the worst.’

Not that the Forest had been idle. The landowners of the New Forest Association had been preparing their case assiduously. Another group, a Commoners’ League, representing the smaller folk, had begun to agitate too.

‘We shall give battle,’ the Colonel said.

It was after he had had his dinner that his wife produced the letter and the package.

‘Do look,’ she said, ‘at what my cousin Totton has sent us. I do think it’s very kind of him.’ The letter announced that her cousin had come across a picture in a gallery. It wasn’t signed, so he couldn’t tell them who the artist was, but he was almost certain the scene depicted came from the New Forest. He’d thought they might like it.

Colonel Albion grunted. He didn’t take much interest in pictures usually but out of courtesy to Totton he inspected it.

‘That’s looking down from Castle Malwood,’ he announced. ‘That’s Minstead church.’ The fact that he could identify the terrain triggered his interest. He inspected it more carefully. The painting showed a summer sunset. After a moment or two he smiled. ‘That’s exactly how it looks,’ he said. ‘The light. Shines exactly like that.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’

‘I do. It’s really damned good. How very kind of Totton. I’ll write to him myself.’

‘I was wondering where to put it.’ She paused. ‘It could go in one of the bedrooms I suppose.’ She paused again.

‘I’ll have it in my office,’ said the Colonel. ‘Unless there’s somewhere you’d rather.’

‘Your office. Why not, Godwin? I’m so glad you’d like it in there.’

Although he didn’t know it, the Colonel had just looked at his first Minimus Furzey.

Colonel Albion was right about the elections. Gladstone lost. March saw a new Parliament. Within weeks, Cumberbatch and his men were felling timber. George Pride himself had been forced to witness one ancient oak come down, over by the Rufus stone.

‘He just did it to make a point really,’ he told his wife sadly.

His own inclosures were in good order. One in particular was due for thinning that year; so when Cumberbatch called him in and demanded a list of timber to be felled, he was able to satisfy him quite easily.

‘Good man, Pride,’ the Deputy Surveyor said with a brisk nod. ‘We may be giving you a new plantation to look after soon. Mr Grockleton suggested we could drain some of those bogs and plant them.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

Apart from this, the spring passed without incident. Young Dorothy was happy going over to the Furzeys. ‘It’s a funny sort of place,’ she told her father. But the Furzeys were very kind to her and she liked the children. ‘They’re brought up just like Forest children in some ways,’ she reported.

Beatrice she liked. ‘You can see she’s a lady, Dad. But she doesn’t live like one I must say.’ Minimus she found funny, but strange. ‘It’s amazing what he knows, though.’ George himself had often wondered how the artist had managed to marry the landowner’s daughter. The whole Forest knew the two men didn’t speak.

‘Even worse than me and Dad,’ he’d say, for although the two Prides still avoided each other, they didn’t actually refuse to speak if they chanced to meet.

Spring turned into summer and the Forest remained quiet.

They had met at midnight up by Nomansland, the remotest hamlet on the Forest’s northern edge. By the light of the
stars and a quarter moon they had ridden their ponies across, past Fritham, like a pack train of smugglers from the good old days. There were about a dozen of them, good Forest men all, led by the big fellow who had spoken to George at Lyndhurst.

When they reached George’s inclosures they stopped and cut some gorse and dry bracken and started a small fire. They had some torches coated with pitch. At various points along the fence they stacked dry material that would burn.

‘I should think we’ll have ourselves a nice little fire here,’ said the burly man.

‘What about the gates?’ asked one of the men.

‘Makes a very nice gate, does Berty Puckle,’ said the big fellow. ‘You don’t want to burn those. That’d be a crime.’ He was pleased with this joke. ‘Now that
would
be a crime.’ He laughed. ‘Be a crime that would, don’t you reckon, John?’ There were several laughs in the darkness. ‘We might take some of those gates. Come in useful those will.’

A few minutes later, several of the smaller gates had been removed from their places.

‘All right then, let’s start,’ the big man cried, and the men with the torches started to light the fires.

They had a quarter-mile of fencing burning nicely when George Pride came along. He was carrying a gun.

There were cries and whoops.

‘Here he comes. Here comes trouble. Whoah there, George!’

But George wasn’t smiling.

Nor was the big man.

‘Thought I told you to stay in bed,’ he cried.

George said nothing.

‘Go home, George,’ called several voices. ‘We don’t mean you no harm.’

But George only shook his head.

‘You stop that,’ he cried.

‘What are you going to do, George?’ asked the big man in his big voice. ‘You going to shoot me?’

‘No. I’ll shoot your pony.’

There was a pause.

‘Don’t be stupid, boy,’ said a voice.

‘If I shoot a few ponies,’ George called out, ‘you’ll not only walk home. You’ll have to explain to the Deputy Surveyor how your pony came to be there.’

‘You might miss and shoot me, George,’ said another voice from the dark.

‘That’s right,’ said George.

‘I’m not very pleased, George,’ said the big man.

‘I didn’t think you would be,’ said George.

So they left, and George tore down the burning fences and, by a miracle, only lost a few trees.

‘So who were they?’ demanded Cumberbatch, the next morning.

‘They rode off,’ said George.

‘We know who the ringleader is, Pride. You must have seen him. All you have to do is say who it was.’

‘I can’t, Mr Cumberbatch,’ he answered, looking him straight in the eye. ‘That’d be a lie because I didn’t see him. They ran off when they saw my gun.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, Sir.’

Cumberbatch looked at him curiously. Was George Pride such a loyal forest man? If he had been on the side of the burners, he could have pretended to sleep through the whole episode until they’d gone. But he obviously hadn’t.

‘You’ve got one hour to change your mind,’ he said, and waved him away.

An hour later, George Pride said the same thing, and Cumberbatch sent him home.

‘Couldn’t you have given just one of the names?’ asked
his wife. But even to her he said nothing. The risk was too great.