The Forest

by Edward Rutherfurd

  He was deep in conversation with the gypsy man and woman when he noticed Grockleton and George Pride approaching.

  Grockleton did not like Minimus Furzey. It was one of the few things he and Colonel Albion could agree about. In Grockleton’s case, there was no specific reason for this dislike: it was more instinctive. Furzey, it seemed to him, represented disorder. It was a pity the disruptive artist should have chosen to sketch at just the place he wished to inspect, but he certainly wasn’t going to let it interfere with him. He gave Furzey and the gypsies a bleak stare, dismounted and began to pace the ground.

  The spot Minimus had selected lay on the edge of a ridge from which a slope swept down into a marshy dip below. Across it, a quarter of a mile off, a Scots pine plantation had been laid out upon the heather recently, its seedling trees only knee-high as yet. Having walked over to inspect the plantation, Grockleton strode back and stood gazing down the slope thoughtfully.

  ‘Buy a posy, Sir. Flowers for your wife.’

  He whirled round. The gypsy woman had come up behind him. He noticed now that she had a small basket of flowers on her arm and she had tied them into little nosegays with tufts of purple heather. He glared at her. The flowers, he thought, had probably been stolen out of somebody’s garden. The Forest folk seemed to tolerate this, but as far as he was concerned it was theft. As for the heather, there must surely be some law against these wretched people taking that.

  ‘Damn your flowers,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Better buy them,’ Furzey called out. ‘Bad luck if you don’t, you know.’

  ‘When I need your advice I’ll ask for it,’ he retorted sharply. He turned to George Pride who was standing awkwardly a little way off. ‘Move these people away, Pride.’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

  ‘Buy a flower, Sir,’ the woman insisted. She did it just to annoy him – Grockleton was sure of it.

  Pride’s attempts to move the woman didn’t amount to much, but she retreated back to Furzey who said something that made both gypsies laugh. Then they got into their caravan and drove away. Grockleton knew he should have ignored Furzey entirely after that, but the tiresome thought of what the fellow might have said to the gypsies niggled at him. After surveying the landscape for a minute or two, therefore, he walked over to where the artist was working, glanced at the sketch, pronounced, ‘Not bad,’ and continued a little further to where a clump of ferns that had been trodden down made a small platform from which he could survey the scene with dignity. Minimus glanced at him, smiled to himself and continued to sketch. After a while he looked up.

  ‘Do you know what you’re standing on?’ he asked. Grockleton stared at him blankly.

  ‘It’s the nest of a hen harrier. The Forest people call them blue hawks.’

  ‘I fail to see why that is of interest.’

  ‘They’re visitors. Very rare. Sometimes they don’t come for years. This is one of the few places in Britain where they’ve been seen. They’re one of the treasures of the Forest, you might say.’

  ‘Treasures to you, Furzey,’ replied Grockleton. ‘Not to anyone else.’ And, quite pleased to see Minimus shrug with irritation, he kicked the remains of the nest and began to pace along the edge of the slope again. ‘I’ll tell you what, though,’ he remarked as he passed the artist, ‘there is something useful we can do with this place.’ He paused a moment to smile, grimly. ‘We can make a plantation.’

  ‘Here? You’ll ruin the place.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Furzey. There’s nothing here except your damned bird’s nest.’ He nodded to himself with satisfaction. ‘We can run it right along this ridge and down the slope. Three hundred acres I estimate.’

  ‘No good planting on the slope,’ said Minimus crossly. ‘It’s a bog.’

  Grockleton stared at him. There was no doubt Furzey could be very irritating indeed.

  ‘The bog is at the bottom of the slope, Furzey,’ he pointed out. ‘The water runs down the slope and enters the bog at the bottom. Any fool can see that, you know.’ He shook his head. ‘I know you don’t want the plantation, Furzey, but if you want to invent objections, couldn’t you think of something more intelligent?’

  ‘It’s a bog,’ said Furzey.

  ‘No it isn’t!’ Grockleton suddenly shouted. He began to stride down the slope. ‘It is a slope, Furzey.’ He called back the words deliberately, as though to a slow-witted child. ‘A slope and not …’ He never reached the end of his sentence, however. Instead, he let out a loud cry as he suddenly disappeared up to his waist.

  There are several kinds of bog in the New Forest. In the lower-lying southern region, where the valleys are wide and shallow, the great peat bogs drawing moisture off the Forest’s gentle gradient extend for hundreds of yards. Some have alder trees along the line of the water flow. Purple moor grass, bog myrtle, ferns, tussocks of sedge and reeds grow there. The edges are flanked with moss. Even after centuries of cutting, the peat in these bogs is often five feet deep, sometimes more.

  In the steeper, narrower gullies of the northern Forest there are smaller bogs. But it is up in the high sweeps of the northern ridges that a different and unexpected kind of bog occurs. These are the step mires.

  In fact their formation is quite logical. As the water seeped down through the gravel of the high terraces, it often encountered a layer of clay. Seeping sideways now it would undermine the gravel above and create a ledge, even hollow out a trench in the ledge, from which it would seep down into the valley below where, if the drainage was poor, a bog would form. Down the main part of the slope a covering of mosses and clumps of purple moor grass would indicate that this was wet heath. But towards the top, where the moisture drained swiftly, the covering of bare grass might lead the unwary to suppose the slope was dry. And the ledge? The centuries had filled it with watery peat and covered it over with vegetation. It seemed a level part of the slope but it was in fact a deep bog. This was the step mire. And Grockleton had just walked into one.

  ‘Told you so,’ said Minimus pleasantly.

  It was unfortunate that as he climbed, wet and filthy, back up the slope, Grockleton should have seen Beatrice returning from her ramble. She was wearing a straw hat. She looked down at him, her blue eyes concerned.

  ‘You poor man. I did that once.’

  He was grateful for that. Even Furzey, he noted, had the grace not to laugh.

  But George Pride was laughing. He hadn’t meant to but he just couldn’t help it. He was biting his lip now, but his body was shaking.

  Grockleton looked at him. If the young woodman hadn’t been so respectful all afternoon he mightn’t have minded so much. But seeing him laughing now, Grockleton couldn’t help wondering if George hadn’t been secretly mocking him ever since they met. These damned Forest people were all the same. He’d speak to Cumberbatch about that.

  It had been quite soon after her marriage that Beatrice had started to dye her hair. Sometimes she would dye it black, and Minimus would call her his raven. With her slim, pale body, and her full breasts – Minimus said they were voluptuous – she had soon learned that if she lay across the carved bed with her dark hair draped across her breasts, it excited him very much.

  Sometimes she would dye it red, and put waves in it so that she looked like a gorgeous figure from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Her face had a strong, rather classical bone structure, so she could carry off these transformations with effect. The changes were not merely decorative; there was magic in them. There was also some calculation. When Furzey was out, she would sometimes take her clothes off and practise attitudes in front of the glass. And then of course she would also return to being the golden-haired landowner’s daughter she was originally, and Minimus liked that too.

  The attitude of her parents to her way of life, insofar as they knew about it, contrasted sharply. Once, when her father saw her walking towards him down Lyndhurst High Street with her hair in rich, crimson curls, he remarked that she looked like a harlot and refused
to talk to her. Mrs Albion, though she could not approve, was more curious and asked Beatrice why she behaved in this strange way.

  ‘Minimus likes variety.’ Beatrice could have added that she rather enjoyed these transformations herself, but she didn’t.

  ‘I have sometimes been afraid,’ her mother ventured, ‘that his love of variety might …’ She left the thought unfinished.

  ‘Extend to other women?’ Beatrice looked at her mother thoughtfully. ‘He is younger than I am, of course.’ She smiled and gave a little shrug. ‘It is a risk, Mother. I have always known that.’ She paused, fingering the little blackened crucifix her grandmother Fanny had given her. ‘I amuse him, you know. I have some education.’ Though she had little formal education, Beatrice had always been a voracious reader in the library at Albion Park. Many young men had found her too clever by half. ‘He says I have talent.’

  One of the things that had originally drawn her to Furzey was the interest he took in her mind. Instead of praising her harmless watercolours extravagantly, as her dear mother did, he had quietly showed her how to improve them. If she wrote a verse, he talked of other poets, read from their works, gave her new standards by which to judge her own. Sometimes poets or painters came to visit them, and they would all go out together to ramble or sketch out of doors. Occasionally they would take the train to London, visit studios, galleries, or attend lectures. To Beatrice these things were all new, and wonderful.

  And most surprising of all, he had opened her eyes to the Forest. She loved it, she had lived there all her life, yet now she realized that she had never really known it at all. Poring on the ground, inspecting a fallen branch, or wandering by a lowland bog, he would utter a cry, and suddenly she would see a damsel fly, a stag beetle, or some other tiny creature she would never have thought of noticing before.

  ‘The Forest is a naturalist’s paradise, you know,’ he would tell her. ‘There are probably more species of insect here than anywhere else in Europe.’

  Sometimes they would go out with butterfly nets. She had seen people doing this in the past and thought them rather comical. But now, when they brought their specimens back, mounted and catalogued them, and when she saw the papers in naturalist journals, including some notes from her husband, she began to realize that this was a scientific enquiry to be taken seriously.

  If she had waited many years, and quietly rejected several conventional suitors before she had encountered Furzey, it was probably also true that Beatrice was the first woman he had met who was able and also willing to be his life companion. His friends were impressed with her; he rather liked that. They were really very happy together.

  ‘And children?’ Mrs Albion had recently asked. It had surprised her that there had been no children yet.

  ‘Minimus and I don’t mind waiting a little. One can try to avoid them you know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I was thinking recently … I think we may soon. We’ll see.’

  ‘You should,’ said her mother. ‘You should.’ And it was really the prospect of having grandchildren that had impelled Mrs Albion to seek the meeting with Minimus in Lyndhurst church. Her two sons were abroad, one in India; neither was yet married. Since Beatrice had married, she had scarcely come to Albion Park, and Furzey was not allowed to set foot there. She couldn’t bear to think of such a situation greeting the arrival of a grandchild. Besides, she felt sure, Beatrice would be needing money.

  Her own attempts to make peace, so far, had been to no avail. Colonel Albion was adamant. He wouldn’t see Furzey. Beatrice had made no great efforts since she knew her husband hardly cared whether he saw Albion or not. The only hope was for Furzey himself to make an approach. A letter: serious, respectful, humble even. If he didn’t apologize for marrying Beatrice, he should at least show a proper gratitude and sense of humility at the sacrifice Beatrice had made in marrying him. He should ask for a reconciliation for her sake and that of any children. All this and more besides. It was not the sort of letter that Minimus was very good at. But this was what, in Lyndhurst church, Mrs Albion had begged him to do.

  She had dictated much of it herself. She had taken out his ironical asides, his humour, his references to Beatrice’s improving education. She had watched him write it and then taken it away before he could add anything more.

  And, amazingly, it had worked. With no very good humour, and after she herself had pointed to some of the respectful passages in the letter of which she was particularly proud, the Colonel had grudgingly agreed that Beatrice and the artist might come to dinner.

  The dinner went surprisingly well. There is nothing like misfortune for bringing people together, and it happened that the day of the dinner also brought the bad news of the House of Lord’s decision. Their Lordships had concluded, not unreasonably, that since there were two parties, the Office of Woods and the commoners, whose interests were diametrically opposed, the only long-term solution was to partition the Forest between them. They did agree that the commoners should be fairly treated and that Cumberbatch and his men should not be allowed to steal all the best land.

  ‘But that’s what will happen in practice,’ Albion remarked gloomily. ‘I’m not sure even Pride will survive.’

  ‘If I understand it correctly,’ Minimus was respectful, on his best behaviour, ‘this Select Committee report isn’t binding.’

  ‘That is true. It is only an opinion. But it carries weight,’ explained Albion. ‘The government may not find time to prepare legislation on the Forest for a year or two, but when they do they’ll almost certainly follow the Committee’s advice.’

  ‘We must fight on, then,’ said Minimus.

  This earned a smile from Mrs Albion and a grunt of approval from the Colonel. But Minimus did even better with his next suggestion.

  ‘I refuse to believe,’ he remarked, ‘that we can all be browbeaten by people who walk into step mires.’ And he gave them an account of Grockleton’s recent accident.

  The Colonel was delighted with this. ‘You mean he just marched in?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘I swear to you,’ said Minimus with a smile, ‘I behaved perfectly. I warned him. I told him it was a bog. And he wouldn’t listen. Straight in, up to his armpits!’

  The meal became quite cheerful after that and it was almost with good humour that, after they had drunk their port, Colonel Albion led Minimus into his office for a private talk.

  Colonel Albion’s office perfectly expressed the man; it also told you much about the state of the New Forest. On the shelves were the usual works of genealogy and county history, the foundation stones and buttresses of the gentry’s world. There were the bound eighteenth century Parliamentary Reports on the New Forest, a shelf of parchment inventories of the Albion estate, and several volumes of minutes of the Verderers’ Court which he had borrowed from Lyndhurst ten years ago and forgotten to return. There were literary works too. A set of Jane Austen’s novels were lodged beside Mr Gilpin’s works, not so much for their literary merit, but because the author had lived in the same county. There was also, given to him by a kinsman who owned the Arnewood estate where the story was set, a copy of Marryat’s Children of the New Forest, whose numerous technical errors on Forest matters were neatly underlined and noted in the Colonel’s own hand.

  Hanging near the door, resplendently scarlet, was the Colonel’s hunting coat. There were two leading hunts in the New Forest now. One hunted the fox, the other the deer which, despite the Deer Removal Act, were still to be found in the area. As a reminder of the days of the medieval deer Forest, they had been granted royal permission to wear the ancient insignia of the Lord Warden on their buttons. Colonel Albion, descendant of Cola the Huntsman, hunted with both.

  Upon a table was a case containing a pair of guns. For the two hunts were not the only sports flourishing in the Forest. The area was becoming increasingly stocked with game. Since with the removal of the deer, the old keepers’ lodges had become redundant, Cumberbatch had soon realized t
hat they could be refurbished and let as shooting lodges. A steady stream of sporting gentlemen were taking the train down to the Forest for this purpose nowadays. Better yet, in Albion’s opinion, were the opportunities for wildfowling over the marshes down by the Solent shore.

  It might have seemed odd that Albion should keep these items, which really belonged in his dressing room and the gun room, in the place where he did his paperwork. But his wife was probably correct in thinking that they were there to comfort him with the thought of future pleasure while he attended to all the letters he so hated writing.

  It was while Albion fiddled with some papers on his desk that Minimus caught sight, on a leather chair, of the game book in which the Colonel recorded the results of his shooting, and began to turn its pages.

  Minimus had only drunk a little port: just enough to let him think that he was on more friendly terms with Colonel Albion than was truly the case. It did not occur to him therefore that he must still be careful.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What’s that?’ the Colonel looked up.

  ‘I’m just looking at what you’ve been killing. It’s astounding.’ The Colonel’s record was certainly one that any sportsman of his day would have been proud of. His bag for the previous year, as well as the usual snipe, geese, duck, wigeon and plovers included: 1 wild swan; 6 pintail; 4 curlew and 1 oystercatcher. ‘It’s wholesale massacre,’ said Minimus. ‘A few more years of this and there won’t be any game left. Do you know how many oystercatchers there still are in the British Isles?’

  ‘No,’ said the Colonel, ‘I do not.’

  ‘Nor do I. But it isn’t many.’ Minimus sighed. ‘You’ll have to be stopped, you know, if you go on like this,’ he said in a friendly way.

  ‘You are not a sporting man, I gather,’ said the Colonel through gritted teeth.

  ‘More a naturalist,’ said Minimus. ‘By the way,’ he turned to face Albion, ‘now that we’re getting on so much better, do you mind if I say something about saving the Forest?’