Ferney

by James Long

  ‘Don’t you like it at all?’

  ‘Oh, I quite like it, I suppose. I’d like to come in winter, though, not now with all these people getting in the way.’ She thought suddenly of Ferney’s scale of time and recognized her true feelings. ‘It’s not that old really though, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s seventeen-something.’

  ‘Three lifetimes, that’s all. Modern really.’

  He looked at her without understanding.

  ‘It’s a funny thought, isn’t it, that barring natural disasters, they’ll never let it fall down now, will they?’ she said.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Not for a hundred years? Five hundred years? Five thousand years?’

  ‘Well, that’s a pretty long time.’

  ‘No, but do you see what I mean? Unless something happens to the world, that place and all the other historic buildings are going to be there for ever effectively.’

  ‘What would you prefer, that we knock them down?’ said Mike with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘Don’t be difficult. Now they’re starting to list 1960s office blocks as historic. If we go on doing that sort of thing and making sure all the old buildings stay up too, there’ll come a time when the whole surface of Britain is covered with listed buildings.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll manage to destroy enough of them somehow,’ said Mike. ‘What is this, a complaint?’

  They drove slowly out of the village through a fantasy rustic arch of jagged rock.

  ‘They could make a start on that,’ said Gally and he laughed.

  ‘I like it,’ he said defiantly. ‘Stourhead, I mean, not just the arch. It’s one of the architectural wonders of the southwest.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ she said vaguely, but her spirits began to lift as she looked ahead at the long wooded spine of Pen Ridge, looking forward to this fresh approach to their new home. They were out of the tourist danger zone now, leaving the last of the Stourhead lakes behind as the narrow road took them through the stone cottages of Gasper on a long detour north, climbing up the side of the ridge. The cedars above them supported their high green copy of the hill’s contour on trunks that offered inviting summer shade, broken here and there by logging tracks and the timber corpse piles awaiting collection. Gally looked at the logs as they passed, at the sawcut cross-section of their ringed history, and momentarily envied them the certainty of that physical record.

  At the top, in a dip in the long spine of the ridge, the road hairpinned sharp left to follow the summit southward. Instead of following it round, Mike turned into a track entrance, braked abruptly and switched off.

  ‘Do you fancy a quick walk?’ he said. ‘If you think Stourhead’s too modern, there’s something just up here you’ll like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I remember the map, Kenny Wilkins’ Castle is only a hundred yards up here. Let’s have a look.’

  An unexpected reluctance took Gally by surprise. ‘Do we have to go now?’ she said. ‘I want to get back.’

  ‘That’s not like you. There’s lots of time.’

  There was, but that wasn’t the point. She didn’t like it, but she got out anyway. They walked on warm tarmac up the slight rise through the woods towards Penselwood. There was birdsong in the darting green sunshade of the high canopy and occasional scuffling in the dry disorder of woodland sediment covering the toes of the trees. Even under that disguise, there was no mistaking it. As they reached the top and the road leapt suddenly ahead, a slot through the wood that marked the long spine of the ridge, an ancient barrier loomed out of the undergrowth to each side, a massive, domed earth rampart fronted by a ditch that was still deep despite the efforts of the ages to fill it in.

  Mike moved into friendly lecture mode. ‘It’s an Iron Age hill fort,’ he said. ‘Seven acres of it, apparently. Two hundred yards across. I looked it up in the books. There’s a tradition that the Roman general Vespasian captured it with the Second Legion on his march west.’

  That stirred nothing in her. The Romans had always seemed a sterile subject. He picked his way through the undergrowth, climbing up on the rampart. ‘It’s in incredibly good nick, really,’ he said, looking round.

  They picked their way along the right-hand parapet of the rampart which dominated the steep slope down the western side of the ridge. To their left inside the camp, between them and the road, were scrubby beech trees and brambles. To the right, down the sharply angled side of the ridge, soaring conifers allowed glimpses of a vast landscape opening out below with no clear sight of the bottom.

  ‘These trees wouldn’t have been here then,’ Mike said. ‘It wouldn’t have been any use without a proper view.’

  ‘So would they have felled them?’

  ‘The climate was different. They wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. I’m sure it was a bare hill.’

  They walked on round until they came to the far gateway where the road passed through, bisecting the long oval. This side of the camp was thick with cedars and the rampart was higher still, but the trees blotted out almost all the view to the east.

  ‘Cenwalch now, your funny friend’s Kenny Wilkins, he was an interesting character.’

  Gally was not at all sure she wanted to hear about Cenwalch, not here, but the price of stopping him telling her, of breaking the main spell which had always brought them together, seemed too high.

  ‘Old Bede, who had a pretty good idea about most things, said Cenwalch was a truly second-rate commander, that he had a habit of messing up things and losing large chunks of his kingdom to his enemies. That’s probably why he started looking for more land to the south-west.’

  This was fine, she thought, whatever the disquiet was that she felt, she seemed to be holding it at bay.

  ‘Anyway he won a battle at Bradford-on-Avon in 652 and after that he controlled the land all down the side of Selwood Forest, so he’d probably been sitting down there looking up at the Britons holding the ridge on and off for six years. Of course this was six hundred years after Vespasian.’

  ‘The trees would have grown by then, would they?’ she asked, wondering why it mattered.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Defending a fortress in a wood would have been a quick route to suicide.’

  The memory of skylight stampeded through the trees so their trunks became glass in her mind and the horizon to the east chopped across them. A door in her mind, carelessly left unguarded, was unlocked. For a wild, reeling, disorientating moment, she looked out across an ancient valley to the outline of the other great fort on the chalk heights of Whitesheet Hill. The ditch below her feet was clear, the rampart refreshed into sharp profiled earth, stone and timber and she was frightened, frightened for her life. Mike spoke again and she staggered physically off balance as the trees thickened abruptly around her in rescue. There was no pleasure here.

  ‘Let’s walk on,’ he said. ‘They think the fort always straddled the road like this.’

  She wanted to go back to the car and drive away, but if they had to walk, the road at least was a modern-day bitumen anchor to her imagination.

  She thought Mike hadn’t noticed anything, but she was wrong.

  ‘What upset you?’ he said when they’d gone a short way, leaving the fort behind them, a vague threat she would have to face again when they went back for the car.

  ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t like it there.’

  ‘I thought you liked everything about Penselwood?’

  She sighed, shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s just the trees or the shade or something.’

  ‘It’s not old Ferney, is it? I have a feeling he’s getting at you in some way. Has he put some idea in your head?’

  She was walking along keeping her eyes firmly on the ground, unwilling to take another risk with the shifting trees, and she answered more vehemently than she intended. ‘No, he hasn’t. He’s not like that at all. Anyway you said you’d be nice to him. You know he’s ill. For all we know, he might nev
er come out of hospital.’

  ‘He’s a tough old bugger, I should think. I’ll bet you a fiver he’s up and about inside a week.’

  ‘I’m not taking any bets on his health,’ she said firm!y.

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that would have been the fastest five pounds I ever made.’

  She looked up and saw an old man in a tweed jacket walking slowly along the road towards them from the direction of the village and she knew straightaway that it was indeed Ferney.

  She was amazed to see him up and walking and it filled her with a sudden, ecstatic pleasure, but she knew without looking that Mike was studying her for a reaction and that she had roughly a hundred yards to decide how to greet Ferney and how to handle the encounter between him and Mike in a way that would start them off in the new direction Mike had promised.

  ‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘He looks fine.’

  ‘He certainly does.’

  ‘Will you . . . will you be friendly, Mike?’

  ‘If he’s friendly to me.’

  The distance was down to fifty yards and Ferney lifted a hand in greeting to them. They weren’t completely alone. From behind them she heard horse’s hooves and, looking round, saw a middle-aged woman riding a chestnut mare trot out of a track into the woods and turn on to the road in their direction. Once on the road the horse stopped, the woman swung herself out of the saddle holding the reins and picked up one of its forelegs to examine the hoof. As she did so, there was a shrill, rising blast of noise and an open-top Ford Escort in loud metallic blue with a louder exhaust and music blaring came rocketing down from the village as if the country lane was a race-track. The young driver braked hard when he saw the horse, but it was too late. As the car swerved past it to disappear round the bend through the old camp, the animal reared up, overcome with terror, jerked its reins from the woman’s hand and, ears flattened back and eyes rolling, bolted down the road towards them.

  Gally, who would previously have turned tail, instead stepped into its path and held out her arms to stop it, but Mike caught her hand and hauled her roughly on to the verge as it tore past. She shook herself free and turned to run after it, taking in the sight of the old man standing stock-still in its way.

  Ferney didn’t even try to get clear. He was calling out to the horse as it careered, terrified, towards him and Gally, running behind it with Mike coming along in her wake, was sure he would be knocked flat by it. The horse, however, lifted its ears when it was twenty yards from him, slowed to a brief trot, then to a walk and circled round him with its ears pricked up and its head on one side. Gally reached him with Mike and the woman rider not far behind. Ferney nodded at her, but motioned the other two back with a sweep of his arm. ‘Whor,’ he was saying softly, ‘whoot, whoot,’ then as the horse, panting, put its head nearer, ‘hutta, hutta, hutta.’ He stroked the horse’s flank. Gally found herself murmuring unfamiliar sounds: ‘Prut, prut, prut.’ They went on making the noises together until the horse gave a great shuddering exhalation and seemed to relax. They continued stroking it for a minute or two, then Ferney handed the reins to the rider, who thanked him effusively.

  As the horse walked off they turned their attention to the old man.

  ‘That was brave,’ said Mike.

  ‘You had me really worried,’ said Gally sternly. ‘It could have knocked you flying.’

  ‘I know how to stop a horse,’ said the old man defiantly. ‘I’ve stopped enough in my time. You did pretty well.’ He lurched slightly and leaned heavily on his stick.

  ‘You’ve overdone it, haven’t you? When did they let you out of hospital?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘This morning? And you’re dashing round the countryside stopping runaway horses? Come on, we’ll take you home.’

  ‘You stay here,’ Mike suggested, ‘and I’ll go back and get the car.’

  He jogged off back towards the camp.

  ‘What was wrong with you?’ asked Gally quietly.

  ‘Just fading a bit.’

  ‘Are you better now?’

  ‘There’s better and better. I’ll go on fading, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. You get used to it, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want you to fade,’ she said simply.

  He sighed. ‘Ah . . . well, there’s ways, you know.’ He nodded in the general direction of her tummy. ‘He’s waxing, I’m waning, that’s all.’

  That seemed so sad that she had to divert down a different turning. ‘Those sounds,’ she said. ‘The sounds you were making to the horse.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I knew them.’

  ‘You did. You had them right yourself.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘Just old horse sounds. The sort of words horses understand. From way back.’

  ‘How far back?’ she said. ‘From Kenny Wilkins’ time?’

  He chuckled but swayed again, so that she found herself watching carefully in case he needed catching. ‘You walked through the camp, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t like it much.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘It was all right, then the trees sort of . . . went away.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you about that. Not now. When we’ve got time.’

  ‘The horse words. You didn’t say.’

  ‘They’re old, right enough. They were old words then, but I couldn’t say about things that happened before that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He found that genuinely amusing. ‘Well I wasn’t there, was I? Anyway, seems you’re not scared of horses any more. He’ll be a bit surprised, your Mike.’

  ‘I don’t think he ever knew I didn’t like them. You don’t get many horses in London.’

  Their car came into sight soon and they put Ferney in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Shall we take you home?’

  ‘Come back and have a cup of tea,’ he said, ‘both of you.’

  It was only three minutes to Ferney’s bungalow and he let Gally make the tea. Mike did what he always did in a strange house and made for the bookshelves, bridging the gap between himself and the stranger by tossing titles across the divide. It was no charade. Ferney’s shelves were packed with history and Mike was startled by the depth of what he found.

  ‘You’ve got the Gimpel book.’

  ‘I got two of them. Which one are you looking at?’

  ‘The Medieval Machine.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Interesting as far as it goes.’

  ‘Whitelock, Thomson, Draper, Underdown,’ Mike breathed a litany of sources.

  ‘They scratch the surface.’

  Mike was nettled. ‘They do a bit more than that, surely?’

  Ferney pointed at the coffee table where that morning’s Independent was neatly folded. ‘You look at that. That’s history. It may be only what happened yesterday, but it’s history. You find me anyone who was involved with any of those stories in there and they’d all have a bone to pick with it somewhere. They’d all have seen it a different way.’

  ‘Fair enough, but that’s journalists for you.’

  ‘So what’s a historian then, if he isn’t a journalist who doesn’t have to talk to anybody?’

  Gally came in with the tea. ‘You know Mike’s a historian, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Do you write books?’ said Ferney. His tone was mild, but in the context of what he’d already said, Mike sounded defensive when he replied.

  ‘I’m a lecturer mostly, but I have been asked to write a book.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s about how agriculture changed in the ninth and tenth century.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Well you see, I think you can trace the improvements in plough design through to the fact that they started growing various sorts of beans and that improved the diet enormously. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that you got this sudden outburst of creativity. It was the die
tary effect of the legumes, the amino acids combined with the grains, you see. It really made people able to get up and go.’

  ‘They were full of beans, you mean.’ Ferney said it drily, but there was a twinkle in his eye. Mike looked startled for a moment, then laughed.

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘It’s what it means, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what you should call it,’ Gally put in, passing the cups around.

  ‘Not very academic,’ said Mike.

  ‘All the better.’

  Ferney was shaking his head. ‘That might be a bit of it,’ he said, ‘but there’s another point that you might just be missing, you know.’

  Mike paused with his cup raised almost to his lips and peered at Ferney over the top. His tone of voice was indulgent. ‘Come again?’

  ‘It was horses, really.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Changed everything, did horses. You go back to those days and all there were to pull your ploughs were oxen.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ferney as though it should be obvious. ‘Have you ever tried to get oxen to go far?’

  ‘No, actually.’

  ‘They take a long time over it. They might be strong, but they’re slow, are oxen. So back in those days, if you had fields to plough you had to live right there on top of them, otherwise it would take you all day just to get the oxen to the field.’

  Mike thought about it, flashed a conspiratorial wink at Gally that she hoped Ferney hadn’t seen and said, ‘Right,’ with the slow down and up emphasis of obvious doubt in it.

  Ferney’s tone grew sharper and Gally tightened her hands into anxious fists.

  ‘It meant everyone lived apart in the country, see? In scattered little hamlets because they had no choice, not until oats came along.’

  ‘Oats?’

  ‘Couldn’t keep horses over the winter until there were oats, you see. Everyone thought they were just a weed to start with, then they heard that over in other countries they grew them for fodder and it was good for the soil, so they started planting three crops a year not two and after that they had enough oats to feed the horses through the winter.’