The Forest (86 page)

Given his superstitious nature and the vaguely mysterious reputation that Burley had always possessed, Caleb Furzey might have hesitated to drive past Burley on a night when the moon was full, but today, as he had proudly told his neighbours some time before, was a special occasion. It was the fiftieth birthday of one of his Ringwood cousins. ‘And if I ain’t there,’ he had told a surprised neighbour, ‘they say it won’t be a proper party at all.’

So it was with great expectations of family warmth and cheerful drinking that he was crossing the Forest now. He was up on Wilverley Plain when he saw the Albions’ carriage returning and, as they passed, he saluted the occupants respectfully enough.

The red sun was already sinking over Beaulieu Heath that evening when Wyndham Martell began to ride across it. He had just spent an interesting two hours with Mr Drummond of Cadland, but now it was time to return. Indeed, he was going to be somewhat late for Mrs Grockleton’s ball.

Hardly anyone was going to be there, as far as he could gather. As Martell gazed across the open Forest before him he saw it, very naturally, through the eyes of the gentry. And to the gentry, although the ordinary Forest folk did not realize it, the whole Forest was just a kind of lake. There were the Mill and Drummond families in the east, various others along the coast; in the centre the Morants and the Albions; there were landed families around the north of the Forest and the estates down the Avon valley, like Bisterne, on its eastern border. But as far as their social world was concerned, the forest villages and hamlets, and even the busy town of Lymington, scarcely existed. ‘There’s no one there,’ they would say, without the least sense of incongruity. Thus Mrs Grockleton’s desire to tempt the members of this class into her social orbit was not mere snobbery, but a more primeval instinct: she wanted, quite simply, to exist.

Her hopes that the Burrards would come were going to be disappointed. When she had heard he was calling upon Mr Drummond of Cadland, she had sent an urgent message through Louisa begging him to bring that gentleman and his entire family with him if he could – a suggestion Martell had quietly ignored. But the Tottons were going, and he had promised to accompany them. And besides, Fanny Albion was going to be there.

Why hadn’t Wyndham Martell been to see Fanny?

On the face of it his excuses might be reasonable enough. He had come there to get to know Sir Harry Burrard and he wished to place himself at that gentleman’s disposal. Indeed, Sir Harry had kept him quite busy, both in conversations with himself and in meetings with other people of local importance like Mr Drummond. It was surely right to attend to these matters first and it would certainly have been wrong to raise Fanny’s hopes with the prospect of a meeting that might have to be deferred. There was, besides, another problem. It was by no means clear that he would be welcome if he did call at Albion House and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to be thrown out a second time. Seeing Fanny, therefore, was not without complications.

But couldn’t he at least have sent her a message of some kind during all the days he had been there? He could have and he hadn’t.

The truth was – and he knew it perfectly well – he had deliberately kept her waiting.

He liked her, certainly. No, he conceded, he liked her very much. She was kindly and intelligent. She was wellbred. She came from an ancient family and she was a modest heiress. If he were to marry her, it might not be called a brilliant match, but then, as he had overheard a young blood remark jealously in London a week before: ‘With two fine estates, that damned Martell can marry anyone he pleases and still look a hero.’

If he secured one of the Lymington parliamentary seats and married the heiress of the Albion estate he had no doubt that his father and his friends would say he had done well, and he wouldn’t deny that such things were important to him. And if, perhaps, secretly he yearned for something more than such conventional pleasures, he supposed his own political career might provide it.

There was something else he liked about her too. She was modest and she had not attempted to captivate him. Many women in London had tried to do so; it had been flattering at first but soon became a burden. He didn’t mind when some cheeky girl like Louisa Totton set her cap at him, because, whatever her drawbacks, he didn’t think she was sophisticated enough to deceive him much, and she was amusing. But Fanny was an entirely different case. Fanny had a simpler, purer nature, as well as being more intelligent.

And she was waiting for him. If he chose – and he wasn’t sure he did, yet – she was waiting to be his. He did not fear competition. He liked to play and win. But in the matter of marriage, if there were competitors, there was always the chance that the woman’s heart had been divided. And Mr Wyndham Martell wanted a heart that belonged to him and him alone – first to last.

He did not care for games, therefore, in matters of the heart. Unless, of course, it was he who was playing them. Every man knew that if a woman is waiting for you it is no bad thing to make her wait a little longer.

She would be there tonight at Mrs Grockleton’s ball, waiting.

Some people might have said there were too many plants. But the infallible maxim had been applied: if there is any doubt about the appointments of a room or the quality of the guests, then fill the place with flowers. And, so far as the September season allowed, this was what Mrs Grockleton had done. Every imperfection was masked by a late rose or a shrub. The entrance to the Lymington Assembly Rooms this evening might have been mistaken for a plant house.

‘Mr Grockleton,’ she declared as, accompanied by her husband and her children, she surveyed the verdant scene, ‘I am quite in a flutter.’ And if a stout lady in a ball gown can be said to be fluttering, she was. ‘We have refreshments, dancing, cards. I’m sure I’ve done my best. And the guests are …’ She trailed off.

The guests were what in social terms might be described as mixed. Their core, naturally, was provided by the young ladies of her academy. The dance, officially, was for them. They gave Mrs Grockleton her cover. They, their parents and their brothers were the participants, she the presiding headmistress. Were the Burrards to come and not to care for the company of some of the parents there, it would be churlish of them indeed to be ungracious to the local school’s young ladies or to insult the headmistress. If she could not quite resist trying to make small social sorties beyond this defensible position, she could at least fall back upon it.

A huge asset were the French officers. Glamorous, undeniably aristocratic and God knows – although there was no need to say it – only too glad to go anywhere that offered dancing and free food, the Frenchmen would dance with the tradesmen’s daughters and speak to Mr Martell as equals. She would happily have entertained a hundred regiments upon such terms. ‘It will really seem’, she said to her husband, ‘as if Versailles has come to Lymington tonight.’

But even so, unless a romance should develop between a French aristocrat and one of the girls, the Frenchmen ultimately were pawns in the grand game of connections she meant to play.

Could the town’s fashionable doctor be introduced to Mr Martell? Surely, yes. Some of the other girls’ merchant parents? Probably not. The encounter she dreamed of was that of the blessed discovery. If, say, the Burrards were to come and meet some other major family, and note that she was already their friend – why, then, they would accept her too. Thus, if Mr Martell brought Mr Drummond, Mr Drummond would find that she knew the Albions. And, of course, if she could then have got herself into Cadland and met the Burrards there … ‘These are connections, Mr Grockleton,’ she would explain. ‘It is all a question of making connections.’ Perhaps a quarter of Mrs Grockleton’s huge mental energy was expended in dreaming about discoveries and connections. ‘Whoever comes,’ she said – by which of course she meant only people like the Drummonds or the Burrards – ‘they will find the Tottons and ourselves and the Albions and Mr Martell all friends together. Just so long as it all goes well.’

‘It will, my dear,’ said her husband. The main room really looked very well. The card tables were all set up in a side room. The food, which Mr Seagull of the Angel had provided, the wine and brandy, which Mr Seagull had also sold the Customs officer at full price, without a twitch of his face – all were in place. In half an hour, when the guests began to arrive, he was sure they could not fail to be delighted. ‘And as soon as the music starts,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and the dancing begins …’

Mrs Grockleton nodded. Then Mrs Grockleton stopped. And then Mrs Grockleton let out a cry that was almost a shriek: ‘Oh, Mr Grockleton, Mr Grockleton, whatever shall we do?’

‘What is the matter, my dear?’ he cried in alarm.

‘Everything is the matter. Oh, Mr Grockleton, I have forgot the band!’

‘The band?’

‘The orchestra. The musicians. I forgot to engage them. We have none. Oh, Mr Grockleton, how are we to dance without any music?’

Mr Grockleton had to confess he did not know. His wife stared wildly round at her children, as if she could transform them, like a magician, into so many fiddlers. But as no such miracle occurred, she turned back to her husband. ‘A dance without music! What is to become of us?’ Then a worse thought: ‘What if the Burrards should come? Quick, Mr Grockleton,’ she cried, ‘run to the theatre and see if the musicians are there.’

‘But if there is a play …’

‘A play is only words. They must come here.’

‘There is no play tonight, Mama,’ cried one of the children.

‘Find the musicians, then. Hurry. A piano. Mr Grockleton. Bring me a piano. Mr Gilpin shall play. I know he can.’

‘Mr Gilpin may not wish …’

‘Of course he must play. He must.’ And crying out frantic orders, Mrs Grockleton soon had her husband, children, servants, even Isaac Seagull rushing about in every possible direction. Twenty minutes later there was a piano in the room, albeit somewhat out of tune. Moments after that a fiddler with his violin appeared. He had not shaved that day and he might, perhaps, have had a drop or two to drink, but he said he was ready and gave directions as to where a colleague might be found; and as the first of her pupils appeared with her father the coal merchant, Mrs Grockleton was relieved, if disconcerted, to hear her solitary violinist start to play a hornpipe from behind a potted plant.

The full moon was already rising when the carriage left Albion House.

Mrs Grockleton’s desire to hold her ball on the night of the full moon was entirely natural. In country areas, if people were to return several miles home late at night, they always preferred to do so when the moon was as bright as possible and balls were arranged accordingly, at seasons when there was the best chance of the sky being clear. Although the forest roads had been free of criminals since the Ambrose Hole affair, people still preferred to be able to see their way home.

Tonight, however, Fanny did not expect that they would be returning late. In the first place she had her own reasons for anticipating a less than enjoyable evening. But secondly there had been another development, which had entirely taken them by surprise.

Mr Albion had decided he was coming too.

They had found him already fully dressed when they arrived home that afternoon. He had positively insisted he would go. Whether old Francis had suddenly acquired a new lease of life or whether he was just cross at being left alone for two days it was hard to be sure; but since he refused all attempts to dissuade him and seemed likely to become angry, there was nothing to do but take him. Mrs Pride was accompanying them in case of any difficulty.

Aunt Adelaide was tired, but in a good humour. Although she did not say much to her brother – except to pass on Mr West’s kind remembrances and to state that the new tenant of Hale was entirely a gentleman – the old lady had already made her views clear to Fanny. ‘He is very suitable,’ she had stated. ‘Do you not think so?’ And when Fanny had agreed that he seemed a sensible man: ‘Do you like him, child?’

‘Truly, Aunt, I do not know,’ she had replied. ‘I have only just met him.’ Her aunt was satisfied to leave it at that and question her no further. Fanny could tell by her manner, however, as the old lady sat in the carriage with a shawl wrapped around her, that Aunt Adelaide felt the effort required to go across the Forest had not been wasted and that she had done something important for Fanny’s future.

As for her real feelings, Fanny hardly knew what she felt any more. The silence of Mr Martell, the knowledge – for she had asked Mrs Pride – that even after her departure no word had come from him and the eerie likeness of the picture of Penruddock had been a series of blows. She was not sure she wanted her poor aunt to catch sight of Martell, as Adelaide’s eyes, old although they were, could not fail to notice this awful likeness; and she would prefer to spare her another shock.

She had quite decided that she hoped he would not be there as they clattered up the High Street towards the Assembly Rooms. Minutes later, as they made their way slowly through the plants into the main hall, it seemed to Fanny that she felt nothing at all.

The Burrards had not come. But all the Tottons were there, and the count and his wife, and all the French officers. The bevy of young ladies from Mrs Grockleton’s academy looked very charming; and if, perhaps, one or two of their parents wore coats of a somewhat rustic cut or more powder than was desirable, or laughed a little too loudly, or tittered too bashfully, you would have been a black-hearted villain to take any notice. Mr Gilpin was also there, looking rather cross. Of Mr Martell she saw no sign.

Her father and Aunt Adelaide both desired to sit down, and Fanny had to acknowledge that here Mr Grockleton behaved admirably, putting chairs for them in a corner, bringing suitable people like the doctor and his wife to talk to them and looking after them in every way, so that she was free to go and talk to her friends. Having greeted her cousins, she thought it her duty, given her social position, to make the rounds of the room; so for some time she was too busy making herself pleasant to the various Lymington families and the French contingent to notice anything much, but she did glance round once or twice and see that Mr Martell had not yet arrived. She was rather astonished, however, when Mrs Grockleton had clapped her hands and her husband gravely announced the dancing, to observe Mr Gilpin, looking none too pleased, sit down at the piano and, accompanied by two men with violins, begin to play.