The Forest (99 page)

‘I asked you here,’ Mrs Albion said, ‘to talk about Beatrice.’ She took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I want you to do.’

Bognor Grockleton was in a cheerful mood. As he passed his claw-like hand over his pale, clean-shaven face to wipe off the beads of perspiration, he was smiling contentedly.

To appreciate Bognor Grockleton – he was named after the seaside resort where his parents liked to go on holiday – it was necessary to understand that he meant well. Perhaps there was something of the missionary in him, or perhaps it was the genetic legacy of his grandmother who, after leaving Lymington, had lived to a formidable old age in Bath; but whatever it was that drove Bognor Grockleton relentlessly forward, he always acted in the belief that the world was there to be improved. Few people, in the Victorian age, would have disagreed with him.

He had been trying to improve the Forest ever since he came there. It was natural that he should soon have found an ally in the Deputy Surveyor. The two men in fact were very different. To Cumberbatch the Forest was a material resource like a coal mine or a gravel pit. The Forest folk were a nuisance. If he could have chained them like galley slaves or culled them like the deer, he probably would have. To Grockleton, the Forest folk needed to be helped. Many of them lived in miserable little cottages with only an acre or two. It was primitive. Even the best sort, like the Prides of Oakley, only made their modest living because they had the run of the Forest, and that was a terrible waste of resources. Once the Forest was economically run though, there would be work for many of them in timber production. A few of the larger farms round the Forest edge would doubtless survive. The factories and enterprises growing up in Southampton and the local market towns like Fordingbridge and Ringwood should absorb the rest. The new productive world was going to be so much better. Once the Forest people saw this, they would understand.

The visit to the House of Lords in London had been interesting, but though the Select Committee had not reported yet, he had little doubt of the outcome. The plantations would continue. They had to. This was progress.

He’d been glad when Cumberbatch had offered him young George Pride as a guide this afternoon. If old Pride represented the past, his son George was the future. The job he’d taken was a good one. The keepers and under-keepers were no longer needed now the deer had gone, but there were several positions, known as woodsmen, looking after the plantations, which brought a cottage with them. Young George might be working for Cumberbatch, but he lived on the Forest and he was well paid.

‘He’ll be very anxious to please you,’ Cumberbatch had remarked with a grim smile. On his return from London the Deputy Surveyor had summoned George to his office and informed him bluntly: ‘You may not be able to control your father, but I wasn’t pleased to see him at the Committee. I’ll be watching you,’ he told him. ‘One false move, any hint of disloyalty, and you’re out.’

So when Grockleton approached the meeting place, he found the young man practically standing to attention. This alone would have made him well disposed towards George; but even without this reception he would probably have been in a sunny mood.

Because they were meeting at Grockleton’s Inclosure.

It was a fine thing to have a building or a street bear your name. But when this inclosure had been made a few years ago and Cumberbatch had announced it would be named after him, Grockleton had realized with a sense of wonder that this was something more: a whole wood, a feature on maps for generations to come. Grockleton’s Inclosure: it was his greatest pride and joy.

It lay in the central area of the Forest, west of Lyndhurst. It covered over three hundred acres. But best of all, as far as Grockleton was concerned, was the timber with which it was planted. For Grockleton’s Inclosure was nearly all Scots pine.

They had been planting fir trees in the Forest for half a century. Usually they were used as a nurse crop to protect young oak or beech from the wind. Though great firs would sometimes be grown as masts for ships, it was oak and beech that the Navy really needed. Or used to need. For wooden ships were giving place to ships of iron. Buckler’s Hard made ships no more; its pleasant building yards were all grassed over, its cottages let to artisans and labourers.

Since 1851 the new plantations had contained a different mix of trees. Slow-growing, broadleaved oak and beech, whose wood was hard, had given way to softwood trees, quick-growing cash crops of Scots pine and other conifers. Though recent, this process had already begun a subtle change in the character of the Forest. The ancient, gentle pattern of oak grove and heath was becoming interrupted by the straight-edged military lines of the fir plantations, dark green all winter. Further, the pines would spread, growing here and there on the open heath, or even sending up stunted seedlings on the acidic bogs.

What pleased Grockleton most of all about his plantation, however, was its wondrous efficiency. ‘See how close-planted they are, Pride,’ he remarked with satisfaction. The trees were so closely set that you would be constantly brushed by their needles if you tried to walk between them. ‘All the goodness of the ground goes into them. There is no waste.’ The greensward and undergrowth between the spreading oaks had always seemed wasteful to Grockleton. Beech plantations were better: the ground under the beech woods was mostly moss. But under the fir trees there was neither light nor space. Nothing grew, not even grass and moss. It was lifeless. ‘That is the utility of the pine plantation, Pride,’ he explained to the woodward. ‘A great improvement.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

They went along the path through the plantation and admired its wonderful uniformity. When the Commissioner was finally satisfied, he announced that he wished to make a tour of the northern part of the Forest. So, walking their horses across the open heath, they made their way northwards.

George Pride was a pleasant-looking young man. His fresh, clean-shaven face was framed by a soft fringe of beard that ran down the line of his jawbone and under his chin. He seemed willing and eager. This was a good opportunity to educate him and Grockleton did not fail to make use of it.

‘You’ll find me very straightforward, Pride,’ he explained. ‘And I like people who are straightforward with me.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

‘The Office of Woods,’ said Grockleton, as they descended from a tract of high ground towards the stream known as Dockens Water, ‘is making great improvements in the Forest.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

‘I’m glad you agree,’ remarked Grockleton. So many did not. The state of the Forest roads was a typical example. When the old turnpike roads had started falling into disrepair around the middle of the century, it was usually the local parish councils, in most parts of England, who had taken over responsibility for repairing them. But would the New Forest villages cooperate? Not at all. And when people like himself and the gentlemen from the Office of Woods had protested, what had the Forest people replied? ‘If the Office of Woods wants roads, let the Office of Woods pay for them. We don’t need them.’ What could you do with such people?

‘We must all move with the times, Pride.’

They forded the stream. Ahead of them rose a long heathery slope at the crest of which lay the stretch of open heath known as Fritham Plain. Here and there Grockleton could see cattle grazing, and as they came out on to the plain, he counted a dozen ponies. He sighed. The commoners and their stock: men like George’s father were so wedded to these useless animals. The cows he could understand, but the sturdy little ponies hardly seemed worth keeping. About the time of the Deer Removal Act the queen’s husband, Prince Albert, had lent an Arabian stallion for a few seasons to breed with the local mares. One could sometimes see a trace of Arabian in some of the ponies now, but the experiment hadn’t yielded much. His friend Cumberbatch, for some reason, had interested himself in the ponies and introduced some fresh mares from other places. But the stocky creatures still looked ugly to Grockleton.

‘We mustn’t blame men like your father for wanting to keep their stock on the Forest you know, Pride,’ he said kindly. ‘It’s a way of life that has to go, but we must be patient.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

‘There were some new plantations planned up here, I believe,’ Grockleton continued. ‘I want you to show me where.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said George. ‘This way.’

There was no question, Minimus Furzey considered: the northern Forest was another world. There were individual vantage points, of course, in the wide tracts below Lyndhurst, from which you might enjoy some fine views. But as you made your way northwards up the rising ground above Lyndhurst and went past Minstead and climbed the high slope up to Castle Malwood, you realized that you had come out on to a broad ridge that swept westward right across to Ringwood. Below the ridge, in descending shelves, the southern Forest spread out; but above, in a huge north-western triangle, a high, heather-clad plateau extended for a dozen miles all the way past Fordingbridge and up to Hale.

This was the table-land that Minimus Furzey loved. Up here in its airy silences, under the open sky, a huge panorama opened out beyond the plateau’s edge: eastward to the downs of Wessex, westward to the blue hills of Dorset, northward to the chalk ridges of Sarum rolling away into the distance like a sea. It was a high, bare, brown and purple place, a land in the sky, a world apart.

This afternoon, as he often did, Minimus had chosen a pleasant spot up on the high ground to sit and sketch. He and Beatrice had walked up from their cottage together, and she had continued across the high heath while he sat down to work.

It was delightfully warm. At his feet, Minimus noticed the bright emerald backs of the tiny Forest insects known as tiger beetles. Across the heather and gorse, he could hear a Dartford warbler, the click of a stonechat and the faint sounds of one or two other heathland birds. He had not remained alone for long, however.

The lone gypsy caravan that had come slowly westward along the track was not an unusual sight. No one was sure when the gypsies had first appeared in the Forest. Some said it was back at the time of the Spanish Armada, some said later. But whenever it was, these strange eastern people who wandered all over Europe made a colourful addition to the Forest scene. With their brightly painted caravans and strings of horses they would pass across near Fordingbridge, then follow the ancient prehistoric tracks along the ridges below Sarum towards the horse fairs in the West Country.

Minimus would often talk to passing gypsies. Once he had gone off with them for several days, leaving Beatrice only a note to say where he was going. He had returned with an armful of sketches and a rich vocabulary of gypsy words so that, nowadays when he talked to them, only they and he knew what was being said.

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.’