The Forest (90 page)

Then, in the middle of the night upon the Forest shore, Grockleton turned to where the darkness covered the deep and let out a great howl.

Isaac Seagull watched the long cavalcade make its way up the Smugglers’ Road. There was a profusion of tracks, defiles and gullies to mystify any Customs riders or dragoons trying to find the Free Traders caravans as they wound their way northwards; but there were no riders out looking for smugglers tonight. The Customs contingent was safely away in the eastern forest where he had so skilfully diverted them.

The run into Chewton Bunny that night had been the finest moment of his long career: a prodigious cargo. He was sorry about having to force Puckle to act as decoy. The poor fellow’s agony had been pitiable.

‘You mean I have to leave the Forest?’

‘Yes.’

‘When can I come back?’

‘When I tell you.’

The tale they made up about their quarrel and a little play-acting in the street had taken in the Customs officer completely. Puckle was already safely at sea by now. He’d gone out in one of the luggers. He’d be well paid. Handsomely. Not that the money meant much to him when he was being exiled like this. But once Seagull had known that Grockleton meant to use the French garrison, he’d needed to do something drastic.

When Mr Samuel Grockleton walked down Lymington High Street that afternoon everyone greeted him very politely. They were all there in their usual places, except Isaac Seagull who seemed to be away.

In a strange way the people of Lymington were getting to like Mr Grockleton. He took his humiliations like a man. As he walked down the street towards the Customs house by the quay, he acknowledged each greeting and, if he didn’t exactly smile, you could hardly blame him for that.

Near the bottom of the street he saw the count, who came up and, giving him a melancholy smile, touched his arm with an affection that was real. ‘Next time,
mon ami
, perhaps we shall have better luck.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I’m always at your service.’

Grockleton nodded and passed on. He had already requested a warrant to be made out for Puckle’s arrest. That, together with a full description, would be sent to every magistrate in the country. It might take time, but sooner or later Puckle was going to pay for this. Meanwhile, if he ever got the chance, he’d use those French troops to shoot every damned smuggler in the Forest.

Only one aspect of the business had not occurred to him: that as long as he proposed to use French troops, the lander’s information would always be better than his.

For the companion the count had brought to his rendezvous at the crinkle-crankle wall that night in spring was Mr Isaac Seagull.

The count felt a genuine affection for Mr Grockleton and his preposterous wife. But he wasn’t stupid.

Francis Albion knew, sometimes, that he was behaving badly and he also, occasionally, felt a twinge of guilt. But when a person comes close to the end of his life it is not unusual for him to feel it only fair that his selfishness should be indulged a little longer. So, if he felt any guilt, he was able to suppress it.

By mid-December, although she did not go out much, Fanny had met the ubiquitous Mr West upon three more occasions. She also seemed distracted and sad. Francis wondered if she were in love with him. If Fanny must marry, he supposed the West fellow was not a bad choice. He could give up the lease of Hale and come to live at Albion House. After all, that way he could learn to run the estate and Fanny would not be taken away. So he brought up the subject with her one winter morning when she had come to sit with him as he rested in his room. ‘Do you have feelings for Mr West, Fanny?’ he mildly enquired.

‘I like him, Father.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and Francis could see that she meant it. ‘Why, Father – did you wish me to marry him?’

‘Oh, no. There is no need.’

‘I know Aunt Adelaide does. And if I were forced to do so, I have no doubt he would be an agreeable husband. But …’ She spread her hands.

‘No, no, my child,’ he said tenderly. ‘You should consult your heart.’ He paused. ‘There is no one else? You seem a little sad.’

‘There is no one. It is only the weather.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’ He gazed at her watchfully. ‘You have your whole life ahead of you, my child, an inheritance. Looks that are very pleasing. I have not the least fear of you remaining unmarried. But’ – he smiled with satisfaction – ‘there is not the least hurry.’

‘You do not wish to see me married, Father?’

Old Francis paused a moment before answering carefully. ‘I do not fear for you, Fanny. I trust your judgement. And I should not like you to marry with the thought only of pleasing me. As for the rest.’ He gave her such a sweet little smile, ‘I like to have you here with me for what, you know, cannot be much longer. I dare say your aunt will outlive me, but if anything should happen to her, you see, I should be quite alone.’ He made a sad face now.

‘You shall never be alone, Father.’

‘You promise me, Fanny, that you won’t go away and leave me all alone?’

‘Never, Father,’ she promised, suddenly moved. ‘I will never leave you.’

Fanny had not been in love before and so she did not know about the pain. There was, besides, this further problem: she had no idea she was in love at all.

If Mr Martell came into her mind, as he often did, it was only as a figure of fear and repulsion. If she suddenly fancied she saw his dark image through a window or, hearing a horse’s hoofs, turned, half expecting it would be him, or listened carefully whenever her cousin Louisa spoke of her visits to the Burrards’, in case she spoke of him, these were only examples, she told herself, of a sort of morbid interest, just as one might think of some threatening, ghostly figure from a Gothic novel. To think that she could have been on terms of near intimacy not merely with a Penruddock, but with the very image of her great-grandmother’s murderer – for that was effectively what he was. What could she make of her own feelings, of his smile, of his hints, even of tenderness? She did not know; she told herself she did not care. It was all useless and meaningless anyway. But with these reflections came one other new and insidious thought.

Could it be that her judgement was at fault? Bad blood. She had bad blood, low connections: she was tainted. Her gentility, her claims to consideration were, in a sense, a fraud. At least the peasants like Puckle are honestly what they are, whereas I lack even that excuse for my existence, she thought. Even if Mr Martell were not an impossible Penruddock, he could scarcely wish to touch me if he knew the truth.

Although hardly aware of the process, she found that by Christmas she had less and less energy. Sometimes she would sit all morning in the parlour, apparently reading a book yet in reality not even doing that. If a visitor like Mr Gilpin called, she could rouse herself into a liveliness, so that she seemed her normal self. But the instant he was gone she would relapse into lethargy, staring out of the window. If Gilpin invited her to tea she would agree to go; she would mean to go; but for some reason she did not understand herself she would sit, hardly able to move until Mrs Pride, standing there with her coat, would induce one of those little bursts of energy that would carry her through the visit.

She got through her days. She did all that was required. One might have accepted, if one did not know her, that the weather was making her listless. No one could know, since she could not tell them, that, hour after hour, she felt not sadness as much as a great, grey sense that everything was pointless.

By mid-January Mrs Pride and Mr Gilpin were seriously worried about her.

Fanny Albion was not the only worry upon the vicar’s mind that month. Of no less concern was the fate of another even younger life.

Nathaniel Furzey had been found out.

It was inevitable that sooner or later someone was going to talk. Over the Christmas season one of the boys told his sister; she told her mother. Within a week it was all over the Forest. Some people laughed, others were scandalized. With the exception of the Prides, who were embarrassed, the parents of the other boys involved were up in arms. To induce the boys to slip out of their cottages at night; to run around naked; to play at witchcraft. They came to see the vicar.

So did the master of the school. ‘This cannot go on,’ he told Gilpin frankly. ‘The boy is a bad influence. I do not think I can continue if he is there. Perhaps’, he added with a viciousness he had been storing for months, ‘you have been teaching him too much.’

It was useless to argue with so much opposition and Gilpin was far too wise to do so. Nathaniel was sent home to his parents in Minstead. His career at Gilpin’s school was over.

But what to do next? It was normal enough for the boys at the school, by the time they were eleven or twelve, either to return home to work for their parents or to be apprenticed to some shopkeeper or craftsman. Yet as Gilpin reflected about the boy, he found it hard to see him settling down into a humdrum life with any craftsman. He could foresee some unfortunate shopkeeper being plagued with practical jokes and, no doubt, throwing Nathaniel out long before his apprenticeship was completed. He could imagine the boy wandering about Southampton looking for work, getting picked up by some Navy press gang and thrown on board a ship. The press gangs were out in force these days. And then? The Navy was England’s greatest glory, her oak-walled defence. But what was life like for the press-ganged men who worked the noble ships? ‘Rum, sodomy and the lash,’ an old mariner had once told him. He hoped it wasn’t quite as bad as that. But whatever the truth, it wasn’t what he wanted for Nathaniel Furzey.

Given the boy’s lively intellect and enterprise, Gilpin found he could see two possible destinies. One, that he receive a proper education, perhaps go as a poor scholar to Oxford and, quite possibly, end up in the Church. The other that he would remain in the Forest, Gilpin thought, and develop into a first-rate smuggler, in which case he might as well go and apprentice to Isaac Seagull right away. After all, since somebody was going to run the smuggling it might as well be someone intelligent. The irony of these two choices was not lost upon the vicar; when he discussed the case with Mr Drummond and Sir Harry Burrard, each of those worthy gentlemen seemed to consider both alternatives with interest.

The solution finally came, however, from a slightly unexpected quarter: Mr Totton the merchant. He had been at dinner with the Burrards and heard about the case. ‘With no more children to educate,’ he told Gilpin in his easy way, ‘I’d be glad to help this boy if you recommend it. He sounds a little wild, though.’

‘He’s bored, I think. But you’ll be taking a chance.’

‘That’, said Totton cheerfully, ‘is what merchants do. So tell me, where shall we send him to school?’

‘There’s a first-rate school in Winchester,’ said Gilpin.

And since one good deed almost always begets another, it was only days after young Nathaniel was packed off to Winchester that Mr Gilpin set about doing something definite for Fanny Albion.

‘Bath!’ cried Mrs Grockleton. ‘Bath! And with Fanny Albion as our charge. We should be as good as her parents, Mr Grockleton –
in loco parentis
.’ She pronounced the Latin phrase as though it were a state secret. ‘Think of that. It’s not as if’, she added with a certain want of tact, ‘you had anything to do here.’

‘And are the Albions in agreement with this?’

‘Well, old Mr Albion, you may be sure, is against it as he is against most things. And Fanny is reluctant to leave him. But Mr Gilpin has persuaded her to consider it and Mrs Pride, the housekeeper, who’s really like an old nanny to her, you know, has been helpful too, I understand. And then Mr Gilpin has quite persuaded old Miss Adelaide. So I think the matter is decided.’

‘Although Mr Albion is against it?’

‘Well, my dear, it’s the women who take the decisions in that house, you know.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Grockleton. ‘Then I suppose’, he continued after a pause while he reflected that this was the best chance he was likely to get of quitting Lymington for a while, ‘that we had better go to Bath.’

‘Thank you, Mr Grockleton.’ His wife beamed. ‘I told them you always see things my way.’

They left two weeks later.

‘Oh, Fanny, we are well up the hill,’ cried Mrs Grockleton as they arrived, ‘which is quite the fashionable place to be,’ she added, in case Fanny had not understood. They were to stay six weeks. After such a period it was fashionable to be bored of Bath although there were those who, for reasons of health or inclination, lived there all year round.

The house Mr Grockleton had found was certainly a fine one. Like most of Bath’s houses, it formed part of a handsome Georgian terrace and was built of a creamy stone.

The houses rose up the steep hills in rows and tiers, in elegant terraces and crescents, staring out at the sky and down into the city’s valleys through which the local river snaked between cliffs of stone. If God had asked Mrs Grockleton how she thought He should create heaven, she would probably have told Him: ‘Make it like Bath.’ She might, however, have added, considering her own plans: ‘You can put it by the sea.’

Fanny, although she did not say so, liked the look of it less. The house, while certainly well-proportioned and elegant, had no garden. Few houses in Bath did. Nor, except in one or two parks, which were anyway given over mainly to lawns and flower beds, did there seem to be any trees. But when she gently remarked upon this to Mrs Grockleton, that lady was able to put her right at once. ‘Trees, Fanny? But have you not considered, in a place like Bath, all those leaves would make such a mess. And besides,’ she added with perfect truth, ‘there are woods in profusion on the hills all around where, I dare say, they look very elegant.’

The house was quite big. The Grockletons had brought their children, but there was a nursery for them on the upper floor. The main reception rooms were on the level above the street and had splendid views down over the city. Fanny quite enjoyed sitting and looking over this prospect. She even tried to sketch it. But there was seldom time for sitting long when Mrs Grockleton was in charge.