The Forest (115 page)

‘It was late afternoon and the Albions and some of the Christchurch people had already started leaving when I noticed little Jack had gone.

‘He was already a very daring little boy, with dark hair and bright eyes. Always climbing things. He was always getting into trouble, but you couldn’t help loving him because he was so cheerful and so courageous.

‘I knew he couldn’t be far away. He’d found another boy a bit older than he was – a big draw to him of course – called Alfie Seagull, from Lymington, and the two of them had been playing; so I felt sure if we found one we’d find the other. And it wasn’t long before someone pointed out the little Seagull boy playing over near the railway cutting.

‘“Is Jack with you?” my wife called out, and he nodded and pointed down into the cutting, so we reckoned that was all right.

‘Mrs Furzey came over to talk to us then, who we were always glad to see, and we had a good chat. I did notice out of the corner of my eye that Furzey was walking along the edge of the cutting, some way off. Inspecting it, I dare say. But I didn’t pay him any particular regard.

‘And then I saw him running. I don’t believe – and I’ve seen many things – that I ever saw a man run as fast as he did then. I truly think he was faster than a deer. And I do not know how it was that he knew what was going to happen. At any event, he flew towards the place where Alfie Seagull was standing and just as he got there we heard the sound.

‘You’d think when so much earth and stone is in motion that you’d hear some sort of a rattle or a roar. And maybe in some landslides you do. But from where we were, as that
cutting gave way, all we heard was a kind of hiss.

‘Furzey ran straight over the edge. He never paused, he went straight over. He must have actually run down that landslide as it was moving. And somewhere before the bottom he scooped up our Jack and kept on running with him. I reckon the weight of all that gravel and clay and stones must have reached him and overwhelmed him within a few yards of the base. He must have held Jack high then, and thrown him forward as he was toppled over.

‘By the time we got to the spot a few moments later, Jack was bruised and bleeding, but he was quite clear of the slide, which would certainly otherwise have buried him.

‘We could see Furzey’s hands. But we had to be careful digging him out because we soon realized both his legs had been badly crushed. I think he may have twisted as he threw Jack forward.

‘So your Jack had his life saved, which caused him to be in the newspaper. And Furzey got a lot of mention too, which I must say he deserved.

‘He never really walked properly after that. You couldn’t help being sorry for him. He was in a bath chair mostly, though it was remarkable how he managed to get himself about. Anyway, my wife would go over to his house to bring him one of her cakes now and then. I suppose, in her eyes, he’d redeemed himself, as you might say.’

‘I’ve often thought it strange,’ said George Pride the next day, ‘considering it almost killed him, that the one thing Jack loved more than anything else, was to go down to the railway line.’ Sally noticed that the lines of his face seemed to harden and his old hands tightened on the arms of his chair.

‘There were a lot of small cattle-bridges over the Forest railway lines, so that the stock could move about, and he’d trained his pony not to be afraid when the engines went underneath. He was always down by one of those bridges.

‘Perhaps one incident, though, should really have warned us of what was to come.

‘The Office of Woods never got over the victory of the commoners, and though he was polite about it, Mr Lascelles never lost an opportunity to undermine the verderers if he could; and you may be sure the verderers gave as good as they got. We had to be constantly on the lookout for those people planting trees where they shouldn’t – which they did – or messing up the Forest generally. They call the Office of Woods the Forestry Commission nowadays, don’t they? But it’s exactly the same and I dare say it always will be.

‘I was just saddling up with Jack to go out one morning when Gilbert came riding up. He’d just become an agister by then. “You’d better come with me,” he said. So off we all went, down to a place near the new railway line where there was a lovely lawn where the ponies liked to shade.

‘Normally, when timber is cut, it is taken to a sawmill in some appropriate place. The sawdust and chips make a terrible mess and ruin any grazing. But here, right beside that lawn, was a hideous sawing machine, a steam engine, puffing away, belching smoke, with sawdust blowing all over the lawn. “Who said you could do this?” we demanded. “Mr Lascelles,” the foreman replied.

‘We were furious. But next thing we knew, young Jack was round the other side of the machine, learning how it worked. And the next day he was down there again, we found out. And for weeks after that.

‘The verderers with Mr Lascelles went to law over that machine. The law case dragged on for years, not because the sawing engine was so important but to show who was in charge of the Forest. It was a stalemate in the end. But young Jack didn’t care about that.’

Jack had never talked to her about this. She watched with interest. She had never realized the bitterness that had come between her husband and his father. But she could see it
now, in George’s face. His jaw was clenched.

‘Even if I forbade him,’ he continued, ‘he’d sneak off to play with that infernal thing so that whenever Lascelles saw me he’d just nod and say: “At least your son appreciates us, Pride.”

‘Anything mechanical: it was during these years that they started having military manoeuvres in the Forest. It was just a wasteland for the military of course. We were always clearing up after them. Stock were killed. But did Jack care? Not a bit. He’d be off learning how the guns worked and firing them too when the soldiers would let him.

‘Much as I loved him, I must confess that by the time he was eighteen I had no control over him. So I suppose it was inevitable that in due course we should have parted from one another.

‘We had gone riding one day, he and I, out past Lyndhurst. We’d just come by the old park pale where the deer used to be caught, when all of a sudden, along the lane from Beaulieu, the most extraordinary vehicle came towards us. It was a sort of little metal cart; it made the most horrible rattling noise, and smoke came out behind. I had read about the motor car, of course, and seen a picture, but this was the first time we’d actually seen one in the Forest. And a very unpleasant experience it was too.

‘It was the Honourable John Montagu, Lord Montagu’s son, who was driving this contraption, and I was very sorry to see that his father allowed him to do it. But Jack, needless to say, thought it was wonderful.

‘“That’s the future, Dad. That’s the future,” he cried.

‘And it was this talk of the future, on our way home that day, which led me to raise the subject of his own.’

George levered himself out of his chair and went over to the window. Outside, the poles that carried his favourite runner beans seemed to occupy his attention for a while. Then he shook his head almost angrily and turned round.

‘You must understand that around the turn of the
century the New Forest was going through a period of what you might call success. Many farmers and landowners in England had been badly hit, even ruined, by all the cheap grain coming in from America. But there was a big demand for dairy products. So the smallholders in the New Forest were doing quite well. The ponies were fetching good prices. Some went to the coal mines as pit ponies – they were very sturdy, you see; and others, sad to say perhaps, went over to Flanders to the horsemeat market. There was also work to be had doing jobs for the new people coming to live at places like Lymington. The price of land was going up, so some people made a bit by selling building plots. All in all, life in the Forest wasn’t bad.

‘I’d been working as an agister many years now. I’d saved up a bit. It seemed to me a good idea to start Jack off with a little smallholding, which I was in a position to do. So I made my offer.

‘“Thank you, but no thank you,” he said. Just like that.

‘“Oh?” I said. “Then what plans have you, might I ask?”

‘“I’m going to be an engine driver on the railways,” he said.

‘I wasn’t best pleased, as you can imagine. “Well, I suppose,” I said, “you could get a place by Brockenhurst,” thinking this was near the railway station. But he shook his head.

‘“I’m leaving the Forest,” he said.

‘“Leaving the Forest? Where would you go?”

‘“Southampton, I should think. Or London.” He gave me this rather pitying smile, which I didn’t appreciate. “I don’t just want to stare up the back of a cow all my life. It’s boring.”

‘And then I argued with him. And then he said some things that I don’t care to think about as they don’t matter any more. One thing he did say, I shall always remember. “Before long, Dad, we won’t even be needing horses any more.”

‘I thought he must be daft.’

George sat down heavily and closed his eyes. Then he sighed. ‘So he left us and went to Southampton. He had to work on the railways a few years before he had his wish. But drive the engines he did.

‘He also, strange to say, became considerably better acquainted with the Honourable John Montagu.

‘When the railway had been built across the northern bit of the Beaulieu estate, a bargain had been struck. The line could go through, but a little station was put in, right in the middle of the open heath. If his Lordship wanted a train for himself and his guests, a signal would let the driver know, and the train was to stop for him. It wasn’t long before Jack was driving the train and saw the signal. So he stopped all right; but to his surprise the Honourable John Montagu steps up and says: “I’ll ride with you if you don’t mind.” He was already a very mechanical man, you see, and a qualified train driver. You can be sure Jack lost no opportunity to ask if he could inspect the Montagu motor car in return. So the next time we saw Jack he’d learned all about the motor car. As for the train, you could never be quite sure when it went past whether it was a Pride or a Montagu driving it.

‘After ten years, Jack moved away from Southampton further up the line. He still wrote us a letter now and again, but we didn’t see much of him.

‘It was no surprise to us, really, that when the Great War came, Jack was mad keen to join a motorised unit. He volunteered at once. And in due course he did manage to drive a vehicle near the front. His letters were full of it. Of course none of us quite realized what was happening, let alone what was going to happen, up at the front; and I suppose somehow we felt that if he was in an armoured vehicle of some kind he must be safer. I dare say he was safer than many of those poor boys in the trenches. But not safe enough.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, we got the telegram telling
us he’d been wounded. They said it was bad and that we’d have to wait. So wait we did. And of course, when he finally did come back – you remember it, Sally – we were shocked. The idea that he could ever be near normal again, let alone marry and have a family – well, he didn’t have much of his face left, so you can’t say we held out much hope. But he was alive.’

Oh, yes. Sally remembered. The poor shattered invalid they brought into the Southampton hospital where she had been nursing. Even the doctors hadn’t thought they could do much for him. Nor had the other nurses.

But she had. And she’d proved it, too. She’d brought him back to health herself. And then she’d married him. She smiled. She’d earned her happiness.

But George was talking now.

‘“I heard them say it, you know, Dad,” he said to me once. “I heard the officer, young Captain Totton come by. A good officer he was. Lost a leg. He came hobbling by asking after me. And the nurse – I never knew what she looked like, of course, but she sounded pretty, if you know what I mean – she said to him: ‘I’m afraid he’s going.’ And he said: ‘Why’s that?’ And she said: ‘I don’t think he wants to live.’ And then she whispered something and he said: ‘Oh.’

‘“And then there was a bit of a pause, and I heard him come up, tick-tock with his crutch and say quite loud to me: ‘Come on, now, we can’t have that. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to fight. Don’t give up.’ I didn’t make any sign, Dad. I mean, I knew he was doing his best. ‘Think of England,’ he says. But though I tried, it didn’t seem to do much good. If I thought of England I just thought of driving my train, and of course I knew I wasn’t going to be doing that any more. So I just lay there and I thought, well, that’s it then. I may as well go really, and no harm done.

‘“And then, about an hour later, I hear this sort of rustling sound by the bed. And even with all my dressings
and all the disinfectant I could smell something, mud and sweat, I suppose, that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. And then I hear this voice. ‘Your name Jack Pride?’ it says. ‘Well if it isn’t you can die and it’s all right. I just got here and my name’s Alfie Seagull. But if you happen to be the Jack Pride I’m thinking of, I watched you nearly get buried under a gravel slide in a railway cutting. Is that you, then?’

‘“So I tried to make some sort of sign that it was. ‘So it is you then,’ he says. ‘You can’t die here,’ he says. ‘Blimey! Have you forgotten who you are? You’re a Pride of the Forest.’ And it’s funny, but then I remembered our cottage, and the woods, and how we used to ride out together in the early morning; and when I thought of that, somehow it did give me strength, Dad, and so here I am.”