The Forest (92 page)

And that was what she had tried to do. With Aunt Adelaide back, the normal pattern of their life had been peacefully resumed. She had gone visiting with her Totton cousins, shown her sketches to Mr Gilpin for his approval and secretly hoped that, if Mr Martell did return to the area and called upon her at Albion House, her aunt would ensure that this time he was given a better reception.

Yet she couldn’t forget it. Not quite. She herself was not sure why. Perhaps it was just that her curiosity had been aroused, or that she wanted to know more about the mother she had lost. But if she was honest with herself, there was more to it than that and the truth was not very comfortable.

For if I really am connected to such people, she thought, then I am ashamed of it. I am afraid to acknowledge members of my own family. How can I defend such cowardice?

It was in this frame of mind that she realized there was one person who almost certainly knew: Edward’s and Louisa’s father, her mother’s half-brother – Mr Totton. Perhaps she could ask him. Yet here a certain discretion
held her back. If he knew and had never spoken of it, he might have his own reasons. Living, as he did, practically in the town, Mr Totton might not thank her for making him talk about even a half-sister’s connection to its less respectable elements. Whatever her curiosity about the matter, she decided not to approach him.

That left only one other source of information, potentially the most dangerous of all: the Seagulls themselves. Even if there was a connection, did the present Seagulls know it? Perhaps not, or maybe they had chosen to keep silent. Or, yet another possibility, possibly they and others in Lymington knew, but it had never come to her ears. What would happen if she approached them? Would they suddenly claim her as one of their own, embarrass her, annoy the Tottons and – it came back to this after all – undermine her own position in society? It would surely be folly to go near the Seagulls.

She had proceeded no further with this delicate matter when news of a different kind drove it, briefly, out of her mind.

‘Fanny, have you heard?’ Her cousin Louisa had taken a chaise by herself and come all the way to Albion House to share the news. ‘My dear, dear Fanny, what do you think? Mr Martell has asked Edward to stay with him in Dorset. And he has particularly asked that I may come too. We are to leave next week. Oh, kiss me, Fanny,’ she cried in delight. ‘I am so excited.’

‘I am sure’ – Fanny managed to smile – ‘that it will be a delightful visit.’

She had wondered, after Louisa had gone, if perhaps she might also be invited, but days passed and no invitation came. She told herself it was natural that Mr Martell should repay the Tottons’ hospitality, yet still continued, despite her better judgement, to hope. Perhaps, she thought, Mr Martell will write or send some message. Although I really don’t know, she scolded herself, why he should. He didn’t,
anyway, and ten days after Louisa’s visit, the two young Tottons left for Dorset, after which she felt very much alone.

She had been sitting outside, three mornings after Louisa’s and Edward’s departure, trying to read a book; and, hardly aware that she was doing so, she had started to finger the little wooden cross she wore, when suddenly the thought struck her. The old woman who had given it to her: how lonely she must have been. Did my mother ever go to see her, Fanny wondered? Probably not. I’m quite sure I was only taken to see her once. And why? Almost certainly because my mother was ashamed of her. She didn’t even want me to keep this wooden cross, the only thing the old woman was ever able to give her granddaughter. Here am I, she considered, feeling sorry for myself because I have not been invited to the house of a man I hardly know and who has probably forgotten me; but how many years was my grandmother left to sit in that house in Lymington all alone, denied the love and affection of a granddaughter, all for a worthless vanity. For the first time in her life Fanny realized that nature is as wasteful of the affections as it is of the acorns that fall upon the forest floor.

‘I don’t care what they think,’ she murmured. ‘I shall go into Lymington tomorrow.’

Isaac Seagull gazed at her with interest. He understood exactly the daring of her question, as she calmly set out across the great social chasm that divided them, like an explorer upon a flimsy bridge. This one’s got courage, the master smuggler thought. He answered her carefully, all the same. ‘I’ve never thought of it as such, Miss Albion,’ he said. ‘It would be very distant, you see, and a long time ago.’

‘Did you know my grandmother, old Mrs Totton?’

‘I did.’ He smiled. ‘A fine old lady.’

‘Was she not born a Miss Seagull?’

‘So I believe, Miss Albion. In fact,’ he admitted
straightforwardly, ‘she was my father’s cousin. She had no brothers or sisters. That line of the family’s all gone.’

‘Except for me.’

‘If you wish to think of it that way.’

‘You don’t advise it?’

Isaac Seagull looked towards the end of the small garden. His curious, chinless face, in reflective repose, had an unexpected fineness, she thought.

‘I shouldn’t think, Miss Albion, that anyone in the town would remember about old Mrs Totton being a Seagull. I expect I’d be the only one who knows.’ He paused, apparently doing a quick reckoning. ‘You had sixteen great-great-grandparents and one of those was my great-grandfather. Only through your mother’s mother, too. No.’ He shook his head wryly. ‘You’re Miss Albion of Albion House as sure as I’m plain Isaac Seagull of the Angel Inn. If I said I was related to you, Miss Albion, people would just laugh at me and say I was getting above myself.’ And he smiled at her kindly.

‘So if my grandmother was the daughter of a Mr Seagull,’ she persisted quietly, ‘who was her mother?’

‘I can’t say I remember. Don’t think I ever knew.’

‘Liar.’

It was not often that anyone dared to say that to Isaac Seagull. He looked down into the girl’s startling blue eyes. ‘You don’t need to know.’

‘I do.’

‘If my memory serves me,’ he said reluctantly, ‘she might have been a Miss Puckle.’

‘Puckle?’ Fanny felt herself go pale. She couldn’t help it. Puckle, the gnome-like figure with the oaken face she had seen at Buckler’s Hard? Puckle, the family of woodsmen and charcoal burners, the lowliest peasants in the Forest? Why some of them, she had heard, used to live in hovels. ‘One of the Puckles of Burley?’

‘He was very taken with her, Miss Albion. She possessed
a rare intelligence. She taught herself to read and write which, forgive me, none of the other Puckles has ever done, I’m sure. My father always told me she was a remarkable woman in every way.’

‘I see.’ She was dazed. Entire landscapes were suddenly opening up before her. In her mind’s eye she saw vistas of underground places, deep burrows, gnarled roots. They were peopled, too, with strange creatures – loathsome, subhuman, hag-like – who turned to look at her or came to her side, claiming her for their own. She felt a cold panic, as though she had been trapped in a cave and heard the flocking sound of bats. She, Fanny Albion, a Puckle. Not a Totton, not even a Seagull, but with the blood of the lowest charcoal burners running in her veins. It was too horrible to contemplate.

‘Miss Albion.’ He was calling her back to daylight. ‘I may be mistaken. These are only things I believe I heard when I was a child.’ He wasn’t quite sure if she had heard. ‘It makes no difference to anything,’ he told her kindly. But all she did was bow her head, and murmur some thanks; and then she departed.

A few minutes later Isaac Seagull was back in his usual place, enjoying the sun. The Albion girl’s secret was safe with him. He’d been keeping secrets all his life. But he contemplated her embarrassment with a philosophical wonder all the same. That, he supposed, was the price you paid for belonging to the gentry, where you had to display your ancestors like plumage and your acres were laid out for all to see. Too high a price, he reckoned; and not for the first time, the clever Free Trader shook his head at the all-embracing vanity of the landed class.

Personally, he was comfortable with all things dark and subterranean. Besides, his fortunes were always riding on the wild and open sea.

Fanny had gone halfway down the High Street when she
encountered Mrs Grockleton, who greeted her most warmly. ‘You have not heard from your clever cousin Louisa, yet?’ She was positively beaming.

‘No, Mrs Grockleton. But I don’t think I expected to. Why do you call her clever, by the way?’

‘Oh, come now, my dear.’ Mrs Grockleton wagged her stout finger at her. ‘You and your cousin must not suppose you can hide your secrets from all us old people.’ She gave her a knowing look. ‘Methinks we may expect news from that quarter before long.’

‘I really have no idea what you mean.’

‘My dear child, I caught sight of Mr Martell with Louisa the day before his departure. Do not tell her so, mind. But these eyes can see. And sure enough, he has asked her to Dorset with her brother. Just the two of them. Had he not been serious I should think very likely he’d have asked you as well.’

‘I see no reason why.’

‘Oh, Fanny, you are a good and loyal friend, and I shall ask no more. But my dear child, we both know Louisa means to marry him and I can assure you, knowing the world as I do, that I think she will succeed.’ She patted Fanny’s cheek. ‘What celebrations you and I may enjoy with her then.’

She did not wait for any further comment, but billowed away, under full sail, up the street.

September came: the days were warm, but the oaks’ first golden leaves appeared, hinting at the sharp excitement of the rutting season ahead. At Boldre, Mr Gilpin’s school resumed, and the troop of girls and boys in their green coats were to be seen walking up the hill to Boldre church on its knoll each Sunday morning.

Among them was Nathaniel Furzey. The weeks of summer he had just spent with his own family up at Minstead had certainly done nothing to lessen his appetite
for cheerful mischief. In school, he was more or less in order. Mr Gilpin had given him a book of simple algebra and geometry to study, since he had long ago mastered all the sums the other children were doing. Also, somewhat against his judgement, the vicar had agreed that one day a week he might read a history book. But the rest of the time, he was to confine his reading to the Bible. ‘For there is quite enough there, young man,’ the vicar told him sternly, ‘to occupy you for a lifetime.’

Even so, the schoolmaster found him a trial. He would start playing curious games with numbers instead of the problems set; if he was set to learn a text he would do so, but then rearrange the words to make foolish rhymes. More than once it had been necessary to punish him for practical jokes – and this was all since the term began. As for his questions, his infuriating habit of demanding the reasons for things instead of simply learning what he was told, the schoolmaster had to report to the vicar: ‘His mind is too active. It must be curbed.’

The Prides, however, were more indulgent. If Nathaniel tempted young Andrew into mischief there was always a wit to the business, which appealed to Pride the timber merchant. ‘Let them get into trouble,’ he told his wife. ‘I always did. Can’t do any harm.’ And if they got into trouble and were punished, which they were, Andrew and Nathaniel somehow knew, although nothing was ever said, that the grown-ups at home did not entirely disapprove of these activities.

But when, one afternoon after school, Nathaniel told Andrew about his new plan, even young Pride was awestruck. ‘You can’t do that,’ he whispered. ‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because … well, it’s too difficult. And anyway, I daren’t.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Nathaniel.

September also seemed to have a strange effect upon Aunt Adelaide. It came out unexpectedly one evening when she and Fanny were sitting together in the usual way.

The shadows were falling, but Aunt Adelaide had decided not to light any candles yet and, sitting in her wing chair, was only dimly visible in the penumbra as the orange glow outside the windows slowly ceased. Apart from the soft ticking of the hall clock, the house was silent and it seemed that Adelaide might have fallen asleep when instead she suddenly said: ‘It’s time you married, Fanny.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I shan’t be here for ever. I want to see you settled before I die. Have you ever thought of anyone?’

‘No.’ Fanny paused only for a moment. ‘I don’t think so.’ And having no wish to pursue this conversation just now she asked in turn: ‘Did you never think of marrying, Aunt Adelaide?’

‘Perhaps.’ The old lady sighed. ‘It was too difficult. There was my mother: I did not feel I could leave her and she lived such a long time. I was over forty when she died. Then there was this house. I had to look after this, you see. I was doing it for her and for the family.’

‘For old Alice, too?’

‘Of course.’ She nodded and then, with such feeling that Fanny could not fail to be moved, said: ‘How could I not keep Albion House as they would have wished? And whomever you marry, you will do the same, won’t you, Fanny?’

‘Yes.’ How many times had she made that promise? A hundred at least. But she knew she would keep it.

‘You must never dishonour your family, you see. When I think’, she burst out, as she had a thousand times before, ‘of that cursed Penruddock and his filthy troops, and my poor, innocent grandmother, made to ride through the night half naked like that. At her age. Thieves! Villains! And Penruddock calling himself a colonel, the common blackguard.’