The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [331]
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,