The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [362]
He favoured the western side of the Forest, finding himself a pleasant little cottage near Fordingbridge which he had set about furnishing with gusto. The walls were hung with his own paintings and watercolours; an annexe he built on contained a studio and a study already filled with specimens of plants and insects, in which he took a scholarly interest. But the possession that gave him most delight was in the bedroom upstairs.
He had found it when he was walking near Burley one day. He had noticed an old cottage, badly damaged by a fire, which a group of men were preparing to demolish. Always curious, he had gone inside. Upstairs, exposed to the open sky, covered with ash and charred rafters, he had discovered the shape of a broken bed. Broken but not destroyed. The dark old oak had survived the fire. Cleaning off the ash, he had seen that the rustic piece was magnificently carved. And by the time the men had brought the thing downstairs for him, Minimus realized that he had stumbled on a treasure. Squirrels and snakes, deer and pony, the thing was alive with every creature of the Forest.
‘This must be preserved,’ he declared, and for a few shillings he both purchased it and had it carted to his own cottage where he restored it for his own use. So Puckle’s bed found a new home.
Mrs Albion had been waiting for him in the church, now, for some time. But she knew better than to be cross. Minimus was always late. In the cavernous space, with the warm light filtering in through the richly coloured windows, she had time to reflect on why her daughter Beatrice had chosen to marry Minimus Furzey. He was almost ten years younger than Beatrice was. And she had had to face her father’s bitter rage.
‘She only wants him because she thinks she’ll never get a husband,’ Colonel Albion had fumed.
‘She is nearly thirty-five,’ Mrs Albion had gently pointed out.
‘The man’s a common adventurer.’
The fact that Minimus was of the same family as some of his humblest tenants could not be expected to please Albion, kindly landlord though he was. It upset the order of things. With neither a proper occupation, nor any income except his sisters’ charity, you couldn’t possibly deny that he was an adventurer.
Yet Mrs Albion knew perfectly well that Minimus hadn’t married for that reason at all. The amount of money her husband had been going to settle upon Beatrice was quite modest, and the fact that he had refused to do so had meant very little to Minimus. Her own suspicion was that Furzey had been a good deal less interested in marrying Beatrice than she had been in marrying him.
‘The damn fellow just sees her as a free housekeeper,’ the Colonel had once muttered, and Mrs Albion suspected this might not be far from the truth. Certainly they lived in the most extraordinary manner, with only a woman coming from outside to cook and clean. Even the meanest shopkeeper in Fordingbridge had a servant or two living in.
But what, she wondered, had Beatrice seen in him? As if in answer to her question, the door of the church opened and there, with the golden sunlight behind him, stood Minimus Furzey.
‘You are alone, aren’t you?’ he enquired as he shut the door.
‘Yes. Quite.’ She smiled and, just for a moment, had to fight down an idiotic little fluttering of her own heart as he came towards her.
He looked about the church. ‘Strange place to meet.’ His musical voice made a brief echo that quickly died away in the surrounding silence. ‘Do you like it?’
The new church which had replaced the eighteenth-century structure on Lyndhurst’s hill was a tall, ornate, redbrick Victorian affair with a tower. The tower had only just been completed and it now rose, a monument to the age’s commercial pride and respectability, over the oak trees of the old royal manor at the heart of the Forest.
‘I’m not sure.’ She didn’t like to say either way, in