The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [372]
That this observation was probably true did not improve Albion’s temper in the least. He ignored it. ‘When you enticed,’ he gave the word an insulting emphasis, ‘my daughter into marriage, did it ever occur to you to consider her welfare?’
Even Minimus noticed that he was being insulted now. ‘It was she who wanted to marry, actually,’ he said. ‘She’s quite old enough to know what she wants, you know. After all,’ he added, ‘she could have just come to live with me. I suggested that.’
‘You are telling me, Sir,’ the Colonel was starting to go very red, ‘that you intended to seduce my daughter and persuade her to live with you in sin?’
‘But I married her,’ said Minimus plaintively. ‘There’s no need to get so shirty.’ He shook his head. ‘Several people I know live with their mistresses.’
‘People?’ Albion’s voice was rising to a new plateau. ‘People like you, Sir. Artists.’ He might have said lepers. ‘And do such people have children, too?’
‘Of course they do,’ Minimus cried. ‘I always told Beatrice, she didn’t have to marry me to have children.’
It was too much. Colonel Albion was now the same colour as his riding coat. He gasped. ‘You villain!’ he shouted, ‘you …’ he began to search for a word, ‘you absolute …’ he searched, and it came at last: ‘you bounder!’
1874
George Pride was devoted to his inclosures. There were three of them under his charge.
The job of woodman was a pleasant one. He had to keep up the inclosure fences and maintain the drains. That was easy enough. More interesting was the management of the woods themselves, supervising the felling, replanting and thinning of the timber. He was also in charge of assigning the lops and tops of trees to the commoners with rights of Estovers, and to the cutting of turves from the peat bogs and bracken from the area.
Each woodman also received fifteen shillings a week, and a cottage with a paddock where he could keep a pony. He had the right to graze a cow on the Forest all year round, an allowance of fern for bedding as well as turves for his fire.
There were twelve woodmen in the Forest now. George Pride’s inclosures all lay on the high ground, about three miles east of Fordingbridge. It was a beautiful, deserted area. Two miles to the east, perched on a wooded rise, in the middle of nowhere, was the hamlet of Fritham. The old Free Traders used to come up there from the Smugglers’ Road, according to the old folk. But the coastguard service had pretty much killed off that fine old trade before George was born, and Fritham was quite a law-abiding place now. Apart from this, wherever you looked was lovely open wilderness.
George Pride’s inclosures were delightful. The conifer plantations, of course, were fairly lifeless, but the mixed inclosures of oak, beech and chestnut were pretty places. With the grazing animals fenced out, they were carpeted with bluebells in May. Columbine, violets and primroses grew there. In one spot George even had wild lily-of-the-valley.
George was particularly proud of his fences – both those of the inclosures and around his cottage. He had wanted the best and so he had gone to Burley and employed Berty Puckle.
Berty Puckle’s fences weren’t like anyone else’s. For a start, he made the planks the proper way.
‘There are people,’ Puckle would say, ‘who get their planks from timber yards, where they’ve been sawed.’ This last word, his personal version of ‘sawn’, was said in tones of the deepest disgust. The way to make a plank, he would explain, was to take a length of wood and split it carefully with a wedge and a hammer. Working his way gently down, following the grain of the wood, the skilful carpenter could produce wafer-thin planks, getting far more from the wood than any clumsy fellow with a saw ever could. Yet they would last for ever. ‘Natural is best,’ he’d say. ‘Takes longer, lasts longer.’
His particular speciality was his gates. ‘I think I got the idea when I was a child,’ he once told George. ‘Down at Buckler’s Hard. My grandfather was still working down there,