The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [384]
‘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