The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [385]
‘Normally, when timber is cut, it is taken to a sawmill in some appropriate place. The sawdust and chips make a terrible mess and ruin any grazing. But here, right beside that lawn, was a hideous sawing machine, a steam engine, puffing away, belching smoke, with sawdust blowing all over the lawn. “Who said you could do this?” we demanded. “Mr Lascelles,” the foreman replied.
‘We were furious. But next thing we knew, young Jack was round the other side of the machine, learning how it worked. And the next day he was down there again, we found out. And for weeks after that.
‘The verderers with Mr Lascelles went to law over that machine. The law case dragged on for years, not because the sawing engine was so important but to show who was in charge of the Forest. It was a stalemate in the end. But young Jack didn’t care about that.’
Jack had never talked to her about this. She watched with interest. She had never realized the bitterness that had come between her husband and his father. But she could see it now, in George’s face. His jaw was clenched.
‘Even if I forbade him,’ he continued, ‘he’d sneak off to play with that infernal thing so that whenever Lascelles saw me he’d just nod and say: “At least your son appreciates us, Pride.”
‘Anything mechanical: it was during these years that they started having military manoeuvres in the Forest. It was just a wasteland for the military of course. We were always clearing up after them. Stock were killed. But did Jack care? Not a bit. He’d be off learning how the guns worked and firing them too when the soldiers would let him.
‘Much as I loved him, I must confess that by the time he was eighteen I had no control over him. So I suppose it was inevitable that in due course we should have parted from one another.
‘We had gone riding one day, he and I, out past Lyndhurst. We’d just come by the old park pale where the deer used to be caught, when all of a sudden, along the lane from Beaulieu, the most extraordinary vehicle came towards us. It was a sort of little metal cart; it made the most horrible rattling noise, and smoke came out behind. I had read about the motor car, of course, and seen a picture, but this was the first time we’d actually seen one in the Forest. And a very unpleasant experience it was too.
‘It was the Honourable John Montagu, Lord Montagu’s son, who was driving this contraption, and I was very sorry to see that his father allowed him to do it. But Jack, needless to say, thought it was wonderful.
‘“That’s the future, Dad. That’s the future,” he cried.
‘And it was this talk of the future, on our way home that day, which led me to raise the subject of his own.’
George levered himself out of his chair and went over to the window. Outside, the poles that carried his favourite runner beans seemed to occupy his attention for a while. Then he shook his head almost angrily and turned round.
‘You must understand that around the turn of the century the New Forest was going through a period of what you might call success. Many farmers and landowners in England had been badly hit, even ruined, by all the cheap grain coming in from America. But there was a big demand for dairy products. So the smallholders in the New Forest were doing quite well. The ponies were fetching good prices. Some went to the coal mines as pit ponies – they were very sturdy, you see; and others, sad to say perhaps, went over to Flanders to the horsemeat market. There was also work to be had doing jobs for the new people coming to live at places like Lymington. The price of land was going up, so some people made a bit by selling building plots. All in all, life in the Forest wasn’t bad.
‘I’d been working as an agister many years now. I’d saved up a bit. It seemed to me a good idea to start Jack off with a little smallholding, which I was in a position to do. So I made my offer.
‘“Thank you, but no thank you,” he said. Just like that.
‘“Oh?” I said. “Then what plans have you, might I ask?”
‘“I’m going to be an engine driver on the railways,