The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [386]
‘I wasn’t best pleased, as you can imagine. “Well, I suppose,” I said, “you could get a place by Brockenhurst,” thinking this was near the railway station. But he shook his head.
‘“I’m leaving the Forest,” he said.
‘“Leaving the Forest? Where would you go?”
‘“Southampton, I should think. Or London.” He gave me this rather pitying smile, which I didn’t appreciate. “I don’t just want to stare up the back of a cow all my life. It’s boring.”
‘And then I argued with him. And then he said some things that I don’t care to think about as they don’t matter any more. One thing he did say, I shall always remember. “Before long, Dad, we won’t even be needing horses any more.”
‘I thought he must be daft.’
George sat down heavily and closed his eyes. Then he sighed. ‘So he left us and went to Southampton. He had to work on the railways a few years before he had his wish. But drive the engines he did.
‘He also, strange to say, became considerably better acquainted with the Honourable John Montagu.
‘When the railway had been built across the northern bit of the Beaulieu estate, a bargain had been struck. The line could go through, but a little station was put in, right in the middle of the open heath. If his Lordship wanted a train for himself and his guests, a signal would let the driver know, and the train was to stop for him. It wasn’t long before Jack was driving the train and saw the signal. So he stopped all right; but to his surprise the Honourable John Montagu steps up and says: “I’ll ride with you if you don’t mind.” He was already a very mechanical man, you see, and a qualified train driver. You can be sure Jack lost no opportunity to ask if he could inspect the Montagu motor car in return. So the next time we saw Jack he’d learned all about the motor car. As for the train, you could never be quite sure when it went past whether it was a Pride or a Montagu driving it.
‘After ten years, Jack moved away from Southampton further up the line. He still wrote us a letter now and again, but we didn’t see much of him.
‘It was no surprise to us, really, that when the Great War came, Jack was mad keen to join a motorised unit. He volunteered at once. And in due course he did manage to drive a vehicle near the front. His letters were full of it. Of course none of us quite realized what was happening, let alone what was going to happen, up at the front; and I suppose somehow we felt that if he was in an armoured vehicle of some kind he must be safer. I dare say he was safer than many of those poor boys in the trenches. But not safe enough.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Well, we got the telegram telling us he’d been wounded. They said it was bad and that we’d have to wait. So wait we did. And of course, when he finally did come back – you remember it, Sally – we were shocked. The idea that he could ever be near normal again, let alone marry and have a family – well, he didn’t have much of his face left, so you can’t say we held out much hope. But he was alive.’
Oh, yes. Sally remembered. The poor shattered invalid they brought into the Southampton hospital where she had been nursing. Even the doctors hadn’t thought they could do much for him. Nor had the other nurses.
But she had. And she’d proved it, too. She’d brought him back to health herself. And then she’d married him. She smiled. She’d earned her happiness.
But George was talking now.
‘“I heard them say it, you know, Dad,” he said to me once. “I heard the officer, young Captain Totton come by. A good officer he was. Lost a leg. He came hobbling by asking after me. And the nurse – I never knew what she looked like, of course, but she sounded pretty, if you know what I mean – she said to him: ‘I’m afraid he’s going.’ And he said: ‘Why’s that?’ And she said: ‘I don’t think he wants to live.’ And then she whispered something and he said: ‘Oh.’
‘“And then there was a bit of a pause, and I heard him come up, tick-tock with his crutch and say quite loud to me: ‘Come on, now, we can’t have that. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to fight. Don’t give up.’ I didn’t make any