The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [393]
‘An oak tree lives in a four-hundred-year time-frame. Human time-frames are always too short. So we get it wrong, and we don’t really understand the natural processes half the time.’
‘So what’s your rule for the Forest?’
‘Look for a balance. But know that nature will find a better one.’ He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I think that’s how to live, really. Don’t you?’
Dottie Pride was silent for a while.
‘Will you be at Beaulieu on Sunday?’ she asked.
She really didn’t want to go to tea with Mrs Totton. It was Friday. The last five days had given her so much to think about that the only thing she wanted to do now was to go over her notes and make her plans. She had devoted the morning to this and made good progress. She had a strong opening, but something was missing. She couldn’t quite pin it down – that magic ingredient that, in her own mind, she called the story. With Dottie it always came at the end of the process and so far it had always happened in time. Just. It had to happen by Saturday.
She really didn’t want to go to tea with Mrs Totton at all.
Mrs Totton lived in a charming whitewashed cottage with a walled garden and a small orchard behind. The cottage was set in the lush little valley near the point where the river was crossed by Boldre Bridge.
‘And I thought, as it’s a nice day, we might walk over the bridge and up to Boldre church,’ she announced, as she met Dottie at the door.
The church on its wooded knoll was a friendly building. Its dark, wooded setting did not seem eerie, but it did, Dottie thought, feel very old. There were several plaques recording members of old Forest families on the walls, and one in particular caught her attention.
It was to Frances Martell, born Albion, of Albion Park; and most unusually, it also recorded her devoted housekeeper and faithful friend – those were the words – Jane Pride.
‘Albion Park. It’s the name of the hotel where I’m staying,’ Dottie remarked.
‘It’s also the house where I was born,’ her hostess told her. ‘I was an Albion before I married Richard Totton.’ She smiled. ‘A lot of the larger Forest houses are hotels now. On the way back she suggested, ‘if you like, I’ll tell you the story of Fanny Albion. She was tried in Bath for stealing a piece of lace.’
There was another guest for tea. A pleasant woman in her fifties called Imogen Furzey who Mrs Totton introduced as ‘a cousin of mine’. Dottie correctly guessed that in Mrs Totton’s world a cousin might be someone removed by many generations, but she did not enquire into the details. ‘She’s an artist, so I thought you’d like to meet her,’ Mrs Totton said confidently, in the manner of those who assume that anyone involved with the media must belong in the company of artists of some kind.
Imogen Furzey was a painter. ‘It runs in the family,’ she explained. ‘My father was a sculptor. And his grandfather was quite a well-known New Forest artist named Minimus Furzey.’
Dottie decided she liked Imogen Furzey. She dressed eccentrically, but with a simple elegance. The smock she was wearing had evidently been designed by herself. So, probably, had the silver bracelet she wore. Around her neck, on a silver chain that matched the bracelet, there hung a curious, dark little crucifix. ‘An heirloom,’ she said, when Dottie remarked on it. ‘I think it must be extremely old, but I don’t know where it comes from.’
The tea was delightful. It even turned out to be useful. Both Mrs Totton and Imogen Furzey were able to tell her an enormous amount about the Forest, and seemed happy to do so.
‘The only thing we both wonder,’ Mrs Totton remarked, as they ended tea, ‘is whether with a name like Pride you aren’t connected to the Forest yourself.’
Dottie told them of her conversation