The Forest (79 page)

‘At home we hunt boar,’ he said wistfully. ‘I wish, my friend, that I could invite you to join us, but unfortunately if I go home at present’ – he gave a shrug – ‘they will cut off my head. Have you fishing also, perhaps?’ Martell assured him that he had some excellent fishing. ‘I like to fish,’ said the count.

As this elicited only a polite bow and a brief silence, Edward cut in to inform the Frenchman that they were going to take tea with Mrs Grockleton and that they must return home.

‘A remarkable woman,’ the count replied. ‘I must bid you
au revoir
, then, my dear friend,’ he said to Martell. ‘I love to fish,’ he added hopefully; but his English friends were moving on and so he continued, sadly, towards the windpumps by the sea.

‘As you see, Mr Martell,’ said Mrs Grockleton at three o’clock that afternoon as, brushed and sedately dressed, they took tea in her drawing room, ‘there are great possibilities for Lymington.’

Mr Martell assured her that he found the town admirable.

‘Oh, Mr Martell, you are too obliging, I’m sure. There is so much to be done.’

‘No doubt, Madam, you will transform the landscape just as Capability Brown would make a park.’

‘I, Sir?’ She almost blushed at what she took to be flattery. ‘I can do nothing, although I hope I may encourage. It is the situation of the place, and its residents, and its royal patrons who will effect the transformation. And it will come. I think I see it clearly.’

‘The sea is bracing, Madam,’ said Martell, noncommittally.

‘The sea? To be sure the sea is bracing,’ cried Mrs Grockleton. ‘But have you seen those ugly windpumps, those furnaces, those salterns? They will have to go, Mr Martell. Would any person of fashion wish to bathe under the gaze of a windpump?’

The question seemed unanswerable; but considering that the leading merchants of the town, including his hosts, were in the salt trade, Martell felt bound to disagree. ‘Perhaps a suitable bathing place may still be found,’ he suggested.

Whether Mrs Grockleton would have allowed this he did not learn since at this moment the master of the house appeared.

Martell had been told what to expect in Samuel Grockleton and he saw that Edward’s description had been accurate; although to insist upon referring to the Customs officer as ‘The Claw’ was, perhaps, a little cruel. He had no sooner sat down and accepted his wife’s offer of tea when the maid who was assisting Mrs Grockleton tripped and upset the cup of hot tea on his leg.

‘Alack-a-day!’ cried Mrs Grockleton. ‘You have scalded my poor husband. Oh, Mr Grockleton.’ But that gentleman, though he winced, got up and, with admirable presence of mind, took a vase of flowers from a table and poured the cold water over his leg. ‘What are you about, my dear husband?’ she demanded a little crossly now.

‘Cooling the scald,’ he replied grimly and sat down again. ‘I may as well have that walnut cake, Mrs Grockleton,’ he now observed.

Martell, who rather admired this blunt good sense, decided to engage his host in conversation at once, so asked him frankly if he considered the trade in smuggling to be large in the Forest.

‘The same as Dorset, Sir,’ the Customs Officer replied.

Since Martell knew perfectly well that from Sarum westwards, across the whole of Dorset and the West Country, there was probably not a single bottle of brandy on which duty had been paid, he contented himself with a nod of the head. ‘Can the trade ever be stopped?’ he enquired.

‘On land, I should say not,’ Grockleton answered. ‘For the simple reason that it would take too many officers. But one day it can and will be severely limited by sea patrols. As in all our nation’s affairs, Sir, the sea is the key. Our land forces are generally of small use.’

‘Ships to intercept the goods at sea? They’d have to be swift, and well armed.’

‘And well manned, Sir, too.’

‘You’d use naval captains?’

‘No, Sir. Retired smugglers.’

‘Brigands in royal service?’

‘By all means. It always worked before. Sir Francis Drake and his like in the days of good Queen Bess, Sir, were all pirates.’

‘Mr Grockleton, fie,’ cried his wife. ‘What are you saying?’

‘No more than the truth,’ he replied drily. ‘You will all forgive me, now,’ he observed, getting up, ‘if I go to change,’ and with a bow he was gone.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Grockleton, obviously disappointed by her husband. ‘What will you think of us, Mr Martell?’

Rather than answer, Martell calmly observed that he understood her academy had enjoyed a growing success.

‘Why indeed, Mr Martell, I truly think it has. Tell Mr Martell, Louisa, about our little academy.’

So turning her large eyes in his direction, Louisa gave some account of the art classes and the other scholastic attainments of the academy in a way that neither made light of them nor took them too seriously.

‘In particular,’ Mrs Grockleton added, ‘I myself instruct the girls in French. I make them read the finest authors, too, I assure you. Last year we read …’ Her mind failed to supply the name.

‘Racine?’ offered Louisa.

‘Racine, to be sure, Racine it was,’ and she beamed at her erstwhile pupil for her cleverness. ‘You speak French perfectly, no doubt, Mr Martell?’

It was at this moment that Martell decided he’d really had enough of Mrs Grockleton. He looked at her blankly for a moment.

‘
Vous parlez français
, Mr Martell? You speak French?’

‘I, Madam? Not a word.’

‘Well, you greatly astonish me. In polite society … Did Edward not say you spoke with the count?’

‘Indeed, Madam. But not in French. We spoke in Latin.’

‘Latin?’

‘Certainly. You teach the young ladies to speak Latin I am sure.’

‘Why no, Mr Martell, I do not.’

‘I am sorry to hear it. In the politest circles … The horrors of the Revolution, Mrs Grockleton, have given many an aversion to the language. In my opinion it will soon be Latin, and Latin alone, that is spoken in the courts of Europe. As it was formerly,’ he added with a scholarly air.

‘Well.’ Mrs Grockleton, for once, looked flummoxed. ‘I had not supposed …’ she began. And then, gradually, a light dawned in her broad face. She raised a finger. ‘Methinks, Mr Martell,’ she said with a knowing smile, ‘methinks you are teasing me.’

‘I, Madam?’

‘Methinks.’ There was just a hint of warning in her eyes now, enough to make even the aristocrat realize that her academy was not built without some ruthless cunning on her part. ‘Methinks that I am mocked.’

Unless he wanted enemies in Lymington it was time to bail out fast. ‘I confess’, he said with a smile, ‘that I speak some French, but not enough, I suspect, Madam, to impress you; so I hardly like to admit it. As for my jest about Latin.’ He looked at her seriously now. ‘After the horrors we have just seen in Paris, I do indeed wonder if French will continue as the chosen language of society.’

This seemed to pass. Mrs Grockleton made noises about the fate of the French aristocracy that almost made it sound as though she were one of them. It was agreed that the sooner the gallant count and his loyal troops in Lymington could return to France and restore order the better.

From here on, Mrs Grockleton was back in her element. The necessity for a new theatre, new Assembly Rooms and very likely new citizens were all warmly agreed to, so that she felt no hesitation in announcing, as they were about to leave: ‘I am intending to give a ball in the Assembly Rooms before long. I do hope, Mr Martell, that you will not disappoint us by refusing your company.’

And given all that had passed, Martell found it difficult not to respond that, if he were anywhere in the vicinity he would be delighted to attend – a form of words that normally would have committed him to nothing, were it not for the fact that he had a curious, uncomfortable feeling that, somehow, she would contrive things so that he was there.

‘Well,’ whispered Edward, as soon as they were out in the street, ‘what did you think of her?’

‘Give me “The Claw” any day,’ murmured Martell.

No further mention had been made of Fanny Albion, nor was it at dinner that evening.

The next day in the morning they took the carriage to call upon Mr Gilpin, who received them in the Boldre vicarage very cordially. They found him in his library, amusing himself by giving mathematical problems to a curly-haired boy from his parish school who, he informed them, was named Nathaniel Furzey.

The vicar was happy to show Martell his library, which had some fine volumes in it, and to let them see some of the recent sketches he had done of New Forest scenes.

‘From time to time I have a small auction of them,’ he explained to Martell, ‘and men like Sir Harry Burrard pay foolish prices for them because they know the money goes to endow the school and some other charities with which I concern myself. The life of a clergyman’ – he gave Martell a sidelong look – ‘is quite rewarding.’

There was no question that Mr Gilpin’s vicarage, which was three storeys tall and capacious, was a very handsome residence for any gentleman, and from the gardens behind he could display an admirable view across to the Isle of Wight. The breeze of the day before had remained about the same, but banks of grey clouds were starting to pass over the Solent water now which, with their silver linings, gave the scene an atmospheric heaviness, a contrast of shafts of light and areas of darkness that was certainly picturesque. It was as they were surveying this natural picture that Martell happened to ask after Fanny.

‘She is at Albion House now,’ Gilpin remarked. ‘Which reminds me’, he added thoughtfully, ‘that I have something to tell her. But that can wait.’ He looked at Edward. ‘Were you intending to call on her?’

Edward, after only a second’s hesitation, said that they were uncertain whether she would wish it at present.

Gilpin sighed. ‘I should think she must be lonely now,’ he remarked. Then, calling the curly-haired boy to him: ‘Nathaniel, you know the way to Albion House. Run up there and enquire, from me, whether Miss Albion will receive Mr Martell and her cousins.’

Some refreshments were brought and, answering numerous questions put to him about the area, he entertained them very well for something more than half an hour, when young Nathaniel returned.

‘I am to say yes, Sir,’ he reported.

It was not quite what he had expected. He could not say exactly why: perhaps it was the closeness of the trees as they turned in at the gate from the lane; or possibly it was the advancing grey clouds which, just as they had come down from old Boldre church, passed with their shining edges overhead, drawing behind them a shadow. All Martell knew was that, as the carriage approached the corner of the narrow drive, the sky above was sunless, and he felt strangely dull and ill at ease.

Then they turned the corner and came in sight of Albion House.

It was only the light, he told himself; it was only the grey glow pressing through the clouds that made the house so sombre. How old it seemed with its bare gables; how closely the green circle around it was hemmed in by the trees. Its brick skin was dark as a bloodstain. Its wrinkled roof told of the old Tudor skeleton of timbers within. The windows stared out so blankly that you might have supposed the place was empty and dwelt in now only by the spirits who would remain there year by year as the house fell slowly into ruin, until it crumbled away so that even their habitation was gone.

They came to the entrance. A tall woman was standing at the door. ‘Mrs Pride, the housekeeper,’ said Edward quietly. There was, Martell thought, a guarded, anxious look in her eyes.

The last few days had not been easy for Fanny. Her father had been very poorly. Several times he had been petulant; once, which was unusual, he had even had a fit of temper. She had sat with him most of the time in his room the day before and today, although he had taken some tea and some broth, and a glass of claret, it seemed unlikely that he would leave the big wing chair beside his bed where he was sitting, wrapped in a shawl.

So it had come as a shock to her when Mrs Pride had come to tell her, half an hour ago, that the young Tottons and Mr Martell were about to call.

‘But we are not in a state to receive them,’ she cried. ‘As for Father … Oh, Mrs Pride, you should have asked me first. You should not have told them to come.’ But once Mrs Pride had apologized and said she supposed Miss Albion would have wished it, there was nothing to be done. ‘We shall have to make the best of it,’ she said.

Yet to her great surprise, when she went to tell her father about the unwanted visit and promised to send them all away as soon as she decently could, old Mr Albion seemed to make a miraculous recovery. Although somewhat querulous, he insisted that she bring him a looking-glass and a clean cravat, scissors, hairbrush, pomade. In no time he had everybody running in every direction so that it was all Fanny could do to slip away and make a few small preparations in her own appearance.

She was standing on the staircase looking down into the hall as they came through the door with the grey daylight behind them. Edward entered first, then Louisa and Mr Martell just behind her. They paused for a moment before they noticed her. Edward looked around and, just before the big door was closed behind them, Louisa half turned to Mr Martell to say something and she saw her lightly touch his arm.

How pale she looked in the shadows of the staircase, Martell thought, as Fanny advanced towards them. In her long dress she seemed like some ghostly figure in a drama from antiquity. He saw at once the signs of strain in her face.

She led them quietly into the old panelled parlour, apologized for the fact that she was not better prepared to greet them, and asked politely after his health and his family. There seemed to be a slight constraint in her manner as she did so, however, and Martell wondered if perhaps she would have preferred it if he had not come.

However, they made polite conversation; Louisa gave a lively account of their tea with Mrs Grockleton, which brought a smile, if a rather weak one, to her face. And when Louisa produced a perfect imitation of Mr Grockleton pouring the vase of water over himself and then replacing the flowers, Fanny too joined in their laughter.