The Forest

  ‘Will you watch it, Sir?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Indeed I shall. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Why, the whole area will be there, I should think. As a matter of fact,’ he added, ‘I was just in Lymington, trying to place a bet on the race myself. But I couldn’t find any takers.’ He laughed. ‘The whole town’s so deep in already that nobody dares bet any more. See what your father’s done to the place, Jonathan Totton!’

  ‘Which way were you betting, Sir?’ asked Willie.

  ‘Well,’ the gentleman answered him honestly, ‘I’m afraid I was betting on the Southampton ship, not because I have any idea who will win, but because I like to be on the same side as Henry Totton.’

  ‘And’ – Jonathan was not sure if it was proper to ask, but Albion was not a man to take offence – ‘how much would you bet, Sir?’

  ‘Five pounds, I offered,’ Albion replied with a chuckle. ‘And no one would take my money!’ He grinned at them. ‘Either of you interested?’

  Jonathan shook his head and Willie answered seriously: ‘My dad told me never to bet. He says only fools bet.’

  ‘Quite right,’ cried Albion, in high good humour. ‘And mind you do what he tells you.’ And he got on his horse and rode away.

  ‘Five pounds!’ said Jonathan to Willie. ‘That’s a lot to lose.’

  Then they resumed their play.

  Although Alan Seagull had not yet forgiven his son for his stupidity in telling the Totton boy his secret, he was in a tolerably good mood when he caught sight of Willie that afternoon. He had just counted up all the money he had been promised and, even if he lost the race, he would be paid more for this run then he had made in the last half-year. If he won, then with Burrard’s money he’d do better still. Student of human nature though he was, the mariner confessed himself astonished by the whole business. But he wasn’t expecting any more surprises, when Willie came up to him and enquired: ‘You know Richard Albion, Dad?’

  ‘Yes, son. I do.’

  ‘We met him at Buckland Rings today. He wants to bet on the race. Against you. But he can’t find no takers. All the Lymington money’s already been bet.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alan shrugged.

  ‘Guess how much he was going to bet, Dad.’

  ‘I don’t know, son. Tell me.’

  ‘Five pounds.’

  Five pounds. Another five-pound bet! Seagull shook his head in wonderment. Someone else was actually prepared to wager that amount of money that he would lose. Nothing to Albion, perhaps. A small fortune to him. For a long time after his son had run inside the mariner sat staring out at the water, thinking.

  Darkness had just fallen when Jonathan heard his father coming along the gallery passage.

  Until the last few days of her life, when she could not move, his mother had always come to kiss Jonathan goodnight. Sometimes she would stay a while and tell him a story. Always, just before going, she would say a little prayer. She had only been dead a few days when Jonathan had asked his father: ‘Are you going to come to say goodnight to me?’

  ‘Why, Jonathan?’ Totton had asked. ‘You are not afraid of the dark, are you?’

  ‘No, Father.’ He had paused uncertainly. ‘Mother used to.’

  Since then, Totton had come to say goodnight to his son most evenings. On his way up the stairs the merchant would try to think of something to say. Perhaps he might ask the boy what he had learned that day; or mention something of interest that had happened in the town. He would enter the room and stand quietly by the door looking down to where his son lay on his little bed.

  And if Totton could think of nothing to say, Jonathan would just lie still for a moment and then murmur: ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Father. Goodnight.’

  This evening, however, it was Jonathan who had been preparing something to say. He had been thinking about it all afternoon. So when his father’s quiet shadow appeared in the doorway and looked towards him without speaking, it was he who broke the silence. ‘Father.’

  ‘Yes, Jonathan.’

  ‘I don’t have to race with Seagull. I could go in your boat, if you prefer.’

  His father did not reply for a little while. ‘It is not a question of what I prefer, Jonathan,’ Totton said at last. ‘You have made your choice.’

  ‘But I could change, Father.’

  ‘Really? I don’t think so.’ There was just a hint of coldness in the voice. ‘Besides, you have already promised your friend to go with him.’

  The boy understood. He perceived that he had hurt his father, that now his father was hitting back with this quiet rejection. He was so sorry, now, that he had wounded him, and afraid, too, of losing his love; for his father was all he had. If only he did not make it so difficult.

  ‘He would understand, Father. I’d rather go in your boat.’

  Not true, thought the merchant, but aloud he said: ‘You gave your word, Jonathan. You must keep it.’

  And now came the other matter that had been on the boy’s mind. ‘Father, you remember at the salterns you told me that if I knew a secret I promised not to tell, that I must keep my promise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well … If I tell you something and ask you to keep it a secret, but I don’t exactly tell you everything, because if I did, that would be giving away the other secret … Would that be all right?’

  ‘You want to tell me something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A secret?’

  ‘Between us, Father. Because you’re my father,’ he added hopefully.

  ‘I see. Very well.’

  ‘Well …’ Jonathan paused. ‘Father, I think you’re going to lose this race.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘But you are sure of it?’

  ‘Pretty sure.’

  ‘There is nothing further you wish to say, Jonathan?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  Totton was silent for a little while. Then his shadow began to recede and the door slowly closed.

  ‘Goodnight, Father,’ said Jonathan. But there was no reply.

  The morning of the race was overcast. During the night the wind had turned and was now coming down from the north; but it seemed to Alan Seagull that it might yet change again. His canny eyes glanced out at the waters of the estuary. He wasn’t sure he liked the weather. One thing was certain: they would have a fast crossing to the island.

  And after that? His eyes scanned the crowded quay. He was looking for someone.

  Yesterday had been strange indeed. He had made bargains before, but never one so unexpected. Surprising though the business was, many things had been resolved.

  One of these was the fate of young Jonathan.

  The scene at the quay was lively. The whole of Lymington had gathered there. The two boats, moored by the waterside, were clearly contrasted. The Southampton vessel was not a full-size merchant ship but the more modest short sea-trader known as a hoy. Its size was forty tuns – which meant that in theory it could carry forty of the huge, two-hundred-and-fifty-gallon casks of wine that were then in use for the big shipments from the Continent. Broad, clinker-built of oak, with only a single mast and a large, square sail, the hoy looked primitive when compared with the great three-masted ships, six times its size, which the English merchants usually imported from the shipbuilders of the Continent. But it served its purpose well enough in coastal waters and could easily make the Channel crossing to Normandy. It carried a crew of twenty.

  Seagull’s boat, although of similar construction, was only half its size. Besides the two boys, it had a hand-picked crew of ten, plus Seagull himself.

  The cargo carried by each vessel was typical for the run across to the Isle of Wight: sacks of wool, fardels of finished cloth, casks of wine, some bales of silk. For extra ballast the Southampton boat also carried ten hundredweight of iron. Both boats had been inspected by the mayor and declared fully laden.

  The terms of the race had been carefully worked out between the
parties and it was the mayor who now called the two ship’s masters together on the quay and rehearsed them.

  ‘You cross to Yarmouth fully laden. You unload on to the quay there. You return unladen, but with the same crew. The first back is the winner.’ He looked at them both severely. Seagull he knew; the big, black-bearded master from Southampton he did not. ‘On my orders you will cast off and row out to midstream. When I wave the flag, you may hoist sail or row forward as you wish. But if you foul the other boat then or at any time during the race, you will be judged the loser. I will decide who is first back and my decision on all matters is final.’

  The two-way crossings, laden and unladen, the unloading, the opportunity to use oar and sail and the changeability of the weather – all these had added enough uncertainty, the mayor had judged, to make the race worth watching; although personally he couldn’t see how the bigger boat could fail to win and had placed his own bet accordingly.

  The Southampton man nodded, scowled at Seagull, but held out his hand nonetheless. Seagull took it briefly. But his eyes were hardly on the other mariner. He was still scanning the crowd.

  And now he saw who he was looking for. As he turned back to his boat, he called Willie over to him. ‘You see Richard Albion, son?’ He pointed to the gentleman. ‘Run quickly and ask him if he still wants to bet five pounds against me winning the race.’

  Willie did as he was told and a minute later returned. ‘He said yes, Dad.’

  ‘Good.’ Seagull nodded to himself. ‘Now just you run back to him and tell him I’ll take his bet, if he cares to lay it with a working man.’

  ‘You, Dad? You’re betting?’

  ‘That’s right, son.’

  ‘Five pounds? Have you got five pounds, Dad?’ The boy gazed at him in astonishment. ‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t.’

  ‘But Dad, you never bet!’

  ‘Are you arguing with me, boy?’

  ‘No, Dad. But …’

  ‘Off you go, then.’

  So Willie ran back to Richard Albion who received the offer with almost as much surprise as the boy. Without hesitation, however, he came striding across to Seagull’s boat. ‘Do I hear you’ll really take a bet on this race?’ he enquired.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I never thought I’d live to see the day that Alan Seagull took a bet. What’ll it be, then?’ His sparkling blue eyes gave just a hint of concern on the mariner’s behalf. ‘No one will take my five pounds, so name your figure and I’ll be honoured.’

  ‘Five pounds is all right with me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The rich gentlemen had no wish to ruin the mariner. ‘I’m getting a bit nervous about five pounds myself. Couldn’t we make it a mark? Two if you like.’

  ‘No. Five pounds you offered, five pounds I took.’

  Albion hesitated only another second, then decided that to question the mariner any further would be to insult him. ‘Done, then,’ he cried and gave Alan his hand, before striding back to the watching crowd. ‘You’ll never guess,’ he announced to them, ‘what’s just happened.’

  It only took a couple of minutes for the whole of Lymington to be buzzing with this unexpected news – and scarcely a couple more before there were theories about what it meant. Why was Seagull suddenly abandoning the habit of a lifetime? Had he lost his head? Had he got five pounds anyway, or had he found someone to stake him. One thing seemed clear: if he was betting, then he must know something they didn’t.

  ‘He knows we’re going to win,’ cried Burrard, cock-a-hoop.

  Was it so? Those who had bet against the mariner began to look uncomfortable. Some of them, standing near Totton, turned to him nervously. What was going on, they demanded? ‘We were following you,’ they reminded him.

  Henry Totton had already endured some chaff when it had been noticed that his son was in Seagull’s boat. ‘Your son’s sailing with the opposition?’ his friends had cried. He had treated the question with perfect equanimity. ‘He’s still friends with the little Seagull boy,’ he had replied calmly. ‘He wanted to go with him.’

  ‘I would have stopped him,’ one merchant remarked grumpily.

  ‘Why?’ Totton had given a quiet smile. ‘My son’s extra weight and will undoubtedly get in the way. I think he’ll cost Seagull a furlong at least.’ This shrewdness had drawn some appreciative laughs.

  So now, as they looked at him accusingly, he only shrugged. ‘Seagull has made a bet, like the rest of us.’

  ‘Yes. But he never bets.’

  ‘And he is probably wise.’ He looked round their faces. ‘Has it not occurred to any of you that he may have made a mistake? He may lose.’ And faced with this further piece of common sense, there wasn’t much anyone could say. There was a feeling, all the same, that there was something fishy about the business.

  Nor was this suspicion confined to the spectators. Down in the boat, Willie Seagull was looking at his father curiously, while the mariner, his leather hat squashed at a jaunty angle on his head, leaned very comfortably against a cask of wine. ‘What are you up to, Dad?’ he whispered.

  But all Seagull did was murmur a short sea-shanty:

  Hot or cold, by land or sea

  Things are not always what they seem to be.

  And that was all Willie could get out of him until the mayor’s voice cried: ‘Cast off.’

  Jonathan Totton was happy. To be with his friend Willie, and the mariner on their boat – and for such an event – it did not seem to him that heaven itself could be much better.

  It was a bracing scene. The little river between the high green slopes on its banks had a silvery tinge. The sky was grey but luminous, the ribs of the clouds spreading southwards. Pale seagulls wheeled round the masts and dipped over the reeds, the waterside echoing with their cries. The two boats were out in midstream now, the Southampton boat nearer the eastern bank. At the quay it had looked larger, but to Jonathan, now, down on the water, the hoy with its built-up platforms fore and aft seemed to tower over the fishing boat.

  The crew were all ready. There were four men on the oars, but only to keep the boat steady in the stream. The rest were in position to raise the sail. Seagull was on the tiller, the two boys, for the time being, crouched down in front of him. As Jonathan looked up at the mariner’s face, with its dark wisps of beard against the gleaming grey sky, it looked, for a moment, strangely sinister. But he put that thought from him as being foolish. And just then, on the shore, the mayor must have waved his flag, for Seagull nodded and said: ‘Now.’ The boys looked forward as the square sail went up with a flap and the four men on the oars gave a few good pulls, and in a few moments they were moving down the stream with the north wind pressing behind them.

  Looking across to the quay, Jonathan could see his father’s face watching them. He wanted to get up and wave to him, but he did not because he was not sure his father would like it. Soon the borough on its sloping crest was falling behind. A shaft of light through a break in the cloud lit up the town’s roofs for a few brief, rather eerie moments; then the clouds closed and greyness descended. They were slipping downstream fast. The trees on the river bank intervened and the borough was lost to sight.

  The smaller craft was able to pick up speed more quickly so that they had moved just ahead of the Southampton boat for the moment. They were in a long reach, now. To the right lay the open wastes of Pennington Marshes; to the left a strip of muddy marsh; and ahead, past a broad tract of mud banks that the high tide had submerged, the choppy waters of the Solent.

  For sailors, the Solent harbours had some remarkable benefits. At first sight, the entrance to the Lymington river might have seemed unpromising. Across the river-mouth, stretching from below Beaulieu in the east to beyond Pennington Marshes in the west – some seven miles in all and over a mile wide in places – lay vast mud-flats, through which various streams cut narrow channels. Rich in nutrients, growing eelgrass and algae, this large feeding area produced molluscs, s
nails and worms in their billions, which in turn supported a huge population, some year round, some migrant, of waders, ducks, geese, cormorants, herons, terns and gulls. A paradise for birds but not, one might suppose, for mariners. Its virtue for shipping, however, lay in two features. One was the obvious fact that the whole twenty-mile stretch of water was sheltered by the comfortable mass of the Isle of Wight, at whose eastern and western ends one entered the sea. But the real key was not the shelter. It was the tides.

  The tidal system of the English Channel operates rather like a see-saw, oscillating about a fulcrum, or node line. At each end of England’s south coast, the waters rise and fall considerably. At the central node, although much water washes back and forth, the water level remains relatively constant. Because the Solent lies quite near the node its tidal rise and fall is modest. But the barrier of the Isle of Wight adds another factor. For as the tide in the English Channel rises, it fills the Solent from both ends, thereby setting up a complex set of internal tides. In the western Solent, where Lymington lies, the tide usually rises with a gentle current for seven hours. There is then a long stand – sometimes, in fact, there are two high waters a couple of hours apart. Then there is a short, fast ebb tide, which scours out a deep channel in the narrows by the western end of the Isle of Wight. All this is perfect for the shipping using the big port of Southampton.

  And even modest Lymington was amply favoured. By high water, the huge mudflats were all submerged. The little river channel was easy to see and deep enough for the draught of any of the merchant vessels then in use.

  As they entered the Solent now, the boat began to pitch against the dark and choppy waves that the wind had raised; but it was quite a light motion and Jonathan enjoyed it. Ahead lay the broad slopes of the Isle of Wight, only four miles away. Their destination, the small harbour of Yarmouth, was almost directly opposite. Looking east, he could see the great funnel of the Solent, rolling away for fifteen miles, a huge grey corridor of sky and water. On the west side, past the marshes and Keyhaven, a long sand and gravel spit with a hooked end came out for a mile from the coast towards the chalk cliffs of the island and, through the narrow channel between, Jonathan could see the open sea. The salt spray stung his face. He felt exhilarated.