be, this, is it? If you're bad with maps and directions?"
"In the wood, you mean? But I've had help." She gestured to the south and he saw she was pointing to a distant knoll where an enormous oak stood beyond the wood itself. "I very carefully kept that tree in sight and on my right as I came into the wood and now that it's on my left, I feel fairly sure I'm heading in the direction of the car park. So you see, despite stumbling onto a thatching site and into a cow pasture, I'm not entirely hopeless."
"That's Nelson's," he said.
"What? D'you mean someone owns the tree? It's on private property?"
"No. It's on Crown land, all right. It's called Nelson's Oak. Supposedly he planted it.
Lord Nelson, that is."
"Ah. I see."
He looked at her more closely. She'd sucked in on her lip, and it came to him that she might not actually know who Lord Nelson was. Some people didn't in this day and age. To help her out while not embarrassing her, he said, "Admiral Nelson had his ships built over Buckler's Hard. Beyond Beaulieu. You know the place? On the estuary? They were using up a hell of a lot of timber, so they had to start replanting. Nelson probably didn't put any acorns in the ground himself but the tree's associated with him anyway."
"I'm not from this place," she told him. "But I expect you worked that out yourself." She extended her hand. "Gina Dickens," she said. "No relation. I know this is Tess - " with a nod at the dog who'd settled herself happily at Gina's side - "but I don't know you."
"Gordon Jossie," he told her and clasped her hand. The soft touch of it brought to mind how work roughened he himself was. How filthy as well, considering he'd spent all day on a rooftop. "I reckoned as much."
"What?"
"That you weren't from round here."
"Yes. Well, I suppose the natives don't get lost as easily as I do, do they?"
"Not that. Your feet."
She looked down. "What's wrong with them?"
"The sandals you were wearing at Boldre Gardens and now those," he said. "Why've you got on wellies? You going into the bog or something?"
She did that bit with her mouth again. He wondered if it meant she was trying not to laugh. "You're a country person, aren't you, so you'll think I'm foolish. It's the adders," she said. "I've read they're in the New Forest and I didn't want to run into one. Now you're going to laugh at me, aren't you?"
He did have to smile. "Expect to run into snakes in the forest, then?" He didn't wait for an answer. "They're out on the heath. They'll be where there's more sun. Could be you might run into one on the path as you cross the bog, but it's not very likely."
"I can see I should have consulted you before I changed my clothes. Have you lived here forever?"
"Ten years. I came down from Winchester."
"But so have I!" She gave a look in the direction she'd come from and said, "Shall I walk with you for a while, Gordon Jossie? I know no one in the area and I'd love to chat, and as you look harmless and you're out here with the sweetest dog ... ?"
He shrugged. "Suit yourself. But I'm just following Tess. We don't need to walk at all.
She'll take herself into the wood and come back when she's ready ...I mean if you'd rather sit instead of walk."
"Oh, I would actually. Truth to tell, I've had quite a ramble already."
He nodded to the log on which he himself had been seated when she'd first emerged from the trees. They sat a careful few feet from each other, but Tess didn't leave them, as he'd thought she would. Rather, she settled next to Gina. She sighed and put her head on her paws.
"Likes you," he noted. "Empty places need filling."
"How true," she said.
She sounded regretful, so he asked her the obvious. It was unusual for someone her age to move into the country. Young adults generally migrated in the other direction. She said, "Well, yes. It was a relationship gone very bad," but she said it with a smile. "So here I am. I'm hoping to work with pregnant teenagers. That's what I did in Winchester."
"Did you?"
"You sound surprised. Why?"
"You don't look much more'n a teenager yourself."
She lowered her sunglasses down her nose and looked at him over their tops. "Are you