***Chapter 13***
***The Death of Beauty***
Beauty passed away quietly one bitter winter's night when a cruel frost lay hard on the ground and glitter-bright stars hung high in the sky, when breath curled like smoke and iciness gnawed into bones, when only the very foolish and the very desperate ventured outdoors.
In the quaint Yorkshire villages such as Whisteldown, families flirted with their own mortality, sitting by unguarded cottage fires, their only source of warmth, close as they dared, children asleep on parents' knees with bedclothes wrapped around shivering little bodies, mother and fathers often still booted and gloved themselves.
Singing Billy, a scrawny, straggly-haired man with a cut-glass accent, said to have had his mind unhinged after the horrors he saw in the Great War, who many years ago had "stopped by" in Yorkshire "on his travels" and who was a familiar figure in the villages, carrying a broken-handled basket with all he owned or dancing a crazy jig and singing tuneless half-songs to earn enough coppers to buy his beer, some weeks later in the yellow light of spring, and just when everyone believed him to have finally upped sticks and moved on, was found frozen to death in an abandoned barn, a newspaper of that date folded inside his shabby coat.
The stable however was warm and cosy. Few draughts ever managed to seep inside, Beauty's heavy horse blanket was, as it was every cold night, across her back, and a family of field mice having made their new home there only that very same morning, nestled thankfully in the hay.
She had been listless for some days and, approached by Jimmy, Arthur Maddocks had agreed to call out a vet "the very best that money can buy" he added kindly, aware of how much the horse meant to him even if he himself had little interest in riding and horses these days and his wife, since the accident, positively detested them.
And so, exactly one week before, Sir David Holland, the most distinguished and expensive veterinary surgeon in the country and a leading expert on equine health care, had arrived at Follyfoot to examine Beauty, composed for her a personal and costly diet that Arthur readily and generously agreed to provide, prescribed appropriate medication and, on overhearing Hargreaves berating a weeping young scullery maid for being a "useless, clumsy idiot", picked up the tray of bread rolls she'd dropped, put Keeper of Keys firmly in his place with a stern promise the incident of bullying would be reported to his employers, and thus departed, leaving the blushing young girl's heart aflutter over his chivalry and handsomeness and to later dramatically declare tearfully to her best friend she was "'opelessly in love with a toff".
But no amount of money and the medicine it bought, no amount of love and kindness or acts of chivalry by debonair gentlemen could mend Beauty's broken heart and bring her back from death when it came.
A motley collection of Follyfoot workers gathered in the January gloom to witness the burial - at Prudence's insistence, "somewhere, anywhere other than at Follyfoot Farm", that somewhere, anywhere turning out to be in an adjacent field also owned by the Maddocks.
Despite her hatred of horses, blaming them unfairly for the accident that damaged her looks, Prudence had said nothing when so much money was spent on Beauty's wellbeing but now that "the beast" was dead she saw no more reason to keep her counsel. And, besides the burial, there was another matter on which she stood firm: there was to be nothing, she stipulated, to mark where Beauty lay. No plaque, no gravestone, no flowers. All trace of her must be wiped away.
Arthur loved his wife too much to refuse her anything but his generous nature wasn't yet done. Having hired men with heavy machinery to remove the corpse and dig the grave, he gave those staff who wished to attend the short ceremony the time off to do so and, knowing how much Beauty would be missed, had even hoped to say a few words, but at the very last minute pressing Government business dictated otherwise.
Peggy and Johnjo, heart-scalded when the grass was again flattened over the earth, the men who had performed the task left, checking pocket-watches and worrying about whether or not they'd make it in time to the next job, and people hurried back to work, back to everyday life, as though nothing had happened, turned to their beloved Dada in bewilderment.
"Ma said the angels would take Beauty up to Heaven! How will they find her?"
Peggy furiously stamped her foot, while Johnjo took out his frustration by wrapping his arms in a vice-like grip around his father's knees and screaming he didn't want Dada to go, for Jimmy, though devastated by Beauty's death, was required to drive Mr Maddocks to the emergency meeting of Parliament.
Davey clapped a hand on Jimmy's shoulder, his own eyes shining with tears. Working alongside his friend, he had stopped seeing the horses as simply a job that put money in his pocket and become very fond of both Beauty and Magic.
"I'll take the bairns back for yer, Jim. If Rosie's still workin' at the laundry I'll mind 'em till she can get off. That is, if yer wouldn't mind, Mr Maddocks? You could dock my wages and I'd work back the time I owed, double, if yer likes."
The teenager had shot up in the last couple of years, towering above many of the Follyfoot staff including Hargreaves, who no longer dared bully him. He was still prone to knocking things over and he would never be a scholar although, thanks to Jimmy patiently teaching him the three Rs, he knew enough to get by, but there was an air of quiet confidence and responsibility about him nowadays and Arthur had had no hesitation in agreeing to Jimmy's suggestion that Davey, already interested in plants and vegetation, learnt the trade of gardening. He had asked Caldwell the gardener, a quiet man whose family had worked for the Maddocks for generations, to keep an eye on him and his reports back to his employer had been glowing.
"That won't be necessary." Arthur smiled. "Take as much time as needed. I know I can trust you not to take advantage."
Unlike in the old days, he was tempted to add, but bit his tongue. Davy often amused him with his refreshingly honest "do it first, ask the Maddocks later" philosophy and he marvelled that from being a shiftless youth almost certainly destined for the same fate as his drunken, workshy father, he had become one of his most reliable employees.
He didn't trouble himself to console Peggy and Johnjo as he, Jimmy, and the boy sent by Hargreaves to run all the way from the manor house and breathlessly deliver the urgent telephone message he was wanted at Parliament, turned back towards the path. Children, as far as Arthur was concerned, were brainless, uninteresting creatures who snivelled frequently, demanded constant attention and caused all manner of problems. He was glad he and Prudence were agreed they had no intention whatsoever of having any.
"Now listen, you's two." Davey stooped down to the little ones after Jimmy had given his son and daughter hasty farewell kisses and hugs. "We're gonna fix it so's the angels know exactly where to find Beauty. Got it?" He winked, pinched their noses and produced a bag of sweets from his pocket. He had long since stopped believing in any God but he respected his workmate's Christian views and a white lie wouldn't hurt.
Peggy and Johnjo, calmer now, faces stained with dried-out tear streaks and cheeks bulging with toffees, nodded solemnly. Although courting quite seriously and planning to marry Beth in a few years, at heart Davey was, and always would be, a child. Unlike the sedate adults who returned via the long path that led to the very top of Whistledown Lane, the three took their own, much quicker route back to Follyfoot Farm, simply pushing their way through frosted long grass, hedges and brambles, jumping over the narrow ditch and scrambling over the fence, where Davey, after lifting the youngsters safely over the barbed wire, paused to untangle a long thread of cotton that had caught from his shirt.
The short-cut had led them directly to the Follyfoot stables, where a large, old tree with thickened truck had stood many a year, its spreading branches like welcoming hands, stripped bare now by winter, but every spring growing defiantly anew until by summer it would again be covered with thick, lush green leaves under which Davey, in his early days of employment, had often sat snoozing while Beauty and Magic peered out over the stable doors to whinny and shake their heads as if in disbelief at his idleness.
"Wait there a mo, kids," Davey instructed the curious youngsters, and he disappeared into a stable, returning almost immediately with a small knife procured from his workbag.
"Now then, to work, slackers!" He grinned, and two pairs of small mittened hands took turns at being guided by his large fist as he helped them carve slowly and carefully across the tree's elderly bark. At last Davey proclaimed the job done and that the angels would now have no trouble in locating Beauty.
Pleased with themselves, Davey, Peggy and Johnjo stood back to admire their handiwork as a cold wind picked up an errant smattering of January snow and whipped their scarves across their faces. Beauty's name and an arrow pointing in the direction of the field was carved there forever.
Except Davey had never quite mastered the art of spelling and the trio remained blissfully unaware that the word read "Booty", a mistake which, many years later, would cause some local children, heads full of dreams from watching a Saturday matinee at the popular Ashtree picture house, to dig around the sodden earth of Follyfoot, convinced that, long ago, bank robbers must have hidden thousands of pounds somewhere near the Haunted Tree of the Haunted Farm.
Few people knew it as Follyfoot Farm anymore.
Empty and neglected as it was, with rainwater gushing over broken slates and into the deserted manor house, grass overgrown and flowers choked by weeds, stables burnt out and derelict, farmhouse shutters, where nails had rusted and fallen, clattering with the wind whistling eerily down from the Yorkshire Moors. There had long been rumours that galloping hooves might be heard here by midnight. There was, some said, a strange sense of waiting...
Ah, but that's another tale, a tale of a Lightning Tree, and one I shall tell in the next chapter…