Jos sat his grey overlooking the expanse of Mayo’s. From the top of the hill he had a splendid view as the countryside rolled away to right and left. He shook his head in amazement. It was incredible how a bungling fool could so start a ruination. It was impossible to believe that it was only a year since James Mayo’s death. How could land go back so in such a short space of time?
Jos had been deeply shocked when he first heard about George. That drink could damn a man he knew only too well. He had not allowed for the fact that it could also muddle his senses and addle his wits. Only the entailment had saved the property and kept it intact at least. The horses—the proud Mayo’s greys—had all been sold long ago to pay for drink.
Jos shook his head again unhappily. It grieved him to see the proud Mayos reduced to this, though how Sarah would have chortled. At this rate there would be precious little left for Jon to inherit but a mass of debts.
He had not learned this all at once upon his return. For many weeks he had been too busy seeing his solicitor and making legal arrangements to safeguard his property for his son. It had taken time but after three months he had considered himself established as a man of property should be.
Jos had been surprised at the old Squire’s attitude when they first met. Particularly, he felt, after the Squire having sold old Sarah’s cottage should learn its new owner.
The old gentleman had ridden over one day and Jos had been more than prepared for a shouting match. The man on the brown hack was weary. Some of the spark had left him. He seemed but a bag of bones which moved automatically.
Jos had invited him into his cottage, proud to show off what he had already achieved. With a careful loan through his solicitors he had extended the original structure and it now boasted two large downstairs rooms with three big bedrooms. One of these doubled as a living-room for his housekeeper, an amiable widow from the village. She was thankful to keep his house, feed him and not have to offer anything else.
The furniture was solid yet graceful. The rugs scattered over the stone floors were thick and warm to the booted feet. A cheery log fire burned in the hearth. From the kitchen wafted smells of soups and meats. Copper pans, burnished like gold, hung like soldiers from pegs on one wall while jars of preserves and spices marched cheek by jowl with bacon flitches, hanging from ceiling hooks. The whole building had not just an air of prosperity and solidity, it extended the warm welcome of a real home.
The Squire had a fleeting thought for his own stark house and the even more dismal welcome he could only ever expect at Mayo’s. He eyed Jos thoughtfully, sipping the hot toddy offered to him by the housekeeper.
‘You’ve come up in the world, Jos!’ he said, nodding at the room in general.
Jos smiled quietly and said nothing. He watched his son crawling over a clip rug intent on some involved game of his own making.
‘I made a bad deal for my gal. I should have let you wed her when she wanted,’ the Squire admitted slowly.
‘Maybe it was all for the best. For myself I can say a wife isn’t everything. What wife could give me more than I have now? I would never allow myself to be tied to a woman again!’ Jos replied firmly.
‘Mayo’s has come down in the world. That would have pleased old Sarah!’
Jos snorted. ‘It pleases me too! It’ll come down even further while that fool George lives with the port bottle at his elbow!’
‘But you just go up and up!’ the Squire stated in admiration.
Where had the old Jos gone? This man sitting opposite him was an assured gentleman of the world. Jos’s prowess as a horseman had preceded his return to the county. He was affluent. That was the only way to describe him.
He even had these new-fangled loose boxes erected for his best horses, those two Mayo’s greys. While twelve stalls at the back of the cottage were regularly filled with animals he was breaking and schooling for the gentry.
The Squire knew that James Mayo had left Jos the land. He guessed that Jos had done well in the Midlands but to have the solidity to acquire a loan to found his horse stud—the Squire’s mind boggled. Who would have thought it? Certainly not him!
‘Why, look at his workers!’ mused the Squire. ‘He employs six stable lads and pays them twenty pounds a year and their keep! I’ve heard tell the stud groom gets double that too! Fancy being able to afford such fantastic wages to common workers. It’s bad though. All the men want to work for him and everyone else can go to hell. He’s not liked for it—and I don’t believe he gives a damn either about public feeling among the landowners. How does he do it? What is there about him?’
The Squire knew that Jos had obtained a row of cottages in the village where he housed his married workers. The single lads lived and fed in a bothy, their creature comforts attended to by a female cook and two serving wenches.
Jos watched the old man and read his obvious thoughts. They gave him immense satisfaction. He felt pity for the Squire. An old man, with an empty title, worth precious little and having no one really to care for him in his old age. Above all, he knew the sad man had made a terrible mistake.
Jos saw him often after than day. The Squire developed the habit of riding past often. Between the two men an odd friendship grew. It amused Jos and warmed the Squire’s heart.
As yet Jos had not met either of the Mayos. That interesting event took place shortly before the harvest. It had been a splendid summer. With his new machines Jos had succeeded in making two hay crops and history at the same time. The hay now stood, neatly stacked, in three large ricks at the rear of the stables. Jos’s oats promised to yield just as well. He saw that with satisfaction and all things being equal, his property would be self-sufficient throughout the winter.
Jos had named his property Ferndale after the old Howard house which had been destroyed in Sarah’s days. His stallion he called Mayho, combining the first letters of both Mayo and Howard. His in-foal mare he called Grace. She had been served with a thoroughbred from Somerset and Jos had great hopes of the foal. Whether it be filly or colt it would be a foundation animal for the Ferndale Stud with the famous grey bloodline. Mayho he used as a travelling stallion during the breeding season as well as on four mares which he had carefully purchased.
Jos loved Mayho and so did Peter. Already the boy showed no fear when the stallion danced and squealed with pride. Jos knew that the blood had run as true in his son as in the grey. Peter would be a horseman. His father would teach him everything he knew.
On the momentous day of the Mayo-Howard meeting Jos was riding Mayho around his fifty acres.
Jos rode out into the long lane which communicated between Mayo’s and the Squire’s. There, so long ago, he had seen his first Mayo’s grey.
From the opposite end of the lane he spotted two riders approaching at a slow walk. To his rear he heard the clop of more hooves. He turned in the saddle, saw the Squire coming up at the trot and waved, waiting for him. At the same time, he watched the riders approaching from his front.
He saw one was a woman sitting side-saddle, her long brown habit waving in the breeze. The other he recognized as George Mayo. A nerve fluttered in his throat. They had to meet sometime. It was amazing that during the time he had been back, they had not met before this. He wondered idly if this was George’s doing.
‘Daughter and son-in-law,’ Jos said, nodding to the Squire in the riders’ direction. He watched the old man pull a face, his eyes grew sad as he watched his daughter ride towards him.
Jos stared in horrified amazement. This was never his Maud. Not this tired, beaten woman with a lock of grey hair showing under her bonnet. Her face was a mixture of the young and old. Lines creased her forehead yet the cheeks still held the pink flush of youth. She sat her saddle as if worn-out. Even so her eyes still held fire. Jos felt them burning into his with an expression he could not name but which made him recoil uneasily.
He switched his gaze to his enemy. His interest was cool and dispassionate. George’s face was a mess. Jos supposed he should have felt pride at what his fists had done but only a deep pity stirred in him. This man, his own age, looked forty. A horribly broken nose sat slantwise, there was a thick coarse red scar above one eyebrow and the once slender lips were thick and ugly. The drink had left its indelible mark. His complexion displayed that over-ruddy alcoholic glow and the eyes were distant.
Jos slowly shook his head. Perhaps it was this movement which attracted George’s attention. No one quite knew what happened to him. Events moved with a speed almost beyond the eye’s ability to register. Wagging tongues over tankards of ale all said afterwards that George Mayo had a brain storm.
The truth of the matter was that George had the biggest shock of his whole life. He knew Jos Howard was back. He had heard he was even doing well but port and bad living do not give a man sharp wits. He had never forgotten the beating from Jos’s fists. It was a recurring nightmare of magnific horror which always left him dripping sweat and crying aloud with moans.
To be confronted suddenly with the man who had ruined his face, the man who had given him such terrible dreams, shocked George Mayo back into the present with an explosion. Jos Howard represented everything bad to which George was now heir. Before the astonished eyes of them all he dug sharp spurs into the chestnut’s flanks and charged at Jos’s stallion. They were all taken by surprise, Jos most of all.
What George thought he could actually do was never clear. It was conceded that his brain was too befuddled for logical thought. For this one instance, though, George was thinking like any sane man. The bloodlust swept through him and his hands itched to fasten themselves around Jos’s throat.
The terrified chestnut crashed into Jos’s stallion, throwing the shocked animal back on its hindlegs, hooves slithering to retain a footing. The chestnut half reared and George leaned out of the saddle, slashing with his switch.
Jos felt sharp pain across his cheeks. He ducked frantically, at the same time trying to control his stallion. The grey’s temper flared and he attacked the chestnut in rage. For two seconds Jos stared into George’s eyes. They mirrored a life-time’s hate. They discharged a loathing so deep and venomous that inwardly Jos shuddered.
He heard Maud scream frantically. He also heard the Squire shouting wildly, then George was at him again, taking advantage of his surprise attack. The switch flailed down, again and again. It cut the skin of Jos’s face, giving him blinding pain. With this pain his own temper flared like a winter gale.
He fought the stallion, bringing him down on all four legs, driving with his heels, parrying the blows with his right hand. Now the chestnut backed away, ignoring the spurs. Blood streamed down its red coat.
It panicked, it reared high, going up and up into the sky, teetering on its hocks and George was finished. He had little real skill as a horseman. He had none when frightened and George Mayo was a frightened man now. He had regained his true sanity, realized what he had done and knew, instinctively, he could never best Jos Howard.
He grabbed frantically at the reins to keep his balance and signed his own death sentence. The cruel curb bit, with its painfully high port, crashed up against the tender bars of the chestnut’s mouth in a sheet of pain.
The chestnut flung its head back to dodge the pain and, already standing nearly vertical, went too far and lost his balance. The hind hooves scrambled wildly backwards but slowly, almost beautifully, the horse fell over, the man underneath.
An experienced horseman might possibly have lived. He could have twisted his body sideways and saved part of himself. George was frozen into stillness. The ground came up, hard and fast. The last picture his eyes ever filmed were of tangled red hairs from the chestnut’s mane hurtling towards him.
There was a dull thud. A second’s silence then his back and neck snapped. George Mayo died. The horse fell better, partly protected by the man as a cushion. The animal, frightened out of its wits, panicked, thrashing around with its hooves, struggling to regain its footing. Its off-fore reached out, and found a hold. The chestnut heaved and started rising. He slipped and with an ugly crack the cannon bone snapped. The chestnut opened his mouth and screamed in sheer agony.
It was bedlam, Jos realized afterwards. His own stallion was screeching with boiling anger. Maud was screaming her head off like a demented soul. The Squire was roaring and futilely waving his crop about in the air.
Jos drove with his heels, used wrists and hands and brought the stallion back under disciplined control. He flung himself out of the saddle, jerking the pistol he always carried from its saddle holster.
Jos sprang over the still suffering chestnut. One look was enough to show him George was dead. He grabbed Maud, brought his hand round and slapped her hard across the face. She flinched and looked up at him in horror. Jos grabbed her arm and pulled her away. He thrust her into the arms of the Squire who, like Maud, had dismounted and was standing dithering from one foot to another.
‘Hold her! Keep her looking the other way!’ Jos snapped at the bewildered old man.
Jos approached the chestnut warily but the animal was far too concerned with its own pain to snap at a mere man. Jos saw the dangling foreleg. Sparks of pain were shooting from bewildered brown eyes. Lifting his pistol, taking aim, he destroyed the horse. The animal stilled, hovered, then lost its balance and crashed down on the dry earth. Everywhere was silent again, except for a gentle whimpering which seeped into Jos’s ears. He realized it came from Maud, held tightly in her father’s arms.
Jos rubbed his hand over his burning face. He felt the salty taste of blood on a lip and wondered if George had marked him for life. It was an interesting question which he would have to answer later.
He pulled the man’s body from under the horse’s hindlegs. Removing his coat he covered the hideous face then slowly stood and looked at Maud and the Squire.
Maud turned and stared back at him. Her eyes were needle points of hatred. They scorched Jos’s soul.
‘Maud! Maud!’ he said gently, walking towards her.
‘Keep away from me!’ she hissed back and he halted in shock.
‘But Maud!’ the Squire started to remonstrate gently.
Maud Mayo jerked herself away from her father’s arms and stared up at Jos, lips drawn back showing bared teeth.
‘It’s all your doing!’ she spat accusingly.
Jos was too stunned to reply at first. ‘What do you mean, my doing? I didn’t attack him!’ he protested wildly.
‘Everything’s your fault, Jos Howard! And to think I once nearly married you!’ Scorn whipped through her voice.
Jos stood frozen, utterly bewildered. The Squire’s mouth gaped and the two men looked at each other, stupefied by her words.
‘I’m now a widow—at my age—and have a son to bring up and not a penny piece to my name!’
‘Well, that’s not my fault!’ Jos retorted quietly.
‘Of course it’s your fault!’ she snapped at him. ‘It’s you who ruined my husband’s looks and drove him to the drink in the first place! It’s you who terrified him so much that he never once, in our married life, slept the whole night through without screaming your name! You’re bad, Jos Howard. Bad through and through! Oh, my word, George was so right when he said he hated you more than anything else in this world. That old fool his father couldn’t or wouldn’t see it but George’s mother could! And so could George! And where is he now? Lying there dead—to prove it!’
‘Maud, my dear!’ the Squire began again unhappily.
‘Oh, don’t you start doddering around me. I’ve enough on now to rear a son on money I don’t have!’
‘But you have the land, daughter!’
‘Fat lot of good that is; it’s entailed, it’s not mine. I can’t sell it to get some money!’
‘You can use it!’ Jos told her coldly.
Jos looked at Maud steadily. He had been told that the true person only came to the surface in times of crisis. It occurred to him that he had, perhaps, been lucky. Perhaps saved something quite appalling. Right now, Maud Mayo acted and spoke like a mad woman. She was beyond reason. Words flowed from her mouth which she had never learned from her gentle father. Only from drunken George could she have learned these foul obscenities. Jos was sickened.
‘Use it? Use it? With what?’ Maud screamed at him.
‘There’s bad blood in you, Jos Howard!’ she raved on. Saliva trickled from her lips. Her eyes became bold and glassy as she worked herself into a rage. ‘But what can you expect from a bastard? A beggar whose mother was a kitchen slut, and whose Grandpa a murderer!’
Jos went white. His fists clenched and he stepped towards her. He swelled, the muscles of his neck standing out like steel cords. Maud was stilled into silence, dwarfed by this now angry giant. One hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes opened wide, showing whites tinged with yellow. She caught her breath, fear and reason stilled her tongue.
‘I’ve never struck a woman in my life yet,’ Jos told her quietly. ‘But there’s always a first time and I swear by God, Maud Mayo, you let any more filth like that out of your mouth either before me or anyone else and this will take every tooth from your gums!’
His giant fist emphasized the threat, brandished within an inch of her lips.
‘Your mouth will stay shut, once and for all!’
Maud cringed like a whipped cur. Her arms covered her breast in an instinctive female gesture. Her head bent aside, eyes slit, watching him in apprehension.
The Squire stood in horror. This frozen tableau of fear before his eyes was unreal. It had to be.
A bird flew over and the scene altered. The man moved, lowering his hand, loosening his thick fingers, stretching his biceps. His face was sculptured in lines of scorn and disgust as if looking at a diseased foulness which had crept from some horrible hole in the ground.
An honest face now marred by two crimson weals which would become permanent scars.
This isn’t Jos, the Squire told himself. This was some devil sent to haunt him. As the devil stepped back, lowered his head and half-turned, he became young Jos again.
And the harridan, where had he seen her before? He had once had a daughter. A charming, gentle girl. Was that slavering hag with the half-crazed eyes and dribbling lips all that was left? For the remainder of his life the tableau would haunt him.
Jos turned. With slow, measured steps he gathered up the reins and swung into the saddle. He sat a minute looking down. He spoke to the old man.
‘Take care of her. I’ll go for help!’ He was gone in a clatter of noise and sparks where iron-shod hooves struck flintstones.
The Squire, feeling like a man of a hundred, approached his daughter with some trepidation. Gingerly he touched her arm and she turned to him. Her eyes were brimming with tears of self-pity and highly-charged emotion.
‘My dear Maud? What has happened to us all?’ he asked plaintively.
A wan smile touched her lips. For a brief while, Maud Mayo became the Maud Gordon of old. One hand came up and touched the grey hair exposed when the old man’s hat had fallen off.
‘I don’t know, father. All I know is that everything goes wrong in my life and everything goes back to Jos Howard.’
‘But, dear child, you can’t blame Jos for what has just happened,’ he protested mildly.
Maud stiffened. ‘I can and I do! There’s a devil watching over him, guarding his every move, saving him! Look at him! Secure, rich almost, the talk of the county and what was he as a boy? Nothing! How is it he’s gone up so while me and mine have come down? It’s not fair!’ she cried petulantly.
The Squire sighed. His shoulders sagged wearily, as he shook his head.
‘I don’t know what’s happened, child. We must do the best we can now. That’s all we can do.’
‘And what’s that? I’m poor, father! Poor! And I’ve a son to raise. All that he has right now is worthless land. I’ve no money to work it. I’m going to be as poor as a farm worker!’
‘It’s not as bad as all that, child. Be fair! George did not have to drink!’
‘What else could you expect him to do after Jos Howard nearly killed him? He was ugly, father! Ugly—and he knew it! People laughed at him behind his back; sneered at him too and he knew that as well! His own father despised him. All he ever thought of was that by-blow of dead John’s! Never a real thought for George. His son and heir!’