Farm Fatale (20 page)

    "The reason I came to see you," Samantha gasped, "was to, um, ask you to an, ahem,
party
I am giving to mark the completion of the renovation works at The Bottoms."

    Dame Nancy clapped her hands. "What an absolutely wonderful idea. I adore a good party. And I've been to some pretty good ones in my time, let me tell you. Me and
Larry—Olivier
, of course, not my cockerel, ha ha—"

    "Of
course
." Samantha was eager to display the reverence expected of one celebrated thespian for another.

    "—once raced round Mayfair at four in the morning passing magnums of champagne to each other from our cars. Then we went back to his flat.
Amazing
. The place was
full
of constables."

    "How wonderful," breathed Samantha reverentially. "I imagine his taste must have been exquisite. I didn't realize he was an art collector though."

    "He wasn't. I mean it was full of policemen."

***

Following Mrs. Womersley's directions to her nephew's farm, Rosie walked up Cinder Lane the next morning feeling an intense sense of relief. She was glad to be out of the cottage. The day had not started well, partly because the evening before hadn't. Thanks to their recent purchase of a powerful convector heater, the USA-shaped bathroom wall stain had lately shrunk by a couple of states. A sudden and violent rainstorm just before bedtime had, however, heralded the reappearance of Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia. It had taken Rosie and Mark until midnight to reapply damp seal, during which time they noticed that the fungus they had scrubbed off in the first flush of ownership was starting to grow once again.

    But this was far from being her only problem. Mark, apparently permanently immured in his bad mood, had temporarily withdrawn all sexual favors. The passionate nights Rosie had been accustomed to, and which compensated for so much, had given way to Mark lying awake until the small hours, racking his brains for possible column subjects. By the time morning had come, he was invariably wound up to such a pitch of fury that even the noise of an engine outside—especially that of Arthur's transit van—had him cursing violently under the pillows. The Muzzle family was a daily thorn in Mark's side. "If only I could bloody muzzle them!" he would curse. Once the screams of the children and the thudding of the ball against the cottage wall had begun, Mark usually lost his temper altogether.

    "Those bloody noisy brats," he spat. "We're supposed to be here for the bloody peace and quiet." Then, as Guinevere rushed outside and quadrupled the amount of noise by bawling furiously at her sons to shut up, he raged, "It's like living next door to the world's smallest council estate."

    Rosie's knees had trembled beneath the duvet. She lived in fear of Mark demanding they go back to London, column or no column. However imperfect Cinder Lane was—and she could see it had its less than idyllic aspects—it was heaven compared to Craster Road. Even if Mark had undergone a complete and alarming personality change since moving to the country, she would still rather they were here. Unlike in London, there was always the hope things might get better.

    "But, darling," she pleaded, "there are bound to be problems to begin with. Teething troubles."

    Mark snarled back that Dungarees' baby certainly had those if the amount of wailing it did was anything to go by. "Although," he added, "it's so bloody old they're probably wisdom teeth. Bloody ridiculous, breast-feeding it at that age." But the sting, Rosie noticed, had gone out of his fury; not for the first time, she wondered whether the twice-daily sight of Dungarees' naked breasts passing the front door was, for Mark, one of the few compensations of life in Cinder Lane.

    "Just look at it this way," soothed Rosie, hoping to appeal to his better instincts. "Everyone knows that a huge issue in the countryside is that young families with children can't afford to live in villages anymore. People like the Muzzles are being priced out of the market. We should be pleased they're living next door to us—it's more…" Rosie struggled to find the right word, "
authentic
."

    Mark cast a sleep-deprived look of disgust at her. "And what about the National Antique Vehicle Collection dumped at the bottom of the road?"

    "Well, I don't suppose they have any money. Rural poverty is another big issue, you know. We can hardly expect local young families to be driving round in people carriers and Land Cruisers."

    "So its fine for them to riot in the street all day, is it? When people like me are trying to earn a decent living?"

    Rosie refrained from pointing out that what Mark's editor was paying could hardly be called decent, much less a living. "Well, they're bound to sound noisy," she said. "It's so quiet round here, if someone drops a pin you can hear it the other side of the village."

    Mark stared. "Pin? The only bloody pin the people next door are ever likely to drop is out of a bloody hand grenade."

    Rosie sighed. What on earth had gotten into Mark? Having spent the last few years in a flat above a Turkish weight lifter who shook the building with the volume of his television even more than he did with his dumbbells, it seemed absurd to object to the occasional yell. But then Mark hadn't been writing a column on Craster Road. It seemed to Rosie that the beginning of "Green-er Pastures" had coincided with the end of Mark Green's Sense of Humor. Her half-serious suggestion that he write about the Muzzles, for example, had met with unmitigated fury. "What? Give that white trash the oxygen of publicity?" Although Mark had never been known for his liberalism, moving to Cinder Lane seemed to have turned him into Archie Bunker.

    "We need to be reasonable," she urged, going into the breach for the final time. "We're newcomers, remember. It's very important that we're not seen as intolerant. We mustn't try to impose ourselves on the existing status quo too much."

    At this, Mark had turned on his bare heel and winced as a number of splinters slid into it. "You've missed your vocation, you have, Rosie. Forget the art, you should be a sodding social worker. You've got more woolly ideas than a knitwear factory. This is what being a bloody vegetarian does to you."

    No, thought Rosie, as she toiled up the last agonizing stretch of Cinder Lane. It had not been the best of mornings. Please, God, she prayed, glancing up at the sun breaking through a sea of patchy clouds, let Mark find something to write about soon. Or else…But Rosie could not frame the thought. Things would get better. They had to.

    Pausing to get her breath, Rosie's mood lifted as she looked around her. The agony of effort was instantly obliterated by the view from the top of the hill. She gazed admiringly down on Eight Mile Bottom spread out below.

    The village, she saw, was not merely one but three different clumps of civilization, each nestling in the hollows between small hills of brilliant green. Directly behind her was the motley cluster of farms and cottages around the Barley Mow, while away to the left lay the slightly more ordered universe of the green, the duck pond, and the surrounding cottages. Nearby, its gray roof sunlit amid mature trees, was The Bottoms. Squinting into the sunshine, Rosie picked out the High Street as it curved up through the village to the limegreen moorland above. As the road led away between its bordering drystone walls, a tiny lane forked to the right to a collection of buildings that, even from this distance, looked imposing. A flag fluttered amid a cluster of castellated towers. Screwing her eyes up so hard they hurt, Rosie could just about make out that what looked like a small town was in fact a large house. Set, to judge from the cedars of Lebanon and avenue of oaks, in a park of some distinction.

    Rosie stared, knowing that this must be Ladymead, home of the reclusive rock star Matt Locke. The music industry's millionaire Sleeping Beauty, the reclusive boy with the Midas touch whose record company was praying would wake up and shoot to the top of the charts again. She paused, intrigued, then shook herself and walked on. She had little sympathy to spare for burned-out stars, having problems enough of her own. Still, it was comforting in a way to know that millionaires didn't have perfect lives either. Then again, there seemed no reason why not. Ladymead was a perfect place, after all; Matt Locke certainly wouldn't have fungal growth to contend with, and his noisiest neighbors were probably ring-collared doves. She scowled at the cheerfully fluttering flag. So what the hell was his problem?

    Her gaze returned to the village. There was the pink-towered church, with Cinder Lane behind it. Spotting what looked like part of their roof, she visualized Mark toiling over his laptop inside. Or, worse, not toiling but pacing up and down, frustrated and furious.

    Still, at least her own professional star seemed on the rise. The book project was perfect, just the type of thing she'd been desperate to do for ages. And, with luck, she'd even found a friendly farmer to provide her with animal models. "You'll like Jack," Mrs. Womersley had urged, eyes twinkling. "He's a lovely boy. So friendly and kind. Very handsome too." Rosie had resisted reminding the old lady that she already had a handsome boyfriend. No doubt Mrs. Womersley was joking, and in any case, Mark was looking considerably less gorgeous than usual at the moment. His attractive features and smooth skin were invariably screwed up with irritation, his generous sensual mouth constantly pressed into a cross line.

    As the old lady had instructed, Rosie climbed onto the stile to the right of the hilltop and jumped down into the field. Bingo, she thought. Scattered over the plump green mounds of grass to either side were great shaggy barrels of just-delivered sheep, their newborn lambs reclining nearby. Rosie, always easily moved where animals were concerned, found it for some reason ridiculously touching that their little black faces were the exact width of each erect ear. Her eyes misted with tears. "Poor little lambkins," she murmured, torturing herself with images of slaugtherhouse-bound lorries and racks of chops crowned with white frilly hats.

    "Which one of you is Edna the Ewe?" Rosie asked them, scanning the curious, ovine faces. One, she noticed, had a look in its eye like a surly adolescent hanging out at a bus stop, the sort of look that would command respect from the most hardened of soccer fans. Blacker-faced than the rest, it was the only sheep grazing apart from the flock. No lambs lay anywhere near it. "It's up to Ewe, New York, New York," Rosie sang to it. Looking back at her with freezing contempt, the sheep emitted a jeering baa.

    "Oy!" A man's sharp shout interrupted her musings. "You there!"

    Rosie looked up, heart pounding. A tall, broad figure was striding purposefully toward her through the gate on the opposite side of the field. He did not sound friendly. Nor did his dog, a small, darting sheepdog, that ran straight up to Rosie and yapped at her furiously. What was it about being barked at by a dog, Rosie wondered, that made one instantly feel like a criminal? She resisted the strong urge to run away.

    Trying not to panic, Rosie smiled as pleasantly as she could as the man approached. He was unusually tall. Taller than Mark. So tall, in fact, that he blocked out the low sun. Its rays shone behind him, gilding his thick, wavy, cropped brown hair and surrounding his mud-spattered blue overalls with a halo of light. He looked, Rosie thought, somewhat like an agricultural saint.

    His expression, however, had nothing remotely benevolent about it. His mouth was as set and straight as a level; beneath glowering brows, a pair of wide-set blue eyes glinted suspiciously out of a tanned and rough-hewn face. "Shut up, Kate," he muttered at the sheepdog, which, subsiding immediately, rubbed her face against his overalled thigh and scrutinized Rosie with the superior air of an established favorite. Under the liquid black gaze of the dog, and the hard blue stare of the man, Rosie quaked. Mrs. Womersley's nephew might be a lovely boy, but he had some decidedly unlovely people working for him.

    "You're trespassing," the man told Rosie flatly.

    "I'm sorry," she gasped. "I thought I was expected."

    "I wasn't expecting you."

    Mrs. Womersley's voice floated into Rosie's head. "So friendly and kind. Very handsome too."

    "Oh my God. Are
you
Jack?"

    The man moved his broad head in a curt nod, proving, Rosie thought, that Mrs. Womersley's eyesight was not all it could have been. At first sight, her nephew conspicuously failed to measure up to any of his prepublicity.

    "It's just that your aunt sent me here and—"

    "You're a friend of my aunt's?" The ice chips in Jack's eyes melted infinitesimally. The glowering eyebrows relaxed.

    "I'm her new next-door neighbor."

    Although he was far from her idea of handsome, Rosie could now at least see what Mrs. Womersley had meant. Thanks to her stammered explanation, the creases that ran across his forehead suggested thought rather than fury, and although it lacked the sharp perfection of Mark's face, Jack's had a certain dignity about it.

    "Oh. Yes. Now I come to think of it, my aunt did mention something about you." He gave her a long, speculative stare, during which Rosie wished she had paid slightly more attention to her personal grooming that morning. Mark had spent so long sulking in the bathroom that there had been no time for anything beyond a cursory scrub of her teeth and a quick finger-comb of her hair.

    "Sorry," Jack said. "Got the wrong end of the stick. Thought you were a right-to-roamer or something. Walker," he added, as Rosie looked blank. "Bloody nightmare, they are," he continued. "Wandering all over the place up to no good. Cutting trees down. Leaving the gates open. Last time they did that, one of my cows escaped, ended up in the river, and damaged its leg on the stones."