Farm Fatale (29 page)

    "Valerian," said Jack. "Came over with the Romans. You must be interested in the Romans, surely, Ptolemy?"

    "Yes, darling," urged Bella. "You love the Romans, don't you? All those Christians being mauled by lions and gladiators murdering each other and everything?" Ptolemy brightened.

    "And this is wild garlic," Jack interrupted, looking disgusted. He ran his fingers through the patches of white bell-heads and shiny leaves. The plants savory tang rose up into the air, mixing with the heady sweetness of the neighboring bluebells. "And these," Jack added, touching with the tip of his finger some tiny white flowers. "Know what these are?"

    Rosie looked at the miniature petals, rising proudly on pink stems out of the clutches of fleshy leaves. She shook her head.

    "London Pride," said Jack with emphasis. Rosie wondered miserably at which of them the barb was aimed. All, probably.

    The botanical master class apparently over, they walked in silence back to the farmyard.

    "Are you organic?" Bella asked Jack conversationally. Rosie clenched her fists apprehensively, silently urging Bella not to go on. Talking to Jack about his farming methods led to nothing but disaster in her experience.

    Jack's brows had drawn together. "No," he said.

    "Well, surely you should be," Bella pronounced decisively, blundering, as Rosie had feared she would, straight into the lion's den. "All farmers should be aiming at sustainable farming systems that maintain the long-term fertility of the soil."

    "That's arable," said Jack shortly.

    "What's so horrible about it?" demanded Bella. "The fact of the matter is that intensive methods, while they produce heavier yields, are also destroying our wildflowers and wildlife. As well as endangering our children's health by allowing all that poison to enter their systems." She looked fondly at Ptolemy, who was busy slashing viciously at the hedgerow flowers with a stick. "That's what horrible."

    "Been reading all that off the leaflet that comes with your organic delivery box, have you?" Jack's tone held an unmistakable note of contempt.

    Bella blinked. "Well, yes, actually."

    "Thought so. Otherwise, you'd know that when I say arable, I mean that Spitewinter isn't. I don't grow crops here. I've a mixed cattle and dairy farm. I don't need to put chemical fertilizers on the land. In fact, the worst danger to plant life in the entire place at the moment is your son."

    "Stop that, darling," Bella snapped at Ptolemy, who, busy beheading a clump of bluebells, ignored her completely.

    They had now reached the top of the hill overlooking the village. Bella paused and peered intently at something. "What's that?" she asked, pointing into the distance. "That group of buildings over there?"

    "Ladymead," Jack said without emotion.

    "Who lives there? It looks
enormous
."

    "Some pop star," the farmer said dismissively—for all the world, thought Rosie with amusement, as if he didn't own a couple of cows called Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears.

    Bella clapped her slender, beringed, and red-nailed hands. "
Wonderful
. So Eight Mile Bottom's got its requisite wrinkly rocker, has it?" She looked laughingly at Jack, the organic clash apparently forgotten. "Is he one of the Rolling Stones?"

    Jack, however, did not forget so easily. At least, Rosie assumed this was why his face had darkened. "No. He's a bit younger. Well, quite a lot younger."

    "Who? Is it Robbie Williams?"

    "Matt Locke, he's called."

    Bella breathed in so sharply she coughed. "
Matt Locke!
'"she choked. "Not
really
? The one who disappeared into the middle of nowhere? So
this
is where he disappeared to?" Bella, eyes streaming, whirled round on Rosie. "Darling, you never told me you lived near
Matt Locke
! I'd have been up
much
sooner…"

    Thanks a lot, thought Rosie. "Forgot to mention it," she muttered.

    "
Forgot!
" Bella's look clearly implied that, as far as Rosie was concerned, all hope was lost. She turned back to Jack. "How much land does he own?" she demanded, her eye drinking in the sweep of green between where they stood and the cluster of towers in the distance.

    Jack shrugged. "Quite a bit. Most of these big fields here in front. Used to be mine, but there was no point keeping them once the herd had to be reduced."

    Rosie stiffened. Oh no, she thought. Here we go.

    "Matt has a thing about fields," Bella cut in. "He's wandering across vast prairies looking mean and moody in almost all of his videos."

    Rosie stole a glance at Jack. Cut off in his prime, he was looking pretty mean and moody himself.

    "Did you sell it to him?" Bella asked Jack.

    "Had no choice." Jack effortlessly picked up the thread of gloom again. "Need every penny I can get. All us farmers do these days. It's madness, what's happening to us. People pay a pound for a tiny bottle of water and I get paid eight pence a pint from the dairy for my cows' milk. And guess how much it costs when it gets to the shops in a carton? Twenty-nine pence, that's what. Is it any wonder we've got our backs against the wall—"

    "I didn't mean
that
," interrupted Bella impatiently. "I mean, did you meet
him
?"

    Jack looked amazed, then furious. "As a matter of fact, I didn't. Some lackey of his dealt with the sale—"

    "Er." Rosie was thankful for the excuse to interrupt. "Isn't that a bull in that field Tolly's walking through?" She did not add that her concern was mostly for the bull.

Over warm gin and flat tonic at Cinder Lane that evening, Bella regaled Mark and Rosie with recent events in the capital, including the news that she and Simon had recently gone to a wedding where a tennis ball machine costing £1,399 had been on the gift list. Also that Florian—"who, of course, you'll remember from the dinner party"—had recently picked up an award for a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a number of minor Royals as they did a home swap with a family on a council estate.

    Her voice was quite unable to block out the fact that, of the children running and screaming up and down the lane outside, Ptolemy was screaming the loudest of all. He and Satchel seemed to have hit upon a modus vivendi instead of merely hitting each other. Rosie tried not to wince as Ptolemy smashed the black football hard against the glass of the window. Only with the greatest of efforts, she noticed, was Mark restraining himself from going outside and tearing him limb from limb.

    "It must be wonderful to be out of the rat race." Bella sighed. "To live at a leisurely pace in the peace and quiet. Not have someone putting the pressure on all the time."

    Thinking immediately of the dreaded editor, Rosie deliberately did not look at Mark.

    "London's
soooo
exhausting," Bella went on. "Everyone desperate for their children to do everything first, as long as it's not drugs and sex and shoplifting. And social climbing like you wouldn't believe. I know one mother who's got Prince Harry lined up for her daughter. At least you never get anything like that round here…"

    Rosie's mind leaped to the party invitation Mark was so desperate to get his hands on. He hadn't mentioned it lately though. Perhaps he had forgotten about it.

    "So, enjoying it here, are you, darling?" Bella turned brightly to Mark. "Must be very quiet after London."

    As he opened his mouth to reply, Rosie tensed. "Not at all. Positively packed with thrills," Mark drawled sarcastically. "Such as a new flower coming out on one of Rosie's bushes, for instance."

    Rosie hoped Bella would drop this line of questioning. Still, as long as she didn't mention the column…

    "Column going well, is it?" Bella inquired next.

    "Fine." Mark's tones sounded dangerous.

    "Have you seen Champagne D'Vyne's column?" Bella trilled. "Rather good, I think."

    "Who's she?" Rosie was desperate to get the subject off columns. Even if it exposed yet another yawning gap in her knowledge of the rich and famous.

    "You
know
," Bella urged. "That gorgeous blond model-cumwhatever with legs up to her armpits. Huge tits, very posh, writes this column called 'Champagne Moments' every week about all the parties she's been to?"

    "Oh…
yes
." Rosie was amazed to find she actually did know. The column ran in a rival Sunday to Mark's. When they lived on Craster Road, he had regularly hurled it violently across the room in disgust, saying it was the only thing worse than "Driving Miss Daisy." More recently, however, Rosie had discovered him on several occasions studying it quite hard.

    Bella went on blithely. "She's famous for being famous, of course. And for having famous boyfriends. Used to go out with Matt Locke, in fact. Supposed to have been the whole reason he became a recluse. He never got over being dumped by her apparently." Bella paused and grinned. "Probably the whole reason he came to Eight Mile Bottom if you think about it."

    As Ptolemy, outside, let rip an ear-splitting scream, Rosie looked pleadingly at Bella. "Do you think supper will be ready yet?"

    It was, Rosie thought, leading the way out of the sitting room, almost worth putting up with the horrors of Ptolemy for the joys of his mother's cooking. For Bella was a proper cook. She could chop onions in that professional way where the knife scythed rapidly into the onion and not, as when Rosie tried to emulate it, into the fingers.

    And there were other reasons for getting her into the kitchen. Surely, following her recent exchange with him, Bella must have realized Mark's behavior was worse than ever. There was also the fact that Rosie had spent the entire journey back from Spitewinter waiting for Bella to pronounce on Jack. So far, however, she had said nothing about either of them.

    "Dreadful shame," Bella observed as she tore up a lettuce.

    "What is?" Rosie asked eagerly. That she was sticking with a sulky prima donna when she should be going for a hunky farmer?

    "About no organic vegetables," Bella continued disappointingly. "I was rather counting on piles of homegrown carrots, potatoes with the earth still on them, broad beans, and all that kind of thing."

    Kind of like Bella's organic delivery box in Islington in other words, thought Rosie. Not to mention the Arcimboldo bowl. It had been hard to explain to Bella that, for some reason, it seemed far more difficult to get your hands on organic vegetables in the country than it did in the city. Vegetables of any sort, come to that. The village shop stocked mostly white bread, tins of beans, and Indian sauces.

    "But can't you grow your own?" Bella had asked, amazed.

    "Yes, but they take ages. And we haven't been here all that long."

    In any case, Rosie's research into what was, for her, the brave new world of horticulture had taught her that much of it was touch and go anyway. A whole host of assassins, she now realized, lurked in the soil waiting to demolish anything trying to grow there. According to the Womersleys, beans in particular needed what practically amounted to a twenty-four-hour suicide watch to protect them from snails, slugs, and greenfly. One look at what snails had done to her herb border gave a whole new meaning to the ravages of thyme.

    "Can't your neighbor give you any?" Bella had peered longingly over the wall into the Womersleys' garden, where serried ranks of different vegetables poked neatly up from the soil. "Theirs look wonderful." Rosie forbore to mention that the Womersleys, like herself, threw slug pellets about like confetti. Bella would almost certainly not approve, although Rosie was increasingly amazed that anyone ever grew anything without them. How, she wondered, had the Elizabethans managed?

    "Surely they could spare you a few onions," Bella said longingly. "I could make a wonderful salsa."

    Rosie felt mildly shocked. Asking the old couple for vegetables had never occurred to her; nor had the offer ever been made. The thought of Mr. Womersley's prize vegetables meeting so ignominious an end as being eaten was unthinkable. As the Womersleys themselves seemed to exist on Fray Bentos meat pies with canned peas, served with thick gravy, it seemed the vegetables were grown for show alone. And certainly not for salsa.

    "I can't believe you can't get any in the village shop, even." Bella sighed as she scrubbed some extremely orange carrots. "Look at them," she muttered. "
Stuffed
with water and
crawling
with poisons. Tolly's simply not used to anything that isn't organic. Everything he eats at home has Soil Association Approved practically stamped all the way through it. He starts the day with organic cereal served with freshly squeezed organic oranges from Spain, then organic pasta with organic cheese for lunch, and then multigrain eggs fried in organic butter for tea…" She was arranging what looked to be, despite everything, a wonderfully fresh vegetable salad on four plates. A delicioussmelling spaghetti sauce bubbled on the stove. "Oh, well. Supper's ready. Could you tell Tolly to come in, darling?"

    "He says he's had his dinner," Rosie reported after making unsuccessful representations in the lane.

    "He can't have." Bella put down her wooden spoon and strode out.

    A few minutes later she returned, Ptolemy's arm clamped firmly in hers, her face as angry as Rosie had ever seen it.