Farm Fatale (32 page)

    Rosie's heart contracted with pity. Poor Jack, carrying the burden of Catherine's betrayal around like a snail with its shell on its back. No wonder he looked so crushed.

    "One good thing came out of it though," Jack added heavily. "Bloody animal-feed firm had always been unreliable, but Catherine insisted we buy from them. Once I knew why, I sacked the bastards." He gave Rosie a rueful smile.

    "No wonder you're wary of Londoners." It all made sense now.

    "Well, after that I was pretty wary of women in general," Jack said shortly. "Never thought I'd trust a city lass again, that's for sure." He gave her a piercing glance. "Until now, that is." There was a charged silence before he added, "But you might change your mind. And I can wait."

    Doubt tore savagely at Rosie. It would be so easy now to say she had had second thoughts. As his sad blue eyes under their sloping brows met hers, she opened her mouth to do so. Unlike Mark, he had been hurt. Unlike Mark, he needed her. She could heal him. Make him happy again…

    A sudden screech of tires interrupted them. "Cricket club's in uproar," shouted Duffy cheerily. "They've lost that cup they won last season—rumor has it the vice captain's sold it.
Oh
," he added as Jack came down the side of the cow shed with Rosie. "Been out for a walk, have you?" He grinned.

    "Walk?" Jack snorted. "Joking, aren't you? Farmers don't have time for walks. Or anything else, come to that. Been checking the sheep in the upper field."

    "Been showing you the ways of the wild, has he?" Duffy turned delightedly to Rosie, who blushed violently. But Jack seemed utterly unruffled. He took the post, turned on his heel, and disappeared into the farmhouse.

    "Looking forward to the party, are we?" Duffy yelled at her as he climbed back into his red van. The party. She'd forgotten about that, and that, as yet, she had precisely nothing to wear. Mark would go spare if she let him down. But perhaps she should let him go spare—on his own, in other words. It seemed the easiest way out.

    "That postman missed his vocation," observed Jack as Rosie ventured into the warm gloom of the Spitewinter kitchen. "Should have been a spy."

    "He talks too much," said Rosie. "And he's not quite got the James Bond looks, let's face it." As Jack handed her a mug of tea, Rosie tried to ignore the animal-feed company logo on its cracked side.

    "Think I might be able to solve your crisis, by the way," he remarked.

    Crisis? What crisis? After all Jack had suffered through his marriage and was continuing to suffer through his farm, Rosie had temporarily forgotten she had any problems at all. "My party clothes, you mean?" Was he about to offer her some of his blue overalls? Did he have a pair of gold lame ones he saved for best?

    "My aunt was a dressmaker in her young days. Got loads of old dresses."

    "
Mrs. Womersley
?" Rosie's mouth fell open. Sharon Stone may have turned up in a Gap polo neck to the Oscars once, but was Jack seriously suggesting that she should wear one of Mrs. Womersley's castoffs to the Party of the Century? Mark would go ballistic.

    "I'll ring her up later and ask her if you like," Jack offered. "She copied designer clothes for herself and local women who couldn't afford Dior and such-like. Did them all. Pucci, Balenciaga, Chanel, Yves St. Laurent. Still has a lot of them. Won't throw them away for some reason." He looked at Rosie, his mouth turning up again slightly. "Excuse me, but I thought vintage couture was very fashionable. Am I wrong?"

    Rosie nodded. The last
Vogue
she had done a food illustration for had been practically devoted to the subject.

    "Catherine used to get
Vogue
, you see."

    Another silence. Bella had been right about his romantic history, Rosie reflected—but she was wrong about him being bitter and twisted. Was he not trying to help her with her party costume, in the full knowledge that she would be going with Mark? Given the circumstances, such generosity seemed positively heroic. Was Jack, Rosie wondered, now trying to change her mind through actions rather than words? As he drained his mug of tea, silhouetted against the window, Rosie couldn't help remembering the feel of his hot, thick fingers, and she tried to divert her thoughts from what was beneath the blue overalls.

Bang, bang, bang. The noise was coming from the back this time. That was the last straw. He'd officially had enough.

    Mark leaped up from his laptop and ran down the stairs so hard his thighs hurt. "
Just shut the fuck up, will you?
" he yelled as he shot out of the kitchen door into the back garden. The first thing he saw was Mr. Womersley, staring indignantly at him from the other side of the wall.

    "
Well!
" said Mr. Womersley.

    The old bastard might be as deaf as a post, but he'd heard that all right. "Not
you
," snapped Mark.

    
Bang bangety bang bangety bang bangety bang
. As he knew it would be, the noise was coming from the Muzzles' garden.

    "Them!" he shrieked, pointing violently at the wall dividing Number 2's now orderly garden from the Muzzles' rubbishstrewn patch.

    Trampling all over Rosie's flowerbeds, her pansies and narcissi irrelevant in the face of his all-consuming fury, Mark stuck his head through the tattered remains of what had once been a small fence on top of the wall but which the combined and irresistible forces of children and weather had succeeded in destroying almost utterly. Nothing was visible in the next-door garden apart from a sea of rubbish, from the middle of which rose a rickety-looking stick and sheet construction vaguely reminiscent of a teepee. It was from here that the banging noise was coming.

    "
Oy!
" Mark screamed.

    The banging stopped as if a plug had been pulled out. "What's up, man?" came Arthur's uncertain, reedy voice.

    "What the
fuck's
going on?"

    The twigs swayed and the sheets surrounding the construction bulged and parted. It seemed to take a full minute for Arthur's lanky body to unfold.

    "Hello, man," he said, blinking in the sunlight. With the parting of the curtains, a powerful blast of marijuana smoke turned on the breeze and hit Mark full in the face. He coughed savagely and his eyes began to stream.

    Once the smoke had cleared, Mark noticed that Arthur's white and skinny arm held a large and battered-looking pair of bongos, their metal surrounds glinting in the dull sun. He looked at them with loathing.

    "Any particular reason why you can't play those inside the
house
?" he demanded, biting each word viciously as it came out. As a loud crash from Arthur's kitchen was followed by the bull-like bellow of Guinevere and the screams of his children, Arthur's slitlike eyes briefly met his.

    "Well,
that
, man," he muttered. "Does my head in sometimes."

    A red mist flickered behind Mark's retinas. He was conscious of his heart having picked up speed. The feeling that if he didn't leave the scene at once he might vault over the fence and do Arthur's head in once and for all threatened to overwhelm him.

    Turning on his heel—and Rosie's narcissi—he stomped back over the lawn. As he wrenched open the back door, he noticed Mr. Womersley still standing there watching him. "And you can sod off as well," he snarled.

    Mr. Womersley cupped his hand to his ear. "Pardon?"

    When Mark returned to his laptop, the envelope icon was flashing in the corner. He'd got mail. The editor would have read this morning's attempt at "Green-er Pastures" by now. It was, Mark thought, calming down slightly, rather a good one.

    After much thought, he had deftly sidestepped the problem of not having his own animals by going to the local children's zoo to write about theirs.

    He had begun,
Have you ever noticed the way animals at the zoo
stop doing anything interesting the moment you reach their cage? The
elephants turn their bottoms to you, the gorilla leaves his climbing frame
and goes into a trance…
Mark opened the editor's email.
Have you
ever noticed the way columnists stop writing anything interesting when
you send them to the country? You're fired.

    Mark stared at the screen in disbelief.
Fired
? He was
sacked
? This was
impossible
. The editor couldn't just get rid of him. The column represented his sole income. Especially given the fact that, for some odd reason, the paper had been utterly unable to syndicate it. There must be some mistake. Perhaps the editor had meant to send the email to someone else?

    Panicking, Mark looked at his watch. Half-past two; there'd be time, if he moved quickly enough, to get down to the newspaper offices and sort things out before the editor swept off in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes for the evening. It was, after all, easy to sack someone when you couldn't see them. Even the editor might think twice about it in the flesh. In the unlikely event that he had meant it.

    It wasn't until he was on the train that he remembered he hadn't left a note for Rosie. Still, it would do her good to wonder where he was for a change. She was definitely taking him for granted these days.

***

Rosie did not miss him immediately. Party clothes were her most pressing agenda. On her return from the farm, she went straight to Mrs. Womersley's to see if what Jack had promised in any way translated into reality.

    Jack had phoned ahead, and Mrs. Womersley seemed not just eager but determined to help. Wondering what she had let herself in for, Rosie followed the old lady up her gloomy staircase, followed by the riotous noise of Mr. Womersley's radio.

    As Mrs. Womersley pulled back the sliding door of her teak wardrobe with a veined and liver-spotted hand, even the poor light of a seventeenth-century cottage bedroom as the afternoon drew to a close could not quite dim the glory of what lay within.

    "Incredible." Rosie was entranced. It looked, she thought, like the fashion cupboard of a glossy magazine before a haute sixties' shoot. From beneath sheaths of clear plastic peeped pastel pinks, bright blues, and shimmering silvers. Jewel-colored sweeps of crushed velvet were suspended over serried ranks of high-heeled shoes. Hats, boas, and bags of all descriptions were piled on the shelves.

    "Haven't got anything
Arabian Night
y, mind," Mrs. Womersley said. "Not much call for it in Eight Mile Bottom. It's more flannelette nighties round here."

    "I'm sure it doesn't matter. Anything partyish will do." Rosie's eyes were glued to the glittering and intensely partyish row of dresses.

    "This would suit you." Mrs. Womersley pulled out a soft tweed two-piece so utterly Jackie Kennedy that Rosie longed to try it on and feel the beautifully lined fabric brush coolly over her back and encase her in vintage First Lady elegance.

    "But it's an evening do, isn't it?" Mrs. Womersley whisked the suit back out of her reach. Sliding her papery arm into the wardrobe again, she brought out a plastic sleeve encasing a slim black dress.

    Rosie looked at it doubtfully. An LBD. Elegant, undoubtedly. But unforgiving. You needed a body as hard as Barbie's to get away with that sort of thing.

    Mrs. Womersley was back in the wardrobe, shoving aside shoes, boxes, and bags in her quest.

    "How about this then?" She removed the clear plastic sarcophagus surrounding something tailored and white.

    Rosie's eyes shone as Mrs. Womersley held up a beautiful white suit with wide lapels. "Fantastic. Pure Bianca Jagger."

    Mrs. Womersley looked surprised. "You're right there," she said. "Made this for Marilyn, the butcher's daughter, after she married Mick Jagger. After Bianca Jagger did, that is," she added hastily. "Marilyn married a chimney liner from Cobchester. Never wore this though. Couldn't fit into it. Too many pork pies, I told her. Should fit you though, easily. You don't look like you eat many pork pies."

    "No, I don't."

    "Nice, though, a pie is. With mushy peas or a bit of mustard."

    Rosie shuddered, recalling the violent vermilion of the pies at the Silent Lady. Not actually wanting to remember anything more about the Silent Lady, she looked longingly at the St. Tropez wedding outfit suspended from the padded hanger.

    "Go on, try it," urged Mrs. Womersley. Rosie hesitated, then shrugged off her fleece. Remembering too late her graying bra, she comforted herself with the thought of Mrs. Womersley's Harvest Festivals stretched out above the chimney breast. Besides, in this light, everything looked gray.

    Except the suit. Rosie shuddered as the cold silk lining made contact with her back and gasped as it pressed against her front. Climbing into the skirt, she sent up a silent prayer of relief as the zip whizzed unhindered to the waistband to enclose her hips in a perfect fit. She buttoned the jacket, straightened her shoulders, and grinned at Mrs. Womersley. "How does it look? Shame I haven't got dark hair."

    "Its not a shame at all," said Mrs. Womersley. "You look very nice, you do. A sight better than Marilyn Sidebottom ever would have done in it, pork pies or no pork pies."

    Rosie padded across in bare feet to the long mirror that gleamed darkly in the corner. Even given the stone in weight that a narrow mirror shaves off one's reflection, she had to admit she looked good. The fitted curves of the jacket drew in gently to the waist; the skirt fell in a generous column to what seemed impossibly tiny ankles. Suddenly, she looked as if she'd stepped straight from a glossy magazine shoot rather than, as Mark said she usually did, the set of
This Old House.