Farm Fatale (8 page)

    "Because
Country Clinic
is on a major network, isn't it?" Samantha raged. "It has
millions
of viewers. It's my big break, for Christ's sake." She raised one thigh and clambered stiffly off him. The countryside conversation would clearly have to be postponed, as, by the looks of it, would the jungle massacre. Judging from the flaccid organ flopped over Guy's right thigh, the victim had fled in any case.

"So." Nigel from Kane, Birch & Spankie, Estate Agents, beamed encouragingly. "What do you think?"

    Rosie smiled uncertainly. "Um…" Phrases existed, she knew, that would precisely encapsulate the hesitation she felt at the large damp stains spreading over the greasy beige walls, not to mention the faintly rancid smell. On the other hand, Mark's point that, as a former fish and chip shop, it suited her nonmeat-eating sensibilities better than the erstwhile butcher's could not be disagreed with.

    "Plenty of potential, as I'm sure you'd agree." The agent rattled a vast quantity of loose change in his pocket.

    "But it's only got an outside loo," Rosie muttered.

    "Yes, but have you
seen
it?" enthused Nigel in a nasal voice uncertainly poised between gruff and squeaky. He wore a badly fitting double-breasted suit, had extravagantly oiled hair combed forward in short spikes, and seemed all of sixteen. "It's an original Crapper. Beautifully enameled and would probably fetch a fortune on
The
Antiques Roadshow
. A work of art." He rattled his coins again.

    Rosie's heart sank. Within seconds of seeing the board displaying available properties at the estate agents', it had been obvious that, as impossible dreams went, her vision of a period cottage with beams, large fireplaces, a garden, and an abundance of character ranked somewhere above asking for the moon. In their price range, at least. Yet there must be somewhere better than the property they were currently inspecting. Not only was it on a main road, but enormous lorries that shook the place to its foundations seemed to be passing every five minutes. "It doesn't seem to be a particularly safe place to live," she ventured.

    "The house is perfectly safe, madam!" Nigel shouted as, right on cue, a huge juggernaut thundered past inches from the windows. Mark, who had been staring absently out of them, leaped back in alarm. "There is," the agent continued, "an entire pavement between the property and the road."

    "Which is almost entirely taken up with a vast crash bar," returned Rosie, as gently as she could. There was something rather heroic about the optimism with which Nigel approached his profession.

    "We can't be too picky," Mark warned her as they drove off in their spluttering old Peugeot. "Beggars can't be choosers, you know."

    "I do know. But it's got to be the right cottage. Or, at least, not something that's so obviously
wrong
."

    "Well, you heard what Nigel said."

    Rosie nodded. That the overenthusiastic agent was not accompanying them on the next visit, having been suddenly called back to the office, was a relief. His parting shot had, however, been a little alarming.

    "Ooh, it's all hands on deck back at KBS," Nigel had announced, shoving a vast and chunky mobile back into his pocket. "Someone's just rung up wanting instant details on all our premier properties. This areas getting very popular, you know. Best to buy while you can." In a gesture pregnant with meaning, he had then handed Mark the large envelope containing the keys and details for the remaining properties on the day's agenda.

    "Actually, the next one looks great," Mark said, waving under Rosie's nose the photograph of a cheerful-looking, low-slung building framed by mature trees. "Limestone Cottage. Amazingly lowpriced as well."

    Rosie crossed her fingers as Mark swung suddenly round a sharp bend of the single-track road. The narrow lanes seemed under constant threat from the burly hedgerows that, running along either side of them, were apparently intent on muscling into the middle.

    It was now the end of January, and the sky was a high, pale blue, overlaid with clouds shirred like thinly sliced smoked salmon. A brilliant, low winter sun irradiated fields ridged like green corduroy trousers and stretching to distant heights of blond moor. As Rosie wound down her window to get a view uninterrupted by bird poo, a flood of air as clear, sharp, and cold as a bucketful of water dashed into her face. She smiled, her eyes streaming with the chill and a sudden leaping joy.

    Entering the village where Limestone Cottage was located, they lurched up a steep and rocky drive that rose at an awkward angle straight from the road. The cheerful little cottage was set, just as the picture showed, in a frame of mature beech trees.

    "Oh, God. Is
this
Limestone Cottage?" Rosie's heart was plummeting faster than those blocks of frozen effluent from plane lavatories that so often seemed to crash through Croydon conservatories and end up in Mark's paper.

    What the photograph had failed to even hint at was the expanse of raw, white hillside, ugly boxlike buildings, and piles of sacks on pallets stretching around the cottage on all sides. "It's in the middle of a quarry," snapped Mark.

    Rosie felt terribly sorry for the pretty little building, its lawn choked with dust, its mellow stone powdered with limestone aggregate, and its roof slumped in defeat. And yet, even so, it seemed the only graceful spot amid so much ugliness.

    "Bloody estate agents," Mark snarled, twisting the key with its brown label agitatedly between his fingers. "Now I see why it's so bloody cheap."

    Overwhelmingly in the cottage's favor, on the other hand, was the fact that they could afford it; a rare thing, given what Nigel kept tactfully referring to as their "restrictive financial situation." A situation that certainly restricted all possibilities of sublime properties such as the one currently commandeering virtually the whole of the agency's front window. Rosie, arriving with Mark to meet Nigel that morning, had spotted it straightaway. A beautiful Jacobean manor house set in an old-fashioned garden, the only nonexquisite thing about it had been its name. The Bottoms.

    "A perfect country house in miniature," the description had run.
An exceptional Grade I listed country house of great historical interest set
in superbly maintained gardens and grounds with far-reaching views.
An example of secular Jacobean building at its finest. The Bottoms boasts
a number of historical features including a priest hole, molded plaster
work ceilings, heraldic fireplaces, and stone-flagged floors throughout.
Five large bedrooms, three south-facing reception rooms, attics, vaulted
cellars with capacity for conversion into a gymnasium…

    "Horrid idea. I'd never do that," Rosie had said, looking at the sunlit stone front with its carved lions and standing sentinel, age-blackened chimneys, and finialed gables and trying to imagine someone underneath it all sweating away on a running machine.

    "I wouldn't worry," Mark had drawled. "We can barely afford the running machine, let alone the house."

As the day went on, the yawning chasm between the estate agents' descriptions and the bricks-and-mortar reality became increasingly evident. Agents' details, they realized, contained a whole code of euphemisms to crack—"lots of potential" almost invariably seemed to translate as "lots of work," while "garden in transitional state" usually turned out to refer to an area entirely paved over in concrete through whose unsightly cracks grass and weeds were steadily gaining ground. As for "mature" gardens, most of the ones Mark and Rosie saw were not only old but positively dribbling with infirmity. One or two definitely had Alzheimer's. So much for the Property Misdescriptions Act. Similarly, details such as "door, Suffolk latch, painted white" were usually a ruse to distract attention from the shortcomings in the bigger picture, such as it not being wired for electricity.

    Although, much to Rosie's relief, there were no butcher's shops on Mark's list (she had, however, overheard him asking Nigel about them), they did view a converted tripe shop next to a pub that, plastered with signs for Saturday-night karaoke, forthcoming real ale festivals, and caravan rallies, not to mention the dread sign COACH PARTIES WELCOME, had even Mark clearing his throat and muttering about it not being quite suitable. Then came the creepy corner house with the pearlized diagonal fifties plastic door handles, boxlike rooms, and air of something inexpressibly hideous having happened in the attic. Next up was the cottage whose apparently limitless garden, clearly and gratifyingly visible on the particulars, turned out to be that of the old people's home next door. Last—and probably least—there had been the only tenanted dwelling on their list, a squat building coated with gray concrete rendering and a drive festooned with broken lavatory bowls and piles of crumbling breezeblock. It was the property of a pinch-faced man of few words, and its low price, Rosie and Mark subsequently discovered, reflected a desire to get out quick. "'E's goin'," a shuffling figure passing the end of the drive informed them as they emerged, "because 'e shot 'is neighbor's dog on Christmas Day."

    "How
awful
," said Rosie, whose desire to make a speedy exit from the property had been equally strong. "But at least he has the decency to move out fast."

    The shuffling figure looked at her with eyes as flat as buttons. "Not that fast. 'E shot it five years ago. But folk don't forget that sort of thing round 'ere."

    "I'll tell you what we need," Mark said as they scrambled back into the Peugeot and sped off as if demons were at their heels.

    "A seventeenth-century cottage with beams, open fireplaces, a cared-for garden, and a sound roof at about half the price the agents are usually asking?"

    "No. Alcohol."

    Rosie nodded, picturing a quaint inn with ivy and badges of culinary excellence without and vast beams heavy with brassware within. "Sounds great."

    "And here's a pub," Mark announced, slowing down as they entered a village. A long, low building of indeterminate age opposite the village church, the pub was almost romantic. Apart, that was, from its sign, which, creaking alarmingly in the wind, depicted a sixteenth-century woman resplendent in ruff and farthingale but conspicuously lacking a head. Below her was painted the pub's name: The Silent Lady.

    "Ha ha ha," said Mark. "Local humor, I suppose."

    "Very droll," said Rosie sarcastically.

    Inside, it was completely empty apart from a small dog with a very protuberant bottom who sat in front of a roaring fire. As a dolorous landlord eventually shuffled into view, Mark strode jovially up to the bar. "Two pints of your best beer, please."

    Rosie shuddered. As a rule, she wasn't keen on beer. Yet she sensed that to ask for city affectations such as a gin and tonic or a spritzer could be asking for trouble.

    "'Airy 'Elmet, Belter, or Knickersplitter."

    "Um, er, one Hairy Helmet. Oh, and one Knickersplitter. I'll live a little." Mark grinned at the landlord, whose hangdog expression remained resolutely hung. "Erm, could I see the, erm, bar menu?"

    "There isn't one," muttered the landlord. "These is t'menu." From her seat by the infernally hot fire, Rosie saw him wave a dismissive hand at two thick plastic covers on the counter.

    "Oh, I see. The pork pies look wonderful. Are they homemade?"

    
Pork pies
. At this, even Rosie's vegetarian stomach rumbled. But she couldn't. She couldn't.

    "We keep us own pigs round t'back."

    "Erm, a
large
pie, yes. And could you possibly cut it in half?"

    "Here's t'knife and t'plate. Cut it in 'alf yoursel'."

    "Oh.
Right
. Thanks. And this is the mustard, is it—yes, I see, there is a scrape or two left. Thanks very much indeed." Mark, grinning, came back to the fireside and sawed the pie in half to reveal close-packed meat of a near-neon pinkness.

    "Go on, Rosie," he urged her. "There's nothing else to eat. No one will know."

    Rosie shook her head resolutely, keeping her eyes trained on the dog's bottom. As an appetite suppressant, it was very effective.

    "They do rooms here," Mark said, returning from the bar with two more pints of beer foaming over his hands and down his arms. Rosie tried to work out whether that was good news. She glanced at the window and decided that, on balance, it was. It was now dark and they needed somewhere to stay, even if this pub's sign bore a picture of a beheaded woman and creaked ominously in the wind. Rosie briefly wondered what the Silent Lady's connection with the pub named in her honor was, then decided she didn't want to know.

    Her faint hopes of encountering heartwarming local characters were dashed when the only other person to beard the portals during the entire course of the evening was a wizened walker from Lancashire eager to share ripping yarns from the fells. As Mark sank gradually into a fire-and-Knickersplitter-soothed stupor, Rosie listened with resigned politeness to near misses on Bastard Gap and being caught short on Dead Cow Ridge.

    It took some time for the landlord to show them their room, not least because the door handle was of a variety requiring not just the one knack but five or six to open it. The gloomy room it eventually disclosed had clearly not been occupied for some time.