by Wendy Holden
"Fix it up, obviously. You could get about twenty executive flats in there. Not to mention a swimming pool, gym, parking for forty cars, and quite possibly a helipad as well." Rosie looked at him in horror. "Not that we're going to obviously," Mark added. "It's hardly the sort of thing we'd want."
"No," said Rosie emphatically. "We want a little cottage. With roses round the door." And a lavender-bordered path, she added silently. And a springy lawn spattered with daisies…
"Cottages are quite expensive," Mark cut in. "We might have to settle for something we can do up." Rosie nodded. No problem. Painting was her job, wasn't it? Mark shook the pile of particulars between both hands. "Quite a few things here actually. A former butcher's shop near Derby…"
"Ugh!" Rosie grimaced.
"We're not looking for a manor house in the Cotswolds, you know."
"I know. It's just—a butcher's shop?"
Mark sighed extravagantly. "Buying something with fifty acres might be a bit beyond our budget."
"It's not where it is," Rosie said, sighing, "but what it is. I'm vegetarian, remember?"
Chapter Four
Samantha, perched perilously on one of the six blasted-granite disks that served as kitchen stools, looked up from her magazine and sighed. Her dissatisfied gaze lingered on the glass bricks of the walls, dazzlingly illuminated by sunken-floor uplighters. Held gingerly between her fingers was one of the thin porcelain cups Basia had decreed as the only type of china permitted in the house. As usual, it contained Japanese green tea, the only permitted beverage besides Evian.
She resumed her reading of the magazine.
It is here, in the rustic dream that is her thick-walled, fifteenthcentury manor house, that society potter Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom goes about her exquisite and distinctive craft. In the hall, a lavender-scented silence pervades; brilliant sunshine floods the stone flags and glances off the glittering diamond-pane windows. Presently, Carinthia brings in a hand-painted tray on which everything, from the colorful mugs of steaming coffee to the thick rounds of shortbread biscuit, is homemade…
Suddenly, Samantha longed with all her soul for a homemade shortbread biscuit, but these did not figure on Basia's list of Ayurvedically balanced foods for Pita personalities. This list, the legendary designer had insisted, should never be deviated from if Samantha's energies, both spiritual and physical, were to harmonize perfectly with those of the house. Judging from the permanent bad temper she had been in since Basia left, her energies still had some way to go.
Samantha groaned. As if the turbulent state of her chakras was not enough, there remained a mere four weeks before filming started to get inside the head of Christabel. She simply had to research Christabel's location, motivation, personal conversation, the lot. And today was location.
"CHRISTABEL: LOCATION," Samantha had written on the first sheet of her fat new pad. Underneath it she had written "THE COUNTRYSIDE." Christabel, Samantha knew from the production notes, lived in the countryside. But what she didn't know, had no idea about, in fact, was what the countryside was actually like. She was far from sure she had ever been there. After a few minutes more of pondering on this, Samantha had yelled for Consuela and sent her out for the latest editions of Country Life, Country Living, Which Gazebo?, Charming Castles, Cottage Beautiful, Country Homes and Interiors, and Period Living. It was in the glossy pages of Cottage Beautiful that she had stumbled across the wonderful world of Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom.
Samantha read on: As one approaches the imposing yet romantic building, a panoply of textures asserts itself: lichened tiles, herbaceous borders, Carinthia's sparkling-white washing fluttering in the lavenderscented breeze, old stone the rich gold of digestive biscuits…
Samantha's fingers tapped on the zinc-topped table. Why did she feel so discontented all of a sudden? It wasn't as if she was lacking a panoply of textures herself, even if, sadly, digestive biscuits did not feature among them. Basia had been extremely keen on textures, as the Neolithic ax head, Maserati connecting rod, and carefully arranged pieces of broken glass currently festooning the windowsills attested. Admittedly, the textures, like the colors, weren't quite the ones Samantha had originally had in mind. Had it really been a good idea to allow Basia to paint all the outside brickworks a shade midway between khaki and brown? Guy had already forcibly expressed his doubts that explanations about fantastic chi would wash with the royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's planning department.
Forcing these unpleasant reflections aside, Samantha returned to Carinthia's sparkling-white washing. Inside, deep-silled windows painted simply in white provide a natural setting for garden flowers in handmade jugs. Elsewhere, Carinthia's use of bold color, antique printed textiles, and reclaimed timber gives the tiny cottage a Tudor Mediterranean feel…Tudor Mediterranean, well, yes, thought Samantha, that sounded much more the sort of thing she'd originally been after with Roland Gardens. Upstairs, gingham throws, rose-stenciled loo seats, and toile de Jouy abound…The words stabbed Samantha to the heart. The thought of Basia's spartan futon muscling to the front of her mind, she stared jealously at pictures of white-painted Victorian iron bedsteads piled high with vintage eiderdowns and crisp white sheets (no doubt fresh from the line) whose lavender scent seemed to billow from the very page.
Outside, in Carinthia's vegetable patch, leeks, potatoes, and onions are encouraged to go to seed for aesthetic reasons, while in a corner of the "wild garden," Carinthia's bower stands wreathed in tantalizing whiffs from the honeysuckle winding elegantly round the weathered pillars of an eighteenth-century temple of Diana…
Emitting a snarl, Samantha jerked her head up. Out of the single-pane kitchen window, its frame painted not crisp white but battleship gray, Basia's zen garden was all too visible. An untantalizing pile of sand, wet pebbles, and a verdigris turtle, it was raked daily, amid much muttering, by Consuela, whom Samantha had to forcibly discourage from polishing the turtle. This, on Basia's explicit instructions, had to be left to weather naturally. Even the Insider people had stopped short of photographing the zen garden, although they had been very excited and complimentary about the rest of the place. It had apparently been given six pages in the forthcoming issue of the magazine. That, at least, was something. Yet the faint glow of comfort in Samantha's breast faded as a cursory examination of the Carinthia article revealed it to be ten pages long.
Carinthia leads me to the kitchen, where she motions me to a roomy shepherd's chair at the deep-grooved farmhouse table where generations of families have broken bread. She crosses the delightfully uneven Elizabethan baked floor tiles [on which generations of families have broken their legs? Samantha imagined viciously] and stirs something savory and satisfying in a vast iron pot on the shining stove. Lunch is imminent…
Samantha ground her teeth, remembering without enthusiasm her own lunch of a single slice of rye bread topped with olive oil and thyme. She closed her eyes as, utterly without warning, a mighty wave of shuddering envy of society potter Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom crashed over her. Samantha was aware of a violent longing for an exquisite little cottage—as long as it wasn't too little—and a glamorous garden with a delicious touch of wildness and without a verdigris turtle in sight. Suddenly, Samantha felt she hadn't wanted to be anybody, not Nicole Kidman, not even Catherine Zeta-Jones, quite so desperately as she now wanted to be Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom.
She looked round Basia's minimalist kitchen with loathing. Had generations of families broken bread here? Of course not. For a start, no bread, not even of the pita variety, was on the list of Ayurvedic foods for Pita personalities. Families, in any case, were not encouraged—particularly Guy's.
His former wife, Marina, and daughter, Iseult, were emphatically persona non grata in Roland Gardens. The entire point of Samantha's designer overhaul had originally been to expunge any reminder of her predecessor. Samantha had watched the council cart off Marina's squashy sofas and sheepskin rugs with a sense of immense satisfaction that had las
ted until Basia had replaced them with vintage iron garden furniture painted a space-age silver and a coffee table made from a life-size elephant head in chicken wire.
Samantha's attempts to expunge Guy's family had met with mixed success in other ways as well. His maddening refusal to break off all diplomatic contact with Marina had been compounded by his insistence that Iseult be allowed to keep her old bedroom in Roland Gardens. Yet it was here that, in Samantha's eyes, Basia had scored her only real designer triumph—the complete removal of all Iseult's hideous posters from the walls, and in particular the one from the Bank of Ganja, signed by the Chief Hashier. The price sticker that remained on one of its peeling bottom corners never failed to remind Samantha that in certain contexts, £3.99 was actually an awful lot of money.
She contemplated Carinthia's bedstead again, noting jealously that it looked even bigger, bouncier, and more glamorous than that traditionally belonging to the pea-troubled Princess in the fairy tale. Christabel…Carinthia. The names were similar. Did her new role, then, mean a whole new place to live? Samantha was not a religious woman, but she believed in destiny. Particularly if that destiny moved Guy out of Marina and Iseult's clutches and into the middle of nowhere.
Meeting Guy in the bank was a perfect example. That it was fate, and not merely being "between films," that had put Samantha behind the switchboard had been obvious the minute her future husband hoved into view across the marble wastes of the mezzanine. Fate had then prompted the subsequent realization on Samantha's part that marrying someone as rich as Guy would remove once and for all the humiliating necessity for her to traipse around to auditions all day long. Fate's final tour de force had been to slip into her head the story about researching the part for the film.
The wonderful thing about fate, Samantha considered, was that not only did it conveniently explain away one's less laudable actions, it also meant that one was rarely wrong. Viewed in this context, the hiring of Basia did not, as Guy insisted, amount to giving her license to vandalize while being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for the privilege, but was, in fact, a logical progression along destiny's path. Fate had of course inflicted Basia on the house in order for her to create an environment so impossible to live in that Samantha would be forced to move. To the country.
Samantha gazed dreamily at the kitchen's shiny aluminum ceiling, reflecting both in it and on the fact that the wonderful thing about acting was its unexpectedness. One's life could change in an instant. From millennium minimalism to medieval manor house in the blink of an eye…
It is here, she thought excitedly, in the rustic dream that is her thick-walled, fifteenth-century manor house, where brilliant sunshine floods the stone flags of the hall, that celebrated actress Samantha Villiers takes a well-deserved break from the set of her latest blockbuster film. A lavender-scented silence pervades the ancient dwelling…
She'd have to talk Guy round, of course. Samantha's lion heart sank slightly at this. Even one such as she, who, alongside generosity, placed optimism as her most marked characteristic, knew that convincing Guy to uproot himself from his clubs, his gym, and most of all the City office where he spent practically all his time would not be easy. She had no idea what he thought about the countryside; perhaps, like herself, he'd never even been there. Which meant there might at least be the possibility of an overnight conversion like her own. But Basia's conversion would be his first concern. The first problem he would raise, Samantha knew, was having one very large and expensive house on their hands already. Roland Gardens was fast taking on the aspect of a very ugly and very uncomfortable albatross. Persuading Guy to leave London would take every trick in what was becoming a very well-thumbed book. She looked at her slim sliver of a watch. She had two hours to think of something before he came home.
***
As far as convincing Guy to do things was concerned, Samantha had learned that crotchless lace was more persuasive than any amount of cold logic. Her argument for leaving Basia's urban sanctum for something significantly more Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom therefore rested principally on a number of points, including a plunging black lace bra with feather trim and nipple holes, a pair of split-crotch knickers, stockings, garters, stilettos, and a satin wrap trimmed with marabou feathers. Given this abundance of plumage, Samantha felt like a raunchy half-plucked chicken as she arranged herself on the daybed in the upstairs sitting room, stared at the wire-wool goat, and thought of lavender-scented silence and waited for Guy's return. And waited.
"I'm home, darling." There was a thud as his Louis Vuitton gym bag hit the kitchen floor. The lavender-scented silence dispersed as a waft of aftershave the olfactory equivalent of a twenty-one-gun salute drifted up the stairs. "Everything all right?" he called.
Damn him, why didn't he come up? She heard him rummage in the cupboard for a glass, then rattle it under the ice dispenser of Basia's wardrobe-size refrigerator. He had already dubbed the blasted-steel edifice A Fridge Too Far.
"Wonderful," trilled Samantha, immediately switching the charm on to full. "How was the gym?" Considering Guy was down a staircase and round a corner, striking a balance between irresistible and audible was not easy.
"Resting heart rate of sixty-five," Guy called back. "Fittest fiftysomething on the block, I am. Been busy, darling?"
A scuffling sound as he picked up one of the country homes magazines from the kitchen table. Samantha rolled her eyes impatiently. "Come upstairs, darling," she called.
But Guy seemed absorbed in whatever he was reading. An incredulous snort reached her from the basement kitchen. "To shift hard-water deposits from the bases of bathroom taps, scrub with an old toothbrush dipped in vinegar…" Guy yelled up the stairs in astonishment. "What's all this about?"
"Christabel," shouted Samantha, as sexily as she could. They were at least getting on to the subject.
"Christabel?" echoed Guy disbelievingly. "Who the hell's that? New cleaner or something? Must say it would be nice to have something slightly foxier to look at than Consuela."
Samantha's lips tightened. Not now, not ever was the time to point out that Consuela's lack of foxiness was the whole point of her.
At last, Guy jogged up the steps and appeared in the sitting room. "Bloody hell," he said as his gaze descended from the curls tumbling seductively round her face, past her exposed nipples to her fishnetted thighs. As Samantha, running her tongue round her lips, lifted her legs and slowly placed a stiletto-heeled foot on either side of the daybed, he registered the knickers as well.
"Shall we go into the bedroom?" she purred.
"No," gasped Guy, tearing himself out of his clothes. "Stay right where you are."
Like hell, thought Samantha, sitting up so quickly on the daybed that it felt as if she had left half her back behind.
Five minutes later, she was slipping her bra straps off her shoulders and admiring herself in the unframed mirror that stood propped against the wall at the bottom of the futon. Beneath the sheer fabric, her breasts rose full, ripe, and brown—the breasts, Samantha thought smugly, of someone ten years younger. Which they could well be—who knew what or who the plastic surgeon had stuck in there.
In her best Mrs. Robinson fashion, she peeled off the fishnet stockings and, pushing a hand through her rumpled auburn hair, smoldered at her husband in the mirror. She had sneaked this into the house in blatant contravention of Basia's rules; its life-or-death necessity was the one thing on which she had stood firm.
Guy, reflected behind her on the futon, was standing pretty firm himself. His stiffly erect penis protruded beneath the swollen roundness of his stomach.
Samantha turned and gave him a burning look from beneath her eyelashes. "I'm a lioness," she informed him in a sibilant hiss. "Hunting for my prey." Her bracelets and watch rattled loudly together as, snarling, she pretended to slash at the air with a paw. Guy grinned appreciatively and grunted in reply. Lion Hunter, Samantha knew, was his favorite game. If this didn't persuade him, nothing would.
&nbs
p; But even here Basia had managed to bugger things up. The slow, threatening big-cat lope toward Guy, in which the sight of her thigh muscles flexing was central to building up his excitement, was perfectly possible on the thick-piled carpet of old. Even if Marina had put it there. Post-Basia, emulating the Queen of the Jungle was less about growling, more trying not to squeal as the bare beech boards, chosen for their knotted qualities, pressed agonizingly into Samantha's bony knees. Guy, however, noticed nothing of this; his attention was fixed unwaveringly on her breasts as, swaying and spilling generously out of the feathered bra, they approached him over the futon.
Breathing in short, excited bursts, Guy squealed in excitement as his wife cuffed him with a heavily beringed hand. Springing forward, he clamped both hands on Samantha's breasts; she, in turn, locked both legs round his waist so he fell back onto the mattress. A sharp crack beneath announced that Basia's futon base had possibly been the first fatality of the jungle attack. Samantha slid her hips along Guy's thighs until she was sitting on his stomach and bent over to push her nipples in his face. His eyes bulged with mingled terror and excitement.
