Farm Fatale

by Wendy Holden

  Another notice had caught Rosie's eye. "What on earth is hen racing?" She giggled.

  "You've never been to a hen race?" Alan looked at her in cheery mock amazement. "Have them here every year, we do, in the pub car park."

  "You race hens in the car park?" It was on the tip of Rosie's tongue to ask if that was cruel, but she swallowed it back determinedly. In any case, it certainly gave a whole new meaning to "free range."

  "That's right. Big village tradition, it is. Everyone who's got hens enters them. Mine's called Josephine and she's heavily fancied this year."

  "What makes them run though?" asked Rosie.

  "A trail of corn. Unfortunately, though, Josephine didn't run fast enough last year. A rogue hen from Milton Keynes won. It was rumored," Alan added darkly, "that it'd had its corn soaked in Southern Comfort."

  "Two pints of Knickersplitter, please," Mark interrupted testily.

  "Is that cheating?" asked Rosie.

  The landlord put the streaming pint glasses on the bar and shrugged. "Not strictly speaking. And if I were honest, there were mitigating circumstances. Josephine is a three-minute hen and not a four-minute hen, and she only runs in fine weather. It was pissing down last year. The Milton Keynes entrant," Alan concluded impressively, "had clearly had wet-weather training."

  Rosie turned in delight to Mark. But Mark wasn't listening. He was concentrating on his pint and smacking his lips. "Orange peel, aniseed, honey, nutmeg, touch of, um, yes, cardamom even," he rhapsodized, taking large drafts and frothing the liquid about his mouth like a wine taster. Suddenly, he whipped out a pen and began making copious notes on one of the house details.

  "Oh, 'eck," said Alan, winking at Rosie. "I'd best have a word with the kitchen. The curry's obviously getting into the beer pipes."

  Rosie flushed, her downcast eyes dwelling on the house details. They were of the one where the dog had been shot. "You don't know of anything for sale round here, do you?" she asked suddenly, ridiculously hopeful.

  Alan shook his head. "Houses, you mean? There's lists of folks miles long at the estate agents wanting places in villages like this, so I'm told. Property market's gone mad."

  "Tell us about it," said Mark heavily, draining his pint.

  ***

  "Amazing about the hen races," Rosie ventured as they drove back toward the Ml.

  Mark shot her an incredulous look from the driving seat. "Didn't believe that, did you? For Christ's sake, Rosie, you can't race hens."

  Rosie lapsed into silence. Mark's snappy mood, she knew, had its root in panic. For him, there was a direct and increasingly urgent link between getting a cottage and getting a column. Which wasn't to say that she didn't want one desperately as well. It had, after all, been her idea in the first place. As they shot at inadvisable speed down the motorway, she dwelt on the bright pictures in her mind. Fields edged with drystone walls spread like green sheets beneath a pale blue sky. A church steeple standing sentinel over the green. Peaceful rows of cottages, huddled behind pots of daffodils. Window boxes rioting with pansies. As, finally, they turned into Craster Road, Rosie's heart felt as if it were dragging along behind the car like cans after newlyweds.

  ***

  Just like Guy to steal her thunder by dropping dead, had been Samantha's first thought as her husband slid, blue-lipped, to the floor in front of her.

  To her surprise, however, he was not dead, but had merely suffered a massive heart attack. "Well, at least I suppose it shows he has one," Samantha drawled to the paramedic.

  From the local emergency medical treatment center, she had transferred Guy to a hospital in London as soon as possible, more for her convenience than his. It had been the work of seconds for Samantha to realize that she—in Guy's unavoidable absence—must now handle negotiations for the sale of the urban sanctum. What was more, she could now take charge of finding them somewhere new to live. By the time he recovered, it would all be over. Against all the odds, destiny had found a way, Samantha thought with glee. Things couldn't have worked out more spectacularly if dear Ridley Scott had done the storyboards.

  Yet, in the oyster that was her world, there remained some grit; the utter boringness of not being allowed to reveal to anyone the identity of the American megastar who had bought Roland Gardens. The only compensation was being summoned from intensive care to The Afterlife, the megastar's international media and production company, to sign the confidentiality clause. A sequence of vast rooms vibrating to long, atonal chords of sound, The Afterlife offices immediately struck Samantha as familiar. The unmistakable whiff of sage smoke, for instance. The wire-wool goat, too, rang a bell, and wasn't that a Maserati connecting rod like her own over there? Amazing how these ancient tribal artifacts got everywhere, although Guy had laughed uproariously and said "Knightsbridge" when Samantha had once wondered aloud in what part of the bush the Maserati people lived.

  "And of course I'm used to these," Samantha purred to the froglike Afterlife lawyer as she put pen to dotted line on the papiermache desk in his office.

  "Really?" snapped the frog, looking at her with bulging, suspicious eyes.

  "Being an actress, you see," Samantha added hurriedly. "We sign a lot of these in my profession. Agreeing not to look Tom Cruise in the eye and all that sort of thing, ha ha…um, where exactly do you want me to sign?"

  Roxy, the megastar's long-haired, hamster-faced PA, was slightly more forthcoming. Over what was, again, a strangely familiar white china cup of Japanese green tea, she re-created for a rapt Samantha the precise moment when the megastar, flicking through Insider on board her Gulfstream, happened upon Basia's handiwork. "She just, like, saw it and she just, like, totally, had to have it," Roxy confided in toothy wonderment. "It was just, like, instant. Like totally."

  "Yes, well, I think that's the way Basia Briggs affects most people," stammered Samantha, who had by now practically lost control of her bowels with excitement. "You either love it or you…" she paused, "ahem, love it even more."

  Samantha was, in truth, almost fond of Basia's work herself now. Particularly given that She Whose Name Could Not Be Revealed had, via the froglike lawyer, practically asked Samantha to name her price. Once she had recovered from the shock and dealt with the tedious incidentals of getting Guy into the hospital, Samantha had driven the most hard and audacious of bargains, although never in a million years had she expected the megastar to agree to the price she was asking.

  That the froglike lawyer hadn't either was evident in his tone when he called back to report that they had a deal. Samantha was jubilant, despite wondering whether she could have asked for even more. But what the hell. In one fell swoop, she'd gotten rid of Roland Gardens and piled up enough to become lady of whatever manor she fancied. She'd gotten her heart's desire and, gratifyingly, with every appearance of helping Guy recover from his heart attack. He could hardly object now.

  Guy's doctor had not only been quick to agree that he needed a period of absolute rest but also that the countryside would be the perfect place to recuperate in. The surgeon had been touched, moved even, by the fact that Samantha was willing to give up what she assured him was a glittering London-based career to move to the back of beyond for the sake of her husband. "I believe in standing by my man, Dr. Carmichael." Samantha had smiled dazzlingly at the doctor, serene in the knowledge that the papers clinching the sale were sitting waiting for her signature in her Fendi Baguette.

  Samantha had tackled Guy's bank next, making sure that Bud Hufflestein, Guy's boss and the bank's president, understood that a move from the capital for health reasons would not in any way affect Guy's ability to keep in touch with the office, modern telecommunications being what they were.

  Wearing the smallest, tightest skirt in her wardrobe, Samantha had worked hard to persuade Hufflestein that, even though his deputy's twenty-hour working days were over, this was no reason why negotiations for a lucrative nonexecutive directorship should not begin. Several intimate dinners with Hufflestein later, Samantha's cup
of joy was running over almost as much as those of her push-up bra.

  The only other bit of grit in her shell was Iseult.

  One of the more boring consequences of Guy's otherwise frankly rather well-timed illness was that his ex-wife and daughter had reappeared on the scene. Iseult, in particular. Despite Samantha's efforts to maintain a near-ubiquitous presence at her husband's bedside, there were times when she was forced to be absent—using mobile phones in intensive care wards being, for some ludicrous reason, not allowed. And it was through these windows in her bedside schedule that Iseult climbed in. Samantha would never have admitted, even to herself, how twitchy the sight of Guy's daughter in the ward made her. There was something in Iseult's big, cornflower-blue eyes that implied she knew that, contrary to what Dr. Carmichael believed, the only reason Samantha was standing by her man was in order to take the wallet out of his pocket.

  In self-defense, Samantha had pruned her call-answering viciously. Those from The Afterlife's lawyer or Bud Hufflestein were accepted, but previously vital personnel such as her aromatherapist, dietician, personal trainer, and even theatrical agent found themselves speaking into the void of Samantha's message box. Unlike the others, however, her agent did not give up after the first three unanswered calls.

  "What the hell is it, Russ?" Samantha, shouting into her mobile outside the hospital entrance, watched in fury as Iseult, all long limbs and flowing hair, loped past into the foyer. "Quick, quick, I haven't got all day. Visiting hours, you know," she added, just to lay it on thick.

  "Darling, it's the director."

  "The director? Steven, you mean?" Had Spielberg called at last?

  "The Country Clinic director. Christabel, remember? The part you were so excited about?"

  Samantha's heart resumed its normal sluggish rate. "Oh. That director." Funny how, after all the recent house excitement, Christabel seemed to have lost a little of her luster. The prospect of playing a provincial barmaid no longer seemed particularly glamorous compared to the tantalizing task of selecting the manor of which she would most like to be lady.

  "He's a little nervous because he thinks you may have lost interest."

  "What on earth makes him think that?" snapped Samantha, playing for time as she racked her brain for excuses.

  "Can't imagine, angel," said Russ. "Possibly—and this is just a hunch—it might have something to do with the fact that you haven't turned up for rehearsals yet."

  "For God's sake, Russ," Samantha exploded. "Doesn't he realize what I'm going through at the moment? Can't he imagine what it's like? How it feels to be on the brink? To know that suddenly it could all go wrong and I could lose absolutely everything?"

  "Darling, I know. I know," Russ soothed. "Believe me. We all realize what you're going through. We can all imagine how you feel. And, believe me, we can sympathize."

  "So I should bloody hope. For Christ's sake, I'm trying to sell a bloody house down here."

  There was a surprised silence. "And Guy?" Russ asked pointedly.

  "God, I mean, Christ," screeched Samantha, pacing furiously about the pavement and tearing at her hair. "What am I supposed to do? I'm not used to working like this."

  "Darling, let's face it, you're not used to working," drawled Russ. "Just get your butt over to the studio for rehearsals. Today. Otherwise, from what I gather, the barmaid gets it."

  Samantha stormed back into the hospital. Her fury intensified when, returning to the ward, she found Iseult, as expected, on the chair at Guy's bedside clutching her father's hand. Hunched on the bedside chair, her black top, apparently manufactured from cobwebs, straining across her budding and braless breasts, she was moving her head mournfully to whatever was playing on the stateof-the-art silver CD player balanced on her crotch. A present from doting Daddy, no doubt, thought Samantha viciously, her eye catching the CD cover—What Did Your Last One Die Of? by someone called Matt Locke. Her lips twisted as she noticed the grapes she had bought from Harrods that morning had almost halved in number. Despite her only-come-out-at-night appearance, Iseult evidently had a healthy appetite. Trust Guy, Samantha thought savagely, to father the sole member of her generation who wasn't an anorexic, yet was still a waif. Iseult's frail neck, skinny arms, and elegantly gangly legs were, Samantha recognized jealously, gifts that had been missing from her own particular genetic stocking and had been achieved only by practically starving herself.

  Ditto Iseult's perfect oval face with its lips so full they were less rosebud, more rose, fashionably thin arched eyebrows, and center-parted hair of a blackness that was almost blue. It was amazing how unlike her father she was, large blue eyes excepted. There was little of the Latin about Guy's florid, Anglo-Saxon appearance, apart, that was, from the eye-watering blasts of aftershave. Iseult was obviously her mother's daughter. If only, Samantha thought, she wasn't her father's.

  "I think your father's tired," said Samantha bossily. "Perhaps you should go."

  A look of intense dislike slid across Iseult's face. She detached her earphones. "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yeah. Er, I mean yes. I'll arrange a cab for you."

  "Don't bother." Iseult looked at her steadily. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you."

  "What about?" Samantha was determined not to show how surprised she was. If Iseult thought she could get around her with a bit of stepdaughterly bonding, she had another think coming.

  "About what the fuck you've done to my bedroom."

  Samantha boggled. "Your bedroom?"

  "You've taken down all my posters and painted it shit color. I've just been to see it."

  Bugger, cursed Samantha. I should have made Basia change the locks as well. "Your—I mean that bedroom," she explained haughtily, "is, along with the rest of the house, the work of the foremost interior designer de nos jours."

  "De where? Never heard of her."

  "Denosjowers," Samantha repeated. "Of our times. Don't they teach you French at your fancy school?"

  "Oh, I see." Iseult looked incredulous. Then amused. "De nos jours," she said slowly in a perfect accent. "Wow," she added.

  "Anyway," blustered Samantha, "I'm afraid it's not your bedroom anymore. The house is being sold and your father and I are moving to the country." She watched with satisfaction as absolute shock rippled across Iseult's irritatingly symmetrical features.

  "The country? So where the hell am I supposed to go?"

  "Wherever you usually go," Samantha drawled. "Your mother's house, I imagine."

  "But I've left Mum's." Jolted on to the defensive, Iseult looked panicked. "Her new boyfriend's a drag. I was going to move in with Dad." The blue eyes focused on Samantha with a look that was almost pleading.

  Conscious that, for once, she had all the cards in her hands, Samantha gave Iseult the benefit of her best stage smile. "Well, I'm afraid we're not going to be here for much longer. So you'll just have to find somewhere else to live. Won't you?"

  For a second, Iseult looked as if she were about to burst into tears. She glanced desperately at her prone and unconscious father, lying oblivious beside them. Then, flashing Samantha a look of killer loathing, Iseult stood up and flounced out of the ward as best she could on rubber soles at least five inches in height. Samantha looked after her with satisfaction. Guy snored on.

  Chapter Seven

  Bent over her worktable in the corner of the flat on Craster Road, Rosie was daydreaming of Eight Mile Bottom. Nothing that any estate agent had sent through since had come close to the village, although Mark had tried hard to interest her in a barn conversion near Cirencester. The problem with this was that the conversion was yet to be done. By them.

  The future was looking bleak. Mark, too, was looking bleak. And looked bleaker every day he went into the office with no cottage to speak of and an increasingly impatient editor.

  Rosie welcomed the interruption of the telephone.

  "Hello," said a nasal voice with a north-country accent that Rosie did not immediately recognize.

  "Hello?"


  "Nigel here. From Kane, Birch, and Spankie. You're in luck. Something's come up. Don't know whether you're still interested, but…"

  "Yes. Yes. Yes!" shrieked Rosie, like Meg Ryan in the restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally. Her heart filled with love for the oily-haired estate agent. "Nigel, you're fantastic."

  "Thank you, madam." Nigel sounded gratified. "The owners are in a hurry to move, so your not being in a chain helps. It's only just come on the market. We've not .put it in the window yet—"

  "Oh, please don't," said Rosie, giving him Mark's work fax number.