Farm Fatale

by Wendy Holden

  "Rosie?" The voice came from the yard behind her.

  She pressed her forehead briefly against the glass. Naturally he would have to wait for her to be doing something embarrassing before coming on the scene. Gawking through his windows, for instance.

  "Oh. Jack. Hi." As Kate came yapping up, beating muddied paws liberally all over her, Rosie tried to sound as casual as she could. She glanced fearfully at him. Would he still be angry?

  He was coming through the gate, Wellingtons squelching in the mud. His tan had intensified—there had been a few days of fine spring sunshine since she had last seen him. A flash of blue eyes, that quick, twisted smile, and Rosie felt unsteady with relief. "I was just, um, seeing if you were in," she mumbled.

  Jack gave a short laugh. "In? I've not been in the house since four o'clock this morning. Since I got up to sort out the stock."

  "Oh, of course. Sorry." Jack, she had pondered many times over the past few days, had more in common with city yuppies than he realized. The only other person Rosie knew who got up at five to sort out stock was Bella, who had once done it to make a soup base for a dinner party. She sensed, though, that this was not the time to share this information. Not ever, perhaps.

  Jack cleared his throat. "Well, help yourself to the animals." He jerked out a hand in a general, expansive gesture.

  "Right-o." Rosie nodded emphatically.

  "I've told them all to suck their cheeks in." His features, screwed up against the sun, attempted to straighten themselves out into a smile.

  "Thanks."

  "You'll find the sheep in the far field today." He pointed in a direction on the other side of the farmhouse.

  "Thanks."

  Silence.

  "Listen," Jack said awkwardly. "I went a bit over the top the other day, I know. Not your fault. I was still angry about that bloody stupid woman telling me off about the cows making noises. Not that that was the last of it either." His eyes hardened.

  "She's complained about them again?"

  "Threatened to have them monitored for the noise they make. Now she's opposing my application to add a free-range poultry unit to the farm. Anyone would think I was trying to put up a nuclear reprocessing plant or something. BANANAS. That's what she is."

  Rosie raised her eyebrows slightly. As expletives went, it seemed amazingly mild. Considering the depths of invective Jack was capable of.

  "BANANAS," Jack repeated. "As in Building Anything Near Anyone Is Not Allowed."

  Rosie giggled. "I'll be off, then," she said. "And don't worry, I'll keep out of your way."

  "You don't have to do that." With apparent spontaneity, Jack moved a step closer. "I think I owe you an apology. You have your principles. I should have treated them with more respect."

  His nearness fizzing in the air between them, Rosie suddenly felt she had no principles at all. Unable, suddenly, to look into his eyes, she stared at his upper lip.

  "I've been thinking about it," the lip said. "And it struck me that, after all I'd said, you must wonder what the hell I'm working on a farm at all for."

  "I've been thinking too," Rosie gasped, eager to grasp the opportunity to apologize. "Just because I don't eat steak doesn't mean you're not allowed to make a living. On the land your family has farmed for generations." The lip was, she noticed, broad. Clumsily cut, but curiously soft-looking.

  "I suppose it's because it's a way of life," Jack continued, so near now she could almost feel his breath. "Meverells—that's my family name—have always farmed here. It was their life and now it's mine. Such as it is. Seven days a week, one day off a year if I'm lucky. Doesn't make much sense, does it?" The lip stretched in a grin. "Must be off my bloody rocker." His face turned, looking toward the fields spreading behind and beyond. "But I suppose I like my own space." He was looking at her, his expression urgent. "Do you understand what I mean?"

  Rosie looked over his shoulder to the flank of hill and nodded. "If it was my space, I'd like it too." She lowered her eyes to his hands. Rough, broken-nailed, they hung heavily by his sides, the solid fingers curved inward.

  "I've missed you, you know," he said softly.

  "Have you?" Rosie meant to sound assured, but it came out as a squeak. Hearing it, she suppressed the near-overwhelming urge to laugh.

  "Got used to having you around, I suppose. Even though you haven't been coming long. You seemed to fit in here somehow." She could feel his eyes searching her face but kept her own trained on the hand moving almost undetectably toward hers. As he brushed a thick digit against her forefinger, excitement juddered up and down her arm almost painfully, as if she had touched an electric fence.

  "It's nice to have you back," Jack murmured. Rosie had no doubt that he was glad to see her. Unless that was a cattle prod in his pocket.

  ***

  Half an hour later Rosie came back down the lane, passing rapidly through the tangle of screaming children kicking the inevitable football against the inevitable cottage. The pebbledash rendering of Number 2 was now bald in several places. But Rosie noticed nothing of this. She was full of Jack, her insides alternately leaping with excitement and trembling with dread at the powerful attraction she had felt. Her lips burned and her hand tingled where he had touched it. Her heart was spinning, her stomach a roller coaster, and her head chaotic, like a messy bedroom. She had no idea what to do. If only Bella were around.

  Rosie tried determinedly not to catch the eye of Mrs. Womersley, bent busily over her flower trough outside the front door of Number

  1. She did not succeed.

  "Been up to Spitewinter?" The old lady's eyes were bright with question.

  Rosie nodded, feeling the leap of delight and an accompanying crimson tide of blush rising up her neck. There was a satisfied look in Mrs. Womersley's eyes as she turned back to her borders.

  Mark was still bent over his laptop as she came in. He did not look up. If anything, he looked more down than he had when she had left him. A riptide of guilt overwhelmed Rosie.

  Yet what had she done? Nothing—in deed. In her head, however…

  "How's it going?" she asked Mark in her brightest voice, filling a glass of water at the kitchen sink to hide her guilty face.

  Mark jerked his head up savagely. "Great," he said sarcastically. "The editors rejected two attempts at 'Green-er Pastures' in the space of the past few hours. The kids have been rioting ever since you went and the bedroom door's fallen off its hinges."

  "Oh, dear," murmured Rosie.

  "Quite. And there's another thing."

  "What?" Rosie looked at him sharply, terror hammering in her heart. Had someone seen her and Jack? The postman…?

  "Bella called about an hour ago. She's back from Val d'Isère and wants to come up and stay. This week."

  In theory, Rosie could not—barring the lottery jackpot—have asked for more welcome news. But talking to her on the telephone was one thing. Actually having her to stay was quite another. "Bella? Here?" Rosie looked round the kitchen. What on earth would Bella think? The small, shabby room with the chipped paint floor could not have been further removed from Bella's pristine Islington cucina. Which, besides being half operating theater, half gastrotemple, was also the size of the entire ground floor of the cottage. Rosie gazed in despair at the galloping damp on the wall and the piles of dirty crockery.

  "Yes. Here," Mark confirmed flatly. "Wants to come up and have some serious girl time with you or something," he added in disgust.

  "Oh, so she's coming on her own?" That at least was something.

  "No. She's bringing the Antichrist."

  Bella's dreaded son, Ptolemy. Rosie's stomach gave a sudden lurch for reasons utterly unconnected with Jack.

  That night, through the curtainless windows—another thing they'd never gotten round to remedying—Rosie watched the light from the almost full moon silver Mark's profile. He seemed, for once, to be sleeping, but there was none of the regular breathing that usually signaled unconsciousness. Rosie lay drinking in for the
millionth time that long, straight nose, bony swell of cheekbone, jutting lip, and sweeping jawline. His arrogant, delicately cut beauty could not have been further removed from Jack's crumpled charms, although there was a resemblance. If Jack was the rough-hewn block, thought Rosie, Mark was the stone after a skilled sculptor had worked it with a chisel.

  She was not accustomed to initiating sex—not very millennium woman of me, Rosie thought miserably. But then she had never had to; Mark seemed to prefer to be in control and she had grown used to the fact that, two or three times a week, he would slide under the duvet, roll over, and begin the rhythmic stroking and nuzzling that set Rosie off on the pathway of delight. Not a pathway she had trodden recently.

  Sliding her hand tentatively through the hole in his boxer shorts, Rosie's fingers touched the flaccid warmth of Mark's penis. She moved her fingers up and down it, applying pressure where she knew he preferred it. There was no welcoming stir. Asleep or not, Mark grunted and rolled over with his back to her.

  Rosie stared miserably up at the moonlit ceiling and thought it was just as well they weren't bouncing off it, as no doubt that would have resulted in yet more cracks. They were numerous enough as it was. She sighed. "Green-er Pastures" seemed to have as much of a struggle appearing in the flesh these days as it did in the newspaper.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Steering the Jaguar with the top of one fingernail, Samantha slashed frantically at the earphone as she swept along.

  "Prestige Property Services? Get me Sir Hadley Bonsanquet. Now." The stuck-up old poof had some serious explaining to do. Such as why she had to find out from Ghosts of the Area that he'd sold her a turkey, not to mention a white lady, a haunted cat, and the three bloody musketeers battling it out on the staircase. Oh, and a black ball of hate into the bargain.

  "What do you mean he's not fucking in?" Samantha yelled at the speaker. "When will he be back? Tomorrow?" Pause. "September, you hope?…In six months' fucking time? Lengthy period of rest following complete nervous breakdown?" Samantha's eyeballs rolled with fury. "I'll give him nervous bloody breakdown," she yelled. So loudly was the blood pounding in her ears that she couldn't quite catch what the receptionist said, but it sounded suspiciously like "You already have done." Samantha stabbed the end of call button with such force it broke her nail.

  Black ball of hate…Samantha's face twisted with loathing. What she wouldn't give to take that black ball of hate and stick it straight between Sir Hadley's beef curtains. And as for Lady bloody St. Felix, who had not answered her phone all day, Samantha itched to plunge an entire block of Sabatiers between those erect and rigid shoulder blades.

  Rounding a vicious bend, she ground the gears and her teeth simultaneously. By no means the least of her difficulties was deciding what she was angriest about. The fact that she was about to have the shit haunted out of her? The fact that ghosts probably spirited away thousands from the value of the house? The fact that Guy might find out? Samantha shuddered at the prospect. He'd be thrilled, no doubt about it. He'd been banging on about the house giving him the creeps for weeks, and the news that the place was riddled with spooks would be just the excuse he needed for insisting that they abandon Eight Mile Bottom and go straight back to South Kensington. Which was, of course, completely out of the question now that the party, and with it her social domination of the village, looked set for glittering success.

  The party. A shocking thought suddenly struck Samantha. The guests. How many of them knew the house was riddled with the undead? Lots of invitees had not yet replied—was this because The Bottoms had roughly the reputation of the Bates Motel? Terror pounded in her temples as she imagined the black ball of hate bouncing in the big silver bowl and spattering everyone with champagne cocktail mixture. Or, worse, emerging unheralded from the depths of one of the Oxford's pristine oak-topped lavatory pans. Samantha clutched the soft leather of the wheel in despair and, heedless of the fact that she was speeding into a blind bend, wailed aloud in horror.

  "Shit. Fucking shit." As the figure of a girl shot into the center of her windshield, Samantha slammed her foot on the brakes. The car skidded on the loose scree and hurled itself across the road into the hedgerow while the girl and what looked like hundreds of sheets of paper flew through the air in the other direction. The Jaguar scythed through the muddy verge and a mass of pebbles clattered against its side, battering the flawless bodywork.

  Samantha staggered out and stared at the filthy wheels in disgust. "You bloody idiot!" she shrieked. "Look what you've done to my fucking hubcaps."

  The further expletives she was planning dried in her throat. Wasn't there something familiar about the girl a few yards away? Samantha squinted. Perhaps she should wear her glasses when driving; Sophia Loren managed to get away with them, after all. Young, thin, dressed in something baggy…Blond, yes, but Iseult could have dyed her hair. Peering in the girl's direction, Samantha's much-put-upon heart skipped a beat. Ever since that last encounter in the hospital she'd been expecting trouble.

  "Look at my drawings," howled the girl. "My work."

  Samantha almost fainted in relief. Not, after all, her hated stepdaughter. Not her voice anyway, and she'd mentioned work, for God's sake, a word Iseult had no comprehension of. As for drawings, the only ones Iseult was capable of were out of her father's bank account. Samantha scowled as she remembered a conversation on the subject during one of the girl's few visits to Roland Gardens. They had been alone together in the kitchen at the time.

  "I need some bread," Iseult had said in the Haight-Ashbury drawl that amused her father but infuriated her stepmother.

  Samantha had exploded. "Bread!" she had repeated in mocking triumph. "I might have bloody known. You're not here because you want to see your sodding father. You're here because you want his sodding money."

  "No," Iseult had said. "I want bread. Like, wholemeal or something."

  Samantha's wandering thoughts returned to the matter in hand. The almost-crashed Jaguar and the girl in front of her who so gloriously was not Iseult. Yet Samantha was sure they had met before.

  "Don't I know you?" Samantha purred. "Didn't you used to wait outside the stage door of…? "

  "No," snapped Rosie, whose life, already complicated, had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Not only had she been practically squashed flat by a maniac, but the maniac had turned out to be, of all people, the ghastly Samantha Villiers.

  "I know I've seen you somewhere." Samantha tapped her forefinger on her chin. "Got it. You were third assistant wardrobe on that Krispi cheese voiceover I did."

  "We met at your house. I was helping on a magazine shoot."

  "Of course. Such exciting news about the sale."

  Rosie suddenly recalled Bella saying something about this. "Oh, yes," she said without interest. "Lady Gaga."

  Samantha wriggled coyly. "Well, of course I can't say. The buyer begged me personally not to reveal anything. And how could I refuse, as they've allowed us to buy our dream house?" With any luck, there would be another Insider feature in this for her. Another megastar to take The Bottoms off her hands would come in very useful just now.

  Dream home. That explained it, Rosie thought. No doubt Samantha was in Eight Mile Bottom handpicking Elizabethan oaks for her garden decking. She shuddered, imagining another handsome London house defaced and destroyed.

  "You really must come round some time," trilled Samantha, climbing back into her Jaguar. "With the rest of the Insider team, of course," she added, skidding off and spraying both Rosie and her drawings liberally with mud.

  But as she drove back into the village, her demons, quite literally, returned. Proceeding up The Bottoms' drive, she looked sourly at the gracious building glowing in the sunlight. The gray stone no longer looked friendly with age and use. It looked forbidding. The tiny leaden panes between the mullions no longer winked in the sunlight but leered. Even the lichened stone lions flanking the door seemed to snarl in warning. Samantha's trepidation increased when, after openi
ng the front door and calling loudly into the hall, she remembered that Guy had gone to a meeting in London. With Ghosts of the Area never far from her mind, she was suddenly reluctant to be in The Bottoms alone.

  She twiddled the car keys for a second, then decided to drive round the village. Nothing, after all, cheered one up as much as seeing how much smaller and cheaper everyone else's houses were besides one's own. Even if one's own was the Spook Sheraton. These cottages here, round the green, for example. Tiny. One bedroom at the most. Slums, really. Samantha was beginning to feel better already.

  She braked in horror to avoid a black and white cat lounging in the middle of the road. Was it the haunted cat? Well, if not, it almost bloody was, Samantha thought, missing its front paws by millimeters as she swerved to the right at the top of the village street. Finding herself in a previously unexplored part of Eight Mile Bottom, Samantha felt fear claw at her heart. Her nerves were more shredded than a steak tartare. That she and the supernatural did not mix had been illustrated several times in her professional career, most recently at her audition for the stage version of The Witches of Eastwick. Or The Bitches of Chiswick, as she had dubbed it after having been put through her thespian paces by two female directors who subsequently decided to pass on her talents. "But why?" Samantha had stormed at Russ. "I thought I was definitely slated for the part."