by Wendy Holden
***
Duffy had by this time moved on to Mark. He had made it his business to separate Mark's post from Rosie's and deliver the former to the gazebo so that he could keep an eye on things. As Mark received, on the whole, even less post than Rosie, Duffy had been required to call on all his reserves of initiative to create some. Mark was now the recipient of an unrelenting stream of special-offer film development envelopes.
"Well, you're making a film, aren't you?" Duffy said innocently as Mark communicated his irritation at being interrupted for the sake of a flier announcing a sale on Quarter Pounders at McDonald's.
"Not that sort of film," said Mark shortly, wishing he had been less free with the movie's prepublicity. His steady loss of faith in the project had not been helped by Iseult's informing him that morning that the closest Samantha had ever come to fame was on a low-budget TV miniseries where the director's secretary had gone by the name of Holly Wood. A story, she assured him, Guy had heard from the horse's mouth, though whether that meant Samantha or the secretary was not established.
Duffy grinned at him. "I suppose you've heard?"
"Heard what?" Mark asked irritably, trying to stem the flow of coffee that Duffy's sudden arrival had propelled over the scene he was writing. Samantha had gone to Dame Nancy's for lunch, so he had the gazebo to himself for a change. Yet for some reason this still had not helped the third redraft of the saucy exchange between Charlotte Brontë and the dashing duke. It just wouldn't gel. If he was honest, it was practically liquid.
"Filming in the village." Duffy's eyes were almost popping out of his head with excitement.
"Who is?" snapped Mark. "The Vicar of bloody Dibley?"
Duffy looked hurt at the suggestion that he would peddle such low-grade gossip. "Course not. Big American film company apparently. Going to have lots of famous people in it—Julie Christie, so I've heard." His eyes gleamed with hope.
"Big American film company?" Mark felt as if a hair dryer had just dropped in his bath. He'd long since ceased believing in them, but had Samantha's claims of friends in Hollywood high places been true all along? Odd…but just about possible. Yet Samantha had said nothing about it. Very odd. Even weirder was the fact that now that she had literally cut Haworth out of the picture, Charlotte had no village scenes to film. All this notwithstanding, a wild hope clawed at his heart. Had talent—Christ, I'm sounding like her now, thought Mark—had a director, stars, and a film unit been found overnight?
Julie Christie seemed strange, though, as Samantha had firmly and repeatedly stated her intention that the rest of the cast apart from herself were to be unknowns. She had explained to Mark that this sprang from her determination to give obscure actors a break, but he suspected it sprang from her determination not to be upstaged by anybody better known than she was. Or known at all, come to that. The Holly Wood anecdote had, after all, a ring of truth, and Mark had yet to meet anyone who had ever heard of Punkawallah.
"It's some sort of country romp, apparently," Duffy went on eagerly.
"Historico-literary drama, you mean," corrected Mark, wondering if there was in fact such a word. His bowels contracted in excitement.
"Don't think so. Set in the present day as far as I know. Farm Fatale or something, it's called."
He'd staved it off for as long as he could, but the hideous suspicion they were talking at cross purposes finally began to dawn on Mark.
"You sure it's not called Charlotte?" he demanded. Had Samantha changed the title without asking him? Calling it Farm Fatale didn't make much sense. But then nothing about this whole venture did.
"Well, there might be someone called Charlotte in it," said the postman doubtfully. "It's supposed to be a romantic comedy or something, so they say."
Mark's heart sank. Even given his gift for inaccurate precis, it seemed unlikely the postman had gotten things this wrong. He was clearly talking about another film altogether. For, however sweeping, gratuitous, and dramatic Samantha's additions to the story of the great Victorian novelist had been, the one thing she hadn't put in was comedy. There was nothing remotely humorous about Charlotte. Not intentionally anyway.
Mark turned grumpily back to his script to find the heroine where he had left her, laughing prettily at one of the dashing duke's saucy sallies. Or did Charlotte Brontë, Mark wondered, have a dirty laugh?
The postman had not moved. "Well, don't you think that's interesting?" he urged Mark. "About the film?"
"Nope." Mark derived a masochistic enjoyment from Duffy's disappointed tones. "Actually, I'm a bit busy," he added impatiently.
"But there's talk of us all getting parts in it," pressed the postman desperately. "They might make a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the filming of it."
Mark gave an elaborately uninterested grunt.
"And Champagne D'Vyne is in it, you know, that columnist from the newspapers? Posh blond woman. Used to go out with Matt Locke?"
Mark's hackles rose at the mere mention of the hated woman who had stolen his column. His upper lip curved in a sneer. Yet he revealed nothing of the violent emotion he felt.
"Star of it, she is. So they say. That'll be interesting, won't it? Her up here. Near to him. After him having that nervous breakdown after he left her and all that." Duffy sounded almost pleading now. "I would have thought the papers would be interested. Can't you write something about it? Give us all a mention?"
Mark turned in his chair and looked witheringly at Duffy. What did the bloody postman know about what papers would be interested in? As for writing something about it…Mark opened his mouth to blast this idea out of the water and then, remembering he had quite possibly neglected to inform Duffy that the paper had let him go, turned it into a yawn of apparent boredom instead.
"I'm busy," he repeated forcefully. Accepting defeat, the postman finally slunk out.
Films? thought Mark savagely. He was sick of them.
Minutes after Duffy had left, Mark's mobile phone rang. The instrument was not technically his, belonging as it did to the paper. However, despite his summary dismissal from employment, they had not yet asked for it back. Given the editor's legendary meanness, it seemed incredible it had been forgotten, but given the editor's cruelty, particularly over his severance pay, Mark had no hesitation in keeping it. It remained in his pocket, a means of outside com munication and the one thing, apart from an adaptor to charge it up with, that he didn't have to rely on Samantha for.
Cursing at another interruption, Mark fished it out and stabbed at the buttons. To his complete amazement, it was the newspaper. His immediate thought was that they were calling about the mobile. The voice was, after all, that of the features secretary, a woman with an asphyxiating stranglehold on the stationery cupboard.
"I'll send it straightaway," he said.
The voice at the other end sounded surprised. "Well, that's very professional, I must say."
"No problem," said Mark. "I'd have sent it before, only—"
"Only that you didn't realize the story was going to get even bigger," soothed the voice. "Now that Brad Bergspiels directing, Champagne D'Vyne's in the film, and they're apparently doing some of the filming at Ladymead, where Matt Locke lives, it's all gone up a gear. We want a behind-the-scenes inside track. Including, of course, lots of speculation as to whether Matt and Champagne will get back together. Two thousand words, by the end of tomorrow."
"Right," said Mark, swallowing. "No problem. Matter of fact, I was already on to it. It's a great story."
"Lucky for you it dropped right into your patch, eh?"
"Guess so," said Mark, trying hard to sound casual. "But I was on the case anyway."
"Be the front-page splash if you get it right. Editor's very keen on it."
Mark closed his eyes ecstatically and imagined the moment. His story on the front of several million newspapers. What a relaunch to his career that would be. With the renaissance of Mark Green, Überreporter, the ignominy of the past months would be obliterated.
&n
bsp; "You still there?" demanded the voice, sounding puzzled by the long silence.
Mark jerked abruptly out of his daydream. A thought had struck him. "Hang on a minute. I don't want to be rude, but didn't you used to be the features secretary? How come you're commissioning news stories?"
"I'm doubling up," said the voice. "Features secretary half the time, news editor the rest. Cuts, you see."
Mark clicked off the mobile and staggered to his feet. His legs felt quite weak with the magnitude of the opportunity. If he could pull this off, not only would the paper welcome him back with open arms, but also he could finally tell Samantha to get stuffed. It was difficult to decide which would give him the most pleasure, and so Mark decided to devote what remained of the afternoon to pondering this delightful conundrum.
There was not, in the end, much time for contemplation. The door of the gazebo was suddenly wrenched open and Samantha, eyes flashing and nostrils flaring, burst in. "I have never known such humiliation," she screeched.
The memory of the party still fresh in his mind, Mark found this hard to believe. "What's the matter?" he asked guardedly.
"Farm bloody Fatale, that's what," spat Samantha.
Mark's ears pricked up as he recalled his assignment. Did she know something useful about it? "Oh yes," he said casually. "I've heard a bit about that. What is it?"
Samantha flung him a glance of contemptuous amazement. "What is it?" she squawked. "Only something practically everyone I met at lunch has parts in. Nancy, obviously, and every single one of those appalling old queens." Samantha's voice hit a pitch that could shatter glass. "And I knew nothing about it. Nothing!" She seemed about to explode with volcanic fury. "Why didn't you know about it?"
"Well, you're the one with the film contacts," Mark fired back, emboldened by the prospect of escape proferred by the paper. "Didn't Brad Bergspiel mention it the last time he called?"
Samantha's saurian eyes glittered. "How dare you?" she hissed. "How bloody dare you? Get out there and get me a part now."
"Oh piss off!" bellowed Mark, storming out and slamming the fragile gazebo door hard in his wake. Now to work, he thought. Round up my sources. Where the hell had that bloody postman gone?
***
"Put it this way," Bella said when she called that evening. "It definitely put the rain in Mediterranean. Poured down all weekend."
Bella, who had been testing a new South of France spa for Insider magazine, had not yet been brought up-to-date on events at Ladymead. Hugging her secret excitedly to her, Rosie wondered whether to tell Bella now, later, or ever. Was it like a wish, liable to disappear if spoken of?
"Darling, please." Bella, two hundred and fifty miles away, took the receiver away from her mouth to negotiate with Ptolemy. "Eat your tomatoes, darling. Yes, I know the silly nanny's not sliced them sideways as you like, but…Jesus," she groaned to Rosie, her mouth returning to the phone. "Children. Don't have them."
Rosie's mouth dropped open in astonishment. Could this really be Bella speaking? A woman who had previously worshiped every inch of the hand-rubbed beech floor her son's handmade shoes had walked on, every Biedermeier chair they had kicked and scraped against?
"What's happened?" she asked. Had something occurred to force the realization that Ptolemy was considerably less than perfect? Rosie was amazed to find that the answer was yes. Ptolemy, it transpired, had been to the optician's and had been unable to see the test board, let alone read out the fourth row from the top.
"It's a nightmare," moaned Bella. "It's all my fault."
"How can it be?" demanded Rosie crossly, determined, in her new happiness, to put a stop to Ptolemy's reign of filial terror. "Honestly, Bel. If you start feeling guilty about his eyesight, where's it all going to end?"
"But it is my fault," insisted Bella. "Apparently it's all because of his nursery. All the sisal and plain walls, and the fact that I wouldn't allow any ghastly patterns. It turns out he's never really been able to focus." She sounded anguished.
Wanting to comfort her friend, but still deliciously delaying the moment of truth, Rosie switched the conversation to the spa weekend.
"Wonderful." Bella sounded considerably more cheerful. "I had my bottom buffed."
Rosie giggled. "Had what?"
"Darling, it's wonderful, I tell you. They rub your wobbly bits with an exfoliating scrub until after five minutes you feel as if you've been flayed alive."
"But you don't have any wobbly bits," Rosie said, thinking it sounded considerably less fun than what Matt had done to her own nether regions.
"Everyone has wobbly bits," said Bella firmly. "That's the one great universal truth, darling. Anyway, as I was saying, they scrub you and then they rub you with aromatherapy oil right down to your ankles to remove the cellulite."
"But no one has cellulite on their ankles."
"No-o," Bella conceded. "But it's best to be on the safe side. Anyway, after this they cover you in detoxifying seaweed and wrap you in cellophane so you feel like a prepacked vine leaf. Result, a bottom softer than a one-hundred-percent cashmere pashmina."
"Amazing," said Rosie, tuning out of the conversation to watch a capable-looking woman, apparently bound for Spitewinter Farm, striding past the cottage window. She looked as if she could wrestle a bull to the ground. Was this, Rosie wondered, the woman Duffy had mentioned? The orgasmic candidate from Yorkshire?
"So I really think you should try some of these treatments," Bella was saying as Rosie tuned back in. "I mean, you can't keep going up to Ladymead looking like you do."
Thanks, thought Rosie. On the other hand, it hadn't seemed to bother Matt. Her clothes had presented no obstacle to him at all. But was Bella right? Should she make more of an effort?
"You don't need to do much, not with a pretty face like yours and all that lovely blond hair. Although it might be a good idea to brush it now and then. Just smarten yourself up a bit. Wear a skirt even. And remember, the shorter and tighter, the better."
"But I hate skirts. Especially ones that are too short."
"There's no such thing as a skirt that's too short—another great universal truth for you, darling. Anyway, remember, Matt's been out with some pretty glamorous women. You've got stiff competition. In every sense of the word, I would think."
"Champagne D'Vyne, you mean?" A chill, slight but definite, suddenly swept through Rosie. The society blonde Matt had loved and lost. But if it had been such a tragedy, why hadn't he mentioned her? He'd mentioned practically everything else. The four Fs, even the pint-glasses-on-the-penis trick. So why hold back?
"You got it, baby. Supposed to have been the whole reason he became a recluse, remember. Never got over being dumped by her and all that."
"But that's rubbish," Rosie burst out. "His breakdown was about being too famous too quickly. He told me."
"Well, he would say that, darling, wouldn't he?" drawled Bella.
"He never said anything about Champagne," Rosie insisted, remembering, suddenly and uneasily, Matt's reference to relationship problems. When she had tried to draw him out, he had resisted. But that could have meant anything. Geordie, Murgatroyd, anyone.
"Not something he wants to boast about, I imagine," Bella returned to Rosie's growing annoyance. Why was she playing devil's advocate? Well, if she thought Rosie was going to tell her everything about her afternoon with Matt after this, she had another think coming.
"Anyway, darling," Bella said with every ounce of the wisdom of Solomon, "there are certain things, and people, one never gets over. Your farmer and his wife, for example—"
"Thanks for reminding me," snapped Rosie.
"Just pointing out a few stately home truths, darling. You need to be tough if you're going into this game. No point having your legs open if your eyes are tightly shut."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do." There was a laugh in Bella's voice.
Rosie blinked
first. "How did you guess?"
"It's in your voice, darling. You've obviously had the shag of your life. But the real clue was that you never denied it when I said you had stiff competition. Normally you'd have slapped me down instantly. Was it as good as it sounds, anyway?"
"Better," breathed Rosie, tingling all over at the thought of it.
"Good. But if you want more where that came from, you must listen to your aunt Bella. The difference between a one-night shag and a relationship is some serious grooming."
Rosie's stomach twisted with irritation. "Doesn't it have something to do with liking the other person, a shared sense of humor, respect, and all that sort of thing?"
Bella snorted. "Oh, sure. In the case of Champagne D'Vyne, it also had something to do with being posh and blond with tits. Seriously, Rose, Matt had a nervous breakdown after she dumped him. She's pretty gorgeous, you know—if you like that sort of thing," she added loyally. "Personally, I find her looks a bit obvious."
