Farm Fatale Page 18

  "Really?" Rosie peered doubtfully through the wire at a large white hen pecking a tomato. It stopped, one scaly ivory leg raised, and blinked at her. "Champion at what?"

  "Hen racing, of course."

  The hen races at the pub, Rosie thought with a twist of the lips. The ones Mark didn't believe existed.

  "Big village tradition, it is," Jack said. "Everyone who's got hens enters them. But Wellington didn't win last year."

  "I know." Rosie grinned. "A rogue hen from Milton Keynes did."

  Jack looked impressed. "That's right." He stood up, brushing against her in the confined space. Acutely aware of how near he was, Rosie could almost feel the warmth of his skin, the faint peppery scent of his soap. As a blush rose unstoppably to her cheeks, she tried to combat it by summoning images of Mark at his most charming to her mind. Given recent form, it was difficult.

  "How's Oliver?" she muttered, looking up at him through the tousled blond strands of her bangs. Hopefully that way he wouldn't be able to see how red her face was.

  "Back in the field," said Jack. "Greedy little bugger, he is. Still, the quicker he grows, the quicker he'll be off my hands and on someone's Sunday dinner table."

  Rosie, shell-shocked, stared at Jack in horror. "But isn't he your pet?"

  "Pet? Of course he's not a pet. This is a livestock and dairy farm. All the animals here are raised for milk and meat."

  "But that's so cruel," Rosie gasped. "How can you send Oliver to a butcher? Or any lamb?"

  "You're a vegetarian, I take it." An edge of steel had crept into Jack's tone.

  Rosie nodded.

  "Have you ever considered that if they weren't reared for slaughter, lambs wouldn't exist at all?" Jack began to stride away from the hen coop in the direction of the sunny farmyard.

  "Wrong. What do you mean?" Rosie hurried after him. "They'd exist more, surely. If people like you weren't bent on slaughtering them all."

  "The only reason they're here is because there's a market for them. No one would bother breeding them if they couldn't sell them. No more than we'd bother to breed cows if we couldn't slaughter them for meat or sell their milk. Farming's a job. More than that, it's a way of life. What it isn't is a bloody hobby."

  "But it's so wrong," Rosie flung back, passionately. "Animals have rights. Including to be allowed to live."

  "And don't you think I've got a right to make a living?" Jack's voice was low and level. "On the land my family has farmed for hundreds of years?"

  "Not if you're killing animals for profit."

  "Profit!" Jack slapped a hand to his forehead. "Some farmers are dumping their sheep at RSPCA centers these days, that's how profitable animals are."

  He turned to look at her, his boot heels grinding stones into the ground, his eyes boring into her like lasers. With a stab of fear, Rosie recalled the hulking, intimidating, suspicious creature she had met on her first day at the farm. As she did so, she wished fervently she had kept her views on animal welfare to herself. A farmer, after all, was hardly likely to sympathize.

  But it was too late. "Have you any idea," Jack demanded, "what it's like to run a farm like this? Last year, I did the lambing singlehanded. There I was afterward, sitting in the bath at four in the morning, knackered and starving, eating baked beans out of a can. I almost gave up on the spot. And do you know why I didn't?"

  "No-o," muttered Rosie, unable to tear her eyes from his freezing Prussian-blue glare.

  "Because I bloody couldn't, that's why. An hour later, I had to go out and milk the dairy herd. And do you know what that's like?"

  Rosie dumbly shook her head, aware that she was about to find out.

  "It's like getting out of bed at five on a freezing morning only to be slapped repeatedly round the face by a shitty tail. It's like being casually stamped on by a South Devon or kicked through the door by a bad-tempered Galloway. If you're lucky. Because after they go back out to grass after a winter eating silage, guess what happens then?"

  "No idea," whispered Rosie.

  "Well, let me tell you," bellowed Jack. "Their system goes berserk and they shit all over you, that's what. And all for milk that doesn't even realize the cost of producing it. And it's all your bloody fault!" he shouted.

  "My fault?" Driven into the ground by the tremendous force of his indignation, she was almost prepared to believe that she, personally, was to blame for his woes.

  "Bloody rich yuppies like you. City types, getting everything from supermarkets, giving them the power to drive milk and meat prices to rock bottom. Then you move to the bloody countryside and send the property prices rocketing. Local families can't afford to live here anymore. Let alone bloody farmers."

  "I know," Rosie interrupted eagerly, seeing a chink of light at last and wanting to tell him how often she had this argument with Mark about the Muzzles. Tell him, too, that far from being a rich yuppie, she didn't have a bean in the world apart from those she had planted, more in hope than experience, in the garden border. She felt her hands begin to shake.

  Jack, however, was far from finished. "Don't you understand that it's livestock farmers like me that keep the countryside looking the way it does?" he hurled at her. "Green and pleasant and all that crap? The reason you bloody newcomers come here in the first place? People like you make me sick. You and that bloody stupid woman the other morning telling me my herd was too noisy. Too noisy! Someone else from the bloody city. Someone else who thinks the countryside's just Knightsbridge with sheep."

  Rosie was moving steadily backward down the yard.

  "Do you know what we call people like you round here?" Jack shouted.

  Rosie did not stay to find out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Really, Samantha thought serenely, life was so perfect it was almost worrying. Even the maddening row the birds made, particularly those ridiculous bloody ducks on the pond, seemed less irritating than usual this morning. As the locks of the Jaguar slid back with their reassuringly expensive clunk, it half occurred to her to wonder about the proximity of good therapists. Just in case she came down with a nasty case of Paradise Syndrome.

  The refurbishment complete and all the major decisions having been made about the party, all that remained was to find something dazzling to wear. Samantha considered her wardrobe less than satisfactory, not least because the Harrods furniture deliveryman had smashed it hard against the low ceiling of The Bottoms' front door and had gone on to demolish two light fittings and a mirror as he carried it up the stairs. The theme of the party was now firmly settled on Arabian Nights, but something a little more imaginative than Lurex knickers and old velvet curtains was required. Best leave that, Samantha thought pityingly, to Dame Nancy and her troupe. Samantha sighed. If only her own unique dramatic vision had been allowed to prevail. But then a prophet was never recognized in her own country. Let alone the countryside.

  There was, however, one small errand to run before she was free to indulge in retail therapy. Although Samantha had posted most of the party invitations, she planned to deliver Matt Locke's by hand. If she dropped in at Ladymead on the way to town, she might not only meet him but also get a peek at the house as well. No doubt he'd invite her in for coffee; no celebrity ever refused refreshment to another.

  Reaching the turn for Ladymead, Samantha, intending to impress the leopardskin pants off any watching rock god, put her foot down and shot as far and as fast up the Ladymead drive as she could. Just round the second bend, Samantha screeched to a halt, the nose of the car mere inches from one of many revolving video cameras and complex-looking security gadgets. The gates were, Samantha noted jealously, light-years ahead of the ones at The Bottoms; so high-tech, in fact, that it was impossible to figure out how to alert anyone to her presence.

  After several fruitless minutes gesticulating wildly into the cameras, Samantha settled for making a long, passionate, and, she liked to think, professional speech to CCTV. She informed camera one that she was just popping by to introduce herself, had rece
ntly moved into the village, was actually quite well known as well, ha ha, and would simply adore it if Matt saw fit to grace her little party with his presence. Samantha gave the performance her all and was disappointed when, despite having a distinct feeling of being watched, no chart-topping celebrity was forthcoming at the end of it. Gathering up the remains of her dignity, Samantha slipped the invitation card marked "Mr. Matthew Locke Esq." into the letterbox and drove away.

  Twenty minutes later, she entered Cobchester and piloted the car toward a space in the cathedral car park with PROVOST ONLY written across it in large white letters. Do the crusty old provost good if people think he drives a car like this, anyway, Samantha thought, tottering off toward the shopping center.

  It did not take long for Samantha to establish that Cobchester's fancy-dress outfits were not numerous. A short trawl round the party-wear section of the one department store revealed rack after rack of collarless suits in matronly sizes or shapeless chiffon tents in beige. Yet Samantha persevered; it wasn't until after she had barked "Where's the Dior?" at an assistant in the smartest boutique she could find and been pointed toward the shop's front entrance that she finally admitted defeat.

  As she pushed open the door in question and allowed it to smash unceremoniously into a mother and an all-terrain stroller exiting the store behind her, Samantha's eye chanced to fall on the window of a bookshop opposite. Books. Now there was something she could do with.

  The oak shelves in the large paneled bibliothèque of The Bottoms remained gapingly empty, following Lady St. Felix's speedy and irritating removal of the set of twenty-five original Waverly novels and other historical literary gems Samantha had imagined were thrown in with the house. Offering her a fiver per yard to leave them had failed to have the desired effect; the result was that she needed old books and she needed them now. And not necessarily by the yard. Pushing open the door with a ping, Samantha wondered if they were available by the mile.

  The bookshop was of the old-fashioned variety—undulating skyscrapers of volumes piled in every available space and dusty shelves marked Folklore and Occult Psychology stretching up to the damp-swollen ceiling. It was, Samantha thought delightedly, just like Notting Hill, except that the corpselike assistant slumped behind the sales desk bore no resemblance whatsoever to darling Hughie. Still, Samantha thought, fanning her Titian waves out over her shoulders, at least she looked enough like Julia Roberts to make up for it. As well as being a film star into the bargain.

  And a better actress. Samantha ran her fingers repeatedly along a row of gold-stamped cloth spines marked "First Editions" until she'd got the gesture exactly right. If she lived to be a hundred she'd never understand why darling Hughie hadn't insisted she play the role of Anna Scott. Roberts, after all, couldn't act her way out of a bus ticket, or however the saying went.

  "Can I help you?" The dusty assistant had risen from the grave. As his cadaverous face appeared round the corner, Samantha emitted a squeal that was more squashed cat than Hollywood's highest-paid female actress. If this were really Notting Hill, she thought, this would be the point at which dear Hughie spilled orange juice all over Julia's T-shirt and fell in love with her. The corpse, she noticed with horror, held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in its bony hand.

  "No, thank you," she stammered, snatching an experiencedlooking volume off the shelf behind her and pretending to thumb through it. As the corpse nodded and disappeared, Samantha glanced down at the book in her hand. Some old claptrap called Ghosts of the Area. "A Vision of Doom" read the chapter heading on the first page. "Concerning the Phenomenon of a Mysterious Apparition with Protruding Eyes and Ashen Lips." Iseult! Samantha snorted and read on.

  It really was too hilarious. According to this volume, the entire surrounding county was riddled with headless horsemen, black dogs, ladies ranging from green through gray to white, and other supernatural phenomena. Doubtless all with completely sensible explanations—"Loud Footsteps and Heavy Breathing," for example, sounded exactly like Guy coming to bed.

  One would, Samantha considered, have to be insane to actually believe in any of it. Take this, for example: "One of the most Haunted Houses in the Area," promised the chapter heading.

  Over the centuries, this charming building has been remarkable for the sheer volume of supernatural activity concentrated on the spot…read the opening paragraph. A ghostly cat, a black dog, screams, the clash of swords, and a green lady said to be the spirit of a murdered previous owner of the house are but a few of the supernatural dramatis personae reported. One guest in the 1920s woke up in the middle of the night to see what he described as a "terrifying black ball of hate" flying toward him out of the gloom, while another witnessed a white Lady reclining on a chaise longue and smiling at him…Tutting with disbelief, Samantha turned the page. Less friendly is the oft-reported sighting of a screaming woman with a large knife stuck in her back…

  For Christ's sake, thought Samantha impatiently. Black ball of hate, indeed. The place had obviously been occupied by a succession of alcoholics, drug addicts, and others prone to wild fantasies. She glanced at the picture of the house accompanying the text. Pity, though. Nice place. Rather like The Bottoms.

  Amazingly like The Bottoms, in fact. Samantha's heart started to race as she peered more closely at the dark black-and-white reproduction of a three-story building in gray stone with gables, mullions, curved bays, and stone lions on either side of the front door. "The Bottoms, Eight Mile Bottom," read the caption. "Home to the St. Felix family for over 500 years."

  The blood drained from Samantha's face. She snapped the book shut, shoved it back onto the shelf, and rushed out of the shop as fast as her stilettos would allow her.

  Notting Hill had just turned into The Amityville Horror.

  ***

  Rosie sat at the top of the stile, looking apprehensively at the field in front of her. The sheep had gone, as had the lambs, and in their place were several large cows. She would have to walk through the cows to reach the farmhouse. Would they rush past her and knock her off her feet like the pig at the Silent Lady pub?

  Could cows, like horses, smell fear? Making reassuring noises in her throat, Rosie locked her eyeballs on rolling bovine pupils and, her workbag with its sketch pads, paints, and paintbrushes banging clumsily against her thigh, climbed carefully down off the stile onto the grass. Amazingly, and most obligingly, the cows started to dance backward, mooing and parting like the Red Sea at her approach. Rosie felt weak-kneed with relief. All much easier than expected. Now for the truly terrifying prospect: Jack.

  Mrs. Womersley had been apology itself. Her wrinkled face was puce with embarrassment the afternoon, a few days ago, she had explained over the garden wall that Jack hadn't really meant it.

  "You mustn't mind him," the old lady had said pleadingly, her hands wringing her apron in anguish. "He doesn't mean it. He's just had one or two bad experiences. Anyway," she added, before Rosie had time to inquire exactly what she meant, "he sends his apologies. Says he's sorry he overreacted and that he hopes you might consider coming back to the farm to finish your drawings." The old woman's eyes were anxious. "Do you think you might?"

  Why did she care so much? "I'll think about it," Rosie promised.

  "Have a plant," said the old lady, ripping one up from the border beneath her and thrusting it over the wall.

  It hadn't taken much thinking about, in fact. Just the few days she had spent exclusively in Mark's company. Days that only served to reinforce how impossible he had become to live with. He had insisted on working downstairs in the kitchen, with the result that everything Rosie did in there excited his irritation. It was, she had discovered, no longer possible even to wash up, unless one moved crockery silently about under the water like submarines, ever fearful of it clanking together and disturbing his fragile-as-blown-glass process of column composition. As if this weren't enough, snatches of her last, furious exchange with Jack ambushed her at unexpected moments. "I've got a right to make a living…rich
yuppies… Knightsbridge with sheep." He'd made it pretty obvious what he thought of her. And who could blame him? With the banging and shouting of the Muzzles an uneasy backdrop to her thoughts, she had stared out of the grimy window at the mackerel sky and reflected that she'd better start looking elsewhere for animals to draw. Her stomach had twisted in regret, especially when she remembered the calm before the storm. That look of surprised welcome, that wry twist of smile, that peppery nearness…

  As Rosie crossed the field, she wished Bella were there to talk this over with and not at Val D'Isère. Still, it was probably just as well. She would put a decent face on it, but there would be no disguising her delight that Rosie's relationship with Mark had hit the rocks. Rosie breathed sharply in. Is that what had happened? It was the first time, even in thought, that she had admitted it. Could things be that bad?

  As Rosie came into the farmyard, a sudden breeze whipped past her nose, carrying with it the now-familiar beer-sour smell of silage. It clung, not unpleasantly, to her nostrils. The yard was deserted, as was the barn. Checking behind the farmhouse revealed Wellington unattended in her coop. Jack was obviously out in the fields somewhere. Or in the house? The door was closed, but Rosie peered in through the low-slung mullioned farmhouse windows. All was dark and still.