Farm Fatale (15 page)

    "Bloody hell," said Mark.

    
Five
.
Six
.
Seven.

    "Oh, it just needs fixing."

    The rest of the lane was silent and deserted as before, yet Rosie was sure that, behind Mrs. W.'s net curtains, someone was watching. Still, she decided as they began to unload the car, carrying in their few possessions under the concealed eyes of one neighbor was better than doing so under the collective gaze of an entire street. The screech of tires interrupted her as she struggled with the beanbag chair.

    "Duffy to the rescue. Here, let me help you with that."

    Rosie willingly relinquished the beanbag and, amused, watched Duffy try to keep it under control the few steps from the car to the cottage.

    "Nothing for you in the post today," he told her as he returned to the open hatchback. "But Mrs. Sidebottom's vet's bill is enormous, which is funny when you think she's only got a goldfish. And Jack up at Spitewinter Farms having a lot of trouble finding the right mailorder bull semen."

    "Fascinating." Rosie grinned.
Spitewinter
. What a strange and sinister name. Suddenly worried she may have sounded sarcastic, she added, "I'm afraid I haven't met Jack."

    "Farms cattle and sheep, and some dairy, he does, at the top of the lane. Mrs. W. next door's his auntie." Duffy paused and shook his head. "Them's his cattle at the back of your garden."

    Rosie looked at him with mock exasperation. "Honestly. Is there anything around here you don't know about?"

    "Not much, to be honest." The postman's eyes creased with amusement. "No, I tell a lie. Matt Locke. I know bugger all about him."

    Rosie looked blank. Matt Locke? The name sounded familiar.

    "Is he an actor?" she hedged.

    Duffy looked almost scornful. "He's that pop star. Lives round here, he does. You never see him around though.
Very
reclusive."

    "Oh, of course." Rosie suddenly remembered, weeks ago, Mark poring over the pictures of Matt Locke in the
Daily Mail
. Pictures of Matt Locke in his country manor, she recalled. "He lives round
here?

    "No need to sound like that," Duffy chided. "There's plenty of famous people living round here, let me tell you. And some who just seem to think they're famous," he added darkly as Mark appeared at the door, threw a scowl in his direction, and vanished back inside again.

    "Have you met him?" In Mark's absence, Rosie felt obliged to dig for column material. The more she could find for Mark to put in about other people, the less he might write about her. He was, she knew, planning to mention the prominent glass-fronted display of her underwear for almost the entire length of the M1 in the next column.

    "I haven't met him exactly," Duffy admitted. "But I'm working on it."

    "I'm afraid I don't know much about him."

    "
Posh Totty
was his first number one album," Duffy told her, casting a disparaging glance at the box of Mark's records he was unloading, on top of which Rick Astley featured with criminal prominence. "It went double platinum, and so did his second album. Then he went AWOL. Disappeared. Cracked under the pressure to repeat his success, they say."

    "So he came here?"

    Duffy nodded. "Lives at Ladymead, that big house out on the moor. You must have seen it."

    Rosie shrugged. "I haven't actually."

    "Oh, well, it's behind a lot of trees. And as I say, no one ever sees him. But I see his post. Fan mail, mostly—you wouldn't believe what some people send. Knickers and…
things
." The postman's eyes widened. "Some of them aren't even
washed
."

    Embarrassed, the postman suddenly cleared his throat. "Well, I'd best be off. See you later." With the regulation squeal of tires, he tore off in his van. Rosie waved. It was only then that she realized Mark hadn't lifted a finger to help with the unloading.

    "Well, can you blame me with that bloody nosy postman about?" he grumbled when Rosie eventually located him on the loo seat reading a magazine. This, she was unsurprised to see, was the Sunday supplement containing the first "Green-er Pastures."

    "He's got lots of local color though," said Rosie, recalling that this was what Mark's editor was keen on.

    "You're telling me. Looks as if he rubs his face with bloody sandpaper."

    "He can't help being red-faced," said Rosie. "What I mean is that he's full of gossip. He might be useful to you. He told me that there's a pop star—"

    "Bound to be rubbish." Mark waved a dismissive hand. "Probably someone who supported the Kinks in about A.D. twenty-four. The countryside's full of old hippies like that. Seriously, I don't know why you encourage him."

    
You can lead a columnist to water
…thought Rosie. But perhaps it was boring, after all. What did she know about newspapers? She slapped the two ancient, twisted beams running parallel across the bathroom's roomy ceiling, rejoicing in the smooth and ancient wood beneath her hand. Theirs. All theirs. At last. She bent and peered through the tiny window next to the bath. "You can see the church clock from here! You can lie in the bath and see what the time is. Or isn't," she added, giggling.

    "Um, not quite yet you can't," Mark said, gesturing at the large crack in the tub and a damp patch the shape and almost the size of the USA on the bathroom wall above it.

    Looking up, Rosie saw that, since their last visit, a whole new network of cracks had appeared in the ceiling. "Oh, well," she said, leaving Mark to complete his ablutions. "Nothing that a bit of plaster won't sort out, I imagine." She decided not to dwell on the fact that the only sort of plaster she and Mark had previously applied was the type one put on a blister. They'd got their dream cottage, hadn't they? Nothing—least of all a few cracks—was going to be allowed to spoil it.

    She went back downstairs to find that a folded piece of paper, printed on both sides, had been pushed through the letterbox. The village newsletter, Rosie realized with delight as she opened it. She leaned against the window ledge, lost in the romantic detail of church cleaning rotas ("Would the person who failed to return the Lemon Jif kindly do so?") and the need to select a carnival queen for the next summer fête ("The persistent rumor that last year's queen is currently up on a drug charge is unsubstantiated and should discourage no one"). As Mark thundered downstairs, Rosie was buried in the continuing controversy surrounding the village recreation ground, where trouble had sprung up due to the cricket net's position too near the basketball court. Balls, it seemed, were flying indiscriminately in all directions.

    "Look," she said, holding out the newsletter. "There's stacks of material here. It's so funny and sweet."

    As before, Mark frowned. "I wouldn't put anything as obvious as
that
in 'Green-er Pastures.' Credit me with a little originality,
please
."

    "But the cricket net story's hilarious. It's carnage on that recreation ground by the sound of it."

    "What's for dinner?" asked Mark, emphatically changing the subject.

***

"The bath is fine if we stick one of those rubber shower things on the taps and keep the water away from the cracked bit," Mark announced the next morning after they had both washed in the bathroom sink. "We can't afford a new one anyway."

    Rosie rubbed her aching back. One night in a sleeping bag on the gritty floor had made her begin to wonder whether their almost complete lack of furniture was the romantic adventure Mark insisted it was. Starting from scratch was all very well—Rosie dug with her nail at the small red bump on her ankle—but not if things were biting you as a result of it. She added Jungle Formula insect repellent to the mental shopping list she had spent much of the sleepless night compiling.

    "We really should go shopping," she said gently. "We need a sofa bed and maybe a kitchen table. Perhaps there's somewhere we can get them cheap. We only need to ask someone."

    "But who?" asked Mark. "Not that bloody postman. Don't want him getting into our business any more than he is already."

    Rosie remembered the cream pots and Popsicle sticks being put to use in Mrs. W.'s back garden. Their thrifty neighbor would certainly know where cheap furniture was to be had.

    "Yes, she might." At the suggestion, Mark opened his hazel eyes innocently and flashed Rosie a devastating smile. "Why don't you go and ask her?"

    "Why me? Why don't you go?"

    "You're better at it."

    "No, I'm not. You go. You might get something for the column out of it."

    Mark snorted scornfully. "Doubt it. No, seriously, you go. I've got work to do. Got to start thinking about the third column."

    The knickers and bras were obviously staying. With a sinking heart, Rosie went outside and knocked on the door of the cottage below. A thrill of fear slithered through her stomach. She was about to discover who, or what, lurked behind the mysterious net curtains.

    Fully expecting a crabbed and bent crone, Rosie was confounded to find the door opened by a bright-eyed old lady with a flowered apron tied over a polka-dot dress. "Come in, do," she said to Rosie. "I've been meaning to pop round and say hello. But I've been that busy!" She let out a girlish giggle and stretched out a hand. "Dora Womersley. How do you do?"

    The first thing about the dark and low-ceilinged interior that struck Rosie was that the air smelled thickly of gravy. Lunch was clearly well on its way. The second was an old man in a burgundy sweater and carpet slippers beside the fire. Despite what sounded like the local sports program turned up to a window-shattering volume, and the radio's position on the mantelpiece on a level with his ear, he seemed to have just woken up. "Hello, duck," he shouted, catching sight of Rosie. "Thought I heard someone come in." He was clearly very deaf.

    "Hello," Rosie bawled back. "I'm Rosie. I've just moved in next door."

    "That's right," shouted Mr. Womersley. "Come and stand over here by t'fire and get warm." The glowing coals beside him packed the punch of a smelting furnace, Rosie realized as she took up his suggestion. After less than a minute, she had some insight into how chicken tikka must feel in a tandoori oven.

    Roasting, Rosie noticed several pairs of old-lady's bloomers strung up to dry on the chimney breast.

    "Yon's her Harvest Festivals," bellowed Mr. Womersley.

    Rosie stared. What on earth was the old man talking—or rather yelling—about?

    To her embarrassment, Mr. Womersley pointed straight at the bloomers. "Them knickers you're looking at. Harvest Festivals, I call 'em. Because all is safely gathered in."

    "He's awful, he really is," Mrs. Womersley grumbled affectionately. Rosie smiled. Married several hundred years and still making jokes with each other. Would she and Mark be so comfortable together fifty years from now?

    She watched as Mr. Womersley was handed a large glass of something pale.

    "Sour milk," explained his wife proudly. "He drinks a pint of it every day with castor oil and sugar in. Best recipe for a long life, according to my mother. She lived till she was ninety. I'm eighty and he's seventy-eight."

    "She was obviously right," Rosie yelled politely over the radio, hoping not to be offered some. Glancing at the odd-colored liquid that was exuding an unpleasant smell, it struck her that there were some circumstances in which a short life could be a merciful option.

    "I don't know if you take sugar," Mrs. Womersley said, offering Rosie a cup of tea and a saucer, "but I always put a spoon in anyway. Stops you spilling it, then."

    "Oh, she's full of them tricks," shouted Mr. Womersley. "Potatoes on t'carpet, tights in t'fridge…"

    "Shut up, you." Mrs. Womersley laughed as the radio roared on. "But it's true," she told the puzzled-looking Rose. "If you put packages of new tights in the freezer for an hour or two, you'll get a lot more wear out of them. And there's nothing like a slice of raw potato to treat a burn mark on a carpet. Fancy a scone with that tea?" The old lady rattled a tin out of a cupboard and wrenched off the lid.

    Rosie eagerly put her hand in the tin and picked out one of the oddest scones she had ever seen.

    "Funny, aren't they?" boomed Mr. Womersley with delight. "Square."

    He was, Rosie thought, just like a naughty, if somewhat deaf and ancient, little boy.

    "Yes, because it saves you dough," bellowed his wife. "Think of all that waste if you cut 'em into rounds."

    "They're delicious," Rosie said truthfully as the buttery scone melted in her mouth. It had been years since she had savored anything as authentically homemade-tasting as this. Outside, the clock struck fifteen. Rosie was reminded that she had not yet broached the subject of furniture.

    "Erm…" Her voice was starting to crack. Sensory overload was the last thing she had expected from the cottage next door, but the combined heat, volume, and taste were proving overwhelming. "I just wanted to ask you—"

    "Are you liking Eight Mile Bottom?" Mrs. Womersley interjected, her eyes bright and questioning above the rim of her teacup.

    Rosie nodded. "Yes, but I need—"

    "You'll need to meet some people, definitely." Mrs. Womersley nodded understandingly. "Well, I'd
love
you to meet my nephew Jack. He'd be a nice friend for you."