Farm Fatale (39 page)

    "They've got marvelous hoses, haven't they?" Dame Nancy murmured admiringly. "So big and thick. And powerful." She turned to Samantha. "Splendid party," she said. "I enjoyed myself enormously."

    Even through her misery, Samantha registered the "enormously" and recalled something about Dame Nancy, a collapsed buffet table, and a well-endowed wine waiter. She noticed, too, that for some reason Dame Nancy had bits of falafel stuck all over her hair.

    "Never mind about the fire, dear," the actress added. "Bound to happen at some stage. We were all expecting something of the kind."

    "What do you mean?" Samantha demanded hysterically. How could she possibly be expected
not to mind
? This was, after all, her darkest hour even if—her eye caught the flames illuminating the night sky for miles around—it was, in a sense, her lightest as well.

    "Well," Dame Nancy said mildly, "anything could happen in a house as haunted as this."

    Shocked to the core, Samantha went gray beneath her gilding, which was itself dissolving in the heat from the conflagration. Was there no closely guarded secret that tonight was not going to lay bare? Her hands trembled. Not content with the other devastating blows she had had to endure over the space of the past few hours, fate had seen fit to deal her the lowest one of all. People other than herself and Guy— who only suspected anyway—knew about the haunted Bottoms. Or was Dame Nancy trying to catch her out? Samantha steeled herself to brazen it out and looked back blankly at her interrogator.

    "You do know what I mean, don't you?" pressed the president of the Eight Mile Bottom Amateur Dramatic Society. Whose crown Samantha had once aspired to. How long ago that seemed, she thought bitterly. "The ghosts. Surely you've seen them?"

    Samantha shook her head in vigorous denial.

    "Oh." Dame Nancy looked disappointed. "Pity. I do hope they've not gone. The Bottoms always had such
splendid
ghosts. By far the best in the area, we always thought."

    Samantha's head was whirling with panic, but these words managed nonetheless to penetrate it. "The
best
in the area?" she repeated. Surely Dame Nancy meant the
worst?

    "Absolutely. Splendid spooks. We like our ghosts round here, you know. Love them, in fact. Most of us only have one or two and we're all wildly jealous of The Bottoms because it's got about ten. Funny
you've
never seen any of them though."

    "Well, there might have been something in the passage…" Samantha hedged.

    "The white lady probably," said Dame Nancy excitedly. "Was she on a chaise longue?"

    "Not sure," Samantha said cagily.

    "Oh, bound to be. Poor thing, jumped off the roof with her lover at the age of fourteen."

    "An appalling death," intoned Samantha, trying to sound simultaneously sympathetic and proprietorial.

    "Oh, she didn't
die
, dear. Broke both her legs though, which is why she's on the chaise. But a fine ghost, a very fine ghost, indeed. Larry de Lisle's always saying he'd trade his black dog and his gray cat and throw in his poltergeist as well just for one night with the white lady of The Bottoms."

    "So there's a pecking order?" Samantha tried to sound casual. Dame Nancy's cockerel looked at her with interest.

    "Of course there is, dear. Taking it from the bottom, a gray, white, or black cat is just about passable, but a black dog is better, particularly if it howls at a full moon. A headless horse is good, but twice as good with a headless horseman
on
it."

    Samantha goggled. "So people—dead ones, obviously—are the best?"

    Dame Nancy nodded emphatically. "But there's a top ten there as well. Take the white lady, since we're talking about her. One white lady equals two green ladies. Or one and a half gray ladies."

    "What about sword fights?" ventured Samantha, on whose brain the offending paragraph from
Ghosts of the Area
had been branded in letters of fire.

    "Interaction is good, so The Bottoms' sword fights score very highly."

    Samantha swallowed. Now for the big one. "Black ball of hate?"

    Dame Nancy pursed her lips. "Average-ish. Johnny's got a red ball of hate, although he says it could be gout. Or an ingrown hair."

    Samantha felt offended on the ball's behalf. It sounded well above average to her. According to Guy, it had been terrifying. Disappointed with the way her stock had suddenly fallen, she almost decided to leave it at that and just rest on her laurels. On the other hand, there would never be a better opportunity to find out more. Samantha decided to risk it. "What about," she asked, "the screaming woman with the knife sticking out of her back?"

    Dame Nancy drew impassioned breath. An expression of pure reverence radiated from what could be seen of her face under the yashmak. "Now that really
is
something. Only a few houses in the country have a ghost even
remotely
resembling that one. Ghosts with knives in their backs are exceedingly rare, because only in very,
very
haunted houses—such as The Bottoms—do you see them at all."

    "Remind me of why that is?" Samantha wrinkled her brow as best she could in an apparent effort to recollect. Her heart started to thump.

    "Because," said Dame Nancy in tremendous tones, "ghosts are
fantastically cutthroat and competitive. Even more than we actor
s are, dear. As well as being
extremely
territorial. If there are too many, or simply not enough corridors, bedrooms, cellars, and so on to go around, from a haunting point of view, one
always get
s stabbed in the back by the others." She paused admiringly. "You really are
terribly fortunate to have one, dear. The whole county i
s green with envy."

    "Yes, I
am
very lucky." Samantha simpered, looking at her home through new, wondering eyes.

    "So you see," Dame Nancy concluded, "the fire was bound to happen. With all that psychic energy around and everything, the risk of spontaneous combustion must have been enormous."

    The biggest risk of spontaneous combustion, Samantha recalled with a twist of the lips, had probably been when she discovered Guy in the bathroom with the waitress. But that was behind her now. She beamed at Dame Nancy, thrilled to the very core of her being. As owner of what was officially Eight Mile Bottom's most intriguing house, her social future now looked assured. As did, inciden tally, the likely outcome of her insurance claim. Very satisfactory, thought Samantha.

    Nor was this all. The fire had worked as a crucible for her talent as well. Was it not in its afterglow (quite literally) that she had dreamt up the idea of the
Charlotte in Love
film project with that wonderfully helpful young journalist? Martin, was it? The stinking remains of the marquee no longer represented the crematorium of all her ambitions but the glorious scene of her phoenixlike rise from the social and thespian ashes.

***

Rosie decided to leave it a few days before seeing Mark. A few years even. She didn't care if she never saw him again. It was over now; what was there to see him for? That he was not coming back to the cottage was a huge relief; she had gathered from Duffy that he was staying at The Bottoms, although doing what was unclear. "Having a treatment," the postman had reported. Rosie had visions of Samantha wrapping Mark in seaweed, until Duffy, exercising his usual right to the free interpretation of events, said it was something to do with a film.

    Still, who cared what it was. It kept Mark out of her way. Eventually, of course, they would have to get together to divide up the folding chairs, the knife and fork drawer, the videos, and the books that formed the depressing limit of their worldly possessions. The beanbag he could have. Neither would she sue for custody of the Rick Astley album, which Mark always claimed he'd been sent by a publicist trying to get the singer in the paper's "Chillin" slot.

    Besides, she had other fish to fry.

    "You might change your mind," Jack had said. "I'll be here if you do." So far, she had not dared take him up on his offer. In the week immediately following the party, blanking her mind of everything but the task in hand, Rosie had thrown herself into finishing
A Ewe in New York
. It was art therapy, she thought. Heart therapy, even more so.

    It was ironic how closely these post-apocalypse days resembled the kind of country life of which she had originally dreamed, full of peace—the Muzzles seemed to be away-—and a soothing rhythm of work. Getting up with the dawn and going to bed with the dusk was reassuring, as well as necessary, given the now near-terminal state of the electricity wiring. Yet this monastic existence appealed to Rosie, who wished to see no one—the postman least of all—still less talk on the telephone until she had had time to think about things. The constantly ringing phone went unanswered, Duffy's knocks on the door unheeded, Mrs. Womersley unchatted to in the garden—Rosie hid behind the wall—and her suit unreturned. There was only one person she wanted to see, and she did not yet feel ready. One day, however, Rosie woke up and felt, finally, that she did.

    The walk to Spitewinter would do her good. As would talking to Jack. She wasn't, after all, intending to fling herself on him or anything. Just to tell him what had happened. She needed to let him know; after all, what he didn't hear from her now, he would hear from Duffy later. If he hadn't—dreaded thought—heard already.

    Rosie walked tremulously up the lane. She had noticed before that greenness could soothe, and the bright emerald of the fields spreading around her exuded a sense of peace. Her heart lifted. There was, she thought, something aislelike about the hedgerows, their full, frilled borders of cow parsley like exceptionally lavish pew decorations. Spring had truly sprung, not, as in London, like the inside of an old sofa, but with the exuberant color and force of a jack-in-the-box. A Jack even!

    Whatever had happened, she was now free. She could make her own choices.

    Joy swelled in Rosie as she saw the forget-me-nots nodding out of the crumbling walls, noticed the purple flames of clover in the fields, heard the hum and twitter of birds and insects.

    "
Never thought I'd trust a city lass again
."

    What a fool she had been to turn Jack down for Mark. An act of insanity no less. From the minute she had met him, it had been obvious who the better man was. In Jack's care, she would flourish the way she never had with Mark; everything about Spitewinter, after all, reflected its owner's noble qualities. Jack's countryside was not as other countryside. The trees were prouder. The grass seemed glossier. The cows in the field looked straight out of the Elgin Marbles, wrinkled of neck, sleek of back, and proud of feature. Rosie paused, admiring their pale, shining, pearly flanks and the elegant curve of their horns.

    After the recent past, the here and now was the best place to be. Mark may have pushed her from the high wire, but she had an emotional safety net to catch her. She smiled as she unhooked the cord holding the farm gate. She had Jack.

***

As Rosie entered the farmyard, Jack was sitting on an upturned bucket in his overalls, scraping mud from the sides of his boots with a knife. He seemed utterly absorbed in the task. At least, he did not look up.

    Rosie felt light-headed with relief at the sight of him. Yet Kate, stretched out in the sun by the farmyard door, had hardly seemed to notice her, let alone bounce to her paws with the usual rattle of chain and chorus of barking.

    "Jack?"

    He gave her a swift glance, followed by an unfathomable grunt. Rosie hesitated, feeling some of the euphoria seep from her mood like air leaking from a balloon. He did not seem to be very happy.

"Is everything all right?" she asked. "No one's ill, are they?"

Jack's knife dug viciously into the mud. "Not as far as I know."

    Rosie hesitated, then decided to seize the day. After all, if Jack had had bad news, her own news should cheer him up.

    "I expect you heard the party was rather, um,
eventful
," she began gaily. "I wish you'd been there to see it."

    Jack looked up sharply. His blue gaze hit her face like a Frisbee. "Would have been a bit in the way, wouldn't I?"

    Rosie's smile widened to a grin. Here was her cue. "I hardly saw Mark, as it happens. He arrived before me, ignored me most of the time I was there, and then didn't come home afterward."

    Jack said nothing. A slight increase in fervor could nonetheless be detected in his cleat scraping. Rosie took this as an encouraging sign. "As a matter of fact, we're going through a rocky patch at the moment," she admitted. Oh, what the hell. May as well tell him. "Actually, we've split up."

    She wasn't sure what she had expected at this point. The surrounding animals to perform a can-can, perhaps, like the sheep on the Let Me Entertain Ewe card. At the very least, Jack leaping up, whirling her round the farmyard, and pressing her against the haystacks with a passionate kiss.

    What was not in the script at all was for him to say, in a low, gruff voice, "I'm not surprised."

    Rosie was puzzled. Had he not understood her? "You've heard then? About the row at the party? The things Mark said to me?" Oh, well. At least it saved her going through the whole thing.

    As she smiled increasingly desperately at him, Rosie realized that he wasn't smiling back. On the contrary, his mouth was a flat, tight line in a face that looked as closed as a fist.