"Margaret says if you take your trousers down she'll do it," came Mrs. Womersley's voice, high and sudden, from the garden next door. "Says she'll put that new zip in, I mean," Mrs. Womersley added crossly, as if something altogether more exciting had occurred to her spouse.
"Sorry to interrupt you, Mrs. Womersley," Rosie said, jerked out of her bovine contemplation as an idea occurred to her. "But you know you mentioned your nephew the farmer…?"
Chapter Eleven
Illyria. Bloody odd name, thought Samantha, pulling up outside Dame Nancy's house. Bloody odd place too. Her gaze dwelt with great satisfaction on the shabby Georgian building less than half the size and definitely less than a third of the value of The Bottoms. A mud-spattered Peugeot lurked at the side of the house. Samantha lost no time in parking the gleaming Jaguar right next to it.
So far, so satisfactory. Samantha was confident that the air of galloping decay about Dame Nancy's house accurately reflected the dilapidated state of its owner. The only puzzle was the dame bit. Possibly, Samantha thought, the reward for a lifetime's dedication to Meals on Wheels or for embroidering a record number of church kneelers for the diocese. In which case, persuading her to relinquish the reins of thespian power would be like taking candy from a baby. She would probably never have met a proper actress before. Let alone a celebrity.
The days of the Eight Mile Bottom Amateur Dramatic Society were numbered. Standing in the wings and fidgeting with impatience were…cue drum roll…the Samantha Villiers Players. Forget Gilbert and Sullivan. Forget
Half
a bloody
Sixpence
. She'd have them doing Pinter and Ayckbourn before you could say Tom Stoppard.
Samantha swung her legs elegantly out of the Jaguar and admired her sleek kneecaps with satisfaction. She pointed the key fob at the car. The reassuring beep was, however, drowned by a disconcerting squawk. Looking down in panic, Samantha saw with horror that a large bird with blue-black feathers was staring at her ankles with mean little eyes. Fear mounted within her as it stabbed the ground near her ankle with its beak. Huge, gleaming, and with intimidatinglooking red wobbly bits all over its face, it looked, she thought, like a vicious creature. Like a pheasant crossed with an eagle. Or maybe even a vulture.
"Fuck off!" Samantha flapped furiously at the bird. Squawking indignantly, it retreated to join a number of others pecking about the dusty corners of Illyria's moldering portico. As she stood rooted to the spot, the peeling front door flew open to reveal a woman wearing an apron and holding a cerise feather duster.
"What are you laughing at, you
naughty
things?" she demanded to the birds bobbing and pecking about her feet. As Samantha watched in disgust, she swooped down, grabbed the largest, and held it in her arms. "Oh, so sorry," she said, spotting Samantha. "I do hope they didn't startle you. They are rather curious, I'm afraid."
"Very curious," Samantha said shortly, looking at the feather duster and wondering if this was Dame Nancy's cleaner.
"Adorable, aren't they?" The woman smiled. Samantha couldn't help noticing that she was rather glamorous for a cleaner. As well as possessing an unexpectedly deep and sexy voice—unexpected for a home help, that was—the woman was tall and straight-shouldered, with white-blond hair framing an elegant, high-cheekboned face. "Larry and Judi are Black Orpingtons, but Denholm and Dirk here are Buffs," she was saying. "And in the back we've got Vanessa and Prunella, a couple of Brahmas…"
Samantha smiled, eager to get the upper hand. "Orpingtons. Oh, I
thought
so. Knew they weren't hens, at any rate."
The cleaner, who, for some reason, looked vaguely familiar, was now staring in amazement at Samantha. "But they
are
hens. Apart from Larry, who's a cockerel, of course. And they're all very fast— they always do terribly well in the Barley Mow hen races."
Samantha gaped. Hen races? What on earth was the woman talking about? "I've come to see your mistress," she said haughtily.
"Mistress?" A slight frown creased the suspiciously miraculous smoothness of a brow of at least fifty summers. Dame Nancy was paying her cleaner far too much if she could afford Botox injections, Samantha smiled. The old woman was obviously even battier than she had imagined.
"Dame Nancy. Of the Amateur Dramatic Society."
The cleaner laughed huskily. "That's me."
Samantha could not have been more shocked if she had plunged her steel stiletto heel into an electrical socket. Thank God, she thought, that her acting training allowed her to appear glacially composed despite any amount of inner turmoil.
"You look rather surprised," observed an amused Dame Nancy. She made a long-fingered, elegant gesture at her apron. Which, Samantha now noticed, was tied to a splendid, statuesque figure. "Sorry if I look a fright. Been doing a spot of housework. What can I do for you, anyway?"
"I'm your new neighbor, and—"
"Oh!" Dame Nancy clasped her hands rapturously to an exceptionally shapely bosom. "From The Bottoms? How wonderful. We've all been dying to meet you. We've heard all about you."
Samantha's smile tightened. Not from that bloody postman, she hoped. It was hard not to be flattered, however.
Dame Nancy was practically hopping from foot to foot in excitement.
"Do come in, please," she urged. "Larry will lead the way. He really is very proprietorial." She kissed the top of the cockerel's head, put him on the ground, and followed him as he scurried into the house. "Have to carry this everywhere in case he poos," she explained, whisking a cloth out of her apron pocket. "But chicken poo isn't too bad. Dries quite quickly."
Suddenly feeling as if she were about to throw up, Samantha followed her hostess into a shabby but elegant hallway. She looked nervously behind her at the following hens. Would they poo on her Armani? How could this bizarre woman even think about having them in the house? But the place was hardly a palace, Samantha thought with satisfaction, noting an ancient and thin-legged chair covered in extremely tatty fabric. Dame Nancy must really be up against it to have furniture like this.
Noticing her looking closely at the chair, Dame Nancy tapped the back of its delicate frame. "Louis Seize. You can sit on it though."
Samantha looked at her uncomprehendingly. Who was Lewie and why had he said that?
Dame Nancy smiled at her. "This calls for a celebration. Martini? Bit naughty, I know, but it's not too far off lunchtime after all."
"Perfect," said Samantha, flattered. Obviously, she wouldn't dream of jumping to conclusions, but doubtless Dame Nancy, knowing of her immense fame as an actress, was merely assuming that this was a celebrated film star's drink of choice. Samantha watched the elegant, tanned fingers, apparently complete strangers to tapestry needles, selecting the bottles on an amazingly well-stocked drinks tray. The many large rings clinked against the glass. "Shaken not stirred," Samantha added. It would do no harm to impress Dame Nancy with her scintillating wit.
Gratifyingly, Dame Nancy burst into a husky peal of laughter. "Everyone says that. It really is impossible to live down."
Samantha permitted herself a slight frown. "But why should the Bond films be lived down?" she demanded, slapping on her film hat at the first opportunity. Best give Dame Nancy the cue she obviously craved. Then they could get on and discuss Samantha's achievements in full. "They're the jewel in the British celluloid crown," she continued, "Masterpieces of the genre."
"I agree," came Dame Nancy's deep, smoky voice. "
Agent of
Consent
is, of course, considered one of the best Bonds ever made. Its special effects—"
"Quite," barked Samantha, regaining what was, after all,
her
special subject. But she could not prevent a certain sourness of tone. The fact that one special effect
Agent of Consent
had felt it could do without was herself still rankled. Even after so many years, it hurt to remember how some upper-class blond model had snatched the starring role of diamond-smuggling Bond villainess Tiffany Blue from under her nose.
"Who, after all, can forget the scene where Tiffany Blue gets tipped into a tank of man-eating tortoises?" continued Dame Nancy.
"Or the scene where Tiffany paints Bond's penis with platinum paint?" returned Samantha smartly, recognizing that Agent o
f
Consent, even if it hadn't consented to her, was the perfect vehicle t
o introduce the crucial subject of her career and celebrity. Indifferent, for once, to her latest spate of orthodontistry, she ground her teeth at the memory of the role-snatching upper-class model. Tiffany had been the cow's first break; Samantha had itched to give the model her second, third, and fourth ones. Preferably with the aid of a large stick.
Dame Nancy sighed. "Yes. I suppose what I mean is that it's odd none of us knew we were making a masterpiece at the time."
We
? What did the absurd creature mean? Samantha was suddenly sick of pussyfooting around the subject. Time to make the bloody woman sit up and take notice. "I was offered that part, as it happens," she said. Well, she'd been offered the opportunity to audition. What was the difference? And the reigning Bond at the time had taken an active—very active—interest in her.
To her irritation, Dame Nancy merely stretched languorously back in her chair and lit up a Marlboro Light. "Darling, everyone on the set was offered that particular 007's part," she drawled in a cloud of smoke. "Practically ran his own casting couch, if I recall correctly. Used to get all these no-hope actresses in, virtually promise them the part, then dip his dick in champagne before getting the poor saps to give him a blow job. Heightened the sensation, apparently."
Samantha reddened slightly.
"I said no though." Dame Nancy held her cigarette hand in the air and examined her diamonds. "My rule of thumb is never to sleep with my costars. Until after you've married them, of course."
Samantha spluttered on her drink. Of course.
This
was the woman who had beaten her hands-down all those years ago.
No
bloody wonder
she looked familiar; those very same features had, twenty-one years ago, been reproduced a million times over on the universally displayed
Agent of Consent
poster.
The woman opposite her slugging back a martini and dressed like an alcoholic housewife was, Samantha realized in horror, the Hon. Nancy Brooke-Sullivan, aristo model turned actress whom Bond's opening murmur of "That's a very nice dress you're almost wearing" had catapulted to international stardom in
Agent of Consent
. Her dazzling early fame, followed by a distinguished career in theater, film, and the more lucrative of the divorce courts, had been crowned by a Dame of the British Empire ten years ago.
"You're an actress yourself, did you say?" Dame Nancy turned on Samantha eyes of an extraordinarily keen blueness.
Ignoring the last three words—it was obviously impossible that Dame Nancy didn't know who she was—Samantha prepared to do battle. One
Punkawallah was, after all, definitely worth a Bon
d film. Even if the subsequent acclaim had been less of the popular variety and more of the critical. Very critical, some of it, as Guy never missed an opportunity to observe.
"But that's marvelous," Dame Nancy interrupted before Samantha, still in the foothills of her
Crown Court
days, had even gotten to the summit of
Punkawallah
. "You must of course join the Amateur Dramatic Society."
Join
it? When she had been intending to take it over? Samantha's hand clenched around the icy glass of martini.
"Quite a number of us are former professionals, you know. Some of the others are really rather well known…"
Some of the
others
? Samantha's blood boiled.
"It would be wonderful if you might accept a part. I've got just the thing in mind, as it happens. We're doing
The Dream
next—
A
Midsummer Night's Dream
, of course—and…"
Draining her glass, Samantha's spirits rose slightly. Even if the prospect of taking over the society in its entirety had receded, a great deal of face could be saved by taking to the stage as Titania.
"…we were thinking it would be fun to have a female Bottom. Great potential, don't you agree? And the fact that you live at The Bottoms would give it a certain…
resonance
."
Samantha froze with horror. The
humiliation
. Bottom! She couldn't. She really
couldn't
. She racked her brains for a way out.
"Actually, Dame Nancy…"
"
Nancy
. Please."
"…Nancy, um, I'm rather busy with the house at the moment. There's a great deal of work to do. The place was an absolute mess when we bought it."
Dame Nancy's fine eyebrows shot up. "Yes, Catherine St. Felix—a
dear
friend of mine—tells me you've been making quite a lot of changes. We're all
dying
to see what you've done," she added, flashing Samantha a dazzling smile.
At this, hope stirred anew in Samantha. It struck her that one way still remained for her to impress her superiority on the rest of the village. No one in Eight Mile Bottom, after all, owned a house remotely resembling the scale and splendor of The Bottoms.