James normally only drank Perrier at lunchtime, both for his figure and to keep his wits about him for his programme, but now he felt it fitting to accept a large Bell’s, just to show that he and Tony were both males capable of holding their liquor.
‘I’ve got a very special mission for you, James,’ said Tony.
Half an hour later James returned to his office in a state of euphoria to find Sarah exuding Anais Anais and expectancy.
‘Are we lunching, darling?’
‘Probably,’ said James. ‘I’ve got to make a call.’
When he rang Valerie Jones, she was absolutely ‘delaighted’ to hear from him. ‘Oh, don’t mention that silly franchise. If one can’t talk to one’s friends,’ she said. ‘I was going to phone you and your — er — lovely wife —’ she always forgot Lizzie’s name — ‘to remind you that we’re opening Green Lawns to the public on Saturday, and we hoped you’d both pop in. It is looking really rather lovely at the moment.’
‘What an extraordinary coincidence,’ said James. ‘I was phoning to say of course we’ve got your opening in our diary and we were hoping we might come and film it for “Cotswold Round-Up”. We’re only covering the best gardens. Tony and Monica’s, of course, and the Duchess’s at Badminton. Hullo, hullo, are you still there?’
‘She’s fainted,’ said Sarah.
‘Of course I am,’ shrieked Valerie.
‘Could I come for a recce this afternoon? Will Freddie be there?’
‘He’s away.’
‘Good,’ said James wolfishly. ‘Give me a chance to get you on my own.’
Valerie’s tinkle of laughter showed she was not displeased.
‘What are you playing at?’ asked Sarah as James hung up.
‘Tony wants a spy in the Venturer camp. He’s chosen me because he thinks I’m the one guy who can charm secrets out of Valerie.’
‘The spy who came in from the cold frame,’ giggled Sarah. ‘Are you going to stick poison umbrellas into Valerie’s garden gnomes?’
It was a muggy, still afternoon, French-grey sky on the horizon deepening to forget-me-not blue overhead. The tall seeding grasses in the hayfields were turning gold against the deep summer greens of the trees. At the bottom of the Jones’s drive was a large sign saying: ‘Garden Open on 13th July, to be televised on “Cotswold Round-Up”. Come and meet James Vereker in person — proceeds to the Red Cross.’
Smirking, James drove up a black tarmac drive as wide as the M1. Long before he reached the house he was almost blinded by a blaze of colour. Every flowerbed was packed with serried clashing ranks of French marigolds, yellow calceolaria, royal-blue cineraria, flaming-red geraniums, billiard-ball pink zinnias and mauve asters. As he drew up in front of the house a lorry was unloading plants. Having denuded every garden centre for miles around, Valerie was now hiring four hundred scarlet salvias and three hundred yellow begonias from Rent-a-Garden.
Round the corner came a sweating youth pushing a wheelbarrow crammed with scarlet and mauve petunias. Next moment Valerie came screaming after him, brandishing a small fork.
‘What are you doing, Spicer?’
‘Putting them on the rubbish heap, ma’am.’
‘They’re meant to be planted in the wheelbarrow, you idiot. Can’t you recognize creative gardening when you see it? Take it straight back to the patio.’
Then she saw handsome James getting out of his pale-blue Porsche and her face softened.
‘James,’ she said, holding out both her hands, ‘it’s been too long.’
‘You’re looking lovely, Mousie,’ said James, taking her hands and holding them, also a little too long. ‘And so’s your garden.’
‘It’s a miracle if it is,’ said Valerie. ‘Our darling old gardener dropped dead last week — wasn’t it maddening? — and we’re having to make do with jobbing gardeners, like that idiot. No, not that way,’ she screamed as another jobbing gardener was carted across the lawn slap into a bed of mauve dahlias by an out-of-control computerized mower.
When she’d finished berating that gardener, Valerie swept James round to the patio and asked him if he’d rather have iced coffee first or wander round.
James said he’d rather have iced coffee, and sat down very quickly on the hammock seat, for fear of being concussed by half-a-dozen hanging baskets weighed down by every colour of petunia. But although he coyly patted the seat beside him, once Valerie had poured the iced coffee she insisted on prowling the patio, dead-heading petunias and showing off her slim figure in the floral pink shirt-waister.
‘What’s happened to your poor legs?’ asked James, noticing several marks on the back of her calves.
‘Bites,’ sighed Valerie. ‘I seem fatally attractive to midges.’
‘And to men, Mousie.’
Valerie smiled. She wasn’t going to tell James that Henry Hampshire had promised to take Freddie and her fly-fishing, and that she’d spent all day practising on the lawn and catching the backs of her legs with the hooks.
‘Tony sent his special love, so did Monica,’ lied James.
‘Oh, we miss them both,’ sighed Valerie. ‘I do wish Freddie’d never got caught up in this stupid franchise. It’s all so pointless.’
‘D’you get roped into meetings?’ asked James, sipping his coffee and wincing because the orange marigolds and magenta petunias in a nearby tub reminded him rather too forcibly of Ginger Johnson’s face.
‘No, no,’ said Valerie, ‘but the socializing side of it’s quite fun. Henry took us to As-Cot; we had cocktails with him on the way home. I was shocked by the number of weeds in his seat. But they have made rather lovely use of white buddleia in the walled garden.’
‘With such interesting programme plans, Venturer must have roped in some pretty considerable production people,’ said James idly.
‘I hope you like our border of massed glads over there,’ said Valerie. ‘Bring your coffee and let’s have a wander.’
Having admired every petal, every gnome, every plastic Venus de Milo, James still hadn’t learned anything more about Venturer.
‘Freddie used to pop into Corinium a lot,’ he said as they passed a dolphin regurgitating Blue Loo into a pond. ‘Does he still see any of his old friends there? I bet they’re knocked-out by this lovely garden.’
‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ said Valerie smugly, ‘but I wish we could grow rhodos in Gloucestershire.’
‘Are Venturer recruiting their staff locally?’ asked James. ‘Who else have they signed up?’
But Valerie was off leaping across a stream to tug up some mare’s tail.
‘I know Tony’s keeping an eye out for moles at Corinium,’ fished James as Valerie joined him again.
‘So are we,’ said Valerie. ‘Moles are Freddie’s biggest worry.’
‘Perhaps we should compare notes, Mousie,’ said James.
As they were now hidden from the house by a row of yellow conifers, he slid his hand around her waist. It was nice and trim.
‘Well, Freddie’s been putting down Mole-Ban everywhere,’ said Valerie, ‘but I’m still terrified I’m going to wake up tomorrow and find mole hills all over the lawn.’
James gave up. Mousie was far too preoccupied with her plot to think about plotting at the moment. He arranged that he and the crew would arrive at about three-thirty, and asked if she could keep any Venturer T-shirts and posters to a minimum.
‘Tony feels you’re so special and that a lovely garden is above personalities. But we really can’t use the footage on “Round-Up” if it’s full of plugs for Venturer.’
As James was filming gardens all Saturday afternoon, Lizzie had planned to work on her book. Then, feeling rather old and dried-up, she rubbed a lot of skin-food into her face, only to realize she’d forgotten her neck, which is supposed to betray your age most, so she rubbed the excess skin-food down into it. Then she remembered you were supposed never to rub skin-food downwards as it made your face droop. Would her life have been different, she wondered, if she’d always remembered to rub skin-food upwards? Would James have stayed faithful to her? Unwisely, knowing it would hurt her, she snooped around in James’s drawers and found a ravishing photograph of Sarah Stratton under his boxer shorts. Feeling utterly miserable, she thought how nice it would be to see Freddie Jones again. Abandoning any thought of work, she decided to go along to Valerie’s opening.