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.
As she drove through Green Lawns’s electric gates, she noticed a large ‘Support Venturer’ sticker on the huge sign announcing that James and Corinium Television would be present that afternoon. Lizzie felt so off James that she couldn’t even be bothered to peel the sticker off. In the car park she found Rupert unashamedly sticking more Venturer stickers on everyone’s windscreens.
‘Darling.’ He kissed her. ‘Divided as we are by our rival consortiums, we shouldn’t consort, but do let’s go round together. I need a good laugh. Mrs Jones’s new rockery is like the polar bear pit at the zoo; she’s been training blow lamps on her roses all night and twenty-four-hour fluorescent lighting in the greenhouse is forcing out the Christmas roses.’
Lizzie laughed. ‘You can’t bring that dog,’ she said as Rupert let Beaver out of his car. ‘Particularly if he’s not on a lead. Mrs Jones will have a coronary.’
‘Good,’ said Rupert, locking the car. ‘Look how well he’s trained,’ he went on as Beaver lifted his leg on a cohort of salmon-pink petunias. ‘Do you think Valerie drills her flowers every morning?’
‘It’s just like a park,’ said Lizzie as they walked towards the house.
‘Unfair to parks,’ said Rupert.
On the edge of the lawn a stall was selling clothes from Valerie’s boutique, with the mark-up going to the Red Cross. Models, sweating in Valerie’s Autumn Range, wandered aimlessly round, fanning themselves with price tags. There was not a Venturer plug in sight.
‘What a lot of people,’ said Rupert. ‘Judging by the mob on the lawn, your husband’s holding court. Let’s go the other way. Isn’t that hell!’ He pointed to a crescent-shaped flower bed crammed with fuchsias and French marigolds that looked as if it had been dug out by a pastry cutter. ‘Lady Valerie of Vulgaria’s gift for self-publicity is only equalled by her appalling taste.’
As they proceeded giggling down the crazy pavement, they could hear Valerie graciously dispensing advice on the other side of the yellow conifer hedge.
‘How d’you manage to grow such whopping glads?’ asked a neighbour admiringly.
‘I feed them with Grow-More,’ said Valerie.
‘She’s obviously been feeding her children the same thing,’ muttered Rupert as poor fat Sharon, blushing at the sight of Rupert, waddled past them.
‘Hullo, Bishop,’ they could now hear Valerie screaming. ‘How good of you to look in. I’m about to be interviewed on TV, but you’ll find Fred-Fred in the grounds.’
‘It’d be grounds for divorce if I was married to her; the only person not allowed into Valerie’s opening is Fred-Fred. The frigid bitch,’ said Rupert, grabbing Lizzie’s arm. ‘Come on, buck up, let’s look at the pond. I don’t want to get trapped with the Bishop.’
‘I thought the Bishop was on your side,’ said Lizzie, panting after him.
‘He is, and a god-awful bore too. He’s mad about Taggie, so he keeps dropping in at The Priory unannounced, and finding Maud and Declan having a bonk, or hurling plates at one another, which, bearing in mind the Bishop’s views on sex and violence, doesn’t go down very well.’
‘I thought it was you having a walk-out with Taggie,’ said Lizzie slyly as they passed Hybrid Teas, massed in clashing colours above totally weedless beds.
Rupert raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Would that I were! She’s
‘Why aren’t you then?’
‘Declan would do his nut, and she’s too young.’
‘Never deterred you in the past.’
‘Ah, but it’s franchise year.’ Rupert bent down to press a Venturer sticker on the bare belly of a plastic Venus
