“Hairdressers are fickle. I remember… Never mind.”
“What about your love life, Charles?”
“Nothing at the moment.”
They passed the meal reminiscing about their adventures in Cyprus and then he drove her home.
“Am I going to stay the night?” asked Charles as they stood together on Agatha’s doorstep.
“No, Charles, I’m not into casual sex.”
“Who says it would be casual?”
“Charles, you demonstrated in Cyprus that I am nothing more than a temporary amusement to you. Has it ever dawned on you that you might be a twenty-per-center yourself?”
“Ouch! But think on this, Aggie. Any eighty-five-percenter who hangs around with twenty-per-centers is just as afraid of commitment.”
He waved to her and went off to his car.
Agatha let herself in, feeling flat. No messages on the phone for her. And what had Bill Wong been thinking of not to phone her?
The sensible thing would be to phone him, and yet Agatha dreaded the idea of finding out she had lost the affection of her first friend.
Life went on. She had to keep moving. Perhaps she would accept Mr. John’s invitation after all.
TWO
THE heat mounted. Ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit was recorded at Pershore in Worcester. Incidents of road rage mounted, tar melted on the roads, and Agatha Raisin longed for her old shorter haircut.
She realized that the reason she had not the courage to ask for it to be cut was in case she was accused of having low self-worth. Having come to this conclusion, Agatha decided it was all too ridiculous and made another appointment with Mr. John. Back to Evesham, where the women had swapped their leggings for shorts. Acres of white, mottled flesh gleamed in the sunlight.
The hairdresser’s was as busy as ever. Mr. John had two male assistants, one female, and two juniors. Agatha asked if she could use the toilet. The window at the back of the toilet was open to a little weedy yard.
Then Agatha heard a woman whisper urgently, “I can’t go on. You’ve got to let me off the hook.”
There was the answering mumble of a man’s voice.
“I’ll kill you!” shouted the woman, suddenly and violently.
Agatha poked her head out of the window, but she could not make out where the voices had come from.
She went back into the salon, had her hair washed and then braced herself to tell Mr. John that she wanted her hair cut short. She found herself wrapped into that anxiety of writing scripts of “I’ll say and then he’ll say.” It was the lawn-mower syndrome.
Mr. Jones goes out to mow the lawn but finds his lawn-mower has broken down. “Why don’t you ask that nice Mr. Smith next door if you can borrow his?” suggests his wife.
“I can’t do that,” protests Mr. Jones. “Bit of an imposition.”
“Don’t be silly,” says his wife. “You’re being childish. Mr. Smith is a very nice man.”
All afternoon Mr. Jones frets. He will ask Mr. Smith for the loan of his lawn-mower and Mr. Smith will say, “Sorry, old chap, I’m using it myself.” Mr. Smith will say, “I don’t like lending out things.” Mr. Smith will lie. Mr. Smith will look shifty and Mr. Smith will say, “Actually, mine’s broken as well.”
At last, nagged by his wife, Mr. Jones goes and knocks on Mr. Smith’s door.
When Mr. Smith answers the door, Mr. Jones shouts, “Fuck you and your lawn-mower,” and walks away.
So when Agatha barked at Mr. John that she wanted her hair cut, she blushed and felt ridiculous when he said mildly, “There’s no need to shout, Agatha.”
He set about snipping busily. Agatha glanced about the busy salon. It was done in American in Paris Brothel. Gilt mirrors, curtains with bobbles separating the rooms, ToulouseLautrec posters. Mr. John wore a white coat like an American dentist. His assistants wore pink smocks.
“I heard a funny thing when I was in the toilet,” Agatha began.
“That sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke.”
“No, really. I heard a woman say something like, ‘I can’t go on. You’ve got to let me off the hook.’ She was answered by some man. Then she said, ‘I’ll kill you.’ ”
“It’s probably the couple who run the shop next door,” he said. “They’re always quarrelling. Their back shop is on the other side of our backyard and voices carry.”
“Oh,” said Agatha, a little disappointed that what had sounded like an intriguing mystery was only a marital quarrel. “Are you married yourself?”
“I was once,” said Mr. John. Those incredibly blue eyes of his glittered with humour. “Didn’t last long. Now I am free to enjoy the company of beautiful women. Speaking of which, when are you going to have dinner with me?”
“Tonight,” said Agatha, confident that he would not be free to make it.
“Tonight’s fine,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at eight.”
He put down his scissors and reached for a notepad. Agatha told him where she lived and he wrote it down. Agatha began to feel as nervous as a teenager. Would he expect her to have sex with him? She surreptitiously glanced at her wrist-watch. She would be home before the salon closed. She could always phone and say something had come up.
But when her hair was blow-dried into a simple shorter style she felt a wave of gratitude for this magician.
And when she got home and felt the silence, the loneliness of the cottage settling round her, as suffocating as the humid heat, she decided that she would be mad to throw away the chance of dinner with a handsome man.
If the climate had changed, thought Agatha, and hot summers were going to become the norm, she would need to think about getting air-conditioning. She had read that to install air-conditioning cost twenty thousand pounds. It was two thousand for a portable unit. The last time she had visited America, she had noticed air- conditioners sticking out of windows of ordinary houses. Surely the average American family could not afford, say, thirty thousand dollars for air-conditioning or even three thousand for a portable unit.
Her cats lay stretched out on the kitchen floor, lethargic in the heat. She sat down on the floor next to them and stroked their warm fur. Where was James Lacey, and would he ever come back again?
She was flooded with such yearning that she let out a small moan. Depression settled down on her once more.
She sat there miserably until a glance at the clock showed her that she would need to hurry if she was to be ready on time.
Mr. John took her to a French restaurant in the village of Blockley, which was only a few miles from Carsely.
“I still can’t understand why an expert like you should settle for Evesham of all places,” said Agatha. “You are good enough to compete with the best in London.”
“What’s up with Evesham?” he teased. “Evesham is the cradle of democracy.”
“How come?”
“Well, Simon de Montfort.”
Agatha looked blank.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never hear of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester!”
“No,” said Agatha with all the irritation one feels on being made to feel ignorant of historical facts, or any facts, for that matter.
“You’ve heard of King John and the Magna Carta?”
“Yes, got that at school.”
