'No, because I didn't ask him'. 'Just wondered. Do you need anything from the shop?'
'No, thank you. I think I've got everything.' When Mrs. Bloxby had left, Agatha debated whether to go back next door and prepare breakfast in a wifely way. But James always made breakfast himself. She adored him, she longed to be with him every minute of the day, yet she dreaded doing anything or saying anything that might stop his marrying her.
The fine weather broke the next day and rain dripped from the thatch on the roof of Agatha's cottage. She was busy all day supervising the packing. Then Doris Simpson, her cleaner, called round in the late afternoon to help clear up the mess left behind. Bill's elephant stood behind the kitchen door.
'Now that's what I call handsome,' said Doris, admiring it. 'Who gave you that?'
'Bill Wong.'
'He's got good taste, I'll say that for him. So you're marrying our Mr. Lacey at last, and all of us thinking him a confirmed bachelor. But as I said, 'What our Agatha wants, our Agatha gets.''
'We're going out for dinner, so I'll leave you to it,' said Agatha, not liking what she felt was the implication that she had bulldozed James into marriage.
Dinner that evening was at a new restaurant in Chipping Campden. It turned out to be one of those restaurants where all energy and effort had gone into the writing of the menu and little into the cooking because the food was insubstantial and tasteless. Agatha had ordered 'Crispy duck with a brandy-and-orange sauce nestling on a bed of warm rocket salad and garnished with sizzling saute potatoes, succulent garden peas, and crispy new carrots'.
James had a 'Prime Angus sirloin from cattle grazed on the lush green hillsides of Scotland, served with pommes du-chesse, and organic vegetables culled from our own kitchen garden'.
Agatha's duck had a tough skin and very little meat. James steak's was full of gristle and he said sourly that it was amazing that the restaurant's kitchen garden had managed to produce such bright-green frozen peas.
The wine, a Chardonnay, was thin and acid.
'We should stop eating out,' said James gloomily.
'I'll cook us something nice tomorrow,' said Agatha.
'What, another of your microwave meals?'
Agatha glared at her plate. She still fondly imagined that if she microwaved a frozen meal and hid the wrappings, James would think she had cooked it herself.
She suddenly looked across the table at him as he pushed his food moodily about on his plate and said, 'Do you love me, James?'
'I'm marrying you, aren't I?'
'Yes, I know, James, but we never talk about our feelings for each other. I feel we should communicate more.'
'You've been watching Oprah Winfrey again. Thank you for sharing that with me, Agatha. I'm not a talking- about-feelings person, nor do I see the need for it. Now shall I get the bill and we'll go home and have a sandwich?'
Agatha felt so crushed, she didn't even have the heart to complain about the food. He was silent as he drove them home and Agatha felt a lump of ice in her stomach. What if he had gone off her?
But he made love to her that night with his usual silent passion and she felt reassured. You couldn't change people. James was marrying her, and nothing else mattered.
The rain-clouds rolled back on the day of Agatha's wedding. Sunlight sparkled in the puddles. The rain- battered roses in Agatha's garden sent out a heady scent. Doris Simpson was to look after Agatha's cats while she was on her honeymoon. Her cottage stood empty now. Only the elephant and her clothes had been transferred to James's cottage.
Agatha, sitting down to make up her face on the great day, wiped off the liberal application of a brand-new anti-wrinkle cream and then stared at her face in horror. She had come out in a red rash. Her face was fiery. She rushed and bathed it in cold water, but the redness remained.
Mrs. Bloxby arrived to find Agatha almost in tears. 'Look at me!' wailed Agatha. 'I tried that new anti-wrinkle cream, Instant Youth, and look what it's done.'
'Time's getting on, Agatha,' said Mrs. Bloxby anxiously. 'Haven't you any thick make-up you could put on?'
Agatha found an old tube of pancake make-up and put a heavy layer over her face. It left a line where her chin ended and her neck began, so she applied the stuff to her neck as well, and then a layer of powder. Eye- shadow, blusher, and mascara followed. Agatha groaned at the resultant mask-like effect. But Mrs. Bloxby, looking out of the window, said the limousine to take Agatha to Mircester had arrived.
So much for the most important day of my life, thought Agatha dismally.
The day was fine but with a blustery wind, which snatched Agatha's hat from her head as she was about to get into the limousine and sent it bowling along Lilac Lane, where it settled in a muddy puddle.
'Oh dear,' mourned Mrs. Bloxby. 'Do you have another hat?'
'I'll go without one,' said Agatha, fighting back a sudden impulse to cry. . She felt that everything was suddenly turning against her. And she dare not cry. For tears would channel runnels through her mask of make- up.
Mrs. Bloxby gave up trying to make conversation on the road to Mircester. The bride-to-be was unusually silent.
But Agatha's spirits appeared to lift when the registry office came in sight and James could be seen standing in front of it, talking to his sister and Bill Wong. Roy Silver was also there, feeling virtuous now that he had done nothing to wreck Agatha's marriage, or so he told himself. If Jimmy Raisin wasn't dead, he soon would be. He might have mentioned to Jimmy that Agatha was getting married and lived in Carsely, but Jimmy had been so drunk, so sodden, that Roy was sure the man hadn't really taken in a word he said.
Mrs. Bloxby took a spray of flowers out of its florist's box and pinned it on the lapel of Agatha's white suit. She noticed that some of Agatha's make-up had stained the white collar of her suit but did not like to say so, thinking that Agatha was already feeling low enough about her appearance.
Fred Griggs, Carsely's village policeman, was unusual in that he liked to walk about the village, instead of patrolling it in the police car. He looked with distaste at the shambling figure of a stranger entering the village by the north road.
'What's your name and what's your business here?' asked Fred.
'Jimmy Raisin,' said the stranger.
Jimmy was sober for the first time in weeks. He had bathed and shaved at a Salvation Army hostel, and then had begged enough money for the bus fare to the Cotswolds. The Salvation Army had also furnished him with a decent suit and a pair of shoes.
'Relation of Mrs. Raisin, are you?' asked Fred, bis fat face creasing in a genial smile.
'I'm her husband,' said Jimmy. He stared about him at the quiet village, at the well-kept houses, and gave a little sigh of satisfaction. His sole reason for seeking out his wife was to find himself a comfortable home in which to quietly drink himself to death.
'Can't be,' said Fred, the smile leaving his face. 'Our Mrs. Raisin is getting married today.'
Jimmy drew a much-folded and dirty piece of paper from his pocket, his marriage lines, which he had somehow held on to over the years, and silently handed it to the policeman.
Appalled, Fred exclaimed. 'I'd better stop that wedding. Oh, my! Wait right here. I'll get the car.'
The registrar did not get as far as pronouncing James and Agatha man and wife. They heard a commotion from the back of the room and then a voice shouting, 'Stop!'
Agatha turned slowly around. She recognized Fred Griggs, but he was with a man she thought she did not
