Rivals (59 page)

He added Taggie’s name to the list, but that didn’t bring him any nearer Rupert. He made a note to track down Beattie Johnson, who’d been writing Rupert’s memoirs when Rupert booted her out last year. There must be some grievances to fan there.

Freddie Jones, Tony decided blackly, was Venturer’s greatest asset. He was so solid, so dependable, so popular, so hugely successful after such a lowly start, which appealed to a crusading streak in the IBA. Ha! thought Tony,
cherchez la femme.
He buzzed Miss Madden. ‘Will you tell James Vereker to come up.’

James was not happy. Even through his layers of egotism he realized he’d made a fool of himself at the public meeting. He was still miffed because no one had asked him to join their consortium, and, opening a new edition of
Who’s Who in Television
that morning, he’d discovered two columns devoted to Declan and not even a reference to himself.

James brushed his hair and put on a tie. He hoped Tony wasn’t still miffed about the public meeting.

Tony, however, was at his most amiable, steering James towards the squashy green sofa, when usually he made male staff perch on hard-backed chairs, telling Madden they didn’t want to be disturbed, offering James a large drink.

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.

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
so
sweet.’

‘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 de Milo. ‘And we’re all having to behave ourselves, as I’m sure your husband knows. Why have you got that rash on your hands?’ he asked more gently as Lizzie whipped off the same sticker.

‘The doctor says it’s stress-related,’ said Lizzie bitterly. ‘Mistress-related, more likely.’ Suddenly she could bear it no longer. ‘James is having an affair with Sarah Stratton. I shouldn’t have told you that. You’ll leak it to
Private Eye
and discredit Corinium even further.’

‘Why don’t you leave him? He’s such a cunt,’ said Rupert, putting another sticker as a figleaf over a cherub, and dragging Lizzie on before she could remove it.

‘Helen didn’t leave you.’ Lizzie paused to examine the pond which was a mass of scarlet and yellow water lilies. ‘God, isn’t this hell?’

‘She did in the end,’ said Rupert. ‘Besides, I’m not a cunt.’

They had reached the end of the garden now; cornfields the colour of French mustard and bluey-green woods stretched to the horizon. On the right, a red tractor chugged back and forth, anxious to get the hay baled and away before tonight’s promised rain.