Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener (3 page)

She changed back and decided to put off accepting the invitation until she had thought clearly what to do. In the meanwhile, she would drive into one of the cheap supermarkets in Evesham and get food for the weekend, picking up some fresh fruit and vegetables from the open-air stands on the A44.

At the supermarket, she decided to have a cup of coffee in the café before shopping. She found that although she had brought cigarettes, she had left her lighter behind, so she went up to the cigarette counter and asked for a cheap lighter. “These,” said the middle-aged assistant, “are electronically controlled.”

“What does that mean?” asked Agatha.

“See, it clicks down without much pressure.” She beamed at Agatha. “Very good for the elderly who have trouble with their thumbs.”

Agatha glared at her. “I hate you.”

“Madam, I just said – ”

“Never mind,” snarled Agatha, “I’ll take it. How much?”

“Eight-five pee. But – ”

Agatha slammed down the right money, picked up the lighter and stormed off. Was this what happened at fifty-something when you didn’t wear make-up? Getting mistaken for a geriatric?

Come on, sounded the voice of logic in her head, she didn’t mean you. Oh, yes, she did, shrieked her bruised emotions. She got herself a cup of coffee at the self-service counter, winced away from the cream cakes and sat moodily down at the window and glared out at the carpark.

There is something very lowering about drinking coffee in a British supermarket while surveying the carpark. Trees surrounded it, wispy, newly planted trees which must have looked very neat and pretty when made out of green sponge on the architect’s model. Agatha could almost imagine herself placed in the café window on the model, a small plastic Agatha. It was a dusty, windy day. Discarded wrappings spiralled up and a thin film of greasy rain began to blur the windows. Agatha sighed heavily. It would be very comfortable to forget about the James Laceys of this world and give up, become fat and contented, leave the skin creams alone and let the wrinkles happen. She would not go to Mary’s. She would be sensible.

But there would be no harm in getting the bicycle out and taking some exercise.

Mary Fortune stood surveying her guests on Friday. She had a plentiful supply of drinks of all kinds and had cooked hot little savouries to go with them. But people weren’t staying, and an awful lot of them had looked around and asked, “Where’s Mrs Raisin?” And Mary had replied sweetly that as Mrs Raisin was expecting a guest at the weekend, she was staying at home to make preparations. Jimmy Page, the farmer, said he thought he had seen Agatha heading for the Red Lion, and an irritating woman, Mrs Toms, said, “Might just drop down there and thank her for that present,” and Mary began to feel that some of the departing guests were following suit. As a further irritation, James no longer looked at her with that glowing, shy sort of look but fidgeted about. Normally he would have kept at her side and then stayed behind to help her clear up. Mary was puzzled. From what she had seen of her, Agatha Raisin was a stocky, plain, middle-aged woman who had had a charm bypass, so James could not possibly have transferred his attentions to her. But it was almost as if this Agatha Raisin belonged to the villagers and the village, and she, Mary did not. And, sure enough, James did not stay.

Agatha waited the next morning at Moreton-in-Marsh station for the arrival of Roy Silver. She wished in a way he were not coming, perhaps because Roy with his waspish camp manner did not fit into the comfortable ways of Carsely. But James Lacey could find nothing, well, romantic in the fact that Agatha had a man staying for the weekend. Roy was far too young, still in his twenties.

When Roy came sailing off the train dressed in black denim and talking into a mobile phone, Agatha’s heart sank. Roy, satisfied at last that the few people on the station platform had noticed the young executive at work, rang off and approached Agatha.

“What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked by way of greeting. “‘O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt…’ Shakespeare, Aggie. Got a word for everything.”

“Taught you well in the reform school?” rejoined Agatha, who hated literary quotations.

“Honestly, darling,” went on Roy cheerfully, “not like you to go to seed.”

“I put on a bit on my holidays,” said Agatha, “but I’ll soon take it off.”

“Go on a diet. I’ll join you,” said Roy eagerly. “The fruit diet’s the thing. Eat nothing but fruit for three days, and I am here for three days.”

“Don’t you have to be at work on Monday?”

“Got an extra day owing to me
and
I’ve got a proposition to put to you.”

“Oh, Roy, I didn’t know you cared. Put that case of yours with the Costa del Sol labels in the back,” snapped Agatha, “and let’s get a move on.”

“Righty-ho. Tell you about it when we get to your place,”

Roy chattered along about the fruit diet, which he seemed determined they should both go on. Agatha drove steadily up through Bourton-on-the-Hill, noticing gloomily that there were still houses for sale, a sign that the recession was not disappearing as fast as the politicians wanted the public to think. She then turned down the long winding road which led to Carsely. There had been a heavy frost that morning, which had not yet melted. White trees leaned over the road and the whole countryside seemed still and frozen into immobility.

“Are you sure you want to go ahead with this diet?” she asked when she had ushered him into the cottage. “I’ve got lots of goodies for the weekend, and I’m a fair cook.”

“Let’s do it, Aggie. Just think how slim you’ll look.”

And Agatha thought of Mary Fortune and heaved a little sigh. “All right, Roy. Fruit it is.”

She said a longing mental goodbye to the lunch of grilled steak and baked potatoes she had planned. That wasn’t fattening, she thought, forgetting about all the sour cream and fresh butter she was going to put on the potatoes.

“Like to go along to the pub for a drink?” she asked hopefully. On Saturdays the bar of the Red Lion was covered in little dishes of cheese nibbles and pickled onions.

“Can’t have alcohol or coffee,” said Roy cheerfully. “We’d better go out and get some fruit.”

“I have fruit,” said Agatha, pointing to a full bowl of apples and oranges.

“Not enough, sweetie. Must get more.”

As they approached her car parked outside in the lane, Agatha was tempted to tell Roy to forget about such a ridiculous diet. But Mary’s car drew up outside James Lacey’s and Mary got out wearing her favourite green. Mary cast a swift appraising look at Roy, and Agatha was suddenly conscious of Roy’s youth and weediness. He had a thin white face and small clever eyes and a thin weedy body which looked as if it needed fattening up rather than dieting.

“Who’s the glamour-puss?” asked Roy.

“Some incomer,” said Agatha sourly. “Get in the car.”

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had breakfasted on a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

But there was the carrot held out in front of her of an almost immediate loss of weight.

They drove to Evesham and bought apples, melons, bananas, grapes, pineapples, oranges and a selection of ‘yuppie’ fruit from an exotic and highly priced variety.

Back home again, they both ate as much as they could and assured each other that they felt terribly well already. Then they went out cycling, Roy borrowing a cycle from the vicarage. It was to be the best part of the weekend as they flew along the frosty lanes in the clear air, returning home under a burning red sun which set the frost-covered grass and trees aflame and made the frozen puddles in the roads burn like monsters’ eyes.

But instead of sitting down that evening to a warming meal, there was nothing but more fruit and mineral water.

“What’s this proposition you were talking about?” asked Agatha.

“You remember Mr Wilson of Pedmans, my boss?”

Agatha’s eyes narrowed. She had sold her PR business to Pedmans. Wilson had gone back on all his assurances that her offices and staff would remain intact, had fired the staff with the exception of Roy, and had sold the offices. “Of course.”

“He was talking about you the other day. Said you were the best ever. I said I was going to see you,” said Roy, carefully and conveniently forgetting that his decision to visit Agatha had been prompted after he had heard his boss’s praise of her. “He said he would like to employ you as an executive. Pure Cosmetics are playing up. You used to handle them.”

“Bunch of toe-rags,” said Agatha moodily. Pure Cosmetics was run by a temperamental and demanding woman, a modern slave-driver.

“But that woman, Jessica Turnbull, the director of Pure Cosmetics, you could always handle her. That’s what Wilson said.”

“I’m retired,” said Agatha. “Hey, you’re spotty.”

Roy squawked and ran upstairs to the bathroom. He returned and said, “I look like a fourteen-year-old with acne. You’re spotty as well.”

“Let’s chuck this stupid diet.”

“No,” said Roy firmly. “It’s toxic waste. The impurities are being purged out of our bodies.”

“I agreed to this stupid thing to look better, not to get spotty.”

“But you look slimmer already, Aggie,” said Roy craftily. “Don’t think about Wilson’s offer now. We’ll watch that video I got and then we’ll have an early night.”

Agatha awoke early the next day, hungry and bad-tempered. She went downstairs and gloomily ate six apples, drank a glass of mineral water, and smoked five cigarettes. The doorbell rang. She went to the door and peered through the spyhole. She recognized James Lacey’s chest, which was all she could see of him.

She put her hands up to her face. She could almost feel the spots.

Agatha backed away from the door. She longed to open it, but not like this, not spotty-faced and in her dressing gown.

Outside, James turned slowly away. He had just decided it was silly to nourish a childish resentment of Agatha because she had made a rude gesture at him, and all that time ago, too. As he approached his cottage, he saw Mary’s blonde head turning into the lane. Without thinking why, he quickened his step and plunged into his cottage like some large animal into its burrow, and when his own doorbell rang imperatively a few moments later, he did not answer it, persuading himself that he needed to get down to work.

He was still working on a history of the Peninsular Wars. He switched on his computer and looked gloomily at the last paragraph he’d written. Then he flicked it off and stared moodily at the screen. There was a heading saying simply, ‘Case’. That was when Agatha and he had been trying to solve a murder and he had typed out all the facts and had studied them. That had been fun. It had been exciting. Perhaps Agatha was on to something new. He shook his head. No one had been murdered for miles around. Carsely was still locked in its winter’s sleep. He wondered uneasily why Agatha had not answered the door. She must have been home because her car was parked outside and smoke had been rising from the chimney. That fellow Roy was staying with her. He had seen them the day before on their bicycles. There couldn’t be any romantic interest there. The fellow was too young. Still, in these modern days of toy boys, one could never tell. They were probably having a high old time, laughing and joking while he sat sunk in boredom.

“I don’t like Wilson and I don’t like Pedmans,” Agatha was saying sourly. “I loathe fruit and I could kill for a big greasy hamburger.”

“Take a look in the mirror,” retorted Roy crossly, made bitter by diet and the fact that his mission was to get Agatha back to work. “You’ve let yourself go. Okay, so you’ve had a bit of excitement in this place before, but nothing is ever going to happen here again and you may as well make up your mind to it Think of London, Aggie!”

And Agatha thought of London and thought of how odd and alien she felt now on her infrequent visits – London, which had once been the centre of her universe.

“I’m happy here,” she said defiantly. “All right, I’ve let myself go a tiny bit, but I’ll be back on form soon enough.”

“But Wilson’s prepared to offer you eighty-five thousand a year, for starters.”

Agatha’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a bit. You and Wilson seem to have discussed this thoroughly, and knowing what a weak little creep you are, Roy, you probably said, “Leave it to me. I’ll nip down there for the weekend and get the old girl to come around.” You probably bragged as well. “Oh, Aggie and I are like
that
. She’d do anything for me.””

This was so nearly exactly what Roy had said that he blushed under his spots and then became furious. “No, it’s not at all what happened,” he screeched. “The trouble with you, Aggie, is that you wouldn’t know a real friend if you met one in your soup. I’m sick of this, sick of this. I’m going up to shave and get packed.”

“Do that,” Agatha shouted after him, “but watch your spots. In fact, to help you on your way, I’ll run you into Oxford!”

An hour later, they set off together on the Oxford road, Agatha driving in a bitter silence. Her stomach wasn’t rumbling, it was letting out moans. She hated Roy, she hated Carsely, she hated James Lacey, she hated the whole of the Carsely Ladies’ Society, she hated Mrs Bloxby…

She was driving along the A40 as that last name in the catalogue came into her mind. She swerved off the road and parked outside a restaurant.

“So what are we doing here?” demanded Roy, speaking for the first time since they had left the village.

“I don’t know about you, but I am going to eat one great big hamburger smothered in ketchup,” said Agatha. “You can watch me or join me, I don’t care.”

Roy followed her into the restaurant and then watched moodily as she ordered coffee and a ‘giant’ hamburger and ‘giant’ French fries. Then, in a tight, squeaky voice, he said to the waitress, “The same for me.”

When the food arrived, they ate their way stolidly through it. Then. Agatha imperiously summoned the waitress. “Same again,” she said.

“Same again,” said Roy, through a sudden fit of the giggles.

“Sorry I was so bitchy,” said Agatha. “Can’t stand diets.”

“That’s all right, Aggie,” said Roy. “Can be a bit of a bitch myself.”