The Constant Gardener

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Until late into the evening, when the whisky finally got the better of him, Sandy Woodrow had remained loyally at his post in the High Commission, shaping, redrafting and honing his forthcoming performance at tomorrow's Chancery meeting; passing it upward into the hierarchy of his official mind, then downward into that other mind that, like an erratic counterweight, dragged him without warning through a bedlam of accusing ghosts, forcing him to shout louder than they did: you do not exist, you are a series of random episodes; you are not related in any way to Porter Coleridge's abrupt departure for London with wife and child, on the questionable grounds that they had decided on the spur of the moment to take some home leave and find Rosie a special school.

And sometimes his thoughts had gone off on their own entirely, to be discovered addressing such subversive matters as divorce by mutual consent, and whether Ghita Pearson or that new girl called Tara Something in Commercial Section would make an appropriate life partner and, if so, which of them the boys would prefer. Or whether after all he was better off living this lone-wolf existence, dreaming of connection, finding none, watching the dream slip further and further from his reach. Driving home with locked doors and closed windows, however, he was able once more to see himself as the loyal family breadwinner and husband — all right, still discreetly open to suggestions, and what man wasn't? — but ultimately the same decent, stalwart, levelheaded soldier's son that Gloria had fallen head over heels in love with all those years ago. As he entered his house, he was therefore surprised, not to say hurt, to discover that Gloria had not by some act of telepathy divined his good intentions and waited up for him, but left him instead to forage for food in the refrigerator. After all, dammit, I am acting High Commissioner, I'm entitled to a little respect, even in my own house.

"Anything on the news?" he called up to her pathetically, eating his cold beef in unstately solitude.

The dining room ceiling, which was one plank of concrete thin, was also the floor to their bedroom.

"Don't you get news at the shop?" Gloria bawled back.

"We don't sit there listening to the radio all day, if that's what you mean," Woodrow replied, rather suggesting that Gloria did. And again waited, his fork poised halfway to his lips.

"They've killed two more white farmers in Zimbabwe, if that's news," Gloria announced, after an apparent breakdown in transmission.

"Don't I know it! We've had the Pellegrin on our backs the whole damn day. Why can't we persuade Moi to put the brakes on Mugabe, if you please? For the same reason we can't persuade Moi to put the brakes on Moi, is the answer to that one." He waited for a "Poor you, darling," but all he got was cryptic silence.

"Nothing else?" he asked. "On the news. Nothing else?"

"What should there be?"

Hell's come over the bloody woman? he marveled sulkily, pouring himself another glass of claret. Never used to be like this. Ever since her widowed lover boy took himself back to England, she's been moping round the house like a sick cow. Won't drink with me, won't eat with me, won't look me in the eye. Won't do the other thing either, not that it was ever high on her list. Hardly bothers with her makeup, amazingly.

All the same, he was pleased she had heard no news. At least he knew something she didn't for once. Not often London manages to sit on a red-hot story without some idiot in Information Department bubbling it to the media ahead of the agreed deadline. If they could just hold their water till tomorrow morning he'd get a clear run, which was what he'd asked Pellegrin for.

"It's a morale issue, Bernard," he'd warned him, in his best military tone. "Couple of people here are going to take it rather badly. I'd like to be the one to break it to them. Particularly with Porter away."

Always good to remind them who was in charge too. Circumspect but unflappable, that's what they look for in their high fliers. Not to make an issue of it, naturally; much better to let London notice for themselves how smoothly things are handled when Porter isn't around to agonize over every comma.

Very trying, this will-they-won't-they standoff, if he was honest. Probably what's getting her down. There's the High Commissioner's residence a hundred yards up the road, staffed and ready to go, Daimler in the garage, but no flag flying. There's Porter Coleridge, our absentee High Commissioner. And there's little me here doing Coleridge's job for him, rather better than Coleridge has been doing it, waiting night and day to hear whether, having stepped into his shoes, I can wear them not as his stand-in but as his official, formal, fully accredited successor, with trappings to match — to wit, the residence, the Daimler, the private office, Mildren, another thirty-five thousand pounds' worth of allowances and several notches nearer to a knighthood.

But there was a major snag. The Office was traditionally reluctant to promote a man en poste. They preferred to bring him home, pack him off somewhere new. There'd been exceptions, of course, but not many…

His thoughts drifted back to Gloria. Lady Woodrow: that'll sort her out. Restless, that's what she is. Not to say idle. I should have given her a couple more kids to keep her busy. Well, she won't be idle if she's installed in the residence, that's for sure. One free night a week, if she's lucky. Quarrelsome too. Flaming row with Juma last week about some totally trivial thing like tarting up the lower ground. And on Monday, though he never dreamed he'd live to see the day, she'd engineered some kind of bust-up with the Archbitch Elena, casus belli unknown.

"Isn't it about time we had the Els to dinner, darling?" he'd suggested chivalrously. "We haven't pushed the boat out for the Els for months."

"If you want them, ask them," Gloria had advised icily, so he hadn't.

But he felt the loss. Gloria without a woman friend was an engine without cogs. The fact — the extraordinary fact — that she'd formed some kind of armed truce with doe-eyed Ghita Pearson consoled him not at all. Only a couple of months ago Gloria was dismissing Ghita as neither one thing nor the other. "I can't be doing with English-educated Brahmins' daughters who talk like us and dress like dervishes," she'd told Elena in Woodrow's hearing. "And that Quayle girl is exerting a bad influence on her." Well, now the Quayle girl was dead and Elena had been sent to Coventry. And Ghita who dressed like a dervish had been signed up to take Gloria on a conducted tour of Kibera slum with the advertised intention of finding her voluntary work with one of the aid agencies. And this, moreover, at the very time when Ghita's own behavior was causing Woodrow serious concern.

First there had been her display at the funeral. Well, there was no rule book on how to behave at funerals, it was true. Nevertheless, Woodrow considered her performance self-indulgent. Then there was what he would call a period of aggressive mourning, during which she wandered round Chancery like a zombie, refusing point-blank to make eye contact with him, whereas in the past he had regarded her as — well, a candidate, let's say. Then last Friday, without giving the smallest explanation, she'd asked for the day off, although, as a brand-new member of Chancery — and the most junior — she had not yet technically earned her entitlement. Yet out of the goodness of his heart he had said, "Well, fine, Ghita, all right, I suppose so, but don't wear him out" — nothing abusive, just an innocent joke between an older married man and a pretty young girl. But if looks could kill, he'd have been dead at her feet.

And what had she done with the time he'd given her — without so much as a by-your-leave? Flown up to Lake bloody Turkana in a chartered plane with a dozen other female members of the self-constituted Tessa Quayle supporters' club, and laid a wreath, and banged drums and sung hymns, at the spot where Tessa and Noah had been murdered! The first that Woodrow knew of this was breakfast on the Monday when he opened his Nairobi Standard and saw her photograph, posed center stage between two enormous African women he vaguely remembered from the funeral.

"Well, Ghita Pearson, get you, I must say," he had snorted, shoving the paper across the table at Gloria. "I mean, for God's sake, it's time to bury the dead, not dig them up every ten minutes. I always thought she was carrying a torch for Justin."

"If we hadn't had the Italian Ambassador I'd have flown up there with them," Gloria replied, in a voice dripping with reproach.

The bedroom light was out. Gloria was pretending to be asleep.

* * *

"So shall we all sit down, please, ladies and gents?"

A power drill was whining from the floor above. Woodrow dispatched Mildren to silence it while he ostentatiously busied himself with papers on his desk. The whining stopped. Taking his time, Woodrow looked up again to find everybody gathered before him, including a breathless Mildren. Exceptionally, Tim Donohue and his assistant Sheila had been asked to put in an appearance. With no High Commissioner's meetings to rally the full complement of diplomatic staff, Woodrow was insisting on a full turnout. Hence also the Defense and Service Attaches and Barney Long from Commercial Section. And poor Sally Aitken, complete with stammer and blushes, on secondment from the Min of Ag and Fish. Ghita, he noticed, was in her usual corner where, since Tessa's death, she had done her best to make herself invisible. To his irritation she still sported the black silk scarf round her neck that recalled the soiled bandage around Tessa's. were her oblique glances flirtatious or disdainful? With Eurasian beauties, how did you tell?

"Bit of a sad story, I'm afraid, guys," he began breezily. "Barney, would you mind getting the door, as we say in America? Don't bring it to me, just locking it will do."

Laughter — but of the apprehensive sort.

He went straight into it, exactly as he had planned. Bull-by-the-horns stuff — we're all professionals — necessary surgery. But also something tacitly courageous in your acting High Commissioner's bearing as he first scans his notes, then taps the blunt end of his pencil on them and braces his shoulders before addressing the parade.

"There are two things I have to tell you this morning. The first is embargoed till you hear it on the news, British or Kenyan, whoever breaks it first. At twelve hundred hours today the Kenyan police will issue a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Arnold Bluhm for the willful murder of Tessa Quayle and the driver Noah. The Kenyans have been in touch with the Belgian government and Bluhm's employers will be informed in advance. We're ahead of the game because of the involvement of Scotland Yard, who will be passing their file to Interpol."

Scarcely a chair creaks after the explosion. No protest, no gasp of astonishment. Just Ghita's enigmatic eyes fixed on him at last, admiring or hating him.

"I know this'll be a hell of a shock to you all, particularly those of you who knew Arnold and liked him. If you want to tip off your partners, you have my permission to do so at your discretion." Quick flash of Gloria, who until Tessa's death had dismissed Bluhm as a jumped-up gigolo but was now mysteriously concerned for his well-being. "I can't pretend I'm delighted myself," Woodrow confessed, becoming the tight-lipped master of understatement. "There'll be the usual facile press explanations of motive, of course. The Tessa-Bluhm relationship will be raked over ad infinitum. And if they ever catch him, there'll be a noisy trial. So from the point of view of this Mission the news could hardly be worse. I've no information at this stage regarding the strength of the evidence. I'm told it's cast iron, but they would say that, wouldn't they?" The same hint of grit inside the humor. "Questions?"

None apparently. The news seemed to have taken the wind out of everybody's sails. Even Mildren, who had had it since last night, could find nothing better to do than scratch an itch on the tip of his nose.

"My second piece of news is not unrelated to the first, but it's a damn sight more delicate. Partners will not be informed without my prior consent. Junior staff will be selectively informed where necessary, on a strictly controlled basis. By myself or by the High Commissioner as and when he returns. Not by you, please. Am I clear so far?"

He was. There were nods of expectation this time, not just cow-like stares. All eyes were on him and Ghita's had never left him. My God, suppose she's fallen for me: how will I ever get out of it? He followed the thought through. Of course! That's why she's making up to Gloria! First it was Justin she was after, now it's me! She's a couple cruiser, never safe unless she's got the wife aboard as well! He squared himself and resumed his manly newscast.

"I am extremely sorry to have to tell you that our erstwhile colleague Justin Quayle has gone walkabout. You probably know he refused all reception facilities when he arrived in London, saying he'd prefer to paddle his own canoe, et cetera. He did manage a meeting with Personnel on his arrival, he did manage a luncheon appointment with the Pellegrin the same day. Both describe him as overwrought, sullen and hostile, poor chap. He was offered sanctuary and counseling and declined them. Meanwhile he's jumped ship."

Now it was Donohue that Woodrow was discreetly favoring, no longer Ghita. Woodrow's gaze, by careful design, was fixed on neither one of them, of course. Ostensibly it oscillated between the middle air and the notes on his desk. But in reality he was focusing on Donohue and persuading himself with increasing conviction that once again Donohue and his scrawny Sheila had received prior warning of Justin's defection.

"On the same day that he arrived in Britain — the same night, more accurately — Justin sent a somewhat disingenuous letter to the Head of Personnel advising her that he was taking leave to sort out his wife's affairs. He used the ordinary mail, which in effect gave him three days to get clear. By the time Personnel moved to put a restraining hand on him — for his own good, I may add — he'd disappeared from everybody's screens. Signs are, he went to considerable lengths to conceal his movements. He's been traced to Elba, where Tessa had estates, but by the time the Office got on the scent he'd moved on. Where to, God knows, but there are suspicions. He'd made no formal leave application, of course, and the Office, for its part, was in the throes of deciding how it could best help him back on his feet — find him a slot where he could nurse his wounds for a year or two." A shrug to suggest there wasn't a lot of gratitude in the world. "Well, whatever he's doing, he's doing it alone. And he's certainly not doing it for us."

He glanced grimly at his audience, then went back to his notes.

"There's a security aspect to this that I obviously can't share with you, so the Office is doubly exercised about where he's going to pop up next and how. They're also decently worried for him, as I'm sure we all are. Having shown a lot of bearing and self-control while he was here, he seems to have gone to pieces from the strain." He was coming to the hard part but they were steeled for it. "We have various readings from the experts, none of them, from our point of view, pleasant."

The general's son soldiers gallantly on.

"One likelihood, according to the clever people who read entrails in these cases, is that Justin is in denial — that's to say, he refuses to accept that his wife is dead and he's gone looking for her. It's very painful, but we're talking of the logic of a temporarily deranged mind. Or we hope it's temporary. Another theory, equally likely or unlikely, says he's on a vengeance trip, looking for Bluhm. It seems that the Pellegrin, with the best of intentions, let slip that Bluhm was under suspicion for Tessa's murder. Maybe Justin took the ball and ran. Sad. Very sad indeed."

For a moment, in his ever-fluctuating vision of himself, Woodrow became the embodiment of this sadness. He was the decent face of a caring British civil service. He was the Roman adjudicator, slow to judge, slower to condemn. He was your man of the world, not afraid of hard decisions but determined to let his best instincts rule. Emboldened by the excellence of his performance, he felt free to improvise.

"It seems that people in Justin's condition very often have agendas they themselves may not be aware of. They're on automatic pilot, waiting for an excuse to do what they're unconsciously planning to do anyway. A bit like suicides. Somebody says something in jest and — and bang, they've triggered it."

Was he talking too much? Too little? Was he straying from the point? Ghita was scowling at him like an angry sibyl, and there was something at the back of Donohue's shaggy yellowed eyes that Woodrow couldn't read. Contempt? Anger? Or just that permanent air of having a different purpose, of coming from a different place and going back to it?

"But the most likely theory of what's in Justin's head at the moment, I'm afraid — the one that best fits the known facts, and is favored, I must tell you, by the Office shrinks — is that Justin has hit the conspiracy trail, which could be very serious indeed. If you can't deal with the reality, then dream up a conspiracy. If you can't accept that your mother died of cancer, then blame the doctor who was attending her. And the surgeons. And the anesthetists. And the nurses. Who were all in league with each other, of course. And collectively conspired to do away with her. And that seems to be exactly what Justin's saying to himself about Tessa. Tessa wasn't just raped and murdered. Tessa was the victim of an international intrigue. She didn't die because she was young and attractive and desperately unlucky, but because They wanted her dead. Who They are — I'm afraid that one's up to you. It can be your neighborhood greengrocer, or the Salvation Army lady who rang your doorbell and flogged you a copy of their magazine. They're all in it. They all conspired to kill Tessa."

A patter of embarrassed laughter. Had he over-spoken or were they coming to him? Harden up. You're getting too broad.

"Or in Justin's case it can be Moi's Boys, and Big Business, and the Foreign Office and us here in this room. We're all enemies. All conspirators. And Justin's the only person who knows it, which is another element of his paranoia. The victim, in Justin's eyes, is not Tessa but himself. Who your enemies are, if you're in Justin's shoes, depends on who you last listened to, what books and newspapers you've read recently, the movies you've seen and where you are in your bio-day. Incidentally, we're told Justin's drinking a lot, which I don't think was the case when he was here. The Pellegrin says lunch for two at his club cost him a month's pay."

Another trickle of nervous laughter, shared by pretty well everyone except Ghita. He skated on, admiring his own footwork, cutting figures in the ice, spinning, gliding. This is the part of me you hated most, he is telling Tessa breathlessly as he pirouettes and comes back to her. This is the voice that ruined England, you told me playfully as we danced. This is the voice that sank a thousand ships, and they were all ours. Very funny. Well, listen to the voice now, girl. Listen to the artful dismantling of your late husband's reputation, courtesy of the Pellegrin and my five mind-warping years in the Foreign Office's ever-truthful Information Department.

A wave of nausea seized him as for a moment he hated every unfeeling surface of his own paradoxical nature. It was the nausea that could have him scurrying out of the room on the pretext of an urgent phone call or a natural need, just to get away from himself; or send him stumbling to this very desk, to pull open the drawer and grab a page of Her Majesty's Stationery Office blue, and fill the void in himself with declarations of adoration and promises of recklessness. Who did this to me? he wondered while he talked. Who made me what I am? England? My father? My schools? My pathetic, terrified mother? Or seventeen years of lying for my country? "We reach an age, Sandy," you were kind enough to inform me, "where our childhood is no longer an excuse. The problem in your case is, that age is going to be about ninety-five."

He rode on. He was being brilliant again.

"What precise conspiracy Justin has dreamed up — and where we come into it, we in the High Commission — whether we're in league with the Freemasons, or the Jesuits, or the Ku Klux Klan, or the World Bank — I'm afraid I can't enlighten you. What I can tell you is, he's out there. He's already made some serious insinuations, he's still very plausible, very personable — when wasn't he? — and it's perfectly possible that tomorrow or in three months' time he'll head this way." He hardened again. "In which case, you all — collectively and individually — are under instruction, please — this is not a request, I'm afraid, Ghita, it's a straight order-whatever your personal feelings toward Justin may be — and believe me, I'm no different, he's a sweet, kind, generous chap, we all know that-whatever time of night or day it is — to inform me. Or Porter when he's back. Or — " a glance at him — "Mike Mildren." He had nearly said Mildred. "Or if it's nighttime the High Commission's duty officer immediately. Before the press or the police or anybody else gets to him — tell us."

Ghita's eyes, covertly observed, seemed darker and more languorous than ever, Donohue's sicklier. Scruffy Sheila's were as hard as diamonds and as unblinking. "For ease of reference — and for security reasons — London has given Justin the code name of Dutchman. As in Flying Dutchman. If by any chance — it's a long shot, but we're speaking of a deeply disturbed man with unlimited money at his disposal — if by any chance he crosses your path-directly, indirectly, hearsay, whatever — or has done so already — then for his sake as well as ours, pick up the phone, wherever you are, and say, "It's about the Dutchman, the Dutchman is doing this or that, I've got a letter from the Dutchman, he's just phoned or faxed or emailed me, he's sitting here in front of me in my armchair." Are we all completely clear on that one? Questions. Yes, Barney?"

"You said "serious insinuations." Who to? Insinuating what?"

It was the dangerous area. Woodrow had discussed it at length with Pellegrin on Porter Coleridge's encrypted telephone. "There seems to be very little pattern to it. He's obsessed with pharmaceutical stuff. As far as we can fathom, he's convinced himself that the manufacturers of a particular drug — and the inventors — were responsible for Tessa's murder."

"He thinks she didn't get her throat cut? He saw her body!" Barney again, disgusted.

"I'm afraid the drug dates back to her unhappy spell in the hospital here. It killed her child. That was the first shot fired by the conspirators. Tessa complained to the manufacturers, so the manufacturers killed her too."

"Is he dangerous?" Donohue's Sheila is asking the question, presumably to demonstrate to all present that she possesses no superior knowledge.

"He could be dangerous. That's the wisdom from London. His primary target is the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the poison. After that, it's the scientists who designed it. Then there'll be the people who administered it, which means in this case the company here in Nairobi that imports it, which in turn means House of ThreeBees, so we may have to warn them." From Donohue, not a flicker. "And do let me repeat that we are dealing with a seemingly rational and composed British diplomat. Don't expect some loony with ash in his hair and yellow cross-garters, frothing at the mouth. Outwardly, he's the chap we all remember and love. Smooth, well dressed, good-looking and frightfully polite. Until he starts screaming at you about the world-class conspiracy that killed his child and his wife." A break. A personal note — God, what wells the man has! "It's tragic. It's worse than tragic. I think all of us who were close to him must feel that. But that's precisely why I have to beat the drum. No sentiment, please. If the Dutchman comes your way, we have to know immediately. Right, guys? Thanks. Other business while we're all here? Yes, Ghita."

* * *

If Woodrow was having a hard time deciphering Ghita's emotions, he was for once closer than he imagined to her state of mind. She was getting to her feet while everyone else, including Woodrow, was sitting. That much she knew. And she was getting up in order to be seen. But mostly she was getting up because she had never in her life listened to such a pack of wicked lies, and because her impulse was quite literally not to take them sitting down. So here she was standing: in protest, in outrage, in preparation for branding Woodrow a liar to his face; and because in her short, bewildering life till now she had never met better people than Tessa, Arnold and Justin.

That much Ghita was aware of. But when she peered across the room — over the stern heads of the Defense Attache and the Commercial Attache and Mildren the High Commissioner's private secretary, all turned toward her — straight into the truthless, insinuating eyes of Sandy Woodrow, she knew she must find a different way.

Tessa's way. Not out of cowardice, but out of tactic.

To call Woodrow a liar to his face was to win one minute of doubtful glory, followed by certain dismissal. And what could she prove? Nothing. His lies were not fabrications. They were a brilliantly devised distorting lens that turned facts into monsters, yet left them looking like facts.

"Yes, Ghita dear."

He had his head back and his eyebrows up and his mouth half open like a choirmaster's, as if he were about to sing along with her. She looked quickly away from him. That old man Donohue's face is all downward lines, she thought. Sister Marie at the convent had a dog like him. A bloodhound's cheeks are called flews, Justin told me. I played badminton with Sheila last night and she's watching me too. To her astonishment, Ghita heard herself addressing the meeting.

"Well, it may be not a good time for me to be suggesting this, Sandy. Perhaps I should leave it over for a few days," she began. "With so much going on."

"Leave what over? Don't tease us, Ghita."

"Only we've had this inquiry through the World Food Program, Sandy. They are agitating most vigorously for us to send a representative from EADEC to attend the next focus group on Customer Self-Sustainment."

It was a lie. A working, effective, acceptable lie. By some miracle of deceit she had dug a standing request from her memory, and revamped it to sound like a pressing invitation. If Woodrow should ask to see the file, she would not have the least idea what to do. But he didn't.

"Customer what, Ghita?" Woodrow inquired, amid mild, cathartic laughter.

"It is what is also called Aid Parturition, Sandy," Ghita replied severely, dredging another piece of jargon from the circular. "How does a community that has received substantial food aid and medicare learn to sustain itself once the agencies withdraw? That is the issue here. What precautions must be taken by the donors to make sure that adequate logistical provisions remain in place and no undue deprivation results? Great store is set by these discussions."

"Well, that sounds reasonable enough. How long does the jamboree last?"

"Three full days, Sandy. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with a possible overrun. But our problem is, Sandy, we don't have an EADEC representative now that Justin's gone."

"So you wondered whether you might go in his place," Woodrow cried, with a knowing laugh for the wiles of pretty women. "Where's it being held, Ghita? Up in Sin City?" His pet name for the United Nations complex.

"Lokichoggio, actually, Sandy," said Ghita.

* * *

Dear Ghita,

I had no chance to tell you how much Tessa loved you and valued the times the two of you spent together. But you know that anyway. Thank you for all the things you gave her.

I have a request of you but it is only a request and you should please not let it trouble you unless the spirit takes you. If ever, in the course of your travels, you happen to be in Lokichoggio, please get in touch with a Sudanese woman called Sarah who was Tessa's friend. She speaks English and was some kind of house servant to an English family during the British mandate. Perhaps she may shed some light on what really took Tessa and Arnold up to Loki. It's only a feeling, but it seems to me in retrospect that they went up there with a greater sense of excitement than was justified by the prospect of a gender awareness course for Sudanese women! If so, Sarah may know of it.

Tessa hardly slept the night before she left, and she was, even for Tessa, exceptionally demonstrative when we said good-bye to each other — what Ovid calls "good-bye for the last time," though I assume neither of us knew it. Here's an address in Italy for you to write to if you should have occasion. But please don't put yourself out. Thank you again.

Fondly,

Justin

Not Dutchman. Justin.