The Constant Gardener

Like a guilty man caught in a felonious act, Justin swiftly slides Tessa's notes beneath the nearest pile of paper, springs to his feet and turns in horrified disbelief toward the oil room door. Somebody is beating on it very hard. He can see it trembling to the rhythm of the blows, and hear above the din the hectoring, horribly familiar, tenacre voice of an Englishman of the imperious class.

"Justin! Come out, dear boy! Don't hide! We know you're there! Two dear friends bring gifts and comfort!"

Frozen, Justin remains incapable of response.

"You're skulking, dear boy! You're doing a Garbo! There's no need! It's us! Beth and Adrian! Your friends!"

Justin grabs the keys from the sideboard and, like a man facing execution, steps blindly into the sunlight, to be faced by Beth and Adrian Tupper, the Greatest Writing Duo of their Age, the world famous Tuppers of Tuscany.

"Beth. Adrian. How lovely," he declares, slamming the door behind him.

Adrian seizes him by the shoulders and drops his voice dramatically. "Dear boy. Justin. Whom the gods love. Mmh? Mmh? Manliness. Only thing," he intones, all on one confiding note of commiseration. "You're alone. Don't tell me. Terribly alone." Submitting to his embraces, Justin sees his two tiny, deep-set eyes searching greedily past his shoulder.

"Oh Justin, we really did love her so," Beth mews, stretching her tiny mouth into a pitiful downward curve, then straightening it up again to kiss him.

"Where's your man Luigi?" Adrian demands.

"In Naples. With his fiancee. They're getting married. In June," Justin adds uselessly.

"Should be here supporting you. World today, dear boy. No loyalty. No servant classes."

"The big one is for darting Tessa in memory, and the little one's for poor Garth, to be beside her," Beth explains in a tinny little voice that has somehow lost its echo. "I thought we'd plant them in remembrance, didn't I, Adrian?"

In the courtyard stands their pickup, its back ostentatiously laden with rustic logs for the benefit of Adrian's readers, who are invited to believe he cuts them for himself. Tied across them lie two young peach trees with plastic bags round their roots.

"Beth has these marvelous vibes," Tupper booms confidingly. "Wavelength, dear boy. Tuned in all the time, aren't you, darling? "We must take him trees," she said. Knows, you see. Knows."

"We could plant them now, then they'd be done, wouldn't they?" says Beth.

"After lunch," says Adrian firmly.

And one simple peasants' picnic — Beth's care package, as she calls it, consisting of a loaf of bread, olives and a trout each from our smokery, darling, just the three of us, over a bottle of your nice Manzini wine.

Courteous unto death, Justin leads them to the villa.

* * *

"Can't mourn forever, dear boy. Jews don't. Seven days is all they get. After that, they're back on their feet, rarin' to go. Their law, you see, darling," Adrian explains, addressing his wife as if she were an imbecile.

They are sitting in the salon under the cherubs, eating trout off their laps in order to satisfy Beth's vision of a picnic.

"All written down for them. What to do, who does it, how long for. After that, get on with the job. Justin should do the same. No good mooching, Justin. You must never mooch in life. Too negative."

"Oh, I'm not mooching," Justin objects, cursing himself for opening a second bottle of wine.

"What are you doing then?" Tupper demands as his small round eyes drill into Justin.

"Well, Tessa left a lot of unfinished business, you see," Justin explains lamely. "Well — there's her estate, obviously. And the charitable trust she had set up. Plus odds and ends."

"Got a computer?"

You saw it! thought Justin, secretly aghast. You can't have done! I was too quick for you, I know I was!

"Most important invention since the printing press, dear boy. Isn't it, Beth? No secretary, no wife, nothing. What do you use? We resisted it to begin with, didn't you, Beth? Mistake."

"We didn't realize," Beth explains, taking a very big pull of wine for such a small woman.

"Oh, I just grabbed whatever they have here," Justin replies, recovering his balance. "Tessa's lawyers shoved a bunch of disks at me. I commandeered the estate machine and plowed through them as best I could."

"So you've finished. Time to go home. Don't dither. G. Your country needs you."

"Well, not quite finished, actually, Adrian. I've still got a few days to go."

"Foreign Office know you're here?"

"Probably," said Justin. How does Adrian do this to me? Rob me of my defenses? Pry into the private places in my life where he has absolutely no business, and I stand by and let him?

A moratorium, during which, to his immense relief, Justin is subjected to an extraordinarily boring account of how the Greatest Writing Couple in the World was converted against all natural inclination to the Net — a dress rehearsal, no doubt, for another riveting chapter of Tuscan Tales, and another free machine from the manufacturers.