The Constant Gardener

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?"