The Constant Gardener

The Woodrow house stood three floors high. The two upper floors comprised what the security companies called a safe haven protected by a folding steel screen on the first landing, to which the Woodrow parents alone had a key. And in the ground-floor guest suite, which the Woodrows called the lower ground because of the slope of the hillside, there was a screen on the garden side to protect the Woodrows from their servants. There were two rooms to the lower ground, both severe and white-painted and, with their barred windows and steel grilles, distinctly prisonlike. But Gloria in anticipation of her guest's arrival had decked them out with roses from the garden and a reading light from Sandy's dressing room, and the staff television set and radio because it would do them good to be without them for a change. It wasn't exactly five-star even then — she confided to her bosom friend Elena, English wife to a softpalmed Greek official at the United Nations — but at least the poor man would have his aloneness, which everybody absolutely had to have when they lost someone, El, and Gloria herself had been exactly the same when Mummy died, but then of course Tessa and Justin did have — well, they did have an unconventional marriage, if one could call it that — though speaking for herself Gloria had never doubted there was real fondness there, at least on Justin's side, though what there was on Tessa's side — frankly, El darling, God alone knows, because none of us ever will.

To which Elena, much divorced and worldly wise where Gloria was neither, remarked, "Well, you just watch your sweet arse, honey. Freshly widowed playboys can be very raunchy."

* * *

Gloria Woodrow was one of those exemplary Foreign Service wives who are determined to see the good side of everything. If there wasn't a good side in sight, she would let out a jolly good laugh and say, "Well, here we all are!" — which was a bugle call to all concerned to band together and shoulder life's discomforts without complaint. She was a loyal old girl of the private schools that had produced her and she sent them regular bulletins of her progress, avidly devouring news of her contemporaries. Each Founder's Feast she sent them a witty telegram of congratulation or, these days, a witty e-mail, usually in verse, because she never wanted them to forget that she had won the school poetry prize. She was attractive in a forthright way, and famously loquacious, especially when there wasn't much to say. And she had that tottery, extraordinarily ugly walk that is affected by Englishwomen of the royal class.

Yet Gloria Woodrow was not naturally stupid. Eighteen years ago at Edinburgh University she had been rated one of the better brains of her year and it was said of her that if she hadn't been so taken up with Woodrow, she would have landed a decent 2:1 in politics and philosophy. However, in the years between, marriage and motherhood and the inconstancies of diplomatic life had replaced whatever ambitions she might have had. Sometimes, to Woodrow's private sadness, she appeared to have deliberately put her intellect to sleep in order to fulfill her wifely role. But he was also grateful to her for this sacrifice, and for the restful way in which she failed to read his inner thoughts, yet pliantly shaped herself to fit his aspirations. "When I want a life of my own, I'll let you know," she would assure him when, seized by one of his bouts of guilt or boredom, he pressed her to take a higher degree, read law, read medicine — or at least read something, for God's sake. "If you don't like me as I am, that's different," she would reply, deftly shifting his complaint from the particular to the general. "Oh but I do, I do, I love you as you are!" he would protest, earnestly embracing her. And more or less he believed himself.

Justin became the secret prisoner of the lower ground on the evening of the same black Monday on which the news of Tessa's death had been brought to him, at the hour when limousines in ambassadorial driveways were starting to champ and stir inside their iron gates before processing toward the evening's mystically elected watering hole. Is it Lumumba Day? Merdeka Day? Bastille Day? Never mind: the national flag will be flying in the garden, the sprinklers will be turned off, the red carpet will be laid out, black servants in white gloves will be hovering, just as they did in the colonial times we all piously disavow. And the appropriate patriotic music will be issuing from the host's marquee.