The Constant Gardener

Ghita dear. Captain McKenzie occupies Entebbe tukul, which is number fourteen on the airstrip side. Take a hand torch with you for when the generators are switched off. He will be happy to receive you at nine o'clock after your dinner. He is a gentleman so you need have no fear. Please give him this note so that I can be sure it has been sensibly disposed of. Take very good care of yourself now and remember your responsibilities as regards discretion. Sarah

* * *

The names of the tukuls read to Ghita like regimental battle honors in the village church close to her convent school in England. The front door to Entebbe was ajar, but the mosquito door inside it was wedged tight. A blue-shaded hurricane lamp burned and Captain McKenzie sat in front of it, so that as Ghita approached the tukul she saw only his silhouette, bowed over his desk while he wrote like a monk. And because first impressions counted greatly with her, she stood a moment observing his craggy look and extreme stillness, anticipating an unbending military nature. She was about to tap on the door frame but Captain McKenzie had either heard or seen her or guessed her, because he sprang to his feet and made two athletic strides to the mosquito door and pulled it back for her.

"Ghita, I'm Rick McKenzie. You're bang on time. Got a note for me?"

New Zealand, she thought, and knew she'd got it right. Sometimes she forgot her knowledge of English names and accents, but this was not one of the times. New Zealand and on closer inspection nearer to fifty than thirty, but she could only guess this from the hairline cracks on the gaunt cheeks and the silver tips to the trim black hair. She handed him Sarah's note and watched while he turned his back on her and held the note to the blue lamp. By the brighter glow she saw a sparse, clean room with an ironing board and polished brown shoes and a soldier's bed made the way she was taught to make her bed at convent school, with hospital corners and the sheet folded over the blanket at the top, then folded back on itself to make an equilateral triangle.

"Why don't you sit yourself over there?" he asked, indicating a kitchen chair. As she moved toward it, the blue lamp moved behind her, to settle on the floor at the center of the doorway to the tukul. "That way nobody gets to see in," he explained. "We've got fulltime tukul watchers here. Take a Coke?" He handed it to her at arm's length. "Sarah says you're a trustworthy person, Ghita. That's good enough for me. Tessa and Arnold didn't trust anyone except each other in this. And me because they had to. That's the way I like to work too. You came up on a Self-Sustainment jag, I hear." It was a question.

"The Self-Sustainment focus group was a pretext. Justin wrote to me asking me to find out what Tessa and Arnold were doing in Loki in the days before she died. He didn't believe the story of the gender workshop."

"He's damn right. Got his letter?"

My identity paper, she thought. My proof of good faith as Justin's messenger. She passed it to him and watched while he stood up, pulled on a pair of austere steel-framed spectacles and stepped obliquely into the arc of the blue lamp, keeping himself out of the eyeline of the door.

He handed the letter back. "So listen up," he said.

But first he turned on his radio, anxious to establish what he pedantically termed the level of acceptable sound.

* * *

Ghita lay on her bed, under a single sheet. The night was no cooler than the day. Through the netting that surrounded her she could watch the red glow of the mosquito coil. She had drawn the curtains but they were very thin. Footsteps and voices kept passing her window and every time they passed she had an urge to leap out of bed and shout "Hi!" Her thoughts turned to Gloria, who a week ago, to her confusion, had invited her to a game of tennis at the club.

"Tell me, dear," Gloria had asked her, having trounced her six games to two in each of three sets. They were walking arm in arm toward the clubhouse. "Did Tessa have some kind of crush on Sandy, or was it the other way round?"

At which Ghita, despite her addiction to the altar of truth, lied straight and fairly into Gloria's face without even blushing. "I am quite sure there was nothing of the kind on either side," she said primly. "Whatever makes you think that, Gloria?"

"Nothing, darling. Nothing at all. Just the way he looked during the funeral, I suppose."

And after Gloria, she went back to Captain McKenzie.