The Constant Gardener

She seems to think they are going to escape together. Smoke or steam is rising from the bonnet and a frightful smell of burning rubber reminds him of student riots in Nairobi, but he continues to accelerate while in the mirror he watches the men running and he muses again on what fools they are and how badly they do these things, it must be their training. And how a better commanded team would never have left the cars behind. And how the best thing they could do if they had any sense would be turn round now — or maybe just two of them turn round — and run like hell back to their cars, but they show no sign of doing this, perhaps because they are coming closer and everything depends on who gives up first, this car or those men. A sign in French and English warns him of an approaching crossroads. As a Sunday philologist, he finds himself comparing the two languages.

"Where's the hospital?" he asks her.

She takes her fingers out of her mouth. "Dr. Lara Emrich is not permitted to enter the precincts of the hospital," she intones.

He laughs for her, determined to buck her up. "Oh well, we can't go there then, can we? Not if it's forbidden. Come on. Where is it?"

"To the left."

"How far?"

"In normal conditions it will be very little time."

"How little?"

"Five minutes. If there is no traffic, less."

There is no traffic, but there is steam or smoke belching out of the bonnet, the road surface is icy cobble, the speedometer is reading an optimistic fifteen miles an hour at most, the men in the mirror show no sign of tiring, there is no sound except for the lumpy whine of spinning wheel-rims like a thousand fingernails scraping on blackboards. Suddenly to Justin's amazement the road ahead becomes a frosted parade ground. He sees the crenellated gatehouse and the Dawes heraldic crest garishly floodlit ahead of him, and to his left the ivy-covered pavilion and its three satellite blocks of steel and glass looming like icebergs above it. He drags the steering wheel to the left and increases his pressure on the accelerator, to no avail. The speedometer registers nought miles an hour, but that's ridiculous because they are still moving, if only just.

"Who do you know?" he shouts at her.

She must have been asking herself the same question. "Phil."

"Who's Phil?"

"A Russian. An ambulance driver. Now he is too old."

She reaches into the back of the car for her bag, takes out a packet of cigarettes — not Sportsmans — lights one and hands it to him, but he ignores it.

"The men have gone," she says, keeping the cigarette for herself.

Like a faithful mount that has run its last, the car dies under them. The front axle collapses, acrid black smoke oozes from the bonnet, a frightful grinding from beneath them announces that the car has found its final resting place at the center of the parade ground. Watched by a pair of drug-eyed Cree in kapok coats, Justin and Lara clamber out of the car.

* * *

Phil's business premises consisted of a white wooden box beside an ambulance park. It contained a stool, a telephone, a rotating red light, a coffee-stained electric heater and a calendar that was permanently opened at December, a month when a lightly dressed female Santa Claus offers her naked backside to grateful male carol singers. Phil sat on the stool, talking into the telephone, wearing a leather cap with earflaps. His face was leather too, cracked and lined and polished, then dusted over with silver stubble. When he heard Lara's voice speaking Russian he did what old prisoners do: kept his head still and his hooded eyes looking straight ahead of him while he waited to have it proved to him that he was being addressed. Only when he was sure did he face her, and become what Russian men of his age become in the presence of beautiful younger women: a little mystical, a little shy, a little abrupt. Phil and Lara spoke for what seemed to Justin an unnecessary eternity, she in the doorway with Justin lurking like an unacknowledged lover in her shadow, and Phil from his stool, his gnarled hands knotted on his lap. They asked — as Justin supposed — after each other's families, and how Uncle this or Cousin that was doing, until finally Lara stood back to let the old man push past her, which he did by holding her quite gratuitously by the waist before trotting down the ramp of an underground car park.

"Does he know you're banned?" Justin asked.

"It is not important."

"Where's he gone?"

No answer but none was needed. A shiny new ambulance was pulling up beside them, and Phil in his leather cap was at the wheel.

* * *