The Constant Gardener

She had risen early and brushed out her hair by the time he had shaved. She had packed the boys off to school with the driver, then cooked him bacon and eggs, which he wasn't allowed, but once in a while a girl's allowed to spoil her man. She was mimicking the school prefect in herself, using her head girl voice, though none of this was yet apparent to her husband, who was plowing his way as usual through a heap of Nairobi newspapers.

"Flag goes back up on Monday, dear," Woodrow replied distractedly, masticating bacon. "Mildred's been on to Protocol Department. Tessa's been half-masted longer than a prince of the blood."

"I'm not talking about that flag, silly," said Gloria, removing the newspapers from his reach and setting them prettily on a side table beneath her watercolors. "Are you sitting comfortably? So listen. I'm talking about throwing an absolutely bumper party to cheer us all up, you included. It's time, Sandy. It really is. It's time we all said to each other, "Right. Been there. Done that. Dreadfully sorry. But life has to go on." Tessa would feel exactly the same. Vital question, darling. What's the inside story? When are the Porters coming back?" The Porters like the Sandys and the Elenas, which is how we talk about people when we're being cozy.

Woodrow transferred a square of egg to his fried bread. "Mr. and Mrs. Porter Coleridge are taking an extended period of home leave while they settle their daughter Rosie into school," he intoned, quoting an imaginary spokesman. "Inside story, outside story, only story there is."

But a story that, despite his seeming ease, exercised Woodrow considerably. What the hell was Coleridge up to? Why this radio silence? All right, he was on home leave. Good luck to him. But Heads of Mission on home leave have telephones and e-mails and addresses. They get withdrawal symptoms, phone their number twos and private secretaries on the flimsiest excuse, wanting to know about their servants, gardens, dogs and how's the old place ticking over without me? And they get huffy when it's suggested to them that the old place ticks over rather better when they're not in it. But from Coleridge, ever since his abrupt departure, not a dicky bird. And if Woodrow called London with the professed aim of bouncing a few innocent questions off him — and quite incidentally to pump him about his aims and dreams — he was met by one blank wall after another. Coleridge was "doing a stint at Cabinet Office," said a neophyte in Africa Department. He was "attending a ministerial working party," said a satrap in the permanent undersecretary's department.

And Bernard Pellegrin, when Woodrow finally reached him from the digital phone on Coleridge's desk, was as airy as the rest of them. "One of those Personnel cock-ups," he explained vaguely. "PM wants a briefing so the Secretary of State has to have one, so they all want one. Everyone wants a bit of Africa. What's new?"

"But is Porter coming back here or not, Bernard? I mean this is very unsettling. For all of us."

"I'd be the last to know, old boy." Slight pause. "You alone?"

"Yes."

"That little shit Mildred hasn't got her ear to the keyhole?"

Woodrow glanced at the closed door to the anteroom and lowered his voice. "No."

"Remember that thick bit o' paper you sent me not so long ago? Twenty-odd pages — woman author?"

Woodrow's stomach lurched. Anti-listening devices might be safe against outsiders, but are they safe against us?

"What about it?"

"My view is — best scenario would be-solve everything — it never arrived. Lost in the mails. That play?"

"You're talking about your end, Bernard. I can't speak for your end. If you didn't receive it, that's your business. But I sent it to you. That's all I know."

"Suppose you didn't send it, old boy. Suppose none of it happened. Never written, never sent? Would that be viable your end?" The voice absolutely at ease with itself.

"No. It's impossible. Not at all viable, Bernard."

"Why not?" Interested, but not the smallest degree perturbed.

"I sent it to you by bag. It was listed. Personal for you. Inventoried. The Queen's Messengers signed for it. I told — " he was going to say "Scotland Yard" but changed his mind in time — "I told the people who came out here about it. I had to. They'd already got the background by the time they spoke to me." His fear made him angry. "I told you I'd told them! I warned you, actually! Bernard, is something unraveling? You're making me a bit jumpy, actually. I'd rather understood from you that the whole thing had been laid peacefully to rest."

"Nothing to it, old boy. Calm down. These things pop up now and then. Bit of toothpaste slips out of the tube, you put it back. People say it can't be done. Happens every day. Wife well?"

"Gloria's fine."

"Kiddywinks?"

"Fine."

"Give our love."

"So I've decided it's to be a really super dance," Gloria was saying enthusiastically.