The Constant Gardener

Gloria decided it was now time to embark on her master plan, for which she needed the blessing of the Private Office. Mike Mildren was a man in flux. Having had a rather unwholesome New Zealand girl sharing his flat for the last six months, he had overnight exchanged her for a good-looking Italian boy who reputedly spent his day lounging by the pool at the Norfolk Hotel. Choosing just after lunch when Mildren was said to be at his most receptive, she telephoned him from the Muthaiga Club, using all her wiles and promising herself not to call him Mildred by mistake.

"Mike, it's Gloria here. How are you? Have you got a minute? Two even?"

Which was nice and modest of her because after all she was the acting High Commissioner's wife, even if she wasn't Veronica Coleridge. Yes, Mildred had a minute.

"Well, Mike, as you may have heard, I and a bunch of stalwarts are planning a rather large pre-Commonwealth Day knees-up. A sort of curtain-raiser for everybody else's do. Sandy's spoken to you about it, obviously. Hasn't he?"

"Not yet, Gloria, but no doubt he will."

Sandy being useless as usual. Forgetting everything about her as soon as he walks out of the front door. And when he comes home, drinking himself to sleep.

"Well, anyway, what we're looking at, Mike," she bowled on, "is a big marquee. As big as we can find, frankly, with a kitchen at the side. We're going to have a slap-up hot buffet and a live, really good local band. Not a disco like Elena's, and not cold salmon either. Sandy's offering up a hefty chunk of his precious allowances, and the Service attaches are digging into their piggy banks, which is a start, shall we say. Still with me?"

"Indeed I am, Gloria."

Pompous little boy. Too many of his master's airs and graces. Sandy will knock him into shape, once he gets the chance.

"So two questions, really, Mike. Both a bit delicate, but never mind, I'll plunge in. One. With Porter AWOL, if I dare say it, and no financial input from H.E.'s frais, as it were, is there, well, a slush fund available, or might Porter be persuaded to chip in from afar, as it were?"

"Two?"

He really is insufferable.

"Two, Mike, is where? Given the size of the event — and the vast marquee — and its importance to the British community at this rather difficult time, and the cachet we want to attach to it, if that's what you do with a cachet — well, we were thinking — I was — not Sandy, he's too busy, obviously — that the best place to have a five-star knees-up for Commonwealth Day just might be-provided everybody agreed, of course — the High Commissioner's lawn. Mike?" She had the eerie feeling that he had dived underwater and swum away.

"Still listening, Gloria."

"Well, wouldn't it? For parking and everything. I mean nobody need go inside the house, obviously. It's Porter's. Well, except for pit stops, obviously. We can't put Portaloos in H.E.'s garden, can we?" She was getting hung up over Porter and Portaloos, but forged on. "I mean everything's there waiting, isn't it? Servants, cars, security, and so on?" She hastily corrected herself. "I mean waiting for Porter and Veronica, obviously. Not waiting for us. Sandy and I are just holding the fort till they come back. It's not a takeover or anything. Mike, are you still there? I feel I'm talking to myself."

She was. The rebuff came the same evening in the form of a typed, hand-delivered note of which Mildred must have kept a copy. She didn't see him deliver it. All she saw was an open car driving away with Mildred in the passenger seat and his pool boy at the wheel. Department was emphatic, he wrote pompously. The High Commissioner's residence and its lawns were a no-go area for functions of all kinds. There was to be no "de facto annexation of High Commissioner status," he ended cruelly. A formal Foreign Office letter to this effect was on its way.

Woodrow was furious. He had never let fly at her like this before. "Serves you bloody well right for asking," he raged, stomping up and down the drawing room. "Do you really suppose I'll land Porter's job by going and camping on his bloody lawn?"

"I was only prodding them a bit," she protested pathetically, as he ranted on. "It's perfectly natural to want you to be Sir Sandy one day. It isn't the borrowed glory I'm after. I just want you to be happy."

But her afterthought was typically resilient. "Then we'll jolly well have to do it better here," she vowed, staring mistily into the garden.

* * *

The great Commonwealth Day bash had begun.