The Constant Gardener

All the frantic preparations had paid off, the guests had arrived, music was playing, drink flowing, couples were chatting, the jacarandas in the front garden were in bloom, life was really rather super at last. The wrong marquee had been replaced with the right one, paper napkins with linen, plastic knives and forks with plate, vile puce bunting with royal blue and gold. A generator that brayed like a sick mule had been replaced with one that bubbled like a hot saucepan. The sweep in front of the house no longer looked like a building site and some brilliant last-minute whipping in by Sandy on the telephone had procured some jolly good Africans, including two or three from Moi's retinue. Sooner than rely on untried waiters — just look at what had happened at Elena's! — or rather hadn't happened! — Gloria had mustered staff from other diplomatic households. One such recruit was Mustafa, Tessa's spearman, as she used to call him, who had been too grief-stricken, by all accounts, to find another job. But Gloria had sent Juma off in pursuit of him, and here he finally was, flitting among the tables on the other side of the dance floor, a bit down in the mouth, bless him, but obviously pleased to have been thought of, which was the important thing. The Blue Boys miraculously had arrived on time to direct parking, and the problem as usual would be to keep them away from the drink, but Gloria had read them the riot act and all one could do was hope. And the band was marvelous, really jungle, and a good strong beat for Sandy to dance to if he had to. And didn't he look simply splendid in the new dinner jacket Gloria had bought him as a "sorry" present? What a parade horse he was going to make one day! And the hot buffet, what she had tasted of it — well, good enough. Not sensational, you didn't expect that in Nairobi, there was a limit to what you could buy even if you could afford it. But streets better than Elena's, not that Gloria felt in the least competitive. And darling Ghita in her gold sari, divine.

* * *

Woodrow too has every reason to congratulate himself. Watching the couples gyrate to music he detests, sipping methodically at his fourth whisky, he is the storm-tossed mariner who has made it back to harbor against all odds. No, Gloria, I never made a pass at her — or at any other her. No to all of it. No, I will not provide you with the means to destroy me. Not you, not the Archbitch Elena, and not Ghita, the scheming little puritan. I'm a status quo man, as Tessa rightly observed.

Out of the corner of his eye Woodrow spots Ghita, matching bodies with some gorgeous African she has probably never seen in her life until tonight. Beauty like yours is a sin, he tells her in his mind. It was a sin with Tessa, it is with you. How can any woman inhabit a body like yours and not share the desires of the man she inflames? Yet when I point this out to you — just the odd confiding touch, nothing gross — your eyes blaze and you hiss at me in a stage whisper to get my hands off you. Then you flounce home in a huff, closely observed by the Archbitch Elena… His reverie was disturbed by a pallid, balding man, who looked as though he'd lost his way, accompanied by a six-foot Amazon in bangs.

"Why, Ambassador, how awfully good of you to come!" Name forgotten but with this bloody music going no one's counting. He bawled at Gloria to join him — "Darling, meet the new Swiss Ambassador who arrived a week ago. Very sweetly called to pay his compliments to Porter! Poor chap got me instead! Wife will be joining you in a couple of weeks' time, isn't that right, Ambassador? So he's on the loose tonight, ha ha! Lovely to see you here! Forgive me if I do the rounds! Ciao!"

The bandleader was singing, if that was how you described his caterwaul. Clutching his microphone in one fist and fondling its tip with the other. Rotating his hips in copulative ecstasy.

"Darling, aren't you the teeniest bit turned on?" Gloria whispered as she whirled past him in the arms of the Indian Ambassador. "I am!"

A tray of drinks went by. Woodrow deftly put his empty glass on it and helped himself to a full one. Gloria was being led back to the dance floor by the jovial, shamelessly corrupt Morrison M'Gumbo, known also as Minister for Lunch. Woodrow cast round gloomily for somebody with a decent enough body to dance with. It was this non-dancing that got his goat. This mincing about, parading your parts. It made him feel like the clumsiest, most useless lover a woman ever had to put up with. It evoked all the do-this-don't-do-thats and the for-God's-sake-Woodrows that had rung in his ears since the age of five.