The Constant Gardener

Gently pushing Mustafa away, Justin received Esmeralda in a double handshake during which she laid the side of her braided forehead against his. Woodrow had the sensation of being admitted to a circle of affection he had not dreamed of. Would Juma weep like this if Gloria got her throat cut? Like hell he would. Would Ebediah? Would Gloria's new maid, whatever her name is? Justin pressed the Ugandan outdoor boy against him, fondled his cheek, then turned his back on all of them and with his right hand took a grasp of the handrail on the staircase. Looking for a moment like the old man he soon would be, he began hauling himself upward. Woodrow watched him gain the shadows of the landing and vanish into the bedroom Woodrow had never entered, though he had imagined it in countless furtive ways.

Finding he was alone, Woodrow hovered, feeling threatened, which was how he felt whenever he entered her house: a country boy come to town. If it's a cocktail party, why don't I know these people? Whose cause are we being asked to espouse tonight? Which room will she be in? Where's Bluhm? At her side, most likely. Or in the kitchen, reducing the servants to paroxysms of helpless laughter. Remembering his purpose, Woodrow edged his way along the twilit corridor to the drawing room door. It was unlocked. Blades of morning sunlight thrust their way between the curtains, illuminating the shields and masks and frayed handwoven throw rugs made by paraplegics, with which Tessa had succeeded in enlivening her dreary government furnishings. How did she make everything so pretty with this junk? The same brick fireplace as ours, the same boxed-in iron girders masquerading as oak beams of Merrie England. Everything like ours but smaller, because the Quayles were childless and a rank lower. Then why did Tessa's house always seem to be the real thing, and ours its unimaginative ugly sister?

He reached the middle of the room and stopped, arrested by the power of memory. This is where I stood and lectured her, the contessa's daughter, from beside this pretty inlaid table that she said her mother had loved, while I clutched the back of this flimsy satinwood chair and pontificated like a Victorian father. Tessa standing over there in front of the window, and the sunlight cutting straight through her cotton dress. Did she know that I was talking to a naked silhouette? That just to look at her was to see my dream of her come true, my girl on a beach, my stranger on a train?

"I thought the best thing I could do was call by," he begins sternly.

"Now why did you think that, Sandy?" she asks.

Eleven in the morning. Chancery meeting over, Justin safely dispatched to Kampala, attending some useless three-day conference on Aid and Efficiency. I have come here on official business, but I have parked my car in a side street like a guilty lover calling on a brother officer's beautiful young wife. And God, is she beautiful. And God, is she young. Young in the high, sharp breasts that never move. How can Justin let her out of his sight? Young in the gray, wide-angry eyes, in the smile too wise for her age. Woodrow can't see the smile because she is backlit. But he can hear it in her voice. Her teasing, foxing, classy voice. He can retrieve it in his memory anytime. As he can retrieve the line of her waist and thighs in the naked silhouette, the maddening fluidity of her walk, no wonder she and Justin fell for one another — they're from the same thoroughbred stable, twenty years apart.

"Tess, honestly, this can't go on."

"Don't call me Tess."

"Why not?"

"That name's reserved."

Who by? he wonders. Bluhm, or another of her lovers? Quayle never called her Tess. Nor did Ghita, as far as Woodrow knew.

"You simply can't go on expressing yourself so freely. Your opinions."

And then the passage he has prepared in advance, the one that reminds her of her duty as the responsible wife of a serving diplomat. But he never reaches the end of it. The word "duty" has stung her into action.

"Sandy, my duty is to Africa. What's yours?"

He is surprised to have to answer for himself. "To my country, if you'll allow me to be pompous. As Justin's is. To my Service and my Head of Mission. Does that answer you?"

"You know it doesn't. Not nearly. It's miles off."

"How would I know anything of the kind?"

"I thought you might have come to talk to me about the riveting documents I gave you."

"No, Tessa, I did not. I came here to ask you to stop shooting your mouth off about the misdoings of the Moi government in front of every Tom, Dick and Harry in Nairobi. I came here to ask you to be one of the team for a change, instead of — oh, finish the sentence for yourself," he ends rudely.