The Constant Gardener

The two men stood in Justin's cell. If the garden hadn't been occupied, Woodrow would have preferred the garden. As it was, they stood facing each other across the drab bedroom, with Tessa's Gladstone bag — Tessa's father's Gladstone bag — reclining behind the grille. My wine store. His bloody key. Her illustrious father's bag. But as he started to speak, he was alarmed to see his surroundings change. Instead of the iron bedstead, he saw the inlaid desk her mother had loved. And behind it, the brick fireplace with invitations on it. And across the room where the bogus beams appeared to converge, Tessa's naked silhouette in front of the French window. He willed himself back to time present and the illusion passed.

"Justin."

"Yes, Sandy."

But for the second time in as many minutes he veered away from the confrontation he had planned. "One of the local broadsheets is running a sort of liber amicorum about Tessa."

"How nice of them."

"There's a lot of rather unambiguous stuff about Bluhm in it. A suggestion that he personally delivered her child. Sort of not very hidden inference that the baby might be his as well. Sorry."

"You mean Garth."

"Yes."

Justin's voice was taut and, to Woodrow's ear, as dangerously pitched as his own. "Yes, well, that is an inference that people have drawn from time to time in recent months, Sandy, and no doubt in the present climate there will be more of it."

Though Woodrow allowed space for him to do so, Justin did not suggest that the inference was wrong. And this impelled Woodrow to press harder. Some guilty inner force was driving him.

"They also suggest that Bluhm went so far as to take a camp bed to the ward so that he could sleep close to her."

"We shared it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sometimes Arnold slept on it, sometimes I did. We took turns, depending on our respective workloads."

"So you don't mind?"

"Mind what?"

"That this should be said of them — that he was devoting this amount of attention to her — with your consent, apparently — while she was acting as your wife here in Nairobi."

"Acting? She was my wife, damn you!"

Woodrow hadn't reckoned with Justin's anger any more than he'd reckoned with Coleridge's. He'd been too busy quelling his own. He'd got his voice down, and in the kitchen he'd managed to shrug some of the tension out of his shoulders. But Justin's outburst came at him out of a clear sky, and startled him. He had expected contrition and, if he was honest, humiliation, but not armed resistance.

"What are you asking me precisely?" Justin inquired. "I don't think I understand."

"I need to know, Justin. That's all."

"Know what? Whether I controlled my wife?"

Woodrow was pleading and backing away at the same time. "Look, Justin — I mean, see it my way — just for a moment, OK? The whole world's press is going to pick this up. I have a right to know."

"Know what?"

"What else Tessa and Bluhm got up to that's going to be headlines — tomorrow and for the next six weeks," he ended, on a note of self-pity.

"Such as what?"

"Bluhm was her guru. Well, wasn't he? Whatever else he was."

"So?"

"So they shared causes together. They sniffed out abuses. Human rights stuff. Bluhm has some kind of watchdog role — right? Or his employers have. So Tessa — " he was losing his way and Justin was watching him do it — "she helped him. Perfectly natural. In the circumstances. Used her lawyer's head."

"D'you mind telling me where this is leading?"

"Her papers. That's all. Her possessions. Those you collected. We did. Together."

"What of them?"

Woodrow pulled himself together: I'm your superior, for God's sake, not some bloody petitioner. Let's get our roles straight, shall we?

"I need your assurance, therefore — that any papers she assembled for her causes — in her capacity as your wife herewith diplomatic status — here on HMG'S ticket — will be handed to the Office. It was on that understanding that I took you to your house last Tuesday. We would not have gone there otherwise."

Justin had not moved. Not a finger, not an eyelid flickered while Woodrow delivered himself of this untruthful afterthought. Backlit, he remained as still as Tessa's naked silhouette.

"The other assurance I'm to obtain from you is self-evident," Woodrow went on.

"What other assurance?"

"Your own discretion in the matter. Whatever you know of her activities — her agitations — her so-called aid work that spun out of control."

"Whose control?"

"I simply mean that wherever she ventured into official waters, you are as much bound by the rules of confidentiality as the rest of us. I'm afraid that's an order from on high." He was trying to make a joke of it but neither of them smiled. "Pellegrin's order."

And you're in good heart, are you, Sandy? Given that times are trying and you've got her husband in your guest room?