The Constant Gardener

For a perilous moment, Woodrow joined forces with his inquisitors. Why me indeed? he demanded of Tessa in a surge of angry self-pity. Because your bloody vanity would never let me go. Because it pleased you to hear me promise my soul away, when both of us knew that on the day of reckoning I wouldn't deliver it and you wouldn't accept it. Because grappling with me was like meeting head-on the English sicknesses you loved to hate. Because I was some kind of archetype for you, "all ritual and no faith" — your words. We are standing face-to-face and half a foot apart and I am wondering why we are the same height till I realize that a raised step runs round the base of the curved wall and that, like other women there, you have climbed onto it, waiting to be spotted by your man. Our faces are at the same level, and despite your new austerity, it is Christmas again and I am dancing with you, smelling the sweet warm grass in your hair.

"So she gave you a bundle of papers," Rob was saying. "What were they about?"

I am taking the envelope from you and feeling the maddening contact of your fingers as you give it to me. You are deliberately reviving the flame in me, you know it and can't help it, you are taking me over the edge again, although you know you will never come with me. I am wearing no jacket. You watch me while I undo my shirt buttons, slide the envelope against my naked skin and work it downward until its lower edge is stuck between the waistband of my trousers and my hip. You watch me again as I refasten the buttons, and I have the same shameful sensations that I would have if I had made love to you. As a good diplomat I offer you a cup of coffee in the shop. You decline. We stand face-to-face like dancers waiting for music to justify our proximity.

"Rob asked you what the papers were about," Lesley was reminding Woodrow from outside his field of consciousness.

"They purported to describe a major scandal."

"Here in Kenya?"

"The correspondence was classified."

"By Tessa?"

"Don't be damn silly. How could she classify anything?" Woodrow snapped, and too late regretted his heat.

You must force them to act, Sandy, you are urging me. Your face is pale with suffering and courage. Your theatrical impulses have not been dimmed by the experience of real tragedy. Your eyes are brimming with the tears that, since the baby, swim in them all the time. Your voice urges, but it caresses too, working the scales the way it always did. We need a champion, Sandy. Someone outside us. Someone official and capable. Promise me. If I can keep faith with you, you can keep faith with me.

So I say it. Like you, I am carried away by the power of the moment. I believe. In God. In love. In Tessa. When we are onstage together, I believe. I swear myself away, which is what I do every time I come to you, and what you want me to do because you also are an addict of impossible relationships and theatrical scenes. I promise, I say, and you make me say it again. I promise, I promise. I love you and I promise. And that is your cue to kiss me on the lips that have spoken the shameful promise: one kiss to silence me and seal the contract; one quick hug to bind me and let me smell your hair.

"The papers were sent by bag to the relevant undersecretary in London," Woodrow was explaining to Rob. "At which point, they were classified."

"Why?"

"Because of the serious allegations they contained."

"Against?"

"Pass, I'm afraid."

"A Company? An Individual?"

"Pass."

"How many pages in the document, d'you reckon?"

"Fifteen. Twenty. There was an annex of some sort."

"Any photographs, illustrations, exhibits at all?"

"Pass."

"Any tape recordings? Disks — taped confessions, statements?"

"Pass."

"Which undersecretary did you send them to?"

"Sir Bernard Pellegrin."

"Did you keep a copy locally?"

"It is a matter of policy to keep as little sensitive material here as possible."

"Did you keep a copy or not?"

"No."

"Were the papers typed?"

"By whom?"

"Were they typed or written by hand?"

"Typed."

"What by?"

"I am not an expert on typewriters."

"Electronic type? Off a word processor? A computer? Do you remember the sort of type? The font?"

Woodrow gave an ill-tempered shrug that was close to violence.

"It wasn't italicized, for instance?" Rob persisted.

"No."

"Or that fake, half-joined-up handwriting they do?"

"It was perfectly ordinary roman type."

"Electronic."

"Yes."

"Then you do remember. Was the annex typed?"

"Probably."

"The same type?"

"Probably."

"So fifteen to twenty pages, give or take, of perfectly ordinary electronic roman type.

Thank you. Did you hear back from London?"

"Eventually."

"From Pellegrin?"

"It may have been Sir Bernard, it may have been one of his subordinates."

"Saying?"

"No action was required."