The Constant Gardener

White gateposts marked the graveyard's entrance as Tessa's cortege arrived. Giant cacti, red mud tracks and docile sellers of bananas, plantain and ice creams lined the path to her grave. The priest was black and old and grizzled. Woodrow had a recollection of shaking his hand at one of Tessa's parties. But the priest's love of Tessa was effusive, and his belief in the afterlife so fervent, and the din of road and air traffic so persistent — not to mention the proximity of other funerals and the blare of spiritual music from mourners' lorries and the competing orators with bullhorns who harangued the rings of friends and family picnicking on the grass around their loved ones' coffins — that it was not surprising that only a few of the holy man's winged words reached the ear of his audience. And Justin, if he heard them at all, showed no sign of having done so. Dapper as ever in the dark double-breasted suit he had mustered for the occasion, he kept his gaze fixed on the boy Kioko who, like Justin, had sought out his own bit of space apart from everyone, and appeared to have hanged himself in it, for his spindly feet scarcely touched the ground and his arms swung raggedly at his side and his long crooked head was craned in a posture of permanent inquiry.

Tessa's final journey had not been a smooth one, but neither Woodrow nor Gloria would have wished it to be. Each tacitly found it fitting that her last act should contain the element of unpredictability that had characterized her life. The Woodrow household had risen early although there was nothing to rise early for, except that in the middle of the night Gloria realized she had no dark hat. A crack-of-dawn phone call established that Elena had two, but they were both a bit twenties and aviatorlike, did Gloria mind? An official Mercedes was dispatched from her Greek husband's residence, conveying a black hat in a Harrods plastic carrier. Gloria returned it, preferring a black lace head scarf of her mother's: she would wear it like a mantilla. After all, Tessa was half Italian, she explained.

"Spanish, darling," Elena replied.

"Nonsense," Gloria riposted. "Her mother was a Tuscan contessa, it said so in the Telegraph."

"The mantilla, darling," Elena patiently corrected her. "Mantillas are Spanish, not Italian, I'm afraid."

"Well, her mother was bloody well Italian," Gloria snapped — only to ring again five minutes later, blaming her temper on the stress.

By then the Woodrow boys had been bundled off to school and Woodrow himself had left for the High Commission and Justin was hovering in the dining room wearing his suit and tie and wanting flowers. Not flowers from Gloria's garden, but his own. He wanted the yellow scenting freesias he grew for her all year round, he said, and always had waiting for her in the living room when she came back from her field trips. He wanted two dozen of them at the least for Tessa's coffin. Gloria's deliberations on how best to obtain these were interrupted by a confused call from a Nairobi newspaper purporting to announce that Bluhm's corpse had been found in a dried-up riverbed fifty miles east of Lake Turkana, and had anyone anything to say about it? Gloria bawled "No comment" into the receiver and slammed it down. But she was shaken, and of two minds whether or not to share the news with Justin now, or wait till the funeral was over. She was therefore greatly relieved to receive a call from Mildren not five minutes later saying that Woodrow was in a meeting but rumors about Bluhm's corpse were drivel: the body, for which a tribe of Somali bandits was demanding ten thousand dollars, was at least a hundred years old, and more like a thousand, and was it possible for him to have a tiny word with Justin?

Gloria brought Justin to the telephone and remained officiously at his side while he said yes — that suited him — you're very kind, and he would make sure he was prepared. But what Mildren was being kind about and what Justin would prepare himself for remained obscure. And no thank you — Justin said emphatically to Mildren, adding to the mystery — he did not wish to be met on arrival, he preferred to make his own arrangements. After which he rang off and asked — rather pointedly, considering everything she had done for him — to be left alone in the dining room to make a reverse-charge call to his solicitor in London, a thing he had done twice before in the last few days, also without admitting Gloria to his deliberations. With a show of discretion she therefore removed herself to the kitchen in order to listen at the hatch — only to find a grief-stricken Mustafa, who had arrived unbidden at the back door with a basketful of yellow freesias which on his own initiative he had picked from Justin's garden. Armed with this excuse Gloria marched into the dining room, hoping at least to catch the end of Justin's conversation, but he was ringing off as she entered.