The Constant Gardener

Entering St. Andrew's Church, Woodrow took stock of the congregation. In a single sweep he spotted the pallid Coleridges and behind them Donohue and his weird wife Maud looking like an ex-Gaiety girl fallen on hard times, and next to them Mildren alias Mildred and an anorexic blonde who was held to be sharing his flat. The Heavy Mob from the Muthaiga Club — Tessa's phrase — had formed a military square. Across the aisle he picked out a contingent from the World Food Program and another that consisted entirely of African women, some in hats, others in jeans, but all with the determined glower of combat that was the hallmark of Tessa's radical friends. Behind them stood a cluster of lost, Gallic-looking, vaguely arrogant young men and women, the women with their heads covered, the men in open necks and designer stubble. Woodrow, after some puzzlement, concluded that they were fellow members of Bluhm's Belgian organization. Must be wondering whether they're going to be back here next week for Arnold, he thought brutally. The Quayles' illegal servants were ranged alongside them: Mustafa the houseboy, Esmeralda from South Sudan and the one-armed Ugandan, name unknown. And in the front row, towering over her furtive little Greek husband, stood the upholstered, carrot-haired figure of darling Elena herself, Woodrow's bete noire, decked out in her grandmother's funereal jet jewelry.

"Now, darling, should I wear the jet or is it over the top?" she had needed to know of Gloria at eight this morning. Not without mischief, Gloria had counseled boldness.

"On other people, frankly El, it might be a tad too much. But with your coloring, darling — go for it."

And no policemen, he noticed with gratification, neither Kenyan nor British. Had Bernard Pellegrin's potions worked their magic? Whisper who dares.

He stole another look at Coleridge, so whey-faced, so martyred. He remembered their bizarre conversation in the residence last Saturday, and cursed him for an indecisive prig. His gaze returned to Tessa's coffin lying in state before the altar, Justin's yellow freesias safely aboard. Tears filled his eyes, to be sharply returned to where they came from. The organ was playing the Nunc Dimittis and Gloria, word-perfect, was singing lustily along. House evensong at her boarding school, Woodrow was thinking. Or mine. He hated both establishments equally. Sandy and Gloria, born unfree. The difference is, I know it and she doesn't. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Sometimes I really wish I could. Depart and never come back. But where would the peace be? His eye again rested on the coffin. I loved you. So much easier to say, now it's in the past tense. I loved you. I was the control freak who couldn't control himself, you were good enough to tell me. Well, now look what's happened to you. And look why it's happened to you.

And no, I never heard of Lorbeer. I know no long-legged Hungarian beauties called Kovacs and I do not, will not listen to any more unproven, unspoken theories that are tolling like tower bells inside my head, and I am totally uninterested in the sleek olive shoulders of the spectral Ghita Pearson in her sari. What I do know is: after you, nobody need ever know again what a timorous child inhabits this soldier's body.

* * *

Needing to distract himself, Woodrow embarked on an energetic study of the church windows. Male saints, all white, no Bluhms. Tessa would go ballistic. Memorial window commemorating one pretty white boy in a sailor suit symbolically surrounded by adoring jungle animals. A good hyena smells blood ten kilometers away. Tears again threatening, Woodrow forced his attentions on dear old St. Andrew himself, a dead ringer for Macpherson the gillie that time we drove the boys to Loch Awe to fish the salmon. The fierce Scottish eye, the rusty Scottish beard. What must they make of us? he marveled, transferring his misty gaze to the black faces in the congregation. What did we imagine we were doing here, back in those days, plugging our white British God and our white Scottish saint while we used the country as an adventure playground for derelict upperclass swingers?

"Personally, I'm trying to make amends," you reply when flirtatiously I put the same question to you on the floor of the Muthaiga Club. But you never answer a question without turning it round and using it in evidence against me: "And what are you doing here, Mr. Woodrow?" you demand. The band is boisterous and we are having to dance close to hear each other at all. Yes, those are my breasts, your eyes say when I dare to look down. Yes, those are my hips, gyrating while you hold me by the waist. You may look at them too, feast your eyes on them. Most men do, and you needn't try to be the exception.