The Constant Gardener

"I suppose what I'm really doing is helping Kenyans to husband the things we've given them," I yell pompously above the music and feel your body stiffen and slip away almost before I've finished the sentence.

"We didn't bloody give them a thing! They took it! At the end of a bloody gun! We gave them nothing — nothing!"

Woodrow swung sharply round. Gloria beside him did the same and so, from the other side of the aisle, did the Coleridges. A scream from outside the church had been followed by the smash of something big and glassy breaking. Through the open doorway Woodrow saw the forecourt gates being dragged shut by two frightened vergers in black suits as helmeted police formed a cordon along the railings, brandishing metal-tipped riot sticks in both hands, like baseball players limbering for a strike. In the street where the students had gathered a tree was burning and a couple of cars lay belly-up beneath it, their occupants too terrified to clamber out. To roars of encouragement from the crowd, a glistening black limousine, a Volvo like Woodrow's, was rising shakily from the ground, borne aloft by a swarm of young men and women. It rose, it lurched, it flipped, first to its side, then onto its back, before falling with a huge bang, dead beside its fellows. The police charged. Whatever they had been waiting for till then, it had happened. One second they were lounging, the next they were hacking themselves a red path through the fleeing rabble, only pausing to rain more blows on those they had brought down. An armored van drew up, half a dozen bleeding bodies were tossed into it.

"University's an absolute tinderbox, old chap," Donohue had advised when Woodrow had consulted him on risk. "Grants have stopped dead, staff aren't being paid, places going to the rich and stupid, dormitories and classrooms packed out, loos all blocked, doors all pinched, fire risk rampant and they're cooking over charcoal in the corridors. They've no power, and no electric light to study by, and no books to study in. The poorest students are taking to the streets because the government is privatizing the higher education system without consulting anyone and education is strictly for the rich, plus the exam results are rigged and the government is trying to force students to get their education abroad. And yesterday the police killed a couple of students, which for some reason their friends refuse to take lightly. Any more questions?"

The church gates opened, the organ struck up again. God's business could resume.

* * *

In the cemetery the heat was aggressive and personal. The grizzled old priest had ceased speaking but the clamor had not subsided and the sun beat through it like a flail. To one side of Woodrow a ghetto blaster was playing a rock version of Hail Mary at full throttle to a group of black nuns in gray habits. To the other, a football squad of blazers was gathered round a coconut shy of empty beer cans while a soloist sang good-bye to a teammate. And Wilson Airport must have been holding some kind of air day, because brightly painted small planes were zooming overhead at twenty-second intervals. The old priest lowered his prayer book. The bearers stepped to the coffin. Each grasped an end of webbing. Justin, still alone, seemed to sway. Woodrow started forward to support him but Gloria restrained him with a gloved claw.

"He wants her to himself, idiot," she hissed through her tears.

The press showed no such tact. This was the shot they had come for: black bearers lower murdered white woman into African soil, watched by husband she deceived. A pock-faced man with a crew cut and cameras bouncing on his belly offered Justin a trowel laden with earth, hoping for a shot of the widower pouring it on the coffin. Justin brushed it aside. As he did so, his gaze fell on two ragged men who were trundling a wooden wheelbarrow with a flat tire to the grave's edge. Wet cement was slopping over its gunwales.

"What are you doing, please?" he demanded of them, so sharply that every face turned to him. "Will somebody kindly find out from these gentlemen what they are intending to do with their cement? Sandy, I need an interpreter, please."

Ignoring Gloria, Woodrow the general's son strode quickly to Justin's side. Wiry Sheila from Tim Donohue's department spoke to the men, then to Justin.

"They say they do it for all rich people, Justin," Sheila said.

"Do what exactly? I don't understand you. Please explain."

"The cement. It's to keep out intruders. Robbers. Rich people are buried in wedding rings and nice clothes. Wazungu are a favorite target. They say the cement's an insurance policy."

"Who instructed them to do this?"

"No one. It's five thousand shillings."