The Constant Gardener

"They're to go, please. Kindly tell them that, will you, Sheila? I do not wish their services and I shall pay them no money. They're to take their barrow and leave." But then, perhaps not trusting her to impart his message with sufficient vigor, Justin marched over to them and, placing himself between their barrow and the grave's edge, struck out an arm, Moseslike, pointing over the heads of the mourners. "Go, please," he ordered. "Leave at once. Thank you."

The mourners parted to make a path along the line his Outstretched arm commanded. The men with their barrow scuttled down it. Justin watched them out of sight. In the vibrating heat the men seemed to ride straight into the blank sky. Justin turned his body round, stiffly like a toy soldier, until he was addressing the press pack.

"I would like you all to go, please," he said in the silence that had formed inside the din. "You have been very kind. Thank you. Goodbye."

Quietly, and to the amazement of the rest, the journalists stowed their cameras and their notebooks and, with mumbles like "See you, Justin," quit the field. Justin returned to his place of solitude at Tessa's head. As he did so, a group of African women trooped forward and arranged themselves in a horseshoe round the foot of the grave. Each wore the same uniform: a blueflowered frilly dress and head scarf of the same material. Separately they might have looked lost, but as a group they looked united. They began singing, at first softly. Nobody conducted them, there were no instruments to sing to, most of the choir were weeping but they didn't let their tears affect their voices. They sang in harmony, in English and kiSwahili alternately, gathering power in the repetition: Kwa heri, Mama Tessa… Little Mama, good-bye… Woodrow tried to catch the other words. Kwa heri, Tessa… Tessa our friend, good-bye… You came to us, Mama Tessa, Little Mama, you gave us your heart… Kwa heri, Tessa, good-bye.

"Where the hell did they spring from?" he asked Gloria out of the corner of his mouth.

"Down the hill," Gloria muttered, nodding her head toward Kibera slum.

The singing swelled as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Justin watched it descend, then winced as it struck bottom, then winced again as the first shovel load of earth clattered onto the lid and a second crashed into the freesias, dirtying the petals. A frightful howl went up, as short as the shriek of a rusty hinge when a door is flung back, but long enough for Woodrow to watch Ghita Pearson collapse to her knees in slow motion, then roll onto one shapely hip as she buried her face in her hands; then, just as improbably, rise again on the arm of Veronica Coleridge and resume her mourner's pose.

Did Justin call out something to Kioko? Or did Kioko act of his own accord? Light as a shadow, he had moved to Justin's side and, in an unashamed gesture of affection, grasped his hand. Through a fresh flood of tears, Gloria saw their linked hands fidget till they found a mutually comfortable grip. Thus joined, the bereaved husband and bereaved brother watched Tessa's coffin disappear beneath the soil.

* * *

Justin left Nairobi the same night. Woodrow, to Gloria's eternal hurt, had given her no warning. The dinner table was laid for three, Gloria herself had uncorked the claret and put a duck in the oven to cheer us all up. She heard a footfall from the hall and assumed to her pleasure that Justin had decided on predinner drinkies, just the two of us while Sandy reads Biggles to the boys upstairs. And suddenly there stood his scruffy Gladstone bag, accompanied by a mossy gray suitcase that Mustafa had brought for him, parked in the hall with labels on them, and Justin standing beside them with his raincoat over his arm and a night bag on his shoulder, wanting to give her back the wine-store key.

"But Justin, you're not off!"

"You've all been immensely kind to me, Gloria. I shall never know how to thank you."

"Sorry about this, darling," Woodrow sang cheerfully, tripping down the stairs two at a time. "Bit cloak-and-dagger, I'm afraid. Didn't want the servants gossiping. Only way to play it."

At which moment there came a ping on the doorbell, and it was Livingstone the driver with a red Peugeot he'd borrowed from a friend to avoid telltale diplomatic license plates at the airport. And slumped in the passenger seat, Mustafa, glowering ahead of him like his own effigy.

"But we must come with you, Justin! We must see you off! I insist! I've got to give you one of my watercolors! What's going to happen to you the other end?" Gloria cried miserably. "We can't just let you go off into the night like this — darling! — "