The Constant Gardener

They drove once more in silence, Ham glowering at the belching lorry in front of him, Justin staring in perplexity at the foreign country he had represented half his life. The beige Ford had overtaken them, to be replaced by a tubby motorcyclist in black leather. In a civilized country, you can never tell.

"You're rich, by the by," Ham blurted, as open fields gave way to suburbia. "Not that you were exactly a pauper before, but now you're stinking. Her father's, mother's, the trust, whole shooting match. Plus you're sole trustee of her charity. She said you'd know what to do with it."

"When did she say that?"

"Month before she lost the baby. Wanted to make sure everything was kosher in case she snuffed it. Well, what the hell was I supposed to do, for Christ's sake?" he demanded, mistaking Justin's silence for reproach. "She was my client, Justin. I was her solicitor. Talk her out of it? Ring you up?"

His eye on the wing mirror, Justin made appropriate soothing noises.

"And Bluhm's the other bloody Executor," Ham added in furious parenthesis.

"Executioner more like."

The hallowed premises of Messrs. Hammond Manzini were situated in a gated cul-de-sac called Ely Place on two wormy upper floors with paneled walls hung with disintegrating images of the illustrious dead. In two hours' time, bilingual clerks would be murmuring into grimy telephones while Ham's ladies in twinsets grappled with the modern technology. But at seven in the morning, Ely Place was deserted except for a dozen cars parked along the curbside and a yellow light burning in the crypt of St. Etheldreda's Chapel. Laboring under the weight of Justin's luggage, the two men clambered up four rickety flights to Ham's office, then up a fifth to his monkish attic flat. In the tiny living-dining-kitchen hung a photograph of a slimmer Ham kicking a goal to the jubilation of an undergraduate crowd. In Ham's tiny bedroom where Justin was supposed to change, Ham and his bride Meg were cutting a three-tier wedding cake to the fanfares of Italian trumpeters in tights. And in the tiny bathroom where he took a shower hung a primitive oil painting of Ham's ancestral home in coldest Northumbria, which accounted for Ham's penury.

"Bloody roof blew clean off the north wing," he was yelling proudly through the kitchen wall while he smashed eggs and clattered pans. "Chimney stacks, tiles, weather vane, clock, buggered to a man. Meg was out on Rosanne, thank God. If she'd been in the vegetable garden, she'd have caught the bell tower slap in the withers, whatever they are."

Justin turned the hot tap and at once scalded his hand. "How very alarming for her," he commiserated, adding cold.

"Sent me this extraordinary little book for Christmas," Ham boomed, to the sizzle of bacon. "Not Meg. Tess. Happen to show it to you at all? Little book she sent me? For Christmas?"

"No, Ham, I don't think she did — " rubbing soap into his hair in the absence of shampoo.

"Some Indian mystic chap. Rahmi Whoosit. Ring any bells? I'll get the rest of him in a minute."

"Afraid not."

"All about how we should love each other without attachment. Struck me as a pretty tall order."

Blinded with soap, Justin emitted a sympathetic growl.

"Freedom, Love and Action — that's the title. Hell she expect me to do with freedom, love and action? I'm married, for fuck's sake. Got a baby in the pipeline. Plus I'm a bloody Roman. Tess was a Roman herself before she jacked it in. Hussy."

"I expect she wanted to thank you for all that running around you did for her," Justin suggested, picking his moment, yet careful to preserve the casual note of their exchange.

Temporary disconnection from other side of wall. More sizzling, followed by heretical expletives and smells of burning.

"What running around was that then?" Ham bawled suspiciously. "Thought you weren't supposed to know about any running around. Deadly secret, according to Tess, the running around was. "To be kept strictly out of reach of all Justins." Health warning. Put it as the subject in every e-mail."

Justin had found a towel, but rubbing his eyes made the smarting worse. "I didn't know about it exactly, Ham. I sort of divined it," he explained through the wall with the same casualness. "What did she want you to do? Blow up Parliament? Poison the reservoirs?" No answer. Ham was engrossed in his cooking. Justin groped for a clean shirt. "Well, don't tell me she had you handing out subversive leaflets about Third World debt," he said.

"Bloody company records," he heard back, over more clashing of saucepans. "Two eggs right for you or one? They're our hens."

"One will be fine, thanks. Whatever records were they?"