The Constant Gardener

Her room was two floors high, with gilded friezes and black wartime radiators and a balcony overlooking very private gardens. There were two armchairs and Alison Landsbury kept a cardigan over the back of hers so that you didn't sit in it by mistake. There was coffee in a thermos so that their tryst need not be interrupted. There was the mysteriously thick atmosphere of other bodies just departed. Four years Minister in Brussels, three years Defense Counselor in Washington, Justin rehearsed, quoting from the form book. Three more back in London on attachment to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Appointed Head of Personnel six months ago. Our only recorded communications: One letter suggesting I trim my wife's wings-ignored. One fax ordering me not to visit my own house — too late. He wondered what Alison's house was like, and awarded her a redbrick mansion flat behind Harrods, handy for her bridge club at weekends. She was wiry and fifty-six and dressed in black for Tessa. She wore a man's signet ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Justin assumed it was her father's. A photograph on the wall showed her driving off at Moor Park. Another — somewhat ill-advisedly, in Justin's view — had her shaking hands with Helmut Kohl. Soon you'll get your women's college and be Dame Alison, he thought.

"I've spent the whole morning thinking of all the things I won't say to you," she began, projecting her voice to the back of the hall for the benefit of latecomers. "And all the things we simply mustn't agree on yet. I'm not going to ask you how you see your future. Or tell you how we see it. We're all far too upset," she ended, with didactic satisfaction. "By the way, I'm a Madeira cake. Don't expect me to be multilayered. I'm the same wherever you slice me."

She had set a laptop on the table in front of her, and it could have been Tessa's. As she spoke she prodded at the screen with a gray baton hooked at the end like a crochet needle. "There are some things I must tell you, and I'll do that straightaway." Prod. "Ah. Indefinite sick leave is the first thing. Indefinite because obviously it's subject to medical reports. Sick because you're in trauma, whether you know it or not." So there. Prod. "And we do counseling, and I'm afraid that with experience we're getting rather good at it." Sad smile and another prod. "Dr. Shand. Emily outside will give you Dr. Shand's coordonnees. You've got a provisional appointment tomorrow at eleven, but change it if you need to. Harley Street, where else? Do you mind a woman?"

"Not at all," Justin replied hospitably.

"Where are you staying?"

"At our house. My house. In Chelsea. Will be."

She frowned. "But that isn't the family house?"

"Tessa's family."

"Ah. But your father has a house in Lord North Street. Rather a beautiful one, I remember."

"He sold it before he died."

"Do you intend remaining in Chelsea?"

"At present."

"Then Emily outside should have the coordonnees of that house as well, please."

Back to the screen. Was she reading from it or hiding in it?

"Dr. Shand isn't a one-night stand, she's a course. She counsels individuals, she counsels groups. And she encourages interaction between patients with similar problems. Where security permits, obviously." Prod. "And if it's a priest you'd like, instead of or as well, we have representatives of every denomination who've been cleared for most things so just ask. Our view here is, give anything a chance, provided it's secure. If Dr. Shand doesn't fit, come back and we'll look for someone who does."

Perhaps you also do acupuncture, thought Justin. But elsewhere in his head he was wondering why she was offering him security-cleared confessors when he had no secrets to confess.

"Ah. Now would you like a haven, Justin?" Prod.

"I'm sorry?"

"A quiet house." The emphasis on "quiet," like "green-house." "An away-from-it-all until the hue and cry dies down. Where you can be totally anonymous, recover your balance, take long country walks, pop up to London to see us when we need you or vice versa, pop back again. Because it's on offer. Not wholly free of charge in your case, but heavily subsidized by HMG. Discuss with Dr. Shand before deciding?"

"If you say so."

"I do." Prod. "You've suffered an awful amount of humiliation in public. How has this affected you, to your knowledge?"

"I'm afraid I haven't been in public very much. You had me hidden away, if you remember."

"All the same you suffered it. Nobody likes to be portrayed as a deceived husband, nobody likes to have their sexuality raked over in the press. Anyway, you don't hate us. You don't feel angry or resentful or demeaned. You're not about to take revenge. You're surviving. Of course you are. You're old Office."

Uncertain whether this was a question, a complaint or merely a definition of durability, Justin let it alone, fixing his attention instead on a doomed peach-colored begonia in a pot too close to the wartime radiator.