The Constant Gardener

The Manzini villa lay low against the island's northern shore. The wind was blowing straight off the sea, rattling palm trees, whipping over stone walls, slapping shutters and roof tiles and making the outbuildings creak like old rope. Alone in the faltering moonlight Justin remained standing where the cab had dropped him, at the entrance to a flagstoned courtyard with its ancient water pump and olive press, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. The villa loomed ahead of him. Two lines of poplar trees, planted by Tessa's grandfather, marked the walk from its front door to the sea's edge. One by one, Justin distinguished retainers' cottages, stone staircases, gateposts, and shadowy bits of Roman masonry. Not a light burned anywhere. The estate manager was in Naples, according to Ham, gadding with his fiancee. Housekeeping was entrusted to a pair of itinerant Austrian women who called themselves painters and were camped in a disused chapel on the other side of the estate. The two laborers' cottages, converted by Tessa's mother the dottoressa, a title the island preferred to contessa, and christened Romeo and Giulietta for the benefit of German tourists, were the responsibility of a letting agency in Frankfurt.

So welcome home, he told Tessa, in case she was a bit slow on the uptake after all the zigzag traveling.

The villa keys were kept on a ledge inside the wooden cladding of the water pump. First you take off the lid, darling — like so — then you reach your arm in and if you're lucky you hoick them out. Then you unlock the front door to the house and take your bride to the bedroom and make love to her, like so. But he didn't take her to the bedroom, he knew a better place. Picking up the canvas suitcases once more, he struck out across the courtyard. As he did so the moon obligingly lifted itself clear of the clouds, lighting his way for him and throwing white bars between the poplars. Reaching the farthest corner of the courtyard he passed by way of a narrow alley resembling an ancient Roman backstreet to an olive-wood door on which was carved a Napoleonic heraldic bee in honor — thus the family legend — of the great man himself who, treasuring the good conversation and even better wine of Tessa's great-great-grandmother, had appointed himself a frequent guest at the villa during his ten restless months of exile.

Justin selected the largest of the keys and turned it. The door groaned and yielded. This is where we counted our money, she is telling him severely, in her role of Manzini heiress, bride and tour guide. Today the superb Manzini olives are shipped to Piombino to be pressed like any other. But in my mother the dottoressa's time this room was still the Holy of Holies. It was where we recorded the oil, jar by jar, before we stored it at a preciously preserved temperature in the cantina downstairs. It was here that — you're not listening

.

"That's because you are making love to me."

You are my husband and I shall make love to you whenever I wish. Pay close attention. In this room the weekly wage was counted into every peasant's hand, and signed for, usually with a cross, in a ledger larger than your English Doomsday Book.

"Tessa, I can't — "

You can't what? Of course you can. You are extremely resourceful. Here also we received our chain gangs of life prisoners from the house of correction on the other side of the island. Hence the spy hole in the door. Hence the iron rings in the wall where the prisoners could be fastened while they were waiting to be taken to the olive groves. Are you not proud of me? A descendant of slave masters?

"Immeasurably."

Then why are you locking the door? Am I your prisoner?

"Eternally."