The Constant Gardener (25 page)

Where to begin?

Everywhere!

Which path to follow?

All of them!

The civil servant in him was in abeyance. Fired by Tessa's impatience, Justin ceased to be accountable to anyone but her. If she was scattershot, so would he be. Where she was methodical, he would submit to her method. Where she made an intuitive leap, he would take her hand and they would leap together. Was he hungry? If Tessa wasn't, neither was he. Was he tired? If Tessa could sit up half the night in her housecoat, huddled at her desk, then Justin could sit up the whole night, and all next day as well, and the next night too!

Once, prizing himself from his labors, he made a raid on the villa's kitchens, returning with salami, olives, crispbread, reggiano and bottled water. Another time—was it dusk or daybreak?—he had an impression of gray light —he was in the middle of her hospital diary, logging the attendances of Lorbeer and his acolytes at Wanza's bedside, when he woke to discover himself drifting round the walled garden. It was here, under Tessa's doting eye, that he had planted wedding lupins, wedding roses and, inevitably, wedding freesias for love of her. The weeds came up to his knees, drenching his trousers. A single rose was in bloom. Remembering he had left the oil room door open, he fled back across the flagstoned courtyard, only to find it safely locked and the key inside his jacket pocket.

•      •      •

Press cutting from the Financial Times:

ThreeBees Buzzing

Rumors are flying that whiz-kid playboy Kenneth K. Curtiss of the House of ThreeBees, Third World venturers, is planning a runaway marriage of convenience with Swiss-Canadian pharma-giant Karel Vita Hudson. Will KVH show up at the altar? Can ThreeBees come up with the dowry? Answer yes and yes so long as Kenneth K's typically daring pharmagamble pays off. In a deal believed unprecedented in the secretive and immensely profitable world of pharmaceuticals, ThreeBees Nairobi will reportedly take up one quarter of the estimated l500 million research and development costs of KVH'S innovative anti-Tb wonder drug DYPRAXA in exchange for all-Africa sale and distribution rights and an unnamed piece of the drug's worldwide profits … ThreeBees' Nairobi-based spokesperson Vivian Eber is cautiously jubilant: “This is brilliant, typical, totally Kenny K. It's a humanitarian act, good for the company, good for shareholders, good for Africa. DYPRAXA is as easy to administer as a Smartie. ThreeBees will be at the forefront of the fight against the terrifying worldwide rise in new strains of TB.”

KVH chairman Dieter Korn, speaking in Basel last night, was quick to echo Eber's optimism: “DYPRAXA converts six or eight months of laborious treatment into a twelve-hit swallow. We believe ThreeBees are the right people to be pioneering DYPRAXA in Africa.”

Handwritten note, Tessa to Bluhm, presumably recovered from Arnold's flat:

Arnold heart:

You didn't believe me when I told you KVH were bad. I've checked. They're bad. Two years ago they were charged with polluting half Florida, where they have a huge facility, and got off with a caution. Undisputed evidence presented by plaintiffs showed that KVH had exceeded their permitted quota of toxic effluents by nine hundred percent, poisoning conservation areas, wetlands, rivers and beaches and probably the milk. KVH performed a similar public service in India, where two hundred children in the region of Madras allegedly died of related causes. The Indian court case will be heard in about fifteen years, or longer if KVH continue to pay off the right people. They're also famous as front-runners in the pharma industry's humanitarian campaign to prolong the life of their patents in the interest of suffering white billionaires. Good night, darling. Never again doubt a word I say. I'm immaculate. So are you. T.

Press cutting from the financial pages of the Guardian, London:

Happy Bees

The dramatic rise (40 per cent in twelve weeks) in the value of ThreeBees Nairobi reflects growing market confidence in the company's recently acquired all-African franchise in the cheap and innovative cure for multi-resistant TB, Dypraxa. Speaking from his home in Monaco, ThreeBees CEO Kenneth K. Curtiss said: “What's good for ThreeBees is good for Africa. And what's good for Africa is good for Europe and America and the rest of the world.”

Separate folder marked HIPPO in Tessa's hand containing some forty exchanges, first by letter, then by printed-out e-mail, between Tessa and a woman named Birgit, who works for an independently funded pharma-watch outfit called Hippo based in a small town called Bielefeld in north Germany. The logo at the top of her letter paper explains that her organization owes its name to Greek physician Hippocrates, born can. 460 B.c., whose oath all doctors swear. The correspondence begins formally but once the e-mails take over it softens. Key players quickly acquire nicknames. KVH becomes Giant, Dypraxa becomes Pill, Lorbeer becomes Goldmaker. Birgit's source on the activities of Karel Vita Hudson becomes “Our Friend” and Our Friend must be protected at all times, since “what she is telling us is completely against Swiss law.”

E-mail printout Birgit to Tessa:

… for his two doctors Emrich and Kovacs, Goldmaker opened a company on Isle of Man, maybe two companies, because this was still Communist times. Our Friend says L put the companies in his own name so that the women wouldn't get bad trouble with the authorities. Since then there has been bad argument between the women. It is scientific, also personal. Nobody in Giant is allowed to know details. Emrich emigrated to Canada one year ago. Kovacs stays in Europe, mostly Basel. The elephant mobile you sent Carl drives him completely crazy with happiness and now he trumpets like an elephant every morning to tell me he is awake.

E-mail printout Birgit to Tessa:

Here is some more history regarding Pill. Five years ago when Goldmaker was looking for financial backing for the women's molecule not everything went easy for him. He tried to persuade some big German pharmas to sponsor but they are resisting strongly because they don't see big profits. The problem with the poor is always the same: they are not rich enough to buy expensive medicines! Giant came in late and only after big market researches. Also Our Friend says they were very clever in their deal with BBB. This was a masterstroke, to sell off poor Africa and keep the rich world for themselves! The plan is very simple, the timing perfect. It is to test Pill in Africa for two or three years, by which time KVH calculate that TB will have become a BIG PROBLEM in the West. Also in three years BBB will be so compromised financially that Giant will be able to buy them out for pennies! Therefore according to Our Friend, BBB have bought the wrong end of the horse and Giant have the whip. Carl is asleep beside me. Dear Tessa, I hope very much your baby will be as beautiful as Carl. He will be a great fighter like his mother, I am sure! Ciao, B.

Final entry in the Birgit/tessa file of correspondence:

Our Friend is reporting very secretive activities at Giant regarding BBB and Africa. Maybe you have stirred a wasps' nest? Kovacs will be flown in great secrecy to Nairobi where Goldmaker is waiting to receive her. Everyone speaks bad things about die schone Lara. She is a traitor, a bitch, etc. How does such a boring corporation become suddenly so passionate?! Take care of yourself, Tessa. I think you are a little bit waghalsig but it is late and my English does not translate this word so maybe you ask your good kind husband to translate it for you! B.

P.s. Come soon to Bielefeld, Tessa, it is a beautiful and very secret little town that you will love! B.

•      •      •

It is evening. Tessa is heavily pregnant. She is pacing the drawing room of the Nairobi house, now sitting, now standing. Arnold has told her she must not go down to Kibera until she has had the baby. Even sitting at her laptop is a tiresome chore for her. After five minutes of it she must prowl about again. Justin has come home early to keep her company in her travail.

“Who or what is waghalsig?” she demands of him, as soon as he opens the front door.

“Who is what?”

She pronounces the word with deliberate anglicization: wag like “wag” the dog, halsig like “hall-sick.” She has to say it twice more before the penny drops.

“Reckless,” Justin replies cautiously. “Daredevilish. Why?”

“Am I waghalsig?”

“Never. Impossible.”

“Somebody's just called me it, that's all. Fat lot of dare deviling I can do in this condition.”

“Don't you believe it,” Justin replies devoutly, and they break out laughing simultaneously.

•      •      •

Letter from Messrs. Oakey, Oakey and Farmeloe, Solicitors of London, Nairobi, and Hong Kong, to Ms. T. Abbott, postbox Nairobi:

Dear Ms. Abbott,

We act for House of ThreeBees, Nairobi, who have passed to us your several letters addressed personally to Sir Kenneth Curtiss, chief executive officer of that company, and to other directors and officers of the managing board.

We are to advise you that the product to which you refer has passed all requisite clinical trials, many of them conducted to standards far higher than those laid down by national or international regulation. As you rightly point out, the product has been fully tested and registered in Germany, Poland and Russia. At the request of the Kenyan health authorities, that registration has also been independently verified by the World Health Organization, a copy of whose certificate is appended to this letter.

We must therefore advise you that any further representations made by you or your associates in this matter, whether directed at House of ThreeBees or some other quarter, will be interpreted as a malicious and unwarranted slur on this highly prestigious product, and on the good name and high standing in the marketplace of its distributors House of ThreeBees Nairobi. In such an eventuality, we are under standing instruction to institute legal proceedings with full vigor and without further reference to our clients. Yours faithfully …

•      •      •

“Old chap. A quick word with you, if I may.”

The speaker is Tim Donohue. The old chap is Justin himself, in whose memory the scene is playing. The game of Monopoly has been voted into temporary suspense while the Woodrow sons hurry late to their karate class and Gloria fetches drinkies from the kitchen. Woodrow has taken himself off to the High Commission in a huff. Justin and Tim are therefore seated alone and head to head at the garden table, surrounded by millions of imitation pounds.

“Mind if I tread on holy ground in the interests of the greater good?” Donohue inquires in a low, tight voice that travels no farther than it needs to.

“If you must.”

“I must. It's this unseemly feud, old chap. The one your late lamented was conducting with Kenny K. Bearding him at his farm, poor fellow. Phone calls at unsociable hours. Rude letters left at his club.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you don't. Not a good subject around the halls just now. Particularly where the coppers are concerned. Sweep it under the carpet, our advice. Not relevant. Ticklish times for all of us. Kenny included.” His voice lifted. “You're bearing up marvelously. Nothing but boundless admiration for him, right, Gloria?”

“He's completely superhuman, aren't you, Justin, darling?” Gloria confirms as she sets down her tray of gin and tonic.

Our advice, Justin remembers, still staring at the solicitors' letters. Not his. Theirs.

•      •      •

E-mail printout Tessa to Ham:

Coz. Angel heart. My deep throat at BBB swears they are in much worse financial doodoo than anyone lets on. She says there are in-house rumors that Kenny K is considering mortgaging his entire nonpharma op to a shady South American syndicate based in Bogota! Question: can he mount a company sell-out without telling his shareholders in advance? I know even less company law than you do, which is saying a lot. Elucidate or else! Love, love, Tess.

But Ham had no time to elucidate, even if he was able to, immediately or otherwise, and neither did Justin. The clatter of an elderly car hauling itself up the drive, followed by a thundering on the door, brought Justin leaping to his feet and peering through the prisoners' spy hole, straight into the well-nourished features of Father Emilio Dell'Oro, parish priest, arranged in an expression of pitiful concern. Justin opened the door to him.

“But what are you doing, Signor Justin?” the priest cried in his operatic boom, embracing him. “Why must I hear it from Mario the taxi driver that the signora's grief-demented husband has locked himself in the villa and is calling himself a Swede? What is a priest for, in the name of heaven, if he is not the companion of the bereaved, a father to his stricken son?”

Justin mumbled something about needing solitude.

“But you are working!”—peering over Justin's shoulder at the piles of papers strewn about the oil room. “Even now, in your grief, you are serving your country! No wonder you English commanded a greater empire than Napoleon!”

Justin offered something fatuous about a diplomat's work never being done.

“Like a priest's, my son, like a priest's! For every soul that turns to God, there are a hundred that do not!” He drew closer. “But la signora was a believer, Signor Justin. As her mother the dottoressa was, even if they disputed it. With so much love for their fellowmen, how could they close their ears to God?”

Somehow Justin shooed the priest away from the doorway to the oil room, sat him in the salon of the freezing villa and, under the flaking frescoes of sexually precocious cherubs, plied him with a glass and then another of Manzini wine while sipping at his own. Somehow he accepted the good Father's assurances that Tessa was safely in the arms of God, and consented without demur to the celebration of a memorial mass to Tessa on her next saint's day and a handsome donation to the church's restoration fund, and another for the conservation of the island's superb hilltop castle, one of the gems of medieval Italy, which scholarly surveyors and archaeologists assure us is soon to fall down unless, with God's will, the walls and foundations are secured … Escorting the good man to his car, Justin was so keen not to detain him that he passively accepted his benediction before hastening back to Tessa.

She was waiting for him with her arms folded.

I refuse to believe in the existence of a God who permits the suffering of innocent children.

“So why are we getting married in a church?”

To melt his heart, she replied. •      •      • PIGBITCH. STOP SUCKING YOUR NIGGERDOCTOR'S COCK! GO BACK TO YOUR RIDICULOUS EUNUCH HUSBAND AND BEHAVE YOURSELF. GET YOUR SHITTY NOSE OUT OF OUR BUSINESS NOW! IF NOT, YOU WILL BE DEAD MEAT AND THAT'S A SOLEMN PROMISE.

The sheet of plain typing paper that he was holding in his trembling hands was not intended to melt anybody's heart. Its message was typed in thick black capitals half an inch high. The signature, unsurprisingly, omitted. The spelling, surprisingly, immaculate. And the impact upon Justin so violent, so accusing, so inflaming, that for a fearful few seconds he lost his temper with her completely.

Why didn't you tell me? Show me? I was your husband, your protector supposedly, your man, your other bloody half!

I give up. I resign. You receive a death threat, through the letter box. You pick it up. You read it—once. Ugh! Then if you're like me, you hold it away from you because it's so vile, so physically repellent that you don't want it coming near your face. But you read it again. And again. Till you're word perfect. Like me.

So then what do you do? Phone me—“Darling, something simply foul has happened, you've got to come home at once”? Leap in a car? Drive like Jehu to the High Commission, wave the letter at me, march me in to Porter? Do you hell. Not a bit of it. As usual, your pride comes first. You don't show me the letter, you don't tell me about it, you don't burn it. You keep it secret. You classify it and you file it. Deep in a drawer of your no-go-area desk. You do exactly what you would laugh at me for doing: you file it among your papers and you preserve what in me you would mockingly call a patrician discretion about the matter. How you live with yourself after this—how you live with me—is anybody's guess. God knows how you live with the threat, but that's your business. So thanks. Thanks a lot, OK? Thanks for delivering the ultimate in marital apartheid. Bravo. And thanks again.

The rage left him as quickly as it had seized him, to be replaced by a sweating shame and remorse. You couldn't bear it, could you? The idea of actually showing someone that letter. Starting a whole landslide you couldn't control. The stuff about Bluhm, the stuff about me. It was just too much. You were protecting us. All of us. Of course you were. Did you tell Arnold? Of course not. He'd try to talk you out of going on.

•      •      •

Justin took a mental step back from this benign line of reasoning.

Too sweet. Tessa was tougher than that. And when her dander was up, nastier.

Think lawyer's intellect. Think icy pragmatism. Think very tough young girl, closing in for the kill.

She knew she was getting warm. The death threat confirmed it. You don't issue death threats to people who don't threaten you.

To scream “Foul!” at this stage would mean handing herself over to the authorities. The British are helpless. They have no powers, no jurisdiction. Our only recourse is to show the letter to the Kenyan authorities.

But Tessa had no faith in the Kenyan authorities. It was her frequently repeated conviction that the tentacles of Moi's empire reached into every corner of Kenyan life. Tessa's faith, like her marital duty, was invested for better or worse in the Brits: witness her secret assignation with Woodrow.

The moment she went to the Kenyan police, she would have to provide a list of her enemies, real and potential. Her pursuit of the great crime would be stopped in its tracks. She would be forced to call off the hunt. She would never do that. The great crime was more important to her than her own life.

Well, it is for me too. Than mine.

•      •      •

As Justin struggles to recover his balance, his eye falls on a hand-addressed envelope which in an earlier life he had extracted in blind haste from the same middle drawer of Tessa's workroom desk in Nairobi in which he had found the empty Dypraxa box. The writing on the envelope is reminiscent, but not yet familiar. The envelope has been torn open. Inside is a single folded page of HM Stationery Office blue. The script is hectic, the text dashed off in haste as well as passion.

My darling Tessa, whom I love beyond all others and always shall,

This is my only absolute conviction, my one piece of self-knowledge as I write. You were terrible to me today, but not as terrible as I was to you. The wrong person was speaking out of both of us. I desire and worship you beyond bearing. I am ready if you are. Let's both chuck in our ridiculous marriages and bolt to wherever you want, as soon as you want. If it's to the end of the earth, so much the better. I love you, I love you and I love you.

But this time the signature was not omitted. It was written loud and clear in letters of a size to match the death threat: Sandy. My name is Sandy, he was saying, and you can tell the whole damn world.

Date and time also given. Even in the throes of great love, Sandy Woodrow remains a conscientious man.

Justin the deceived husband is struck motionless by the moonlight as he stares rigidly at the sea's silvered horizon and takes long breaths of chill night air. He has the feeling he has inhaled something nauseous and needs to clean out his lungs. Sandy leads from weakness into strength, you once told me. Sandy deceives himself first and the rest of us afterward … Sandy is the coward who needs the protection of grand gestures and grand words because anything less leaves him unprotected….

So if you knew all this, what in God's name did you do to bring this down on yourself? he demanded, of the sea, the sky, the snapping night wind.

Nothing whatever, she replied serenely. Sandy mistook my flirtations for a promise, exactly as he mistook your good manners for weakness.

For a moment nonetheless, almost as a luxury, Justin lets his courage fail him, as in his inmost heart he has sometimes let it fail him over Arnold. But his memory is stirring. Something he has read yesterday, last night, the night before. But what? A printout, Tessa to Ham. A long e-mail, a little too intimate for Justin's blood at first reading, so he put it aside in a folder dedicated to enigmas to be resolved when I am strong enough to face them. Returning to the oil room, he exhumes the printout and examines the date.

E-mail printout Tessa to Ham, dated exactly eleven hours after Woodrow, contrary to Service rules regarding the use of official writing paper, declared his passion for a colleague's wife on Her Majesty's Stationery Office blue:

I'm not a girl anymore, Ham, and it's time I put away girlish things, but what girl does, even when she's in pig? And now I've landed myself with a five-star megacreep with the hots for me. Problem is, Arnold and I have struck gold at last, more accurately true excrement of the foulest sort, and we desperately need said creep to speak for us in the corridors of power, which is the only way I can bear to go if I'm Justin's wife and the loyal Brit I aspire to be despite all. Do I hear you say I'm still the same ruthless bitch who likes leading men around on a string even when they're super-creeps? Well, don't say it, Ham. Don't say it even if it's true. Shut up about it. Because I have promises to keep, and so have you, sweetheart. And I need you to stick by me like the dear, sweet pal you are, and tell me I'm a good girl really, because I am. And if you don't, I'll give you the wettest kiss since the day I pushed you into the Rubicon in your sailor suit. Love you, darling. Ciao. Tess.