The Constant Gardener (8 page)

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There are six beds in the ward at the Uhuru Hospital, three to either wall. None has sheets or pillows. The floor is concrete. There are skylights but they are unopened. It is winter, but no breeze passes through the room, and the stench of excreta and disinfectant is so fierce that Woodrow seems to ingest as well as smell it. Tessa lies in the middle bed of the left-hand wall, breast-feeding a child. He sees her last, deliberately. The beds either side of her are empty except for perished sheets of rubber buttoned to the mattresses. Across the room from her, one very young woman huddles on her side, her head flat on the mattress, one bare arm dangling. A teenaged boy crouches on the floor close beside her, his wide beseeching gaze turned unflinchingly to her face as he fans it with a piece of cardboard. Next to them a dignified old woman with white hair perches sternly upright reading a mission Bible through hornrimmed spectacles. She wears a kanga cloth of cotton, the type sold to tourists as a cover-up. Beyond her, a woman with earphones scowls at whatever she is hearing. Her face is etched in pain, and deeply devout. All this Woodrow takes in like a spy, while out of the corner of his eye he watches Tessa and wonders whether she has seen him.

But Bluhm has seen him. Bluhm's head has lifted as soon as Woodrow steps awkwardly into the room. Bluhm has risen from his place at Tessa's bedside, then stooped to whisper something in her ear, before coming silently toward him to take his hand and murmur, “Welcome,” man to man. Welcome to what precisely? Welcome to Tessa, courtesy of her lover? Welcome to this reeking hellhole of lethargic suffering? But Woodrow's only response is a reverent, “Good to see you, Arnold,” as Bluhm slips discreetly into the corridor.

Englishwomen feeding children, in Woodrow's limited experience of the species, exercised a decent restraint. Certainly Gloria had done so. They open their fronts as men open theirs, then use their arts to obscure whatever lies within. But Tessa in the stifling African air feels no need of modesty. She is naked to her waist, which is covered in a kanga cloth similar to the old woman's, and she is cradling the child to her left breast, her right breast free and waiting. Her upper body is slender and translucent. Her breasts, even in the aftermath of childbirth, are as light and flawless as he has so often imagined them. The child is black. Blue-black against the marble whiteness of her skin. One tiny black hand has found the breast that is feeding it, and is working it with eerie confidence while Tessa watches. Then slowly she raises her wide gray eyes and looks into Woodrow's. He reaches for words but hasn't any. He leans over her and past the child and, with his left hand resting on her bed head, kisses her brow. As he does so he is surprised to see a notebook on the side of the bed where Bluhm has been sitting. It is balanced precariously on a tiny table, together with a glass of stale-looking water and a couple of ballpoint pens. It is open, and she has been writing in it in a vague, spidery hand that is like a bad memory of the privately tutored italic script he associates with her. He lowers himself sidesaddle onto the bed while he thinks of something to say. But it is Tessa who speaks first. Weakly, a voice drugged and strangled after pain yet unnaturally composed, still managing to strike the mocking note she always has for him.

“His name is Baraka,” she says. “It means blessing. But you knew that.”

“Good name.”

“He's not mine.” Woodrow says nothing. “His mother can't feed him,” she explains. Her voice is slow and dreamy.

“Then he's lucky to have you,” Woodrow says handsomely. “How are you, Tessa? I've been terribly worried for you, you can't imagine. I'm just so sorry. Who's looking after you, apart from Justin? Ghita and who else?”

“Arnold.”

“I mean apart from Arnold too, obviously.”

“You told me once that I court coincidences,” she says, ignoring his question. “By putting myself in the front line, I make things happen.”

“I was admiring you for it.”

“Do you still?”

“Of course.”

“She's dying,” she says, shifting her eyes from him and staring across the room. “His mother is. Wanza.” She is looking at the woman with the dangling arm, and the mute boy hunched on the floor beside her. “Come on, Sandy. Aren't you going to ask what of?”

“What of?” he asks obediently.

“Life. Which the Buddhists tell us is the first cause of death. Overcrowding. Undernourishment. Filthy living conditions.” She is addressing the child. “And greed. Greedy men in this case. It's a miracle they didn't kill you too. But they didn't, did they? For the first few days they visited her twice a day. They were terrified.”

“Who were?”

“The coincidences. The greedy ones. In fine white coats. They watched her, prodded her a bit, read her numbers, talked to the nurses. Now they've stopped coming.” The child is hurting her. She tenderly adjusts it and resumes. “It was all right for Christ. Christ could sit at dying people's bedsides, say the magic words, the people lived and everybody clapped. The coincidences couldn't do that. That's why they went away. They've killed her and now they don't know the words.”

“Poor things,” Woodrow says, humoring her.

“No.” She turns her head, wincing as pain hits her, and nods across the room. “They're the poor things. Wanza. And him down on the floor there. Kioko, her brother. He walked eighty kilometers from his village to keep the flies off you, didn't he, your uncle?” she says to the baby and, settling it on her lap, gently taps its back until it blindly belches. She places her palm beneath her other breast for it to suck.

“Tessa, listen to me.” Woodrow watches her eyes measure him. She knows the voice. She knows all his voices. He sees the shadow of suspicion fall across her face and not move on. She sent for me because she had a use for me, but now she's remembered who I am. “Tessa, please, hear me out. Nobody's dying. Nobody's killed anyone. You're fevered, you're imagining things. You're dreadfully tired. Give it a rest. Give yourself a rest. Please.”

She returns her attention to the child, buffing its tiny cheek with her fingertip. “You're the most beautiful thing I ever touched in my life,” she whispers to it. “And don't you go forgetting it.”

“I'm sure he won't,” says Woodrow heartily, and the sound of his voice reminds her of his presence.

“How's the hothouse?” she asks—her word for the High Commission.

“Thriving.”

“You could all pack up and go home tomorrow. It wouldn't make the slightest difference,” she says vaguely.

“So you always tell me.”

“Africa's over here. You're over there.”

“Let's argue about that when you're stronger,” Woodrow suggests in his most placatory voice.

“Can we?”

“Of course.”

“And you'll listen?”

“Like a hawk.”

“And then we can tell you about the greedy coincidences in white coats. And you'll believe us. It's a deal?”

“Us?”

“Arnold.”

The mention of Bluhm brought Woodrow back to earth. “I'll do whatever I can in the circumstances. Whatever it is. Within reason. I promise. Now try to get some rest. Please.”

She reflects on this. “He promises to do whatever he can in the circumstances,” she explains to the child. “Within reason. Well, there's a man. How's Gloria?”

“Deeply concerned. She sends her love.”

Tessa lets out a slow sigh of exhaustion and, with the child still at her breast, slumps back in the pillows and closes her eyes. “Then go home to her. And don't write me any more letters,” she says. “And leave Ghita alone. She won't play either.”

He gets up and turns, for some reason expecting to see Bluhm in the doorway, in the posture he detests most: Bluhm propped nonchalantly against the door frame, hands wedged cowboy-style into his arty belt, grinning his white-toothed grin inside his pretentious black beard. But the doorway is empty, the corridor windowless and dark, lit like an airraid shelter by a line of underpowered lights. Making his way past broken-down trolleys laden with recumbent bodies, smelling the blood and excrement mingling with the sweet, horsy scent of Africa, Woodrow wonders whether this squalor is part of what makes her attractive to him: I have spent my life in flight from reality, but because of her I am drawn to it.

He enters a crowded concourse and sees Bluhm engaged in a heated conversation with another man. First he hears Bluhm's voice—though not the words—strident and accusing, echoing in the steel girders. Then the other man speaks back. Some people, once seen, live forever in our memories. For Woodrow this is one of them. The other man is thickly built and paunchy, with a glistening, meaty face that is cast in an expression of abject despair. His hair, blond to ginger, is spread sparsely over his scalded pate. He has a pinched, rosebud mouth that pleads and denies. His eyes, round with hurt, are haunted by a horror that both men seem to share. His hands are mottled and very strong, his khaki shirt stained with tramlines of sweat around the collar. The rest of him is concealed under a white medical coat.

And then we can tell you about the greedy coincidences in white coats.

Woodrow moves stealthily forward. He is almost upon them, but neither head turns. They are too intent on arguing. He strides past them unnoticed, their raised voices lost in the din.

•      •      •

Donohue's car was back in the drive. The sight of it moved Woodrow to sick fury. He stormed upstairs, showered, put on a fresh shirt and felt no less furious. The house was unusually silent for a Saturday and when he glanced out of his bathroom window he saw why. Donohue, Justin, Gloria and the boys were seated at the table in the garden playing Monopoly. Woodrow loathed all board games, but for Monopoly he had an unreasoning hatred not unlike his hatred of the Friends and all the other members of Britain's overblown Intelligence community. What the devil does he mean by coming back here minutes after I told him to keep his bloody distance? And what kind of weird husband is it who sits down to a jolly game of Monopoly just days after his wife is hacked to death? Houseguests, Woodrow and Gloria used to tell each other, quoting the Chinese proverb, were like fish and stank on the third day. But Justin was becoming more fragrant to Gloria with each day that passed.

Woodrow went downstairs and stood in the kitchen, looking out of the window. No staff on Saturday afternoons, of course. So much nicer to be just ourselves, darling. Except that it's not ourselves, it's your-selves. And you look a bloody sight happier with two middle-aged men fawning on you than you ever look with me.

At the table, Justin had landed on somebody's street and was paying out a stack of money in rent while Gloria and the boys hooted with delight and Donohue protested that it was about time too. Justin was wearing his stupid straw hat, and as with everything else he wore, it became him perfectly. Woodrow filled a kettle and set it on the gas. I'll take out tea to them, let them know I'm back—assuming they aren't too tied up with one another to notice. Changing his mind, he stepped smartly into the garden and marched up to the table.

“Justin. Sorry to butt in. Wondered if we could have a quick word.” And to the others—my own family, staring at me as if I've raped the housemaid—“Didn't mean to break this up, gang. Only be a few minutes. Who's winning?”

“Nobody,” said Gloria with edge, while Donohue from the wings grinned his shaggy grin.

The two men stood in Justin's cell. If the garden hadn't been occupied, Woodrow would have preferred the garden. As it was, they stood facing each other across the drab bedroom, with Tessa's Gladstone bag—Tessa's father's Gladstone bag—reclining behind the grille. My wine store. His bloody key. Her illustrious father's bag. But as he started to speak, he was alarmed to see his surroundings change. Instead of the iron bedstead, he saw the inlaid desk her mother had loved. And behind it, the brick fireplace with invitations on it. And across the room where the bogus beams appeared to converge, Tessa's naked silhouette in front of the French window. He willed himself back to time present and the illusion passed.

“Justin.”

“Yes, Sandy.”

But for the second time in as many minutes he veered away from the confrontation he had planned. “One of the local broadsheets is running a sort of liber amicorum about Tessa.”

“How nice of them.”

“There's a lot of rather unambiguous stuff about Bluhm in it. A suggestion that he personally delivered her child. Sort of not very hidden inference that the baby might be his as well. Sorry.”

“You mean Garth.”

“Yes.”

Justin's voice was taut and, to Woodrow's ear, as dangerously pitched as his own. “Yes, well, that is an inference that people have drawn from time to time in recent months, Sandy, and no doubt in the present climate there will be more of it.”

Though Woodrow allowed space for him to do so, Justin did not suggest that the inference was wrong. And this impelled Woodrow to press harder. Some guilty inner force was driving him.

“They also suggest that Bluhm went so far as to take a camp bed to the ward so that he could sleep close to her.”

“We shared it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sometimes Arnold slept on it, sometimes I did. We took turns, depending on our respective workloads.”

“So you don't mind?”

“Mind what?”

“That this should be said of them—that he was devoting this amount of attention to her—with your consent, apparently —while she was acting as your wife here in Nairobi.”

“Acting? She was my wife, damn you!”

Woodrow hadn't reckoned with Justin's anger any more than he'd reckoned with Coleridge's. He'd been too busy quelling his own. He'd got his voice down, and in the kitchen he'd managed to shrug some of the tension out of his shoulders. But Justin's outburst came at him out of a clear sky, and startled him. He had expected contrition and, if he was honest, humiliation, but not armed resistance.

“What are you asking me precisely?” Justin inquired. “I don't think I understand.”

“I need to know, Justin. That's all.”

“Know what? Whether I controlled my wife?”

Woodrow was pleading and backing away at the same time. “Look, Justin—I mean, see it my way—just for a moment, OK? The whole world's press is going to pick this up. I have a right to know.”