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THE CONSTANT GARDENER

THE CONSTANT GARDENER A Novel by JOHN LE CARRE THE CONSTANT GARDENER Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carre's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. What he might know and what he ultimately learns make him suspect among his own colleagues and a target for the profiteers who killed his wife. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (1 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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A master chronicler of the deceptions and betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, le Carre portrays, in The Constant Gardener, the dark side of unbridled capitalism. His eighteenth novel is also the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, seemingly oblivious to his wife's cause, discovers his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love. The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. Published by: SCRIBNER. NEW YORK. Copyright 2001 by David Cornwell John le Carre was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (2 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People. His novels include The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, Our Game, The Tailor of Panama, and Single and Single. John le Carre lives in Cornwall. PRAISE FOR JOHN LE CARRE "Le Carre is more than just a great storyteller. He captures the zeitgeist itself."--TOM WOLFE "He is one of the half-dozen best novelists now working in English." -CHICAGO SUN-TIMES "A brilliant linguistic artist with a keen eye for the exotic and not-so-exotic locale, a crafty moralizer with an occasional bent for sentiment." --THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (3 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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both well read and well regarded."--SCOTT TUROW "Le Carre has a great talent for entangling his audience in the sticky tape of complexity, paradox, and irony, and much of the pleasure in his stories is following the same dense, dark path as his characters."--NEW YORK DAILY NEWS "Any reader who feared that the end of the Cold War would deprive Mr. le Carre of his subject can now feel a measure of relief. If anything, his subject of EastWest misunderstanding has grown richer, and he now possesses vast new territories to mine."-THE NEW YORK TIMES "He has reinvented the realistic spy story as the supreme theater of paradox, where heroism breeds vice, and virtue is a quite accidental by-product of impudent crimes."--TIME "Le Carre is one of the best novelists-file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (4 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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of any kind--we have."--VANITY FAIR ALSO BY JOHN LE CARRE CALL FOR THE DEAD A MURDER OF QUALITY THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD THE LOOKING GLASS WAR A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY SMILEY'S PEOPLE THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL A PERFECT SPY file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (5 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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THE RUSSIA HOUSE THE SECRET PILGRIM THE NIGHT MANAGER OUR GAME THE TAILOR OF PANAMA SINGLE AND SINGLE This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. For Yvette Pierpaoli who lived and died giving a damn Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? "Andrea del Sarto" by ROBERT BROWNING file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (6 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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THE CONSTANT GARDENER The news hit the British High Commission in Nairobi at nine-thirty on a Monday morning. Sandy Woodrow took it like a bullet, jaw rigid, chest out, smack through his divided English heart. He was standing. That much he afterwards remembered. He was standing and the internal phone was piping. He was reaching for something, he heard the piping so he checked himself in order to stretch down and fish the receiver off the desk and say, "Woodrow." Or maybe, "Woodrow here." And he certainly barked his name a bit, he had that memory for sure, of his voice sounding like someone else's, and sounding stroppy: "Woodrow here," his own perfectly decent name, but without the softening of his nickname Sandy, and snapped out as if he hated it, because the High Commissioner's usual prayer meeting was slated to start in thirty minutes prompt, with Woodrow, as Head of Chancery, playing in-house moderator to a bunch of specialfile:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (7 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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interest prima donnas, each of whom wanted sole possession of the High Commissioner's heart and mind. In short, just another bloody Monday in late January, the hottest time in the Nairobi year, a time of dust and water shortages and brown grass and sore eyes and heat ripping off the city pavements; and the jacarandas, like everybody else, waiting for the long rains. Exactly why he was standing was a question he never resolved. By rights he should have been crouched behind his desk, fingering his keyboard, anxiously reviewing guidance material from London and incomings from neighboring African missions. Instead of which he was standing in front of his desk and performing some unidentified vital act--such as straightening the photograph of his wife Gloria and two small sons, perhaps, taken last summer while the family was on home leave. The High Commission stood on a file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (8 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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slope, and its continuing subsidence was enough to tilt pictures out of true after a weekend on their own. Or perhaps he had been squirting mosquito spray at some Kenyan insect from which even diplomats are not immune. There had been a plague of "Nairobi eye" a few months back, flies that when squidged and rubbed accidentally on the skin could give you boils and blisters, and even send you blind. He had been spraying, he heard his phone ring, he put the can down on his desk and grabbed the receiver: also possible, because somewhere in his later memory there was a color-slide of a red tin of insecticide sitting in the out tray on his desk. So, "Woodrow here," and the telephone jammed to his ear. "Oh, Sandy, it's Mike Mildren. Good morning. You alone by any chance?" Shiny, overweight, twenty-four-year-old Mildren, High Commissioner's private secretary, Essex accent, fresh out from file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (9 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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England on his first overseas posting--and known to the junior staff, predictably, as Mildred. Yes, Woodrow conceded, he was alone. Why? "Something's come up, I'm afraid, Sandy. I wondered if I might pop down a moment actually." "Can't it wait till after the meeting?" "Well, I don't think it can really--no, it can't," Mildren replied, gathering conviction as he spoke. "It's Tessa Quayle, Sandy." A different Woodrow now, hackles up, nerves extended. Tessa. "What about her?" he said. His tone deliberately incurious, his mind racing in all directions. Oh Tessa. Oh Christ. What have you done now? "The Nairobi police say she's been killed," Mildren said, as if he said it file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (10 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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every day. "Utter nonsense," Woodrow snapped back before he had given himself time to think. "Don't be ridiculous. Where? When?" "At Lake Turkana. The eastern shore. This weekend. They're being diplomatic about the details. In her car. An unfortunate accident, according to them," he added apologetically. "I had a sense that they were trying to spare our feelings." "Whose car?" Woodrow demanded wildlyfighting now, rejecting the whole mad concept-who, how, where and his other thoughts and senses forced down, down, down, and all his secret memories of her furiously edited out, to be replaced by the baked moonscape of Turkana as he recalled it from a field trip six months ago in the unimpeachable company of the military attache. "Stay where you are, I'm coming up. And don't talk to anyone else, d'you hear?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (11 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Moving by numbers now, Woodrow replaced the receiver, walked round his desk, picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and pulled it on, sleeve by sleeve. He would not customarily have put on a jacket to go upstairs. Jackets were not mandatory for Monday meetings, let alone for going to the private office for a chat with chubby Mildren. But the professional in Woodrow was telling him he was facing a long journey. Nevertheless on his way upstairs he managed by a sturdy effort of self-will to revert to his first principles whenever a crisis appeared on his horizon, and assure himself, just as he had assured Mildren, that it was a lot of utter nonsense. In support of which, he summoned up the sensational case of a young Englishwoman who had been hacked to pieces in the African bush ten years ago. It's a sick hoax, of course it is. A replay in somebody's deranged imagination. Some wildcat African policeman stuck out in the desert, half loco on bangi, trying to bolster the dismal salary he hasn't file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (12 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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been paid for six months. The newly completed building he was ascending was austere and well designed. He liked its style, perhaps because it corresponded outwardly with his own. With its neatly defined compound, canteen, shop, fuel pump and clean, muted corridors, it gave off a self-sufficient, rugged impression. Woodrow, to all appearances, had the same sterling qualities. At forty, he was happily married to Gloria--or if he wasn't, he assumed he was the only person to know it. He was Head of Chancery and it was a fair bet that, if he played his cards right, he would land his own modest mission on his next posting, and from there advance by less modest missions to a knighthood--a prospect to which he himself attached no importance, of course, but it would be nice for Gloria. There was a bit of the soldier about him, but then he was a soldier's son. In his seventeen years in Her Majesty's Foreign Service he had flown the flag in half a dozen overseas British file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (13 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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missions. All the same, dangerous, decaying, plundered, bankrupt, onceBritish Kenya had stirred him more than most of them, though how much of this was due to Tessa he dared not ask himself. "All right," he said aggressively to Mildren, having first closed the door behind him and dropped the latch. Mildren had a permanent pout. Seated at his desk he looked like a naughty fat boy who has refused to finish up his porridge. "She was staying at the Oasis," he said. "What oasis? Be precise, if you can." But Mildren was not as easily rattled as his age and rank might have led Woodrow to believe. He had been keeping a shorthand record, which he now consulted before he spoke. Must be what they teach them these days, thought Woodrow with contempt. How else does an Estuary upstart like Mildren file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (14 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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find time to pick up shorthand? "There's a lodge on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana, at the southern end," Mildren announced, his eyes on the pad. "It's called the Oasis. Tessa spent the night there and set off next morning in a fourtrack provided by the lodge's owner. She said she wanted to see the birthplace of civilization two hundred miles north. The Leakey dig." He corrected himself. "The site of Richard Leakey's excavation. In the Sibiloi National Park." "Alone?" "Wolfgang provided a driver. His body's in the four-track with hers." "Wolfgang?" "The lodge's owner. Surname to follow. Everyone calls him Wolfgang. He's German, apparently. A character. According to the police, the driver's been brutally murdered." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (15 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"How?" "Decapitated. Missing." "Who's missing? You said he was in the car with her." "The head's missing." I might have guessed that for myself, mightn't I? "How's Tessa supposed to have died?" "An accident. That's all they're saying." "Was she robbed?" "Not according to the police." The absence of a theft, coupled with the driver's murder, had Woodrow's imagination racing. "Just give it me exactly as you have it," he ordered.

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Mildren rested his big cheeks in his palms while he again consulted his shorthand. "Ninetwenty-nine, incoming from Nairobi police headquarters flying squad asking for the High Commissioner," he recited. "I explained that H.e. was in town visiting ministries, due back ten A.m. latest. An efficient-sounding duty officer, name supplied. He said reports were coming in from Lodwar--" "Lodwar? That's miles from Turkana!" "It's the nearest police station," Mildren replied. "A four-track, property of the Oasis Lodge, Turkana, had been found abandoned on the east side of the lake, short of Allia Bay, on the way to the Leakey site. The bodies were thirty-six hours old at least. One dead white female, death unexplained, one headless African, identified as Noah the driver, married with four children. One Mephisto safari boot, size seven. One blue bush jacket, size XL, bloodstained, found on the floor of the car. The woman in her mid-to-late file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (17 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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twenties, dark-haired, one gold ring on third finger of left hand. One gold necklace on the car floor." That necklace you're wearing, Woodrow heard himself saying in mock challenge as they danced. My grandmother gave it to my mother on her wedding day, she answered. I wear it with everything, even if it's out of sight. Even in bed? Depends. "Who found them?" Woodrow asked. "Wolfgang. He radioed the police and informed his office here in Nairobi. Also by radio. The Oasis has no telephone." "If the driver was headless, how can they know it was the driver?"

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"He had a crushed arm. That's why he took up driving. Wolfgang watched Tessa drive off with Noah on Saturday at five-thirty, in the company of Arnold Bluhm. That was the last time he saw them alive." He was still quoting from notes or if he wasn't he was pretending to. His cheeks were still in his hands and he seemed determined they should stay here, for there was a stubborn rigidity across his shoulders. "Give me that again," Woodrow ordered, after a beat. "Tessa was accompanied by Arnold Bluhm. They checked into the Oasis Lodge together, spent Friday night there and set off in Noah's jeep next morning at fivethirty," Mildren repeated patiently. "Bluhm's body wasn't in the four-track and there's no trace of him. Or none reported so far. Lodwar police and the flying squad are on site but Nairobi headquarters want to know if we'll pay for a helicopter." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (19 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Where are the bodies now?" Woodrow was his soldier father's son, crisp and practical. "Not known. The police wanted the Oasis to take charge of them but Wolfgang refused. He said his staff would walk out and so would his guests." A hesitation. "She booked in as Tessa Abbott." "Abbott?" "Her maiden name. "Tessa Abbott, care of a PO box in Nairobi." Ours. We haven't got an Abbott so I ran the name across our records and got Quayle, maiden name Abbott, Tessa. I gather it's the name she uses for her relief work." He was studying the last page of his notes. "I've tried to raise the High Commissioner but he's doing the ministries and it's rush hour," he said. By which he meant: this is President Moi's modern Nairobi, where a local call can take half an hour of listening to I'm file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (20 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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sorry, all lines are busy, please try again later, repeated tirelessly by a complacent woman in middle age. Woodrow was already at the door. "And you've told nobody?" "Not a soul." "Have the police?" "They say no. But they can't answer for Lodwar and I shouldn't think they can answer for themselves." "And Justin's been told nothing as far as you know." "Correct." "Where is he?" "In his office, I assume." "Keep him there." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (21 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"He came in early. It's what he does when Tessa's on a field trip. Do you want me to cancel the meeting?" "Wait." Aware by now, if he ever doubted it, that he was coping with a Force Twelve scandal as well as a tragedy, Woodrow darted up a back staircase marked Authorized Staff Only and entered a glum passage that led to a closed steel door with an eyehole and a bell button. A camera scanned him while he pressed the button. The door was opened by a willowy redheaded woman in jeans and a flowered smock. Sheila, their number two, kiSwahili speaker, he thought automatically. "Where's Tim?" he asked. Sheila pressed a buzzer then spoke into a box. "It's Sandy in a hurry." "Hold for figures one minute," cried an file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (22 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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expansive male voice. They held. "Coast now totally clear," the same voice reported as another door burped open. Sheila stood back and Woodrow strode past her into the room. Tim Donohue, the sixfoot-six Head of Station, was looming in front of his desk. He must have been clearing it, for there was not a paper in sight. Donohue looked even sicker than usual. Woodrow's wife Gloria insisted he was dying. Sunken, colorless cheeks. Nests of crumbling skin below the drooping yellowed eyes. The straggling mustache clawed downward in comic despair. "Sandy. Greetings. What can we do you for?" he cried, peering down on Woodrow through his bifocals and grinning his skull's grin. He comes too close, Woodrow remembered. He overflies your territory and intercepts file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (23 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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your signals before you make them. "Tessa Quayle seems to have been killed somewhere near Lake Turkana," he said, feeling a vindictive urge to shock. "There's a place called Oasis Lodge. I need to talk to the owner by radio." This is how they're trained, he thought. Rule one: never show your feelings, if you have any. Sheila's freckled features, frozen in pensive rejection. Tim Donohue still grinning his foolish grin--but then the grin hadn't meant anything in the first place. "Been what, old boy? Say again?" "Killed. Method unknown or the police aren't saying. The driver of her jeep had his head hacked off. That's the story." "Killed and robbed?" "Just killed."

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"Near Lake Turkana." "Yes." "What the hell was she doing up there?" "I've no idea. Visiting the Leakey site, allegedly." "Does Justin know?" "Not yet." "Anyone else we know involved?" "One of the things I'm trying to find out." Donohue led the way to a soundproofed communications booth that Woodrow had never seen before. Colored telephones with cavities for code lozenges. A fax machine resting on what looked like an oil drum. A radio set made of stippled green metal boxes. A homeprinted directory lying on top of them. So this is how our spies file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (25 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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whisper to each other from inside our buildings, he thought. Overworld or underworld? He never knew. Donohue sat himself at the radio, studied the directory, then fumbled the controls with trembling white fingers while he intoned, "ZNB 85, ZNB 85 calling TKA 60," like a hero in a war film. "TKA 60, do you read me, please? Over. Oasis, do you read me, Oasis? Over." A burst of atmospherics was followed by a challenging, "Oasis here. Loud and clear, mister. Who are you? Over"--spoken in a raffish German accent. "Oasis, this is the British High Commission in Nairobi, I'm passing you to Sandy Woodrow. Over." Woodrow leaned both hands on Donohue's desk in order to come closer to the microphone. "This is Woodrow, Head of Chancery. Am I file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (26 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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speaking to Wolfgang? Over." "Chancellery like Hitler had one?" "The political section. Over." "OK, Mr. Chancery, I'm Wolfgang. What's your question? Over." "I want you to give me, please, your own description of the woman who checked into your hotel as Miss Tessa Abbott. That's correct, is it? That's what she wrote? Over." "Sure. Tessa." "What did she look like? Over." "Dark hair, no makeup, tall, late twenties, not British. Not for me. South German, Austrian or Italian. I'm a hotelier. I look at people. And beautiful. I'm a man too. Sexy like an animal, how she moves. And clothes like you could blow them off. That sound like your Abbott or file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (27 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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somebody else's? Over." Donohue's head was a few inches from his own. Sheila was standing at his other side. All three of them were gazing at the microphone. "Yes. That sounds like Miss Abbott. Can you tell me, please: when did she make the reservation at your hotel, and how? I believe you have an office in Nairobi. Over." "She didn't." "I'm sorry?" "Dr. Bluhm made the reservation. Two persons, two cabins close to the pool, one night. We've only got one cabin free, I tell him. OK, he'll take it. That's some fellow. Wow. Everybody looks at them. The guests, the staff. One beautiful white woman, one beautiful African doctor. That's a nice sight. Over." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (28 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"How many rooms does a cabin have?" Woodrow asked, feebly hoping to head off the scandal that was staring him in the face. "One bedroom, two single beds, not too hard, nice and springy. One sitting room. Everybody signs the register here. No funny names, I tell them. People get lost, I got to know who they are. So that's her name, right? Abbott? Over." "Her maiden name. Over. The PO box number she gave is the High Commission." "Where's the husband?" "Here in Nairobi." "Oh boy." "So when did Bluhm make the reservation? Over." "Thursday. Thursday evening. Radios me file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (29 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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from Loki. Tells me they expect to leave Friday first light. Loki like Lokichoggio. On the northern border. Capital of the aid agencies working South Sudan. Over." "I know where Lokichoggio is. Did they say what they were doing there?" "Aid stuff. Bluhm's in the aid game, right? That's the only way you get to Loki. Works for some Belgian medical outfit, he told me. Over." "So he booked from Loki and they left Loki on Friday morning early. Over." "Tells me they expect to reach the west side of the lake around noon. Wants me to fix them a boat to bring them across the lake to the Oasis. "Listen," I tell him. "Lokichoggio to Turkana, that's a hairy drive. Best you ride with a food convoy. The hills are lousy with bandits, there's tribes stealing each other's cattle, which is normal, except that ten years ago they file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (30 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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had spears and today they all got AKBLEDG'S." He laughs. Says he can handle it. And he can. They make it, no problem. Over." "So they check in, then sign the register. Then what? Over." "Bluhm tells me they want a jeep and a driver to go up to Leakey's place first light next morning. Don't ask me why he didn't mention it when he booked, I didn't ask him. Maybe they only just decided. Maybe they didn't like to discuss their plans over the radio. "OK," I tell him. "You're lucky. You can have Noah." Bluhm's pleased. She's pleased. They walk in the garden, swim together, sit at the bar together, eat together, tell good night to everybody, go to their cabin. In the morning they leave together. I watch them. You want to know what they had for breakfast?" "Who saw them leave apart from you? Over." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (31 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Everybody who's awake sees them. Packed lunch, box of water, spare gas, emergency rations, medical supplies. All three of them in the front and Abbott in the middle, like one happy family. This is an oasis, OK? I got twenty guests, mostly they're asleep. I got forty staff, mostly they're awake. I got about a hundred guys I don't need hanging round my car park selling animal skins and walking sticks and hunting knives. Everyone who sees Bluhm and Abbott leave waves bye-bye. I wave, the skin sellers wave, Noah waves back, Bluhm and Abbott wave back. They don't smile. They're serious. Like they've got heavy business to do, big decisions, what do I know? What you want me to do, Mr. Chancery? Kill the witnesses? Listen, I'm Galileo. Put me in prison, I'll swear she never came to the Oasis. Over." For a moment of paralysis Woodrow had no further questions, or perhaps he had too many. I'm in prison already, he thought. My life sentence started five minutes ago. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (32 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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He passed a hand across his eyes and when he removed it he saw Donohue and Sheila watching him with the same blank expressions they had worn when he told them she was dead. "When did you first get the idea something might have gone wrong? Over," he asked lamely--like, Do you live up there all year round? Over. Or, How long have you been running your nice hotel? Over. "The four-track has a radio. On a trip with guests, Noah is supposed to call and say he's happy. Noah doesn't call. OK, radios fail, drivers forget. To make a link it's boring. You got to stop the car, get out, set up the aerial. You still hearing me? Over." "Loud and clear. Over." "Except Noah never forgets. That's why he drives for me. But he doesn't call. Not in the afternoon, not in the evening. OK, I think. Maybe they camped somewhere, gave file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (33 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Noah too much to drink or something. Last thing in the evening before shutdown I radio the rangers up around the Leakey site. No sign. First thing next morning I go to Lodwar to report the loss. It's my jeep, OK? My driver. I'm not allowed to report the loss by radio, I've got to do it in person. It's a hell of a journey but that's the law. The Lodwar police really like helping citizens in distress. My jeep went missing? Tough sh*t. It had two of my guests and my driver in it? Then why don't I go look for them? It's a Sunday, they're not expecting to work today. They got to go to church. "Give us some money, lend us a car, maybe we help you," they tell me. I come home, I put a search party together. Over." "Consisting of whom?" Woodrow was getting back into his stride. "Two groups. My own people, two trucks, water, spare fuel, medical supplies, provisions, Scotch in case I need to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (34 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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disinfect something. Over." A crossbroadcast intervened. Wolfgang told it to get the hell off the air. Surprisingly, it did. "It's pretty hot up here right now, Mr. Chancery. We got a hundred and fifteen Fahrenheit plus jackals and hyenas like you got mice. Over." A pause, apparently for Woodrow to speak. "I'm listening," Woodrow said. "The jeep was on its side. Don't ask me why. The doors were closed. Don't ask me why. One window open like five centimeters. Somebody closed the doors and locked them, took away the key. The smell unspeakable, just from the little gap. Hyena scratches all over, big dents where they'd tried to get in. Tracks all round while they went crazy. A good hyena smells blood ten kilometers away. If they'd been able to reach the bodies they'd have cracked them open one bite, got the marrow out the bones. But they didn't. Somebody locked the door on them and left the bit file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (35 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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of window open. So they went crazy. So would you. Over." Woodrow struggled to get his words together. "The police say Noah was decapitated. Is that right? Over." "Sure. He was a great guy. Family's worried crazy. They got people everywhere looking for his head. If they can't find the head they can't give him a decent funeral and his spirit will come back to haunt them. Over." "What about Miss Abbott? Over--" a vile vision of Tessa without her head. "Didn't they tell you?" "No. Over." "Throat cut. Over." A second vision, this time of her killer's fist as it ripped off her necklace to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (36 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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clear the way for the knife. Wolfgang was explaining what he did next. "Number one, I tell my boys, leave the doors closed. Nobody's alive in there. Anybody opening the doors is going to have a very bad time. I leave one group to light a fire and keep watch. I drive the other group back to the Oasis. Over." "Question. Over." Woodrow was struggling to hold on. "What's your question, Mr. Chancery? Come in, please. Over." "Who opened the jeep? Over." "The police. Soon as the police arrived, my boys get the hell out the way. No one likes police. No one likes to be arrested. Not up here. Lodwar police came first, now we've got the flying squad, plus some guys from Moi's personal Gestapo. My boys are locking the till and hiding the silver, except I haven't got any silver. Over." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (37 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Another delay while Woodrow wrestled for rational words. "Was Bluhm wearing a safari jacket when they set out for Leakey's place? Over." "Sure. Old one. More a waistcoat. Blue. Over." "Did anyone find a knife at the scene of the murder? Over." "No. And it was some knife, believe me. A panga with a Wilkinson blade. Went through Noah like butter. One swing. Same with her. Vump. The woman was stripped naked. Lot of bruising. Did I say that? Over." No, you didn't say that, Woodrow told him silently. You omitted her nakedness completely. The bruising also. "Was there a panga in the four-track when they set out from your lodge? Over."

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"I never knew an African yet who didn't take his panga on safari, Mr. Chancery." "Where are the bodies now?" "Noah, what's left of him, they give him to his tribe. Miss Abbott, the police sent a motor dinghy for her. Had to cut the jeep roof off. Borrowed our cutting equipment. Then strap her to the deck. No room for her downstairs. Over." "Why not?" But he was already wishing he hadn't asked. "Use your imagination, Mr. Chancery. You know what happens to corpses in this heat? You want to fly her down to Nairobi, you better cut her up or she won't get into the hold." Woodrow had a moment of mental numbness and when he woke from it he heard Wolfgang saying yes, he had met Bluhm once before. So Woodrow must have asked him the question, although he hadn't heard it file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (39 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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himself. "Nine months back. Bear-leading a party of fat cats in the aid game. World food, world health, world expense accounts. Bastards spent a mountain of money, wanted receipts for twice the amount. I tell them to get f*cked. Bluhm liked that. Over." "How did he seem to you this time? Over." "What's that mean?" "Was he different in any way? More excitable or strange or anything?" "What are you talking about, Mr. Chancery?" "I mean--do you think it possible he was on something? High on something, I mean?" He was floundering. "Well, like--I don't know-cocaine or something. Over." "Sweetheart," said Wolfgang, and the line file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (40 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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went cold. Woodrow was once more conscious of Donohue's probing stare. Sheila had disappeared. Woodrow had the impression she had gone to do something urgent. But what could that be? Why should Tessa's death require the urgent action of the spies? He felt chilly and wished he had a cardigan, yet the sweat was pouring off him. "Nothing more we can do for you, old boy?" Donohue asked, with peculiar solicitude, still staring down at him with his sick, shaggy eyes. "Little glass of something?" "Thank you. Not at present." They knew, Woodrow told himself in fury as he returned downstairs. They knew before I did that she was dead. But that's what they want you to believe: we spies know more about everything than you do, and sooner. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (41 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"High Commissioner back yet?" he asked, shoving his head round Mildren's door. "Any minute." "Cancel the meeting." Woodrow did not head directly for Justin's room. He looked in on Ghita Pearson, Chancery's most junior member, friend and confidante of Tessa. Ghita was dark-eyed, fair-haired, Anglo-Indian and wore a caste mark on her forehead. Locally employed, Woodrow rehearsed, but aspires to make the Service her career. A distrustful frown crossed her brow as she saw him close the door behind him. "Ghita, this one's strictly for you, OK?" She looked at him steadily, waiting. "Bluhm. Dr. Arnold Bluhm. Yes?" "What about him?" "Chum of yours." No response. "I mean file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (42 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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you're friendly with him." "He's a contact." Ghita's duties kept her in daily touch with the relief agencies. "And a chum of Tessa's, obviously." Ghita's dark eyes made no comment. "Do you know other people at Bluhm's outfit?" "I ring Charlotte from time to his office. The rest are field Why?" The Anglo-Indian lilt to that he had found so alluring. again. Never anybody again.

time. She's people. her voice But never

"Bluhm was in Lokichoggio last week. Accompanied." A third nod, but a slower one, and a lowering of the eyes. "I want to know what he was doing there. From Loki he drove across to Turkana. I need to know whether he's made it back to Nairobi yet. Or maybe he returned to Loki. Can you do that without breaking too many file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (43 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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eggs?" "I doubt it." "Well, try." A question occurred to him. In all the months he had known Tessa, it had never presented itself till now. "Is Bluhm married, d'you know?" "I would imagine so. Somewhere down the line. They usually are, aren't they?" They meaning Africans? Or they meaning lovers? All lovers? "But he hasn't got a wife here? Not in Nairobi. Or not so far as you've heard. Bluhm hasn't." "Why?"--softly, in a rush. "Has something happened to Tessa?" "It may have done. We're finding out." Reaching the door to Justin's room, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (44 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Woodrow knocked and went in without waiting for an answer. This time he did not lock the door behind him but, hands in pockets, leaned his broad shoulders against it, which for as long as he remained there had the same effect. Justin was standing with his elegant back to him. His neatly groomed head was turned to the wall and he was studying a graph, one of several ranged around the room, each with a caption of initials in black, each marked in steps of different colors, rising or descending. The particular graph that held his attention was titled RELATIVE INFRASTRUCTURES 2005-2010 and purported, so far as Woodrow could make out from where he stood, to predict the future prosperity of African nations. On the windowsill at Justin's left stood a line of potted plants that he was nurturing. Woodrow identified jasmine and balsam, but only because Justin had made gifts of these to Gloria. "Hi, Sandy," Justin said, drawing out the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (45 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Hi." "Hi." "I gather we're not assembling this morning. Trouble at mill?" The famous golden voice, thought Woodrow, noticing every detail as if it were fresh to him. Tarnished by time but guaranteed to enchant, as long as you prefer tone to substance. Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life? From now until the end of your days there will be before this moment and after it and they will be separate ages for you, just as they are for me. Why don't you take your bloody jacket off? You must be the only fellow left in the Service who goes to his tailor for tropical suits. Then he remembered he was still wearing his own jacket. "And you're all well, I trust?" Justin asked in that same studied drawl of his. "Gloria not languishing in this awful file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (46 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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heat? The boys both flourishing and so forth?" "We're fine." A delay, of Woodrow's manufacture. "And Tessa is up-country," he suggested. He was giving her one last chance to prove it was all a dreadful mistake. Justin at once became lavish, which was what he did when Tessa's name was spoken at him. "Yes, indeed. Her relief work is absolutely nonstop these days." He was hugging a United Nations tome to himself, all of three inches thick. Stooping again, he laid it to rest on a side table. "She'll have saved all Africa by the time we leave, at this rate." "What's she gone up-country for, actually?" --still clutching at straws--"I thought she was doing stuff down here in Nairobi. In the slums. Kibera, wasn't it?" "Indeed she is," said Justin proudly. "Night and day, the poor girl. Everything file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (47 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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from wiping babies' bottoms to acquainting paralegals with their civil rights, I'm told. Most of her clients are women, of course, which appeals to her. Even if it doesn't appeal quite so much to their menfolk." His wistful smile, the one that says if only. "Property rights, divorce, physical abuse, marital rape, female circumcision, safe sex. The whole menu, every day. You can see why their husbands get a little touchy, can't you? I would, if I was a marital rapist." "So what's she doing up-country?" Woodrow persisted. "Oh, goodness knows. Ask Doc Arnold," Justin threw out, too casually. "Arnold's her guide and philosopher up there." This is how he plays it, Woodrow remembered. The cover story that covers all three of them. Arnold Bluhm, M.d., her moral tutor, black knight, protector in the aid jungle. Anything but her tolerated file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (48 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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lover. "Up where exactly?" he asked. "Loki. Lokichoggio." Justin had propped himself on the edge of his desk, perhaps in unconscious imitation of Woodrow's careless posture at the door. "The World Food Program people are running a gender awareness workshop up there, can you imagine? They fly unaware village women down from South Sudan, give them the crash course in John Stuart Mill and fly them back aware. Arnold and Tessa went up to watch the fun, lucky dogs." "Where is she now?" Justin appeared not to like this question. Perhaps it was the moment when he realized there was purpose to Woodrow's small talk. Or perhaps--thought Woodrow--he didn't take kindly to being pinned down on the subject of Tessa, when he couldn't pin her down himself. "On her way back, one assumes. Why?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (49 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"With Arnold?" "Presumably. He wouldn't just leave her there." "Has she been in touch?" "With me? From Loki? How could she be? They haven't got telephones." "I thought she might have used one of the aid agencies' radio links. Isn't that what other people do?" "Tessa's not other people," Justin retorted, as a frown collected on his brow. "She has strong principles. Such as not spending donors' money unnecessarily. What's going on, Sandy?" Justin scowling now, shoving himself away from the desk and placing himself upright at the center of the room with his hands behind his back. And Woodrow, observing his studiously handsome face and graying file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (50 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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black hair in the sunlight, remembered Tessa's hair, the same color exactly, but without the age in it, or the restraint. He remembered the first time he saw them together, Tessa and Justin, our glamorous newly wedded arrivals, honored guests of the High Commissioner's welcome-to-Nairobi party. And how, as he had stepped forward to greet them, he had imagined to himself that they were father and daughter, and he was the suitor for her hand. "So you haven't heard from her since when?" he asked. "Tuesday when I drove them to the airport. What is this, Sandy? If Arnold's with her she'll be all right. She'll do what she's told." "Do you think they could have gone on to Lake Turkana, she and Bluhm--Arnold?" "If they had transport and felt like it, why not? Tessa loves the wild places, she has a great regard for Richard Leakey, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (51 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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both as an archaeologist and as a decent white African. Surely Leakey's got a clinic up there? Arnold probably had work to do and took her along. Sandy, what is this?" he repeated indignantly. Delivering the death blow, Woodrow had no option but to observe the effect of his words on Justin's features. And he saw how the last remnants of Justin's departed youth drained out of him as, like some kind of sea creature, his pretty face closed and hardened, leaving only seeming coral. "We're getting reports of a white woman and an African driver found on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana. Killed," Woodrow began deliberately, avoiding the word "murdered." "The car and driver were hired from the Oasis Lodge. The lodge's owner claims to have identified the woman as Tessa. He says she and Bluhm spent the night at the Oasis before setting out for the Richard Leakey site. Bluhm's still file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (52 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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missing. They've found her necklace. The one she always wore." How do I know that? Why, in God's name, do I choose this moment to parade my intimate knowledge of her necklace? Woodrow was still watching Justin. The coward in him wanted to look away, but to the soldier's son it would have been like sentencing a man to be executed and not showing up for his hanging. He watched Justin's eyes widen in injured disappointment, as if he had been hit from behind by a friend, then dwindle to almost nothing, as if the same friend had knocked him unconscious. He watched his nicely carved lips part in a spasm of physical pain, then gather themselves into a muscular line of exclusion turned pale by pressure. "Good of you to tell me, Sandy. Can't have been pleasant. Does Porter know?" Porter was the High Commissioner's improbable first name. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (53 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Mildren's chasing him up. They found a Mephisto boot. Size seven. Does that figure?" Justin was having difficulty coordinating. First he had to wait for the sound of Woodrow's words to catch up with him. Then he hastened to respond in brisk, hard-won sentences. "There's this shop off Piccadilly. She bought three pairs last home leave. Never seen her splash out like that. Not a spender as a rule. Never had to think about money. So she didn't. Dress at the Salvation Army shop. Given half a chance." "And some kind of safari tunic. Blue." "Oh she absolutely hated the beastly things," Justin retorted, as the power of speech came back to him in a flood. "She said if I ever caught her wearing one of those khaki contraptions with pockets on the thighs I should burn it or give it to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (54 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Mustafa." Mustafa, her houseboy, Woodrow remembered. "The police say blue." "She detested blue"--now apparently on the verge of losing his temper--"she absolutely loathed anything paramilitary." The past tense already, Woodrow noticed. "She once owned a green bush jacket, I grant you. She bought it at Farbelow's in Stanley Street. I took her, don't know why. Probably made me. Hated shopping. She put it on and promptly had a fit. "Look at me," she said. "I'm General Patton in drag." No, sport, I told her, you're not General Patton. You're a very pretty girl wearing a bloody awful green jacket." He began packing up his desk. Precisely. Packing to leave. Opening and shutting drawers. Putting his file trays into his steel cupboard and locking it. Absently smoothing back his hair between moves, a tic that Woodrow had always found particularly irritating in him. Gingerly file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (55 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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switching off his hated computer terminal-stabbing at it with his forefinger as if he was afraid it would bite him. Rumor had it that he got Ghita Pearson to switch it on for him every morning. Woodrow watched him give the room a last sightless look round. End of term. End of life. Please leave this space tidy for the next occupant. At the door Justin turned and glanced back at the plants on the windowsill, perhaps wondering whether he should bring them with him, or at least give instructions for their maintenance, but he did neither. Walking Justin along the corridor, Woodrow made to touch his arm, but some kind of revulsion caused him to withdraw his hand before it made contact. All the same he was careful to walk close enough to catch him if he sagged or stumbled in some way, because by now Justin had the air of a welldressed sleepwalker who had abdicated his sense of destination. They were moving slowly and without much sound, but Ghita file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (56 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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must have heard them coming because as they passed her door she opened it and tiptoed alongside Woodrow for a couple of paces while she murmured in his ear, holding back her golden hair so that it didn't brush against him. "He disappeared. They're searching high and low for him." But Justin's hearing was better than either of them could have anticipated. Or perhaps, in the extremity of emotion, his perceptions were abnormally acute. "You're worrying about Arnold, I expect," he told Ghita, in the helpful tone of a stranger indicating the way. * * * The High Commissioner was a hollowed, hyperintelligent man, an eternal student of something. He had a son who was a merchant banker and a small daughter called Rosie who was severely braindamaged, and a wife who, when she was in England, was a justice of the Peace. He file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (57 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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adored them all equally and spent his weekends with Rosie strapped to his stomach. Yet Coleridge himself had somehow remained stranded on the brink of manhood. He wore a young man's braces with baggy Oxford trousers. A matching jacket hung behind the door on a hanger with his name on it: P. Coleridge, Balliol. He stood poised at the center of his large office, his tousled head tipped angrily to Woodrow as he listened. There were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. "f*ck," he announced furiously, as if he had been waiting to get the word off his chest. "I know," said Woodrow. "That poor girl. How old was she? Nothing!" "Twenty-five." How did I know that? "About," he added, for vagueness.

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"She looked about eighteen. That poor bugger Justin with his flowers." "I know," Woodrow said again. "Does Ghita know?" "Bits." "What the hell will he do? He hasn't even got a career. They were all set to throw him out at the end of this tour. If Tessa hadn't lost her baby, they'd have ditched him in the next cull." Sick of standing in one place, Coleridge swung away to another part of the room. "Rosie caught a twopound trout on Saturday," he blurted accusingly. "What do you make of that?" Coleridge had this habit of buying time with unannounced diversions. "Splendid," Woodrow murmured dutifully. "Tessa'd have been thrilled to bits. Always said Rosie would make it. And Rosie file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (59 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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adored her." "I'm sure she did." "Wouldn't eat it, mind. We had to keep the sod on life support all weekend, then bury it in the garden." A straightening of the shoulders indicated that they were in business again. "There's a back story to this, Sandy. A bloody messy one." "I'm well aware of that." "That sh*t Pellegrin's already been on the line bleating about limiting the damage"-Sir Bernard Pellegrin, Foreign Office mandarin with special responsibility for Africa and Coleridge's archenemy--"how the hell are we supposed to limit the damage when we don't know what the f*cking damage is? Ruined his tennis for him too, I expect." "She was with Bluhm for four days and nights before she died," Woodrow said, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (60 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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glancing at the door to make sure it was still shut. "If that's damage. They did Loki, then they did Turkana. They shared a cabin and Christ knows what. A whole raft of people saw them together." "Thanks. Thanks very much. Just what I wanted to hear." Plunging his hands deep into his baggy pockets, Coleridge waded round the room. "Where the f*ck is Bluhm, anyway?" "They're hunting high and low for him, they say. Last seen sitting at Tessa's side in the jeep when they set out for the Leakey site." Coleridge stalked to his desk, flopped into his chair and leaned back with his arms splayed. "So the butler did it," he declared. "Bluhm forgot his education, went berserk, topped the two of them, bagged Noah's head as a souvenir, rolled the jeep on its side, locked it and did a runner. Well, wouldn't we all? f*ck." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (61 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"You know him as well as I do." "No, I don't. I keep clear of him. I don't like film stars in the aid business. Where the hell did he go? Where is he?" Images were playing in Woodrow's mind. Bluhm the Westerner's African, bearded Apollo of the Nairobi co*cktail round, charismatic, witty, beautiful. Bluhm and Tessa side by side, glad-handing guests while Justin the old debutantes' delight purrs and smiles and pushes out the drinks. Arnold Bluhm, M.d., sometime hero of the war in Algeria, discoursing from the rostrum of the United Nations lecture hall on medical priorities in disaster situations. Bluhm when the party's nearly over, slumped in a chair and looking lost and empty, with everything worth knowing about him hidden five miles down. "I couldn't send them home, Sandy," Coleridge was saying in the sterner voice of a man who has visited his conscience file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (62 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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and come back reassured. "I never saw it as my job to ruin a man's career just because his wife likes to get her leg over. It's the new millennium. People must be allowed to screw up their lives as they see fit." "Of course." "She was doing a bloody good job out there in the slums, whatever anybody said about her up at the Muthaiga Club. She may have got up the noses of Moi's Boys but Africans who mattered loved her to a man." "No question," Woodrow agreed. "All right, she was into all that gender crap. So she should be. Give Africa to the women and the place might work." Mildren entered without knocking. "Call from Protocol, sir. Tessa's body's just arrived at the hospital morgue and they're asking for an immediate file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (63 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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identification. And the press agencies are screaming for a statement." "How the hell did they get her to Nairobi so fast?" "Flew her," Woodrow said, recalling Wolfgang's repulsive image of slicing up her body to get it into the hold. "No statement till she's been identified," Coleridge snapped. * * * Woodrow and Justin went there together, crouching on the slatted bench of a High Commission Volkswagen van with tinted windows. Livingstone drove, with Jackson his massive fellow Kikuyu squeezed beside him on the front seat for added muscle in case they needed it. With the airconditioning on high the van was still a furnace. The city traffic was at its demented worst. Crammed Matutu minibuses hurtled and honked to either side of them, poured out fumes and hurled up dust and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (64 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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grit. Livingstone negotiated a roundabout and pulled up outside a stone doorway surrounded by chanting, swaying groups of men and women. Mistaking them for demonstrators Woodrow let out an exclamation of anger, then realized they were mourners waiting to collect their bodies. Rusted vans and cars with red cortege ribbons were parked expectantly along the curb. "There is really no need for you to do this, Sandy," Justin said. "Of course there's a need," said the soldier's son nobly. A gaggle of police and medical-looking men in spattered white overalls waited on the doorstep to receive them. Their one aim was to please. An Inspector Muramba presented himself and, smiling delightedly, shook hands with the two distinguished gentlemen from the British High Commission. An Asian in a black suit introduced himself as Surgeon Doctor Banda file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (65 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Singh at their service. Overhead pipes accompanied them down a weeping concrete corridor lined with overflowing dustbins. The pipes supply the refrigerators, thought Woodrow, but the refrigerators don't work because there's a power cut and the morgue has no generators. Dr. Banda led the way, but Woodrow could have found it on his own. Turn left, you lose the smell. Turn right, it gets stronger. The unfeeling side of him had taken over again. A soldier's duty is to be here, not to feel. Duty. Why did she always make me think of duty? He wondered whether there was some ancient piece of superstition about what happened to aspiring adulterers when they gazed on the dead bodies of the women they had coveted. Dr. Banda was leading them up a short staircase. They emerged in an unventilated reception hall where the stench of death was allpervading. A rusting steel door stood closed against them and Banda hammered on it in a file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (66 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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commanding manner, leaning back on his heels and rapping four or five times at calculated intervals as if a code were being transmitted. The door creaked open partway to reveal the haggard, apprehensive heads of three young men. But at the sight of the surgeon doctor they reeled back, enabling him to slither past them, with the result that Woodrow, left standing in the stinking hall, was treated to the hellish vision of his school dormitory given over to the AIDS'-DEAD of all ages. Emaciated corpses lay two a bed. More corpses lay on the floor between them, some dressed, some naked on their backs or sides. Others had their knees drawn up in futile self-protection and their chins flung back in protest. Over them, in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note. And at the center of the dormitory, parked by itself in the passage between the beds, stood matron's ironing board, on wheels. And on the ironing board, an arctic mass of winding-sheet, and two monstrous file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (67 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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semihuman feet protruding from it, reminding Woodrow of the duck-feet bedroom slippers he and Gloria had given to their son Harry last Christmas. One distended hand had somehow contrived to remain outside the sheet. Its fingers were coated in black blood and the blood was thickest at the joints. Its fingertips were aquamarine blue. Use your imagination, Mr. Chancery. You know what happens to corpses in this heat? "Mr. Justin Quayle, please," Dr. Banda Singh called, with the portent of a barker at a royal reception. "I'm coming with you," Woodrow muttered and, with Justin at his side, stepped bravely forward in time to see Dr. Banda roll back the sheet and reveal Tessa's head, grossly caricatured and bound chinto-skull in a strip of grimy cloth which had been led round the throat where her necklace had once hung. A drowning man rising to the surface for the last time, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (68 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Woodrow recklessly took in the rest: her black hair plastered to her skull by some undertaker's comb. Her cheeks puffed out like a cherub's blowing up a wind. Her eyes closed and eyebrows raised and mouth open in lolling disbelief, black blood caked inside as if she'd had all her teeth pulled at the same time. You? she is blowing stupidly as they kill her, her mouth formed into an oo. You? But who does she say it to? Who is she ogling through her stretched white eyelids? "You know this lady, sir?" Inspector Muramba inquired delicately of Justin. "Yes. Yes, I do, thank you," Justin replied, each word carefully weighed before it was delivered. "It's my wife Tessa. We must fix her funeral, Sandy. She'll want it to be here in Africa as soon as possible. She's an only child. She has no parents. There is no one apart from me who needs to be consulted. Better make it as soon as possible." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (69 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Well, I suppose that will have to depend a bit on the police," said Woodrow gruffly and was barely in time to make it to a cracked hand basin, where he vomited his heart out while Justin the ever-courteous stood at his shoulder with his arm round him, murmuring condolences. * * * From the carpeted sanctuary of the Private Office, Mildren slowly read aloud to the blank-voiced young man on the other end of the line: The High Commission is sad to announce the death by murder of Mrs. Tessa Quayle, the wife of Justin Quayle, First Secretary in Chancery. Mrs. Quayle died on the shores of Lake Turkana, close to Allia Bay. Her driver Mr. Noah Katanga was also killed. Mrs. Quayle will be remembered for her devotion to the cause of women's rights in Africa, as well as for her youth and beauty. We wish to express our deep sympathy to Mrs. Quayle's husband Justin and her many friends. The High Commission file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (70 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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flag will be flown at half-mast until further notice. A book of condolence will be placed in the High Commission reception lobby. "When will you be running that?" "I just did," said the young man. The Woodrows lived in a suburban house of quarried stone and leaded mock-Tudor windows, one of a colony set in large English gardens in the exclusive hilltop suburb of Muthaiga, a stone's throw from the Muthaiga Club and the British High Commissioner's residence and the ample residences of ambassadors from countries you may never have heard of till you ride the closely guarded avenues and spot their nameplates planted among warnings in kiSwahili of dangerous dogs. In the wake of the bomb attack on Nairobi's U.s. Embassy, the Foreign Office had supplied all staff of Woodrow's rank and upward with crash-proof iron front gates and these were conscientiously manned day and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (71 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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night by shifts of exuberant Baluhya and their many friends and relatives. Round the garden's perimeter, the same inspired minds had provided an electrified fence crowned with coils of razor wire and intruder lights that blazed all night. In Muthaiga there is a pecking order about protection, as there is about many other things. The humblest houses have broken bottles on stone walls, the middle-rankers razor wire. But for diplomatic gentry, nothing less than iron gates, electric fences, window sensors and intruder lights will secure their preservation.

The Woodrow house stood three floors high. The two upper floors comprised what the security companies called a safe haven protected by a folding steel screen on the first landing, to which the Woodrow parents alone had a key. And in the groundfloor guest suite, which the Woodrows called the lower ground because of the slope of the hillside, there was a screen on the garden side to protect the Woodrows file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (72 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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from their servants. There were two rooms to the lower ground, both severe and whitepainted and, with their barred windows and steel grilles, distinctly prisonlike. But Gloria in anticipation of her guest's arrival had decked them out with roses from the garden and a reading light from Sandy's dressing room, and the staff television set and radio because it would do them good to be without them for a change. It wasn't exactly five-star even then--she confided to her bosom friend Elena, English wife to a softpalmed Greek official at the United Nations --but at least the poor man would have his aloneness, which everybody absolutely had to have when they lost someone, El, and Gloria herself had been exactly the same when Mummy died, but then of course Tessa and Justin did have--well, they did have an unconventional marriage, if one could call it that--though speaking for herself Gloria had never doubted there was real fondness there, at least on Justin's side, though what there was on Tessa's side-frankly, El darling, God alone knows, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (73 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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because none of us ever will. To which Elena, much divorced and worldly wise where Gloria was neither, remarked, "Well, you just watch your sweet arse, honey. Freshly widowed playboys can be very raunchy." * * * Gloria Woodrow was one of those exemplary Foreign Service wives who are determined to see the good side of everything. If there wasn't a good side in sight, she would let out a jolly good laugh and say, "Well, here we all are!" --which was a bugle call to all concerned to band together and shoulder life's discomforts without complaint. She was a loyal old girl of the private schools that had produced her and she sent them regular bulletins of her progress, avidly devouring news of her contemporaries. Each Founder's Feast she sent them a witty telegram of congratulation or, these days, a witty e-mail, usually in verse, because she never wanted them to forget that she file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (74 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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had won the school poetry prize. She was attractive in a forthright way, and famously loquacious, especially when there wasn't much to say. And she had that tottery, extraordinarily ugly walk that is affected by Englishwomen of the royal class. Yet Gloria Woodrow was not naturally stupid. Eighteen years ago at Edinburgh University she had been rated one of the better brains of her year and it was said of her that if she hadn't been so taken up with Woodrow, she would have landed a decent two-one in politics and philosophy. However, in the years between, marriage and motherhood and the inconstancies of diplomatic life had replaced whatever ambitions she might have had. Sometimes, to Woodrow's private sadness, she appeared to have deliberately put her intellect to sleep in order to fulfill her wifely role. But he was also grateful to her for this sacrifice, and for the restful way in which she failed to read his inner thoughts, yet pliantly shaped herself to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (75 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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fit his aspirations. "When I want a life of my own, I'll let you know," she would assure him when, seized by one of his bouts of guilt or boredom, he pressed her to take a higher degree, read law, read medicine--or at least read something, for God's sake. "If you don't like me as I am, that's different," she would reply, deftly shifting his complaint from the particular to the general. "Oh but I do, I do, I love you as you are!" he would protest, earnestly embracing her. And more or less he believed himself. Justin became the secret prisoner of the lower ground on the evening of the same black Monday on which the news of Tessa's death had been brought to him, at the hour when limousines in ambassadorial driveways were starting to champ and stir inside their iron gates before processing toward the evening's mystically elected watering hole. Is it Lumumba Day? Merdeka Day? Bastille Day? Never mind: the national flag will be flying in the garden, the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (76 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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sprinklers will be turned off, the red carpet will be laid out, black servants in white gloves will be hovering, just as they did in the colonial times we all piously disavow. And the appropriate patriotic music will be issuing from the host's marquee. Woodrow rode with Justin in the black Volkswagen van. From the hospital morgue, Woodrow had escorted him to police headquarters and watched him compose, in his immaculate academic hand, a statement identifying his wife's corpse. From headquarters Woodrow had called ahead to inform Gloria that, traffic permitting, he would be arriving in fifteen minutes with their special guest--"and he'll be keeping his head down, darling, and we've got to make sure it stays that way"--though this did not prevent Gloria from putting through a crash call to Elena, dialing repeatedly till she got her, to discuss menus for dinner--did poor Justin love fish or hate it? she forgot, but she had a feeling he was faddish--and God, El, what file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (77 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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on earth do I talk to him about while Sandy's off manning the fort and I'm stuck with the poor man alone for hours on end? I mean all the real subjects are off limits. "You'll think of something, don't worry, darling," Elena assured her, not altogether kindly. But Gloria still found time to give Elena a rundown of the absolutely harrowing phone calls she'd taken from the press, and others she'd refused to take, preferring to have Juma, her Wakamba houseboy, say that Mr. or Mrs. Woodrow are not available to come to the telephone at present--except that there was this frightfully well-spoken young man from the Telegraph whom she would have adored to talk to, but Sandy had said no on pain of death. "Perhaps he'll write, darling," said Elena consolingly. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (78 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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The Volkswagen van with tinted windows pulled up in the Woodrow driveway, Woodrow sprang out to check for journalists and immediately afterwards Gloria was treated to her first sight of Justin the widower, the man who had lost his wife and baby son in the space of six months, Justin the deceived husband who would be deceived no longer, Justin of the tailored lightweight suit and soft gaze that were habitual to him, her secret fugitive to be hidden in the lower ground, removing his straw hat as he climbed out of the tailgate with his back to the audience, and thanking everybody--which meant Livingston the driver, and Jackson the guard, and Juma who was hovering uselessly as usual--with a distracted bow of his handsome dark head as he moved gracefully along the line of them to the front door. She saw his face first in black shadow, then in the shortlived evening twilight. He advanced on her and said, "Good evening, Gloria, how very good of you to have me," in a voice so bravely mustered that she could have wept file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (79 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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and later did. "We're just so relieved to be able to do anything to help, Justin darling," she murmured, kissing him with cautious tenderness. "And there's no word of Arnold, one takes it? Nobody rang while we were on the road?" "I'm sorry, dear, not a peep. We're all on tenterhooks, of course." One takes it, she thought. I'll say one does. Like a hero. Somewhere in the background Woodrow was advising her in a bereaved voice that he needed another hour in the office, sweet, he'd ring, but she barely bothered with him. Who's he lost? she thought scathingly. She heard car doors clunk and the black Volkswagen drive away but paid it no attention. Her eyes were with Justin, her ward and tragic hero. Justin, she now realized, was as much the victim file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (80 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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of this tragedy as Tessa was, because Tessa was dead while Justin had been lumbered with a grief he would have to cart with him to his grave. Already it had grayed his cheeks and changed the way he walked and the things he looked at as he went along. Gloria's cherished herbaceous borders, planted to his specification, passed him by without a glance. So did the rhus and two malus trees he had so sweetly refused to let her pay for. Because it was one of the marvelous things about Justin that Gloria had never really got used to-this to Elena in a lengthy resume the same evening--that he was hugely knowledgeable about plants and flowers and gardens. And I mean, where on earth did that come from, El? His mother probably. Wasn't she half a Dudley? Well, all the Dudleys gardened like mad, they'd done it for eons. Because we're talking classic English botany here, El, not what you read in the Sunday papers. Ushering her treasured guest up the steps to the front door, across the hall and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (81 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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down the servants' stairs to the lower ground, Gloria gave him the tour of the prison cell that would be home to him for the duration of his sentence: the warped plywood wardrobe for hanging up your suits, Justin--why on earth had she never given Ebediah another fifty shillings and told him to paint it?--the worm-eaten chest of drawers for your shirts and socks-why had she never thought to line it? But it was Justin, as usual, who was doing the apologizing. "I'm afraid I haven't much in the way of clothes to put in them, Gloria. My house is besieged by newshounds and Mustafa must have taken the phone off the hook. Sandy kindly said he'd lend me whatever I need until it's safe to smuggle something round." "Oh Justin, how stupid of me," Gloria exclaimed, flushing. But then, either because she didn't want to leave him, or didn't know how to, she file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (82 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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insisted on showing him the awful old fridge crammed with bottles of drinking water and mixers--why had she never had the rotting rubber replaced?--and the ice here, Justin, just run it under the tap to break it up--and the plastic electric kettle that she'd always hated, and the bumblebee pot from Ilfracombe with Tetley tea bags and a crack in it, and the battered Huntley and Palmer's tin of sugared biscuits in case he liked a nibble last thing at night, because Sandy always does, although he's been told to lose weight. And finally--thank God she'd got something right--the splendid vase of manycolored snapdragons that she had raised from seed on his instructions. "Well, good, I'll leave you in peace then," she said--until, reaching the door, she realized to her shame that she had still not spoken her words of commiseration. "Justin darling--" she began. "Thanks, Gloria, there's really no need," file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (83 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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he cut in with surprising firmness. Deprived of her tender moment, Gloria struggled to recover a tone of practicality. "Yes, well, you'll come up whenever you want, won't you, dear? Dinner at eight, theoretically. Drinkies before if you feel like it. Just do whatever you wish. Or nothing. Heaven knows when Sandy will be back." After which she went gratefully upstairs to her bedroom, showered and changed and did her face, then looked in on the boys at their prep. Quelled by the presence of death, they were working diligently, or pretending to. "Does he look terrifically sad?" asked Harry, the younger one. "You'll meet him tomorrow. Just be very polite and serious with him. Mathilda's making you hamburgers. You'll eat them in the playroom, not the kitchen, understood?" A postscript popped out of her before she had even thought about it: file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (84 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"He's a very courageous fine man, and you're to treat him with great respect."

Descending to the drawing room she was surprised to find Justin ahead of her. He accepted a hefty whisky and soda, she poured herself a glass of white wine and sat in an armchair, actually Sandy's, but she wasn't thinking of Sandy. For minutes-she'd no idea how many in real time-neither of them spoke, but the silence was a bond that Gloria felt more keenly the longer it went on. Justin sipped his whisky, and she was relieved to note that he had not caught Sandy's thoroughly irritating new habit of closing his eyes and pouting as if the whisky had been given him to test. Glass in hand, he moved himself to the French window, looking out into the floodlit garden--twenty 150-watt bulbs hooked up to the house generator, and the blaze of them burning one half of his face. "Maybe that's what everyone thinks," he remarked suddenly, resuming a conversation file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (85 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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they had not had. "What is, dear?" Gloria asked, not certain she was being addressed, but asking anyway because he clearly needed to talk to someone. "That you were loved for being someone you weren't. That you're a sort of fraud. A love thief." Gloria had no idea whether this was something everyone thought, but she had no doubts at all that they shouldn't. "Of course you're not a fraud, Justin," she said stoutly. "You're one of the most genuine people I know, you always were. Tessa adored you and so she should have done. She was a very lucky young girl indeed." As for love thief, she thoughtwell, no prizes for guessing who did the love thieving in that duo! Justin did not respond to this glib assurance, or not that she could see, and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (86 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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for a spell all she heard was the chain reaction of barking dogs--one started, then all the others did, up and down Muthaiga's golden mile. "You were always good to her, Justin, you know you were. You mustn't go castigating yourself for crimes you didn't commit. A lot of people do that when they lose someone, and they're not being fair on themselves. We can't go round treating people as if they were going to drop dead any minute, or we'd never get anywhere. Well, would we? You were loyal to her. Always," she asserted, thereby incidentally implying that the same could not be said for Tessa. And the implication was not lost on him, she was sure of it: he was on the brink of talking about that wretched Arnold Bluhm when to her vexation she heard the clunk of her husband's latchkey in the door and knew the spell was broken. "Justin, you poor chap, how's it going?" Woodrow cried, pouring himself an file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (87 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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unusually modest glass of wine before crashing onto the sofa. "No more news, I'm afraid. Good or bad. No clues, no suspects, not as yet. No trace of Arnold. The Belgians are supplying a helicopter, London's coming up with a second. Money, money, curse of us all. Still, he's a Belgian citizen, so why not? How very pretty you're looking, sweet. What's for dins?" He's been drinking, Gloria thought in disgust. He pretends to work late and he sits there in his office drinking while I make the boys do their homework. She heard a movement from the window and saw to her dismay that Justin had braced himself to take his leave--scared off, no doubt, by her husband's elephantine flat-footedness. "No food?" Woodrow protested. "Got to keep your strength up, you know, old boy." "You are very kind but I fear I have no appetite. Gloria, thank you again. Sandy, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (88 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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good night." "And the Pellegrin sends strong supporting messages from London. Whole Foreign Office struck down with grief, he says. Didn't want to intrude personally." "Bernard was always very tactful." She watched the door close, she heard his footsteps descend the concrete staircase, she saw his empty glass resting on the bamboo table beside the French window, and for a frightening moment she was convinced she would never see him again. Woodrow bolted his dinner clumsily, not tasting it as usual. Gloria, who like Justin had no appetite, watched him. Juma their houseboy, tiptoeing restlessly between them, watched him too. "How we faring?" Woodrow murmured with a conspiratorial slur, keeping his voice down and pointing at the floor to warn her to do the same. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (89 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Been fine," she said, playing his game. "Considering." What are you doing down there? she wondered. Are you lying on your bed, flailing yourself in the darkness? Or are you staring through your bars into the garden, talking to her ghost? "Anything of any significance come out?" Woodrow was asking, stumbling a bit on the word "significance" but still contriving to keep their conversation allusive on account of Juma. "Like what?" "About our lover boy," he said and, leering shamefully, jabbed a thumb at her begonias and mouthed "bloom," at which Juma hurried off to get a jug of water. For hours Gloria lay awake beside her snoring husband until, fancying she heard a sound from downstairs, she crept to the landing and peered out of the window. The file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (90 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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power cut was over. An orange glow from the city lifted to the stars. But no Tessa lurked in the lighted garden, and no Justin either. She returned to bed to find Harry diagonally asleep with his thumb in his mouth and one arm across his father's chest. * * * The family rose early as usual, but Justin was ahead of them, dressed in his crushed suit and hovering. He looked flushed, she thought, a little overbusy, too much color under the brown eyes. The boys shook his hand, gravely as instructed, and Justin meticulously returned their greetings. "Oh Sandy, yes, good morning," he said as soon as Woodrow appeared. "I wondered whether we might have a quick word." The two men withdrew to the sun lounge. "It's about my house," Justin began, as soon as they were alone. "House here or house in London, old boy?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (91 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Woodrow countered in a fatuous effort to be cheerful. And Gloria, listening to every word through the serving hatch to the kitchen, could have brained him. "Here in Nairobi. Her private papers, lawyers' letters. Her family-trust material. Documents that are precious to both of us. I can't leave her personal correspondence sitting there for the Kenyan police to plunder at will." "So what's the solution, old boy?" "I'd like to go there. At once." So firm! Gloria rhapsodized. So forceful, in spite of everything! "My dear chap, that's impossible. The hacks would eat you alive." "I don't believe that's true, actually. They can try and take my photograph, I suppose. They can shout at me. If I don't file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (92 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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reply to them, that's about as far as they can go. Catch them while they're shaving." Gloria knew her husband's prevarications inside out. In a minute he'll call Bernard Pellegrin in London. That's what he always does when he needs to bypass Porter Coleridge and get the answer he wants to hear. "Look here, tell you what, old boy. Why not write me a list of what you want and I'll pass it to Mustafa somehow and have him bring the stuff here?" Typical, thought Gloria furiously. Dither, haver, look for the easy way out every time. "Mustafa would have no idea what to select," she heard Justin reply, as firmly as before. "And a list would be no good to him at all. Even shopping lists defeat him. I owe it to her, Sandy. It's a debt of honor and I must discharge it. Whether or not you come along." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (93 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Class will out! Gloria applauded silently from her touchline. Well played, that man! But even then it did not occur to her, though her mind was opening up in all sorts of unexpected directions, that her husband might have his own reasons for wishing to visit Tessa's house. * * * The press were not shaving. Justin had that wrong. Or if they were, they were doing it on the grass verges outside Justin's house, where they had been camping all night in hire cars, dumping their garbage in the hydrangea bushes. A couple of African vendors in Uncle Sam pants and top hats had opened a tea stand. Others were cooking maize on charcoal. Lackluster policemen hung around a beatenup patrol car, yawning and smoking cigarettes. Their leader, an enormously fat man in a polished brown belt and gold Rolex, was sprawled in the front passenger seat with his eyes shut. It was half past seven in the morning. Low cloud cut off file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (94 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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the city. Large blackbirds were changing places on the overhead wires, waiting for their moment to swoop for food. "Drive past, then stop," Woodrow the soldier's son ordered from the back of the van. It was the same arrangement as the day before: Livingstone and Jackson up front, Woodrow and Justin hunkered on the rear seat. The black Volkswagen had CD plates but so had every second vehicle in Muthaiga. An informed eye might have spotted the British prefix to the license number, but no such eye was present, nobody showed any interest as Livingstone drove sedately past the gates and up the gentle slope. Easing the van to a halt, he put on the hand brake. "Jackson, get out of the van, walk slowly down the hill to the gates of Mr. Quayle's house. What's the name of your gatekeeper?" This to Justin. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (95 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Omari," Justin said. "Tell Omari that as the van approaches he is to open the gates at the last minute, and close them as soon as it's through. Stay with him to make sure he does exactly what he's told. Now." Born to the part, Jackson clambered out of the van, stretched, fiddled with his belt and finally ambled down the hill to Justin's iron security gates where, under the eye of police and journalists, he took up a place beside Omari. "All right, back down," Woodrow ordered Livingstone. "Very slowly. Take your time." Livingstone released the hand brake and, with the engine still running, allowed the van to curl gently backward down the slope until the tailgate was tucked into the opening to Justin's drive. He's turning round, they may have thought. If so, they file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (96 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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can't have thought it long, because in the next moment he had slammed down the accelerator and was racing backwards to the gates, scattering astonished journalists to left and right of him. The gates flew open, pulled on one side by Omari and on the other by Jackson. The van passed through, the gates slammed shut again. Jackson on the house side leaped back into the van while Livingstone kept it rolling all the way to Justin's porch and up the two steps, to rest inches from the front door, which Justin's houseboy Mustafa, with exemplary prescience, flung open from inside while Woodrow bundled Justin ahead of him, then sprang after him into the hall, slamming the front door shut behind them as he went. * * * The house was in darkness. Out of respect for Tessa or the newshounds, the staff had drawn the curtains. The three men stood in the hall, Justin, Woodrow, Mustafa. Mustafa was weeping silently. Woodrow could make out his crumpled face, the grimace of white teeth, the tears set wide file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (97 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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on the cheeks, almost underneath the ears. Justin was holding Mustafa's shoulders, comforting him. Startled by this unEnglish demonstration of affection on Justin's part, Woodrow was also offended by it. Justin drew Mustafa against him until Mustafa's clenched jaw rested on his shoulder. Woodrow looked away in embarrassment. Down the passage other shadows had appeared from the servants' area: the one-armed illegal Ugandan shamba boy who helped Justin in the garden and whose name Woodrow had never managed to retain, and the illegal South Sudanese refugee called Esmeralda who was always having boy trouble. Tessa could no more resist a sob story than she could bow to local regulations. Sometimes her household had resembled a pan-African hostel for disabled down-and-outs. More than once, Woodrow had remonstrated with Justin on the subject but met a blank wall. Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for churlishness or indifference. Woodrow file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (98 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This is how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born and you Wazungu have not. Gently pushing Mustafa away, Justin received Esmeralda in a double handshake during which she laid the side of her braided forehead against his. Woodrow had the sensation of being admitted to a circle of affection he had not dreamed of. Would Juma weep like this if Gloria got her throat cut? Like hell he would. Would Ebediah? Would Gloria's new maid, whatever her name is? Justin pressed the Ugandan outdoor boy against him, fondled his cheek, then turned his back on all of them and with his right hand took a grasp of the handrail on the staircase. Looking for a moment like the old man he soon would be, he began hauling himself upward. Woodrow watched him gain the shadows of the landing and vanish into the bedroom Woodrow had never entered, though he had file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCarre%20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (99 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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imagined it in countless furtive ways. Finding he was alone, Woodrow hovered, feeling threatened, which was how he felt whenever he entered her house: a country boy come to town. If it's a co*cktail party, why don't I know these people? Whose cause are we being asked to espouse tonight? Which room will she be in? Where's Bluhm? At her side, most likely. Or in the kitchen, reducing the servants to paroxysms of helpless laughter. Remembering his purpose, Woodrow edged his way along the twilit corridor to the drawing room door. It was unlocked. Blades of morning sunlight thrust their way between the curtains, illuminating the shields and masks and frayed handwoven throw rugs made by paraplegics, with which Tessa had succeeded in enlivening her dreary government furnishings. How did she make everything so pretty with this junk? The same brick fireplace as ours, the same boxed-in iron girders masquerading as oak beams of Merrie England. Everything like file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (100 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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ours but smaller, because the Quayles were childless and a rank lower. Then why did Tessa's house always seem to be the real thing, and ours its unimaginative ugly sister? He reached the middle of the room and stopped, arrested by the power of memory. This is where I stood and lectured her, the contessa's daughter, from beside this pretty inlaid table that she said her mother had loved, while I clutched the back of this flimsy satinwood chair and pontificated like a Victorian father. Tessa standing over there in front of the window, and the sunlight cutting straight through her cotton dress. Did she know that I was talking to a naked silhouette? That just to look at her was to see my dream of her come true, my girl on a beach, my stranger on a train? "I thought the best thing I could do was call by," he begins sternly. "Now why did you think that, Sandy?" she asks. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (101 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Eleven in the morning. Chancery meeting over, Justin safely dispatched to Kampala, attending some useless three-day conference on Aid and Efficiency. I have come here on official business, but I have parked my car in a side street like a guilty lover calling on a brother officer's beautiful young wife. And God, is she beautiful. And God, is she young. Young in the high, sharp breasts that never move. How can Justin let her out of his sight? Young in the gray, wideangry eyes, in the smile too wise for her age. Woodrow can't see the smile because she is backlit. But he can hear it in her voice. Her teasing, foxing, classy voice. He can retrieve it in his memory anytime. As he can retrieve the line of her waist and thighs in the naked silhouette, the maddening fluidity of her walk, no wonder she and Justin fell for one another-they're from the same thoroughbred stable, twenty years apart. "Tess, honestly, this can't go on." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (102 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Don't call me Tess." "Why not?" "That name's reserved." Who by? he wonders. Bluhm, or another of her lovers? Quayle never called her Tess. Nor did Ghita, as far as Woodrow knew. "You simply can't go on expressing yourself so freely. Your opinions." And then the passage he has prepared in advance, the one that reminds her of her duty as the responsible wife of a serving diplomat. But he never reaches the end of it. The word "duty" has stung her into action. "Sandy, my duty is to Africa. What's yours?" He is surprised to have to answer for himself. "To my country, if you'll allow file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (103 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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me to be pompous. As Justin's is. To my Service and my Head of Mission. Does that answer you?" "You know it doesn't. Not nearly. It's miles off." "How would I know anything of the kind?" "I thought you might have come to talk to me about the riveting documents I gave you." "No, Tessa, I did not. I came here to ask you to stop shooting your mouth off about the misdoings of the Moi government in front of every Tom, Dick and Harry in Nairobi. I came here to ask you to be one of the team for a change, instead of--oh, finish the sentence for yourself," he ends rudely. Would I have talked to her like that if I'd known she was pregnant? Probably not so baldly. But I would have talked to her. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (104 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Did I guess that she was pregnant while I tried not to notice her naked silhouette? No. I was wanting her beyond bearing, as she could tell by the altered state of my voice and the stiltedness of my movements. "So you mean you haven't read them?" she says, sticking determinedly to the subject of the documents. "You'll be telling me in a minute that you haven't had time." "Of course I've read them." "And what did you make of them when you'd read them, Sandy?" "They tell me nothing I don't know, and nothing I can do anything about." "Now Sandy, that's very negative of you. It's worse. It's pusillanimous. Why can't you do anything about them?" Woodrow, hating how he sounds: "Because we are diplomats and not policemen, Tessa. The Moi government is terminally corrupt, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (105 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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you tell me. I never doubted it. The country is dying of AIDS, it's bankrupt, there is not a corner of it, from tourism to wildlife to education to transport to welfare to communications, that isn't falling apart from fraud, incompetence and neglect. Well observed. Ministers and officials are diverting lorry-loads of food aid and medical supplies earmarked for starving refugees, sometimes with the connivance of aid agency employees, you say. Of course they are. Expenditure on the country's health runs at five dollars per head per year and that's before everybody from the top of the line to the bottom has taken his cut. The police routinely mishandle anybody unwise enough to bring these matters to public attention. Also true. You have studied their methods. They use water torture, you say. They soak people, then beat them, which reduces visible marks. You are right. They do. They are not selective. And we do not protest. They also rent out their weapons to friendly murder gangs, to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (106 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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be returned by first light or you don't get your deposit back. The High Commission shares your disgust, but still we do not protest. Why not? Because we are here, mercifully, to represent our country, not theirs. We have thirty-five thousand indigenous Britons in Kenya whose precarious livelihood depends on President Moi's whim. The High Commission is not in the business of making life harder for them than it already is." "And you have British business interests to represent," she reminds him playfully. "That is not a sin, Tessa," he retorts, trying to wrest the lower half of his gaze from the shadow of her breasts through the puff of dress. "Commerce is not a sin. Trading with emerging countries is not a sin. Trade helps them to emerge, as a matter of fact. It makes reforms possible. The kind of reforms we all want. It brings them into the modern world. It enables us to help them. How can we help a poor country if we're not rich ourselves?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (107 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Bullsh*t." "I beg your pardon?" "Specious, unadulterated, pompous Foreign Office bullsh*t, if you want its full name, worthy of the inestimable Pellegrin himself. Look around you. Trade isn't making the poor rich. Profits don't buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts." "I dispute that absolutely--" She cuts him short. "So it's file and forget. Right? No action at this time. Signed, Sandy. Great. The mother of democracies is once more revealed as a lying hypocrite, preaching liberty and human rights for all, except where she hopes to make a buck." "That's not fair at all! All right, Moi's Boys are crooks and the old man still has file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (108 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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a couple of years to run. But good things are on the horizon. A word in the right ear--the collective withholding of donor nations' aid--quiet diplomacy--they're all having their effect. And Richard Leakey is being drafted into the Cabinet to put a brake on corruption and reassure donors that they can start giving again without financing Moi's rackets." He is beginning to sound like a guidance telegram, and knows it. Worse, she knows it too, as evidenced by a very big yawn. "Kenya may not have much of a present but it has a future," he ends bravely. And waits for a reciprocal sign from her to indicate that they are moving toward some kind of cobbled truce. But Tessa, he remembers too late, is not a conciliator, neither is her bosom pal Ghita. They are both young enough to believe there is such a thing as simple truth. "The document I gave you supplies names and dates and bank accounts," she insists remorselessly. "Individual ministers are identified and incriminated. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (109 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Will that be a word in the right ear too? Or is nobody listening out there?" "Tessa." She is slipping away from him when he came here to be closer to her. "Sandy." "I take your point. I hear you. But for heaven's sake--in the name of sanity--you can't seriously be suggesting that HMG in the person of Bernard Pellegrin should be conducting a witchhunt against named ministers of the Kenyan government! I mean, my God--it's not as if we Brits were above corruption ourselves. Is the Kenyan High Commissioner in London about to tell us to clean up our act?" "Sheer bloody humbug and you know it," Tessa snaps, eyes flaming. He has not reckoned with Mustafa. He file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (110 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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enters silently, at the stoop. First with great accuracy he sets a small table midway between them on the carpet, then a silver tray with a silver coffeepot and her late mother's silver sweetmeat basket filled with shortbread. And the intrusion clearly stimulates Tessa's ever-present sense of theater, for she kneels upright before the little table, shoulders back, dress stretched across her breasts while she punctuates her speech with humorously barbed inquiries about his tastes. "Was it black, Sandy, or just a touch of the cream?--I forget," she asks with mock gentility. This is the Pharisaic life we lead--she is telling him--a continent lies dying at our door, and here we stand or kneel drinking coffee off a silver tray while just down the road children starve, the sick die and crooked politicians bankrupt the nation that was tricked into electing them. "A witch-hunt--since you mention it--would make an excellent beginning. Name 'em, shame 'em, chop their heads off and spike 'em on the city gates, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (111 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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says I. The trouble is, it doesn't work. The same List of Shame is published every year in the Nairobi newspapers, and the same Kenyan politicians feature in it every time. Nobody is sacked, nobody is hauled up before the courts." She hands him a cup, swiveling on her knees to reach him. "But it doesn't bother you, does it? You're a status quo man. That's a decision you've taken. It hasn't been thrust upon you. You took it. You, Sandy. You looked in the mirror one day and you thought: Hullo, me, from now on I'll treat the world as I find it. I'll get the best deal I can for Britain, and I'll call it my duty. Never mind if it's a duty that accounts for the survival of some of the foulest governments on the globe. I'll do it anyway." She offers him sugar. He silently declines it. "So I'm afraid we can't agree, can we? I want to speak up. You want me to bury my head where yours is. One woman's duty is another man's copout. What's new?"

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"And Justin?" Woodrow asks, playing his last useless card. "Where does he come into this, I wonder?" She stiffens, sensing a trap. "Justin is Justin," she replies warily. "He has made his choices as I have made mine." "And Bluhm's Bluhm, I suppose," Woodrow sneers, driven by jealousy and anger to speak the name he has promised himself he will on no account utter. And she, apparently, has sworn not to hear it. By some bitter inner discipline she keeps her lips tightly closed while she waits for him to make an even bigger fool of himself. Which he duly does. Royally. "You don't think you're prejudicing Justin's career, for instance?" he inquires haughtily. "Is that why you came to see me?" "Basically, yes." "I thought you'd come here to save me from file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (113 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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myself. Now it turns out you've come to save Justin from me. How very laddish of you." "I had imagined Justin's interests and yours were identical." A taut, humorless laugh, as her anger returns. But unlike Woodrow she does not lose her self-control. "Good heavens, Sandy, you must be the only person in Nairobi who imagines any such thing!" She stands up, the game over. "I think you'd better go now. People will begin to talk about us. I won't send you more documents, you'll be relieved to hear. We can't have you wearing out the High Commissioner's shredder, can we? You might lose promotion points." Reliving this scene as he had relived it repeatedly in the twelve months since it had taken place, feeling again his humiliation and frustration and her scornful gaze burning his back as he took file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (114 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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his leave, Woodrow surreptitiously pulled open a slim drawer of the inlaid table that her mother had loved and swept his hand round the inside, gathering together anything he found. I was drunk, I was mad, he told himself in extenuation of this act. I had a craving to do something rash. I was trying to bring the roof tumbling round my head so that I would see clear sky. One piece of paper--that's all he asked as he frantically slewed and skimmed his way through drawers and shelves--one insignificant sheet of Her Majesty's Stationery Office blue, with one side of writing, mine, saying the unsayable in words that for once do not equivocate, do not say, On the one hand this, but on the other hand there's nothing I can do about it--signed not S or SW but Sandy in good, legible script and very nearly the name WOODROW in block capitals after it to show the whole world and Tessa Quayle that, for five deranged minutes back in his office that same evening, with her naked file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (115 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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silhouette still taunting his memory, and a king-sized glass of hospitality whisky at his timid lover's elbow, one Sandy Woodrow, Head of Chancery at the British High Commission in Nairobi, performed an act of unique, deliberate, calculated lunacy, putting at risk career, wife and children in a doomed effort to bring his life closer to his feelings.

And having written as he wrote, had enclosed said letter in Her Majesty's envelope and sealed said envelope with a whisky-flavored tongue. Had carefully addressed it and--ignoring all sensible internal voices urging him to wait an hour, a day, another lifetime, have himself another Scotch, apply for home leave or at the very least send the letter tomorrow morning after he has slept on it-had borne it aloft to the High Commission mail room where a locally employed Kikuyu clerk named Jomo after the great Kenyatta, not troubling to inquire why a Head of Chancery might be sending a hand-delivered file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (116 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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letter marked PERSONAL to the naked silhouette of the beautiful young wife of a colleague and subordinate, had slung it in a bag marked LOCAL UNCLASSIFIED while obsequiously chanting, "Night, Mr. Woodrow, sir," to his departing back. * * * Old Christmas cards. Old invitation cards marked with a cross for "no" in Tessa's hand. Others, more emphatically marked, "never." Old get-well card from Ghita Pearson, portraying Indian birds. A twist of ribbon, a wine cork, a bunch of diplomats' calling cards held together with a bulldog clip. But no small, single sheet of HM Stationery Office blue ending with the triumphant scrawl: "I love you, I love you and I love you, Sandy." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (117 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Woodrow sidled swiftly along the last shelves, flipping open books at random, opening trinket boxes, acknowledging defeat. Take a grip on yourself, man, he urged, as he fought to turn bad news into good. All right: no letter. Why should there be a letter? Tessa? After twelve months? Probably chucked it in the wastepaper basket the day she got it. A woman like that, compulsive flirt, husband a wimp, she gets a pass made at her twice a month. Three times! Weekly! Daily! He was sweating. In Africa, sweat broke out on him in a greasy shower, then dried up. He stood head forward, letting the torrent fall, listening. What's the bloody man doing up there? Softly back and forth? Private papers, he had said. Lawyers' letters. What papers did she keep upstairs that were too private for the ground floor? The drawing room telephone was ringing. It had been ringing nonstop ever since they entered the house, but he had only now noticed it. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (118 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Journalists? Lovers? Who cares? He let it ring. He was plotting the upstairs layout of his own house and applying it to this one. Justin was directly above him, left of the stairwell as you went up. There was a dressing room and there was the bathroom and there was the main bedroom. Woodrow remembered Tessa telling him she had converted the dressing room into a workroom: It's not only men who have dens, Sandy. Us girls have them too, she had told him provocatively, as if she were instructing him in body parts. The rhythm changed. Now you're collecting stuff from round the room. What stuff? Documents that are precious to both of us. To me too maybe, thought Woodrow, in a sickening reminder of his folly. Discovering he was now standing at the window overlooking the back garden, he poked aside the curtain and saw festoons of flowering shrubs, the pride of Justin's "open days" for junior staff when he served strawberries and cream and cold white wine and gave them the tour of his file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (119 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Elysium. "One year's gardening in Kenya is worth ten in England," he liked to claim as he made his comic little pilgrimages round Chancery, handing out his flowers to the boys and girls. It was the only subject, come to think of it, on which he had been known to boast. Woodrow squinted sideways along the shoulder of the hill. The Quayle house was no distance from his own. The way the hill ran, they could see one another's lights at night. His eye homed on the very window from which too often he had been moved to stare in this direction. Suddenly he was as near as he ever came to weeping. Her hair was in his face. He could swim in her eyes, smell her perfume and the scent of warm sweet grass you got from her when you were dancing with her at Christmas at the Muthaiga Club and by sheer accident your nose brushed against her hair. It's the curtains, he realized, waiting for his half tears to recede. They've kept her scent and I'm standing right up against them. On an impulse he grabbed the curtain in both file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (120 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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hands, about to bury his face in it. "Thank you, Sandy. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

He swung round, shoving the curtain away from him. Justin was looming in the doorway, looking as flustered as Woodrow felt and clutching a long, orange, sausageshaped leather Gladstone bag, fully laden and very scuffed, with brass screws, brass corners and brass padlocks either end. "All set then, old man? Debt of honor discharged?" Woodrow asked, taken aback but, as a good diplomat, recovering his charm immediately. "Jolly good. That's the way then. And you've got everything you came for, all that?" "I believe so. Yes. To a point." "You sound unsure." "Really? I don't mean to. It was her father's," he explained, making a gesture file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (121 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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with the bag. "Looks more like an abortionist's," said Woodrow, to be chummy. He offered a hand to help him, but Justin preferred to carry his booty for himself. Woodrow climbed into the van, Justin climbed after him, to sit with one hand curled over its old leather carrying handles. The taunts of journalists came at them through the thin walls: "Do you reckon Bluhm topped her, Mr. Quayle?" "Hey, Justin, my proprietor is offering mega-megabucks." From the direction of the house, above the ringing of the telephone, Woodrow thought he heard a baby crying, and realized it was Mustafa. Press coverage of Tessa's murder was at file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (122 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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first not half as dire as Woodrow and his High Commissioner had feared. Arseholes who are expert at making something out of nothing, Coleridge cautiously observed, appeared equally capable of making nothing out of something. To begin with, that was what they did. "Bush Killers Slay British Envoy's Wife" ran the first reports, and this robust approach, written upward for the broadsheets and downward for the tabloids, served a discerning public well. The increasing hazards to aid workers around the globe were dwelled upon, there were stinging editorials on the failure of the United Nations to protect its own and the ever-rising cost of humanitarians brave enough to stand up and be counted. There was high talk of lawless tribesmen seeking whom they might devour, ritual killings, witchcraft and the gruesome trade in human skins. Much was made of the presence of roving gangs of illegal immigrants from Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. But nothing at all of the irrefutable fact that Tessa and Bluhm, in full view of staff and guests, had shared file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (123 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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a cabin on the night before her death. Bluhm was "a Belgian aid official"--right-"a United Nations medical consultant"-wrong--"an expert in tropical diseases"-wrong--and was feared abducted by the murderers, to be held for ransom or killed. The bond between the experienced Dr. Arnold Bluhm and his beautiful young protegee was commitment, it was humanitarian. And that was all it was. Noah made it only to the first editions, then died a second death. Black blood, as every Fleet Street schoolboy knows, is not news, but a decapitation is worth a mention. The searchlight was remorselessly on Tessa, the Society Girl Turned Oxbridge Lawyer, the Princess Diana of the African Poor, the Mother Teresa of the Nairobi Slums and the FO Angel Who Gave a Damn. An editorial in the Guardian made much of the fact that the Millennium's New Woman Diplomat [sic] should have met her death at Leakey's cradle of mankind, and drew file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (124 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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from this the disquieting moral that, though racial attitudes may change, we cannot plumb the wells of savagery that are to be found at the heart of every man's darkness. The piece lost some of its impact when a subeditor unfamiliar with the African continent set Tessa's murder on the shores of Lake Tanganyika rather than Turkana. There were photographs of her galore. Cheerful baby Tessa in the arms of her father the judge in the days when His Honor was a humble barrister struggling along on half a million a year. Ten-yearold Tessa in plaits and jodhpurs at her rich girl's private school, docile pony in background. (though her mother was an Italian contessa, it was noted approvingly, the parents had wisely settled for a British education.) Teenaged Golden Girl Tessa in bikini, her uncut throat artfully highlighted by the photographic editor's airbrush. Tessa in saucily pitched mortarboard, academic gown and miniskirt. Tessa in the ludicrous garb file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (125 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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of a British barrister, following in her father's footsteps. Tessa on her wedding day, and Old Etonian Justin already smiling his older Etonian's smile.

Toward Justin, the press showed an unusual restraint, partly because they wished nothing to tarnish the shining image of their instant heroine, partly because there was precious little to say about him. Justin was "one of the FO'S loyal middle-rankers"--read "pen pusher"--a longterm bachelor "born into the diplomatic tradition" who before his marriage had flown the flag in some of the world's least favored hot spots, among them Aden and Beirut. Colleagues spoke kindly of his coolness in crisis. In Nairobi he had headed a "hightech international forum" on aid. Nobody used the word "backwater." Rather comically, there turned out to be a dearth of photographs of him either before or after his wedding. A "family snap" showed a clouded, inward-looking youth who with hindsight seemed marked down for file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (126 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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early widowhood. It was abstracted, Justin confessed under pressure from his hostess, from a group picture of the Eton rugby team. "I didn't know you were a rugger man, Justin! How very plucky of you," cried Gloria, whose self-appointed task each morning after breakfast was to take him his letters of commiseration and newspaper cuttings sent up by the High Commission. "It wasn't plucky at all," he retorted in one of those flashes of spirit that Gloria so relished. "I was press-ganged into it by a thug of a housemaster who thought we weren't men till we'd been kicked to pieces. The school had no business releasing that photograph." And cooling down: "I'm most grateful, Gloria." As he was for everything, she reported to Elena: for his drinks and meals and for his prison cell; for their turns together in the garden and their little seminars on bedding plants--he was particularly file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (127 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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complimentary about the alyssum, white and purple, that she had finally persuaded to spread underneath the bombax tree--for her help in handling details of the approaching funeral, including going with Jackson to inspect the grave site and funeral home, since Justin by edict of London was to remain gated till the hue and cry died down. A faxed Foreign Office letter to this effect, addressed to Justin at the High Commission and signed "Alison Landsbury, Head of Personnel," had produced an almost violent effect on Gloria. She could not afterward remember an occasion when she so nearly lost control of herself. "Justin, you are being outrageously misused. "Surrender the keys to your house until the appropriate steps have been taken by the authorities," my Aunt Fanny! Which authorities? Kenyan authorities? Or those flatfeet from Scotland Yard who still haven't even bothered to call on you?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (128 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"But Gloria, I have already been to my house," Justin insisted, in an effort to soothe her. "Why fight a battle that is won? Will the cemetery have us?" "At two-thirty. We are to be at Lee's Funeral Parlor at two. A notice goes to the newspapers tomorrow." "And she's next to Garth"--Garth his dead son, so named after Tessa's father the judge. "As near as we can be, dear. Under the same jacaranda tree. With a little African boy." "You're very kind," he told her for the umpteenth time and, without further word, removed himself to the lower ground and his Gladstone bag. The bag was his comforter. Twice now Gloria had glimpsed him through the bars of the garden window, seated motionless on file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (129 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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his bed, head in hands and the bag at his feet, staring down at it. Her secret conviction--shared with Elena--was that it contained Bluhm's love letters. He had rescued them from prying eyes--no thanks to Sandy--and he was waiting till he was strong enough to decide whether to read them or burn them. Elena agreed, though she thought Tessa a stupid little tart to have kept them. "Read 'em and sling 'em is my motto, darling." Noticing Justin's reluctance to stray from his room for fear of leaving the bag unguarded, Gloria suggested he put it in the wine store, which, having an iron grille for a door, added to the prisonlike grimness of the lower ground. "And you shall keep the key, Justin"-grandly entrusting it to him. "There. And when Sandy wants a bottle he'll have to come and ask you for it. Then perhaps he'll drink less." * * * Gradually, as one press deadline followed file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (130 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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another, Woodrow and Coleridge almost persuaded themselves that they had held the dam. Either Wolfgang had silenced his staff and guests, or the press was so obsessed with the scene of the crime that nobody bothered to check out the Oasis, they told each other. Coleridge personally addressed the assembled elders of the Muthaiga Club entreating them, in the name of Anglo-Kenyan solidarity, to stem the flow of gossip. Woodrow delivered a similar homily to the staff of the High Commission. Whatever we may think privately we must do nothing that could fan the flames, he urged, and his wise words, earnestly delivered, had their effect. But it was all illusion, as Woodrow in his rational heart had known from the start. Just as the press was running out of steam, a Belgian daily ran a front-page story accusing Tessa and Bluhm of "a passionate liaison" and featuring a page photocopied from the registration book at the Oasis and eyewitness accounts of the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (131 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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loving couple dining head to head on the eve of Tessa's murder. The British Sundays had a field day; overnight Bluhm became a figure of loathing for Fleet Street to snipe at as it wished. Until now, he had been Arnold Bluhm, M.d., the adopted Congolese son of a wealthy Belgian mining couple, educated Kinshasa, Brussels and the Sorbonne, medical monk, denizen of war zones, selfless healer of Algiers. From now on he was Bluhm the seducer, Bluhm the adulterer, Bluhm the maniac. A page-three feature about murderous doctors down the ages was accompanied by lookalike photographs of Bluhm and O. J. Simpson over the catchy heading "Which Twin is the Doctor?" Bluhm, if you were that kind of newspaper reader, was your archetypal black killer. He had ensnared a white man's wife, cut her throat, decapitated the driver and run off into the bush to seek new prey or do whatever those salon blacks do when they revert to type. To make the comparison more graphically, they had airbrushed out Bluhm's beard. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (132 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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All day long Gloria kept the worst away from Justin, fearing it would unhinge him. But he insisted on seeing everything, warts and all. So come the evening hour and before Woodrow returned, she took him a whisky and reluctantly presented him with the whole garish bundle. Entering his prison space, she was outraged to discover her son Harry sitting opposite him at the rickety pine table, and both of them frowning in concentration over a game of chess. A wave of jealousy seized her. "Harry, dear, that's most inconsiderate of you, badgering poor Mr. Quayle for chess when--" But Justin interrupted her before she could finish her sentence. "Your son has a most serpentine mind, Gloria," he assured her. "Sandy will have to watch himself, believe me." Taking the bundle from her, he sat himself languidly on the bed and flicked through it. "Arnold file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (133 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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has a pretty good notion of our prejudices, you know," he went on in the same remote tone. "If he's alive, he won't be surprised. If he's not, he's not going to care, is he?" But the press had a far more lethal shot in its locker, which Gloria at her most pessimistic could not have foreseen. * * * Among the dozen or so maverick newsletters to which the High Commission subscribed-colored local broadsheets, pseudonymously written and printed on the hoof--one in particular had shown a remarkable capacity for survival. It was called, without adornment, "Africa Corrupt," and its policy, if such a word could be applied to the turbulent impulses that drove it, was to rake mud regardless of race, color, truth or the consequences. If it exposed alleged acts of larceny perpetrated by ministers and bureaucrats of the Moi administration, it was equally at home laying bare the "grafting, corruption and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (134 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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pigs-in-clover lifestyle" of the aid bureaucrats.

But the newsletter in question--known ever after as Issue 64--was devoted to none of these matters. It was printed on both sides of a single sheet of shocking-pink paper a yard square. Folded small, it fitted nicely in the jacket pocket. A thick black border signified that Issue 64's anonymous editors were in mourning. The headline consisted of the one word TESSA in black letters three inches high, and Woodrow's copy was delivered to him on Saturday afternoon by none other than the sickly, shaggy, bespectacled, mustached, six-foot-six Tim Donohue in person. The front doorbell rang as Woodrow was playing tip-andrun cricket with the boys in the garden. Gloria, normally a tireless wicket keeper, was grappling with a headache upstairs; Justin was hull down in his cell with the curtains closed. Woodrow walked through the house and, suspecting some journalist's ruse, peered through the fisheye. And there stood Donohue on the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (135 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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doorstep, a sheepish smile on his long sad face, flapping what looked like a pink table napkin back and forth. "Frightfully sorry to disturb you, old boy. Holy Saturday and all that. Spot of sh*t seems to have hit the proverbial fan." With undisguised distaste Woodrow led him to the drawing room. What on earth's the bloody man up to now? What on earth was he ever up to, come to think of it? Woodrow had always disliked the Friends, as the spies were unaffectionately known to the Foreign Office. Donohue wasn't smooth, he had no known linguistic skills, he didn't charm. He was to all outward purposes past his sell-by date. His day hours appeared to be spent on the Muthaiga Club golf course with the fleshier members of Nairobi's business community, his evenings at bridge. Yet he lived high, in a grand hiring with four servants and a faded beauty called Maud who looked as ill as he file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (136 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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did. Was Nairobi a sinecure for him? A kiss-off at the end of a distinguished career? Woodrow had heard the Friends did that sort of thing. Donohue was in Woodrow's judgment surplus ballast in a profession that was by definition parasitic and out of date. "One of my boys just happened to be loafing in the marketplace," Donohue explained. "A couple of chaps were handing out free copies in a shifty sort of way, so my lad thought he might as well have one." The front page consisted of three separate eulogies of Tessa, each purportedly written by a different African woman friend. The style was Afro-English vernacular: a little of the pulpit, a little of the soapbox, disarming flourishes of feeling. Tessa, each of the writers claimed in her different way, had broken the mold. With her wealth, parentage, education and looks she should have been up there dancing and feasting file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (137 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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with the worst of Kenya's white supremacists. Instead she was the opposite of all they stood for. Tessa was in revolt against her class, race and whatever she believed was tying her down, whether it was the color of her skin, the prejudice of her social equals or the bonds of a conventional Foreign Service marriage. "How's Justin holding up?" Donohue asked, while Woodrow read. "Well, thank you, considering." "I heard he was over at his house the other day." "Do you want me to read this or not?" "Pretty smart footwork, I must say, old boy, dodging those reptiles on the doorstep. You should join our lot. Is he around?" "Yes, but not receiving." If Africa was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (138 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Tessa Quayle's adopted country, Woodrow read, Africa's women were her adopted religion. Tessa fought for us no matter where the battleground, no matter what the taboos. She fought for us at posh champagne parties, posh dinner parties and any other posh party that was crazy enough to invite her, and her message was always the same. Only the emancipation of African women could save us from the blunderings and corruption of our menfolk. And when Tessa discovered she was pregnant, she insisted on bearing her African child among the African women she loved. "Oh my Christ," Woodrow exclaimed softly. "Bit what I felt, actually," Donohue agreed. The last paragraph was printed in capitals. Mechanically, Woodrow read it also: file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (139 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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GOOD-BYE MAMA TESSA. WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF YOUR COURAGE. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, MAMA TESSA, FOR YOUR LIFE. ARNOLD BLUHM MAY LIVE ON BUT YOU ARE DEAD WITHOUT QUESTION. IF THE BRITISH QUEEN EVER AWARDS MEDALS POSTHUMOUSLY; THEN INSTEAD OF ELEVATING MR. PORTER COLERIDGE TO A KNIGHTHOOD FOR HIS SERVICES TO BRITISH COMPLACENCY, LET'S HOPE SHE'LL GIVE THE VICTORIA CROSS TO YOU, MAMA TESSA, OUR FRIEND, FOR YOUR OUTSTANDING GALLANTRY IN THE FACE OF POSTCOLONIAL BIGOTRY. "Best bit's on the back, actually," Donohue said. Woodrow turned the paper round. MAMA TESSA'S AFRICAN BABY Tessa Quayle believed in putting her body and her life wherever her convictions led her. She expected others to do the same. When Tessa was confined in the Uhuru Hospital, Nairobi, her very close friend Dr. Arnold Bluhm visited her every day file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (140 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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and, according to some reports, most nights as well, even taking a folding bed with him so that he could sleep beside her in the ward. Woodrow folded the broadsheet and put it in his pocket. "Think I'll just run this round to Porter, if it's all right by you. I can keep it, presumably?" "All yours, old boy. Comps of the Firm." Woodrow was moving toward the door but Donohue showed no sign of following him. "Coming?" Woodrow asked. "Thought I'd just hang on, if you didn't mind. Say my piece to poor old Justin. Where is he? Upstairs?" "I thought we agreed you wouldn't do that." "Did we, old boy? No problem at all. Another time. Your house, your guest. You file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (141 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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haven't got Bluhm tucked away too, have you?" "Don't be ridiculous." Undeterred, Donohue loped to Woodrow's side, dipping at the knees, making a party piece of it. "Care for a lift? Only round the corner. Save you getting the car out. Too hot to walk." Still half fearing Donohue might nip back to make another attempt on Justin, Woodrow accepted the lift and watched his car safely over the hill. Porter and Veronica Coleridge were sunning themselves in the garden. Behind them lay the High Commission's Surrey mansion, before them the faultless lawns and weedless flower beds of a rich stockbroker's garden. Coleridge had the swing seat and was reading documents from a despatch case. His blonde wife Veronica, in corn blue skirt and floppy straw hat, was sprawled on the grass beside a padded playpen. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (142 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Within it, their daughter Rosie rolled to and fro on her back, admiring the foliage of an oak tree through the gaps between her fingers while Veronica hummed to her. Woodrow handed Coleridge the broadsheet and waited for the expletives. None came. "Who reads this crap?" "Every hack in town, I would imagine," said Woodrow tonelessly. "What's their next stop?" "The hospital," he replied with a sinking heart. Slumped in a corduroy armchair in Coleridge's study, one ear listening to him trading guarded sentences with his detested superior in London over the digital telephone that Coleridge kept locked inside his desk, Woodrow in the recurrent dream he would not shake off until his dying day watched his white man's body striding at colonial speed file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (143 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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through the immense crowded halls of Uhuru Hospital, pausing only to ask anybody in uniform for the right staircase, the right floor, the right ward, the right patient. "The sh*t Pellegrin says shove the whole thing under the carpet," Porter Coleridge announced, slamming down the telephone. "Shove it far and fast. Biggest bloody carpet we can find. Typical." Through the study window, Woodrow watched as Veronica lifted Rosie from her playpen and carried her toward the house. "I thought we were doing that already," he objected, still lost in his reverie. "What Tessa did in her spare time was her own business. That includes having it off with Bluhm and any noble causes she may have been into. Off the record and only if asked, we respected her crusades but considered them underinformed and screwball. And we don't comment on irresponsible claims by the gutter press." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (144 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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A pause while he wrestled with his selfdisgust. "And we're to put it about that she was crazy." "Why on earth should we do that?"--waking sharply. "Ours not to reason why. She was unhinged by her dead baby and unstable before it. She went to a shrink in London, which helps. It stinks and I hate it. When's the funeral?" "Middle of next week is the earliest." "Can't it be sooner?" "No." "Why not?" "We're waiting for the postmortem. Funerals have to be booked in advance." "Sherry?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (145 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"No thanks. Think I'll get back to the ranch." "The Office wants long-suffering. She was our cross but we bore her bravely. Can you do long-suffering?" "I don't think I can." "Neither can I. It makes me absolutely f*cking sick." The words had slipped from him so fast, with such subversiveness and conviction, that Woodrow at first doubted whether he had heard them at all. "The sh*t Pellegrin says it's a threeline whip," Coleridge continued in a tone of mordant contempt. "No doubters, no defectors. Can you accept that?" "I suppose so." "Well done, you. I'm not sure I can. Any file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (146 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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outside representations she made anywhere -she and Bluhm--together or separately-to anyone, including you or me--any bees she had in her bonnet--about matters animal, vegetable, political or pharmaceutical--" a long unbearable pause while Coleridge's eyes rested on him with the fervor of a heretic enjoining him to treason--"are outside our bailiwick and we know absolutely and completely f*ck all about them. Have I made myself clear or would you like me to write it on the wall in secret ink?" "You've made yourself clear." "Because Pellegrin made himself clear, you see. Unclear he was not." "No. He wouldn't be." "Did we keep copies of that stuff she never gave you? The stuff we never saw, touched or otherwise sullied our lily white consciences with?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (147 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Everything she gave us went to Pellegrin." "How clever of us. And heart, are you, Sandy? that, given that times you've got her husband room?"

you're in good Tail up and all are trying and in your guest

"I think so. How about you?" asked Woodrow who for some time, with Gloria's encouragement, had been looking with favor on the growing rift between Coleridge and London, and wondering how best to exploit it. "Not sure I am in good heart, actually," Coleridge replied, with more frankness than he had shown to Woodrow in the past. "Not sure at all. In fact, come to think of it, I'm bloody un-sure that I can subscribe to any of it. I can't, in fact. I refuse. So scupper Bernard bloody Pellegrin and all his works. Bugger them in fact. And he's a bloody awful tennis file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (148 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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player. I shall tell him." On any other day Woodrow might have welcomed such evidence of schism and done his modest best to foment it, but his memories of the hospital were hounding him with a vividness he could not escape, filling him with hostility toward a world that held him prisoner against his will. To walk from the High Commissioner's residence to his own took no more than ten minutes. Along the way he became a moving target for barking dogs, begging children calling "Five shillings, five shillings" as they ran after him, and wellintentioned motorists who slowed down to offer him a lift. Yet by the time he walked into his drive he had relived the most accusing hour of his life. * * * 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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (149 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (150 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (151 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (152 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (153 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"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. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (154 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (155 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"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, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (156 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (157 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"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 circ*mstances. 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 circ*mstances," she explains to the child. "Within reason. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (158 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (159 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (160 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (161 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (162 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (163 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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."

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"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." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (165 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (166 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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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." "Know what?" "What else Tessa and Bluhm got up to that's going to be headlines--tomorrow and for the next six weeks," he ended, on a note of self-pity. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (167 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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"Such as what?" "Bluhm was her guru. Well, wasn't he? Whatever else he was." "So?" "So they shared causes together. They sniffed out abuses. Human rights stuff. Bluhm has some kind of watchdog role-right? Or his employers have. So Tessa--" he was losing his way and Justin was watching him do it--"she helped him. Perfectly natural. In the circ*mstances. Used her lawyer's head." "D'you mind telling me where this is leading?" "Her papers. That's all. Her possessions. Those you collected. We did. Together." "What of them?"

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Woodrow pulled himself together: I'm your superior, for God's sake, not some bloody petitioner. Let's get our roles straight, shall we? "I need your assurance, therefore--that any papers she assembled for her causes-in her capacity as your wife herewith diplomatic status --here on HMG'S ticket-will be handed to the Office. It was on that understanding that I took you to your house last Tuesday. We would not have gone there otherwise." Justin had not moved. Not a finger, not an eyelid flickered while Woodrow delivered himself of this untruthful afterthought. Backlit, he remained as still as Tessa's naked silhouette. "The other assurance I'm to obtain from you is self-evident," Woodrow went on. "What other assurance?" "Your own discretion in the matter. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (169 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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Whatever you know of her activities--her agitations--her so-called aid work that spun out of control." "Whose control?" "I simply mean that wherever she ventured into official waters, you are as much bound by the rules of confidentiality as the rest of us. I'm afraid that's an order from on high." He was trying to make a joke of it but neither of them smiled. "Pellegrin's order." And you're in good heart, are you, Sandy? Given that times are trying and you've got her husband in your guest room? Justin was speaking at last. "Thank you, Sandy. I'm appreciative of all you've done for me. I'm grateful that you enabled me to visit my own house. But now I must collect the rent on Piccadilly, where I seem to own a valuable hotel."

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At which to Woodrow's astonishment he returned to the garden and, resuming his place next to Donohue, took up the game of Monopoly where he had left it. The British police were absolute lambs. Gloria said so, and if Woodrow didn't agree with her, he didn't show it. Even Porter Coleridge, though parsimonious in describing his dealings with them, declared them "surprisingly civilized considering they were sh*ts." And the nicest thing about them was-Gloria reported to Elena from her bedroom after she had escorted them to the living room for the start of their second day with Justin--the nicest thing ever was, El, that you really felt they were here to help, not heap more pain and embarrassment onto poor dear Justin's shoulders. Rob the boy was dishy--well, man really, El, he must be twenty-five if a day! A bit of an actor in a nonflashy way, and awfully good at taking off the Nairobi Blue Boys they had to work alongside. And Lesley--who's a woman, darling, N.b., which took everybody file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (171 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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by surprise, and shows you how little we know about the real England these days-clothes a little bit last season but, apart from that, well, frankly you'd never have guessed she didn't have our sort of education. Not by the voice, of course, because nobody speaks the way they're brought up anymore, they daren't. But totally at home in one's drawing room, very composed and selfassured, and cozy, with a nice warm smile and a bit of early gray in her hair which she very sensibly leaves, and what Sandy calls a decent quiet, so that you don't have to think of things to say all the time when they're having their pit stops and giving poor Justin a rest. The only problem was, Gloria had absolutely no idea what went on between them all, because she could hardly stand in the kitchen all day with her ear glued to the serving hatch, well, certainly not with the servants watching her, well, could she, El? But if the matter of the discussions file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (172 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:50]

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between Justin and the two police officers eluded her, Gloria knew even less about their dealings with her husband, for the good reason that he did not tell her they were taking place. * * * The opening exchanges between Woodrow and the two officers were courtesy itself. The officers said they understood the delicacy of their mission, they were not about to lift the lid on the white community in Nairobi, et cetera. Woodrow in return pledged the cooperation of his staff and all appropriate facilities, amen. The officers promised to keep Woodrow abreast of their investigations, so far as this was compatible with their instructions from the Yard. Woodrow genially pointed out that they were all serving the same Queen; and if first names were good enough for Her Majesty, they were good enough for us. "So what's Justin's job description here in the High Commission then, Mr. Woodrow?" Rob the boy asked politely, ignoring this file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (173 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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call to intimacy. Rob was a London marathon runner, all ears and knees and elbows and true grit. Lesley, who could have been his smarter elder sister, carried a useful bag which Woodrow facetiously imagined to contain the things Rob needed at the trackside-iodine, salt tablets, spare laces for his running shoes--but which actually, so far as he could see, contained nothing but a tape recorder, cassettes and a colorful array of shorthand pads and notebooks. Woodrow affected to consider. He wore the judicious frown that told you he was the professional. "Well, he's our in-house Old Etonian for a start," he said, and everybody enjoyed this good joke. "Basically, Rob, he's our British representative on the East African Donors' Effectiveness Committee known otherwise by the acronym EADEC," he went on, speaking with the clarity owed to Rob's limited intelligence. "The second E was originally file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (174 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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for "Efficacy" but that wasn't a word many people were familiar with round here, so we changed it to something more userfriendly." "It does what, this committee?" "EADEC is a relatively new consultative body, Rob, based here in Nairobi. It comprises representatives of all donor nations who provide aid, succor and relief to East Africa, in whatever form. Its members are drawn from the embassies and high commissions of each donor; the committee meets weekly and renders a fortnightly report." "To?" said Rob, writing. "All member countries, obviously." "On?" "On what the title says," said Woodrow patiently, making allowances for the boy's manners. "It fosters efficacy, or file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (175 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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effectiveness, in the aid field. In aid work, effectiveness is pretty much the gold standard. Compassion's a given," he added with a disarming smile that said we were all compassionate people. "EADEC addresses the thorny question of how much of each dollar from each donor nation actually reaches its target, and how much wasteful overlap and unhelpful competition exists between agencies on the ground. It grapples, as we all do, alas, with the aid world's three R's: reduplication, rivalry, rationalization. It balances overheads against productivity and--" the smile of one bestowing wisdom--"makes the odd tentative recommendation, given that-unlike you chaps--it has no executive powers and no powers of enforcement." A gracious tilting of the head announced the little confidence. "I'm not sure it was the greatest idea on earth, between ourselves. But it was the brainchild of our very own dear Foreign Secretary, it sat well with calls for greater transparency and an ethical foreign policy file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (176 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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and other questionable nostrums of the day, so we pushed it for all it was worth. There are those who say the U.n. should do the job. Others say the U.n. already does it. Others again say the U.n. is part of the disease. Take your pick." A deprecating shrug invited them to do just that. "What disease?" said Rob. "EADEC is not empowered to investigate at field level. Nevertheless, corruption is a major factor that has to be costed in as soon as you start to relate what is spent to what is achieved. Not to be confused with natural wastage and incompetence, but akin to them." He reached for a common man's analogy. "Take our dear old British water grid, built 1890 or thereabouts. Water leaves the reservoir. Some of it, if you're lucky, comes out of your tap. But there are some very leaky pipes along the way. Now when that water is donated out of the goodness of the general public's heart, you can't just let it seep away file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (177 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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into nowhere, can you? Certainly not if you're dependent on the fickle voter for your job." "Who does this committee job bring Justin into contact with?" Rob asked. "Ranking diplomats. Drawn from the international community here in Nairobi. Mostly counselor and above. The odd First Secretary, but not many." He seemed to think this required some explanation. "EADEC had to be exalted, in my judgment. Head in the clouds. Once it allowed itself to be dragged down to field level, it would end up as some kind of super nongovernmental organization--NGO to you, Rob --and be tarred with its own brush. I argued that strongly. All right: EADEC must be here in Nairobi, on the ground, locally aware. Obviously. But it's still a think tank. It must preserve the dispassionate overview. Absolutely vital that it remains--if you'll allow me to quote myself--an emotion-free zone. And file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (178 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Justin is the committee secretary. Nothing he's earned: it's our turn. He takes the minutes, collates the research and drafts the fortnightlies." "Tessa wasn't an emotion-free zone," Rob objected after a moment's thought. "Tessa was emotion all the way, from what we hear." "I'm afraid you've been reading too many newspapers, Rob." "No, I haven't. I've been looking at her field reports. She was right in there with her sleeves rolled up. sh*t up to her elbows, day and night." "And very necessary, no doubt. Very laudable. But hardly conducive to objectivity, which is the committee's first responsibility as an international consultative body," said Woodrow graciously, ignoring this descent into gutter language, as--at a different level entirely --he ignored it in his High file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (179 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Commissioner. "So they went their different ways," Rob concluded, sitting back and tapping his teeth with his pencil. "He was objective, she was emotional. He played the safe center, she worked the dangerous edges. I get it now. As a matter of fact, I think I knew that already. So where does Bluhm fit in?" "In what sense?" "Bluhm. Arnold Bluhm. Doctor. Where does he fit into the scheme of things in Tessa's life and yours?" Woodrow gave a little smile, forgiving this quirkish formulation. My life? What did her life have to do with mine? "We have a great variety of donor-financed organizations here, as I'm sure you know. All supported by different countries and funded by all sorts of charitable and other outfits. Our gallant President Moi file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (180 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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detests them en bloc." "Why?" "Because they do what his government would do if it was doing its job. They also bypass his systems of corruption. Bluhm's organization is modest, it's Belgian, it's privately funded and medical. That's all I can tell you about it, I'm afraid," he added, with a candor that invited them to share his ignorance of these things. But they were not so easily won. "It's a watchdog outfit," Rob informed him shortly. "Its physicians tour the other NGO'S, visit clinics, check out diagnoses and correct them. Like, "Maybe this isn't malaria, doctor, maybe it's liver cancer." Then they check out the treatment. They also deal in epidemiology. What about Leakey?" "What about him?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (181 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Bluhm and Tessa were on their way to his site--correct?" "Purportedly." "Who is he exactly? Leakey? What's his bag?" "He's by way of being a white African legend. An anthropologist and archaeologist who worked alongside his parents on the eastern shores of Turkana exploring the origins of mankind. When they died he continued their work. He directed the National Museum here in Nairobi and later took over wildlife and conservation." "But resigned." "Or was pushed. The story is complex." "Plus he's a thorn in Moi's breeches, right?"

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"He opposed Moi politically and was badly beaten up for his pains. He is now undergoing some kind of resurrection as the scourge of Kenyan corruption. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are effectively demanding his presence in the government." As Rob sat back and Lesley took her turn, it was clear that the distinction Rob had applied to the Quayles also defined the police officers' separate styles. Rob spoke in jerks, with the thickness of a man fighting to hold back his emotions. Lesley was the model of dispassion. "So what sort of man is this Justin?" she mused, observing him as a distant character in history. "Away from his place of work and this committee of his? What are his interests, appetites, what's his lifestyle, who is he?" "Oh my God, who are any of us?" Woodrow declaimed, perhaps a little too theatrically, at which Rob again rattled his pencil against his teeth and Lesley file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (183 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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smiled patiently; and Woodrow, with charming reluctance, recited a checklist of Justin's meager attributes: a keen gardener--though, come to think of it, not so keen since Tessa lost her baby-loves nothing better than toiling in the flower beds on a Saturday afternoon--a gentleman, whatever that means--the right sort of Etonian-courteous to a fault in his dealings with locally employed staff, of course--kind of chap who can be relied on to dance with the wallflowers at the High Commissioner's annual bash--bit of an old bachelor in ways Woodrow couldn't immediately call to mind--not a golfer or a tennis player to his knowledge, not a shooter or a fisher, not an outdoor man at all, apart from his gardening. And of course, a first-rate, meat-and-potatoes professional diplomat--bags of field experience, two or three languages, safe pair of hands, totally loyal to London guidance. And--here's the cruel bit, Robby no fault of his own, caught in the promotion bulge. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (184 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"And he doesn't keep low company or anything?" Lesley asked, consulting her notebook. "You wouldn't see him whooping it up in the shady nightclubs while Tessa was out on her field trips?" The question was already a bit of a joke. "That wouldn't be his thing, I take it?" "Nightclubs? Justin? What a wonderful thought! Annabel's maybe, twenty-five years ago. Whatever gave you that idea?" Woodrow exclaimed with a heartier laugh than he had had for days. Rob was happy to enlighten him. "Our Super, actually. Mr. Gridley, he did a spell in Nairobi on liaison. He says the nightclubs are where you'd hire a hit man if you had a mind to. There's one on River Road, a block away from the New Stanley, which is handy if you're staying there. Five hundred U.s. and they'll whack out anyone you want. Half down, half afterward. Less in some clubs, according to him, but then you don't get the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (185 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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quality." "Did Justin love Tessa?" Lesley asked, while Woodrow was still smiling. In the relaxed spirit that was growing up between them, Woodrow threw up his arms and offered a muted cry to heaven. "Oh my God! Who loves whom in this world and why?" And when Lesley did not immediately relieve him of the question: "She was beautiful. Witty. Young. He was fortysomething when he met her. Menopausal, heading for injury time, lonely, infatuated, wanting to settle down. Love? That's your call, not mine." But if this was an invitation to Lesley to chime in with her own opinions, she ignored it. She appeared, like Rob beside her, more interested in the subtle transfiguration of Woodrow's features; in the tightening of the skin lines in the upper cheeks, the faint blotches of color that had appeared at the neck; in the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (186 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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tiny, involuntary puckerings of the lower jaw. "And Justin wasn't angry with her--like about her aid work for instance?" Rob suggested. "Why should he be?" "It didn't get up his nose when she banged on about how certain Western companies, British included, were ripping off the Africans-overcharging them for technical services, dumping overpriced out-of-date medicines on them? Using Africans as human guinea pigs to try out new drugs, which is sometimes implied if seldom proved, so to speak?" "I'm sure Justin was very proud of her aid work. A lot of our wives here tend to sit back. Tessa's involvement redressed the balance." "So he wasn't angry with her," Rob pressed. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (187 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Justin is simply not given to anger. Not in the normal way. If he was anything at all, he was embarrassed." "Were you embarrassed? I mean, you here at the High Commission?" "What on earth by?" "Her aid work. Her special interests. Did they conflict at all with HM interests?" Woodrow composed his most puzzled and disarming frown. "Her Majesty's government could never be embarrassed by acts of humanity, Rob. You should know that." "We're learning it, Mr. Woodrow," Lesley cut in quietly. "We're new." And having examined him for a while without for one second relaxing her nice smile, she loaded her notebooks and tape recorder back into her bag and, pleading engagements in the town, proposed they resume their file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (188 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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deliberations tomorrow at the same hour. "Did Tessa confide in anyone, do you know?" Lesley asked, in a by-the-by tone as they all three moved in a bunch toward the door. "Apart from Bluhm, you mean?" "I meant women friends, actually." Woodrow ostentatiously searched his memory. "No. No, I don't think so. Nobody comes specifically to mind. But I don't suppose I'd know really, would I?" "You might if it were someone on your staff. Like Ghita Pearson or somebody," said Lesley helpfully. "Ghita? Oh well, obviously, yes, Ghita. And they're looking after you all right, are they? You've got transport and everything? Good." A whole day passed, and a whole night, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (189 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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before they came again. * * * This time it was Lesley not Rob who opened the proceedings, and she did so with a freshness that suggested encouraging things had happened since they last met. "Tessa had had recent intercourse," she announced in a bright start-the-day sort of voice as she set out her properties like court exhibits--pencils, notebooks, tape recorder, a piece of india rubber. "We suspect rape. That's not for publication, though I expect we'll all be reading it in tomorrow's newspapers. It's only a vagin*l swab they've taken at this stage and peeked through a microscope to see whether the sperm was alive or dead. It was dead, but they still think it may be more than one person's sperm. Maybe a whole co*cktail. Our view is they've got no way to tell." Woodrow sank his head into his hands. "We'll have to wait for our own boffins to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (190 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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pronounce before it's a hundred per cent," Lesley said, watching him. Rob, as yesterday, was nonchalantly tapping his pencil against his big teeth. "And the blood on Bluhm's tunic was Tessa's," Lesley continued in the same frank tone. "Only provisional, mind. They only do the basic types here. Anything else, we'll have to do back home." Woodrow had risen to his feet, a thing he did quite often at informal meetings to put everyone at their ease. Strolling languidly to the window he took up a position at the other end of the room and affected to study the hideous city skyline. There was freak thunder about, and that indefinable smell of tension that precedes the magical African rain. His manner, by contrast, was repose itself. Nobody could see the two or three drops of hot sweat that had left his armpits and were crawling like fat insects down his ribs. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (191 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Has anyone told Quayle yet?" he asked, and wondered, as perhaps they did, why a raped woman's widower suddenly becomes a Quayle and not a Justin. "We thought it would be better coming from a friend," Lesley replied. "You," Rob suggested. "Of course." "Plus it is just possible--like Les here said --that she and Arnold had one last one for the road. If you want to mention that to him. It's up to you." What's my last straw? he wondered. What more has to happen before I open this window and jump out? Perhaps that was what I wanted her to do for me: take me beyond the limits of my own acceptance. "We really like Bluhm," Lesley broke out file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (192 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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in chummy exasperation, as if she needed Woodrow to like Bluhm too. "All right, we've got to be on the lookout for the other Bluhm, the beast in human shape. And where we come from, the most peaceable people will do the most terrible things when they're pushed. But who pushed him-if he was pushed? Nobody, unless she did." Lesley paused here, inviting Woodrow's comment, but he was exercising his right to remain silent. "Bluhm's as close as you'll ever get to a good man," she insisted, as if good man were a finite condition like hom*o sapiens. "He's done a lot of really, really good things. Not for display, but because he wanted to. Saved lives, risked his own, worked in awful places for no money, hidden people in his attic. Well, don't you agree, sir?" Was she goading him? Or merely seeking enlightenment from a mature observer of the TessaBluhm relationship? file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (193 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"I'm sure he has a fine record," Woodrow conceded. Rob gave a snort of impatience, and a disconcerting writhe of his upper body. "Look. Forget his record. Personally: do you like him, yes or no? Simple as that." And flung himself into a fresh position on his chair. "My God," said Woodrow over his shoulder, careful this time not to overdo the histrionics, but allowing nonetheless a note of exasperation to enter his voice. "Yesterday it was define love, today it's define like. We do rather chase our absolute definitions in Cool Britannia these days, don't we?" "We're asking your opinion, sir," said Rob. Perhaps it was the "sir's" that turned the trick. At their first meeting it was Mr. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (194 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Woodrow, or when they felt bold, Sandy. Now it was sir, advising Woodrow that these two junior police officers were not his colleagues, not his friends, but lowerclass outsiders poking their noses into the exclusive club that had given him standing and protection these seventeen years. He linked his hands behind his back and braced his shoulders, then turned on his heel until he faced his interrogators. "Arnold Bluhm is persuasive," he declared, lecturing them down the length of the room. "He has looks, charm of a sort. Wit if you like that type of humor. Some sort of aura--perhaps it's that neat little beard. To the impressionable, he's an African folk hero." After which he turned away from them, as if waiting for them to pack and leave. "And to the unimpressionable?" asked Lesley, taking advantage of his turned back to reconnoiter him with her eyes: the hands nonchalantly comforting one another behind him, the unweighted knee lifted in file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (195 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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self-defense. "Oh, we're in the minority, I'm sure," Woodrow replied silkily. "Only I imagine it could be very worrying for you--vexing too, in your position of responsibility as Head of Chancery--seeing all this happening under your nose and knowing there's nothing you can do to stop it. I mean you can't go up to Justin, can you, and say, "Look at that bearded black man over there, he's carrying on with your wife," can you? Or can you?" "If scandal threatens to drag the good name of the Mission into the gutter, I'm entitled--indeed obliged--to interpose myself." "And did you?"--Lesley speaking. "In a general way, yes." "With Justin? Or with Tessa directly?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (196 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"The problem was, obviously, that her relationship with Bluhm had cover, as one might say," Woodrow replied, contriving to ignore the question. "The man's a ranking doctor. He's well regarded in the aid community. Tessa was his devoted volunteer. On the surface, all perfectly aboveboard. One can't just sail in and accuse them of adultery on no evidence. One can only say--"look here, this is giving out the wrong signals, so please be a little more circ*mspect."" "So who did you say it to?" Lesley asked while she jotted in a notebook. "It's not as simple as that. There was more to it than just one episode--one dialogue." Lesley leaned forward, checking as she did so that the spool was turning in her tape recorder. "Between you and Tessa?" "Tessa was a brilliantly designed engine file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (197 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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with half the cogs missing. Before she lost her baby boy, she was a bit wild. All right." About to make his betrayal of Tessa absolute, Woodrow was remembering Porter Coleridge seated in his study furiously quoting Pellegrin's instructions. "But afterward--I have to say this--with enormous regret--she struck more than a few of us as pretty much unhinged." "Was she nympho?" Rob asked. "I'm afraid that question is a little above my pay grade," Woodrow replied icily. "Let's just say she flirted outrageously," Lesley suggested. "With everyone." "If you insist"--no man could have sounded more detached--"it's hard to tell, isn't it? Beautiful girl, belle of the ball, older husband--is she flirting? Or is she just being herself, having a good time? If file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (198 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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she wears a low dress and flounces, people say she's fast. If she doesn't, they say she's a bore. That's white Nairobi for you. Perhaps it's anywhere. I can't say I'm an expert." "Did she flirt with you?" asked Rob, after another infuriating tattoo of the pencil on his teeth. "I've told you already. It was impossible to tell whether she was flirting or merely indulging her high spirits," said Woodrow, reaching new levels of urbanity. "So, er, did you by any chance have a bit of a flirt back?" Rob inquired. "Don't look like that, Mr. Woodrow. You're fortysome-thing, menopausal, heading for injury time, same as Justin is. You had the hots for her, why not? I'll bet I would have." Woodrow's recovery was so quick that it had happened almost before he was aware of it. "Oh my dear chap. Thought of nothing else. Tessa, Tessa, night and day. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (199 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Obsessed by her. Ask anyone." "We did," said Rob. * * * Next morning, it seemed to the beleaguered Woodrow, his interrogators were indecent in their haste to get at him. Rob set the tape recorder on the table, Lesley opened a large red notebook at a double page marked by an elastic band and led the questioning. "We have reason to believe you visited Tessa in the Nairobi hospital soon after she lost her baby, sir, is that correct?" Woodrow's world rocked. Who in God's name told them that? Justin? He can't have done, they haven't seen him yet, I'd know. "Hold everything," he ordered sharply. Lesley's head came up. Rob unraveled himself and, as if about to flatten his face with his palm, extended one long hand file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (200 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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and laid it upright against his nose, then studied Woodrow over the tips of his extended fingers. "Is this to be our topic for the morning?" Woodrow demanded. "It's one of them," Lesley conceded. "Then can you tell me, please--given that time is short for all of us--what on earth visiting Tessa in hospital has to do with tracking down her murderer--which I understand is the purpose of your being here?" "We're looking for a motive," said Lesley. "You told me you had one. Rape." "Rape doesn't fit anymore. Not as motive. Rape was a side effect. Maybe a blind, to make us think we're looking at a random killing, not a planned one." "Premeditation," Rob explained, his big file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (201 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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brown eyes fixing Woodrow in a lonely stare. "What we call a corporate job." At which, for a brief but terrifying moment, Woodrow thought of absolutely nothing at all. Then he thought corporate. Why did he say "corporate"? Corporate as performed by a corporation? Outrageous! Too farfetched to be worthy of consideration by a reputable diplomat! After that his mind became a blank screen. No words, not even the most banal and meaningless, came to rescue him. He saw himself, if at all, as some kind of computer, retrieving, assembling and then rejecting a train of heavily encrypted connections from a cordoned-off area of his brain. Corporate nothing. It was random. Unplanned. A blood feast, African style. "So what took you to the hospital?" he file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (202 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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heard Lesley saying as he caught up with the sound track. "Why did you go and see Tessa after she lost her baby boy?" "Because she asked me to. Through her husband. In my capacity as Justin's superior." "Anyone else invited to the party?" "Not to my knowledge." "Maybe Ghita?" "You mean Ghita Pearson?" "D'you know a different one?" "Ghita Pearson was not present." "So just you and Tessa," Lesley noted aloud, writing in her notebook. "What's you being his superior got to do with it?" "She was concerned for Justin's welfare and wished to reassure herself that all file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (203 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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was well with him," Woodrow replied, deliberately taking his time rather than respond to her quickening rhythm. "I had tried to persuade Justin to take leave of absence, but he preferred to remain at his post. The EADEC annual conference of ministers was coming up and he was determined to prepare for it. I explained this to her and promised to continue to keep an eye on him." "Did she have her laptop with her?" Rob cut in. "I beg your pardon?" "Why's that so difficult? Did she have her laptop with her--beside her, on a table, under the bed, in it? Her laptop. Tessa loved her laptop. She e-mailed people with it. She emailed Bluhm. She e-mailed Ghita. She e-mailed a sick kid in Italy she was looking after, and some old boyfriend she had in London. She e-mailed half the world all the time. Did she have the laptop with file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (204 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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her?" "Thank you for being so explicit. No, I saw no laptop." "What about a notebook?" A hesitation while he searched his memory and composed the lie. "None that I saw." "Any you didn't?" Woodrow did not deign to answer. Rob leaned back and studied the ceiling in a falsely leisured way. "So how was she in herself?" he inquired. "Nobody's at her best after producing a stillborn baby." "So how was she?" "Weak. Rambling. Depressed." "And that was all you talked about. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (205 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Justin. Her beloved husband." "So far as I remember, yes." "How long were you with her?" "I didn't time myself, but I would imagine something in the region of twenty minutes. Obviously I didn't want to tire her." "So you talked about Justin for twenty minutes. Whether he's eating his porridge and that." "The conversation was intermittent," Woodrow replied, coloring. "When someone is feverish and exhausted and has lost her child, it is not easy to have a lucid exchange." "Anyone else present?" "I told you already. I went alone." "That's not what I asked you. I asked file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (206 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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whether anyone else was present?" "Such as who?" "Such as whoever else was present. A nurse, a doctor. Another visitor, a friend of hers. Girlfriend. Man friend. African friend. Like Dr. Arnold Bluhm, for instance. Why do I have to drag it out of you, sir?" As evidence of his annoyance, Rob unwound himself like a javelin thrower, first flinging a hand in the air, then tortuously repositioning his long legs. Woodrow meanwhile was again visibly consulting his memory: bringing his eyebrows together in an amused and rueful frown. "Now you come to mention it, Rob, you're right. How very clever of you. Bluhm was there when I arrived. We greeted each other and he left. I would imagine we overlapped by the better part of twenty seconds. For you, twenty-five." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (207 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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But Woodrow's careless demeanor was hard won. Who the devil told him Bluhm was at her bedside? But his apprehension went further. It reached into the darkest crevices of his other mind, touching again on that chain of causality he refused to acknowledge and Porter Coleridge had furiously ordered him to forget. "So what was Bluhm doing there, do you suppose, sir?" "He offered no explanation, neither did she. He's a doctor, isn't he? Apart from anything else." "What was Tessa doing?" "Lying in the bed. What did you expect her to be doing?" he retorted, losing his head for a moment. "Playing tiddlywinks?" Rob stretched his long legs in front of him, admiring his huge feet down the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (208 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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length of them in the manner of a sunbather. "I don't know," he said. "What do we expect her to be doing, Les?" he asked of his fellow officer. "Not tiddlywinks, for sure. There she is lying in bed. Doing what? we ask ourselves." "Feeding a black baby, I should think," Lesley said. "While its mother died." For a while the only sounds in the room came from passing footsteps in the corridor, and cars racing and fighting in the town across the valley. Rob reached out a gangly arm and switched off the tape recorder. "As you pointed out, sir, we're all short of time," he said courteously. "So kindly don't f*cking waste it by dodging questions and treating us like sh*t." He switched the tape recorder back on. "Be so good as to tell us in your own words about the dying woman in the ward and her little baby boy, Mr. Woodrow, sir," he said. "Please. And what she died of, and who was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (209 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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trying to cure her of it and how, and anything else you happen to know in that regard." Cornered and resentful in his isolation, Woodrow reached instinctively for the support of his Head of Mission, only to be reminded that Coleridge was playing hard to get. Last night, when Woodrow had tried to reach him for a private word, Mildren had advised that his master was cloistered with the American ambassador and could be reached only in emergency. This morning Coleridge was reportedly "conducting business from the residence." 5 Woodrow was not easily unmanned. In his diplomatic career he had been obliged to carry off any number of humiliating situations, and had learned by experience that the soundest course was to refuse to recognize that anything was amiss. He applied this lesson now as, in curt sentences, he gave a minimalist's rendering of the scene in the hospital file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (210 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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ward. Yes, he agreed --mildly surprised that they should be so interested in the minutiae of Tessa's confinement--he distantly remembered that a fellow patient of Tessa's was asleep or comatose. And that since she was not able to feed her own baby, Tessa was acting as the child's wet nurse. Tessa's loss was the child's gain. "Did the sick woman have a name?" Lesley asked. "Not that I recall." "Was there anybody with the sick woman--a relative or friend?" "Her brother. A teenaged boy from her village. That is how Tessa told it, but given her state, I do not regard her as a reliable witness." "D'you know the brother's name?" "No." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (211 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Or the name of the village?" "No." "Did Tessa tell you what was wrong with the woman?" "Most of what she said was incoherent." "So the rest was coherent," Rob pointed out. An eerie forbearance was settling over him. His gangling limbs had found a resting place. He suddenly had all day to kill. "In her coherent moments, what did Tessa tell you about the sick woman across the ward from her, Mr. Woodrow?" "That she was dying. That her illness, which she did not name, derived from the social conditions in which she lived." "AIDS?" "That's not what she said." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (212 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Makes a change, then." "Indeed." "Was anyone treating the woman for this unnamed illness?" "Presumably. Why else would she be in hospital?" "Was Lorbeer?" "Who?" "Lorbeer." Rob spelled it. ""Lor" like "Lor" help us, "beer" like Heineken. Dutch mongrel. Red-haired or blonde. Midfifties. Fat." "I've never heard of the man," Woodrow retorted with absolute facial confidence while his bowels churned. "Did you see anyone treat her?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (213 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"No." "Do you know how she was being treated? What with?" "No." "You never saw anybody give her a pill or inject her with anything?" "I told you already: no hospital staff appeared in the ward during my presence." In his newfound leisure Rob found time to contemplate this reply, and his response to it. "How about non'-hospital staff?" "Not in my presence." "Out of it?" "How should I know that?" "From Tessa. From what Tessa told you when she was being coherent," Rob explained, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (214 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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and smiled so broadly that his good humor became a disturbing element, the precursor of a joke they had yet to share. "Was the sick woman in Tessa's ward--whose baby she was feeding--receiving any medical attention from anyone, according to Tessa?" he asked patiently, composing his words to fit some unspecified parlor game. "Was the sick woman being visited--or examined--or observed--or treated--by anyone, male or female, black or white, be they doctors, nurses, nondoctors, outsiders, insiders, hospital sweepers, visitors or plain people?" He sat back: wriggle out of that one. Woodrow was becoming aware of the scale of his predicament. How much more did they know that they weren't revealing? The name Lorbeer had sounded in his head like a death knell. What other names were they about to throw at him? How much more could he deny and stay upright? What had Coleridge told them? Why was he withholding comfort, refusing to collude? Or was he confessing all, behind Woodrow's file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (215 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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back? "She had some story about the woman being visited by little men in white coats," he replied disdainfully. "I assumed she had dreamed it. Or was dreaming it while she related it. I gave it no credence." And nor should you, he was saying. "Why were the white coats visiting her? According to Tessa's story. In what you call her dream." "Because the men in white coats had killed the woman. At one point she called them the coincidences." He had decided to tell the truth and ridicule it. "I think she also called them greedy. They wished to cure her, but were unable to do so. The story was a load of rubbish." "Cure her how?" "That was not revealed."

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"Killed her how, then?" "I'm afraid she was equally unclear on that point." "Had she written it down at all?" "The story? How could she?" "Had she made notes? Did she read to you from notes?" "I told you. To my knowledge she had no notebook." Rob tilted his long head to one side in order to observe Woodrow from a different angle, and perhaps a more telling one. "Arnold Bluhm doesn't think the story was a load of rubbish. He doesn't think she was incoherent. Arnold reckons she was bang on target with everything she said. Right, Les?" * * * The blood had drained from Woodrow's face, he could feel it. Yet even in the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (217 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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aftershock of their words he remained as steady under fire as any other seasoned diplomat who must hold the fort. Somehow he found the voice. And the indignation. "I'm sorry. Are you saying you've found Bluhm? That's utterly outrageous." "You mean you don't want us to find him?" Rob inquired, puzzled. "I mean nothing of the kind. I mean that you're here on terms, and that if you have found Bluhm or spoken to him, you're under a clear obligation to share that knowledge with the High Commission." But Rob was already shaking his head. "No way we've found him, sir. Wish we had. But we've found a few papers of his. Useful bits and pieces, as you might say, lying around his flat. Nothing sensational, unfortunately. A few case notes, which I suppose might interest someone. Copies of the odd rude letter the doctor sent to this or that firm, laboratory, or teaching file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (218 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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hospital around the world. And that's about it, isn't it, Les?" "Lying around's a bit of an exaggeration, actually," Lesley admitted. "Stashed is more like. There was one batch pasted to the back of a picture frame, another underneath the bathtub. Took us all day. Well, most of one, anyway." She licked her finger and turned a page of her notebook. "Plus the whoevers had forgotten his car," Rob reminded her. "More like a rubbish tip than a flat by the time they'd finished with it," Lesley agreed. "No art to it. Just smash and grab. Mind you, we get that in London these days. Someone's posted missing or dead in the papers, the villains are round there the same morning, helping themselves. Our crime prevention people are getting quite bothered about it. Mind if we bounce a couple more names off you a minute, Mr. Woodrow?" she inquired, raising her gray eyes and turning them file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (219 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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steadily upon him. "Make yourselves at home," said Woodrow, as if they hadn't. "Kovacs--believed Hungarian--woman-young. Raven black hair, long legs-he'll be giving us her vital statistics next -first name unknown, researcher." "You'd remember her all right," said Rob. "I'm afraid I don't." "Emrich. Medical doctor, research scientist, first qualified in Petersburg, took a German degree at Leipzig, did research work in Gdansk. Female. No description available. Name to you?" "I've never heard of such a person in my life. Nobody of that description, nobody of that name, nobody of that origin or qualification."

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"Blimey. You really haven't heard of her, have you?" "And our old friend Lorbeer," Lesley came in apologetically. "First name unknown, origins unknown, probably half Dutch or Boer, qualifications also a mystery. We're quoting from Bluhm's notes, that's the problem, so we're at his mercy, as you might say. He's got the three names ringed together like a flow chart, with itsybitsy descriptions inside each balloon. Lorbeer and the two women doctors. Lorbeer, Emrich, Kovacs. Quite a mouthful. We'd have brought you a copy but we're a bit queasy about using copiers at the moment. You know what the local police are like. And copy shops --well, we wouldn't trust them to copy the Lord's Prayer, frankly, would we, Rob?" "Use ours," said Woodrow too quickly. A ruminative silence followed, which to Woodrow was like a deafness where no cars went by, and no birds sang, and nobody file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (221 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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walked down the corridor outside his door. It was broken by Lesley doggedly describing Lorbeer as the man they would most like to question. "Lorbeer's a floater. He's believed to be in the pharmaceutical business. He's believed to have been in and out of Nairobi a few times in the last year but the Kenyans can't trace him, surprisingly. He's believed to have visited Tessa's ward in the Uhuru Hospital when she was confined there. Bullish, that's another description we've had. I thought that was the Stock Exchange. And you're sure you've never come across a reddish-haired medical Lorbeer of bullish appearance at all, may be a doctor? Anywhere in your travels?" "Never heard of the man. Or anyone like him." "We're getting that quite a lot, actually," Rob commented from the wings.

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"Tessa knew him. So did Bluhm," said Lesley. "That doesn't mean I knew him." "So what's the white plague when it's at home?" Rob asked. "I've absolutely no idea." They left as they had left before: on an evergrowing question mark. * * * As soon as he was safely clear of them, Woodrow picked up the internal phone to Coleridge and, to his relief, heard his voice. "Got a minute?" "I suppose so." He found him sitting at his desk, one splayed hand to his brow. He was wearing yellow braces with horses on them. His expression was wary and belligerent. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (223 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"I need to be assured that we have London's backing in this," Woodrow began, without sitting down. "We being who exactly?" "You and I." "And by London, you mean Pellegrin, I take it." "Why? Has anything changed?" "Not to my knowledge." "Is it going to?" "Not to my knowledge." "Well, does Pellegrin have backing? Put it that way." "Oh, Bernard always has backing."

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"So do we go on with this, or don't we?" "Go on lying, you mean? Of course we do." "Then why can't we agree on--on what we say?" "Good point. I don't know. If I were a God man, I'd sneak off and pray. But it's not as f*cking easy as that. The girl's dead. That's one part of it. And we're alive. That's another part." "So have you told them the truth?" "No, no, good Lord no. Memory like a sieve, me. Terribly sorry." "Are you going to tell them the truth?" "Them? No, no. Never. sh*ts." "Then why can't we agree our stories?" "That's it. Why not? Why not indeed. You've put your finger on it, Sandy. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (225 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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What's stopping us?" * * * "It's about your visit to the Uhuru Hospital, sir," Lesley began crisply. "I thought we'd rather done that one in our last session." "Your other visit. Your second one. A bit later. More a follow--up." "Follow-up? Follow-up of what?" "A promise you made to her, apparently." "What are you talking about? I don't understand you." But Rob understood her perfectly, and said so. "Sounded pretty good English to me, sir. Did you have a second meeting with Tessa at the hospital? Like four weeks after she'd been discharged, for instance? Like meet her in the anteroom to the postnatal clinic where she had an file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (226 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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appointment? Because that's what it says you did in Arnold's notes, and he hasn't been wrong so far, not from what us ignorant folk can understand of them." Arnold, Woodrow recorded. Not Bluhm anymore. The soldier's son was debating with himself, and he was doing so with the glacial calculation that in crisis was his muse, while in his memory he was following the scene in the crowded hospital as if it had happened to someone else. Tessa is carrying a tapestry bag with cane handles. It is the first time he has seen it, but from now on and for the rest of her short life it is part of the tough image that she had formed of herself while she was lying in hospital with her dead baby in the morgue and a dying woman in the bed opposite her and the dying woman's baby at her breast. It goes with the less makeup and the shorter hair and the glower that is not so very different from the disbelieving stare that Lesley was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (227 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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bestowing on him this minute, while she waited for his edited version of the event. The light, as everywhere in the hospital, is fickle. Huge shafts of sunlight bisect the half dark of the interior. Small birds glide among the rafters. Tessa is standing with her back against a curved wall, next to an ill-smelling coffee shop with orange chairs. There is a crowd milling in and out of the sunbeams but he sees her immediately. She is holding the tapestry bag in both hands across her lower belly and standing the way tarts used to stand in doorways when he was young and scared. The wall is in shadow because the sunbeams don't reach the edges of the room and perhaps that's why Tessa has chosen this particular spot. "You said you would listen to me when I was stronger," she reminds him in a low, harsh voice he scarcely recognizes. It is the first time they have spoken since his visit to the ward. He sees her file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (228 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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lips, so fragile without the discipline of lipstick. He sees the passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included. "The meeting you are referring to was not social," he told Rob, avoiding Lesley's unrelenting gaze. "It was professional. Tessa claimed to have stumbled on some documents which, if genuine, were politically sensitive. She asked me to meet her at the clinic so that she could hand them over." "Stumbled how?" asked Rob. "She had outside connections. That's all I know. Friends in the aid agencies." "Such as Bluhm?" "Among others. It was not the first time she had approached the High Commission with stories of high scandal, I should add. She made quite a habit of it." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (229 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"By High Commission, you mean you?" "If you mean me in my capacity as Head of Chancery, yes." "Why didn't she give them to Justin to hand over?" "Justin must remain out of the equation. That was her determination, and presumably his." Was he explaining too much, another peril? He plunged on. "I respected that in her. To be frank, I respected any sign of scruple in her at all." "Why didn't she give them to Ghita?" "Ghita is new and young and locally employed. She would not have been a suitable messenger." "So you met," Lesley resumed. "At the hospital. In the anteroom to the postnatal clinic. Wasn't that a rather conspicuous meeting place: two whites among all those file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (230 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Africans?" You've been there, he thought, with another lurch into near-panic. You've visited the hospital. "It wasn't Africans she was afraid of. It was whites. She was not to be reasoned with. When she was among Africans she felt safe." "Did she say that?" "I deduced it." "What from?"--Rob. "Her attitude during those last months. After the baby. To me, to the white community. To Bluhm. Bluhm could do no wrong. He was African and handsome and a doctor. And Ghita's half Indian"--a little wildly. "How did Tessa make the appointment?" Rob asked. "Sent a note to my house, by hand of her file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (231 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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houseboy Mustafa." "Did your wife know you were meeting her?" "Mustafa gave the note to my houseboy, who passed it to me." "And you didn't tell your wife?" "I regarded the meeting as confidential." "Why didn't she phone you?" "My wife?" "Tessa." "She distrusted diplomatic telephones. With reason. We all do." "Why didn't she simply send the documents with Mustafa?" "There were assurances she required of me. Guarantees." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (232 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Why didn't she bring the papers to you here?" Still Rob, pressing, pressing. "For the reason I have already given you. She had reached a point where she did not trust the High Commission, did not wish to be tainted by it, did not wish to be seen entering or leaving it. You speak as if her actions were logical. It's hard to apply logic to Tessa's final months." "Why not Coleridge? Why did it have to be you all the time? You at her bedside, you at the clinic? Didn't she know anyone else here?" For a perilous moment, Woodrow joined forces with his inquisitors. Why me indeed? he demanded of Tessa in a surge of angry self-pity. Because your bloody vanity would never let me go. Because it pleased you to hear me promise my soul away, when both of us knew that on the day of reckoning I wouldn't deliver it and you wouldn't accept it. Because grappling with file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (233 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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me was like meeting head-on the English sicknesses you loved to hate. Because I was some kind of archetype for you, "all ritual and no faith" --your words. We are standing face-to-face and half a foot apart and I am wondering why we are the same height till I realize that a raised step runs round the base of the curved wall and that, like other women there, you have climbed onto it, waiting to be spotted by your man. Our faces are at the same level, and despite your new austerity, it is Christmas again and I am dancing with you, smelling the sweet warm grass in your hair. "So she gave you a bundle of papers," Rob was saying. "What were they about?" I am taking the envelope from you and feeling the maddening contact of your fingers as you give it to me. You are deliberately reviving the flame in me, you know it and can't help it, you are taking me over the edge again, although you know file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (234 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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you will never come with me. I am wearing no jacket. You watch me while I undo my shirt buttons, slide the envelope against my naked skin and work it downward until its lower edge is stuck between the waistband of my trousers and my hip. You watch me again as I refasten the buttons, and I have the same shameful sensations that I would have if I had made love to you. As a good diplomat I offer you a cup of coffee in the shop. You decline. We stand face-to-face like dancers waiting for music to justify our proximity. "Rob asked you what the papers were about," Lesley was reminding Woodrow from outside his field of consciousness. "They purported to describe a major scandal." "Here in Kenya?" "The correspondence was classified." "By Tessa?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (235 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Don't be damn silly. How could she classify anything?" Woodrow snapped, and too late regretted his heat. You must force them to act, Sandy, you are urging me. Your face is pale with suffering and courage. Your theatrical impulses have not been dimmed by the experience of real tragedy. Your eyes are brimming with the tears that, since the baby, swim in them all the time. Your voice urges, but it caresses too, working the scales the way it always did. We need a champion, Sandy. Someone outside us. Someone official and capable. Promise me. If I can keep faith with you, you can keep faith with me. So I say it. Like you, I am carried away by the power of the moment. I believe. In God. In love. In Tessa. When we are onstage together, I believe. I swear myself away, which is what I do every time I come to you, and what you want me to do file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (236 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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because you also are an addict of impossible relationships and theatrical scenes. I promise, I say, and you make me say it again. I promise, I promise. I love you and I promise. And that is your cue to kiss me on the lips that have spoken the shameful promise: one kiss to silence me and seal the contract; one quick hug to bind me and let me smell your hair. "The papers were sent by bag to the relevant undersecretary in London," Woodrow was explaining to Rob. "At which point, they were classified." "Why?" "Because of the serious allegations they contained." "Against?" "Pass, I'm afraid." "A Company? An Individual?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (237 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Pass." "How many pages in the document, d'you reckon?" "Fifteen. Twenty. There was an annex of some sort." "Any photographs, illustrations, exhibits at all?" "Pass." "Any tape recordings? Disks--taped confessions, statements?" "Pass." "Which undersecretary did you send them to?" "Sir Bernard Pellegrin." "Did you keep a copy locally?"

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"It is a matter of policy to keep as little sensitive material here as possible." "Did you keep a copy or not?" "No." "Were the papers typed?" "By whom?" "Were they typed or written by hand?" "Typed." "What by?" "I am not an expert on typewriters." "Electronic type? Off a word processor? A computer? Do you remember the sort of type? The font?" Woodrow gave an ill-tempered shrug that was close to violence. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (239 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"It wasn't italicized, for instance?" Rob persisted. "No." "Or that fake, half-joined-up handwriting they do?" "It was perfectly ordinary roman type." "Electronic." "Yes." "Then you do remember. Was the annex typed?" "Probably." "The same type?" "Probably." "So fifteen to twenty pages, give or take, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (240 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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of perfectly ordinary electronic roman type. Thank you. Did you hear back from London?" "Eventually." "From Pellegrin?" "It may have been Sir Bernard, it may have been one of his subordinates." "Saying?" "No action was required." "Any reason given at all?" Still Rob, throwing his questions like punches. "The so-called evidence offered in the document was tendentious. Any inquiries on the strength of it would achieve nothing and prejudice our relations with the host nation." "Did you tell Tessa that was the answer-no action?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (241 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Not in as many words." "What did you tell her?" Lesley asked. Was it Woodrow's new policy of truth telling that made him reply as he did--or some weaker instinct to confess? "I told her what I felt would be acceptable to her, given her condition-given the loss she had suffered, and the importance she attached to the documents." Lesley had switched off the tape recorder and was packing away her notebooks. "So what lie was acceptable to her, sir? In your judgment?" she asked. "That London was on the case. Steps were being taken." For a blessed moment Woodrow believed the meeting was over. But Rob was still in there, slugging away.

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"One more thing, if you don't mind, Mr. Woodrow. Bell, Barker and Benjamin. Known otherwise as ThreeBees." Woodrow's posture did not alter by a fraction. "Ads all over town. "ThreeBees, Busy for Africa." "Buzzing for You, Honey! I Love ThreeBees." Headquarters up the road. Big new glass building, looks like a Dalek." "What of them?" "Only we pulled out their company profile last night, didn't we, Les? Quite an amazing outfit, you don't realize. Finger in every African pie but British to the core. Hotels, travel agencies, newspapers, security companies, banks, extractors of gold, coal and copper, importers of cars, boats and trucks--I could go on forever. Plus a fine range of drugs. "ThreeBees Buzzing for Your Health." We spotted that one as we drove here this morning, didn't we, Les?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (243 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Just back down the road," Lesley agreed. "And they're hugger-mugger with Moi's Boys too, from all we hear. Private jets, all the girls you can eat." "I assume this is getting us somewhere." "Not really. I just wanted to watch your face while I talked about them. I've done it now. Thank you for your patience." Lesley was still busy with her bag. For all the interest she had shown in this exchange, she might not have heard it at all. "People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow," she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. "You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem." "She means you're a f*cking liar," Rob file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (244 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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explained. This time, Woodrow did not escort them to the door. He remained at his post behind the desk, listening to the fading footsteps of his departing guests, then he called the front desk and asked, in the most casual tone, to be advised when they had cleared the building. On learning they had, he made his way swiftly to Coleridge's private office. Coleridge, he well knew, was away from his desk, conferring with the Kenyan Ministry of External Affairs. Mildren was speaking on the internal telephone, looking unpleasantly relaxed. "This is urgent," Woodrow said, in contrast to whatever Mildren thought he was doing. Seated at Coleridge's empty desk, Woodrow watched Mildren extract a white lozenge from the High Commissioner's personal safe and insert it officiously in the digital phone. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (245 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Who do you want, anyway?" Mildren asked, with the insolence peculiar to lower-class private secretaries to the great. "Get out," Woodrow said. And as soon as he was alone, dialed the direct number of Sir Bernard Pellegrin. * * * They sat on the veranda, two Service colleagues enjoying an after-dinner nightcap under the relentless glare of intruder lights. Gloria had taken herself to the drawing room. "There's no good way of saying this, Justin," Woodrow began. "So I'll say it anyway. The very strong probability is, she was raped. I'm terribly, terribly sorry. For her and for you." And Woodrow was sorry, he must be. Sometimes you don't have to feel something file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (246 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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to know you feel it. Sometimes your senses are so trampled that another appalling piece of news is just one more tiresome detail to administer. "This is ahead of the postmortem of course, so it's premature and off the record," he went on, avoiding Justin's eye. "But they seem to have no doubt." He felt a need to offer practical consolation. "The police feel it's actually quite thought-clearing--to have a motive at least. It helps them with the broad thrust of the case, even if they can't point a finger yet." Justin was sitting to attention, holding his brandy glass in front of him with both hands, as if someone had handed it to him as a prize. "Only a probability?" he objected at last. "How very strange. How can that be?" Woodrow had not imagined that, once again, he would be subjected to questioning but file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (247 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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in some ghastly way he welcomed it. A devil was driving him. "Well, obviously they do have to ask themselves whether it could have been consensual. That's routine." "Consensual with whom?" Justin inquired, puzzled. "Well, whoever--whoever they have in mind. We can't do their job for them, can we?" "No. We can't. Poor you, Sandy. You seem to get all the dirty jobs. And now I am sure we should pay attention to Gloria. How right she was to leave us to ourselves. Sitting outside with the entire insect kingdom of Africa would be more than that fair English skin of hers could bear." Developing a sudden aversion to Woodrow's proximity, he had stood up and pushed open the French window. "Gloria, my dear, we have been neglecting you."

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Justin Quayle buried his much-murdered wife in a beautiful African cemetery called Langata under a jacaranda tree between her stillborn son Garth and a fiveyear-old Kikuyu boy who was watched over by a plastercast kneeling angel with a shield declaring he had joined the saints. Behind her lay Horatio John Williams of Dorset, with God, and at her feet Miranda K. Soper, loved forever. But Garth and the little African boy, who was called Gitau Karanja, were her closest companions, and Tessa lay shoulder to shoulder with them, which was what Justin had wanted, and what Gloria, after an appropriate distribution of Justin's largesse, had obtained for him. Throughout the ceremony Justin stood apart from everyone, Tessa's grave to his left and Garth's to his right, and a full two paces forward of Woodrow and Gloria who until then had hovered protectively to either side of him, in part to give him comfort, in part to shield him from the attentions of the press, which, ever mindful of its duty to the public, was relentless in its determination to obtain file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (249 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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pictures and copy concerning the cuckolded British diplomat and would-be father whose butchered white wife--thus the bolder tabloids--had borne a baby by her African lover and now lay beside it in a corner of a foreign field-to quote no less than three of them on the same day--that was forever England. Beside the Woodrows and well clear of them stood Ghita Pearson in a sari, head forward and hands joined before her in the ageless attitude of mourning, and beside Ghita stood the deathly pale Porter Coleridge and his wife Veronica, and to Woodrow's eye it was as if they were lavishing on her the protection they would otherwise have lavished on their absent daughter Rosie. Langata graveyard stands on a lush plateau of tall grass and red mud and flowering ornamental trees, both sad and joyful, a couple of miles from the town center and just a short step from Kibera, one of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (250 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Nairobi's larger slums, a vast brown smear of smoking tin houses overhung with a pall of sickly African dust, crammed into the Nairobi river valley without a hand's width between them. The population of Kibera is half a million and rising, and the valley is rich in deposits of sewage, plastic bags, colorful strands of old clothing, banana and orange peel, corncobs, and anything else the city cares to dump in it. Across the road from the graveyard are the dapper offices of the Kenyan Tourist Board and the entrance to the Nairobi Game Park, and somewhere behind them the ramshackle hutments of Wilson Airport, Kenya's oldest. To both of the Woodrows and many of Tessa's mourners there was something ominous as well as heroic in Justin's solitude as the moment of interment approached. He seemed to be taking leave not just of Tessa but of his career, of Nairobi, of his stillborn son, and of his entire life till now. His perilous proximity to the grave's edge appeared to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (251 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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signal this. There was the inescapable suggestion that a good deal of the Justin they knew, and perhaps all of it, was going with her to the hereafter. Only one living person seemed to merit his attention, Woodrow noticed, and that was not the priest, it was not the sentinel figure of Ghita Pearson, it was not the reticent and white-faced Porter Coleridge his Head of Mission, nor the journalists who jockeyed with each other for a better shot, a better view, nor the longjawed English wives locked in empathetic grief for their departed sister whose fate could so easily have been their own, not the dozen overweight Kenyan policemen who tugged at their leather belts. It was Kioko. It was the boy who had been sitting on the floor of Tessa's ward in the Uhuru Hospital, watching his sister die; who had walked ten hours from his village to be with her at the end, and had walked ten more to be with Tessa today. Justin and Kioko saw each other at the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (252 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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same time and, having done so, held each other's gaze in a complicitous exchange. Kioko was the youngest person present, Woodrow noticed. In response to tribal tradition, Justin had requested that young people stay away.

White gateposts marked the graveyard's entrance as Tessa's cortege arrived. Giant cacti, red mud tracks and docile sellers of bananas, plantain and ice creams lined the path to her grave. The priest was black and old and grizzled. Woodrow had a recollection of shaking his hand at one of Tessa's parties. But the priest's love of Tessa was effusive, and his belief in the afterlife so fervent, and the din of road and air traffic so persistent--not to mention the proximity of other funerals and the blare of spiritual music from mourners' lorries and the competing orators with bullhorns who harangued the rings of friends and family picnicking on the grass around their loved ones' coffins-that it was not surprising that only a few of the holy man's winged words reached file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (253 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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the ear of his audience. And Justin, if he heard them at all, showed no sign of having done so. Dapper as ever in the dark double-breasted suit he had mustered for the occasion, he kept his gaze fixed on the boy Kioko who, like Justin, had sought out his own bit of space apart from everyone, and appeared to have hanged himself in it, for his spindly feet scarcely touched the ground and his arms swung raggedly at his side and his long crooked head was craned in a posture of permanent inquiry. Tessa's final journey had not been a smooth one, but neither Woodrow nor Gloria would have wished it to be. Each tacitly found it fitting that her last act should contain the element of unpredictability that had characterized her life. The Woodrow household had risen early although there was nothing to rise early for, except that in the middle of the night Gloria realized she had no dark hat. A crack-of-dawn phone call established that file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (254 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Elena had two, but they were both a bit twenties and aviatorlike, did Gloria mind? An official Mercedes was dispatched from her Greek husband's residence, conveying a black hat in a Harrods plastic carrier. Gloria returned it, preferring a black lace head scarf of her mother's: she would wear it like a mantilla. After all, Tessa was half Italian, she explained. "Spanish, darling," Elena replied. "Nonsense," Gloria riposted. "Her mother was a Tuscan contessa, it said so in the Telegraph." "The mantilla, darling," Elena patiently corrected her. "Mantillas are Spanish, not Italian, I'm afraid." "Well, her mother was bloody well Italian," Gloria snapped--only to ring again five minutes later, blaming her temper on the stress. By then the Woodrow boys had been bundled file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (255 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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off to school and Woodrow himself had left for the High Commission and Justin was hovering in the dining room wearing his suit and tie and wanting flowers. Not flowers from Gloria's garden, but his own. He wanted the yellow scenting freesias he grew for her all year round, he said, and always had waiting for her in the living room when she came back from her field trips. He wanted two dozen of them at the least for Tessa's coffin. Gloria's deliberations on how best to obtain these were interrupted by a confused call from a Nairobi newspaper purporting to announce that Bluhm's corpse had been found in a dried-up riverbed fifty miles east of Lake Turkana, and had anyone anything to say about it? Gloria bawled "No comment" into the receiver and slammed it down. But she was shaken, and of two minds whether or not to share the news with Justin now, or wait till the funeral was over. She was therefore greatly relieved to receive a call from Mildren not five minutes later saying that Woodrow was in a meeting but file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (256 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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rumors about Bluhm's corpse were drivel: the body, for which a tribe of Somali bandits was demanding ten thousand dollars, was at least a hundred years old, and more like a thousand, and was it possible for him to have a tiny word with Justin? Gloria brought Justin to the telephone and remained officiously at his side while he said yes--that suited him--you're very kind, and he would make sure he was prepared. But what Mildren was being kind about and what Justin would prepare himself for remained obscure. And no thank you--Justin said emphatically to Mildren, adding to the mystery-he did not wish to be met on arrival, he preferred to make his own arrangements. After which he rang off and asked--rather pointedly, considering everything she had done for him--to be left alone in the dining room to make a reverse-charge call to his solicitor in London, a thing he had done twice before in the last few days, also without admitting Gloria to his file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (257 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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deliberations. With a show of discretion she therefore removed herself to the kitchen in order to listen at the hatch-only to find a grief-stricken Mustafa, who had arrived unbidden at the back door with a basketful of yellow freesias which on his own initiative he had picked from Justin's garden. Armed with this excuse Gloria marched into the dining room, hoping at least to catch the end of Justin's conversation, but he was ringing off as she entered. Suddenly, without more time passing, everything was late. Gloria had finished dressing but hadn't touched her face, nobody had eaten a thing and it was past lunchtime, Woodrow was waiting outside in the Volkswagen, Justin was standing in the hall clutching his freesias--now bound into a posy-Juma was waving a plate of cheese sandwiches at everyone and Gloria was trying to decide whether to tie the mantilla under her chin or drape it over her shoulders like her mother. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (258 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Seated on the rear seat of the van next to Justin with Woodrow on the other side of her, Gloria privately acknowledged what Elena had been telling her for several days: that she had fallen head over heels in love with Justin, a thing that hadn't happened to her for years, and it was an absolute agony to think he would be gone any day. On the other hand, as Elena had pointed out, his departure would at least allow her to get her head straight and resume normal marital services. And if it should turn out that absence only made the heart grow fonder, well, as Elena had daringly suggested, Gloria could always do something about it in London. The drive through the city struck Gloria as more than usually bumpy and she was too conscious for her comfort of the warmth of Justin's thigh against her own. By the time the Volkswagen pulled up at the funeral home, a lump had formed in her throat, her handkerchief was a damp ball in the palm of her hand and she no longer file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (259 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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knew whether she was grieving for Tessa or Justin. The rear doors of the van were opened from outside, Justin and Woodrow hopped out, leaving her alone on the backseat with Livingstone in the front. No journalists, she recorded gratefully, struggling to regain her composure. Or none yet. She watched her two men through the windscreen as they climbed the front steps of a single-story granite building with a touch of the Tudors about the eaves. Justin with his tailored suit and perfect mane of gray-black hair that you never saw him brush or comb, clutching yellow freesias--and that cavalry officer's walk he had, and for all she knew all half Dudleys had, right shoulder forward. Why did Justin always seem to lead and Sandy follow? And why was Sandy so menial these days, so butler-like? she complained to herself. And it's time he bought himself a new suit; that serge thing makes him look like a private detective.

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They disappeared into the entrance lobby. "Papers to sign, sweet," Sandy had said in a superior voice. "Releases for the deceased's body and that kind of nonsense." Why does he treat me like his Little Woman suddenly? Has he forgotten I arranged the whole bloody funeral? A gaggle of black-clad bearers had formed at the side entrance of the funeral home. Doors were opening, a black hearse was backing toward them, the word HEARSE gratuitously painted in white letters a foot high on its side. Gloria caught a glimpse of honey-varnished wood and yellow freesias as the coffin slid between black jackets into the open back. They must have taped the posy to the lid; how else did you get freesias to sit tight on a coffin lid? Justin thought of everything. The hearse pulled out of the forecourt, bearers aboard. Gloria had a big sniff, then blew her nose. "It is bad, madam," Livingstone intoned from the front. "It is very, very bad." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (261 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"It is indeed, Livingstone," said Gloria, grateful for the formality of the exchange. You are about to be watched, young woman, she warned herself firmly. Time to chin up and set an example. The back doors slammed open. "All right, girl?" Woodrow asked cheerfully, crashing down beside her. "They were marvelous, weren't they, Justin? Very sympathetic, very professional." Don't you dare call me girl, she told him furiously--but not aloud. * * * Entering St. Andrew's Church, Woodrow took stock of the congregation. In a single sweep he spotted the pallid Coleridges and behind them Donohue and his weird wife Maud looking like an ex-Gaiety girl fallen on hard times, and next to them Mildren alias Mildred and an anorexic blonde who was held to be sharing his flat. The Heavy Mob from the Muthaiga Club --Tessa's file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (262 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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phrase--had formed a military square. Across the aisle he picked out a contingent from the World Food Program and another that consisted entirely of African women, some in hats, others in jeans, but all with the determined glower of combat that was the hallmark of Tessa's radical friends. Behind them stood a cluster of lost, Gallic-looking, vaguely arrogant young men and women, the women with their heads covered, the men in open necks and designer stubble. Woodrow, after some puzzlement, concluded that they were fellow members of Bluhm's Belgian organization. Must be wondering whether they're going to be back here next week for Arnold, he thought brutally. The Quayles' illegal servants were ranged alongside them: Mustafa the houseboy, Esmeralda from South Sudan and the onearmed Ugandan, name unknown. And in the front row, towering over her furtive little Greek husband, stood the upholstered, carrot-haired figure of darling Elena herself, Woodrow's bete noire, decked out in her grandmother's file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (263 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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funereal jet jewelry. "Now, darling, should I wear the jet or is it over the top?" she had needed to know of Gloria at eight this morning. Not without mischief, Gloria had counseled boldness. "On other people, frankly El, it might be a tad too much. But with your coloring, darling--go for it." And no policemen, he noticed with gratification, neither Kenyan nor British. Had Bernard Pellegrin's potions worked their magic? Whisper who dares. He stole another look at Coleridge, so whey-faced, so martyred. He remembered their bizarre conversation in the residence last Saturday, and cursed him for an indecisive prig. His gaze returned to Tessa's coffin lying in state before the altar, Justin's yellow freesias safely aboard. Tears filled his eyes, to be file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (264 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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sharply returned to where they came from. The organ was playing the Nunc Dimittis and Gloria, word-perfect, was singing lustily along. House evensong at her boarding school, Woodrow was thinking. Or mine. He hated both establishments equally. Sandy and Gloria, born unfree. The difference is, I know it and she doesn't. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Sometimes I really wish I could. Depart and never come back. But where would the peace be? His eye again rested on the coffin. I loved you. So much easier to say, now it's in the past tense. I loved you. I was the control freak who couldn't control himself, you were good enough to tell me. Well, now look what's happened to you. And look why it's happened to you. And no, I never heard of Lorbeer. I know no long-legged Hungarian beauties called Kovacs and I do not, will not listen to any more unproven, unspoken theories that are tolling like tower bells inside my head, and I am totally uninterested in the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (265 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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sleek olive shoulders of the spectral Ghita Pearson in her sari. What I do know is: after you, nobody need ever know again what a timorous child inhabits this soldier's body. * * * Needing to distract himself, Woodrow embarked on an energetic study of the church windows. Male saints, all white, no Bluhms. Tessa would go ballistic. Memorial window commemorating one pretty white boy in a sailor suit symbolically surrounded by adoring jungle animals. A good hyena smells blood ten kilometers away. Tears again threatening, Woodrow forced his attentions on dear old St. Andrew himself, a dead ringer for Macpherson the gillie that time we drove the boys to Loch Awe to fish the salmon. The fierce Scottish eye, the rusty Scottish beard. What must they make of us? he marveled, transferring his misty gaze to the black faces in the congregation. What did we imagine we were doing here, back in those days, plugging our white British God and our white file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (266 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Scottish saint while we used the country as an adventure playground for derelict upper-class swingers? "Personally, I'm trying to make amends," you reply when flirtatiously I put the same question to you on the floor of the Muthaiga Club. But you never answer a question without turning it round and using it in evidence against me: "And what are you doing here, Mr. Woodrow?" you demand. The band is boisterous and we are having to dance close to hear each other at all. Yes, those are my breasts, your eyes say when I dare to look down. Yes, those are my hips, gyrating while you hold me by the waist. You may look at them too, feast your eyes on them. Most men do, and you needn't try to be the exception. "I suppose what I'm really doing is helping Kenyans to husband the things we've given them," I yell pompously above the music and feel your body stiffen and slip away almost before I've finished the sentence. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (267 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"We didn't bloody give them a thing! They took it! At the end of a bloody gun! We gave them nothing--nothing!" Woodrow swung sharply round. Gloria beside him did the same and so, from the other side of the aisle, did the Coleridges. A scream from outside the church had been followed by the smash of something big and glassy breaking. Through the open doorway Woodrow saw the forecourt gates being dragged shut by two frightened vergers in black suits as helmeted police formed a cordon along the railings, brandishing metal-tipped riot sticks in both hands, like baseball players limbering for a strike. In the street where the students had gathered a tree was burning and a couple of cars lay belly-up beneath it, their occupants too terrified to clamber out. To roars of encouragement from the crowd, a glistening black limousine, a Volvo like Woodrow's, was rising shakily from the ground, borne aloft by a swarm of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (268 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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young men and women. It rose, it lurched, it flipped, first to its side, then onto its back, before falling with a huge bang, dead beside its fellows. The police charged. Whatever they had been waiting for till then, it had happened. One second they were lounging, the next they were hacking themselves a red path through the fleeing rabble, only pausing to rain more blows on those they had brought down. An armored van drew up, half a dozen bleeding bodies were tossed into it. "University's an absolute tinderbox, old chap," Donohue had advised when Woodrow had consulted him on risk. "Grants have stopped dead, staff aren't being paid, places going to the rich and stupid, dormitories and classrooms packed out, loos all blocked, doors all pinched, fire risk rampant and they're cooking over charcoal in the corridors. They've no power, and no electric light to study by, and no books to study in. The poorest students are taking to the streets because the government is privatizing the higher file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (269 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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education system without consulting anyone and education is strictly for the rich, plus the exam results are rigged and the government is trying to force students to get their education abroad. And yesterday the police killed a couple of students, which for some reason their friends refuse to take lightly. Any more questions?" The church gates opened, the organ struck up again. God's business could resume. * * * In the cemetery the heat was aggressive and personal. The grizzled old priest had ceased speaking but the clamor had not subsided and the sun beat through it like a flail. To one side of Woodrow a ghetto blaster was playing a rock version of Hail Mary at full throttle to a group of black nuns in gray habits. To the other, a football squad of blazers was gathered round a coconut shy of empty beer cans while a soloist sang good-bye to a teammate. And Wilson Airport must have file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (270 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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been holding some kind of air day, because brightly painted small planes were zooming overhead at twenty-second intervals. The old priest lowered his prayer book. The bearers stepped to the coffin. Each grasped an end of webbing. Justin, still alone, seemed to sway. Woodrow started forward to support him but Gloria restrained him with a gloved claw. "He wants her to himself, idiot," she hissed through her tears. The press showed no such tact. This was the shot they had come for: black bearers lower murdered white woman into African soil, watched by husband she deceived. A pock-faced man with a crew cut and cameras bouncing on his belly offered Justin a trowel laden with earth, hoping for a shot of the widower pouring it on the coffin. Justin brushed it aside. As he did so, his gaze fell on two ragged men who were trundling a wooden wheelbarrow with a flat tire to the grave's edge. Wet cement was slopping over its gunwales. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (271 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"What are you doing, please?" he demanded of them, so sharply that every face turned to him. "Will somebody kindly find out from these gentlemen what they are intending to do with their cement? Sandy, I need an interpreter, please." Ignoring Gloria, Woodrow the general's son strode quickly to Justin's side. Wiry Sheila from Tim Donohue's department spoke to the men, then to Justin. "They say they do it for all rich people, Justin," Sheila said. "Do what exactly? I don't understand you. Please explain." "The cement. It's to keep out intruders. Robbers. Rich people are buried in wedding rings and nice clothes. Wazungu are a favorite target. They say the cement's an insurance policy."

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"Who instructed them to do this?" "No one. It's five thousand shillings." "They're to go, please. Kindly tell them that, will you, Sheila? I do not wish their services and I shall pay them no money. They're to take their barrow and leave." But then, perhaps not trusting her to impart his message with sufficient vigor, Justin marched over to them and, placing himself between their barrow and the grave's edge, struck out an arm, Moseslike, pointing over the heads of the mourners. "Go, please," he ordered. "Leave at once. Thank you." The mourners parted to make a path along the line his Outstretched arm commanded. The men with their barrow scuttled down it. Justin watched them out of sight. In the vibrating heat the men seemed to ride straight into the blank sky. Justin turned his body round, stiffly like a toy soldier, until he was addressing the press pack. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (273 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"I would like you all to go, please," he said in the silence that had formed inside the din. "You have been very kind. Thank you. Goodbye." Quietly, and to the amazement of the rest, the journalists stowed their cameras and their notebooks and, with mumbles like "See you, Justin," quit the field. Justin returned to his place of solitude at Tessa's head. As he did so, a group of African women trooped forward and arranged themselves in a horseshoe round the foot of the grave. Each wore the same uniform: a blueflowered frilly dress and head scarf of the same material. Separately they might have looked lost, but as a group they looked united. They began singing, at first softly. Nobody conducted them, there were no instruments to sing to, most of the choir were weeping but they didn't let their tears affect their voices. They sang in harmony, in English and kiSwahili alternately, gathering power in the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (274 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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repetition: Kwa heri, Mama Tessa ... Little Mama, good-bye ... Woodrow tried to catch the other words. Kwa heri, Tessa ... Tessa our friend, good-bye ... You came to us, Mama Tessa, Little Mama, you gave us your heart ... Kwa heri, Tessa, good-bye. "Where the hell did they spring from?" he asked Gloria out of the corner of his mouth. "Down the hill," Gloria muttered, nodding her head toward Kibera slum. The singing swelled as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Justin watched it descend, then winced as it struck bottom, then winced again as the first shovel load of earth clattered onto the lid and a second crashed into the freesias, dirtying the petals. A frightful howl went up, as short as the shriek of a rusty hinge when a door is flung back, but long enough for Woodrow to watch Ghita Pearson collapse to her knees in slow motion, then roll onto one shapely hip as she buried her face in file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (275 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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her hands; then, just as improbably, rise again on the arm of Veronica Coleridge and resume her mourner's pose. Did Justin call out something to Kioko? Or did Kioko act of his own accord? Light as a shadow, he had moved to Justin's side and, in an unashamed gesture of affection, grasped his hand. Through a fresh flood of tears, Gloria saw their linked hands fidget till they found a mutually comfortable grip. Thus joined, the bereaved husband and bereaved brother watched Tessa's coffin disappear beneath the soil. * * * Justin left Nairobi the same night. Woodrow, to Gloria's eternal hurt, had given her no warning. The dinner table was laid for three, Gloria herself had uncorked the claret and put a duck in the oven to cheer us all up. She heard a footfall from the hall and assumed to her pleasure that Justin had decided on predinner drinkies, just the two of us file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (276 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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while Sandy reads Biggles to the boys upstairs. And suddenly there stood his scruffy Gladstone bag, accompanied by a mossy gray suitcase that Mustafa had brought for him, parked in the hall with labels on them, and Justin standing beside them with his raincoat over his arm and a night bag on his shoulder, wanting to give her back the winestore key. "But Justin, you're not off!" "You've all been immensely kind to me, Gloria. I shall never know how to thank you." "Sorry about this, darling," Woodrow sang cheerfully, tripping down the stairs two at a time. "Bit cloak-and-dagger, I'm afraid. Didn't want the servants gossiping. Only way to play it." At which moment there came a ping on the doorbell, and it was Livingstone the driver with a red Peugeot he'd borrowed from a friend to avoid telltale diplomatic file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (277 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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license plates at the airport. And slumped in the passenger seat, Mustafa, glowering ahead of him like his own effigy. "But we must come with you, Justin! We must see you off! I insist! I've got to give you one of my watercolors! What's going to happen to you the other end?" Gloria cried miserably. "We can't just let you go off into the night like thisdarling!--" The "darling" was technically addressed to Woodrow, but it might as well have been meant for Justin, for as she blurted it she dissolved into uncontrollable tears, the last of a long and tearful day. Sobbing wretchedly, she grasped Justin against her, punching his back and rolling her cheek against him and whispering, "Oh don't go, oh please, oh Justin," and other less decipherable exhortations before bravely thrusting herself free of him, elbowing her husband out of the light and charging up the stairs to her bedroom and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (278 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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slamming the door. "Bit overwrought," Woodrow explained, grinning. "We all are," said Justin, accepting Woodrow's hand and shaking it. "Thank you again, Sandy." "We'll be in touch." "Indeed." "And you're quite sure you don't want a reception party the other end? They're all busting to do their stuff." "Quite sure, thank you. Tessa's lawyers are preparing for my arrival." And the next minute Justin was walking down the steps to the red car, with Mustafa one side of him with the Gladstone bag, and Livingstone carrying his gray suitcase on the other. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (279 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"I have left envelopes for you all with Mr. Woodrow," Justin told Mustafa as they drove. "And this is to be handed privately to Ghita Pearson. And you know I mean privately." "We know you will always be a good man, Mzee," said Mustafa prophetically, consigning the envelope to the recesses of his cotton jacket. But there was no forgiveness in his voice for leaving Africa. * * * The airport, despite its recent facelift, was in chaos. Travel-weary groups of scalded tourists made long lines, harangued tour guides and frantically bundled huge rucksacks into X-ray machines. Check-in clerks puzzled over every ticket and murmured interminably into telephones. Incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements spread panic while porters and policemen looked idly on. But Woodrow had arranged everything. Justin had barely emerged from the car file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (280 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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before a male British Airways representative spirited him to a small office safe from public gaze. "I'd like my friends to come with me, please," Justin said. "No problem." With Livingstone and Mustafa hovering behind him, he was handed a boarding pass in the name of Mr. Alfred Brown. He looked on passively while his gray suitcase was similarly labeled. "And I shall take this one into the cabin with me," he announced, as an edict. The representative, a blond New Zealand boy, affected to weigh the Gladstone in his hand and let out an exaggerated grunt of exertion. "Family silver, is it, sir?" "My host's," said Justin, duly entering into the joke, but there was enough in his face to suggest that the issue was not file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (281 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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negotiable. "If you can carry it, sir, so can we," said the blond representative, passing the bag back to him. "Have a nice flight, Mr. Brown. We'll be taking you through the arrivals side, if it's all the same to you." "You're very kind." Turning to say his last good-byes, Justin seized Livingstone's enormous fists in a double handshake. But for Mustafa the moment was too much. Silently as ever, he had slipped away. The Gladstone firmly in his grasp, Justin entered the arrivals hall in the wake of his guide, to find himself staring at a giant buxom woman of no definable race grinning down at him from the wall. She was twenty feet tall and five feet across her widest point and she was the only commercial advertisem*nt in the entire hall. She was dressed in nurse's uniform and had three golden bees file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (282 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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on each shoulder. Three more were prominently displayed on the breast pocket of her white tunic, and she was offering a tray of pharmaceutical delicacies to a vaguely multiracial family of happy children and their parents. The tray held something for each of them: bottles of gold-brown medicine that looked more like whisky for the dad, chocolate-coated pills just right for munching by the kiddies, and for the mum beauty products decorated with naked goddesses reaching for the sun. Blazoned across the top and bottom of the poster, violent puce lettering proclaimed the joyous message to all mankind: ThreeBees BUZZY FOR THE HEALTH OF AFRICA! The poster held him. Exactly as it had held Tessa. Staring rigidly up at it, Justin is listening to her joyous protestations at his right side. Dizzy from travel, laden with last--minute hand luggage, the two of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (283 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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them have minutes earlier arrived here from London for the first time. Neither has set foot on the African continent before. Kenya --all Africa--awaits them. But it is this poster that commands Tessa's excited interest. "Justin, look! You're not looking." "What is it? Of course I am." "They've hijacked our bloody bees! Somebody thinks he's Napoleon! It's absolutely brazen. It's an outrage. You must do something!" And so it was. An outrage. A hilarious one. Napoleon's three bees, symbols of his glory, treasured emblems of Tessa's beloved island of Elba where the great man had whittled away his first exile, had been shamelessly deported to Kenya and sold into commercial slavery. Pondering the same poster now, Justin could only marvel at the obscenity of life's file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (284 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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coincidence. Perched stiffly in his upgraded seat at the front of the plane, the Gladstone bag above him in the overhead locker, Justin Quayle stared past his reflection into the blackness of space. He was free. Not pardoned, not reconciled, not comforted, not resolved. Not free of the nightmares that told him she was dead, and waking to discover they were true. Not free of the survivor's guilt. Not free of fretting about Arnold. But free at last to mourn in his own way. Free of his dreadful cell. Of the jailers he had learned to detest. Of circling his room like a convict, driven half crazy by the dazzlement of his mind and the squalor of his confinement. Free of the silence of his own voice, of sitting on the edge of his bed asking why? on and on. Free of the shameful moments when he was so low and tired and drained that he almost succeeded in convincing himself that he didn't give a damn, the marriage had been a madness anyway and was over, so be thankful. And if grief, as he file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (285 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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had read somewhere, was a species of idleness, then free of the idleness that thought of nothing but its grief. Free also of his interrogation by the police, when a Justin he didn't recognize strode to the center of the stage and, in a series of immaculately sculpted sentences, laid his burden at the feet of his bemused interrogators --or as much of it as a puzzled instinct told him it was prudent to reveal. They began by accusing him of murder. "There's a scenario hanging over us here, Justin," Lesley explains apologetically, "and we have to put it to you straightaway, so that you're aware of it, although we know it's hurtful. It's called a love triangle, and you're the jealous husband and you've organized a contract killing while your wife and her lover are as far away from you as possible, which is always good for the alibi. You had them both killed, which was what you wanted for file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (286 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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your vengeance. You had Arnold Bluhm's body taken out of the jeep and lost so that we'd think Arnold Bluhm was the killer and not you. Lake Turkana's full of crocodiles, so losing Arnold wouldn't be a problem. Plus there's a nice inheritance coming your way by all accounts, which doubles up the motive."

They are watching him, he is well aware, for signs of guilt or innocence or outrage or despair--for signs of something anyway-and watching him in vain, because, unlike Woodrow, Justin at first does absolutely nothing. He sits groomed and pensive and remote on Woodrow's reproduction carving chair, his fingertips set to the table as if he has just played a chord of music and is listening to it fade away. Lesley is accusing him of murder, yet all she gets is a small frown linking him to his inner world. "I had rather understood, from the little Woodrow has been good enough to tell me of the progress of your inquiries," Justin file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (287 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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objects, more in the plaintive manner of an academic than a grieving husband, "that your prevailing theory was of a random killing, not a planned affair." "Woodrow's full of sh*t," says Rob, keeping his voice down in deference to their hostess. There is no tape recorder on the table yet. The notebooks of many colors lie untouched in Lesley's useful bag. There is nothing to hurry or formalize the occasion. Gloria has brought a tray of tea and, after a lengthy dissertation on the recent demise of her bull terrier, reluctantly departed. "We found the marks of a second vehicle parked five miles from the scene of the murder," Lesley explains. "It was lying up in a gully southwest of the spot where Tessa was murdered. We found an oil patch, plus the remains of a fire." Justin blinks, as if the daylight is a bit too file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (288 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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bright, then politely inclines his head to show he is still listening. "Plus freshly buried beer bottles and cigarette ends," she goes on, laying all this at Justin's door. "When Tessa's jeep drove by, the mystery wagon pulled out behind and tailed it. Then it pulled alongside. One of the front wheels of Tessa's jeep was shot off with a hunting rifle. That doesn't look like a random killing to us." "More like corporate murder, as we like to call it," Rob explains. "Planned and executed by paid professionals at the behest of a person or persons unknown. Whoever tipped them off knew Tessa's plans inside out." "And the rape?" Justin inquires with feigned detachment, keeping his eyes fixed on his folded hands. "Cosmetic or incidental," Rob retorts crisply. "Villains lost their heads or did it with forethought." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (289 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Which brings us back to motive, Justin," Lesley says. "Yours," says Rob. "Unless you've got a better idea." Their two faces are trained on Justin's like cameras, one to either side of him, but Justin remains as impervious to their double stare as he is to innuendo. Perhaps in his internal isolation he is not aware of either. Lesley lowers one hand to her useful bag in order to locate the tape recorder, but thinks better of it. The hand remains caught in flagrante, while the rest of her is turned to Justin, to this man of impeccably drafted sentences, this sitting committee of one. "But I know no killers, you see," he is objecting--pointing out the flaw in their argument as he peers ahead of him with emptied eyes. "I hired nobody, instructed nobody, I'm afraid. I had nothing whatever to do with my wife's murder. Not in the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (290 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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sense you are implying. I did not wish it, I did not engineer it." His voice falters, and strikes an embarrassing kink. "I regret it beyond words." And this with such finality that for an instant the police officers appear to have nowhere to go, preferring to study Gloria's watercolors of Singapore, which hang in a row across the brick fireplace, each priced at "l199 and NO BLOODY VAT!" each with the same scrubbed sky and palm tree and flock of birds and her name in lettering loud enough to read across the road, plus a date for the benefit of collectors. Until Rob, who has the brashness, if not the self-assurance of his age, throws up his long thin head and blurts, "So you didn't mind your wife and Bluhm sleeping together, I suppose? A lot of husbands could get a bit ratty about a thing like that." Then snaps his mouth shut, waiting for Justin to do whatever Rob's righteous expectations require deceived husbands to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (291 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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do in such cases: weep, blush, rage against their own inadequacies or the perfidy of their friends. If so, Justin disappoints him. "That is simply not the point," he replies, with such force that he takes himself by surprise, and sits upright, and peers round him as if to see who has spoken out of turn, and reprimand the fellow. "It may be the point for the newspapers. It may be the point for you. It was never the point for me, and it is not the point now." "So what is the point?" Rob demands. "I failed her." "How? Not up to it, you mean?"--a male sneer --"failed her in the bedroom, did you?" Justin is shaking his head. "By detaching myself." His voice fell to a murmur. "By file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (292 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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letting her go it alone. By emigrating from her in my mind. By making an immoral contract with her. One that I should never have allowed. And nor should she." "What was that then?" Lesley asks sweet as milk after Rob's deliberate roughness. "She follows her conscience, I get on with my job. It was an immoral distinction. It should never have been made. It was like sending her off to church and telling her to pray for both of us. It was like drawing a chalk line down the middle of our house and saying see you in bed." Unfazed by the frankness of these admissions, and the nights and days of self-recrimination suggested by them, Rob makes to challenge him. His lugubrious face is set in the same incredulous sneer, his mouth round and open like the muzzle of a large gun. But Lesley is quicker than Rob today. The woman in her is wide awake and listening to sounds that Rob's aggressively male ear can't catch. Rob file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (293 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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turns to her, seeking her permission for something: to challenge him again with Arnold Bluhm perhaps, or with some other telling question that will bring him nearer to the murder. But Lesley shakes her head and, lifting her hand from the region of the bag, surreptitiously pats the air, meaning "slowly, slowly." "So how did the two of you get together in the first place, anyway?" she asks Justin, as one might ask a chance acquaintance on a long journey. And this is genius on Lesley's part: to offer him a woman's ear and a stranger's understanding; to call a halt like this, and lead him from his present battlefield to the unthreatened meadows of his past. And Justin responds to her appeal. He relaxes his shoulders, half closes his eyes and in a distant, deeply private tone of recollection tells it the way it was, exactly as he had told it to himself a hundred times in as many tormented hours. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (294 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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* * * "So when is a state not a state, in your opinion, Mr. Quayle?" Tessa inquired sweetly, one idle midday in Cambridge four years ago, in an ancient attic lecture room with dusty sunbeams sloping through the skylight. They are the first words she ever addressed to him, and they trigger a burst of laughter from the languid audience of fifty fellow lawyers who, like Tessa, had enrolled themselves for a twoweek summer seminar on Law and the Administered Society. Justin repeats them now. How he came to be standing alone on the dais, in a threepiece gray flannel suit by Hayward, clutching a lectern in both hands, is the story of his life so far, he explains, speaking away from both of them, into the fake Tudor recesses of the Woodrow dining room. "Quayle will do it!" some acolyte in the permanent undersecretary's private office had cried, late last night, not eleven hours before the lecture was due to be given. "Get me Quayle!" Quayle the professional bachelor, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (295 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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he meant, postable Quayle, the aging debs' delight, last of a dying breed, thank God, just back from bloody Bosnia and marked for Africa but not yet. Quayle the spare male, worth knowing if you're giving a dinner party and stuck, perfect manners, probably gay--except he wasn't, as a few of the better-looking wives had reason to know, even if they weren't telling. "Justin, is that you?--Haggarty. You were in College a couple of years ahead of me. Look here, the PUS is delivering a speech at Cambridge tomorrow to a bunch of aspiring lawyers, except he can't. He's got to leave for Washington in an hour--" And Justin the good chap already talking himself into it with: "Well, if it's already written, I suppose--if it's only a matter of reading it--" And Haggarty cutting him short with, "I'll have his car and driver standing outside your house at the stroke of nine, not a file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (296 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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minute later. The lecture's crap. He wrote it himself. You can sap it up on the way down. Justin, you're a brick." So here he was, a fellow Etonian brick, having delivered himself of the dullest lecture he had read in his lifepatronizing, puffy and verbose like its author, who by now presumably was relaxing in the lap of undersecretarial luxury in Washington, D.c. It had never occurred to him that he would be required to take questions from the floor, but when Tessa piped out hers, it never occurred to him to refuse her. She was positioned at the geometric center of the room, which was where she belonged. Locating her, Justin formed the foolish impression that her colleagues had deliberately left a space round her in deference to her beauty. The high neck of her legal white blouse reached, like a blameless choirgirl's, to her chin. Her pallor and spectral slimness made a waif of her. You wanted to roll her up in a blanket and make her safe. The sunbeams from the skylight shone so file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (297 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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brightly on her dark hair that to begin with he couldn't make out the face inside. The most he got was a broad, pale brow, a pair of solemn wide eyes and a fighter's pebble jaw. But the jaw came later. In the meantime she was an angel. What he didn't know, but was about to discover, was that she was an angel with a cudgel.

"Well--I suppose the answer to your question is--" Justin began--"and you must please correct me if you think differently-" bridging the age gap and the gender gap and generally imparting an egalitarian air-"that a state ceases to be a state when it ceases to deliver on its essential responsibilities. Would that be your feeling, basically?" "Essential responsibilities being what?" the angel-waif rapped back. "Well--" said Justin again, not certain where he was heading anymore, and therefore resorting to those nonmating file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (298 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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signals with which he imagined he was securing protection for himself, if not some kind of outright immunity--"Well--" troubled gesture of the hand, dab of the Etonian forefinger at graying sideburn, down again--"I would suggest to you that, these days, very roughly, the qualifications for being a civilized state amount to--electoral suffrage, ah-protection of life and property --um, justice, health and education for all, at least to a certain level--then the maintenance of a sound administrative infrastructure--and roads, transport, drains, et cetera--and-what else is there?-ah yes, the equitable collection of taxes. If a state fails to deliver on at least a quorum of the above--then one has to say that the contract between state and citizen begins to look pretty shaky --and if it fails on all of the above, then it's a failed state, as we say these days. An unstate." Joke. "An ex-state." Another joke, but still no one laughed. "Does that answer your question?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (299 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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He had assumed that the angel would require a moment's reflection to ponder this profound reply, and was therefore rattled when, barely allowing him time to bring the paragraph home, she struck again. "So can you imagine a situation where you personally would feel obliged to undermine the state?" "I personally? In this country? Oh my goodness me, certainly not," Justin replied, appropriately shocked. "Not when I've just come home." Disdainful laughter from the audience, which was firmly on Tessa's side. "In no circ*mstances?" "None that I can envisage, no." "How about other countries?" "Well, I'm not a citizen of other file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (300 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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countries, am I?"--the laughter beginning to go his way now--"Believe me, it is really quite enough work trying to speak for one country--" greeted by more laughter, which further heartened him--"I mean more than one is simply not--" He needed an adjective but she threw her next punch before he found one: a salvo of punches, as it turned out, delivered in a rata-tat to face and body. "Why do you have to be a citizen of a country before you make a judgment about it? You negotiate with other countries, don't you? You cut deals with them. You legitimize them through trading partnerships. Are you telling us there's one ethical standard for your country and another for the rest? What are you telling us, actually?" Justin was first embarrassed, then angry. He remembered, a little late, that he was still deeply tired after his recent sojourn in bloody Bosnia and theoretically file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (301 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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recuperating. He was reading for an African posting--he assumed, as usual, a gruesome one. He had not come back to Mother England to play whipping boy for some absentee undersecretary, let alone read his lousy speech. And he was damned if Eternally Eligible Justin was going to be pilloried by a beautiful harridan who had cast him as some kind of archetypal chinless wonder. There was more laughter in the air, but it was laughter on a knife edge, ready to fall either way. Very well: if she was playing to the gallery, so would he. Hamming it like the best of them, he raised his sculpted eyebrows and kept them raised. He took a step forward and flung up his hands, palms outward in self-protection. "Madam," he began--as the laughter swung in his favor. "I think, madam--I very much fear--that you are attempting to lure me into a discussion about my morals." At which the audience sent up a veritable file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (302 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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thunder of applause--everyone but Tessa. The sun that had been shining down on her had disappeared and he could see her beautiful face and it was hurt and fugitive. And suddenly he knew her very well --better in that instant than he knew himself. He understood the burden of beauty and the curse of always being an event, and he realized he had scored a victory that he didn't want. He knew his own insecurities and recognized them at work in her. She felt, by reason of her beauty, that she had an obligation to be heard. She had set out on a dare and it had gone wrong for her, and now she didn't know how to get back to base, wherever base was. He remembered the awful drivel he had just read, and the glib answers he had given, and he thought: She's absolutely right and I'm a pig, I'm worse, I'm a middleaged Foreign Office smoothie who's turned the room against a beautiful young girl who was doing what was natural to her. Having knocked her down, he therefore rushed to help her to her feet: file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (303 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"However, if we are being serious for a moment," he announced in an altogether stiffer voice, across the room to her, as the laughter obediently died, "you have put your finger on precisely the issue that literally none of us in the international community knows how to answer. Who are the white hats? What is an ethical foreign policy? All right. Let's agree that what joins the better nations these days is some notion of humanistic liberalism. But what divides us is precisely the question you ask: when does a supposedly humanistic state become unacceptably repressive? What happens when it threatens our national interests? Who's the humanist then? When, in other words, do we press the panic button for the United Nations--assuming they show up, which is another question entirely? Take Chechnya--take Burma-take Indonesia--take three-quarters of the countries in the socalled developing world--" And so on, and so on. Metaphysical fluff file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (304 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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of the worst kind, as he would have been the first to admit, but it got her off the hook. A debate of sorts developed, sides were formed and facile points thrashed out. The meeting overran, and was therefore judged a triumph. "I'd like you to take me for a walk," Tessa told him as the meeting broke up. "You can tell me about Bosnia," she added, by way of an excuse. They walked in the gardens of Clare College and, instead of telling her about bloody Bosnia, Justin told her the name of every plant, first name and family name, and how it earned its living. She held his arm and listened in silence except for the odd "Why do they do that?" or "How does that happen?" And this had the effect of keeping him talking, for which he was at first grateful, because talking was his way of putting up screens against people-except that with Tessa on his arm he found himself thinking less of screens than how frail her ankles were inside her modish file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (305 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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heavy boots as she set them one after the other along the narrow path they shared. He was convinced she had only to fall forward in them to snap her shinbones. And how lightly she bobbed against him, as if they weren't so much walking as sailing. After the walk they had a late lunch at an Italian restaurant, and the waiters flirted with her, which annoyed him, until it transpired that Tessa was half Italian herself, which somehow made it all right, and incidentally enabled Justin to show off his own Italian, of which he was proud. But then he saw how grave she had become, how pensive, and how her hands faltered, as if her knife and fork were too heavy for her, the way her boots had been in the garden. "You protected me," she explained, still in Italian, face down inside her hair. "You always will protect me, won't you?" And Justin, polite to a fault as always, said yes, well, if called upon he would, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (306 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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of course. Or he'd certainly do his best, put it that way. As far as he ever remembered, those were the only words that passed between them during lunch, although later to his amazement she assured him that he talked brilliantly about the threat of future conflict in Lebanon, a place he hadn't thought about for years, and about the Western media's demonization of Islam and the ludicrous posture of Western liberals who did not allow their ignorance to stand in the way of their intolerance; and that she was greatly impressed by how much feeling he brought to this important theme, which again puzzled Justin because so far as he knew he was totally divided on the issue. But then something was happening to Justin that, to his excitement and alarm, he was unable to control. He had been drawn completely by accident into a beautiful play, and was captivated by it. He was in a different element, acting a part, and the part was the one he had often wanted to play in life, but never till now quite file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (307 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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brought off. Once or twice, it was true, he had sensed the onset of a similar sensation, but never with such heady confidence or abandon. And all this while the practiced womanizer in him sent out dire warning signals of the most emphatic kind: abort, this one's trouble, she's too young for you, too real, too earnest, she doesn't know how the game is played. It made no odds. After lunch, with the sun still shining on them, they went on the river, and he demonstrated to her what all good lovers are supposed to demonstrate to their womenfolk on the Cam--notably, how deft he was, and how polished, and how at ease, balanced up there in his waistcoat on the precarious stern of a punt, wielding a pole and making witty bilingual conversation--which again she swore was what he did, though all he could ever afterward remember was her long waif's body in its white blouse and her horsewoman's black skirt with a slash in it, and her grave eyes watching him with file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (308 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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some kind of recognition he could not reciprocate, since he had never in his life been possessed by such a strong attraction or been so helpless in its spell. She asked him where he had learned his gardening, and he replied, "From our gardeners." She asked him who his parents were, and he was obliged to admit-reluctantly, certain it would offend her egalitarian principles--that he was well born and well heeled, and that the gardeners were paid for by his father, who had also paid for a long succession of nannies and boarding schools and universities and foreign holidays, and whatever else was needed to ease his path into the "family firm," which was what his father called the Foreign Office. But to his relief she seemed to find this a perfectly reasonable description of his provenance, and matched it with a few confidences of her own. She too had been born into privilege, she confessed. But both her parents had died within the last nine months, both from cancer. "So I'm an file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (309 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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orphan," she declared, with fake levity, "free to good home." After which they sat apart for a while, still in close communion. "I've forgotten the car," he told her at some point, as if this in some way put a bar on further business. "Where did you park it?" "I didn't. It's got a driver. It's a government car." "Can't you ring it up?" And amazingly she had a telephone in her handbag and he had the driver's mobile number in his pocket. So he moored the boat and sat beside her while he told the driver to go back to London on his own, which was like throwing away the compass, an act of shared self-marooning that was lost on neither of them. And after the river she took him back to her rooms and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (310 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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made love to him. And why she did that, and who she thought he was when she did it, and who he thought she was, and who either of them was by the end of that weekend, such mysteries, she told him as she peppered him with kisses at the railway station, would be solved by time and practice. The fact was, she said, she loved him, and everything else would fall into place when they were married. And Justin, in the madness that had seized him, made similar heedless declarations, repeated them and enlarged upon them, all on the wave of the folly that was conveying him--and he let it gladly, even if, in some recess of his consciousness, he knew that each hyperbole would one day have its price. She made no secret of wanting an older lover. Like many beautiful young women he had known, she was sick of the sight of men her own age. In language that secretly repelled him, she described herself as a tramp, a tart with a heart and a bit of a little devil, but he was too smitten to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (311 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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correct her. The expressions, he later discovered, stemmed from her father, whom he thereafter detested, while taking pains to disguise this from her since she spoke of him as a saint. Her need for Justin's love, she explained, was an unappeasable hunger in her, and Justin could only protest that the same went for him, no question. And at the time he believed himself. His first instinct, forty-eight hours after returning to London, was to bolt. He had been hit by a tornado, but tornadoes, he knew from experience, did a lot of damage, some of it collateral, and moved on. His posting to an African hellhole, still pending, suddenly looked inviting. His protestations of love alarmed him the more he rehearsed them: this is not true, this is me in the wrong play. He had had a string of affairs and hoped to have a few more--but only on the most contained and premeditated lines, with women as disinclined as he was to abandon common file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (312 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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sense for passion. But more cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paidup pessimist, he knew he had none. Not in human nature, not in God, not in the future, and certainly not in the universal power of love. Man was vile and evermore would be so. The world contained a small number of reasonable souls of whom Justin happened to be one. Their job, in his simple view, was to head off the human race from its worst excesses--with the proviso that when two sides were determined to blow each other to smithereens, there was precious little a reasonable person could do about it, however ruthless he might be in his efforts to stave off ruthlessness. In the end, the master of lofty nihilism told himself, all civilized men are Canutes these days, and the tide is coming in faster all the time. It was therefore doubly unfortunate that Justin, who regarded any form of idealism with the deepest skepticism, should have involved himself with a young woman who, though delightfully uninhibited in many ways, was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (313 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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unable to cross the road without first taking a moral view. Escape was the only sensible recourse. But as the weeks went by and he embarked on what was intended to be the delicate process of disengagement, the wonder of what had happened gained ground in him. Little dinners planned for the regretful parting scene turning out instead to be feasts of enchantment followed by ever headier sexual delights. He began to feel ashamed of his secret apostasy. He was amused, not deterred, by Tessa's kooky idealism--and in an untroubled way fired by it. Somebody should feel these things and say them. Until now he had regarded strongly held convictions as the natural enemies of the diplomat, to be ignored, humored or, like dangerous energy, diverted into harmless channels. Now to his surprise he saw them as emblems of courage and Tessa as their standardbearer.

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And with this revelation came a new perception of himself. He was no longer the aging debs' delight, the nimble bachelor forever sidestepping the chains of marriage. He was the droll, adoring father figure to a beautiful young girl, indulging her every whim as the saying goes, letting her have her head anytime she needed it. But her protector nonetheless, her rock, her steadying hand, her adoring elder gardener in a straw hat. Abandoning his plan of escape, Justin set course firmly toward her, and this time-or so he would wish the police officers to believe--he never regretted it, never looked back. * * * "Not even when she became an embarrassment to you?" Lesley asks after she and Rob, covertly astonished by his frankness, have sat in respectful silence for the regulation period. "I told you. There were issues where we stayed apart. I was waiting. Either for her to moderate herself or for the Foreign file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (315 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Office to provide roles for us that were not at odds. The status of wives in the Foreign Service is in constant flux. They can't earn pay in the countries where they're posted. They're obliged to move when their husbands move. One moment they're being offered all the freedoms of the day. The next they're expected to behave like diplomatic geisha." "Is that Tessa speaking or you?" Lesley asks with a smile. "Tessa never waited to be given her freedom. She took it." "And Bluhm didn't embarrass you?" asks Rob roughly. "It is neither here nor there, but Arnold Bluhm was not her lover. They were joined by quite other things. Tessa's darkest secret was her virtue. She loved to shock."

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This is too much for Rob. "Four nights on the trot, Justin?" he objects. "Sharing a cottage on Turkana? A girl like Tessa? And you're seriously asking us to believe they didn't have it off?" "You'll believe whatever you want," Justin replies, the apostle of unsurprise. "I have no doubt of it whatever." "Why?" "Because she told me." And to this they had no answer at all. But there was something more that Justin needed to say and, bit by bit, assisted by Lesley's prompting, he managed to get it out. "She had married convention," he began awkwardly. "Me. Not some high-minded dogooder. Me. You really mustn't see her as somebody exotic. I never doubted--nor did she when we arrived here--that she would be anything other than a member of the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (317 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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diplomatic geisha she derided. In her own way. But toeing the line." He deliberated, conscious of their disbelieving stares. "After her parents' death she had scared herself. Now, with me to steady her, she wanted to pull back from too much freedom. It was the price she was prepared to pay for not being an orphan anymore." "So what changed that?" Lesley asked. "We did," Justin retorted with fervor. He meant the other we. We her survivors. We the guilty ones. "With our complacency," he said, lowering his voice. "With this." And here he made a gesture that embraced not just the dining room and Gloria's hideous watercolors impaled along the chimney breast, but the whole house round them, and its occupants, and by inference the other houses in the street. "We who are paid to see what's going on, and prefer not to. We who walk past life with our eyes down."

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"Did she say that?" "I did. It's how she came to regard us. She was born rich but that never impressed her. She had no interest in money. She needed far less of it than the aspiring classes. But she knew she had no excuse for being indifferent to what she saw and heard. She knew she owed." And Lesley on this note calls a break until tomorrow at the same time, Justin, if that's all right by you. It is. And British Airways seemed to have come to much the same conclusion, for they were dousing the lights in the first-class cabin and taking last orders for the night. 8 Rob lounges while Lesley again unpacks her toys: the colored notebooks, pencils, the little tape recorder that yesterday remained untouched, the piece of india file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (319 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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rubber. Justin has a prison pallor and a web of hairline cracks around his eyes, which is how the mornings take him now. A doctor would prescribe fresh air. "You said you had nothing to do with your wife's murder in the sense we're implying, Justin," Lesley reminds him. "What other sense is there, if you don't mind us asking?" And has to lean across the table to catch his words. "I should have gone with her." "To Lokichoggio?" He shook his head. "To Lake Turkana?" "To anywhere." "Is that what she told you?" "No. She never criticized me. We never file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (320 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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told each other what to do. We had one argument, and it was to do with method, not substance. Arnold was never an obstruction." "What was the argument about, exactly?" Rob demands, clinging determinedly to his literal view of things. "After the loss of our baby, I begged Tessa to let me take her back to England or Italy. Take her anywhere she wanted. She wouldn't think of it. She had a mission, thank God, a reason to survive, and it was here in Nairobi. She had come upon a great social injustice. A great crime; she called it both. That was all I was allowed to know. In my profession, studied ignorance is an art form." He turns to the window and peers out sightlessly. "Have you seen how people live in the slums here?" Lesley shakes her head. "She took me once. In a weak moment, she file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (321 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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said later, she wanted me to inspect her workplace. Ghita Pearson came with us. Ghita and Tessa were naturally close. The affinities were ridiculous. Their mothers had both been doctors, their fathers lawyers, they'd both been brought up Catholic. We went to a medical center. Four concrete walls and a tin roof and a thousand people waiting to get to the door." For a moment he forgets where he is. "Poverty on that scale is a discipline of its own. It can't be learned in an afternoon. Nevertheless, it was hard for me, from then on, to walk down Stanley Street without--" he broke off again-"without the other image in my mind." After Woodrow's sleek evasions, his words ring out like the true gospel. "The great injustice--the great crime--was what kept her alive. Our baby was five weeks dead. Left alone in the house, Tessa would stare vacantly at the wall. Mustafa would telephone me at the High Commission--"Come home, Mzee, she is ill, she is ill." But it wasn't I who revived her. It was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (322 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Arnold. Arnold understood. Arnold shared the secret with her. She'd only to hear his car in the drive and she became a different woman. "What have you got? What have you got?"' She meant news. Information. Progress. When he'd gone, she'd retreat to her little workroom and toil into the night." "At her computer?" A moment's wariness on Justin's part. Overcome. "She had her papers, she had her computer. She had the telephone, which she used with the greatest circ*mspection. And she had Arnold, whenever he was able to get away." "And you didn't mind that then?" Rob sneers, in an ill-judged return to his hectoring tone. "Your wife sitting about mooning, waiting for Dr. Wonderful to show up?" "Tessa was desolate. If she'd needed a hundred Bluhms, as far as I was concerned, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (323 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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she could have them all and on whatever terms she wished." "And you didn't know anything about the great crime," Lesley resumed, unwilling to be persuaded. "Nothing. What it was about, who the victims and the main players were. They kept it all from you. Bluhm and Tessa together, and you stuck out there in the cold." "I gave them their distance," Justin confirmed doggedly.

"I just don't see how you could survive like that," Lesley insists, putting down her notebook and opening her hands. "Apart, but together-the way you describe it--it's like--not being on speaking terms-worse." "We didn't survive," Justin reminds her simply. "Tessa's dead." * * * Here they might have thought that the time file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (324 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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for intimate confidences had run its course and a period of sheepishness or embarrassment would follow, even recantation. But Justin has only begun. He jolts himself upright, like a man raising his game. His hands fall to his thighs and stay there until otherwise ordered. His voice recovers its power. Some deep interior force is driving it to the surface, into the unfresh air of the Woodrows' fetid dining room, still rank with last night's gravy.

"She was so impetuous," he declares proudly, once more reciting from speeches he has made to himself for hours on end. "I loved that in her from the start. She was so desperate to have our child at once. The death of her parents must be compensated as soon as possible! Why wait till we were married? I held her back. I shouldn't have done. I pleaded convention-God knows why. "Very well," she said, "if we must be married in order to have a baby, let's get married immediately." So we went off to Italy and married file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (325 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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immediately, to the huge entertainment of my colleagues." He is entertained himself. ""Quayle's gone mad! Old Justin's married his daughter! Has Tessa passed her A levels yet?"' When she became pregnant, after three years of trying, she wept. So did I." He breaks off, but no one interrupts his flow. "With pregnancy she changed. But only for the good. Tessa grew into motherhood. Outwardly she remained lighthearted. But inwardly a deep sense of responsibility was forming in her. Her aid work took on new meaning. I am told that's not unusual. What had been important now became a vocation, practically a destiny. She was seven months pregnant and still tending the sick and dying, then coming back for some fatuous diplomatic dinner party in town. The nearer the baby came, the more determined she was to make a better world for it. Not just for our child. For all file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (326 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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children. By then she'd set her heart on an African hospital. If I'd forced her to go to some private clinic, she'd have done it, but I'd have betrayed her." "How?" Lesley murmurs. "Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It's diplomatic pain. It's television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans." "But she was doing something about it," Lesley objects. "Hence the African hospital. In her extreme moments she talked of bearing her child in the slums of Kibera. Mercifully, Arnold and Ghita between them were able to restore her sense of proportion. Arnold has the authority of suffering. He not file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (327 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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only treated torture victims in Algeria, he was tortured himself. He had earned his pass to the wretched of the earth. I hadn't." Rob seizes on this, as if the point has not been made a dozen times before. "A bit hard to see where you came in, then, isn't it? Bit of a spare wheel, you were, sitting up there in the clouds with your diplomatic pain and your highlevel committee, weren't you?" But Justin's forbearance is limitless. There are times when he is simply too well bred to disagree. "She exempted me from active service, as she put it," he assents with a shameful dropping of the voice. "She invented specious arguments to put me at my ease. She insisted that the world needed both of us: me inside the system, pushing; herself outside it, in the field, pulling. "I'm the one who believes in the moral state," she would say. "If you lot don't do your job, what hope is there for file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (328 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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the rest of us?"' It was sophistry and we both knew it. The system didn't need my job. Neither did I. What was the point of it? I was writing reports no one looked at and suggesting action that was never taken. Tessa was a stranger to deceit. Except in my case. For me, she deceived herself totally." "Was she ever afraid?" Lesley asks, softly in order not to violate the atmosphere of confession. Justin reflects, then allows himself a half smile of recollection. "She once boasted to the American Ambassadress that fear was the only four-letter word she didn't know the meaning of. Her Excellency was not amused." Lesley smiles too, but not for long. "And this decision to have her baby in an African hospital," she asks, her eye on her notebook. "Can you tell us when and how it was taken, please?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (329 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"There was a woman from one of the slum villages up north that Tessa regularly visited. Wanza, surname unknown. Wanza was suffering from a mystery illness of some sort. She had been singled out for special treatment. By coincidence they found themselves in the same ward at the Uhuru Hospital and Tessa befriended her." Do they hear the guarded note that has entered his voice? Justin does. "Know what illness?" "Only the generality. She was ill and might become dangerously so." "Did she have AIDS?" "Whether her illness was AIDS'-RELATED I have no idea. My impression was that the concerns were different." "That's pretty unusual, isn't it, a woman from the slums giving birth in a file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (330 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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hospital?" "She was under observation." "Whose observation?" It is the second time that Justin censors himself. Deception does not come naturally to him. "I assume one of the health clinics. In her village. In a shantytown. As you see, I'm hazy. I marvel at how much I managed not to know." "And Wanza died, didn't she?" "She died on the last night of Tessa's stay at the hospital," Justin replies, gratefully abandoning his reserve in order to reconstruct the moment for them. "I'd been in the ward all evening but Tessa insisted I go home for a few hours' sleep. She'd told the same to Arnold and Ghita. We were taking alternate watches at her bedside. Arnold had supplied a safari bed. At four in the morning, Tessa telephoned me. There was no telephone in her ward so file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (331 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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she used the Sister's. She was distressed. Hysterical is the more accurate description, but Tessa, when she is hysterical, does not raise her voice. Wanza had disappeared. The baby also. She had woken to find Wanza's bed empty and the baby's cot vanished. I drove to Uhuru Hospital. Arnold and Ghita arrived at the same moment. Tessa was inconsolable. It was as if she'd lost a second child in the space of a few days. Between the three of us, we persuaded her that it was time for her to convalesce at home. With Wanza dead and the baby removed, she felt no obligation to remain." "Tessa didn't get to see the body?" "She asked to see it but was told it was not appropriate. Wanza was dead and her baby had been taken to the mother's village by her brother. So far as the hospital was concerned, that was an end to the matter. Hospitals do not care to dwell on death," he adds, speaking with the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (332 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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experience of Garth. "Did Arnold get to see the body?" "He was too late. It had been sent to the morgue and lost." Lesley's eyes widen in unfeigned astonishment while, on the other side of Justin, Rob leans quickly forward, grabs the tape recorder and makes sure the tape is turning in the little window. "Lost? You don't lose bodies!" Rob exclaims. "To the contrary, I'm assured that in Nairobi it happens all the time." "What about the death certificate?" "I can only tell you what I learned from Arnold and Tessa. I know nothing of a death certificate. None was mentioned." "And no postmortem?" Lesley is back. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (333 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"To my knowledge, none." "Did Wanza receive visitors at the hospital?" Justin ponders this but evidently sees no reason not to reply. "Her brother Kioko. He slept beside her on the floor when he wasn't keeping the flies off her. And Ghita Pearson would make a point of sitting with her when she called on Tessa." "Anyone else?" "A white male doctor, I believe. I can't be sure." "That he was white?" "That he was a doctor. A white man in a white coat. And a stethoscope." "Alone?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (334 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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The reserve again, falling like a shadow across his voice. "He was accompanied by a group of students. Or so I took them to be. They were young. They wore white coats." With three golden bees embroidered on the pocket of each coat, he might have added, but his resolve held him back. "Why do you say students? Did Tessa say they were students?" "No." "Did Arnold?" "Arnold made no judgment about them in my hearing. It is pure presumption on my part. They were young." "How about their leader? Their doctor, if that's what he was. Did Arnold say anything about him?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (335 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Not to me. If he had concerns, he addressed them to the man himself--the man with the stethoscope." "In your presence?" "But not in my hearing." Or almost not. Rob like Lesley is craning forward to catch his every word. "Describe." Justin is already doing so. For a brief truce he has joined their team. But the reserve has not left his voice. Caution and circ*mspection are written round his tired eyes. "Arnold took the man to one side. By the arm. The man with the stethoscope. They spoke to each other as doctors do. In low voices, apart." "In English?" "I believe so. When Arnold speaks French or kiSwahili he acquires a different body language." And when he speaks English he file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (336 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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is inclined to raise his pitch a little, he might have added. "Describe him--the bloke with the stethoscope," Rob commands. "He was burly. A big man. Plump. Unkempt. I have a memory of suede shoes. I remember thinking it peculiar that a medical doctor should wear suede shoes, I am not sure why. But the memory of the shoes endures. His coat was grimy from nothing very particular. Suede shoes, a grimy coat, a red face. A showman of some kind. If it had not been for his white coat, an impresario." And three golden bees, tarnished but distinct, embroidered on his pocket, just like the nurse in the poster at the airport, he was thinking. "He seemed ashamed," he added, taking himself by surprise. "What of?" "Of his own presence there. Of what he was doing." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (337 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Why do you say that?" "He wouldn't look at Tessa. At either of us. He'd look anywhere else. Just not at us." "Color of hair?" "Fair. Fair to ginger. There was drink in his face. The reddish hair set it off. Do you know of him? Tessa was most curious about him." "Beard? Mustache?" "Clean-shaven. No. He was not. He had a day's stubble at least. It had a golden color to it. She asked him his name repeatedly. He declined to give it." Rob comes crashing in again. "What kind of conversation did it look like?" he insists. "Was it an argument? Was it friendly? were they inviting each other to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (338 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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lunch? What was going on?" The caution back. I heard nothing. I only saw. "Arnold appeared to be protestingreproaching. The doctor was denying. I had the impression--" he pauses, giving himself time to choose his words. Trust nobody, Tessa had said. Nobody but Ghita and Arnold. Promise me. I promise. "My impression was, this was not the first time a disagreement had taken place between them. What I was witnessing was part of a continuing argument. So I thought afterward, at least. That I had witnessed a resumption of hostilities between adversaries." "You've thought about it a lot, then." "Yes. Yes, I have," Justin agrees dubiously. "My other impression was that English was not the doctor's first language." "But you didn't discuss any of this with Arnold and Tessa?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (339 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"When the man had gone, Arnold returned to Tessa's bedside, took her pulse and spoke in her ear." "Which again you didn't hear?" "No and I was not intended to." Too thin, he thinks. Try harder. "It was a part I had become familiar with," he explains, avoiding their gaze. "To remain outside their circle." "What medication was Wanza on?" Lesley asks. "I've no idea." He had every idea. Poison. He had fetched Tessa from the hospital and was standing two steps below her on the staircase to their bedroom, holding her night bag in one hand and the bag of Garth's first clothes and bedclothes and nappies in the other, but he was watching her like a file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (340 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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wrestler because, being Tessa, she had to manage on her own. As soon as she started to crumple he let go the bags and caught her before her knees gave way, and he felt the awful lightness of her, and the shaking and despair as she broke into her lament, not about dead Garth, but about dead Wanza. They killed her! she blurted, straight into his face because he was holding her so close. Those bastards killed Wanza! Justin! They killed her with their poison. Who did, darling? he asked, smoothing her sweated hair away from her cheeks and forehead. Who killed her? Tell me. With his arm across her emaciated back he manhandled her gently up the stairs. What bastards, darling? Tell me who the bastards are. Those bastards in ThreeBees. Those phony bloody doctors. The ones that wouldn't look at us! What sort of doctors are we talking about?-lifting her up and laying her on the bed, not giving her the slightest second chance to fall. Do they have names, the doctors? Tell me. From deep in his inner world, he hears file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (341 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Lesley asking him the same question in reverse. "Does the name Lorbeer mean anything to you, Justin?" If in doubt, lie, he has sworn to himself. If in hell, lie. If I trust nobody--not even myself--if I am to be loyal only to the dead, lie. "I fear not," he replies. "Not overheard anywhere--on the phone? Bits of chitchat between Arnold and Tessa? Lorbeer, German, Dutch--Swiss perhaps?" "Lorbeer is not a name to me in any context." "Kovacs--Hungarian woman? Dark hair, said to be a beauty?" "Does she have a first name?" He means no again, but this time it's the truth. "Nobody does," Lesley replies in a kind of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (342 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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desperation. "Emrich. Also a woman. But blonde. No?" She tosses her pencil onto the table in defeat. "So Wanza dies," she says. "Official. Killed by a man who wouldn't look at you. And today, six months later, you still don't know what of. She just died." "It was never revealed to me. If Tessa or Arnold knew the cause of her death, I did not." Rob and Lesley flop in their chairs like two athletes who have agreed to take time out. Leaning back, stretching his arms wide, Rob gives a stage sigh while Lesley stays leaning forward, cupping her chin in her hand, an expression of melancholy on her wise face. "And you haven't made this up, then?" she asks Justin through her knuckles. "This whole pitch about the dying woman Wanza, her baby, the so-called doctor who was ashamed, the so-called students in white coats? It's not a tissue of lies from end file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (343 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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to end, for example?" "What a perfectly ridiculous suggestion! Why on earth should I waste your time inventing such a story?" "The Uhuru Hospital's got no record of Wanza," Rob explains, equally despondent, from his half-recumbent position. "Tessa existed, so did your poor Garth. Wanza didn't. She was never there, she was never admitted, she was never treated by a doctor, pseudo or otherwise, no one observed her, no one prescribed for her. Her baby was never born, she never died, her body was never lost because it never existed. Our Les here had a go at speaking to a few of the nurses but they don't know nuffink, do they, Les?" "Somebody had a quiet word with them before I did," Lesley explains. * * * Hearing a man's voice behind him, Justin swung round. But it was only the flight file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (344 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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steward inquiring after his bodily comforts. Did Mr. Brown require a spot of help with the controls on his seat at all? Thank you, Mr. Brown preferred to remain upright. Or his video machine? Thank you, no, I have no need of it. Then would he like to have the blind across his window drawn at all? No, thank you--emphatically-Justin preferred his window open to the cosmos. Then what about a nice warm blanket for Mr. Brown? Out of incurable politeness, Justin accepted a blanket and returned his gaze to the black window in time to see Gloria barging into the dining room without knocking, carrying a tray of paste sandwiches. Setting it on the table, she sneaks a look at whatever Lesley has written in her notebook: fruitlessly, as it happens, for Lesley has deftly turned to a fresh page. "You won't overwork our poor houseguest, will you, darlings? He's got quite enough on his plate as it is, haven't you, Justin?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (345 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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And a kiss on the cheek for Justin, and a music-hall exit for everyone, as the three of them with one mind spring to open the door for their jailer as she departs with the spent tea tray. * * * For a while after Gloria's intrusion the talk is piecemeal. They munch their sandwiches, Lesley opens a different notebook, a blue one, while Rob with his mouth full fires off a seemingly unrelated stream of questions. "Know anyone who smokes Sportsman cigarettes incessantly, do we?"--in a tone to suggest that smoking Sportsmans is a capital offense. "Not that I'm aware of, no. We both detested cigarette smoke." "I meant out and about, not just at home." "Still no."

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"Know anyone owns a green long-wheelbase safari truck, good condition, Kenyan plates?" "The High Commissioner boasts an armored jeep of some sort, but I don't imagine that's what you have in mind." "Know any blokes in their forties, wellbuilt military types, polished shoes, tanned complexions?" "Nobody who comes to mind, I'm afraid," Justin confesses, smiling in his relief to be clear of the danger zone. "Ever heard of a place called Marsabit, at all?" "Yes, I think so. Yes, Marsabit. Of course. Why?" "Oh. Right. Good. We have heard of it. Where is it?" "On the edge of the Chalbi desert." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (347 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"East of Lake Turkana then?" "As memory serves, yes. It's an administrative center of some sort. A meeting place for wanderers from all over the northern region." "Ever been there?" "Alas, no." "Know anyone who has?" "No, I don't believe so." "Any idea of the facilities available to the careworn traveler at Marsabit?" "I believe there is accommodation there. And a police post. And a national reserve." "But you've never been there." Justin has not. "Or sent anyone there? Two anyones, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (348 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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for instance?" Justin has not. "So how come you know all about the place then? Psychic, are you?" "When I am posted to a country I make it my business to study the map." "We're getting stories of a green longwheelbase safari truck that stopped over at Marsabit two nights before the murder, Justin," Lesley explains, when this ritual display of aggression has run its course. "Two white men aboard. They sound like white hunters. Fit, your sort of age, khaki drills, shiny shoes, like Rob says. Didn't talk to anyone except each other. Didn't flirt with a bevy of Swedish girls at the bar. Bought stores from the shop. Fuel, fa*gs, water, beer, rations. The fa*gs were Sportsmans, the beer was Whitecap in bottles. Whitecap only comes in bottles. They left next morning, headed west across the desert. If they kept driving they could have hit Turkana shore next evening. They might even have made it to Allia Bay. The empty file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (349 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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beer bottles we found near the murder scene were Whitecaps. The fa*g ends were Sportsmans." "Is it simplistic of me to ask whether the hotel at Marsabit keeps a register?" Justin inquires. "Page missing," Rob declares triumphantly, barging his way back. "Untimely ripped. Plus the Marsabit staff don't remember them from sh*t. They're so scared they can't remember their own names. Someone had a quiet word with them too, we assume. Same people as had a word with the staff at the hospital." But this is Rob's swansong in his role of Justin's hangman, a truth that he himself seems to recognize, for he scowls and yanks at his ear and very nearly looks apologetic, but Justin meanwhile is quickening. His gaze travels restlessly from Rob to Lesley and back again. He waits for the next question and, when none file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (350 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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is forthcoming, asks one of his own. "What about the vehicle registration office?" The suggestion drew a hollow laugh from the two officers. "In Kenya?" they ask. "The motor insurance companies, then. The importers, the suppliers. There can't be that many long-wheelbase green safari trucks in Kenya. Not if you sift through them." "The Blue Boys are working on it flat out," says Rob. "By the next millennium, if we're very nice, they may come up with an answer. The importers haven't been all that clever either, to be frank," he goes on, with a sly look at Lesley. "Little firm called Bell, Barker and Benjamin, known otherwise as ThreeBees--heard of them? President for Life, one Sir Kenneth K. Curtiss, golfer and crook, Kenny K to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (351 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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his friends?" "Everyone in Africa has heard of ThreeBees," says Justin, pulling himself sharply back into line. If in doubt, lie. "And of Sir Kenneth, obviously. He's a character." "Loved?" "Admired, I suppose is the word. He owns a popular Kenyan football team. And wears a baseball cap back to front," he adds, with a distaste that makes them laugh. "ThreeBees have shown a lot of what I'd call alacrity all right, but not a lot of results," Rob resumes. "Very helpful, not a lot of help. "No problem, Officer! You'll have it by lunchtime, Officer!" But that was lunchtime a week ago." "I'm afraid that's the way with quite a few people round here," Justin laments with a weary smile. "Have you tried the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (352 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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motor insurance companies?" "ThreeBees do motor insurance too. Well, they would, wouldn't they? Free thirdparty cover when you buy one of their vehicles. Still, that hasn't been a lot of help either. Not when it comes to green safari trucks in good condition." "I see," says Justin blandly. "Tessa never had them in her sights at all, did she?" Rob asks, in his ever-socasual tone. "ThreeBees? Kenny K does seem rather close to the Moi throne, which can usually be relied on to get her dander up. Did she?" "Oh I expect so," says Justin with equal vagueness. "At one time or another. Bound to have." "Which might account for why we're not getting that extra bit of help we're after from the noble House of ThreeBees on the matter of the mystery vehicle and one or file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (353 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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two other matters not directly related to it. Only they're big in other fields too, aren't they? Everything from cough syrup to executive jets, they told us, didn't they, Les?" Justin smiles distantly, but does not advance the topic of conversation--not even, though he is tempted, with an amusing reference to the borrowed glory of Napoleon, or the absurd coincidence of Tessa's connection with the island of Elba. And he makes no reference whatever to the night he brought her home from the hospital, and to those bastards in ThreeBees who killed Wanza with their poison. "But they weren't on Tessa's blacklist, you say," Rob continues. "Which is surprising really, considering what's been said about them by their many critics. "The iron fist in the iron glove," was how one Westminster MP recently described them if I remember rightly, apropos some file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (354 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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forgotten scandal. I don't expect he'll be getting a free safari in a hurry, will he, Les?" Les said no way. "Kenny K and his ThreeBees. Sounds like a rock group. But Tessa hadn't declared one of her fatwas against them, as far as you know?" "Not to my knowledge, no," says Justin, smiling at "fatwa." Rob doesn't let it go. "Based on--I don't know--some bad experience she and Arnold had in their fieldwork, say--malpractice of some kind--of the pharmaceutical sort? Only she was pretty big on the medical side of things, wasn't she? And so's Kenny K, when he's not on the golf course with Moi's Boys or buzzing round in his Gulfstream buying a few more companies." "Oh indeed," says Justin--but with such an air of detachment, if not downright disinterest, that there is clearly no prospect of further enlightenment. "So if I told you that Tessa and Arnold file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (355 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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had made repeated representations to numerous departments of the far-flung House of ThreeBees over recent weeks--had written letters, made phone calls and appointments and had persistently been given the runaround for their trouble--you would still be saying this was not something that had come to your notice in any shape or form. That's a question." "I'm afraid I would." "Tessa writes a string of furious letters to Kenny K personally. They're handdelivered or registered. She phones his secretary three times a day and bombards him with e-mails. She attempts to doorstep him at his farm at Lake Naivasha and at the entrance to his illustrious new offices, but his boys tip him off in time and he uses the back stairs, to the great entertainment of his staff. All this would be total news to you, so help you God?" "With or without God's help, it is news to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (356 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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me." "Yet you don't seem surprised." "Don't I? How odd. I thought I was astonished. Perhaps I am not betraying my emotions as I should," Justin retorts, with a mixture of anger and reserve that catches the officers off their guard, for their heads lift to him, almost in salute. * * * But Justin is not interested in their responses. His deceptions come from an entirely different stable to Woodrow's. Where Woodrow was busily forgetting, Justin is being assailed from all sides by half-recovered memories: shreds of conversation between Bluhm and Tessa that in honor he had compelled himself not to hear, but that now come drifting back to him; her exasperation, disguising itself as silence, whenever the omnipresent name of Kenny K is spoken in her hearing--for example, his imminent elevation to the House of Lords, which in the Muthaiga Club file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (357 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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is predicted as a racing certainty--for example, the persistent rumors of a giant merger between ThreeBees and a multinational conglomerate even vaster than itself. He is remembering her implacable boycott of all ThreeBees products--her antiNapoleonic crusade, as she ironically dubbed it--from the household foods and detergents that Tessa's domestic army of down-and-outs was not allowed to buy on pain of death to the ThreeBees roadside cafeterias and gasoline stations, car batteries and oils that Justin was forbidden to make use of when they were out driving together--and her furious cursing whenever a ThreeBees billboard with Napoleon's stolen emblem leered at them from the hoardings. "We're hearing "radical" a lot, Justin," Lesley announces, emerging from her notes to break into his thoughts once more. "Was Tessa radical? Radical's like militant where we come from. "If you don't like it, bomb it" sort of thing. Tessa wasn't into file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (358 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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that stuff, was she? Nor was Arnold. Or were they?" Justin's answer has the weary ring of repeated drafting for a pedantic Head of Department. "Tessa believed that the irresponsible quest for corporate profit is destroying the globe, and the emerging world in particular. Under the guise of investment, Western capital ruins the native environment and favors the rise of kleptocracies. So ran her argument. It is scarcely a radical one these days. I have heard it widely canvassed in the corridors of the international community. Even in my own committee." He pauses again while he recalls the unlovely sight of the vastly overweight Kenny K driving off from the first tee of the Muthaiga Club in the company of Tim Donohue, our overaged head spy. "By the same argument, aid to the Third file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (359 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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World is exploitation under another name," he resumes. "The beneficiaries are the countries that supply the money on interest, local African politicians and officials who pocket huge bribes, and the Western contractors and arms suppliers who walk away with huge profits. The victims are the man in the street, the uprooted, the poor and the very poor. And the children who will have no future," he ends, quoting Tessa and remembering Garth. "Do you believe that?" Lesley asks. "It's a little late for me to believe anything," Justin replies meekly, and there is a moment's quiet before he adds-less meekly--"Tessa was that rarest thing: a lawyer who believes in justice." "Why were they heading for Leakey's place?" Lesley demands when she has silently acknowledged this statement. "Perhaps Arnold had business up there for file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (360 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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his NGO. Leakey is not one to disregard the welfare of native Africans." "Perhaps," Lesley agrees, writing thoughtfully in a green-backed notebook. "Had she met him?" "I do not believe so." "Had Arnold?" "I have no idea. Perhaps you should put the question to Leakey." "Mr. Leakey never heard of either one of them till he turned on his television set last week," Lesley replies, in a tone of gloom. "Mr. Leakey spends most of his time in Nairobi these days, trying to be Moi's Mr. Clean and having a hard time getting his message over." Rob glances at Lesley for her approval and receives a veiled nod. He cranes himself forward and gives the tape recorder an aggressive shove in Justin's direction: file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (361 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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speak into this thing. "So what's the white plague then, when it's at home?" he demands, implying by his hectoring tone that Justin is personally responsible for its spread. "The white plague," he repeats, when Justin hesitates. "What is it? Come on." A stoical immobility has once more settled over Justin's face. His voice retreats into its official shell. Paths of connection are again opening before him, but they are Tessa's and he will walk them alone. "The white plague was once a popular term for tuberculosis," he pronounces. "Tessa's grandfather died of the disease. As a child she witnessed his death. Tessa possessed a book of the same title." But he didn't add that the book had been lying at her bedside until he had transferred it to the Gladstone bag.

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Now it is Lesley's turn to be cautious. "Did she take a special interest in TB for that reason?" "Special I don't know. As you have just said, her work in the slums gave her an interest in a range of medical matters. Tuberculosis was one of them."

"But if her grandfather died of it, Justin-" "Tessa particularly disliked the sentimentalism that attaches to the disease in literature," Justin goes on severely, talking across her. "Keats, Stevenson, Coleridge, Thomas Mann--she used to say that people who found TB romantic should have tried sitting at her grandfather's bedside." Rob again consults Lesley with his eyes, and again receives her silent nod. "So would it surprise you to hear that in the course of an unauthorized search of Arnold Bluhm's apartment we found a copy of an file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (363 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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old letter he had sent to the head of ThreeBees' marketing operation, warning him of the side effects of a new shortcourse, antituberculosis drug that ThreeBees are peddling?" Justin does not hesitate for a second. The perilous line of questioning has reactivated his diplomatic skills. "Why should it surprise me? Bluhm's NGO takes a close professional interest in Third World drugs. Drugs are the scandal of Africa. If any one thing denotes the Western indifference to African suffering, it's the miserable shortage of the right drugs, and the disgracefully high prices that the pharmaceutical firms have been exacting over the last thirty years"--quoting Tessa but without attribution. "I'm sure Arnold has written dozens of such letters." "This one was hidden away by itself," says Rob. "Rolled up with a lot of technical data that's beyond us."

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"Well, let's hope you can ask Arnold to decipher it for you when he comes back," says Justin primly, not bothering to conceal his distaste at the notion that they had been foraging through Bluhm's possessions and reading his correspondence without his knowledge. Lesley takes over again. "Tessa had a laptop, right?" "Indeed she did." "What make?" "The name escapes me. Small, gray and Japanese is about all I can tell you." He is lying. Glibly. He knows it, they know it. To judge by their faces, an air of loss has entered the relationship, of friendship disappointed. But not on Justin's side. Justin knows only stubborn refusal, concealed within diplomatic grace. This is the battle he has steeled himself for over days and nights, while file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (365 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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praying it may never be joined. "She kept it in her workroom, right? Where she kept her notice board and her papers and research material." "When she was not taking it with her, yes." "Did she use it for her letters-documents?" "I believe so." "And e-mails?" "Frequently." "And she'd print out from it, right?" "Sometimes." "She wrote a long document about five or six months ago--around eighteen pages of letter and annex. It was some kind of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (366 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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protest about malpractice, we think medical or pharmaceutical or both. A case history, describing something very serious that was going on here in Kenya. Did she show it to you?" "No." "And you didn't read it--for yourself, without her knowledge?" "No." "You know nothing about it then. Is that what you're saying?" "I'm afraid it is." Washed down with a regretful smile. "Only we were wondering whether this was to do with the great crime she thought she'd got onto." "I see." "And whether ThreeBees might have file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (367 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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something to do with that great crime." "It's always possible." "But she didn't show it to you?" Lesley insists. "As I have told you several times, Lesley: no." He almost adds, "dear lady." "Do you think it might have involved ThreeBees in any way?" "Alas, I have absolutely no idea." But he has every idea. It is the terrible time. It is the time when he feared he might have lost her; when her young face grew harder by the day and her young eyes acquired a zealot's light; when she crouched, night after night, at her laptop in her little office, surrounded by heaps of papers flagged and cross-referred like a lawyer's brief; the time when she ate her food without noticing what she was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (368 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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eating, then hurried back to her labors without even a good-bye; the time when shy villagers from the countryside came soundlessly to the side door of the house to visit her, and sat with her on the veranda, eating the food that Mustafa brought to them. "So she never even discussed the document with you?" Lesley, acting incredulous. "Never, I'm afraid." "Or in front of you--with Arnold or Ghita, say?" "In the last months, Tessa and Arnold kept Ghita at arm's length, I assume for her own good. As for myself, it was my perception that they actually mistrusted me. They believed that if I was caught in a conflict of interest, I would owe my first allegiance to the Crown." "And would you?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (369 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Never in a thousand years, he is thinking. But his answer reflects the ambivalence they expect of him. "Since I am not familiar with the document you refer to, I fear that is not a question I can answer." "But the document would have been printed from her laptop, right? This eighteen-page job--even if she didn't show it to you." "Possibly. Or Bluhm's. Or a friend's." "So where is it now--the laptop? This minute?" Seamless. Woodrow could have learned from him. No body language, no tremor in the voice or exaggerated pause for breath. "I looked in vain for her laptop in the inventory of her possessions presented to me by the Kenyan police and, like a number file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (370 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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of other things, regrettably it does not feature." "Nobody at Loki saw her with a laptop," Lesley says. "But then I don't suppose they inspected her personal luggage." "Nobody at the Oasis saw her with one. Did she have it with her when you drove her to the airport?" "She had the rucksack that she always carried on her field trips. That too has disappeared. She had an overnight bag which may also have contained her laptop. Sometimes it did. Kenya does not encourage lone women to display expensive electronic equipment in public places." "But then she wasn't alone, was she?" Rob reminds him, after which a long silence intervenes--so long that it becomes a matter of suspense to see who breaks it first. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (371 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Justin," says Lesley finally. "When you visited your house with Woodrow last Tuesday morning, what did you take away with you?" Justin affects to assemble a mental list. "Oh ... family papers ... private correspondence relating to Tessa's family trust ... some shirts, socks ... a dark suit for the funeral ... a few trinkets of sentimental value ... a couple of ties." "Nothing else?" "Nothing that immediately springs to mind. No." "Anything that doesn't?" asks Rob. Justin smiles wearily but says nothing. "We talked to Mustafa," says Lesley. "We asked him: "Mustafa, where's Miss Tessa's laptop?"' He gave out conflicting signals. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (372 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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One minute she'd taken it away with her. The next she hadn't. After that, the journalists had stolen it. The one person who hadn't taken it was you. We thought he might be trying to front for you and not succeeding very well." "I'm afraid that's rather what you get when you bully domestic staff." "We didn't bully him," Lesley comes back, angry at last. "We were extremely gentle. We asked him about her notice board. Why was it full of pins and pinholes but didn't have any notices on it? He'd tidied it, he said. Tidied it all by himself with no help from anyone. He can't read English, he's not allowed to touch her possessions or anything in the room, but he'd tidied the notice board. What had he done with the notices? we asked him. Burned them, he said. Who told him to burn them? Nobody. Who told him to tidy the notice board? Nobody. Least of all Mr. Justin. We think he was covering for you, not very well. We think you took the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (373 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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notices, not Mustafa. We think he's covering for you on the laptop too." Justin has lapsed once more into that state of artificial ease that is the curse and virtue of his profession. "I fear you do not take into account our cultural differences here, Lesley. A more likely explanation is that the laptop went with her to Turkana." "Plus the notices off her notice board? I don't think so, Justin. Did you help yourself to any disks during your visit?" And here for a moment--but only here-Justin drops his guard. For while one side of him is engaged in bland denial, another is as anxious as his interrogators to obtain answers. "No, but I confess I searched for them. Much of her legal correspondence was contained in them. She was in the habit of e-mailing her solicitor on a range of file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (374 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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matters." "And you didn't find them." "They were always on her desk," Justin protests, now lavish in his desire to share the problem. "In a pretty lacquer box given her by the very same solicitor last Christmas-they're not just cousins but old friends. The box has Chinese lettering on it. Tessa had a Chinese aid worker translate it. To her delight, it turned out to be a tirade against loathsome Westerners. I can only suppose that it went the same way as the laptop. Perhaps she took the disks to Loki too." "Why should she do that?" asks Lesley skeptically. "I'm not literate in information technology. I should be, but I'm not. The police inventory said nothing of disks either," he adds, waiting for their help. Rob reflects on this. "Whatever was on the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (375 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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disks, chances are it's on the laptop too," he pronounces. "Unless she downloaded onto a disk, then wiped the hard disk clean. But why would anyone do that?" "Tessa had a highly developed sense of security, as I told you." Another ruminative silence, shared by Justin. "So where are her papers now?" asks Rob roughly. "On their way to London." "By diplomatic bag?" "By whatever route I choose. The Foreign Office is being most supportive." Perhaps it is the echo of Woodrow's evasions that brings Lesley to the edge of her chair in an outburst of unfeigned file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (376 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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exasperation. "Justin." "Yes, Lesley." "Tessa researched. Right? Forget the disks. Forget the laptop. Where are her papers --all her papers--physically and at this moment?" she demands. "And where are the notices off that board?" Playing his artificial self again, Justin vouchsafes her a tolerant frown, implying that although she is being unreasonable, he will do his best to humor her. "Among my effects, no doubt. If you ask me which particular suitcase, I might be a little stumped." Lesley waits, letting her breathing settle. "We'd like you to open all your luggage for us, please. We'd like you to take us downstairs now, and show us everything you took from your house on Tuesday morning." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (377 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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She stands up. Rob does the same, and stations himself beside the door in readiness. Only Justin remains seated. "I'm afraid that is not possible," he says. "Why not?" Lesley snaps. "For the reason that I took the papers in the first place. They are personal and private. I do not propose to submit them to your scrutiny, or anybody else's, until I have had a chance to read them myself." Lesley flushes. "If this was England, Justin, I'd slap a subpoena on you so fast you wouldn't even feel it." "But this is not England, alas. You have no warrant and no local powers that I'm aware of." Lesley ignores him. "If this was England, I'd get a warrant to search this house file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (378 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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from top to bottom. And I'd take every trinket, piece of paper and disk that you lifted from Tessa's workroom. And the laptop. I'd go through them with a tooth comb." "But you've already searched my house, Lesley," Justin protests calmly from his chair. "I don't think Woodrow would take kindly to your searching his as well, would he? And I certainly cannot give you permission to do to me what you have done to Arnold without his consent." Lesley is scowling and pink like a woman wronged. Rob, very pale, stares longingly at his clenched fists. "We'll see about that tomorrow then," Lesley says ominously as they leave. But tomorrow never comes. Not for all her fiery words. Throughout the night and late into the morning Justin sits on the edge of his bed, waiting for Rob and Lesley to return as they have threatened, armed with file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (379 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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their warrants, their subpoenas and their writs, and a posse of Kenyan Blue Boys to do their dirty work for them. He fruitlessly debates options and hiding places as he has done for days. Thinks like a prisoner of war, contemplating floors and walls and ceilings: Where? Makes plans to recruit Gloria, drops them. Makes others involving Mustafa and Gloria's houseboy. Others again involving Ghita. But the only word of his inquisitors is a phone call from Mildren saying the police officers are required elsewhere, and no, there is no news of Arnold. And when the funeral comes, the police officers are still required elsewhere--or so it appears to Justin, when now and then he scans the mourners, counting absent friends. * * * The plane had entered a land of eternal predawn. Outside his cabin window, wave after wave of frozen sea rolled toward a colorless infinity. All round him, whiteshrouded passengers slept in the unearthly file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (380 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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postures of the dead. One had her arm thrown upward as if she had been shot while waving to someone. Another had his mouth open in a silent scream, and his dead man's hand across his heart. Upright and alone, Justin returned his gaze to the window. His face floated in it beside Tessa's, like the masks of people he once knew. "It's just bloody horrible!" cried a balding figure in a voluminous brown overcoat, prizing Justin free of his luggage trolley and blinding him with a bear hug. "It's absolutely foul and f*cking unfair and bloody horrible. First Garth, now Tess." "Thank you, Ham," said Justin, returning the embrace as best he could, given that his arms were pinned to his sides. "And thank you for turning out at this ungodly hour. No, I'll take that, thank you. You carry the suitcase." "I'd have come to the funeral if you'd let file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (381 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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me! Christ, Justin!" "It was better to have you holding the fort," said Justin kindly. "That suit warm enough? Bit brass monkeys, isn't it, after sunny Africa?" Arthur Luigi Hammond was sole partner of the law firm of Hammond Manzini of London and Turin. Ham's father had deviled with Tessa's father at law school at Oxford, and afterward at law school in Milan. At a single ceremony in a tall church in Turin they had married two aristocratic Italian sisters, both fabled beauties. When Tessa was born to the one, Ham was born to the other. As the children grew they spent holidays together on Elba, skied together in Cortina and, as de facto brother and sister, graduated together at university, Ham with a rugger Blue and a hard-won third, Tessa with a first. Since the death of Tessa's parents Ham had played the part of Tessa's wise uncle, zealously file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (382 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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administering her family trust, making ruinously prudent investments for her and, with all the authority of his prematurely bald head, curbing his cousin's generous instincts while forgetting to render his own fees. He was big and pink and shiny, with twinkly eyes and liquid cheeks that frowned or smiled with every inner breeze. When Ham plays gin rummy, Tessa used to say, you know his hand before he does, just by the width of his grin when he picks up each card. "Why not shove that thing in the back?" Ham roared as they clambered into his tiny car. "All right, on the floor then. What's it got in it? Heroin?" "Cocaine," said Justin as he discreetly scanned the ranks of frosted cars. At Immigration, two woman officers had nodded him through with conspicuous indifference. In the luggage hall, two dull-faced men in suits and identification tags had looked at everyone but Justin. Three cars down from Ham's, a man and woman sat head to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (383 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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head in the front of a beige Ford saloon studying a map. In a civilized country, you can never tell, gentlemen, the jaded instructor on the security course liked to say. The most comfortable thing you can do is assume they're with you all the time. "All set?" Ham asked shyly, buckling his seat belt. England was beautiful. Low rays of morning sun gilded the frozen Sussex plow. Ham drove as he always drove, at sixty-five miles an hour in a seventy speed limit, ten yards behind the belching exhaust pipe of the nearest convenient lorry. "Meg sends love," he announced gruffly, in a reference to his very pregnant wife. "Blubbed for a week. So did I. Blub now if I'm not bloody careful." "I'm sorry, Ham," said Justin simply, accepting without bitterness that Ham was one of those mourners who look to the file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (384 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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bereaved for consolation. "I just wish they'd find the bugger, that's all," Ham burst out some minutes later. "And when they've strung him up, they can toss those Fleet Street bastards into the Thames for good measure. She's doing time with her bloody mother," he added. "That should bring it on." 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." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (385 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"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-desac 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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (386 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 livingdining-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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (387 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (388 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"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 f*ck'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. file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (389 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"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 email." 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." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (390 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"One will be fine, thanks. Whatever records were they?" "All she cared about. Anytime she thought I was getting fat and comfortable: pow, in there with another e-mail about company records." More crashing of pans deflected Ham to other paths. "Cheated at tennis, know that? In Turin. Oh yes. Little minx and self were partnered in a kiddywink knockout competition. Lied like a trooper all through the match. Every line call: out. Could be a yard in, didn't make a blind bit of difference. Ou. "I'm Italian," she said, "I'm allowed to." "Like hell you're Italian," I said. "You're English to your boots, same as me." God alone knows what I'd have done if we'd won. Given the cup back, I suppose. No, I wouldn't. She'd have killed me. Oh Christ. Sorry." Justin stepped into the drawing room to take his place before a greasy slag heap of bacon, egg, sausages, fried bread and file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (391 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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tomatoes. Ham was standing with one hand crammed to his mouth, dazed by his unhappy choice of metaphor. "What sort of companies exactly, Ham? Don't look like that. You'll put me off my breakfast." "Ownership," said Ham through his knuckles, as he sat down opposite Justin at the tiny table. "Whole thing was about ownership. Who owned two pissy little companies in the Isle of Man. Anyone else call her Tess, d'you know?" he asked, still chastened. "Apart from me?" "Not in my hearing. And certainly not in hers. "Tess" was your sole copyright." "Loved her rotten, you see." "And she loved you. What sort of companies?" "Intellectual property. Never had it off file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (392 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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with her, mind. Too close." "And in case you were wondering, it was the same with Bluhm." "Is that official?" "He didn't kill her, either. Any more than you or I did." "Sure?" "Sure." Ham brightened. "Old Meg wasn't convinced. Didn't know Tess the way I did, you see. Special thing. Can't be replicated. "Tess has chums," I told her. "Buddies. The demon sex doesn't come into it." I'll tell her what you said, if you don't mind. Cheer her up. All that sh*t in the press. Sort of rebounded on me." "So where were these companies registered? What were their names? Do you remember?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (393 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"'Course I remember. Couldn't help bloody remembering, with old Tess hammering away at me every other day." Ham was pouring tea, clutching the teapot in both hands, one for the pot, one to keep the lid from falling off while he grumbled. The operation completed, he sat back, still nursing the teapot, then lowered his head as if he were about to charge. "All right," he demanded aggressively. "Name me the most secretive, duplicitous, mendacious, hypocritical bunch of corporate wide boys it's been my dubious pleasure to encounter." "Defense," Justin suggested disingenuously. "Wrong. Pharmaceutical. Beats Defense into a co*cked hat. I've got it now. Knew I would. Lorpharma and Pharmabeer."

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"Who?" "It was in some medical rag. Lorpharma discovered the molecule and Pharmabeer owned the process. Knew I would. How those chaps come up with names like that, God knows." "Process to do what?" "Produce the molecule, arsehole, what do you think?" "What molecule?" "God knows. Same as the law but worse. Words I've never seen before, hope never to see 'em again. Blind the punters with science. Keep 'em in their place." After breakfast they went downstairs together and put the Gladstone in Ham's strongroom next door to his office. Lips pursed for discretion, eyes lifted to the heavens, Ham spun the combination and hauled back the steel door for Justin to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (395 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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go in alone. Then watched from the doorway while Justin laid the bag on the floor close to a pile of age-honored leather boxes with the firm's Turin address embossed on the lid. "That was only the beginning, mark you," Ham warned darkly, affecting indignation. "A canter round the course before the real thing. After that it was names of directors of all companies owned by Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson of Vancouver, Seattle, Basel plus every city you've heard of from Oshkosh to East Pinner. And "What's the state of play regarding the muchpublicized rumors of an imminent collapse of the noble and ancient house of Balls, Birmingham and Bumfluff Limited or whatever they're called, known otherwise as ThreeBees, president for life and master of the universe one Kenneth K. Curtiss, knight?"' Did she have any more questions? you wonder. Yes, she bloody did. I told her to get it off the Internet but she said half the stuff she wanted was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (396 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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X-rated or whatever they do if they don't want Joe Public looking over their shoulders. I said to her --"Tess, old thing, Christ's sake, this is going to take me weeks. Months, old girl." Did she give a tinker's? Did she hell. It was Tess, for Christ's sake. I'd have jumped out of a balloon without the parachute if she'd told me to." "And the sum of it was?" Ham was already beaming with innocent pride. "KVH Vancouver and Basel own fiftyone percent of the pissy Isle of Man biotech companies, Lor-hoojamy and Pharmawhatnot. ThreeBees Nairobi have sole import and distribution rights of said molecule plus all derivatives for the whole of the African continent." "Ham, you're incredible!" "Lorpharma and Pharmabeer are both owned by the same gang of three. Or were till they sold their fifty-one percent. One file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (397 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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chap, two hags. The chap is called Lorbeer. "Lor" plus "beer" plus "pharma" gives you Lorpharma and Pharmabeer. The hags are both doctors. Address care of a Swiss gnome who lives in a letter box in Liechtenstein." "Names?" "Lara Somebody. She's in my notes. Lara Emrich. Got it." "And the other one?" "Forget. No, I don't. Kovacs. No first name given. It was Lara I fell in love with. My favorite song. Used to be. From Zhivago. Old Tess's too in those days. f*ck." A natural break while Ham blew his nose and Justin waited. "So what did you do with these nuggets of intelligence when you'd landed them, Ham?" Justin inquired tenderly.

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"Read the whole lot to her over the telephone to Nairobi. Chuffed to bits, she was. Called me her hero--" he broke off, alarmed by Justin's expression--"not your telephone, idiot. Some mate of hers upcountry. "You're to go to a phone box, Ham, and you're to call me straight back on the following number. Got a pen?"' Bossy little cow, always was. Bloody cagey about telephones, though. Bit paranoid in my view. Still, some paranoids have real enemies, don't they?" "Tessa did," Justin agreed, and Ham gave him a queer look, which got queerer the longer it lasted. "You don't think that's what happened, do you?" Ham asked, in a subdued voice. "In what way?" "Old Tess fell foul of the pharmaceutical chaps?" "It's conceivable." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (399 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"But I mean, Christ--old sport--you don't think they shut her mouth for her, do you? I mean, I know they're not Boy Scouts." "I'm sure they're all dedicated philanthropists, Ham. Right down to their last millionaire." A very long silence followed, broken by Ham. "Mother. Oh Christ. Well. Tread gently, what?" "Exactly." "I dropped her in the sh*t by making that phone call." "No, Ham. You broke an arm and a leg for her and she loved you." "Well. Christ. Anything I can do?"

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"Yes. Find me a box. A stout brown cardboard box would do. Got such a thing?" Glad of an errand Ham charged off and, after much cursing, returned with a plastic draining tray. Crouching to the Gladstone, Justin opened the padlocks, released the leather straps and, masking Ham's view with his back, transferred the contents to the tray. "And now, if you would, a wad of your dullest files on the Manzini estate. Back numbers. Stuff you keep but never look at. Enough to fill up this bag."

So Ham found him files too: as old and dogeared as Justin seemed to want. And helped him load them into the empty bag. And watched him buckle the bag up and lock it. Then from his window watched him again, as he strode down the cul-desac, bag in hand, to hail a cab. And as Justin disappeared from view, Ham breathed "Holy Mother!" in an honest invocation to the Virgin. * * * file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (401 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Good morning, Mr. Quayle, sir. Take your bag, sir? I'll have to run it under the X ray, if you don't mind. It's the new regulations. Wasn't like that in our day, was it? Or your father's. Thank you, sir. And here's your ticket, all shipshape and aboveboard as they say." A dropping of the voice. "Very sorry, sir. We're all greatly affected." "Good morning, sir! Nice to have you back with us." Another dropped voice. "Deepest condolences, sir. From the wife also." "Our very deepest commiserations, Quayle"--another voice, breathing fumes in his ear--"Miss Landsbury please to go straight on up, sir. home."

Mr. beer says Welcome

But the Foreign Office was no longer home. Its preposterous hall, built to strike terror into the hearts of Indian princes, imparted only strutting impotence. The portraits of disdainful buccaneers in file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (402 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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periwigs no longer tipped him their familial smile. "Justin. I'm Alison. We haven't met. What a terrible, terrible way to get to know each other. How are you?" said Alison Landsbury, appearing with posed restraint in the twelve-foot-tall doorway of her office, and pressing his right hand in both of hers before leaving it to swing. "We're all so, so sad, Justin. So utterly horrified. And you're so brave. Coming here so soon. Are you really able to talk sensibly? I don't see how you could." "I was wondering whether you had any news of Arnold." "Arnold?--ah, the mysterious Dr. Bluhm. Not a murmur, I'm afraid. We must fear the worst," she said, without revealing what the worst might be. "Still, he's not a British subject, is he?"--cheering up--"we must let the good Belgians look after their own." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (403 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 fiftysix and dressed in black for Tessa. She file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (404 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (405 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (406 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (407 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 awayfrom-it-all until the hue and cry dies down. Where you can be totally anonymous, recover your balance, take long country walks, pop up file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (408 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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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 file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (409 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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complaint or merely a definition of durability, Justin let it alone, fixing his attention instead on a doomed peachcolored begonia in a pot too close to the wartime radiator. "I seem to have a memo here from the pay people. Do you want all this now or is it too much?" She gave it to him anyway. "We're keeping you on full pay of course. Married allowances, I'm afraid, discontinued, effective from the day you became single. These are nettles one has to grasp, Justin, and in my experience they're best grasped now and accepted. And the usual return-to-U.k. cushioning allowances pending a decision about your eventual destination, but again obviously at single rates. Now Justin, is that enough?" "Enough money?" "Enough information for you to function for the time being." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (410 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Why? Is there more?" She put down her baton and turned her gaze full on him. Years ago, Justin had had the temerity to complain at a grand store in Piccadilly, and had faced the same frigid managerial stare. "Not as yet, Justin. Not that we're aware of. We live on tenterhooks. Bluhm's not accounted for, and the whole grisly press story will run and run until the case is cleared up one way or the other. And you're having lunch with the Pellegrin." "Yes." "Well, he's awfully good. You've been steadfast, Justin, you've shown grace under pressure and it's been noted. You've suffered appalling strain, I'm sure. Not only after Tessa's death but before it. We should have been firmer and brought you both home while there was time. Erring on the side of tolerance looks in retrospect file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (411 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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very like the easy way out, I'm afraid." Prod, and scrutinize screen with growing disapproval. "And you've given no press interviews, have you? Not talked at all, on or off the record?" "Only to the police." She let this go. "And you won't. Obviously. Don't even say "no comment." In your state, you're perfectly entitled to put the phone down on them." "I'm sure that won't be hard." Prod. Pause. Study screen again. Study Justin. Return eyes to screen. "And you've no papers or materials that belong to us? That are --how shall I say it?--our intellectual property? You've been asked, but I'm to ask you again in case something has come up, or comes up in the future. Has anything come up?" "Of Tessa's?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (412 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"I'm referring to her extramarital activities." She took her time before defining what these might be. And while she did so, it dawned on Justin, a little late perhaps, that Tessa was some kind of monstrous insult to her, a disgrace to their schools and class and sex and country and the Service she had defiled; and that by extension Justin was the Trojan horse who had smuggled her into the citadel. "I'm thinking of any research papers she may have acquired, legitimately or otherwise, in the course of her investigations or whatever she called them," she added with frank distaste. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for," Justin complained. "Neither do we. And really it's very hard for us here to understand how she ever got into this position in the first place." Suddenly the anger that had been simmering was forcing its way out of her. She hadn't meant it to, he was sure; she had gone to file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (413 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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great lengths to contain it. But it had evidently slipped from her control. "It's really quite extraordinary, looking at what's since come to light, that Tessa was ever allowed to become that person. Porter has been an excellent Head of Mission in his way but I can't help feeling he must share a good deal of the blame for this." "For what exactly?" Her dead stop took him by surprise. It was as if she had hit the buffers. She came to a halt, her eyes firmly on her screen. She held the crochet needle at the ready, but made no move with it. She laid it softly on the table as if grounding her rifle at a military funeral. "Yes, well, Porter," she conceded. But he had made no point for her to concede. "What's happened to him?" Justin asked. "I think it's absolutely marvelous the way file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (414 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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the two of them sacrificed everything for that poor child." "I do too. But what have they sacrificed now?" She seemed to share his bewilderment. To need him as an ally, if only while she was denigrating Porter Coleridge. "Terribly, terribly hard, in this job, Justin, to know where to put one's foot down. One wants to treat people as individuals, one longs to be able to fit each person's circ*mstances into the general picture." But if Justin thought she was tempering her assault on Porter, he was dead wrong. She was simply reloading. "But Porter--we have to face it--was on the spot and we weren't. We can't act if we're kept in the dark. It's no good asking us to pick up the pieces ex post facto if we haven't been informed a priori. Is it?" "I suppose not." "And if Porter was too starry-eyed, too file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (415 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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tied up with his awful family problems-nobody disputes that--to see what was developing under his nose--the Bluhm thing and so on, I'm sorry-he had an absolutely first-class lieutenant in Sandy, with a very safe pair of hands, at his elbow, anytime, to spell it out for him in words a foot high. Which Sandy did. Ad nauseam, one gathers. But to no effect. So I mean it's perfectly clear that the child-obviously-the poor girl--Rosie or whatever its name is --claims all their out-ofhours attention. Which isn't necessarily what one appoints a High Commissioner for. Is it?" Justin made a meek face, indicating his sympathy with her dilemma. "I'm not prying, Justin. I'm asking you. How is it possible--how was it possible-forget Porter for a moment--for your wife to engage in a range of activities of which, by your account, you knew nothing? All right. She was a modern woman. Jolly file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (416 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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good luck to her. She led her life, she had her relationships." Pointed silence. "I'm not suggesting you should have restrained her, that would be sexist. I'm asking you how, in reality, you remained totally ignorant of her activities--her inquiries--her--how shall I put it? I'd like to say meddling, actually." "We had an arrangement," Justin said. "Of course you did. Equal and parallel lives. But in the same house, Justin! Are you really saying she told you nothing, showed you nothing, shared nothing? I find that awfully hard to believe." "I do too," Justin agreed. "But I'm afraid it's what happens when you put your head in the sand." Prod. "So now did you share her computer?" "Did I what?" "The question is perfectly clear. Did you file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (417 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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share, or otherwise have access to, Tessa's laptop computer? You may not know it, but she addressed some very strong documents to the Office, among others. Raising grave allegations about certain people. Accusing them of awful things. Making trouble of a potentially very damaging kind." "Potentially damaging to whom, actually, Alison?" Justin asked, delicately fishing for any free gifts of information she might care to bestow. "It's not a matter of whom, Justin," she replied severely. "It's whether you have Tessa's laptop computer in your possession and, if not, where is it, physically at this moment in time and what does it contain?" "We never shared it, is the answer to your first question. It was hers and hers alone. I wouldn't even know how to get into it." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (418 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Never mind getting into it. You have it in your possession, that's the main thing. Scotland Yard asked you for it, but you, very wisely and loyally, concluded that it was better in the Office's hands than theirs. We're grateful for that. It's been noted." It was a statement, it was a binary question. Tick box A for yes I have it, box B for no I haven't. It was an order and a challenge. And judging by her crystal stare, it was a threat. "And disks, obviously," she added while she waited. "She was an efficient woman, which makes it all so odd, a lawyer. She's sure to have made copies of whatever was important to her. In the circ*mstances these disks also constitute a breach of security and we'd like them as well, please." "There aren't any disks. Weren't." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (419 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Of course there were. How can she have run a computer without keeping disks?" "I looked high and low. There weren't any." "How very bizarre." "Yes, isn't it?" "So I think the best thing you can do, Justin, on reflection, is bring everything you've got into the Office as soon as you've unpacked it, and let us handle it from then on. To spare you the pain and the responsibility. Yes? We can do a deal. Anything that isn't relevant to our concerns belongs to you exclusively. We'll print it out, and give it to you, and nobody here will read it or evaluate it or commit it to memory in any way. Shall we send somebody with you now? Would that help? Yes?" "I'm not sure." file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (420 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Not sure you want a second person? You should be. A sympathetic colleague of your own grade? Someone you can trust entirely? Now are you sure?" "It was Tessa's, you see. She bought it, she used it." "So?" "So I'm not sure you should be asking me to do that. Give you her property to be plundered just because she's dead." Feeling sleepy, he closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head to wake himself. "Anyway, it's not an issue, is it?" "Why not, pray?" "Because I haven't got it." He stood up, taking himself by surprise, but he needed a stretch and some fresh air. "The Kenyan police probably stole it. They steal most things. Thank you, Alison. You've been file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (421 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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very kind." Recovering the Gladstone from the head janitor took a little longer than was natural. "Sorry to be premature," Justin said while he waited. "You're not premature at all, sir," the head janitor retorted, and flushed. * * * "Justin, my dear fellow!" Justin had started to give his name to the club porter at the door, but Pellegrin was ahead of him, pounding down the steps to claim him, smiling his decent chap's smile and calling out, "He's mine, Jimmy, shove his bag in your glory hole and put him down to me," before grasping Justin's hand and flinging his other arm round Justin's shoulders in a powerful un-English gesture of friendship and commiseration.

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"You're up to this, are you?" he asked confidingly, first making sure no one was within earshot. "We can take a walk in the park if you'd rather. Or do it another time. Just say." "I'm fine, Bernard. Really." "The Beast of Landsbury didn't wear you out?" "Not a bit." "I've booked us in the dining room. There's a bar lunch, but it's eat off your crotch and a lot of ex-Office wrinklies moaning about Suez. Need a pee?" The dining room was a risen catafalque with painted cherubs posturing in a ceiling of blue sky. Pellegrin's chosen place of worship was a corner sheltered by a polished granite pillar and a sad dracaena palm. Round them sat the timeless Whitehall brethren in chemical gray suits and school haircuts. This was my world, file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (423 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Justin explained to her. When I married you, I was still one of them. "Let's get rid of the hard work first," Pellegrin proposed masterfully, when a West Indian waiter in a mauve dinner jacket had handed them menus shaped like Ping-Pong bats. And that was tactful of Pellegrin and typical of his decent chap's image, because by studying menus they were able to settle to each other and avoid eye contact. "Flight bearable?" "Very, thank you. They upgraded me." "Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous girl, Justin," Pellegrin murmured, over the parapet of his Ping-Pong bat. "Enough said." "Thank you, Bernard." "Great spirit, great guts. Bugger the rest. Meat or fish?--not a Monday--what have you been eating out there?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (424 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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Justin had known Bernard Pellegrin in snatches for most of his career. He had followed Bernard in Ottawa and they had briefly coincided in Beirut. In London they had attended a hostage survival course together and shared such gems as how to establish that you are being pursued by a group of armed thugs not afraid to die; how to preserve your dignity when they blindfold you and bind you hand and foot with sticky plaster and sling you into the boot of their Mercedes; and the best way to jump out of an upperstory window if you can't use the stairs but presumably have your feet free. "All journalists are sh*ts," Pellegrin declared confidently, still from inside his menu. "Know what I'm going to do one day? Doorstep the buggers. Do what they did to you, but do it back to 'em. Rent a mob, picket the editor of the Grauniad and the Screws of the World while they're having it away with their floozies. Photograph their kids going to school. Ask file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (425 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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their wives what their old men are like in bed. Show the sh*ts what it feels like to be at the receiving end. Did you want to take a machine gun to the lot of 'em?" "Not really." "Me too. Illiterate bunch of hypocrites. Herring fillet's all right. Smoked eel makes me fart. Sole meuniere's good if you like sole. If you don't, have it grilled." He was writing on a printed pad. It had SIR BERNARD P printed in electronic capitals at the top, and the food options listed on the left side, and boxes to tick on the right, and space for the member's signature at the bottom. "A sole would be fine." Pellegrin doesn't listen, Justin remembered. It's what got him his reputation as a negotiator. "Grilled?" file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (426 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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"Meuniere." "Landsbury in form?" "Fighting fit." "She tell you she was a Madeira cake?" "I'm afraid she did." "She wants to watch that one. She talk to you about your future?" "I'm in trauma and on indefinite sick leave." "Shrimps do you?" "I think I'd prefer the avocado, thank you," Justin said, and watched Pellegrin tick shrimp co*cktail twice. "The Foreign Office formally disapproves of drinking at lunchtime these days, you'll be relieved to hear," Pellegrin file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (427 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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said, surprising Justin with a full-beam smile. Then, in case the first application hadn't taken, a second one. And Justin remembered that the smiles were always the same: the same length, the same duration, the same degree of spontaneous warmth. "However, you're a compassionate case and it's my painful duty to keep you company. They do a passable sub-Meursault. You good for your half?" His silver propelling pencil ticked the appropriate box. "You're cleared, by the by. Off the hook. Sprung. Congratulations." He tore off the chit and weighed it down with the saltcellar to prevent it from blowing away. "Cleared of what?" "Murder, what else? You didn't kill Tessa or her driver, you didn't hire contract killers in a den of vice, and you haven't got Bluhm swinging by his balls in your attic. You can leave the courtroom without a stain on your escutcheon. Courtesy of the coppers." The order form had file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (428 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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disappeared from underneath the saltcellar. The waiter must have taken it, but Justin in his out-of-body state had failed to spot the maneuver. "What sort of gardening you get up to out there by the by? Promised Celly I'd ask you." Celly short for Celine, Pellegrin's terrifying wife. "Exotics? Succulents? Not my scene, I'm afraid." "Pretty well everything really," Justin heard himself say. "The Kenyan climate is extremely benign. I didn't know there was a stain on my escutcheon, Bernard. There was a theory, I suppose. But it was only a remote hypothesis." "Had all sorts of theories, poor darlings. Theories far above their station, frankly. You must come down to Dorchester sometime. Talk to Celly about it. Do a weekend. Play tennis?" "I'm afraid I don't." They had all sorts of theories, he was file:///I|/L/Le%20Carre%20John/EBOOKS/LeCa...20John%20-%20The%20Constant%20Gardener.htm (429 of 1129) [31.01.2005 23:29:51]

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surreptitiously repeating to himself. Poor darlings. Pellegrin speaks about Rob and Lesley the way Landsbury spoke about Porter Coleridge. That turd Tom Somebody was about to get Belgrade, Pellegrin was saying, largely because the Secretary of State couldn't stand the sight of his beastly face in London, and who could? Dick Somebody Else was getting his K in the next Honors, then with any luck he'd be kicked upstairs to Treasury--God help the national economy, joke--but of course old Dick's been kissing New Labor arse for the last five years. Otherwise, it was business as usual. The Office continued to fill up with the same redbrick achievers from Croydon with offcolor accents and Fair Isle pullovers that Justin would remember from his pre-Africa days; in ten years' time there wouldn't be O