The Constant Gardener by John le Carré Page A

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.”
    “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 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. 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, 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 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