21
“Sandy Woodrow,” Gloria announced with playful severity, standing arms akimbo before him in her new fluffy dressing gown, “it’s jolly well time you showed the flag.”
She had risen early and brushed out her hair by the time he had shaved. She had packed the boys off to school with the driver, then cooked him bacon and eggs which he wasn’t allowed, but once in a while a girl’s allowed to spoil her man. She was mimicking the school prefect in herself, using her head girl voice, though none of this was yet apparent to her husband, who was ploughing his way as usual through a heap of Nairobi newspapers.
“Flag goes back up on Monday, dear,” Woodrow replied distractedly, masticating bacon. “Mildred’s been on to Protocol Department. Tessa’s been half-masted longer than a prince of the blood.”
“I’m not talking about that flag, silly,” said Gloria, removing the newspapers from his reach and setting them prettily on a side table beneath her watercolours. “Are you sitting comfortably? So listen. I’m talking about throwing an absolutely bumper party to cheer us all up, you included. It’s time, Sandy. It really is. It’s time we all said to each other, ‘Right. Done that. Been there. Dreadfully sorry. But life has to go on.’ Tessa would feel exactly the same. Vital question, darling. What’s the inside story? When are the Porters coming back?” The Porters like the Sandys and the Elenas, which is how we talk about people when we’re being cosy.
Woodrow transferred a square of egg to his fried bread. “‘Mr and Mrs Porter Coleridge are taking an extended period of home leave while they settle their daughter Rosie into school,’” he intoned, quoting an imaginary spokesman. “Inside story, outside story, only story there is.”
But a story that, despite his seeming ease, exercised Woodrow considerably. What the hell was Coleridge up to? Why this radio silence? All right, he was on home leave. Good luck to him. But Heads of Mission on home leave have telephones and e-mails and addresses. They get withdrawal symptoms, phone their number twos and private secretaries on the flimsiest excuse, wanting to know about their servants, gardens, dogs and how’s the old place ticking over without me? And they get huffy when it’s suggested to them that the old place ticks over rather better when they’re not in it. But from Coleridge, ever since his abrupt departure, not a dicky-bird. And if Woodrow called London with the professed aim of bouncing a few innocent questions off him—and quite incidentally to pump him about his aims and dreams—he was met by one blank wall after another. Coleridge was “doing a stint at Cabinet Office,” said a neophyte in Africa Department. He was “attending a ministerial working party,” said a satrap in the permanent undersecretary’s department.
And Bernard Pellegrin, when Woodrow finally reached him from the digital phone on Coleridge’s desk, was as airy as the rest of them. “One of those Personnel cock-ups,” he explained vaguely. “PM wants a briefing so the Secretary of State has to have one, so they all want one. Everyone wants a bit of Africa. What’s new?”
“But is Porter coming back here or not, Bernard? I mean this is very unsettling. For all of us.”
“I’d be the last to know, old boy.” Slight pause. “You alone?”
“Yes.”
“That little shit Mildred hasn’t got her ear to the keyhole?”
Woodrow glanced at the closed door to the ante-room and lowered his voice. “No.”
“Remember that thick bit o’ paper you sent me not so long ago?—Twenty pages-odd—woman author?”
Woodrow’s stomach lurched. Anti-listening devices might be safe against outsiders, but are they safe against us?
“What about it?”
“My view is—best scenario would be—solve everything—it never arrived. Lost in the mails. That play?”
“You’re talking about your end, Bernard. I can’t speak for your end. If you didn’t receive it, that’s your business. But I sent it to you. That’s all I know.”
“Suppose you didn’t send it, old boy. Suppose none of it happened. Never written, never sent? Would that be viable your end?” The voice absolutely at ease with itself.
“No. It’s impossible. Not at all viable, Bernard.”
“Why not?” Interested, but not the smallest degree perturbed.
“I sent it to you by bag. It was listed. Personal for you. Inventoried. The Queen’s Messengers signed for it. I told—”he was going to say “Scotland Yard” but changed his mind in time—“I told the people who came out here about it. I had to. They’d already got the background by the time they spoke to me.” His fear made him angry. “I told you I’d told them! I warned you, actually! Bernard, is something unravelling? You’re making me a bit jumpy, actually. I’d rather understood from you that the whole thing had been laid peacefully to rest.”
“Nothing to it, old boy. Calm down. These things pop up now and then. Bit of toothpaste slips out of the tube, you put it back. People say it can’t be done. Happens every day. Wife well?”
“Gloria’s fine.”
“Kiddywinks?”
“Fine.”
“Give our love.”
“So I’ve decided it’s to be a really super dance,” Gloria was saying enthusiastically.
“Oh, right, splendid,” said Woodrow and, giving himself time to recover the thread of their conversation, helped himself to the pills she made him swallow every morning: three oat-bran tablets, one cod-liver oil and half an aspirin.
“I know you hate dancing but that’s not your fault, it’s your mother’s,” Gloria went on sweetly. “I shan’t be letting Elena interfere, not after the rather tacky little do she gave recently. I shall just keep her informed.”
“Oh. Right. You two have kissed and made up, have you? Don’t think I knew that. Congratulations.”
Gloria bit her lip. Memories of Elena’s dance had momentarily cast her down. “I do have friends, Sandy, you know,” she said, a little pitifully. “I rather need them, to be frank. It gets quite lonely waiting all day for you to come back. Friends laugh, they chat, they do each other favours. And sometimes they fall out. But then they get together again. That’s what friends do. I just wish you had someone like that. Well, don’t I?”
“But I’ve got you, darling,” Woodrow said gallantly as he embraced her goodbye.
Gloria went to work with all the drive and efficiency she had put into Tessa’s funeral. She formed a working committee of fellow wives and members of the staff too junior to refuse her. First among them was Ghita, a choice that mattered greatly to her since Ghita had been the unwitting cause of the rift between Elena and herself and the ghastly scene that had followed it. The memory would haunt her all her days.
Elena had given her dance, and it had been, to a point, one had to say, well, a success. And Sandy, it was well known, was a great believer in couples splitting up at parties and working the room, as he called it. Parties, he liked to say, were where he did his best diplomacy. And so they should be. He was charming. So for most of the evening Gloria and Sandy hadn’t seen much of one another, except for the odd woo-hoo across the room and the odd wave on the dance floor. Which was perfectly normal, though Gloria could have wished for just one dance, even if it had to be a foxtrot so that Sandy could get the rhythm. And beyond that Gloria had had very little to say about the evening, except that she really thought Elena could cover up a bit more at her age, instead of having her bust springing out all over, as we used to say, and she wished the Brazilian Ambassador had not insisted on putting his hand on her bottom for the samba, but Sandy says that’s what Latins do.
So it came as a total bolt from the blue when, on the morning after the dance—at which Gloria had noticed nothing untoward, be it repeated, and she did consider herself rather observant—over a post-mortem coffee at the Muthaiga, Elena had let slip—completely casually, as if it were just another bit of perfectly ordinary gossip rather than a total bombshell, wrecking her complete life— that Sandy had come on so heavily with Ghita Pearson—Elena’s very words—that Ghita had pleaded a head
ache and gone home early, which Elena considered tedious of her, because if everyone did that, one might just as well not bother to give a party at all.
Gloria was at first speechless. Then she refused point blank to believe a word of it. What did Elena mean, come on, exactly? Come on how, El? Be specific, please. I think I’m rather upset. No, it’s perfectly all right, just go on, please. Now you’ve said it, let’s have it all.
Feeling her up, for openers, Elena retorted with deliberate coarseness, incensed by what she perceived as Gloria’s prudishness. Groping her tits. Pressing his nasty up against her crotch. What do you expect a man to do when he’s got the hots for somebody, woman? You must be the only girl in town not to know that Sandy is the biggest pussy-hound in the business. Look at the way he padded round Tessa all those months with his tongue hanging out, even when she was eight months pregnant!
The mention of Tessa did it. Gloria had long accepted that Sandy had had a harmless thing about Tessa, though of course he was far too upright to let his feelings get out of hand. Rather to her shame, she had quizzed Ghita on the subject and drawn a satisfying blank. Now Elena had not only reopened the wound: she had poured vinegar into it. Incredulous, mystified, humiliated and plain bloody angry, Gloria stormed home, dismissed the staff, settled the boys at their homework, locked the drinks cupboard and waited darkly for Sandy to return. Which he finally did around eight o’clock, pleading pressure of work as usual but, so far as she could tell in her fraught state, sober. Not wishing to be earwigged by the boys, she grabbed him by the arm and frogmarched him down the servants’ staircase to the lower ground.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he complained. “I need a Scotch.”
“You are the matter, Sandy,” Gloria retorted fearsomely. “I want no circumlocutions, please. No diplomatic sweet-talk, thank you. No courtesies of any kind. We’re both grown-ups. Did you, or did you not, have an affair with Tessa Quayle? I warn you, Sandy. I know you very well. I shall know immediately if you’re lying.”
“No,” said Woodrow simply. “I didn’t. Any more questions?”
“Were you in love with her?”
“No.”
Stoical under fire like his father. Not budging an eyebrow. The Sandy she loved best, if she was honest. The kind of man you know where you are with. I’ll never talk to Elena again.
“Did you make up to Ghita Pearson while you were dancing with her at Elena’s party, or not?”
“No.”
“Elena says you did.”
“Then Elena’s talking bilge. What’s new?”
“She says Ghita left early in tears because you pawed her.”
“Then I assume Elena is pissed off because I didn’t paw Elena.”
Gloria had not expected such straight, unequivocal, almost reckless denials. She could have done without “pissed off,” and she’d just stopped Philip’s pocket money for saying it, but Sandy might be right all the same. “Did you stroke Ghita—feel her up—did you press yourself against her—tell me!” she shouted, and gave way to a burst of tears.
“No,” Woodrow replied again, and made a step towards her, but she brushed him aside.
“Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! Did you want to have an affair with her?”
“With Ghita or Tessa?”
“Either of them! Both of them! What does it matter?”
“Shall we take Tessa first?”
“Do what you want!”
“If you mean by ‘affair,’ go to bed with her, I’m sure the idea occurred to me, as it would to most men of heterosexual appetite. Ghita I find less appealing, but youth has its attractions, so let’s throw her in too. How about the Jimmy Carter formula? ‘I committed adultery in my heart.’ There. I’ve confessed. Want a divorce or can I have my Scotch?”
By which time she was doubled up, weeping helplessly with shame and self-loathing, and begging Sandy to forgive her because it had become horribly obvious to her what she had been doing. She had been accusing him of all the things she had been accusing herself of ever since Justin slipped into the night with his suitcases. She had been working out her guilt on him. Mortified, she hugged herself and blurted, “I’m so sorry, Sandy,” and “Oh Sandy, please,” and “Sandy, forgive me, I’m so awful,” as she struggled to release herself from his grasp. But Sandy by now had an arm round her shoulders and was helping her up the stairs like the good doctor he should have been. And when they reached the drawing room she gave him the key to the drinks cupboard and he poured a stiff one for both of them.
Nonetheless the healing process took its time. Suspicions so monstrous are not laid to rest in a day, particularly when they echo other suspicions that have been laid to rest in the past. Gloria thought back a distance, then another distance. Her memory, which had a way of going off on its own, insisted on retrieving incidents that at the time she had dismissed. After all, Sandy was an attractive man. Of course women would make up to him. He was the most distinguished-looking person in the room. And a little innocent flirtation never did anyone any harm. But then memory kicked in again, and she wondered. Women from previous postings came to mind—tennis partners, babysitters, young wives with promotable husbands. She found herself reliving picnic parties, swimming parties, even—an involuntary shudder—a rather drunken nude swimming party in the French Ambassador’s pool in Amman, when nobody really looked, and we all ran shrieking for our towels, but all the same . . .
It took Gloria several days to forgive Elena, and in a way, of course, she never would. But then Elena was so unhappy, she reflected, with her generous side. How could she not be, married to that dreadful little Greek, and trying to make up for him with one seedy affair after another?
Otherwise, the only thing that slightly bothered Gloria was what precisely they ought to be celebrating. Obviously it had to be a Day—like Independence Day or May Day. Obviously it had to be soon, or the Porters would come back, which was not what Gloria wanted at all. She wanted Sandy in the limelight. Commonwealth Day was looming but it was too far away. With a little doctoring, they could have an early Commonwealth Day that got in ahead of everybody else’s. That would show initiative. She would have preferred British Commonwealth Day, but everything has to be cut down to size these days, it’s the age we live in. She would have preferred St George’s Day, and let’s slay the bloody dragon for good! Or Dunkirk Day and let’s fight them on the beaches! Or Waterloo Day or Trafalgar Day or Agincourt Day, all resounding British victories—but unfortunately they were victories over the French who, as Elena acidly pointed out, had the best cooks in town. But since none of these days fitted, Commonwealth Day it had to be.
Gloria decided it was now time to embark on her master plan, for which she needed the blessing of the Private Office. Mike Mildren was a man in flux. Having had a rather unwholesome New Zealand girl sharing his flat for the last six months, he had overnight exchanged her for a good-looking Italian boy who reputedly spent his day lounging by the pool at the Norfolk Hotel. Choosing just after lunch when Mildren was said to be at his most receptive, she telephoned him from the Muthaiga Club, using all her wiles and promising herself not to call him Mildred by mistake.
“Mike, it’s Gloria here. How are you? Have you got a minute? Two even?”
Which was nice and modest of her because after all she was the acting High Commissioner’s wife, even if she wasn’t Veronica Coleridge. Yes, Mildred had a minute.
“Well, Mike, as you may have heard, I and a bunch of stalwarts are planning a rather large pre-Commonwealth Day knees-up. A sort of curtain-raiser for everybody else’s do. Sandy’s spoken to you about it, obviously. Hasn’t he?”
“Not yet, Gloria, but no doubt he will.”
Sandy being useless as usual. Forgetting everything about her as soon as he walks out of the front door. And when he comes home, drinking himself to sleep.
“Well, anyway, what we’re looking at, Mike,” she bowled on, “is a big marquee. As big as we can find, frankly, with a kitchen
at the side. We’re going to have a slap-up hot buffet, and a live, really good local band. Not a disco like Elena’s, and not cold salmon either. Sandy’s offering up a hefty chunk of his precious allowances, and the Service attachés are digging into their piggy-banks, which is a start, shall we say. Still with me?”
“Indeed I am, Gloria.”
Pompous little boy. Too many of his master’s airs and graces.
Sandy will knock him into shape, once he gets the chance.
“So two questions, really, Mike. Both a bit delicate, but never mind, I’ll plunge in. One. With Porter AWOL, if I dare say it, and no financial input from H.E.’s frais, as it were, is there, well, a slush fund available, or might Porter be persuaded to chip in from afar, as it were?”
“Two?”
He really is insufferable.
“Two, Mike, is where? Given the size of the event—and the vast marquee—and its importance to the British community at this rather difficult time, and the cachet we want to attach to it, if that’s what you do with a cachet—well, we were thinking—I was—not Sandy, he’s too busy, obviously—that the best place to have a five-star knees-up for Commonwealth Day just might be—provided everybody agreed, of course—the High Commissioner’s lawn. Mike?” She had the eerie feeling that he had dived underwater and swum away.
“Still listening, Gloria.”
“Well, wouldn’t it? For parking and everything. I mean nobody need go inside the house, obviously. It’s Porter’s. Well, except for pitstops, obviously. We can’t put Portaloos in H.E.’s garden, can we?” She was getting hung up over Porter and Portaloos, but forged on. “I mean everything’s there waiting, isn’t it? Servants, cars, security, and so on?” She hastily corrected herself. “I mean waiting for Porter and Veronica, obviously. Not waiting for us. Sandy and I are just holding the fort till they come back. It’s not a takeover or anything. Mike, are you still there? I feel I’m talking to myself.”