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 2:1 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 many-colored 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.