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, baby-sitters, 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 attaches 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 pit stops, 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."
She was. The rebuff came the same evening in the form of a typed, hand-delivered note of which Mildred must have kept a copy. She didn't see him deliver it. All she saw was an open car driving away with Mildred in the passenger seat and his pool boy at the wheel. Department was emphatic, he wrote pompously. The High Commissioner's residence and its lawns were a no-go area for functions of all kinds. There was to be no "de facto annexation of High Commissioner status," he ended cruelly. A formal Foreign Office letter to this effect was on its way.
Woodrow was furious. He had never let fly at her like this before. "Serves you bloody well right for asking," he raged, stomping up and down the drawing room. "Do you really suppose I'll land Porter's job by going and camping on his bloody lawn?"
"I was only prodding them a bit," she protested pathetically, as he ranted on. "It's perfectly natural to want you to be Sir Sandy one day. It isn't the borrowed glory I'm after. I just want you to be happy."
But her afterthought was typically resilient. "Then we'll jolly well have to do it better here," she vowed, staring mistily into the garden.
* * *
The great Commonwealth Day bash had begun.
All the frantic preparations had paid off, the guests had arrived, music was playing, drink flowing, couples were chatting, the jacarandas in the front garden were in bloom, life was really rather super at last. The wrong marquee had been replaced with the right one, paper napkins with linen, plastic knives and forks with plate, vile puce bunting with royal blue and gold. A generator that brayed like a sick mule had been replaced with one that bubbled like a hot saucepan. The sweep in front of the house no longer looked like a building site and some brilliant last-minute whipping in by Sandy on the telephone had procured some jolly good Africans, including two or three from Moi's retinue. Sooner than rely on untried waiters — just look at what had happened at Elena's! — or rather hadn't happened! — Gloria had mustered staff from other diplomatic households. One such recruit was Mustafa, Tessa's spearman, as she used to call him, who had been too grief-stricken, by all accounts, to find another job. But Gloria had sent Juma off in pursuit of him, and here he finally was, flitting among the tables on the other side of the dance floor, a bit down in the mouth, bless him, but obviously pleased to have been thought of, which was the important thing. The Blue Boys miraculously had arrived on time to direct parking, and the problem as usual would be to keep them away from the drink, but Gloria had read them the riot act and all one could do was hope. And the band was marvelous, really jungle, and a good strong beat for Sandy to dance to if he had to. And didn't he look simply splendid in the new dinner jacket Gloria had bought him as a "sorry" present? What a parade horse he was going to make one day! And the hot buffet, what she had tasted of it — well, good enough. Not sensational, you didn't expect that in Nairobi, there was a limit to what you could buy even if you could afford it. But streets better than Elena's, not that Gloria felt in the least competitive. And darling Ghita in her gold sari, divine.