The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Read online

  ‘I switched off the bleeper, forgot, and went off for a quick supper at Brazzi’s. I’ve missed out, haven’t I?’

  His guilt was almost comic, but it was sad too. For he had missed out – on that special, perfect moment when Chloë tumbled into the world.

  The backwash of exhaustion, discomfort and spent hormones was draining my strength. ‘Go and look at your beautiful daughter. Then please ring Dad… and my mother. I promised her that you would.’

  ‘I hope you forgive me?’

  Of course I did. Chloë was here, well and safe and, set against that, there was nothing to forgive.

  *

  We moved into the new house in Stanwinton when Chloë was two weeks old. I had been reluctant to stir from the safety of the flat but Will had insisted we observe the agreed timetable. ‘We can manage,’ he said, when I produced excuses about feeding and crying and nappy-changing, all of which still appeared in the light of a complex mathematical theory. ‘It is the right thing to do to take our new daughter to our new house.’

  Still sore and battered, I struggled to do my best and Will, still repentant for his non-showing at her birth, tried to make up for it by packing, ferrying and driving. I was not to do anything. This seemed reasonable for I did not wish to do anything.

  ‘I don’t want to get up, cook, wash clothes, even think.’ Since the birth, my voice had sounded different even to me. I put it down to hoarseness from my cries but I almost believed it was because I was changing so profoundly.

  Will took this type of comment touchingly seriously. ‘It’s normal to feel down after a baby.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I read about it in the books.’ I did not bother to respond to that, and he pressed on: ‘You’ll feel better once you’re settled in the house. I’ll be back every Friday.’

  I almost felt sorry for him, so desperate was he to make things right.

  The fields were bristling with stubble as our heavily laden car nosed between them, and the leaves on the beeches swayed in the breeze. From the back of the car where I sat with Chloë, I looked out on the fields. Like them or not, they were going to be companion presences.

  Mannochie was waiting at the front door. The professional smile deepened into the genuine article as he helped me out of the car. ‘Welcome to you all,’ he said, in a quaintly formal way. On cue, Chloë woke up and began to cry. ‘May I?’ asked Mannochie, and picked her up. Would you know? Chloë stopped crying.

  ‘I didn’t know you were good with babies, Mannochie.’

  ‘She’s lovely.’ Mannochie was rocking Chloë in a way she liked.

  Will peered over his shoulder. ‘She is, isn’t she?’

  I left them to it and stepped over the threshold. The men had been hard at work on the house for the last few weeks, and it had been decorated, with cheap job lots from a DIY store, and carpets had been laid.

  The freshly varnished banisters felt a little sticky under my hand as I went upstairs and the virgin carpet was slippery underfoot. The first thing I did in our bedroom was tug open the window and allow the fresh air to dilute the fug of fresh paint.

  My body ached and my mind was as dull and spongy as batter that had been allowed to stand overlong. Except when I looked at Chloë, I felt cold and distanced, without life and energy.

  Somewhere, far away, a baby was crying. Resentment flickered: I had lost what I now saw as the privilege of being alone.

  Mannochie padded upstairs. ‘Chloë’s crying.’

  I did not move. ‘I know’

  He tried again. ‘She seems hungry.’

  I knew I should close the window and go downstairs. But I wanted to remain at my vantage-point, observe the rooks wheeling above their eyries and the gun-metal sky.

  Mannochie touched my arm. A non-threatening, polite gesture. ‘Fanny, have you seen the doctor lately?’

  Tears ran down beside my mouth. I had lost something. My tree-house and the freedom I had known up in the branches were in another country, far, far away. Without a doubt, I would grow older – and old – and never again go there.

  My tears were also fearful: I was frightened I would be unable to perform in my roles, that I could not cope, let alone soar to the heights of managing house and baby brilliantly.

  I put out my tongue and tasted salt. ‘Why would I need a doctor?’

  ‘Fanny!’ Will appeared in the doorway with a screaming Chloë.

  Reluctantly, I turned. ‘Give her to me.’

  He thrust her into my arms and peered at me. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  The men returned downstairs, and while they brought in the luggage I sat down with Chloë and fed her. Enchanted, enraptured and angry, I watched the busy little button mouth, the little veins in the almost transparent eyelids. ‘You’re a greedy minx,’ I informed her.

  Chloë took no notice. After she had finished, her head fell back and she slept. Gradually, the jangle of feelings inside me subsided.

  Will came up with a cup of tea and watched us fondly. His presence was calming and, suddenly, I felt almost peaceful and happy.

  ‘Here,’ he said, and settled me against his shoulder, and took Chloë on to his lap. ‘Just sit for a while. There’s no hurry.

  ‘I love you both very much,’ he added.

  ‘OK, ready,’ called the photographer from the Stanwinton Echo. The camera flashed. ‘Again,’ he commanded.

  I tried to hide my still bulky stomach behind Will.

  ‘Smile and look to the left.’

  The experience was not as bad as I had feared. It fact it was fun to be the focus of attention and, at any other time, I might have taken to it.

  ‘Could we have the baby now, please?’

  The one thing that Will and I agreed on absolutely was to stick to the principle of keeping Chloë out of photographs and publicity. Yet, here we were, with Chloë only a month old, in the town hall at a press conference. It was, we agreed, a minor emergency.

  A more senior MP had been taken ill, and Will had been press-ganged into a TV discussion panel on transport. In the heat of the moment, he fumbled over a phrase, which made it sound as if he was taking the opposite view to party policy, which was a big, black mark against him.

  After the programme, he had driven home to Stanwinton and, during the night, had been very sick. I held his head and mopped up and made him tea.

  He drank it gratefully and muttered, ‘I do this sometimes when things go wrong. Silly, isn’t it?’

  His confession touched me deeply and I sat up with him into the small hours while we tried to work out the best damage limitation plan.

  The morning papers reported on the programme and picked out Will for special mention. ‘Fluency with integrity,’ wrote one (upmarket) critic. ‘A Prince Charming delivers,’ wrote another (downmarket). Mannochie got on the phone and they agreed some well-focused local publicity would go a long way to propping up his image in the constituency.

  One of the reporters asked, ‘How do you feel about being the most glamorous couple in Parliament?’

  A girl in leather trousers stuck up a finger. ‘Are you feeding the baby yourself, Mrs Savage?’

  Mannochie intervened. ‘If you wish to question Will on policy, now is the moment.’

  The girl made a face. Policy? Get real!

  Relaxed and smiling, Will allowed the photographers to take as many shots as they wished and answered all their questions. Then I spotted the expression in his eyes that was neither patient nor obedient. It was a private expression that only I could interpret – a signpost to the secret, erotic territory that we shared – and it made my senses quiver.

  Mannochie had arranged that I would give one interview and I retreated with Chloë, who was behaving beautifully, into a smaller room with the girl in leather trousers whose name was Lucy.

  She set down a tape-recorder between us. ‘How do you see the role of today’s political wife?’

  ‘It’s developing…’ I repli
ed. In the sudden quiet, my exhilaration vanished, my bones almost burned with fatigue, and the weight of my broken nights hung like oil paintings under my eyes.

  ‘So, not the traditional helpmeet, then?’

  ‘Wives are different from the way they used to be.’

  ‘Would you vote differently from your husband?’

  ‘If I felt it was right.’

  She looked extra sympathetic. ‘Given that political marriages are, for obvious reasons, at risk, do you think you can hack it with motherhood and a career?’

  I resented the implication that Will and I were doomed. ‘I am not prepared to answer that question,’ I said. ‘As you will have noticed, my baby is still very young.’

  From that moment, the interview limped.

  Two days later, the article was published. The headline read: ‘Sceptical and Independent, the Modern MP’s Wife Votes against Her Husband’. The text read: ‘Fanny Savage is one of a new breed: a modern woman with a career and a mind of her own. If she felt it was right, she would vote for the opposition.’

  Pearl Veriker rang while I was still in bed feeding Chloë, and read the article out over the phone. ‘That was so unwise, Fanny. A betrayal, even.’

  With a sick feeling, I realized that Pearl’s rulebook was more complicated than I had thought. ‘Pearl, I am entitled to my own views, and this is hardly treason.’

  But, as with the wearing of tights, it seemed that there was no room for negotiation. In the end, I handed the phone over to Will and listened to him finessing Pearl back into calm.

  This particular mess was my fault. I knew it, and Will knew it. He slumped back on to the pillow. ‘We discussed it so carefully,’ he said.

  I rubbed my hands over my eyes. ‘She got me on the raw’

  Will swung himself out of bed, ripped off the T-shirt in which he slept and dropped it on the floor. ‘We talked about that, too.’

  ‘Could I point out to the Honourable Member that the first mistake was his?’

  ‘And I’ve paid for it twice.’

  I nuzzled Chloë’s cheek. She smelt of milk and baby lotion, innocent, innocuous, ordinary, honest things. I visualized my culpability stretching out like a gauzy vapour trail through an endless sky. Had I ruined Will? Set a mark on him – unreliable – like Cain? ‘I’m sorry. I forgot how hard it is not to say what you think.’

  Will wrenched open the shirt drawer. ‘Hasn’t it been made plain enough to you? Never, ever say what you think.’

  There was a long, odd silence as we each absorbed the implications of what the other had said.

  ‘Will, don’t you think it is slightly strange that, in order to appear honest and transparent, we have to pretend?’

  Will picked out a blue shirt and examined the collar. ‘I know’ He looked up at me, perplexed, and more than a little aghast. ‘I know.’

  My father was horrified when I rang up, almost incoherent with exhaustion and sobs, and reported on my latest lapse. ‘I am coming over,’ he said. ‘Give me an hour to sort out some things.’

  He arrived to the minute. ‘You’re coming back with me to Ember House,’ he announced. ‘I’ve phoned Benedetta and she’s flying over to take charge.’

  ‘You’ve phoned Benedetta? You’ve made up with her?’ A foolish smile spread over my face. ‘Oh, Dad, I so long to see her.’ Then I said, ‘I can’t abandon Will.’

  ‘Will can come to Ember House at the weekends. It’s simple.’ He hugged me close. I hustled him into my cluttered, muddled kitchen and shoved a basket of Chloë’s laundered clothes out of sight under the table with my foot. ‘Sorry it’s so untidy, but I’m too tired to tackle the cleaning.’

  He threw his car keys on to the table. ‘You’re my daughter and you need help. You’d better come now. The house is ready.’

  ‘All right.’ I sat down with a sense of dizzy relief.

  I rang Will and told him I was going home with my father. ‘Just for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘What do you mean “going home”?’ He was offended. ‘I thought home was with me.’

  ‘Sorry. Slip of the tongue.’ But it made heavy weather of our conversation and, not for the first time, I wished we did not have to discuss plans, issues, developments by phone.

  ‘Do you mind? It would do Chloë and me good.’

  ‘I notice you’ve just gone ahead.’ But, in the end, he said, ‘Of course you must go. Of course, you must have some help.’

  I put down the phone and noticed the layer of dust that roosted on one of the ugly radiator cases. I was too tired to fetch a duster. I blew on it instead. The dust lifted and settled back. ‘Go away,’ I ordered it. ‘Pack your suitcase and go somewhere else.’

  *

  When we arrived at Ember House, my father snatched Chloë from me. ‘Look at her! Already a beauty.’

  And clever, Dad. She has us all running around after her.’

  Chloë peered up at her grandfather. He sat down and propped her on his knee. ‘I won’t make the same mistakes with you.’

  ‘You didn’t make mistakes,’ I said. ‘You were the best father.’

  He shrugged. ‘There were times when I felt like packing the whole thing in and despatching you to your mother. But, of course, I didn’t.’

  I busied myself with a stack of Chloë’s nappies. ‘Was I in the way?’ Suddenly, I was close to tears.

  ‘Francesca, you haven’t grasped my point. Once you arrived, I simply could not have been without you. I wanted you to be there and I strove to adapt in whichever way it took.’ He stroked Chloë’s chubby cheek. ‘You’ll find out.’

  I watched the interaction between grandfather and granddaughter. I had already found out. I wiped my eyes surreptitiously and smiled at him. For a moment or two, the room was charged with love, the uncomplicated, unconditional sort that made me feel better and stronger.

  Chloë opened her mouth and began to yell. My breasts prickled and seeped. Quick as a flash, my father handed her back to me.

  Nothing had changed at Ember House. It was peaceful, solid, shabby and, above all, familiar. It allowed me to be sleepy and doe-like. It knew me, and I knew it. No surprises. No adjustments necessary. Father had been right. I needed this interlude and, with the arrival of Benedetta, a burden dropped from my shoulders.

  ‘Santa Patata, you are pale,’ she said. ‘You must eat liver. I will cook it for you.’

  Naturally she took charge, and it was as if the intervening years had not happened – and Benedetta had not been married and widowed, nor had I grown up. She issued orders in the foreground and fussed in the background -washing and folding Chloë’s tiny clothes, making sure I slept in the afternoon, whisking Chloë away when she was fretful after her evening feed. ‘You are my bambina Fanny, and I look after my bambina’s bambina.’ The inflections and rhythms of her voice roused many, oh, so many, dormant echoes of my childhood.

  They were clever, my father and Benedetta. And generous. Despite their past, they united to give me the space and peace to concentrate on Chloë. I learnt that one kind of cry meant hunger, another that she was uncomfortable or bored. With Benedetta’s advice, conducted in her broken English and my Italian, which had always required improvement, I learnt to anticipate Chloë’s needs – when to feed, when to put her to sleep, when she might require additional soothing. Under Benedetta’s tuition, I began to flex the muscles necessary to carry, lightly and gracefully, the weight of change and of motherhood.

  10

  The day before I returned home from that stay with my father was cool and blustery. I pushed open the sitting-room french windows and stepped outside. The smell of the garden never changed: damp earth, a sharp, acrid whiff of mould, the sweeter tang of the shrubs growing close by. The lawn was wet, the earth soft, and my feet left a predictable trail as I made for the beech tree. It looked the same and its sounds were familiar – the rustle of leaves, the whistle of wind, the fractured light shafting through the thick canopy.

  I squinted upwards. The tr
ee-house appeared to be intact still. I ran my hands over my hips, felt their extra fullness and softness. Go on, Fanny. Smiling, I placed my hand on the first branch and hauled myself up. Easy. Then I scrambled up inch by inch to the platform. Not so easy.

  Yet once up there, queasily balanced on the now unsteady planks, I was, fleetingly, queen of all I surveyed.

  The breeze released a shower of moisture from previous rain and I put my hand to my mouth and licked it. Clean and cool. Up here, I felt weightless, without responsibility, without the terrors that came wrapped up with a baby. Peaceful. Not precisely how I used to be, but good enough.

  Gradually, my jangled feelings lightened and drifted away.

  That evening, to cheer me up, my father held a little party.

  It was quite like old times. My high heels felt strange from disuse and I squeezed myself into a tight black skirt, wincing at the pad of fat still attached to my stomach, and stood in the receiving line with my pelvis tilted forward and my toes pinched, and felt wonderfully normal.

  The guests were wine people and I knew them all, including Raoul who was over for a short visit. We were often a little awkward with each other, but it tended to wear off. ‘How’s the nose?’ he asked as he kissed me. As pregnancy was known to affect the nose, it was the first question he would have asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said seriously. ‘I shall have to see.’

  Raoul had olive skin, an interesting, sensitive face and liked to dress well. Today, for some reason, he had a scratch on his cheek which gave him a bold and buccaneering look.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was hacking down some undergrowth back home and it hit me, but I haven’t congratulated you,’ he said. ‘I hope when the baby is older you will make sure you pay us a visit. My family would love to see her.’

  ‘I would love that, too.’

  In France, passion for good wine was part of the national psyche – it is what makes the French consider themselves French, apart from their language. Thus the Villeneuves would consider it only their due that they lived in the most exquisite château I had ever seen.