The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 11

  He peered at me. ‘You look a little tired, Fanny. I know it’s hard after a baby to get back to normal.’

  Again, I felt those treacherous tears and I looked away, down at the carpet that I helped to choose with Caro many years ago.

  ‘My father will be retiring soon, and I will be taking over.’

  How perfect, I thought. Raoul’s life is now arranged like an immaculately set dinner table. Well off, position assured. Doing what he loves. Knife, fork, spoon… and wine glass.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

  I told Raoul and he said he considered that the interesting bit in life would prove to be when one has worked through the hors d’oeuvre and was half-way through the entrée.

  ‘We must discuss it when we get there,’ I said.

  Before I left for home, my father and I had a serious talk about the business and I began to Understand more precisely my own limits. My new world. ‘I think we should consider employing someone else to help me until Chloë is well launched. There’s no hurry for you to come back. You need time.’

  I was not sure if I was hurt or relieved. ‘I can’t imagine not working,’ I said.

  My father looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I understand. But I think for the moment, you must put Chloë first.’

  After a little struggle, I gave in. ‘I want you to know I can cope, but you’re probably right. It would be wiser for the time being. Why don’t you ask if Raoul could come over and help out for a month or two.’

  ‘I already have,’ said my father. ‘I can’t put my granddaughter at risk. Nor your health.’

  I digested his sleight of hand.

  ‘By the way, he tells me he is going to marry Thérèse. Very suitable.’ Thérèse, I knew, was the daughter of a fellow negociant family, also very well off. He smiled. ‘So, it has all worked out, hasn’t it? What’s the matter, my love? Didn’t he tell you?’

  I wanted to go home. I missed Will and, now that I felt stronger, I needed to be in my own domain. The idea of it was growing clearer and more urgent: the notion of drawing the curtains, lighting the fire and tucking my daughter into a cheerful bedroom decorated with Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit.

  ‘Now, you take care,’ said my father, holding me close.

  ‘Now, you take care.’ I kissed his cheek, so familiar beneath my lips.

  With his instructions about getting some help ringing in my ears, I got into the car and drove away.

  The laurel hedge was still the same dispiriting colour and rooks dived over the beeches. No change there. I carried Chloë into the kitchen and slotted her into her bouncer. ‘My best girl,’ I told her, and her mouth split into such a lovely grin that I could not resist picking her up again. She smelt of baby, and was so small and trusting that I knew I would die to protect one tiny fair curl from harm.

  On the Thursday afternoon, Elaine Miller dropped in on her way north to visit her mother. ‘Amy thought you might need a helping word. Not a helping hand, mind. Just so we’re straight.’

  I gave her a kiss. ‘The pastoral care can’t be faulted.’

  ‘Solidarity in numbers, Fanny.’

  I served her shop-bought quiche and salad, and we scraped at the filling because the pastry was soggy. Chloë danced in her baby chair beside us and made ever-increasing eye-contact. Elaine’s children rampaged in the garden.

  Elaine asked for more, and filled my kitchen with energy and crackle. ‘Listen, love, this is the worst bit. Once you’re through it, you can take stock.’ She cast her eyes over the battered old stove and the china stacked on the sideboard, which I had not got round to stowing. ‘Could be nice here.’

  Over coffee, she gave more advice. ‘You’d better have something that’s yours. An interest, your job… otherwise…’ Now, she was serious. ‘You don’t know that yet, but you will.’ Her mouth stretched in a taut, painful smile. ‘Neil sleeps with his secretary. It happens. Some of ‘em consider it part of the package. Don’t worry, for me it’s neither here nor there.’

  ‘So you are a trouper.’

  ‘So will you be. I can tell.’

  Later, after Elaine had gone, Will surprised me by sneaking into the bathroom where I was bathing Chloë and slid his hands round my waist. ‘Hallo, Mrs Savage. Please don’t go away again.’

  I twisted round to kiss him. ‘I had planned to be all beautiful, shiny-haired and lipsticked for you.’

  He swept the damp hair away from my neck and pressed his mouth on to the exposed skin and I gasped. ‘Careful, I’ll drop Chloë.’

  Later on, we sat down to supper and Will produced a bottle of wine. ‘I want you to approve my choice. I’ve been doing some homework.’

  ‘Have you?’ I felt extraordinarily pleased and excited. I raised my glass and sniffed. Rich and warm. Tannin and blackcurrant. ‘Perfect, Will. Eight out of ten. No, nine…’

  ‘It isn’t that good.’ His eyes danced above the rim of the glass. ‘Not one word about politics, tonight. Promise.’ He took another sip. ‘So, first off, do you love me?’

  We were half-way through our roast chicken when Chloë woke up with a touch of colic. When I finally made it back downstairs, Will was on the phone – deep in conversation with a colleague about an upcoming piece of income-tax legislation. I poked at my congealed chicken and listened in to a one-sided conversation about who in the party was likely to rebel, who would not, and the likely consequences.

  Will was talking easily, rapidly, absorbed and intent. The lazy intimacy – the give and take of exchange, the delight in each other’s company – of our supper table had vanished. By the time he had convinced his colleague that an extra penny on income tax was vital to fund a social programme, I was on a second helping of fruit salad.

  Will yawned. ‘Bed, I think.’

  At this point in the evening, I needed no persuading. We lay with our arms wrapped around each other and, almost immediately, Will fell asleep.

  It seemed no time at all before Chloë demanded her night feed. She was fractious and grizzly and when at last I backed away from the cot, hardly daring to breathe, I was chilled and shaking with exhaustion.

  Will had turned on the light and was sitting propped up on the pillows. He looked up and said, ‘Fanny, I’ve had an idea which I’ve been mulling over. I meant to talk it over at supper.’ Then he dropped his bombshell. ‘I’ve been trying to think what’s best for everyone. For us, and Chloë, and Sacha. And Meg. Meg has got to move out of her flat because the area is being redeveloped and she’s looking for somewhere else. I know it’s a really big thing to ask, a huge thing, but I feel it makes sense…’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, as the implications of his idea sank in. ‘It is too big a thing to ask.’

  He picked up my cold hand and kissed the fingers, one by one. ‘Listen to me. I’ve worked it out. We could turn the scullery into a kitchen for Meg and give her the rooms above as a bedroom and sitting room. There’s plenty of space in this house, and the alterations would be worth doing anyway. I can do some things.’

  I had heard that before. ‘Will, you know you won’t… Anyway, that’s beside the point.’

  There was a lengthy silence.

  Will broke it first. ‘Families should help each other, shouldn’t they, Fanny? Meg is miserable, needs a home. I thought that this might be a way to keep an eye on her.’

  I let my hand rest in his. ‘Will, I don’t want anyone living with us. It’s enough being with you and Chloë.’

  ‘I know, I feel that too, but…’ Up went a questioning eyebrow. ‘You like Meg, don’t you? She says she can talk to you.’

  Meg had told me the story of her broken marriage, her battle with the bottle and her anguish when Sacha was taken away to live with his father because of her drinking. Meg had become estranged from all she cared about – her ex-husband (‘a saint whose patience snapped’), and her son (who was only permitted to see her at weekends). I had felt very sad for her, and completely helpless.

  ‘Of course, I lik
e Meg,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I like lots of people. I love lots of people, but I don’t want to live with them.’

  Will pulled me close. ‘Listen, Fanny. Here’s a chance to practise what we preach. But not just for the sake of a cause, for the sake of my sister…’

  ‘But Will, this is a marriage, not a… charity.’

  I sensed he was struggling with the legacy of an old, difficult history. ‘Fanny, when I really needed her, she was there for me,’ he said simply. ‘It doesn’t seem fair for me to turn my back on her now…’ He brightened. ‘Also, we don’t have much money to buy enormous amounts of help, and you need help. Meg can do her bit. You could spend more time in London… I think it will help our marriage.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t think it is a good idea.’

  He looked down at our clasped hands and made a final appeal. ‘She’s losing her flat and she hasn’t got a job at the moment; she can’t cope. I owe her so much. In one way or another, her life has turned out pretty badly, and I can’t help feeling that quite a lot of that is my fault.’

  It was a long time before I got to sleep.

  When I woke, Will was beside the bed with Chloë draped over his shoulder. ‘She’s hungry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what to do with her.’

  Everything had changed. The room swam and my heart pounded in protest. Every nerve in my body screamed with exhaustion. Downstairs, a basket of dirty washing required attention. There was not much food in the fridge, and dust still crusted the radiator. I pushed my hair out of my eyes, and pulled myself upright. ‘Give her to me.’

  Will laid Chloë in my arms and I put her to suckle. ‘You win,’ I said to Will. ‘Meg can come and live here. But only for a few months, until everyone is straightened out. Just till I’m back on my feet and she’s feeling better.’

  It all happened very quickly, and while the house at Stan-winton was being altered to accommodate Meg (Will did not find the time to do any DIY), I flew with Chloë to see my mother in Montana. Father was dead set against the idea. ‘Why bother?’ he demanded, with a rare flash of bitterness. ‘You can come and live here while the house is a mess, if that’s the problem.’

  ‘She has a right to see her granddaughter.’

  ‘Nothing stopping her getting on a plane.’

  Sally was waiting for us by the barrier at the airport. I had not seen her for three years, and it took me a moment or two to recognize her – she could have been any one of the middle-aged women dressed in tracksuits or capacious jeans and fleeces who milled around the concourse. Sad or funny? My mother was somewhere in that crowd and I wasn’t sure who she was.

  Finally I spotted her in a brown suede jacket with hair – frizzy and overlong – settled round a pale, freckled face innocent of make-up. Arms folded, she was leaning on the barrier and looked scared. Big, burly Art was beside her, smiling benignly as he scanned the arrivals. His baggy jeans and checked shirt were deceptive: he made a good living. Granted, property in Montana was not like property in New York, but there was plenty of it and more space.

  ‘Hi!’ cried Sally, in a voice from which all traces of her English origins had long gone. She kissed my cheek briefly, embarrassed, and turned to Chloë. ‘Why, hallo!’

  I relinquished Chloë and Art pumped my hand up and down. ‘We sure appreciate this,’ he said. ‘Sally has been unreal with nerves for the past few days. Haven’t known what to do with her.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother give a tiny shrug.

  Sally and I sat in the back of the station-wagon with Chloë between us while Art drove extra carefully through the town and out the other side. He did not say much but his was an easy silence. Sally did not say much either, except ‘Hasn’t changed much since you were last here. More houses, which is a pity.’

  Paradiseville had been so named because at the height of gold fever it was thought a seam ran through the mountain foothills to the south and a cluster of tin and wooden shacks had mushroomed down by the river. It had grown from there.

  Art gave a satisfied laugh. ‘That’s fine by me. Good business, don’t knock it.’

  A person can comment,’ Sally said sharply.

  I had forgotten that the landscape of Montana was a spectacle on the scale of grand opera or a wide-screen cinema epic. Nature was big here. It was like walking into a great golden tidal wave into which red and ochre had been mixed. But the details were lovely too. Cobnuts lay on the ground and spilled their tender contents out of their husks, berries dozed in the hedgerows, and horses grazed against a backdrop of mountain.

  I pointed all this out to Chloë, who took no notice.

  To be honest, I remembered the house better than I remembered my mother. Constructed of clapboard, which had been painted off-white, it had a balcony that ran round it, and a swinging seat at the front, where I knew I would sit and rock Chloë.

  Sally slid out of the station-wagon. ‘I didn’t know what stuff you needed so I asked Ma Frobber down the way. She put me right and lent me her stuff. She’s had six.’ Sally smiled a little anxiously. ‘Hope it’s OK.’

  It was fine, except that Chloë was jet-lagged and refused to sleep for most of the first night. Naturally, in the small house, her crying was magnified and, as I strove desperately to pacify her, the light was switched on more than once in Sally and Art’s room.

  After breakfast, I sat on the swing seat with her. Sally plumped up a cushion which had a black horse embroidered on it and wedged herself beside me. ‘I had forgotten,’ she peered down at Chloë, ‘how awful it is.’ She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, revealing freckled forearms. ‘I was no good at it at all,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve got no advice or handy tips.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve got the hang of it yet, either.’

  ‘I reckon a person is given only one talent. Mine’s for horses. I always thought if you could cope with horses, you could cope with the kids. But it doesn’t work out like that.’

  Chloë began to grizzle and Sally set the seat to rock, which seemed to settle her, and we sat there, talking of nothing much, until the sun slid round and hit us hard. Then we retreated to the kitchen. With one foot on the borrowed baby-bouncer, I drank bitter coffee and jiggled Chloë while Sally prepared a meal of stew and carrots for later.

  I tried not to stare at my mother, but I couldn’t help it. So much of her – how she walked with a little drag of her right foot, the mole on her arm – reminded me of myself. Could I edge closer and try to cross the barrier of time and our history? It was impossible. All we shared was a set of genes, and that was not enough.

  Now I had Chloë I perceived my mother from a different perspective. I knew what it was like to hold a tiny person against my body and I knew that they depended on you absolutely. Thus, the question, How could you have brought yourself to leave me? trembled on my lips. But I did not ask it. A silence between a mother and a daughter should be (should it not?) an expression of years of mutual history. My mother smacked me when I stole money out of her pocket. My mother made me wear a dress with smocking in coral pink silk. My mother promised me a hundred pounds if I did not smoke. But there was nothing between Sally and me except a gap. Not a hostile gap, we did not know each other well enough for that, just an unfilled space.

  Sally chopped vigorously at a carrot. ‘How is your father?’

  Sally would have had to nerve herself to ask the question and I was careful with the reply. ‘I don’t think he ever got over you,’ I said.

  She put down the knife and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Yes, he did. He knew perfectly well that we… did not suit each other. He wanted one thing, I wanted another. In the end, I chose for him.’

  ‘You make it sound so simple.’

  Sally switched on a gas-ring and slapped down a frying-pan. ‘It was. If two people can’t live together, one of them has to go. Anyway, I’d met Art so I went. It was better that you stayed with Alfredo.’

  I bent over to check that the strap holding Chloë was tigh
t enough. ‘I used to search for you in the street. I made up stories about you and imagined you might fly into my bedroom at night. I used to try to stay awake in case you did.’

  Sally went very still. ‘That’s a lot to put on a person.’ She tipped the meat into the pan and the snap and hiss of frying filled the kitchen. ‘I wish I could say I watched over you, but that’s the way it is. Not all women manage what is expected of them, and I don’t see why I should be guilty, Fanny. You had Alfredo, who loved you.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Pass me the casserole on the table.’

  I got up and took it over to her. The phone rang and Sally answered it. I spooned cubes of meat and the carrots into the casserole, added some stock, and put it into the oven.

  The next day I was awake early and stretched out in the old cotton-spool bed in the spare room under a patchwork quilt, watching sunlight slide like melted butter over the wall. Outside, a bird sounded in the larches, and a breeze rollicked through the branches. This was a wilder, wider place than home, with a bigger horizon. Sally had left my father for Art, a simple love triangle, but I reckoned, warm and sleepy in bed, that it had been as much to do with the wind in the larches and a horizon that marched out of sight as anything else.

  ‘Come and see the horses,’ Sally said, after we had had breakfast, and led the way up to the paddocks behind the house. There were seven of her shaggy-maned, large-eyed darlings milling around and, at the sound of her voice, they came over to us and jostled for attention. Rapt and confident, Sally talked to each one. ‘Here, Vince. Here, Melly…’

  Not sure about them, Chloë squirmed in my arms, and I longed to be as assured in my handling of her as Sally was with her horses.

  Sally took Chloë. ‘Go on. Make friends.’

  I touched the hot, fragrant hides and soft muzzles. Chloë blinked and Sally guided her small hand towards a steamy flank. ‘Nice horse, Chloë,’ she said. ‘When you’re old enough, you must come and visit and I’ll teach you to ride.’

  A sour taste flooded into my mouth. With a shock, I realized I was jealous of my own daughter. I busied myself with Melly’s mane and struggled to bring myself to order.