The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Read online

  A suggestion of humour softened Mannochie’s features. ‘He’s keen on putting forward women and minorities.’

  I looked at Will. ‘You’d better watch it.’

  Will sent me his private signal-a tiny lift of the eyebrows – which meant: ‘Share the joke.’ Or ‘You’re right.’ Or ‘Thank you.’ Or sometimes all three.

  After Mannochie had driven off to scoop up Mrs Mannochie from the swimming-baths, Will retired to his study to work on the red boxes. I moved around the kitchen, checking, making lists, when the sound of raised voices issued from Meg’s side of the house.

  Will’s sister had lived with us in the Stanwinton house for a long time now and there had been plenty of opportunity to argue about most things, including what we meant by being good. Meg was as fair and delicate as I was dark and tall, and looked like an angel. ‘I’m a hopeless case,’ she once said, ‘bad all the way through.’ She sighed and shot me a look. ‘Poor me. But you’re good, Fanny’ She was at her most sarcastic. ‘The bit I lack.’

  I screwed the top on to a bottle of olive oil with fingers that, suddenly, felt all thumbs. That sort of commotion usually meant one thing – and the house had been free of it for some time. Meg had been drinking. Not now, I thought. And then, why now, Meg? You’ve been doing so well.

  Will would have heard – and his lips would have gone white. It had taken me several years to work out that this meant fear, loathing and love in equal measure, and that it was my job to protect him. ‘I’ll go,’ I called.

  I went down the passage that ran the width of the house and let myself into Meg’s part of the house. ‘Sacha?’

  ‘Upstairs, Fanny.’

  I found him in Meg’s bedroom, manhandling his mother’s inert body on to the bed, and hastened to help. Meg was hunched on her side, and her breath soughed audibly in and out. I smoothed her hair back from her forehead. ‘I should have checked on her.’

  Sacha arranged her legs into a more comfortable position. ‘She’s been at it all day.’ He added, with an effort, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ I bent down to retrieve a whisky bottle from the floor. It was still three-quarters full. ‘I don’t think she’s had that much, Sacha.’

  ‘But enough.’

  ‘She’s been brilliant lately, and nothing while you were away.’ Sacha’s nu-metal band was struggling to get off the ground and he was frequently away doing the circuits.

  Sacha flinched and I could have kicked myself. ‘Sacha, it isn’t you. It isn’t you coming back… It’s the time of year, an unexpected bill or – ’

  ‘I know. She rang my father today. Apparently, he wants to renegotiate the alimony. That’s probably it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Meg had never got over Rob walking out on her when Sacha was tiny. ‘Talking to your father’s always tricky for her.’

  ‘I know,’ he said again. He spoke far too wearily for a twenty-four-year-old. I slid my arms around my surrogate son. He smelt so clean. He always did, however many smoky, drink-filled places he worked in. ‘Don’t despair.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he lied.

  ‘Shall I sit with her?’

  Sacha pushed me gently towards the door. This was between him and his mother and he kept it that way – because it was so terrible and so intimate.

  Meg’s lost battle was marked out in the kitchen by a trail of half-empty coffee cups. The one by the phone was still full, and marked the moment of defeat. ‘Tea and coffee are so unattractive to look at,’ Meg said. ‘I can’t fancy them.’ But when it came to the rubies and topazes of wine and brandy, then we were talking.

  How could I, of all people, with my passion for wine, disagree?

  ‘I hate you for knowing when to stop,’ Meg had flung at me once.

  I harvested the cups and washed them up, scrubbing angrily at their brown, scummy rims. Meg had not only blackened the important moments of her son’s life, she had also instilled in him the fear that, one day, he might be like her.

  I looked up from the sink and outside, outlined in the dusk, a vixen was sliding along the flower-bed. She was thinner than a London fox. They say that foxes are safest in the city, but I wonder if they have a genetic memory from the past that plagues them. Do they miss the smell of corn in high summer? The sharpness of frosted grass?

  In our room, Will was already in bed and I slid in beside him. ‘Is she… is she all right?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘What triggered her off do you think?’

  I considered it. ‘Rob rang her and wanted to talk about money, but I suspect that it had something to do with our anniversary.’

  We talked about it for a bit. Will scratched his head. ‘I would give much to think that Meg was happy and sorted out.’ He turned to me. ‘She has a lot to thank you for, Fanny. So do I.’

  My feelings for Meg could be ambivalent, but being thanked by Will was certainly sweet.

  He stirred restlessly. ‘What do you think is best, Fanny,’ he said. ‘Do you think we should arrange more help for her? Could you manage to do that?’

  ‘I could, but it might be better if you could talk to her. Maybe she needs a bit of your attention.’

  He thought about this. ‘I haven’t got the time at the moment. But I will when I can. I promise.’

  2

  It was eight o’clock on Monday morning and downstairs line two, the line reserved for constituents, was buzzing. This was not unusual.

  ‘You answer.’ Will was thick with sleep. He hunched over in the bed and dragged the duvet round his shoulders. Go away, world. He did that rather well.

  I had pulled on my jeans but not yet reached the jumper stage. The morning chill brushed my cheeks as I padded downstairs. Many things were required of me but dealing with a constituent before I was dressed was not at the top of the list.

  ‘Mrs Savage…’ The voice was familiar.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Tucker. Where are you phoning from?’

  ‘From Number Nine Heaven.’

  Mr Tucker changed his locations according to which medication he had been taking. ‘Mr Tucker, are you alone?’

  ‘You’re never alone, Mrs Savage. I want to complain about the lack of angels in Stanwinton.’

  This seemed a rather admirable complaint. ‘Do you remember, Mr Tucker? We dealt with that one last week.’

  Voices in the background urged Mr Tucker to put down the phone and come along. ‘Goodbye, Mr Tucker. It was nice to talk to you.’

  Mr Tucker resided on a planet of his own but, as Will argued, a vote was a vote. ‘You mean, the staff taking care of Mr Tucker will vote for you,’ I said. ‘“That nice man Mr Savage… never too busy…”’

  ‘Exactly. Anyway, an MP should listen to the dotty as well as the sane,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Well, that sheds a new light on Parliament,’ I said.

  In the hall, cleaning materials were distributed over the floor, which indicated that Maleeka had come in early. Maleeka was my angel and my saviour, and other wives – especially my friends – hated me for her. I see the point. One can envy another woman’s beauty, or her mind, but you only truly hate her if her house is clean and shining. Of distant Arabian extraction, hence her name, Maleeka was a Bosnian refugee who had appeared in Will’s surgery and begged for work. Will had a habit of forwarding problems to me, and did so on this occasion. ‘Mrs Savage, I have two daughters and four grandchildrens to make food for,’ she said. What could I say?

  During the first week of her regime, she smashed two china figurines and dropped bleach on to the landing carpet. The navy blue pile now sported three almost perfect white circles. ‘Look on them as symbols,’ I told Will, ‘of our commitment.’ Will had been a little slow to see the point, a reminder that he dealt with theory so much that the practical was often beyond him. Not so for Maleeka: she made it her business to absorb herself into my household, and had turned up faithfully twice a week for ten years to impose order on the piles of laundry, remove tidemarks from the bath and the enc
rustations that decorated the taps, dust from the landing window-sill and the strange marks that inexplicably appeared in the fridge. If grime, disorder and mess flickered through the rooms like marsh gas or plague, Maleeka maintained a firm perspective on the family chaos that made me catch my breath: ‘Izt safe here,’ she said. ‘Good.’

  I picked my way through a flotsam of bleach, polish and dusters, and tracked their source to the kitchen, where she was kneeling with her head in the oven – a position not a few political wives (any wife?) had, from time to time, considered. ‘Izt bad, Mrs Savage.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘Very bad.’

  She meant the oven but the remark had a portmanteau ring to it.

  I boiled the kettle and made toast. ‘Come and eat, Maleeka.’

  She hauled herself upright and sat down. I gave her coffee and two thick slices of toast: I knew she went short of food so that the rest of the family had enough. Tengo famiglia, as Alfredo, my Italian father, would say. ‘Hold the family safe, Francesca. We may be sinners and failures but that is the one thing we must do.’ On that point, Maleeka and my father were perfectly matched. Not that Maleeka talked about it much – she was ashamed of her transient status and deeply homesick.

  ‘Have you heard from your husband?’

  Poitr had been left in Bosnia to fight. Or, at least, to guard the family house. Not that Maleeka minded the separation. ‘Pouf, the man izt bad.’ Yet, there was no question of divorce. ‘He izt my husband. Finish.’

  She was eating a third piece of toast when a fresh, shining Will appeared. However late we had been, he always managed to look new-minted and ready… to tackle the theory at any rate. Maleeka crammed the remainder of the toast into her mouth and leapt to her feet. ‘Mornings, Mr Savage. I get on.’

  Will did not fail at many things, but he had failed in his attempt to make Maleeka call him Will. ‘Mr Savage’ pricked at his principles and made him feel uneasy. Or so he said.

  He ate his breakfast rapidly and efficiently, and worked through the papers. Afterwards we did a final check of our respective diaries. Of course, his was full. ‘Can you make drinks for the European and Commonwealth finance ministers’ convention on the seventeenth?’ he asked. ‘And on the twenty-first, there’s a dinner for the same people. Much smaller, more intimate. I’ll count on you, Fanny’

  I turned over the pages. For all sorts of reasons, the convention was important, not least because Will was spearheading the UK end of a controversial European initiative to impose a tax on anyone who owned a second car. Naturally everyone was up in arms: the car lobby, the country dweller, the salesman and anyone who had to endure public transport. But Will believed in it because, as he explained, it was right to tax those who enjoyed a standard of living that permitted them to have a second car. ‘We would be setting an example to the world,’ he said. ‘We should do that. We must do that.’

  I stabbed my finger on the seventeenth. ‘I’ve got a homeless-persons meeting in the morning. Afterwards, if the traffic’s OK, I can hop into our second car and make a dash for it.’

  Will tried not to smile. ‘Don’t be nasty. Will you target Antonio Pasquale? Use your dazzling Italian. I need to make sure that he’s on board. But you will go carefully?’

  ‘Will, look at me. What do you see?’

  He leant over and cupped my chin with a hand. ‘You, of course.’ He wore his busy-busy expression but his eyes were soft and, as usual, I melted.

  What did I see? His hair was shorter now than it had been when I’d first met him, but he had a much better haircut. His jaw line was rather tauter than his waistline these days… but no, I won’t go into that. And those dark eyes still lit up, from time to time, with a combination of idealism and a hint of vulnerability that he was careful only to show to those he loved.

  Much the same.

  ‘How long have I been on the circuit for you?’ He had the honesty to look a little discomfited. ‘I do have some idea, Will.’

  ‘Yes, but… I want to be sure you understand’. Will retrieved his hand and launched into an explanation of the whys and wherefores of the tax scheme, which, to be fair, were tricky.

  I listened, as I had many times before. On the one hand Will was right: it would strike a blow for a better, greener world and bring in more money for useful projects. On the other, ordinary families would struggle, the bus queues would snake out of sight, jobs might be at risk. Will’s smile turned into that of the professional debater and his voice swooped up and down, brightened, sharpened, drove home the points. He leant back in his chair, an embodiment of clear thinking, authority, given edge by his weight of experience, and he knew it.

  And I wanted to be there with him – but increasingly I sensed I had lost the almost mystical sense of mission, and the capacity to believe in it. Being married to an idealist was different from being one. I had become dulled by the glue of routine and domesticity, and diverted by the equally passionate imperatives of motherhood.

  ‘So you see,’ said Will, and smiled at me.

  Not bad, I thought appreciatively. Over the years Will had shed a certain innocence. But so had I – so had everyone. We were warier, more realistic, pathetically grateful for the small triumphs of a policy implemented, a constituent satisfied. We knew our limitations better – oh, much, much better. We knew, too, for we had discussed it, that as that innocence slipped away, personal ambition had grown in direct proportion.

  There was a pause.

  ‘What’s best for those living in a rural area?’ I asked, because this side of the argument should have an airing.

  Will held out his cup for more coffee. ‘Fanny,’ he sounded a warning, ‘we can’t afford any wobbles. Otherwise we get dumped on.’

  He meant the press. Not for the first time, I thought how strange it was that treachery and dissent reached so much wider than loyalty… or fidelity.

  No, scrub that.

  That last had caught me unawares, which it did from time to time. I had learnt to deal with any bruising it inflicted.

  Will pressed on: ‘I know what you’re thinking, Fanny, but we have to do something before the world chokes.’ He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

  These days when I looked at Will, I no longer perceived the golden light that, when I first fell in love with him, had bathed him from head to foot. Now I saw differently and Will was only an element in a larger context: family, home, commitments. At forty-something, I had learnt many things, not least to reshuffle the priorities. Perhaps that was better, certainly more rational. All the same, I mourned the golden light. I missed it, and the intensity of my hunger to find out what Will was, my passion to possess him, and for him to possess me.

  Again the eyebrows arched above the brown eyes. This time it meant: ‘Let’s sort this out.’ ‘Give it a chance, Fanny… yes?’ He smiled, willing the old intimacy to bind us together. If I played ball, Will would be comforted and assured that we were walking down the right track.

  ‘Trust me?’

  ‘Should I?’

  He yawned theatrically. ‘Am I being pompous?’

  In politics, or anywhere where power was the prize, it was hard to keep the layers of oneself glued together, and it was hard not to run with the hares. I understood that perfectly.

  He got to his feet. ‘For goodness sake drive a pin into me if I get fat, boring or pompous.’ He looked briefly appalled. ‘On second thoughts, perhaps you’d better not.’

  ‘Would it be that easy to burst the bubble?’

  He bent over and whispered, ‘Only you know the answer to that.’

  Outside in the drive, the ministerial car nosed to a halt with a discreet toot of the horn. Will shoved his papers into his briefcase. ‘See you Friday’.

  I sat quite still. Will’s hand pressed into my shoulder. ‘Fanny… the question of Meg.’

  ‘Is she a question?’

  Meg had never been a question. She had always been a fact. A hard fact t
hat sat at the centre of our marriage.

  The pressure on my shoulder became almost intolerable. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘No, she isn’t.’

  Meg and Will’s parents killed themselves in a spectacular car crash. The tangle of wreckage made it almost impossible to say who had been driving but, in some respects, it was irrelevant. Both were alcoholics, and the blood tests indicated that neither of them should have been at the wheel.

  The children were cared for by grandparents too aged to cope. Four years older than Will, Meg had ended up cooking, cleaning, protecting and directing. She teased out Will’s halting French verbs, wrestled with his algebra and, by the time he left home to train as a barrister, had forgotten about herself. ‘It was as if there was a vacuum inside me, sucking up the person that was me,’ she confided, soon after she moved in with us, ‘and I could only fill it one way’

  When she married Rob, another barrister, the drinking had been sly, furtive, but apparently under control. After Sacha was born, and the strains of marriage to a busy man became clear, Meg began to slip. Eventually, Rob said he could no longer live with her. Then he informed her he’d found someone else who would look after him and Sacha properly.

  ‘It was the “properly” that really hurt,’ said Meg.

  ‘Meg became my mother,’ Will said, when he asked me if she could come and live with us, ‘and my father. She gave up everything to make sure that I was all right.’

  After Will had gone, I went upstairs. Our bedroom was still frowsty from the night and I threw open the window. A man wearing a bright orange jacket was walking up the road and the colour imprinted itself, vivid and garish, on my retinas. He did not seem to be in any hurry, and looked neither sad nor happy, just indifferent.

  That’s how I felt.

  I made the bed and pulled my mother’s quilt over it. With a forefinger, I traced the tree hung with red cherry blossoms. One of the flower bracts had been unevenly sewn. I often wondered about the creator and why she had made the mistake. Had it been deliberate? A gesture of rage, rebellion or misery?