The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 4

  I tried a bit of role reversal. ‘On one condition. That you go and see a doctor for a check-up. I’ll make the appointment. Then, I promise, we’ll go to Fiertino.’

  My father looked guilty. ‘I’ve already been. Just a shade of concern about the heart. He’s given me pills. Everything is fine, except anno domini.’

  Driving home, I turned on the radio and music filled the car.

  ‘Quick, Francesca, before Benedetta orders you to bed. Tell me which are the grapes grown in Tuscany?’

  I pressed my cupped hand to his ear. ‘Sangiovese,’ I whispered.

  ‘Good girl. Now, which are the big reds of Piedmont?’

  ‘Dolcetto, Barbera, Nebbiolo…’

  Wonderful Benedetta. She scolded my father so many times for heating up my poor little brain. ‘Santa Patata, Alfredo, you are a cruel man.’ Santa Patata was the nearest the devout Benedetta would allow herself to swearing. ‘The child is too young.’ She need not have worried. My poor little brain was quite capable of sniffing out an opportunity to draw attention to me. Anyway, I was quick to see that I was being invited on to my father’s territory. What the French call the terroir.

  I know that terroir really means topsoil, drainage and climate. But, to me, it suggests something more profound and interesting – the territory of the heart.

  Back at the Stanwinton house, I parked the car in the drive beside the laurel hedge and let myself in at the front door. It clicked shut behind me.

  ‘Mum,’ Chloë greeted me in the kitchen, ‘I’m hungry’

  I opened the fridge door and got out a fish stew.

  ‘Not fish,’ she said.

  ‘Good for the brain. It’s fish from now on.’

  Chloë bit her lip. ‘I wish I didn’t have to do these exams.’

  ‘Just one last effort, darling, and then you’re free. You’ll be off to Australia and fretting about something different.’ I put the stew on to warm. ‘Do you think Sacha would like some?’

  ‘Probably. He’s been helping me revise.’ Chloë extracted knives and forks from the drawer. ‘I do love him, you know, Mum.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said swiftly. ‘He’s your cousin.’

  Chloë positioned a fork on the table with care. ‘He’s so kind. He just knows things.’

  I wanted to say to my daughter, ‘Please be careful. Don’t go into dangerous territory’ Chloë did not lack friends, far from it – they swarmed in and out of the house, demanding coffee, meals, television, a bed for the night – yet it was Sacha to whom she turned. Darling, lovely Sacha, who dressed in leather and wore his beautifully clean hair in a crop that emphasized his bony, but fine, features.

  While they ate, I sipped a glass of cranberry juice – my friend Elaine said it was system-cleansing. They discussed exam tactics and Chloë admitted how frightened she was.

  ‘All you need to do,’ said Sacha, ‘is to have the good idea when you’ve seen the questions. Don’t bother thinking up ideas now, otherwise you’ll fit the questions round them and that doesn’t work.’

  As a principle for life, this seemed sound.

  Chloë sent him one of her melting looks, and ate a huge plate of fish stew. I worked away at my internal cleansing and thought how lovely it was just to be sitting there peacefully, listening to them.

  Then Meg came into the kitchen. She looked groomed and well pressed, and her fair hair, in shades of light caramel, was twisted on top of her head. ‘Darlings,’ she said, ‘you should have called me down from exile. I would have liked to join you.’ She sat down at the table. ‘It’s been a bit of a lonely day. Everyone was out.’

  I was refilling my glass but I knew Meg’s gaze rested on me. ‘Be quiet,’ I wanted to say to her. ‘Please be quiet.’

  ‘Still, it’s productive working away at chores and, no doubt, good for the soul. And we all know that my soul certainly needs some good done to it.’ Meg’s expression held a touch of complacency and plenty of mischief. When no one made any comment, she added, ‘Could I point out, I have been virtuous today?’

  Sacha sprang to his feet and the chair screeched across the tiles. ‘Why don’t I make you a cup of coffee, Mum?’

  Meg tapped the table with her exquisitely shaped nails – her hands were quite lovely and she kept them immaculate. ‘Coffee is so… brown…’ she said. ‘But I guess I have to settle for it.’ Again she looked in my direction – and a shock of loathing suddenly pulsed through me. ‘Joke,’ she said.

  Hatred is a curious emotion. It can be dulled with weariness, then spring into sharp, destructive life. Or, and this never fails to astonish me, it sometimes turns into what could only be called affection. That’s how I found it with Meg.

  For some reason, Will’s late-night call came through on the business line. ‘This is Mrs Savage,’ I said, ‘and it’s far too late to be phoning.’

  ‘You’re completely right,’ said my husband. ‘You shouldn’t be talking to strangers at this hour.’

  ‘You’d better put the phone down then.’ The words issued tartly from my mouth before I could stop them.

  There was a second’s silence. ‘It’s not like you to sound so fed up. What is it? Have I done something?’

  ‘Sorry’

  Will tried again. ‘Can I help?’

  I resisted the temptation to tell him he sounded as though he was dealing with one of his crankier constituents. ‘OK. This is the daily Sit. Rep. There are three photographs of you in the local press. One is not good, the others are fine. There is also a piece about the Hansard report which shows how hard you’re fighting for the constituency even though you’re a minister.’

  He sighed rather wearily, which made me feel churlish. ‘What is wrong, Fanny,’ he asked.

  I wanted to say that I wished he were at home more often. That he should be at home more often, before it started not to matter if he was or wasn’t.

  Instead I stuck to routine exchanges of information. ‘Meg is fine. Chloë is seesawing between terror and elation. Sacha is being… Sacha.’

  This appeared to satisfy Will. ‘Busy day tomorrow,’ he said, and I wondered if he realized that he said that most days.

  ‘So have I.’ I wondered if he noticed that I said that most days.

  ‘Good night, darling. Hope you are feeling more cheerful in the morning.’

  ‘Good night,’ I said.

  The first words I ever heard Will utter were: ‘No more government waste. No more schools that betray their children, or hospitals that kill their patients. Ladies and gentlemen, I see these wrongs, daily, in my work as a barrister. I know how the trusting, the innocent and the deprived can suffer. I know how much they need a champion.’

  He stopped, thought for a moment. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I consider politics to be a means of building a bridge between what we feel to be just and right in our private lives and putting them into practice in public life…’

  It was a bitter January afternoon and I had nipped into Stanwinton town hall to escape the cold, rather than waiting at the station for the train I was due to catch, and stumbled on the meeting. I read the papers, but I had only a vague knowledge of politics and my interests lay elsewhere.

  Will was speaking as the adopted candidate for his party. At the very earliest, a general election was not due until the spring, but he was making himself known in what I later learned was a carefully constructed programme.

  I remember thinking: does he mean what he says? But as I gazed at a tall figure with hair the colour of corn in high summer, and at features which were lit up by humour and passion, I became convinced that he did, and I was possessed by a sudden, intense hunger to find out who he was. I mean, who he really was.

  I remember, too, that after the speech, as I made my way rather boldly towards him to introduce myself, I was stopped by a woman in red.

  ‘Can I help? I’m Will Savage’s sister.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You won’t bother him?’ she asked, anxiously. ‘He has so much on his plate, and he gets so t
ired.’ Then she smiled, and her delicate face came alive in the same way as her brother’s. ‘I’m here to protect him, you see?’

  4

  Half-way up the drive to Ember House, Will slammed on the brakes. ‘Just a minute, Fanny, have I got this wrong?’

  We had known each other for six weeks and I was taking him home to meet my father. He was twenty-eight and I was twenty-three, and both of us knew that this was a moment of great importance in our respective lives – more important than taking off our clothes in front of each other for the first time. This meeting, in effect, would cause us to be naked and exposed in quite another manner.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you lived like this… A stately home?’ Will wound down the window and gestured at the drive, which was flanked by clumps of snowdrops and crocuses and disappeared round a bend. I remember noting that the drive was at its best, before the pushy, blowsy azaleas took over and drowned it in pinks and reds.

  Already I was sensitive to how seriously Will considered his image, his positioning. ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t. The original house must have been, but it was knocked down in the fifties and a new one built. The drive is the only bit left of the grounds. My father bought it at a knock-down price when he set up the business. Nobody wanted it. The house is quite small, in fact, and not at all distinguished.’

  Will relaxed. At one of our meetings – snatched between his commitments in chambers and at court, the photo-calls, sponsored walks and chicken lunches, and my clients, negotiations with suppliers, sessions choosing wines for seasonal tastings – Will had explained he was committed to working for a society where people made their way by merit and not by privilege.

  ‘And what do you think you are?’ I teased. ‘Barristers earn telephone numbers.’

  I touched the long, sensitive-looking fingers that rested on the wheel. Everything was miraculous about Will, including his fingers. ‘You needn’t worry,’ I heard myself gabble and fumble with the words, ‘we’re not rich, not at all. We’re practically poor.’

  Will smiled at me lovingly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  I blushed. ‘Silly,’ I agreed.

  Was this me? The girl who helped her father so confidently to run his business, who lived a life so confidently in London? It was and it wasn’t. Falling in love with such suddenness and abandon had cut the ground from beneath my feet. It puzzled and – almost – frightened me, this violent, sweet, sharp, desperate emotion.

  Will’s knuckles whitened. ‘I’m a bit nervous,’ he confessed.

  Now I was in charge. ‘Just don’t pretend to know about wine, that’s all.’

  He grinned. ‘Political suicide.’

  Father was waiting for us in the sitting room with Caro, his mistress of ten years. After she had come into his life, which had been the cue for a thunderous-browed, red-eyed Benedetta to pack her bags and return to Fiertino, the interior of the house took a turn for the better. Caro had given it a more settled touch: a cushion, the repositioning of a chair, a pot of white hyacinths in spring, a lamp that cast a subtler light. They were only minor changes, but so effective.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind?’ Caro had asked, when she first arrived. I was thirteen, almost feral in my dislike – my terror at how things could change overnight. And I was in mourning for Benedetta. Caro had laughed and flipped back her hair, which had been long and naturally blonde then. She was so sure of her position as the woman likely to marry my father that she was careless of my reply.

  Five years or so later, when we had become friends and Caro was no nearer her goal, she turned to me and said bitterly, ‘Alfredo never notices what I do.’

  I saw myself reflected in her large, pleading eyes and I was angry with my father, sick at the thought that I had made her unhappy in the past. ‘You know my feelings on the subject,’ he had said, with his guarded look when I tackled him.

  ‘This is Will.’ I led him up to my father, who was standing in front of the fire.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, in his driest fashion, and my father could be very dry – my heart sank, ‘the politician.’

  In reply, Will could have said – might well have said, ‘Ah,’ the self-made man,’ which would have described my father perfectly, but his polite rejoinder managed to include Caro, who was sitting on the sofa. It was, I had noticed, a trick he had: bring everyone in.

  At dinner, we drank a sauvignon blanc from Lawson’s Dry Hill in New Zealand. Will barely touched his, prompting a slight frown to appear on my father’s face. We had coffee in the sitting room. Caro returned to her seat on the sofa and I sat beside her. My father took up his stance by the fire. ‘The papers are not very flattering about your party. They consider you a wily lot.’

  Will brightened. ‘That makes for the best battle,’ he said, at home on this territory. ‘In the end the voters will see that we have the right policies.’

  ‘Really,’ said my father. He looked up at me. ‘I never knew you were interested in politics, Francesca.’

  ‘I am now,’ I said.

  The fire flickered. I heard Caro’s cup rattle back into the saucer. I was so proud of Will that I almost wept. Instead I took refuge in the practical: I reached for the coffee-pot and refilled the cups. As I bent over my task, I asked myself why I had been singled out by the gods to be blessed in this way. Why had I, Fanny Battista, been lucky enough to find my other half?

  Will came over to stand by me and held out his hand. ‘Fanny?’

  I took it and sprang to my feet. Will turned to my father. ‘We would like to tell you something. Fanny and I have decided to get married.’

  My father rocked back on his feet, as if he had been dealt a blow. He looked at me and I knew that I had hurt him by not letting him into my confidence.

  ‘We decided last night,’ I explained.

  ‘It’s too quick,’ said my father. ‘You barely know each other.’

  Will slid his arm around me. ‘Swift, but sure.’

  Will sneaked into my bed in the small hours and I spent a wakeful night. It was still early when I decided to get up. I slid out of bed, leaving Will folded on to one side, one hand flung out. Foolishly, lovingly, I bent over and checked his breathing.

  On the way down to the kitchen, I had to pass Caro’s bedroom, which was opposite my father’s. The door was open, the light on, and I put my head in to ask if she wanted some tea.

  Clothes were littered over the bed and Caro was packing. We stared at each other. I, rumpled and sated, she beautifully dressed but desolate.

  ‘Why are you packing?’ I closed the door behind me.

  Caro picked up a green jumper and folded it. ‘Fanny, the one good thing in this mess has been our friendship. That has been…’ She blinked back tears. ‘It helped. Otherwise…’ she shrugged helplessly ‘…it has been a waste of my time.’

  I removed a pile of shirts from the bed and sat down. ‘Why now?’

  She fiddled with the jumper. ‘Put it this way. You’re getting married and I’m not. I know it’s stupid to worry about a piece of paper, but I do. A lot of people do. That’s the trouble with being pretty ordinary.’

  I snatched the jumper away from her and pleated it between my fingers. The material was soft and expensive. ‘Caro, you’ve been together for such a long time.’

  She raised an anguished gaze to me. ‘All good things come to an end.’

  ‘Would you like me to talk to him?’

  She shook her head. ‘No point.’

  ‘But you’ve been happy. I know you have.’

  ‘Let’s see…’ she ticked off the points. ‘Your father is kind enough to allocate me a very nice bedroom and a place at the table. I can order groceries and ask Jane to hoover the carpets. But that is it, Fanny.’ She repossessed the jumper. ‘You won’t understand yet, but it is not enough to look decorative when your father entertains. I want a real, live, working partnership. So…’ She got up and packed the green jumper. ‘I am drawing a line under the last ten years. I am relying on you to tell him.’ />
  ‘But you must tell him.’

  At that, she sparked with anger. ‘No, you can give him chapter and verse.’ She wrenched one of her suitcases shut. ‘What’s more, I am giving you your most useful wedding present.’

  I had no idea what she meant.

  With a foot, she nudged the suitcase towards the door. ‘I’m showing you how to leave, Fanny. It’s a good lesson.’

  On honeymoon in the Loire valley only six months after our first meeting, Will laid his head on my breast and said, ‘Your heartbeat is louder than a drum.’

  ‘And how many heartbeats have you listened to this closely?’

  ‘Very few’ He smiled. ‘Promise. Apart from my own, of course.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I don’t want to have shared you with too many.’ I luxuriated in the feeling and the smell of him on my skin. ‘Do you think our heartbeats match?’

  ‘Of course.’ He wrapped his arms tighter around me and said he had known they would as soon as he spotted me. ‘Five seconds is all it took. All right, perhaps ten..’

  ‘I saw you first.’ I kissed the damp, faintly salty hollow of his neck.

  ‘Hussy,’ he said and made me lie still, and I looked up into the dark eyes and saw a life ahead filled with possibilities, and thought how lucky I was.

  On the third day of our honeymoon, we had lunch in one of those plush, well-manicured but sleepy villages by the Loire. It was hot for early June and the heat shimmered off the stone streets. The big, sleepy, shiny river murmured beneath the clatter of cutlery and chink of glasses.

  Will did not eat much. Eventually, he dug into his pocket for his cigarettes. Officially he was a non-smoker, and would never do so in public – except in France, which was ‘different’. In fact, he was very fond of white-filtered American cigarettes and it made me smile then that a testament of our intimacy was having smoke blown in my face.

  I fussed with the waiter over the wine – I had never rated the Chinon red which colonized most of the list. Will watched me and then said, ‘I love seeing you with your wine. You know such a lot, and you know exactly what you want. You’re your father’s daughter.’