The Good Wife (11 page)

‘It isn’t an end, believe me,’ he said, and tucked my hand into his arm. ‘Hang on to that.’

Chloë scrambled up to the second fork in the trunk where, I knew, the bark was smooth and flecked with lichen, and the branches were wide and generous. Perfect for the lonely, perennially grubby girl who had made it her den all those years ago. Chloë hooked her leg over the branch and settled back. ‘I’m probably looking at what you looked at.’

‘Probably.’

She squinted across at the remains of the platform. ‘All the planks look rotten.’

‘Be careful.’ A breeze rippled the leaves. I knew that sound so well. In the end, I had known the pathway up that tree better than the stairs in the house.

‘I drank my first bottle of cider up there,’ I said, to my father, ‘and practised swearing.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I used to prowl underneath, just to make sure you were all right.’

‘Really, Dad? I never saw you. I always thought I was the clever one.’

‘And so you were, Francesca.’ He looked pleased with himself. ‘But I wasn’t a complete fool.’

I looked at him. However much I tried to ignore it, my father was growing older. Fright drove a stiletto into me. ‘Why don’t I take some work back with me, if I’m to come back to work properly, why don’t you give me some stuff today?’

He paused and laid his hand on my arm. His touch was a brittle leaf. ‘Why don’t I?’

‘Guys, I’m coming down.’ A moment later Chloë landed beside us. ‘Got moss all over my jeans, Mum. And this is my
travelling
pair.’

It was not really necessary for me to brush and pat Chloë clean but, since I would not have her for much longer, I allowed myself to fuss. It gave me an excuse to smooth back her hair and run my hands over her shoulders to check they were not too thin. Close your eyes, I told myself. Savour and memorize: imprint the
feel
of her.

Will – of course – could not come to see Chloë off. ‘Send my dearest love… and, Fanny, give her some extra money. From me. I’ll pay you back.’ Nor did Sacha. ‘At a gig.’ So I drove her and her rucksack to the airport, where we met Jenny and Fabia, her travelling companions.

The three girls listened in silence to the three mothers while the final lecture –
stick together, spiked drinks, drugs, lecherous men
– was delivered in staccato bursts of anxiety.

I drew Chloë aside. ‘I’m sorry Sacha isn’t here.’

Chloë averted her eyes with their long, long lashes, but not before I had caught a glimpse of panic and hurt. ‘Sacha doesn’t think goodbyes are important. But I think they are, don’t you, Mum?’

‘Yes.’

She fingered her daysack, which contained her money, ticket and passport. ‘He couldn’t come, could he?’

‘You did pack all the medicines?’ I begged her.

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘You’ve got your money-belt on?’

‘You’ve asked me that twice, Mum.’

Her role was to be composed and determined. Mine was to fuss, fear and, finally, to raise my hand in farewell and push my daughter gently into her future.

8

Hoping to catch a final glimpse of Chloë – just a flicker of her head, the suggestion of her shoulder – I hovered outside Departures and watched, without seeing, the progression of passengers file through. Some were girls like Chloë, Jenny and Fabia, young, hopeful, anxious to be tested and tempered by what the world had to offer.

Five minutes sifted by, then ten. I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other. I dug my hand into my jacket pocket and felt the car-park ticket slide under my nail. I was preparing myself. A tooth after Novocaine is numb, but the pain is not absent.

An official on the gate sent me a look of mixed suspicion and boredom. He’d seen it all before. My mobile phone didn’t take international calls and I ducked into a telephone booth, rang Will, and fed more coins into the telephone and waited.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I forgot to check Chloë had her fleece. It’s winter in Australia now and she’ll be cold.’

‘Is that why you’ve got me out of the meeting?’

‘I just wanted to tell you that she’s gone.’

His voice sounded tender – but also a little exasperated.

‘I’m glad you did. Listen, you idiot, she can buy something out there. They do have shops.’

‘I know,’ I said, miserably. ‘I know I shouldn’t have rung you. I’m being stupid, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ he repeated, and did not terminate the conversation with the usual ‘must go’ until he had talked me through Chloë’s potential goose bumps and checked that I had enough money to pay for the car park.

I cried all the way to Elaine’s. The tears dripped off my chin and on to the car seat.

She was making chocolate cup cakes for the Red Cross charity fête when I walked into the kitchen. There was a deafening noise coming from upstairs.

‘That’s Jake,’ she said as she kissed me. ‘Practising the drums.’

‘Home from home,’ I said.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and searched my face. ‘Very down in the dumps?’

‘A bit.’ I bit my lip. ‘Actually, very. I don’t know what I’m going to do without Chloë.’

‘Right. Let’s make a plan,’ she said briskly. ‘First of all you will help me make these wretched cakes and then you will ring home and tell them you are staying the night, and blow everyone else.’ She thrust a wooden spoon at me.

‘Get going. Earn your keep.’

Upstairs, the drum beats rolled and crashed. Elaine sighed and brushed back her hair with a hand that trembled.

I asked a little anxiously,
‘Are you
all right?’

‘Sure.’

But, over a supper of spaghetti Bolognese and a bottle of wine, Elaine confessed, ‘I’ve had enough of this life.’

This was not like her. ‘What’s happened?’

There was a long pause and she dropped her head into her hands. ‘I think Neil may be having a serious affair this time.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘All the signs are there. One of the secretaries in the House. I’ve been trying not to face it, but I must.’

‘Oh, Elaine.’

Elaine raised her head. ‘I didn’t mean to say anything, Fanny. Not while you’re feeling so bereft.’

That was so like Elaine and I cast around as to how I could possibly help and comfort. ‘Tell me about it,’ I said, ‘and then we can work out what’s best.’

We spent half the night talking and went to bed not much the wiser and with nothing resolved. We could think of any amount of practical things to do – including Elaine packing her bags – but none of them were a panacea for anguish. Stupid with fatigue, I arrived home mid-morning to find my house in uproar. Overnight, Brigitte had done a bunk. At some point the previous evening, she had packed her bags, dropped the keys on to the kitchen table and abandoned ship.

‘Without a word,’ said Meg, avoiding my eyes. ‘I didn’t hear a taxi or anything.’

‘She izt horrible womans,’ Maleeka said.

Brigitte had not appeared to me to be ‘horrible womans’. Irritating, perhaps, but not horrible. Yet when I discovered that her parting shot had been to let herself into our bathroom and help herself to shampoo and bath oil, her malice felt like sandpaper against sunburnt skin.

On Friday night, Will arrived home unexpectedly early.

I was sitting at the kitchen table. Having worked my
way through a pile of my father’s invoices and shipping orders, I was reading a couple of files I’d scooped up at Ember House. ‘Ambitious’, he had written of one vineyard, ‘but too impatient.’ Of another, ‘Soil unlikely to yield’. Of a third, ‘Terroir limited and undefined.’ They were so like him, these precise, careful assessments.

‘Where am I?’ Elaine had cried. ‘
Who
am I? Where do I go from here?’ Her distress had affected me deeply – for all sorts of reasons that were not only to do with my affection for her.

I sorted the papers into ‘Done’ and ‘Must Do’, and surveyed the pile. Come to that, who was I? Certainly, I was not Fanny Savage, wife, mother, wine expert and business woman which, once, had been my ambition.

But that had been my choice.

‘Hallo, darling,’ said Will.

I looked up, surprised, and did not register for a second who he was. He was in his best grey suit and sported a light tan. ‘I wasn’t expecting you yet.’

‘I managed to get an earlier flight. I thought I’d try and come home early to see how you were.’ He smiled rather sadly. ‘I knew you’d be missing Chloë.’

I held up my hand and he took it. ‘That was nice of you. You look well. You found a second or two to sit by the pool.’

‘Yup.’ He dropped a kiss on my head. ‘What are you up to?’

‘The usual Battista stuff. I’ve been talking to Dad about taking on a bit more; I really think he needs the help. What do you think?’

He frowned slightly and flopped down into a chair. ‘Any chance of supper? Where are the others?’

‘I’ll see what I can rustle up. Meg decided to go to an AA meeting and Sacha’s in London.’ Something in his pose alerted me to trouble. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

‘Trouble… of course.’ He sighed. ‘The car lobby is getting pretty vicious over the second-car tax. It’s got a lot of money at its disposal and a couple of the tabloids have come out in its favour, banging on about personal freedom.’ He sounded unusually despondent, and very tired.

I got up and laid a hand on his shoulder. The material of his suit jacket felt smooth, expensive, sophisticated. ‘Not so very terrible. And there is always trouble somewhere along the line.’

‘It’s pretty bad,’ he said. ‘If this goes wrong, I’ll look a fool, and it will mark me out as a loser.’

He twisted round to look at me, and I knew he was still aching for the Chancellorship. I opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. ‘How about fishcakes and tomato salad?’

‘Fine.’

‘By the way, Brigitte’s packed her bags and done a bunk. Last night, without any warning.’

Will was not listening. ‘Do you care at all about the second-car tax, Fanny? I’d rather you told me now if you didn’t.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Not as much as I should.’ I put the fishcakes into a frying pan and chopped up the tomatoes. They were small, cold and tough and I cheered them up with a sprinkling of chives. What was the point
in not telling the truth? ‘You know I’ve had doubts about the idea.’

He was clearly hurt and a little bewildered, and it cut me to the quick. The ingrained habits of love and loyalty resurfaced and I put my arms around him. ‘Sorry, Will. But I can’t summon the enthusiasm for it.’ He leant against me and I stroked his hair, relishing its thickness.

‘I get a little tired, too,’ I continued, ‘of waiting and organizing, and of being on show all the time.’

‘Not much of a deal, is it?’ he confessed. ‘For you, I mean. But I honestly don’t know what I can do about it.’

A cool little voice in my head said to me that Will was right and there was no point in pursuing the discussion. There wasn’t anything to be done – except to live with it. Or was there? The cool little voice unsettled me even further when it added, sympathetically and most seductively:
Fanny, I think you need a holiday from being married
.

The idea made my knees shake.
Only a holiday?

Will was searching my face for clues as to what I might be thinking and, unnerved by my own subversion, I thought it best to return to the subject of the second-car tax. ‘I still think people don’t want to be told what’s good for them, Will.’

‘Listen to me,’ he urged and, once again, outlined the arguments for the scheme. I replied, reiterating mine. We found we agreed on one point, disagreed on another. We laughed about a third. Suddenly, our intimacy was back.

‘Come upstairs with me, Fanny’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What a touching scene.’ Neither of us had heard Meg appear in the doorway.

Will released me and she glided up and gave him a hug. ‘Good meeting?’ he asked.

She looked calm and collected. ‘Winning the battle. I hope. No more scenes.’ She looked straight at me. ‘I am sorry about that, Fanny. I hope you have forgiven me?’

‘Short meeting,’ I said.

She raised a quizzical eyebrow at my lack of response and unwound a pink scarf from her neck. ‘It’s very simple and it can be said in two words. “Don’t drink.” Even the stupidest can get that message, and I’m not stupid.’

Will regarded her fondly. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘So what were you two talking about?’

I went to check on the fishcakes. ‘Second-car tax, what else? But I was rather hoping to discuss the revival of my career.’

She tucked her arm into Will’s. ‘I’m not up to speed,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it.’

I found myself chopping the last tomato with unnecessary vigour.

In keeping with the summer so far, the week of the twenty-first dawned scratchy and unsettled. To prepare for the dinner, I had got myself to the hairdresser and spent three hours reading up the briefing notes supplied by Will’s office. Transport Tariffs. Aids. Agricultural initiatives. So far so predictable.

As Will handed me into the car, he surprised me by saying, ‘You look lovely.’

‘Thank you.’

In a full, black silk skirt and tiny matching jacket, my
hair highlighted and swept back from my forehead, I sat between Antonio Pasquale–we greeted each other warmly – and the charming Italian ambassador. During the first two courses, I was occupied by Antonio and we discussed rubies. He had noted my ring. ‘Is there not a passage in the Bible that refers to a good woman being above the price of rubies?’ He smiled into my eyes. ‘Your husband should have bought you a bigger one.’ Conversationally, both of us did well and, as dessert was served and I turned to my right, I was sure he winked at me.

The Italian ambassador was formidably well educated and good-looking. ‘Is something amusing you, Mrs Savage?’

‘I think your finance minister just winked at me.’

‘Can I wink at you too?’

‘If you like.’

‘Your husband has been energetic lately. He is a notable politician.’ He leant towards me. His breath was scented with raspberries and vanilla. ‘We just need a little more time to think out his scheme. You know that we’ve stuck on one or two points.’