The Good Wife (15 page)

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 tight 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.

The moment passed.

Melly’s neck was corrugated with muscle. I ran my hand over it, enjoying the feel of her damp coat. ‘I wonder how Will is?’

‘What sort of man is he?’ Sally batted Melly’s nose gently out of Chloë’s orbit. ‘Would he like it here?’

‘I think so. But he hasn’t time to come.’

Sally gave me back Chloë and swung herself over the
fence. Her horses swirled around her and she attached a leading-rein to Melly’s head-collar, grasped a handful of the golden mane and swung herself up. In daylight she seemed older, but the thighs under her denims were toned and strong. ‘Art gives himself plenty of time. That’s the difference.’ She turned Melly, then trotted her to the end of the paddock and back again. ‘Just testing. We’ve had trouble with her hock. But she’s fine.’

In the distance, Art’s station-wagon was nosing down the track towards us. It slowed and he wound down the window. The sound of country-and-western shattered the peace. ‘Thought I’d make a detour,’ he said, ‘to say hi to you ladies.’

He drove on. ‘Now, that’s what I call passing the test,’ said Sally fondly. ‘Most days he does that.’ She slid down from Melly’s back and leant against the picket fence. Once more, her horses closed in on her.

I felt the download of sadness, anger even, that my father had not passed Sally’s test. ‘You must get tired looking after the horses.’

Sally squinted into the sun, which emphasized the fanlight of lines around her eyes. ‘You get tired of everything. The question is, what do you tire of least? My horses are easy and uncomplicated. They want feeding, grooming, and exercising, and they might, in return, love a person a little. But not too much. It’s not their nature. I know that. And because I know that, it’s fine.’

She climbed back over the fence. ‘Do you want to know why your father and I didn’t make it? He wanted to go too far, too fast.
That
tired me. I didn’t want the big house, the entertaining and the wine snobbery. And I didn’t want to
sacrifice everything to make money. But it was hard, because we had known each other for so long.’

‘He didn’t become that rich. The business is hardly a gold mine.’

‘I made a mistake,’ said Sally. ‘I didn’t realize how a person could change as they grew older.’

On our last day Art minded Chloë, and Sally took me out on Melly. She rode upfront on the big, prancing Quincy and urged him along a track fringed by trees, which were turning every shade of yellow and ochre. The earth was moist underfoot and insects rose in clouds. In the distance the ridge of hills rose ragged and unpeaceful-looking in contrast to the warm landscape around the town. Sally pointed towards them. ‘There’s the ruins of a couple of mining buildings up there, if you look. Poor devils. They never found anything.’

Quincy’s tail twitched and I tagged behind, fussing with Melly’s reins and the angle of my foot. Every movement reminded me that I was not with Chloë. I knew she was perfectly all right, that she was safe, yet with every rustle in the undergrowth or shiver of the branches, I found myself listening for my child’s breathing. With every thud of the horses’ hoofs, I strained to hear her cry of distress, hunger or pleasure.

It was like that now, and there was nothing to be done about it.

After supper, I helped Sally to make gingerbread for the Rotary Club picnic. ‘We take the station-wagons and head up into the mountains, sing a little, eat a lot. It’s neat.’ Chloë was asleep in the little boxroom and Art was
watching television in the next room, surrounded by papers and beer cans.

Sally dug a spoon into the molasses. ‘Since you’ve been here, my paperwork has gone to pot. Never mind – I’ve enjoyed it, Fanny. This has been good.’

The molasses had to be coaxed into the bowl.

‘Friends?’

‘Yup.’ She flushed a harsh red. ‘I wish… But that’s my business.’ She dropped the spoon and folded her hands across her stomach.

‘I thought you had no regrets.’

‘I don’t and I do. That’s natural.’ She poured the gingerbread mix into the tin. ‘But I have to say it’s mighty big of you to… Oh, what the heck, Fanny? What I did was for the best.’

‘Hey,’ I slipped my arm round her shoulders, ‘I didn’t mean…’

She looked up at me. ‘I chose me because I figured I only had one life and I’d better live it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘In a manner of speaking, Art was incidental.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Coincidental, more like, because he happened along at the right time. But that’s our secret.’

I leant past her and ran my finger around the bowl. ‘He’s nice, Sally.’

‘He’s a man,’ she said briskly. ‘Is any of us nice? But we come in all shapes and his suited mine.’

I licked my finger. ‘You got away.’

Sally offered me the bowl for a second helping. ‘Like I say, I’m better with horses. And that’s what I’ve stuck to. You need things, you know, to take your mind off the mess and muddle of eating and sleeping and being polite in the
home. Men don’t expect to think about it all the time. Why should I?’

Just as I was climbing into the spool bed for the last time Will rang. I wrapped a rug round my shoulders and went down to the kitchen to take the call.

‘Can’t wait to see you, Fanny,’ he said.

We hadn’t spoken for three days and I felt it acutely. ‘Tell me what’s been happening.’

He had several pieces of gossip. ‘Listen to this. The PM liked the speech I wrote for him and used a couple of the phrases. “Tough care”, you know, that sort of thing. Not very revolutionary but it seemed to do the trick.’

I told him about riding through the larch woods and the ruins of the mining buildings. ‘They sat up there during the winter, freezing and dying.’

‘They wanted a better life.’ He sounded like the Will I had first known.

‘If you come out here we can ride up into the mountains.’

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’

Arriving home in the airport in London, I spotted Will before he saw Chloë and me. He was deep in conversation with a girl with a blonde ponytail and tight leather trousers.

He was smiling and talking, and gesticulating, in the way that he had when he wooed a listener around to his way of thinking. This was Will at his most persuasive and the girl was listening intently.

Despite my burden of Chloë and the luggage trolley, I almost ran up to him. ‘Will?’

He whirled round. ‘Hallo, darling. Hallo, my poppet.’

The girl melted away. ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’ Will hugged Chloë. ‘She said she recognized me from television and admired what we were trying to do, so I was just explaining to her how it would work.’

I clung on to him. ‘Am I pleased to see you. The last few days went so slowly.’

‘For me too.’

Will handed back Chloë and took over the luggage and we made our way out to the car. ‘It’s good isn’t it,’ he commented, as he strapped Chloë into her seat. ‘My face
is
getting known.’

All the way home, I kept looking at him, ravenous for every detail. ‘Did you really miss me?’ I asked.

He turned his head and looked at me and, for a moment, I thought I saw a shadow in his eyes, a wariness that I could not place. ‘I missed you more than you can possibly imagine.’

I laid my hand on his thigh and let it rest there.

11

Back at Stanwinton, the brown leather diary was lying on the hall table. Tucked into it were typed lists and invitations. Bowling club tea. The single-parents’ jumble sale. The Ladies’ Guild ball…

‘Mannochie’s been busy,’ I said.

Meg came hurrying out to meet us. ‘Welcome home, Fanny. Are you exhausted? Oh, Chloë, you’re such a big girl… There’s coffee and sandwiches in the kitchen. Come and see what’s been done.’

Along with the alterations to accommodate Meg, my kitchen had been given an overhaul. It smelt of paint and to my jet-lagged sensibility, it seemed to exude a fresh, optimistic feel – if such a thing were possible. While we were planning the alterations, Will suggested that we splash out and buy a new oven. And there it was: chunky and reliable looking. I showed it to Chloë, who considered it extremely exciting when I banged the door shut.

Meg’s tiny kitchen space sparkled with fittings and equipment, and matching pink towels hung over the heated towel rail in her bathroom. I touched one: it was soft and expensive, and the colour matched the bath hat hanging on the door.

Meg hovered behind me. ‘Fanny, I haven’t thanked you properly… for agreeing to me living here.’

I turned round. ‘You don’t have to thank me. I’m glad we can do something.’

‘I do have to thank you,’ she insisted. ‘I need somewhere safe and secure so that I can… beat… well, you know what I have to beat. I can’t seem to do it on my own but I promise that I will be as helpful as I can, to make it up to you. I plan to find a job as soon as I can. Part-time, so I can help out with Chloë.’ She smiled a little bleakly. ‘I will try and earn my keep.’

I left Meg talking to Will, hefted Chloë on to a hip and went upstairs to our bedroom. I opened the windows and Chloë chuckled as I wrestled with the catches. She looked so gorgeous, so
edible
, that I caught up a fat fist and kissed it.