The Good Wife (26 page)

‘Has it been worth it, Fanny?’ he asked.

‘Who knows? A few years back I would have said yes, but I don’t know any more.’

‘That sounds quite healthy. As nothing is certain, we might as well own up to it.’

‘Uncomfortable, though.’

Raoul was not looking at the sky. ‘It took me a long time to get over the tree-house,’ he said, and we had arrived at the point of the evening. ‘It haunts me. It also amazed me how sex can destroy something so quickly. Just like that.’

I let my hand rest on his arm. ‘You know… I knew nothing about sex, or not much, and I was frightened by the experience.’ I smiled. ‘But I got over it. It took a little while, and by then you had gone back to France. Life went on in a different way. It was bad timing.’

Raoul took my hand and we wandered towards the house. In the moonlight, Casa Rosa appeared larger than it was, mysterious, and its windows glinted darkly in the moonlight.

‘Are you unhappy, Fanny?’

‘I came to bury Alfredo’s ashes. I can’t quite decide where yet, but I don’t think he minds waiting. I think he would want me to take my time. And… I suppose… I came out here to escape, for a bit, and to think. I have been unhappy, but I don’t think significantly so.’

I touched the wooden column by the front door. ‘Even the wood is hot.’

Raoul pushed me up against the column. I felt beautiful, mysterious and elated. I felt like a bird climbing into flight. And why not? Once, Will had betrayed me. Why not I? Uncertainty, mystery, playfulness… could be mine. I could take them and bundle them up into an area marked ‘Private’, and Will would never know.

Raoul placed one hand on my breast, the other at my waist and pressed his fingers into the curve of my back. It was a confident gesture. ‘Second time luckier, Fanny.’

I stretched out my neck and waited for my surrender.
Willing
my surrender.

The past dug in its hook. What was it I had promised myself so long ago?
If I worked where Will did and watched the prowling men, I would have fought to keep the faith, to cherish a perfection
.

And then I thought of Will, clearly and properly, and I knew that if Raoul and I went into Casa Rosa together, that would be the moment at which our marriage died. And what would remain? A man and a woman living under one roof, and the rooms under that roof would be empty and echoing.

‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘Raoul, I’ve made a mistake.’

‘Fanny…’

‘I wish I hadn’t, but I have. I can’t get away with it.’

‘Yes, you can.’

‘Not in that way.
I
can’t get away with it. With what’s in my head.’

‘Could I point out, Fanny, that at this moment I’m not interested in what is going on in your head?’ Raoul’s hand tightened on my flesh and fell away.

‘I’m very sorry. I don’t expect you to understand.’

‘That is beside the point,’ he said, and moved away.

While we had been talking, a figure had stepped round the side of the house. It was a woman dressed in a cotton skirt that adapted itself smoothly to the lines of her body as she moved.

‘Hallo,’ said Meg. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to return. I wasn’t sure that the taxi had dumped me at the right place. Then I spotted a wine book on the kitchen table.’ She moved forward and the moon outlined her in a sharp, silver light. ‘Hallo, Raoul, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Fanny always keeps you to herself whenever you come over.’

Raoul did not miss a beat. He went over and kissed Meg’s cheek. ‘Fanny did not mention…’

Meg submitted to Raoul’s embrace. ‘That was nice.’ She touched her cheek. ‘We should meet more often. Come to that, Will didn’t mention that you were here.’

‘Will doesn’t know,’ I said.

Meg looked from Raoul to me. ‘Oh, well,’ she said.

Raoul laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I will be in touch. Maybe we can all have dinner somewhere before I go home.’

All three of us knew this was a fiction.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Meg.
‘That
would be cosy.’

19

‘Just what are you doing here?’ I demanded after Raoul had driven away.

‘Arriving in the nick of time, it would seem,’ she said drily.

There was no answer to that.

Meg followed me into the kitchen and dropped her suitcase on to the floor.

‘If I said, Fanny, that it seemed a little greedy of you to have all this space in a lovely house in Italy and not to share it… or I could say, that I missed you. So does Will. He does love you, you know. And…’ She bit her lip, but spoke with her usual mockery, ‘I love whoever Will loves…’

Her eyes shifted away, and I knew she was frightened as to my reaction.

Meg commandeered the single chair in the kitchen, leaving me to stand. ‘He was nice. My darling brother is always nice to me. But he made it plain that he didn’t wish me to appear at his side. He said…’ She grimaced. ‘He said it was your place, not mine. But before you go all dewy, he had probably calculated that if I stood in for you people would talk.’

‘Meg –’

‘Will never gives up. When he dies you’ll find “percentage swing” engraved on his heart.’

‘Who taught him to be like that in the first place?’

‘I suppose it might have had something to do with me.’ Meg nudged her suitcase with a foot. ‘I’m sorry to have surprised you, Fanny, it was not nice of me, but you can make room. We’ve lived together long enough.’

My energy had returned and I knew I had to confront Meg. The compromises were over. ‘Go home,’ I said. ‘I won’t have you here. This is
my
breathing space.’

Meg’s lips quivered. ‘Don’t be nasty, Fanny. I’m not sure I can bear it.’

‘Try.’

‘I have tried, and I need you.’

It was close to midnight. It was hot, I was bone tired, the airport was miles away and, as usual, Meg had brought her baggage of the funny, the sad and the monstrous with her, and there was nothing much to be done.

We cleared a space in the second bedroom. Inhaling camphor, I knelt down by the chest of drawers in the corridor and searched among its contents for extra sheets. Eventually, I found a pair with embroidered initials, MS, at the corner and we made up Meg’s bed.

‘Clearly, this was meant,’ she said.

Heated with the effort of dragging furniture around, we went outside and walked up the road.

‘What will you do with me in the morning?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Our feet stirred up a wake of white dust as we passed. Cicadas sang in the undergrowth. The darkness was scented – basil and marjoram, a hint of lemon – and far, far removed from the cool, rain-laden, sodden air of Stanwinton.

I broke the silence. ‘I’ve been out of touch. Is there any news?’

‘The polls show that support is slipping,’ Meg sounded troubled, ‘but what can you expect? Everyone needs a change. People get fed up with continuity and good intentions.’

We walked past the clump of olives and the vineyard where the vines grew straight and disciplined. At the end of each row there was a rosebush.

‘Nice detail,’ observed Meg.

I pinched a leaf or two of wild thyme between my fingers and sniffed. ‘Smell this. You’ll never buy herbs in a bottle again.’

At the point where the road divided, we halted. One fork led down into Fiertino, whose lights, a bright contrast against the dark sky, were strung in a necklace of brilliants. The other snaked up past Casa Rosa and over the hill. Meg pushed back her hair. ‘It’s hot.’

‘That’s its point, to be as different from Stanwinton as possible.’ I spoke more passionately than I’d intended.

‘Poor you, you’ve got it bad.’

‘I have. But I’ve sorted out a few things while I’ve been here.’

‘If you call Raoul sorting out,’ she said.

We walked on. ‘Raoul and I are good friends. I knew him long before I met Will.’

‘If you say so, Fanny.’ Meg scuffed at a stone with a sandalled foot. ‘I have been good, Fanny,’ she said. ‘I’m as clean as a whistle. I
have
tried.’

I was touched by the halting admission.

‘I wish I’d been different, Fanny. I wish I’d
done
things
differently. I would never have ended up so… wanting. So under the spell of a substance.’ Meg tugged at her hair so hard it must have hurt.

I sighed deeply and Meg heard. She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Drink destroys. A girl fetches up with no friends, no husbands, no lovers. Only… only a son, and he has grown up and gone away. That leaves you and Will.’ She paused. ‘You managed it better. As you
always
do, Fanny… the good Fanny.’

‘OK, Meg,’ I said. ‘We’ve had this conversation before.’

Meg did a swift volte-face. ‘Two old lags, then.’

‘Less of the old.’ In the moonlight, Meg’s face looked odd, strained. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m trying to frown. I’ve had Botox shots. I reckoned if I couldn’t frown, life wouldn’t seem so dreadful. But I keep forgetting.’

I found myself standing – an adulteress
manquée –
on the dusty, moonlit road with the lights of Fiertino blazing in the distance, helpless with laughter.

‘You should have some too, Fanny,’ Meg suggested, when she could get a word in edgeways. ‘You’re getting a few lines.’

I tucked my hand under her brittle elbow. ‘Meg, why don’t you consider doing that university course you once talked about?’

She froze but did not draw away. ‘I’m not clever enough for that.’

‘Actually, you are.’

We walked back up the path to Casa Rosa. ‘I’m frightened of not winning my particular battle,’ Meg admitted, in a rush. ‘For the rest of my life, I will be on twenty-four
hour watch. But the demon will try to slip under my defences, in the dark, when I’m sleepy and sad. It will try to outwit me in the sunshine, and the boredom of the day when nobody minds if I’m there or not.’

‘Sacha minds. Will minds… I mind.’

‘Sacha is… a son. Not a husband, or a lover, or a companion.’

During the night, I heard Meg call out. I threw back my sheet and felt my way across the room over the cool floor. Meg was hunched on her side and the sheets were twisted and bunched. I bent over her and she muttered something unintelligible: a troubled, sad sound. Inadequate to console, and guilty that I did not want her here, I did my best to straighten the sheets. ‘Meg?’

Her eyes flicked open but she looked through me, and beyond.

After she had quietened, I went downstairs and took out the two bottles of wine – Vigna L’Apparita (the merlot grape) – which had been given to me by our host at La Foce, from where I had racked them in the kitchen. These were worth dying for, and I hid them under a cache of cardboard.

Upstairs, I searched for aspirins for my aching head and upended the contents of my handbag on the bed. My new mobile phone dropped out and I switched it on. A text message flashed up: ‘I LV U Mum Cxxx’.

I sat down and wept tears for my father and Chloë’s absence. Tears of confusion and–more than a little–of regret.

The next morning I left Meg, still asleep, in Casa Rosa.

It was market day in Fiertino, and the square was choked
with vans and stalls selling cut-price kitchenware, mounds of vegetables and raffia baskets. I bought a bucket from a stall and rubber gloves, a broom, disinfectant, cream cleanser, descaler and polish in the supermarket.

‘Signora.’ The dark-eyed woman serving me spotted the red bumps on my arm and tossed a tube into the purchases.
‘Per i morsi,’
she said, with a smile.
‘Grails.’

I thanked her and trudged back to the house in the now broiling sun. I tied a scarf round my head, boiled water and began the cleaning.

I scrubbed the table. The kitchen floor. The bathroom. I brushed every nook and cranny of the house and the dead insects piled into heaps. I cleaned the windows, chipped away at the fur-encrusted taps, washed the walls, erasing with scourer and chemical the stain of doubt on myself.

Perhaps, in life, one regrets more the things that one did not do than those one did?

What would my father have thought?

Surely what was important was the affirmation of passionate feeling? The resolve never to have an empty heart?

The chemicals and the immersion in water puckered my fingers into pink prunes. My back grew stiff from stooping, and I was soaked with sweat from head to foot. To clean Casa Rosa properly was a hopeless task, but I was going to do it.

‘Looks to me like a bad conscience,’ Meg commented, when she eventually appeared. ‘Scrubbing away the sins. Don’t ask me to join in.’ There was a red mark on one cheek where she had slept on it and her fair hair was mussed. ‘Any hot water?’

‘I’ve used it up.’

Meg looked thoughtful. ‘It’s very frontier,’ she said. ‘Still, if that’s what’s required, Fanny, I’ll wash in cold to join you in spirit.’

From where I knelt on my hands and knees, I said, ‘Ring up the airport, Meg, and book a flight home.’

‘Please Fanny. Let me stay.
Please.’

‘Why is
she
here?’ Benedetta whispered to me when, later in the morning, I took Meg over to see her. ‘To make the trouble?’

‘I hope not.’

Benedetta opened her dark eyes wide and I saw how beautiful they still were and remembered how my father had once loved them. ‘Big nuisance, Fanny.’

Meg was on her best behaviour, but she was not offered a fresh tomato from Benedetta’s crop and I took the hint.

Strangely enough, Meg was still
in situ
at Casa Rosa the following morning and we ate breakfast at Angelo’s.

‘Amore!’
Maria, who was busy at the coffee machine, called.

‘That’s what mothers call their sons in Italy,’ I informed Meg.

‘A mummy’s boy?’ Meg smiled winningly at Angelo, who blushed, and watched his well-covered form as he hastened inside to answer his mother.

‘No more than Sacha.’

Meg tried to frown and failed. ‘Sacha does not always obey his mummy’

Meg’s brioche had been reduced to crumbs, but not
much had been eaten. ‘You should eat,’ I said. ‘Eat breakfast like a king.’