The Good Wife (5 page)

‘I was forgetting,’ he said sadly. ‘You’re a big girl now and we must talk about grown-up things.’

I was more interested by the framed photograph on my father’s desk. It was of a man and a woman carved in stone, lying together on an ornate couch draped in material. He had a square face and a beard; she had curls falling down her back and dangling earrings. His arm was round her, and she leant back against him.

I swivelled to look at my father. Greatly daring, I asked, ‘Is that Mummy?’

There was a short, tense silence. No, it was not, he answered, and, if my question hurt him, he did not betray it by so much as a flicker. No, the picture was of an Etruscan funerary couch. Fifth century
BC
.

‘Was that when I was eight?’ I asked, for time had no meaning.

My father laughed. ‘The Etruscans were a people who, long, long ago, lived in the Fiertino area where the Battistas come from. They made such a lot of things that people are always digging up bits and pieces and putting them in museums. I like this one particularly because he and she will never be… parted.’

Bedtimes were usually reserved for my father’s inexhaustible supply of Fiertino stories which, it must be said, were a little different each time he told them. I enjoyed pouncing on the discrepancies. ‘But, Dad, you said the oxen were grey, not white.’ At which point he would tap my hand and say, ‘Don’t be too clever, my darling,’ and continue.

‘Fiertino is only a little town, but a town all the same. It is in a valley north of Rome which was originally lived
in by the Etruscans, an ancient people who loved the good things in life. Chestnut trees grow on one slope; on the other, wheat, olives and vines. It has a square with a large church at one end, and a beautiful colonnaded walk around it, which gives very necessary shade from the sun. Our family, the Battistas, lived in the
fattoria
, the farm, just outside the town, and your grandfather was the
fattore
. He supervised the granaries and cellars, the oil presses and the dairy. We had our own vineyard and grew the Sangiovese grape.’

Like the horn of plenty, the stories never appeared to be finished and Fiertino became synonymous for me with drowsiness and sleep. I heard about hot sun and the harvesting of olives, of the huge family house, the
fattoria
, which echoed to the shrieks and exchanges of a large, extended, uninhibited family. I knew that the town had suffered badly in the war. I heard the story of the three-legged goat, the miraculous olive tree, the runaway Battista bride, and of the young wife who was murdered by her much older husband for taking a lover.

‘You see, there is the code,’ my father said. He spoke in the present tense.

He was clever, my father. He knew how to plant a footprint in a child’s mind. Images crept into mine and put down long, tough, fibrous roots – just like the vine.

‘It’s time I went back to Fiertino,’ said my father. ‘We have left it too long.’

Curiously, we had not been there together. In fact, my father had returned only once, as a young man. We travelled everywhere else in the world and we did business in the
north of Italy but my father had never cared to go south to Fiertino. Partly, I suspect, this was because of Benedetta, who had wanted to marry him. But
that
was another story.

‘How many times have you said that?’

He looked a little sheepish. ‘I mean it this time.’

I rose to leave. ‘How about September when Chloë is in Australia? Then I’ll be free.’ I corrected myself. ‘Or I can negotiate with Will and Mannochie. I’m due time off.’

My father brightened in a way that caught at my heart. ‘If you think it is possible, there is nothing I would like more.’

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 tired.’ 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.