The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

7

Looking back, there was a peculiar intensity about living in virtually one room. We touched constantly: if I went into the kitchen, I brushed against Will; if he sat down on the bed to lace up his shoes, he dislodged me; if we passed each other, our shoulders met.

After we moved, and there were rooms in which to expand, it was different. But, then, we had a new life, and different things to occupy us.

At the very last minute, Will was ordered to join a factfinding tour of Europe for the car-tax scheme which put paid to his plan to spend a couple of days at home with Chloë before she left on her travels. He broke the news to her over a Sunday lunch. ‘Sorry, darling. I hope you understand.’

Chloë continued to eat. ‘It’s OK,’ she said.

I couldn’t bear the disappointment on her face. ‘Will, couldn’t you just manage an afternoon?’

‘It’s OK.’ Chloë did her best to look as if she did not care.

Will shot me a look and I mouthed at him, ‘She’s upset.’ ‘Chloë,’ he said, ‘I feel miserable about it.’

She stood up, and I saw the much older Chloë in her expression. ‘But not quite miserable enough, Dad,’ she said. ‘So let’s leave it, shall we?’

She left the room, closing the door with a distinct bang.

I looked at Will. ‘She’s been planning this for ages…’

Will looked really distressed. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

‘Oh, well.’ I began to clear up the plates. ‘It’s done now.’

He winced, and studied his shoe laces. ‘Fanny,’ he said at length, without looking up, ‘I have a favour to ask…’

‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Let me guess.’

Surgeries took place in one of the smaller rooms of the town hall. Its window was stuck shut, trapping in the odours of stewed coffee and stale air.

Tina, the constituency secretary, bustled in with two shopping-bags and dumped them on the floor. ‘The whole bloody lot is bound to thaw,’ she said, ‘chicken korma, peas, but if the old man demands his dinner pronto, who am I…?’

Tina was a compact, motherly woman who had a habit of clicking her tongue in protest as she listened in to some of the worst cases. Her husband was out of work, and to make ends meet she sold make-up from door to door. Today she was wearing turquoise trousers and a shell-pink lipstick, which, if it had been the last lipstick on earth, should have been burned in an auto da fé. But she wore it with defiance and an air of ‘never surrender’. She shoved the chicken korma under the table. ‘My old man thinks we should have a bodyguard. There are madmen out there.’

‘Mannochie will do, won’t you, Mannochie?’

‘To the death,’ he said, in his dry way.

First in was Mrs Scott. She was a regular at the Saturday surgeries. Over the years Will had struggled to sort out her damp flat and the family next door who terrorized her. She was tiny, twisted with osteoporosis and, long ago, had lost any remaining family of her own.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘The minister busy? Something important?’ Touchingly, Mrs Scott considered Will’s seniority a personal plus. I explained I was not exactly taking the surgery but sitting in for him. Today she had an arm in a sling. ‘Tripped on the stairs, didn’t I? The council said they’d come and see to them so I want you to sue them for me.’

We discussed what we could do for her and the continuing and losing battle against her neighbours’ regime of terror. Mrs Scott’s mouth was drawn tight with pain and stress. ‘Should we get the doctor to come and check you over?’ I asked.

The remnants of her old spirit revived. ‘The last time a doctor set foot in the place, Queen Victoria was on the throne.’ She delved into her bag. ‘I’ve brought you something. I was going to give it to the minister to give to you.’

She passed over a soft piece of netting edged with beads. ‘It’s for your milk jug,’ she said. ‘I made it.’

I spread it out on the desk. The beads were lapis-lazuli blue with gold flecks and very pretty. A lump came into my throat.

She watched me with shrewd eyes. ‘Not all a waste of time, eh?’

No, it was not. ‘That must be your best one, Mrs Scott.’

‘I wanted you to have it now. I might not be around for too long,’ she said.

With an effort, she pulled herself to her feet and shook her head as if she were trying to release stored information. ‘It’s gone in a flash,’ she said. ‘Life. And I wouldn’t mind if it hadn’t been so bloody rotten.’

At her desk, Tina clicked her tongue and typed away while Mannochie patrolled the entrance to keep the madmen at bay.

Surgery over, he and I sorted out the urgent from the non-urgent tasks and talked over any problems. If I required proof – which I did not – that politics existed on mysterious levels, the surgery provided it. At Westminster there was plenty of talk and gesture but it was here, on the ground, that the cogs turned.

I drove into town to meet Chloë.

My father and I had friends throughout the Australian wine areas and any one of them would have taken in Chloë. But, no: Chloë was being Miss Independent. So far, her itinerary for Australia included a week’s stay in Adelaide, and a trip to the Hunter Valley. But that was all she would permit us to arrange.

We met in the backpacker shop: I was clutching a wad of cash and she the list she had promised to make. On inspection, it was pitifully short. Mini-karabiners. Walking sandals. Walking boots. Insect repellent. Padlock for the backpack. ‘There must be more,’ I said. ‘You can’t take off to the other side of the world without proper equipment. It’s not safe.’

‘Honestly, Mum, you should listen to yourself. I’ll be fine.’

I longed to reach inside my daughter and tease out exactly what she was thinking. To be allowed to smooth out any ruffles of apprehension. To do a mother’s work of being infinitely more wise and calm. ‘I’m allowed to make a few suggestions,’ I said defensively, ‘surely?’

She picked up a travelling wallet, designed to strap on under the arm. ‘Do you think I should take this?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘And sun stuff. Masses of it for when it gets hot.’

‘Mother. They sell sun cream in Australia.’

Chloë was quiet as I paid. She sat back in the car, and I reckoned the silence was suggestive. Sure enough… She picked at her mistreated cuticles. ‘Sacha says Aunt Meg told him you’re thinking of moving house. You wouldn’t do that without me, would you? Not until I come home?’

‘Meg shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘But if it’s true?’

‘It was just an idea.’ I drove on a bit further then added, ‘I wouldn’t mind a change. You’ll be leaving home – ’

‘I hate it when grown-ups say things like that.’

I reached over and touched her cheek. ‘Where’s the girl who couldn’t wait to grow up? The one who always said, “I forbid you to treat me like a child”?’

Chloë looked thoughtful. ‘Mum… That was then. Can’t you tell?’ She hunched her shoulders and gazed out of the window at the speeding landscape. ‘Are you and Dad getting on all right?’

I negotiated a bend with extra care. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘Just asking.’

‘We’re fine.’

‘It doesn’t sound like it when you talk to him on the phone.’

I considered my answer. ‘My phone conversations are supposed to be private.’

Chloë looked both pitying and superior. ‘Get real, Mum, this is a family.’

I laughed but with genuine pleasure. ‘That’s good.’

Back at the house, we unloaded the packages and Chloë disappeared upstairs to phone her travelling companions. A stream of excited chatter filtered down from her room.

I went downstairs to the kitchen. My father was coming to supper that evening. I removed my wedding ring and hung it on the hook on the noticeboard. From time to time, it still made my finger swell – perhaps it was something to do with my hormones, my mood, the time of the year – and it bothered me when I was doing the chores.

Brigitte poked her head round the door. ‘I’m out,’ she said. ‘OK.’ It was a statement, not a question. The back door banged with a decided emphasis.

‘I don’t think she’s a happy bunny,’ commented Meg, who had come into the kitchen. ‘She’s been on the phone a lot. She wasn’t very nice about you either.’

I knew perfectly well that the au pairs ran an information service about their employers. I had never quite got over meeting comparative strangers who knew exactly the state of my underwear – not least because I possessed detailed information on theirs.

I began to chop up stewing steak and an onion which made my eyes water.

‘You’ve turned into a good cook, Fanny,’ Meg observed. ‘Who would have thought it?’

Silence.

She watched me lay the table with cutlery and water glasses. ‘You’ve laid too many places.’

‘Dad’s coming.’

She nodded. ‘Good.’ Another silence. ‘You seem cross.’

‘I am.’ I put the final glass in its place. ‘I can’t trust you, Meg, ever, not to repeat things. You shouldn’t have told Sacha, which means Chloë, about the idea of moving house.’

Meg looked defiant. ‘Doesn’t she have a right to know?’

‘You’ve upset her.’

‘Fanny,’ she pointed out, gently, ‘Chloë is a big girl now.’

That Meg was right made me even crosser. ‘Will and I would prefer to be the ones to choose when we discuss something important with her.’

‘If you say so.’ Meg filled the water jug and placed it in the exact centre of the table where it overshadowed the little vase of pink and white roses I had put there earlier.

Half-way through the meal, I looked up from my plate. Meg was flirting with my father, which he always enjoyed. ‘Meg is a smart woman,’ he had said once. Sacha and Chloë were deep in conversation. The candles on the table threw a dreamy light over the roses and the water jug. Will’s chair was empty, of course, and I thought, he must miss this.

Chloë laughed and, in the candlelight, she glowed with the kind of beauty that you can only possess when the most interesting part of your life lies ahead of you. My father turned his head towards me and raised his glass in my direction. It was a little habit of his. It told me that he loved me, and always would.

I raised mine back.

I had phoned my father first with the news. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

‘But that’s wonderful, Francesca. Wonderful news. Clever girl.’ There was a pause. ‘You’re pleased?’

‘Bit taken aback, Dad. Bit of a mad mistake. But, yes, of course.’

‘Ah.’ Another pause. ‘Francesca, we must talk about what this means for the business.’

‘I know.’ I bit my lip. Suddenly I felt as if I had boarded the wrong plane and arrived at the wrong destination. ‘We’ll have to make do and mend for a few months after the baby, but everything will go back to normal afterwards.’

Only then did I phone Will, who ducked out of a debate on trade tariffs and rushed home. ‘This is brilliant. Wonderful. I’ll ring Meg, you ring your father.’

‘Dad knows.’

‘I see,’ he said, and disengaged himself. I could have bitten off my tongue. ‘Oh, well, that puts me in my place.’

A couple of weeks later he arrived home with three books on pregnancy and childbirth. ‘Must do things properly.’

‘Be nice and let me down gently.’ I whisked into the kitchen where I peeled garlic and crushed it into butter and spread it over a couple of steaks.

‘Fanny, you might like to know you have a broad bean inside you,’ Will called.

The look of the steaks encouraged my stomach to perform a tribal dance. ‘For a broad bean it’s very uppity.’

Will stood in the doorway and waved the book at me. ‘Wait until it’s the size of an ammonite.’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘Nor can I.’ Will chucked aside the manual, switched off the grill and dragged me to the bed. There, with the heightened sensual pleasure of a changing body, I felt my nerve endings double, triple.

Afterwards we lay and talked over the future in lazy, luxurious detail. We would have to find a house quickly, the birth would be in London – or should it be in the constituency? – possible names.

I had saved one piece of information until now. ‘Will, I won’t be going to Australia after all. The doctor says that if I pick up a bug on the aircraft, or something, I can’t have anything to help. It’s best not to risk it. Dad says he can cope on his own.’

I was lying on his arm. Slowly, his hand curved round my shoulder and rested there. ‘OK.’ His voice was purged of any triumph. ‘OK.’

The Christmas party at the House of Commons was held in the terrace room overlooking the river. It was full, noisy and hot. We threaded through the crowd, and although I was quite at home in my world this was different. My stomach rippled with pregnancy, nerves and… shyness.

Amy Greene came to my rescue. ‘There you are. Come along.’ She put a hand at the small of my back and pushed me towards the huge window that overlooked the river. ‘This is Elaine Miller. Husband belongs to the Other Party, but we like her.’ A tall, thin redhead extended her hand. ‘And this,’ said Amy, ‘is Betsey Thwaite. Her husband is One of Us and on the fast track. Like yours.’

Betsey Thwaite was a small blonde whose smile did not extend to her eyes. ‘David has just been made a junior whip.’

‘So,’ said Elaine, ‘by being nosy and an official bully you get to be a junior minister.’ Betsey looked poisonous. ‘What a darling blouse,’ Elaine went on. ‘Where did you get it?’

To my surprise, they knew I was pregnant. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Elaine. ‘The jungle tom-toms beat night and day in this world. They even know the wives’ bra sizes. Where are you going to have it?’

I grabbed an orange juice from the waiter. ‘At the local hospital.’

Elaine looked thoughtful. ‘Just as long as you don’t have it when there’s a vote going on.’

‘Elaine…’ Betsey Thwaite intervened. ‘Don’t let Fanny down too quickly.’

Amy gave a short, bitter laugh.

Elaine turned to me. ‘Betsey’s such a trouper, but you mustn’t be bullied, Fanny, like so many of us.’

‘Come on, Elaine,’ said Betsey. ‘You’re a trouper too. Don’t deny it.’

Elaine softened. ‘When I married Neil, I disagreed with everything he believed in. But what the hell? I loved him and I fell in behind. So I suppose Betsey’s right. I am a trouper.’

Elaine had three children – ‘I might as well be a single parent,’ she confessed – and was planning to start up a knitwear business. ‘But the goalposts keep moving. Still, with a bit of luck, Neil’s party will stay out of power for years.’ She gave me an honest smile. ‘Welcome to the club, Fanny.’

When I was ready to go home, I went on the hunt for Will and ran him to earth talking to a group of men of about his age, surrounded by a larger ring of admiring women. I touched his arm. For a second or two, it was clear that he had not registered who I was. Then it clicked. ‘Darling.’ He was elated and his eyes were sparkling. ‘You must be exhausted. Look, why don’t I get you a taxi? I’ve got to sort out a few things with Neil over a spot of dinner.’

There were many such evenings.

If Will got back late, he crept in beside me. He offered to sleep on the sofa, but I wouldn’t have it. ‘You belong with me,’ I said, and I didn’t mind if he woke me up with his blundering about in the dark.

Word was spreading about Will that, of his intake, he was a man to watch. ‘The Honourable Member for Stanwinton,’ wrote one political commentator ‘has a whiff of the razzle-dazzle about him.’

After she had read the piece, Elaine rang me: ‘I can hear the knives sharpening. Be warned. Grow a tough skin.’

I cut the article out of the paper and stuck it on to the mirror by the front door. When Will came home, I was in the kitchen, battling with a wave of nausea. One. Two. I leant over the unit. Breathe in. Breathe out.

There was a silence. No ‘Hallo, darling.’ Curious, I poked my head round the kitchen door and caught Will staring into the mirror. Unaware of me, he patted his chin and fussed with his hair. He dug his hands into his pockets, squared his shoulders and took a step back.

‘What on earth…?’ I asked.

He swung round. ‘Just looking,’ he admitted, sheepish yet defiant.

‘Practising,’ I said.

He went bright red. ‘Catching up with myself.’

I slid my arm round his waist. ‘Own up. You were practising for the despatch box.’

Pearl Veriker had sent over the particulars of a house a couple of miles outside the town. ‘This one would do,’ she wrote, in her determined-looking hand, the ‘do’ heavily underlined. That weekend, while Will did his surgery, my father and I went to see it. We drove down a narrow lane, flanked by two big fields under plough, and turned into the driveway of a harsh red-brick house built in late Victorian Gothic style, with a couple of outhouses tacked on to the kitchen.

It was already empty. As I stepped through the front door, I sensed I was entering a place that had been denied fresh air for a long time.

‘Look at it this way,’ said my father, ‘it’s a roof over your head.’

Upstairs, the rooms were better-proportioned and the winter sun was reflected in the large windows. The main bedroom overlooked the ploughed fields in the front. The dun and grey of the soil filled my eyes. Notices had been placed around the perimeters, ‘No walkers’, and at the north end of the field a rookery clotted the branches of the beeches.

My father tugged open a window and prodded at the sill. Sharp and winter-scented, a stream of air invaded the stuffy chill. ‘Fanny…’ he said.

I sensed what was coming. I inspected my hands. They had swollen slightly. So had my waistband and my trousers felt tight around my thighs. Even my shoulders felt bigger. Pregnancy did not agree with me: my body refused to obey orders, which was both puzzling and enraging. The broad-bean-cum-ammonite was neither well behaved nor polite in its colonization of my body.

‘I know what you’re going to say. You need someone for the business who’ll be more on board. I haven’t been doing so well lately.’

‘You can come back,’ he said quickly, ‘after the baby’s born.’

I stared at the depressing fields. ‘Funny how things change, Dad.’ For the sake of a broad bean that was turning into an ammonite.

My father was observing me closely. ‘It makes sense. Having a baby isn’t like going to the dentist – half an hour’s unpleasantness and it’s all over.’

‘I will come back,’ I said. ‘I promise. It’ll be fine. I’ll cope.’ My father looked sceptical. ‘Dad, there’s no question of me giving up work permanently. Will wouldn’t expect it either.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and I read into his inflection a new precariousness, a new treachery even, in my position.

Later, that afternoon, I took Will to see the house. The twilight was kinder on it, dimming its strident colour, and the rooms downstairs were less gloomy in the electric light.

Will was delighted with the house. He pointed out the proportions of the bedrooms and the view over the fields. Downstairs required a lot of work but he was excited by the challenge. ‘I can build shelves,’ he said. ‘And lay floors. I like DIY.’

His energy and enthusiasm were infectious and it was a relief to know we could afford the house and make plans. I stood in the place where he reckoned we should put the kitchen, and looked out at the rookery in the clump of beeches beyond the rather ridiculous Gothic window. Black shapes wheeled in and out of the branches. I told myself that the country was a much better place to bring up a baby and was surprisingly content.

We finished supper early and I was ordered to sit still while Meg, Chloë and my father did the washing-up.

The phone rang. It was Raoul. ‘Fanny, I haven’t heard from you for a long time,’ he said.

‘I was just thinking the same. How’s business? How are Thérèse and the children?’

‘Business could always be better. The French market isn’t flourishing.’

I knew perfectly well from my father’s records that the French suppliers were more than holding their own. ‘How can that be?’ I teased.

‘People are drinking more and more New World wines… I will have to get another job.’

Whichever way you looked at it, the Villeneuves were well cushioned and Raoul would never give up. Cut Raoul and he would bleed Pétrus or Château Longueville.

We talked for half an hour or so: a happy, meandering conversation which flowed neatly past any spectre of an unfinished past.

Eventually, Raoul said, ‘Alfredo tells me that now Chloë is off, you are considering coming back properly into the business. Really, Fanny, this is exceptionally good news.’

‘I’m thinking about it. It all rather depends on what Will’s up to. He’s… um… hoping for big things.’

‘It would make you very happy,’ he said simply. ‘I know it would.’

I allowed myself the merest moment of reprise, of what-might-have-been-possible. ‘Dad tells me that Château d’Yseult has been bought by the Americans. Has that caused a stir?’

‘I think we will get used to it,’ Raoul said. ‘Or, rather, I think we French have to get used to it.’

Chloë’s flight was on the thirteenth of July and I struggled against feeling superstitious.

The day before, we drove over to Ember House to say goodbye to my father. Before lunch, we walked around the garden and came to a halt under the beech in which, many years before, my father had built me a tree-house.

‘Don’t look down,’ I called up to Chloë, who had decided to climb it.

Don’t look down. My father had taught me that – advice that is perfectly obvious once you have received it, but not before.

‘Don’t worry,’ said my father. ‘Let her be.’

‘Stop fussing, Mum.’ Chloë swung herself up into the first fork and straddled the branch. ‘Look at me.’

‘She’s just like you,’ remarked my father fondly.

‘Was I as pig-headed?’

‘Probably I can’t remember.’

I bent down to tip a stone out of my shoe. Tucked into the tree roots were green, vivid moss and the remnants of the miniature cyclamen I had planted over the years. Cyclamen should never be in pots. They belonged outside in the cool, drenched damp of an English spring. ‘I wish she wasn’t going, Dad, but I know she must. It seems a sort of… end.’

‘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.