The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

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.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Will fix his gaze on me. Don’t let me down.

Teamwork. The spoon in my hand was cool and hard and the raspberries tanged sweetly on my tongue. Once a team, always a team.

‘Why don’t you talk to him after dinner?’

‘Maybe the Prime Minister… We’re not sure how supportive the Prime Minister is…’

I smiled. ‘The Prime Minister is not a personal friend.’

‘But perhaps you will remind your husband to consider everyone’s interests.’

I put down my spoon. ‘You must talk to him yourself.’

The women retired for coffee, leaving the men in the dining room. ‘Terrible,’ hissed our hostess, in my ear, ‘but they like it that way.’

I accepted a cup of coffee. ‘Do you ever get tired of it all?’

She looked startled. ‘I don’t think so. It has its drawbacks but it’s an interesting life. Of course, when the children are young…’

We went over to join the rest of the wives, who were huddled in a gorgeous group of reds, blues and gold. They were a jolly group, keen to sample the delights of a capital city, and we settled down to discuss facials, shopping and theatre.

I reported the conversation about the Prime Minister to Will when we got back to the flat. ‘Point taken,’ he said, climbed into bed and reached for the red box.

Lines of fatigue stood out harshly under his eyes. ‘Will, would you ever consider doing something different?’

‘Not really. Though there are times… it used to seem so straightforward. Get elected and start improving the world… It isn’t that simple, is it? But I don’t see myself getting off the treadmill quite yet.’

I turned away and pulled the pillow under my head. The box hit the floor and Will put his arms around me. ‘Fanny…’

But the distance had opened up between us again, and I struggled with my feelings of indifference… and remoteness. Will had almost – but not quite – become a stranger, a troubling kind of stranger: someone I had once known inside out, but who had slipped into acquaintanceship.

‘Oh Fanny,’ he said at last. He pulled back my arms and caught me by my wrists. ‘I miss you…’

I made an effort and put my arms around his neck. It was a matter of faith, I think, and effort of will. I had to believe that the passionate feelings we once shared were not completely dead.

It worked.

Afterwards, he said. ‘Fanny, that was so nice.’

I smiled and touched his thigh. ‘It was.’

I lay awake, listening to the sounds of the city.

I would have given almost anything to be walking on a hot hillside where my father told me that the vines plunged deep through clay and sand. I wanted to squint through the sunlight at a horizon where Cupressus sempervirens pointed to the sky, and to see olive trees, fat tomatoes on skinny stakes, the bright green of basil.

I ached, too, for Chloë and wondered where she was. Did her feet hurt, or her back ache? Was she fed and were her clothes clean? Would she cope with… the experiences that lay before her?

From the branches of my beech tree at Ember House, I had spied on cars as they negotiated the bend in the road that skirted the garden. If I angled my (plastic, shocking pink) telescope correctly, I got a good view of the occupants. Often, when a car slowed, the women passengers flipped down the sunshade to check their lipstick in the mirror. Occasionally, the driver wound down the window and chucked out rubbish. This behaviour made me conclude that people were very peculiar.

It was on my eighteenth birthday that I took Raoul up to my eyrie; we clawed and cursed our way up in the dark. For once, Raoul had drunk too much wine, and I was wearing delicate, strappy sandals. The platform groaned under the weight of our bodies, and we embraced clumsily. My thin cotton dress split at the seam when Raoul tugged too hard and he pounced on the tongue of flesh which appeared. ‘So brown,’ he murmured, and wrenched off his shirt.

Inexperience and ignorance made me shrink and Raoul was unnecessarily rough. We had no saving grace of humour, only a grim determination to get the deed done.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Raoul murmured at last. He lifted a face sheened with sweat. ‘I love you.’

But I pushed him away.

That was unfair of me.

A tree-house is no place for seduction. It belongs to childhood… to a different place. Now, it was spoilt.

That night, I quit my tree-house in more ways than one.

I turned over in bed and considered the aspects of my life. The rubies and crimsons, the frail gold and amber of wine. My father. Will. Meg. Sacha.

Pushing my daughter towards Departure…