The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

21

On the way back to Casa Rosa, Meg and I spoke only when necessary. I went to bed early.

After the day’s heat, the sheets were a cool, fresh contrast. I read, I made notes and, occasionally, I glanced up at the wooden casket on the shelf. Would my father approve of what I had done? I wasn’t sure. Maybe he would have felt that you have to hang on to the bits and pieces of a family, whatever the cost.

I put out the light and settled to sleep. I felt the relief of the patient who, after illness and incapacity, has taken a first step.

A noise on the stairs followed by a cautious footstep on the path outside made me sit up. I swung my legs out of bed and pushed open the shutters. ‘Meg?’

Moonlight streamed into my bedroom and illuminated the thin figure on the path below. Meg had twisted up her hair into a sexy caramel knot and she was wearing her new high heels. The light played tricks, for she looked so young and pretty that I caught my breath. She raised an arm and the bracelets on her wrist emitted a faint, high shiver of sound.

I leant on the sill. ‘Don’t go,’ I begged, for I had a good idea where she was heading.

She laughed without humour. ‘Jealous?’

‘I so am jealous.’ I mocked Chloë’s vernacular.

She shook her head. ‘Not convincing, Fanny. You’ll have to do better.’

Her voice was husky with excitement. I clutched at my nightdress. ‘Wait. I’m coming down.’

The cotton flapped round my legs as I ran out on to the path. Meg was searching in her shoulder-bag and I grabbed at the strap. ‘It’s not worth it. Stay.’

‘But you’ve told me to go. You have made… everything quite clear.’

In a final effort, I tugged hard at the strap and Meg swayed a little on her high heels. ‘But it doesn’t mean you have to throw everything away. Don’t be silly. Please, please, stay here. We’ll talk… I’ll listen to you… whatever.’ Meg shrugged and I threw in quickly, ‘Think of Sacha. Think of Will.’

‘I am thinking of them,’ she said. ‘Very much.’

‘I was unkind.’

‘Go back to bed,’ she said, an adult addressing a troublesome child. ‘I’m going out for a little diversion. I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘Do you want me to go down on my knees? I will, you know, if that’s what it takes.’

Meg fiddled with her bracelets. ‘I must make you understand, Fanny. It’s all right. I’m in control. But…’ she seemed to be searching for an explanation, ‘I’m not the only woman to have fallen from grace, and to have inflicted these wounds upon myself. But, at times, I’ve felt so alone. That’s what makes me so crabby and selfish, I guess.’ She nodded her head. ‘I appreciate the knees bit though, Fanny. I know what it would cost you, and I’m tempted to take you up on it.’

I forced Meg back into the kitchen and made her sit down. ‘Talk to me. Come on. You can talk to me.’

She seemed both surprised and gratified. ‘I’ve tried.’ Her mouth tightened and she fiddled with the bracelets. ‘OK. Confession time. I’ve tried very hard to absorb myself in other things. Clothes. Part-time work here and there. An occasional lover. Charity, or whatever those women do who have too much time on their hands. But apart from Sacha, and you and Will and Chloë, nothing burrowed very deep. My mind had been blown.’

‘I’m listening.’ I put on the kettle and the gas-ring glowed and bubbled.

Meg seemed fixated by the glow. ‘But you are right, Fanny, it is time to make changes, and to think differently. When we go home, I will look for somewhere else to live.’

‘Close to us,’ I said.

Her eyebrow flicked up. ‘No need to go mad.’

‘All right, at a decent distance.’

She smiled at me. A car drew up outside the house. Its engine revved, its door opened and shut. Meg gathered up her bag.

‘You’re not going?’

‘Sure, I am,’ she said. She got up, put her hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek, a light, cool touch. ‘We’re quite good friends really, aren’t we? In the end? I like to think so, Fanny.’

I kissed her back. ‘Of course.’ Then I held her tight, and the breath of her forgiveness stole over me.

‘That’s straight, then. That’s something. Go back to bed, my good and watchful Fanny.’

‘Shall I come with you? Why don’t I? Give me five minutes.’

‘No, Fanny. I am on my own now. Remember?’

Defeated, I went back upstairs. I heard voices, doors banging, and the car accelerating down the road.

I opened the shutters wide to let in the night.

I meant to wait up until she returned but I fell asleep and was woken by a light pulsing through the room.

There was an exchange in Italian outside on the path, followed by a knock on the door. I reached for a T-shirt and pulled it over my nightdress. With each step down the stairs, my heartbeat accelerated.

Italian policemen, I noted in a stupefied way, were always immaculate, even at that time of the morning. The male one had a perfect crease on his shirt sleeve and an equally perfect one ironed into his trousers. His belt buckle gleamed and his hair was brushed and beautifully cut. ‘So sorry, Signora,’ he said. His female colleague had long blonde hair and a tiny waist. She stepped forward and took my hands in her tanned olive ones.

‘Where did you find her?’ I asked eventually.

‘Outside the church.’ The policewoman was calm and professional. ‘We think she tripped and hit her head on the tethering stone by the fountain. But we are not sure if that is what killed her. The doctors will tell us.’

The woman paused, then asked, ‘Did the signora have a history of illness?’

I bit my lip. ‘In a way, yes, she did.’

Later, about ten minutes or so, when I had brought my knees under control and fought my way into some clothes, they escorted me down the path and handed me into the car.

A hush fell as I was led through the police station to the morgue at the back. The policewoman touched my arm. ‘Hold on to me if you want to,’ she said.

My nails dug into my skin.

At the policewoman’s nod, the sheet over the figure on the gurney was pulled back.

My first thought was, It’s all right. Meg’s sleeping. Only sleeping.

Her cheek had a faint flush, and her hair fell back naturally on to the rubber sheet beneath her head so that the wound was concealed. Her mouth was peaceful and there was not one line on the smooth, youthful forehead.

The policewoman knew, all too well, the many ways in which the bereaved reacted. One was to refuse to believe.

‘The signora is dead,’ she said gently. ‘No doubt.’

‘Don’t bother to grieve,’ those peaceful lips might say. ‘I’ve had enough. Battle over. Eh?’

The policeman consulted his notes. ‘She had been drinking in the Bacchus. Too much, according to the reports, and she was asked to leave at approximately half past two. She was seen walking down the road towards the church and knocking on the church door. The witness said he was worried because she was unsteady and he went after her, but by the time he caught up she had fallen.’

I leant over and touched the untroubled, line-free forehead. Then I picked up her hand and smoothed the fingers with their tiny, pearly nails, one by one. Already they seemed waxen, doll-like. ‘Oh, Meg,’ I whispered, and hot tears ran down my cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

As I left they handed me a packet of her things in a plastic bag with a list. One ring, gold. The bracelets. One leather purse, empty. One cotton skirt. The black high heels. And, finally, one cross, gold. Surprised, I held it up between finger and thumb and, caught in the electric light, the chain glimmered. ‘I can’t stand religion,’ Meg had protested more than once. ‘So bossy. So pointless. So vulgar.’

I returned to Casa Rosa and made the first of many phone calls.

Some time later, I’m not sure when, I went into the kitchen. There was the chair in which Meg had sat. The bottles of oil and balsamic vinegar she had used. The coffee machine, which she had taken over.

I touched them. Implements and objects that, only a few hours ago, Meg had also touched.

I did not believe she was dead.

Still later, as the heat shimmered above the tarmac and the geraniums in the pots outside the houses drooped in the sun, I walked past Maria and Angelo, who nodded at me sorrowfully, skirted the tethering stone, with its iron ring for the horses’ bridles, and entered the church. The gloom in the interior was a cool bath, and I swam through it towards the frescos. Instinctively I knew Meg had been trying to get into the church to see them. I reckoned she had felt that you knew where you were with them. Stupid with drink, she had forgotten that the church was locked at night to protect the paintings.

I unclenched my fists, felt pins and needles lick up my arms, and tried to make myself understand. Meg was dead.

Dead…

Then I got into the car and took the road to the airport.

Sacha was in Meg’s room next door and I could hear him moving about restlessly. Will lay on my bed with his arm over his face.

I sat down and took his free hand and held it.

He dropped his arm. He had been crying and he was white with shock and fatigue and he had bitten his lip. It had left a rough, sore patch. ‘I suppose it was bound to happen, one day.’

I climbed into the bed and took him in my arms and held him until he was calmer. Then I made him take some aspirin and stroked his hair.

‘Do you want me to tell you what happened, or would you rather wait?’

He nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Tell me.’

Without camouflage, I described our visit to Siena, our conversation there, and the exchange back at the Casa Rosa. As I reached the end of the story, I felt myself grow hot and cold with shame and regret. ‘Until last night and our quarrel, she was under control.’

‘That was something.’ Will was eager to latch on to anything positive.

‘I’m afraid it was my asking her to find somewhere else to live that set her off. I did try to stop her, Will. I promise you, but I feel responsible.’

He took a while to absorb all the details. ‘Not even you could predict a fatal blow to the head on a tethering stone outside a church in an Italian town.’

‘Even so.’ I looked at the floor strewn with clothes in my haste to get dressed when the police arrived. ‘In the end we were friends. And she knew that you loved her, and Sacha.’ I bit my own lip. ‘I’m sure she knew.’

The bedroom had grown very hot, and the bed was rumpled. I asked Will to get up and led him into the bathroom and made him wash.

I remade the bed, pulling the sheets tight and smooth. I threw open the shutter and let in the night air. I folded clothes and closed drawers.

I went downstairs and put the kettle on to boil. I poked at the tea bags in the mugs and the water turned from amber to brown – the brown that Meg had so despised.

Oh Meg, I thought, with a wild and terrible sense of loss. Oh, Meg.

‘Sacha?’ I shook him gently. ‘It’s seven thirty and things are done early here.’

He turned to me with big, hot-looking eyes. I swooped down and felt his forehead. ‘You’re ill.’

Sacha was clearly feverish and I ordered him to remain where he was, then went down to take charge of Will, who was wrestling with the stove. ‘Poor Sacha. He’ll feel he’s letting Meg down.’

We drank our coffee on the loggia. Unable to sit still, Will paced about. ‘I like it here, and I like this house. We should have come here with your father.’ He looked away. ‘But I would have invaded the private club of two.’

Surprised, I looked up. ‘You minded. I’m sorry.’

Will decided to view Meg’s body alone, and emerged composed. We negotiated with the police and struggled to short-cut delays. Once the suggestion of foul play had been eliminated, the doctor signed the relevant certificates and we made arrangements for the body to be flown home. Then, it was a question of waiting for the authorities to release it.

Meg was to be buried at Stanwinton. As Sacha pointed out, it had been her home. Working together, Will and I shared the endless phone calls back to England. Mannochie. The funeral director. The vicar. Will had a knack of dealing with emergencies, but with this one he was too tired and sad. Once or twice I had to intervene when he lost the thread.

Will also phoned Chloë and, having told her the news, passed the phone to me. Chloë was almost incoherent. ‘You won’t die on me, Mum, will you, or Dad? Promise.’

I did my best to calm her, and wondered if we should encourage her to get on a plane, but Will anticipated what I was thinking and shook his head.

‘Poor, poor Sacha,’ cried Chloë. ‘I can’t bear it for him. Tell him I love him.’

‘He’ll ring you,’ I said, ‘when he’s feeling better. I promise.’

Rob rang several times and Sacha staggered downstairs to talk to his father. Will and I retreated out of earshot. When I broached the subject of his father, Sacha said only, ‘He’s left it all up to me. He says he doesn’t feel he should interfere.’

I urged him back into bed and dosed him up. ‘Your father’s trying to make it easier for you by not getting in the way.’

I reported this conversation to Will, who went straight upstairs and spent over an hour talking to Sacha. When I took up more tea, I discovered him sitting on the edge of the bed and a red-eyed Sacha propped up on the pillows. Both of them looked dreadful. I stood over them, and fussed and bullied them into drinking it. After a couple of mouthfuls, Sacha grimaced. ‘Give me the stuff the spoon will stand up in.’

In the morning, Sacha was better but still weak, and agreed without too much argument to remain in bed. I fed him more tea, made him change out of his sweaty T-shirt and insisted on brushing his hair.

‘Thanks,’ he said, leant back on the pillows and closed his eyes.

The police told us, ‘Only two days.’ But this was Italy and two days stretched into three, then four. Meg would have appreciated the joke.

The convalescent Sacha was content to sit it out on the loggia at Casa Rosa. ‘I need to get my head straight,’ he said, and it was clear that he preferred to be on his own.

In contrast, Will was restless, had not eaten much and was sleeping badly. I said to him, ‘There’s something I would like to show you if you’d like to come.’

He showed only a polite interest. ‘Let’s do it, then.’

We left Sacha well supplied with iced drinks and a cold pasta salad. Armed with maps and guidebooks, I drove Will to Tarquinia. The car skidded a little as I forced it up the slope leading out of the valley and down the other side, past poppies, clumps of herbs, wild lavender and the olive trees, their bases plastered with summer dust.

Will slumped back in the passenger seat and wiped his sunglasses. ‘Italy’s too hot.’

‘You get used to it,’ I said.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said, and fell silent.

The museum in Tarquinia was cool and almost empty. We did not linger over the exhibits – I suspected Will’s concentration was not good. Eventually, I led him up to the funerary couch. ‘There. Do you recognize it?’

He looked blank. Then he said, ‘It was on your father’s desk. He was very fond of it.’

‘The real thing is better.’

‘She’s no beauty.’

I nudged him gently. ‘Nor is he.’

I went to inspect an exquisite bronze candelabrum, worked with bunches of grapes and vine leaves. ‘Will… come and see this.’

But Will was rooted in front of the funerary couple, eyes narrowed, his face a mask of distress.

We returned to the car and consulted the maps, for I was anxious to visit the Etruscan tombs. Chloë and I always teased Will about maps but, truth be told, his skill had got us places. Now I waited for him to say that women have no spatial awareness and for me to reply, ‘Women are better team players.’ But he didn’t and I didn’t.

On his instructions, I drove far up into a maquis of rock and scrub. Here the land had a blind, bitter, cussed feel. Yet the books reported that, all those centuries ago, the Etruscans had made it fertile and fruitful with trees, pasture and crops. Their lovely Paradise. Their Elysium.

We drove into a clearing and parked close to the remains of an Etruscan town, which didn’t amount to much – a hint of a mosaic pavement and the suggestion of a stone wall running at an angle up the hill. Drinks were being sold under a cluster of umbrellas, and an overflowing rubbish bin was sited next to an ancient brick arch. Otherwise the scene had an abandoned, desolate quality.

We followed the track up into the hills. The going became precipitous and it was very hot. In my sandals, my feet grew slippery with sweat, and Will was panting. An arrow indicated a steep incline and a second pointed yet further up. The heat seared into our backs.

‘Over there.’ I pointed to a dark opening, partly obscured by vegetation.

Will smiled grimly. ‘This had better be worth it.’

He pushed back the vegetation to let me through, and we found ourselves in a large rock chamber lined with stone shelves on which the Etruscans had laid out their dead.

There was no mistaking an odour of semi-stagnant water and rock that never saw the sun. The smell was the essence of extinction. I laid a hand on a cold shelf. The ghosts of the Etruscan dead were locked into this place, far, far removed from the banqueting and harvesting, the wine, lovemaking and married love depicted in their painting and sculpture.

‘I don’t know why we make such a fuss about the afterlife,’ said Will. ‘Once you’ve gone, that’s it. Meg has gone, so has your father. What’s left?’ he reached for my hand.

But I fled from the tomb and scrambled back down the path. I heard Will come after me and, by the time he caught up, I was breathless. I gasped for air and the heat whistled painfully into my lungs but I welcomed it. Far better to be here in the open, burning hot but alive.

I lifted my face to the sun. To emerge from the dark cave into the light was to know that I was free.

On the way back, Will asked, ‘Alfredo’s ashes… have you decided?’

‘No. Silly isn’t it?’

‘You can’t put it off for ever.’

‘I know.’

Over supper of grilled veal chops and roasted peppers, Sacha told us that he would be moving on. ‘To Manchester. I think,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a couple of gigs lined up. After that… well, I’ll go and see Chloë in Oz. Hitch around a little. Take a look.’

‘That would be nice.’ I kept my voice neutral.

‘I miss her,’ he said simply.

‘So do we.’ Instinctively, I glanced at Will and our eyes locked. ‘Don’t’ was the message in his. A mental nudge, I suppose.

After supper, Will said to me, ‘Fanny, go and get your father’s ashes.’ I stared at him. ‘Go on.’

I went upstairs, retrieved the small wooden casket and carried it down to the loggia. ‘May I?’ asked Will. I nodded and he took it from me. ‘Now we’ll find a place for Alfredo.’

Holding the casket under one arm, he propelled me out of the house with the other.

We walked up the dust road, and the residual heat cradled our feet. ‘I should have paid more attention to the descriptions of Fiertino,’ Will said, in a conversational way. ‘Then I would know where I was. Where did your father’s family live?’

The moon was as bright as burnished silver as I pointed down the road to the ugly replacement fattoria. ‘It was burnt down at the end of the war,’ I explained.

‘I see.’ Will considered. ‘I don’t think that would be right. Nor, I think, is the churchyard. I think your father would prefer to be free.’

I blinked back tears. ‘Yes, he would.’

At the fork in the road, Will ignored the route into the village and we picked our way up the rise where the cypresses and chestnuts grew in clumps and the vines swept past them down into the valley. It was a mystery to me how anyone slept in the deep, perfumed Italian nights, and I said so to Will. He smiled.

‘I don’t believe you said that.’

Down below, the lights of the village were tucked into the slope of the hillside under a starred palanquin. The moonlight worked its usual deceptions and Fiertino seemed to spring out of the landscape, untouched and complete. ‘I love this place,’ I confessed.

‘I know you do. But, Fanny…’ He was hesitant. ‘You do know you’re only a visitor?’

It would have been so easy to say, ‘No, I belong here.’ But that would be to ignore many particulars and the evidence against. I was a visitor – a special one, but a visitor. I knew that now.

‘Your father never liked me,’ Will remarked, in the same conversational tone. ‘I wish he had.’

‘He didn’t say that,’ I replied. ‘You were different. You use politics to deal with difficult questions and difficult problems – how to conduct ourselves in society before death and… extinction. Dad thought it was a waste of time. He relied on himself.’

‘But I liked him.’

‘So did I,’ I said, with a half-sob.

Will gestured towards the vines. ‘What’s the grape?’ he asked.

‘Sangiovese.’

‘Was that a favourite?’

‘He admired it.’

‘Why don’t you settle him among the vines?’ Will offered me the urn. ‘Don’t you think he would like that?’

I knew he had got it right.

I picked my way between the swollen grape trusses and came to a halt. With a little painful thud of my heart, I upended the casket and watched my father’s ashes drift towards the earth.

His terroir.

By the time I returned to where Will waited, I was shivering with emotion and he held me very close.

The following days were waiting days. When it got too hot, we retreated to the loggia at Casa Rosa and ate green bean and tomato salad from Benedetta’s harvest for lunch and grew sleepy on a glass of Chianti. At night we ate at Angelo’s, and Sacha sometimes remained to drink coffee in the square. I was glad to see a little colour returning to his face.

Naturally, Will was preoccupied, and very quiet. I waited until we were alone in our bedroom at the Casa Rosa before I finally coaxed him to talk.

‘Meg’s death has pulled everything into focus. What’s so important as that? Nothing.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘I can only explain it as a loss of nerve,’ he said. ‘I find I’m not so sure any more. Facing things and fighting battles feels more difficult to me now than it did at the beginning. I used to be so certain about the things we needed to achieve. Now I wonder whether we do any good at all.’ He looked up at me ruefully. ‘I don’t know why I should feel that now, at the grand old, battle-hardened age of forty-eight.’

I looked at him and saw for the first time that it was only after blazing desire has turned to tenderness and familiarity, that true knowledge – the knowledge which I sought – was possible. And I thought with a little flutter of nerves of the degree of risk which I had taken. Not that I regretted it, but it was worth considering the destruction of what might have been.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What else.’

‘You disappeared out here and seemed so absorbed in a quite different world, and I didn’t think I could catch up. I thought you would vanish. Then I thought I had kept you against your will. No, I don’t mean against your will exactly, but caged, and when you had the first chance to fly away, you did.’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘I suppose I was jealous of Fiertino, and of you in Fiertino.’

I felt a pang of sympathy. ‘So the minute I go away you develop a first-class case of nerves?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.’

A little later, he said. ‘You really love this place… the Casa Rosa, and the town. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s in my bloodstream. But that is not to say it is my father’s Fiertino. That was different.’

Will stood by the window and looked out across the valley. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go back.’

I did not have any illusions. I understood perfectly that once Will got back within sound and scent of the Westminster arena, his ears would prick up and his nose would twitch.

‘Listen to me,’ I said and came and stood beside him and gave the gentlest of nudges. ‘You are fine. Absolutely fine.’

He bent over and kissed me.

The following day, I went to the priest and arranged for a small stone to be placed, with my father’s name and dates, among the rest of the Battistas. And then I turned my face homeward. We spent the last few hours at Casa Rosa setting it in order. I swept floors, stacked china, dusted the bedrooms. Together Sacha and I packed up Meg’s things and talked about her.

When evening came, and the sun flooded the valley with shadows, I sat by the window of the bedroom and drank in the last moments until Will called, ‘Fanny, please come.’

I loved Casa Rosa, and never more so than when I was saying goodbye to it. The last task was to fasten the shutters and I had insisted that I did it.

Will and Sacha waited in the car. I gave it a final, lingering inspection before we drove down to Benedetta, who had a present for me. It was a small, blurred photograph of a house whose roof had fallen in and whose blackened beams pointed burnt fingers to the open sky. I could just make out a fountain in the garden, which was filled with rubble and churned-up earth. I turned the photograph over: on the back was written, ‘1799-1944’.

‘The fattoria,’ she said. I put it into my handbag and kissed her goodbye. ‘Santa Patata’ she said, ‘you will be back.’

I looked back only once as we took the road for Rome, and the view shimmered into a brilliant radiance of olive tree, scarlet poppy and vine. I thought of Meg.

How cross she would be that she was not here to climb into the hot car and say, ‘Poor me, I’ve got the worst seat.’

I pictured the vines pushing their roots deep into the terroir and the sun on the grapes. ‘Allow the sun to shine on the grapes,’ my father would say, ‘until the last possible moment, and it will seduce the fruit into such richness and flavour.’