The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

2

It was eight o’clock on Monday morning and downstairs line two, the line reserved for constituents, was buzzing. This was not unusual.

‘You answer.’ Will was thick with sleep. He hunched over in the bed and dragged the duvet round his shoulders. Go away, world. He did that rather well.

I had pulled on my jeans but not yet reached the jumper stage. The morning chill brushed my cheeks as I padded downstairs. Many things were required of me but dealing with a constituent before I was dressed was not at the top of the list.

‘Mrs Savage…’ The voice was familiar.

‘Hallo, Mr Tucker. Where are you phoning from?’

‘From Number Nine Heaven.’

Mr Tucker changed his locations according to which medication he had been taking. ‘Mr Tucker, are you alone?’

‘You’re never alone, Mrs Savage. I want to complain about the lack of angels in Stanwinton.’

This seemed a rather admirable complaint. ‘Do you remember, Mr Tucker? We dealt with that one last week.’

Voices in the background urged Mr Tucker to put down the phone and come along. ‘Goodbye, Mr Tucker. It was nice to talk to you.’

Mr Tucker resided on a planet of his own but, as Will argued, a vote was a vote. ‘You mean, the staff taking care of Mr Tucker will vote for you,’ I said. ‘“That nice man Mr Savage… never too busy…”’

‘Exactly. Anyway, an MP should listen to the dotty as well as the sane,’ he pointed out.

‘Well, that sheds a new light on Parliament,’ I said.

In the hall, cleaning materials were distributed over the floor, which indicated that Maleeka had come in early. Maleeka was my angel and my saviour, and other wives – especially my friends – hated me for her. I see the point. One can envy another woman’s beauty, or her mind, but you only truly hate her if her house is clean and shining. Of distant Arabian extraction, hence her name, Maleeka was a Bosnian refugee who had appeared in Will’s surgery and begged for work. Will had a habit of forwarding problems to me, and did so on this occasion. ‘Mrs Savage, I have two daughters and four grandchildrens to make food for,’ she said. What could I say?

During the first week of her regime, she smashed two china figurines and dropped bleach on to the landing carpet. The navy blue pile now sported three almost perfect white circles. ‘Look on them as symbols,’ I told Will, ‘of our commitment.’ Will had been a little slow to see the point, a reminder that he dealt with theory so much that the practical was often beyond him. Not so for Maleeka: she made it her business to absorb herself into my household, and had turned up faithfully twice a week for ten years to impose order on the piles of laundry, remove tidemarks from the bath and the encrustations that decorated the taps, dust from the landing window-sill and the strange marks that inexplicably appeared in the fridge. If grime, disorder and mess flickered through the rooms like marsh gas or plague, Maleeka maintained a firm perspective on the family chaos that made me catch my breath: ‘Izt safe here,’ she said. ‘Good.’

I picked my way through a flotsam of bleach, polish and dusters, and tracked their source to the kitchen, where she was kneeling with her head in the oven – a position not a few political wives (any wife?) had, from time to time, considered. ‘Izt bad, Mrs Savage.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘Very bad.’

She meant the oven but the remark had a portmanteau ring to it.

I boiled the kettle and made toast. ‘Come and eat, Maleeka.’

She hauled herself upright and sat down. I gave her coffee and two thick slices of toast: I knew she went short of food so that the rest of the family had enough. Tengo famiglia, as Alfredo, my Italian father, would say. ‘Hold the family safe, Francesca. We may be sinners and failures but that is the one thing we must do.’ On that point, Maleeka and my father were perfectly matched. Not that Maleeka talked about it much – she was ashamed of her transient status and deeply homesick.

‘Have you heard from your husband?’

Poitr had been left in Bosnia to fight. Or, at least, to guard the family house. Not that Maleeka minded the separation. ‘Pouf, the man izt bad.’ Yet, there was no question of divorce. ‘He izt my husband. Finish.’

She was eating a third piece of toast when a fresh, shining Will appeared. However late we had been, he always managed to look new-minted and ready… to tackle the theory at any rate. Maleeka crammed the remainder of the toast into her mouth and leapt to her feet. ‘Mornings, Mr Savage. I get on.’

Will did not fail at many things, but he had failed in his attempt to make Maleeka call him Will. ‘Mr Savage’ pricked at his principles and made him feel uneasy. Or so he said.

He ate his breakfast rapidly and efficiently, and worked through the papers. Afterwards we did a final check of our respective diaries. Of course, his was full. ‘Can you make drinks for the European and Commonwealth finance ministers’ convention on the seventeenth?’ he asked. ‘And on the twenty-first, there’s a dinner for the same people. Much smaller, more intimate. I’ll count on you, Fanny’

I turned over the pages. For all sorts of reasons, the convention was important, not least because Will was spearheading the UK end of a controversial European initiative to impose a tax on anyone who owned a second car. Naturally everyone was up in arms: the car lobby, the country dweller, the salesman and anyone who had to endure public transport. But Will believed in it because, as he explained, it was right to tax those who enjoyed a standard of living that permitted them to have a second car. ‘We would be setting an example to the world,’ he said. ‘We should do that. We must do that.’

I stabbed my finger on the seventeenth. ‘I’ve got a homeless-persons meeting in the morning. Afterwards, if the traffic’s OK, I can hop into our second car and make a dash for it.’

Will tried not to smile. ‘Don’t be nasty. Will you target Antonio Pasquale? Use your dazzling Italian. I need to make sure that he’s on board. But you will go carefully?’

‘Will, look at me. What do you see?’

He leant over and cupped my chin with a hand. ‘You, of course.’ He wore his busy-busy expression but his eyes were soft and, as usual, I melted.

What did I see? His hair was shorter now than it had been when I’d first met him, but he had a much better haircut. His jaw line was rather tauter than his waistline these days… but no, I won’t go into that. And those dark eyes still lit up, from time to time, with a combination of idealism and a hint of vulnerability that he was careful only to show to those he loved.

Much the same.

‘How long have I been on the circuit for you?’ He had the honesty to look a little discomfited. ‘I do have some idea, Will.’

‘Yes, but… I want to be sure you understand’. Will retrieved his hand and launched into an explanation of the whys and wherefores of the tax scheme, which, to be fair, were tricky.

I listened, as I had many times before. On the one hand Will was right: it would strike a blow for a better, greener world and bring in more money for useful projects. On the other, ordinary families would struggle, the bus queues would snake out of sight, jobs might be at risk. Will’s smile turned into that of the professional debater and his voice swooped up and down, brightened, sharpened, drove home the points. He leant back in his chair, an embodiment of clear thinking, authority, given edge by his weight of experience, and he knew it.

And I wanted to be there with him – but increasingly I sensed I had lost the almost mystical sense of mission, and the capacity to believe in it. Being married to an idealist was different from being one. I had become dulled by the glue of routine and domesticity, and diverted by the equally passionate imperatives of motherhood.

‘So you see,’ said Will, and smiled at me.

Not bad, I thought appreciatively. Over the years Will had shed a certain innocence. But so had I – so had everyone. We were warier, more realistic, pathetically grateful for the small triumphs of a policy implemented, a constituent satisfied. We knew our limitations better – oh, much, much better. We knew, too, for we had discussed it, that as that innocence slipped away, personal ambition had grown in direct proportion.

There was a pause.

‘What’s best for those living in a rural area?’ I asked, because this side of the argument should have an airing.

Will held out his cup for more coffee. ‘Fanny,’ he sounded a warning, ‘we can’t afford any wobbles. Otherwise we get dumped on.’

He meant the press. Not for the first time, I thought how strange it was that treachery and dissent reached so much wider than loyalty… or fidelity.

No, scrub that.

That last had caught me unawares, which it did from time to time. I had learnt to deal with any bruising it inflicted.

Will pressed on: ‘I know what you’re thinking, Fanny, but we have to do something before the world chokes.’ He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

These days when I looked at Will, I no longer perceived the golden light that, when I first fell in love with him, had bathed him from head to foot. Now I saw differently and Will was only an element in a larger context: family, home, commitments. At forty-something, I had learnt many things, not least to reshuffle the priorities. Perhaps that was better, certainly more rational. All the same, I mourned the golden light. I missed it, and the intensity of my hunger to find out what Will was, my passion to possess him, and for him to possess me.

Again the eyebrows arched above the brown eyes. This time it meant: ‘Let’s sort this out.’ ‘Give it a chance, Fanny… yes?’ He smiled, willing the old intimacy to bind us together. If I played ball, Will would be comforted and assured that we were walking down the right track.

‘Trust me?’

‘Should I?’

He yawned theatrically. ‘Am I being pompous?’

In politics, or anywhere where power was the prize, it was hard to keep the layers of oneself glued together, and it was hard not to run with the hares. I understood that perfectly.

He got to his feet. ‘For goodness sake drive a pin into me if I get fat, boring or pompous.’ He looked briefly appalled. ‘On second thoughts, perhaps you’d better not.’

‘Would it be that easy to burst the bubble?’

He bent over and whispered, ‘Only you know the answer to that.’

Outside in the drive, the ministerial car nosed to a halt with a discreet toot of the horn. Will shoved his papers into his briefcase. ‘See you Friday’.

I sat quite still. Will’s hand pressed into my shoulder. ‘Fanny… the question of Meg.’

‘Is she a question?’

Meg had never been a question. She had always been a fact. A hard fact that sat at the centre of our marriage.

The pressure on my shoulder became almost intolerable. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘No, she isn’t.’

Meg and Will’s parents killed themselves in a spectacular car crash. The tangle of wreckage made it almost impossible to say who had been driving but, in some respects, it was irrelevant. Both were alcoholics, and the blood tests indicated that neither of them should have been at the wheel.

The children were cared for by grandparents too aged to cope. Four years older than Will, Meg had ended up cooking, cleaning, protecting and directing. She teased out Will’s halting French verbs, wrestled with his algebra and, by the time he left home to train as a barrister, had forgotten about herself. ‘It was as if there was a vacuum inside me, sucking up the person that was me,’ she confided, soon after she moved in with us, ‘and I could only fill it one way’

When she married Rob, another barrister, the drinking had been sly, furtive, but apparently under control. After Sacha was born, and the strains of marriage to a busy man became clear, Meg began to slip. Eventually, Rob said he could no longer live with her. Then he informed her he’d found someone else who would look after him and Sacha properly.

‘It was the “properly” that really hurt,’ said Meg.

‘Meg became my mother,’ Will said, when he asked me if she could come and live with us, ‘and my father. She gave up everything to make sure that I was all right.’

After Will had gone, I went upstairs. Our bedroom was still frowsty from the night and I threw open the window. A man wearing a bright orange jacket was walking up the road and the colour imprinted itself, vivid and garish, on my retinas. He did not seem to be in any hurry, and looked neither sad nor happy, just indifferent.

That’s how I felt.

I made the bed and pulled my mother’s quilt over it. With a forefinger, I traced the tree hung with red cherry blossoms. One of the flower bracts had been unevenly sewn. I often wondered about the creator and why she had made the mistake. Had it been deliberate? A gesture of rage, rebellion or misery?

Will’s clothes from the previous week were stacked on the chair and, working automatically from long practice, I set about sorting them – laundry basket, shelf, cupboard. Nowadays his ties were silk, and his shirts were soft and expensive, made in subtle colours with battens inserted into the collar points. Sometimes I remembered to remove them, sometimes not.

A shirt in hand, I sat down on the bed and buried my face in its folds. It smelt of Will, the Will I had always loved.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Fanny, are you there?’ Without waiting for an answer, Brigitte stuck her head round the door. ‘Yes, you are.’

Guiltily, I dropped the shirt. Although she was only a temporary feature of the Savage household, Brigitte had that effect on me and I was so thoroughly in awe of her that I was never sure if I employed her or she me.

Brigitte, who came from deepest Austria, disapproved of the Savage set-up – Meg’s oddness, Sacha’s coming and going, Chloë’s truculence – and she had a way of conveying this that made it matter. As a tactic, I admired it.

She glanced at the photograph on the dressing-table of a family group. Today, it appeared to draw particular disapproval. ‘The shopping list, Fanny, I cannot find it.’

‘Sure.’ I reached for the notebook, which was always beside the bed, tore off the top page and handed it to her. Brigitte scanned it. ‘You forgot the polish.’ She tapped her nose with a finger. ‘I don’t forget. Or the bread.’

She gestured with her large, capable hands in a way that expressed her desire to ensure that the Savage ménage remained provisioned. It was a task that appeared to give her authority and purpose. Back home, Brigitte was an ardent, paid-up member of the Green Party and washed her hair in soap, never in harmful shampoo. It was a sacrifice worth making, she had explained. Observing the state of her hair, I am sorry to say that I did not agree.

‘I’ll take the laundry.’ She brushed past me, swept up the clothes and marched downstairs. The sound of raised voices informed me that she and Maleeka were agitating for space in my home.

Bearing a tray with a breakfast of mashed banana, toast and tea, I knocked on Meg’s bedroom door. There was a muttered ‘Come in’.

The room stank of whisky. Meg was lying on her side and I drew back the curtains.

She flung an arm across her eyes. ‘I suppose yet another apology is needed.’

‘Only if you wish.’

‘I don’t.’ She struggled upright.

I handed her a cup of tea. ‘Get that down you.’

Between mouthfuls, she asked, ‘Is Sacha OK?’

‘He kept watch. He’s probably asleep.’

Meg gave a wry smile. ‘Sacha says he writes his songs late at night. He says his mind is more receptive and fertile then.’

‘Does he?’ I knew what Sacha meant. When I was feeding Chloë as a baby, those small hours of the night provided strange, heightened interludes where, the baby at my breast, I was free from busyness, and at liberty to try and grope my way towards clarity and knowledge.

‘Why do I do it to him, Fanny?’

It was not the first time Meg had asked the question: nor, if both of us were honest, was it likely to be the last. I followed the uneven progress of the cup to her lips. ‘Would you like more help? We can organize it.’

She cut me off. ‘Nope. Done it. It’s up to me now. Battered, unreliable old me.’

‘Please don’t, Meg.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said quickly. ‘It won’t happen again.’

I sat down at the end of the bed. ‘What about Sacha and Will?’

She grimaced.

‘Shouldn’t be drinking tea on an empty stomach. It doesn’t like it.’ I cut the toast into squares and handed her one.

Meg edged the cup on to the bedside table. ‘So many people to fuss and worry over, Fanny. It must positively warm your heart.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Sorry, didn’t mean it.’

At times like this, Meg took pleasure in driving me, or whoever was coping with her, to the edge, but we both knew the boundaries of our co-existence. Meg wanted love and a place in the family. Like Will with his passion to change the world for the better, I wanted to help, and somehow, muddling along, we had managed to keep a balance.

She looked up and said softly, ‘I’m a good cause, the kind you like. The best, because I’m unredeemable. So none of you can blame yourselves when the worst happens.’ She dropped the half-eaten toast back on the plate. ‘Go away, Fanny. Go and be busy and keep everything in order.’

I removed the tray from her lap. ‘Rob rang this morning.’

‘So? I talked to him yesterday.’

‘He forgot to remind you that it’s Sacha’s birthday at the weekend. He wanted to know what you were doing about it.’

Meg buried her face in her hands. ‘What have I done?’

I bent down, picked up her discarded jumper and trousers and placed them on the chair. ‘I’m busy today. I’ll see you later.’

‘It’s all Rob’s fault,’ she muttered. ‘If he’d stayed married to me, I might have got through.’

At my wits’ end, I whirled round. ‘Meg, you drove him to it. He fell in love with Tania out of the exhaustion.’

‘I’m sick,’ she said flatly. ‘He should have tried harder. You shouldn’t give up on sick people.’

‘Have I ever given up on you?’ I asked.

‘You’ve wanted to. Be honest.’

We stared at each other. Meg was the first to drop her gaze but only because she knew she was the victor. She knew she had made it impossible for me to walk out of the room.

I drew up a chair, manipulated the banana on to the spoon and handed it to her. ‘Eat.’

A smile hovered at the corner of her mouth, but her eyes darted towards the whisky bottle in the wastepaper basket, before she parted her lips.

I used to dream of a big, generous, blowsy household where children rustled and muttered in the bedrooms – two, three, even four. And every night I would go round and count them. ‘This is Millie’, I would say, smoothing fair tangles away from her face. ‘This is Arthur’, removing the thumb from his mouth. And this… this one is Jamie, the terror.’

But it had not happened that way. After Chloë there were no more babies. My body pulled and strained to obey my longings, but it could not do what I asked of it. They haunt me, my non-children. Those warm, sleeping, rosy bodies, the children-who-never-were. Sometimes, I listen out for them playing under the eaves of my ugly house.

‘I don’t mind,’ Will said to me once. ‘We have Chloë, that’s enough. We look after her. I look after you. You look after me, Fanny. Be content,please’

‘Don’t you mind at all?’ I asked.

He touched my cheek. ‘I mind for you. I mind anything that hurts you.’

Yet my household was full and we had been happy. First Chloë was born, and I was catapulted into the terror and mystery and exultation of a love that would never die. Then Meg came to live with us; Sacha too, after his sixteenth birthday. The au pairs came and went; the party workers slipped in and out; each leaving a ghostly imprint on the atmosphere, their rustles and murmurs dissolving into the general murmur of our lives.