When Will arrived – a little late, but not too late – I was waiting with a meal and an open bottle of wine. The flat was immaculate and the washing machine churned in the background.
I allowed him to kiss my cheek.
He was excited and wanted to tell me about the Bill they were pushing through the House. ‘It’s not perfect, Fanny, but it’s a big step forward and we’re in a hurry to get things done.’
That is what I had been. In a hurry to marry Will.
He poured out a glass of wine. ‘Better still, there’s a whisper of a vacancy in the whips’ office, and my name has been mentioned.’
‘And give up your independence?’
He ruffled his hair. ‘It’s the only way, you know. You can’t do it by muttering on the back benches. To get things done, you have to be out front. And a way up is through the whips’ office.’ He slapped his hand down on the table. ‘I’m starving. Can we eat?’
I faced him across the cutlery and china. ‘Will, who have you had here?’
He started. ‘Why?’
‘Because I found underwear in our bed.’
Will went chalk white. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You tell me.’
Did I want him to deny it, vehemently, convincingly, so that I could allow myself to believe him? Or would I prefer him to look me straight in the eyes and say, I have been unfaithful.
I did not know the answer. Each came with a terrible burden of pain or suspicion.
‘Who is she?’
Eventually, Will said, ‘It must have been Liz.’
‘There’s a choice?’
‘She’s a researcher and I said she could crash out here after she’d worked late one night.’
‘Don’t lie.’
He looked away. ‘All right. No lies. No more lies.’
‘When?’
‘You want the details?’
I looked down at the floor which I had swept so blithely that morning. ‘Perhaps not.’
Will put his hand over his eyes. ‘What have I done?’
The sounds in the flat – the muted gurgle of a water pipe, the washing machine – seemed very loud. ‘In our bed?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘About our bed, or what you did in it?’
Will flinched. ‘I deserve that.’
There was a long, long silence. ‘I had a couple of whiskies,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. I, of all people… should know.’
There was a click. The boiler switched off and, with it, I felt something die in me… the trust, absolute and unquestioning, I’d had reposed in Will.
I felt so foolish, so naive, so ill-fitting.
‘Will,’ I whispered. ‘Had you grown tired of me? We haven’t been married that long.’
‘It wasn’t like that, Fanny. I can’t explain. I have no excuse but, in a strange way, it was nothing to do with you.’
‘How can we continue after this?’
He dropped his head into his hands. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘What am I supposed to say? What would you have said if it had been me?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just know I would have been desperate.’
‘Well?’ I moved in the chair experimentally, because every move I made seemed to hurt. ‘It might have been different if we had been married for a long time.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he muttered.
‘It was all so easy,’ I burst out. ‘I go away with your daughter, and you leap at the opportunity… to enjoy yourself.’
I got up and went into the bedroom and looked down at the freshly made bed. The images it conjured up were too much to bear, so I blundered into the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the bath, and tried to think what I could do. I looked into the mirror at an unfamiliar face.
I returned to Will. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa, still ashen and shaky looking. Our eyes met. I looked away first.
‘I’m leaving,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to the house and Chloë, and I’ll let you know what is happening when I’ve made up my mind.’
I was neither witless, nor an innocent. I knew about sex. I knew that lapses happened and people survived. The world was built on temptation and Liz had been one of them. I pictured her hurrying busily though the corridors of the House. I saw her making telephone calls, working on the facts: smart and organized; the icing on the bun.
Maybe that was the explanation. Proximity – like that peculiar intensity of living cheek-by-jowl with Will in his flat. Those sweet, intoxicating encounters of body against body.
Perhaps that was true of Westminster?
I almost persuaded myself that if I’d worked where Will did, and watched the prowling men, I too might have listened to a serpent and eaten of the fruit.
But it was Will who had not kept faith.
Perhaps, if we had talked, he might have explained that he had been eased aside by the messy, cosy intimacies between baby and mother, and by a new and deadly priority: the need for sleep.
Maybe to give birth is to remind one of death, and the nudge is too sharp and shocking. I could understand that a tender-fleshed apple offers a moment of sweetness and oblivion. Then again, maybe something has to die when something else is born. If so, we should Have shared our fears, for I felt their dark presence too.
12
I woke the next morning in our empty bed at Stanwinton.
What was I going to do?
Take refuge in motherhood. Take refuge in the slap and polish of running a house. That was what I would do. Give Chloë her breakfast. The heating? I’d adjust it. The morning post required sorting. Ordinary life flowed over the rocks and hidden pools and coasted over the dangerous shallows. In danger of drowning, I clung to it.
Somehow, the morning passed. These tasks accomplished, I held Chloë tight and, imagining that we were playing a game, she crowed with delight and looked up at me. Reflected in those huge, innocent eyes I saw a new version of myself: tall and strong, the one on whom she relied.
She bounced up and down and beat at my chest. Then, without warning, she regurgitated her lunch. She cried a little with shock and I took her upstairs and ran a bath.
Now it was the yellow-duck routine, the splashing routine, the song about the deep blue sea and the silly now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t game with the towel.
Perhaps my distress filtered through to her because, after she was dressed, Chloë switched from the happy little madam into a tyrant who demanded extra cuddles. She fussed when I put her into her cot for her afternoon sleep and a thin, fretful wail followed me downstairs.
In the kitchen, I cast round for something to do and my eye lit on a mountain of baby clothes in the ironing pile.
With heat and steam, the iron battered the small garments into submission. If only it was so easy to batter a life into shape. If only I could iron into the white vests and pink tights the bright anticipation of yesterday. If only I could iron away a strange woman’s underwear in my bed.
But I couldn’t.
I heard a key in the front door. ‘Hi.’ Meg appeared in the kitchen. She looked flushed and pretty in a suede jacket and black trousers. ‘Why did you come back last night?’
‘No reason.’
‘Didn’t you trust me?’
I laid the iron in its cradle and switched it off. ‘I want some peace, that’s all.’
‘Fanny! You do have some bite.’ She looked at me sharply and unbuttoned her jacket. ‘We all have our off-days, God knows.’ She draped her jacket on a chair and I wanted to shout: ‘Take it away!’ She pulled out another chair and dropped into it. ‘You can tell me.’
‘Go away, Meg.’ This was the first time I had ever spoken to her in such a manner.
To her credit, she did not take offence. ‘Have you and the darling brother quarrelled? Love’s young dream sullied?’ She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘You have my sympathy. Been there.’ Her eyes followed me as I folded, tidied and stacked obj
ects, anything to keep moving, to keep breathing. ‘It’s not worth it, you know’ She dropped the comment into the silence. ‘Take it from me.’
Her mockery had a bracing effect and I caught the contradiction of love and hate that was Meg. ‘You can’t trust anyone,’ she said. ‘Not even yourself. Especially not yourself.’
Meg was right. There was not much to be said for it, yet pity for oneself opened one to pity for others. Despite my own torment, my heart ached for her as well as for me. I picked up the laundry basket with its burden of clean clothes. ‘I’ll make coffee, and then I want to get on with things.’
Meg cocked her head. ‘Chloë’s crying. I’ll go and change her. See what she wants. By the way, I sorted out the cupboard with her stuff in. I noticed the other day…’
I trembled with sudden fury at her interference. I opened my mouth to say, ‘It’s none of your business’, but exhaustion punched in. ‘Oh, go and get Chloë.’
I had my back to the door when Meg returned. ‘Fanny, I think Chloë’s ill.’ She spoke in a quite different tone. ‘She’s very hot.’
I whirled round and took the stairs two at a time. Chloë was flushed and her cheeks were burning. When I picked her up, she grizzled and ducked her head in an unfamiliar way.
‘I’ll hold her while you drive to the doctor,’ ordered Meg. ‘Now.’
‘I’ll ring Will,’ Meg said.
She and I were standing over the cot in the hospital ward. I was shaking as Chloë lay in the cot, so small and ill.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Meg, more or less calmly, ‘all sorts of dire thoughts, but she’ll be fine. The doctor said they just wanted to keep an eye on her overnight. She’s picked up a chest infection and a stomach bug, that’s all, and they have it under control. All you have to do is take a grip.’
I grabbed Meg’s arm and steadied myself. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ she said.
The nurses were nice. They showed me where to fetch water and how to sponge Chloë down. They checked her pulse, wrote up their notes, spoke in professional terms. Meg was right, but I sat through the night beside the cot, my eyes fixed on the tiny figure of my daughter, not daring to look away once.
As instructed, every fifteen minutes or so, I dipped a sponge in water and squeezed it out. I lifted first one tiny stem that was Chloë’s arm, bathed and patted it dry, then the other. Then I began on the pink assembly of minute bones that were her feet, then her little legs.
I sat down and, again, took up my vigil.
The nurse, fair hair twisted up into a tight pleat under her cap, checked on Chloë and the chart quivered a little at the end of the cot as she snapped it back into its holder. She sent me a half-smile and I could not be sure whether it was pity or reassurance.
Babies don’t die, do they? I wanted to beg her. Not now, not these days, especially if they’re as round and rosy as Chloë. Yet all through history they have died. The human race was known for it.
She must have sensed my panic. ‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea, Mrs Savage?’
Around midnight, Will arrived. He was unshaven and looked awful. I refused to look at him as I spelled out the details. ‘They say the antibiotics will start working within twenty-four hours.’
He bent over the cot and touched Chloë’s cheek. ‘Little one,’ he said. ‘You’ll be better now’ He straightened up. ‘I’ll stay here with you.’
I fetched another chair and we sat, side by side, for the rest of the night only speaking to each other when it was necessary.
In the morning, it was clear Chloë was on the mend, and I told Will to go back to London.
Three days later, Meg and I regarded each other lifelessly over the kitchen table. Neither of us had slept much since we had brought Chloë home after that night in hospital.
Meg twisted a strand of hair around her fingers. ‘We can relax now.’
No, we can’t, I thought. I can’t take anything for granted again.
I looked down at my hands, which appeared so white and thin that I hardly recognized them.
‘Babies do this,’ Meg offered. ‘It’s to test us.’
I managed a weak smile. ‘I am grateful, Meg, for the support.’
She seemed pleased. ‘For the moment.’
We sat in a non-threatening silence and drank coffee. Upstairs, for the first time in days, Chloë slept a tranquil sleep – which, at that moment, I considered the height of my ambitions.
‘Will rang,’ Meg said. ‘Earlier. He’s on his way.’
To the surprise of both of us, I dropped my head into my hands and cried. There was a touch on my shoulder. ‘Leave Will to me. You concentrate on Chloë.’
This was too much. I peeled my damp face away from my hands. ‘Meg. Thank you for everything you have done, but you must leave Will and me alone.’
‘Fanny…’ Meg assumed her caring expression and I was never quite sure how to trust it. ‘I’ve looked after him in the past. I know how to handle him.’
‘No. It’s fine.’
She shrugged. ‘As you wish. But I suggest you have a sleep before he gets here.’
I was deeply asleep when Will shook me awake. ‘It’s six o’clock, Fanny.’ I managed to drag open my eyes. ‘Good girl.’ He placed a cup of tea beside me and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Meg has seen to everything downstairs, so we thought it best to leave you as long as possible.’
I lay quite still.
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘What is there to say?’
He looked marginally more kempt than in the hospital. At any rate, he had shaved. He looked down at the floor as he spoke. ‘I have been a terrible fool. Liz is nothing to me. I am nothing to her. You are the person I love and with whom I wish to spend my life. I can’t explain it further, without sounding beyond contempt.’
I tried to explain what I felt, and did it badly. ‘Will, what we had was private and not to be shared. God knows, you share everything else with the world. Don’t you see? That was the one thing that belonged only to us.’
He hunched over his clasped hands. ‘Isn’t it the other way round? It does not excuse me, I know, but – ’
‘I can hear Chloë, Will.’
‘I’ll get her.’
He reappeared with a pale, sleepy baby. ‘Here.’ He put her down in the middle of the bed and lay in his accustomed place.
Chloë gave a pallid chuckle. Will propped himself up and offered her a finger. ‘Poor sweetie. Better now.’ Chloë kidnapped his finger, pressed it into her mouth and bit. ‘Ouch…’
He extracted his finger. ‘Fanny, I know how bad it is, how bad it looks but, I beg you, don’t make it more complicated than it was.’
‘Will, what am I supposed to make of it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, in a hopeless way. ‘It was a terrible mistake. I will regret it to my dying day. I didn’t stop to think, I didn’t make comparisons. It was just for the moment, and I took it. I am sorry. I am so sorry.’
Deprived of the attention, Chloë shrieked, sounding much more like her old self. Will hauled her into his arms and pressed his cheek against hers. ‘Precious.’
Chloë now bit his nose and Will yelped. ‘When did she start doing that?’
‘She’s probably teething.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if we can be married any more.’
Will reached out for me but I flinched. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘What can I say, Fanny? What can I do?’
I glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. I swung my leg out of the bed. ‘Get moving, Will, it’s the Rotary Club supper. We won’t stay late.’
His mouth dropped open. ‘We’re going?’
‘Do we have a choice?’ I opened the wardrobe door and dragged out the dress which I had earmarked. ‘Can’t let the Rotary Club down.’
‘But what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know, Will. Go to the Rotary Club supper.’
I pul
led off my jumper and T-shirt and transcribed a slow, provocative circle in front of my husband. He swallowed and went pale. My body was still a little slack, breasts not quite settled back to their normal size; it was the body of a girl… no, not a girl, a woman, who had given birth, and I wanted him to see it.
That night, I glittered, or so Will reported. But perhaps he was filtering a new, rather terrible me through a guilty prism.
Oddly, along with my outrage and the still partly submerged pulse of grief, a peculiar kind of confidence had arrived, with the desire not to be beaten. I wanted to face this challenge, to be fierce and determined, to seize the competing strands of this situation and arrange them as I wished.
Will watched my every move surreptitiously as I donned the pink dress with the full skirt and a pair of high heels, for which I would pay later. I brushed my hair until it crackled and let it hang down over my shoulders. I made him wait until I was ready and Meg was summoned to take charge of Chloë.
I got into the driving seat, kicked off my shoes and drove into the town in silence. I parked in the hotel car park and ran through a briefing. ‘Pearl will be there. There will be an auction of books and things. A raffle. The usual. It’s fund-raising to provide machinery for the new neonatal baby unit in the hospital. Got it?’
‘Fanny. Stop this.’
‘No,’ I said. I gathered up my bag and shoved my feet into the high heels.
‘If you want me to leave,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I will think about it. Let’s go in.’
Attired in a faded green dress shot through with silver, Pearl exuded a certain magnificence. ‘Your father’s here,’ she observed. I glanced round. He was talking to a Knights-bridge blonde in black and pearls. He raised a hand and I waved back.
Pearl pressed a glass of indifferent champagne into my hand – I could tell by the colour and the general look of it. ‘We must have a chat,’ she said, and I could have sworn her eyes flicked over my legs to check that the tights were there.
By now I knew the form. We drank champagne in a reception room with tasselled brocade curtains and lots of gilt decoration. From there we progressed to dinner and were served chicken in a cream and mushroom sauce, followed by rubbery lemon mousse. Afterwards there was coffee with chocolate mints. I ate as much of it as I could and I answered the questions of the two men who sat on my left and right but, if I had been asked, I could not have remembered what we talked about.
The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 13