‘For God’s sake, leave me in peace,’ I whispered.
Meg straightened up. There was an odd, terrible pause. ‘I think I need a drink,’ she said. ‘A little nightcap. Want some.’
‘There isn’t any in the house.’
‘Oh, no?’
I looked up at her. ‘I don’t want a drink. And you don’t, Meg. Please.’
Again, the ghastly suspension of sound. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control. I can manage a little one, now and again. I’m lucky that way, not like the others. The doctor says – ’
The sharp edge of the broken plate pressed into my hand, teasing the flesh. ‘Meg, think. You’ve been doing so well.’
‘Precisely.’ Meg went in search of her contraband whisky bottle – her lover, brother, friend and child – and I did nothing to stop her.
I went upstairs to ring Will. With a shock, I realized that a primitive feeling of being protected had vanished with my father. He had left us to patrol the frontline between death and Chloë and it was a busy business.
Somehow, I had to pull myself together to make this family work. That was my business, and what was important. I had to… hold the family. That, and struggle towards resolution as he had.
I made myself walk back downstairs, through the kitchen and up into Meg’s bedroom. She was sitting on the bed, staring at a photograph of Sacha. There was a full glass in her hand.
She did not offer much resistance. ‘Where were you hiding this and how much have you had?’ I prised it away from her.
She looked up at me. ‘Only a mouthful. I had a bottle in the wardrobe. It was my safety-belt.’
‘Don’t, Meg. I’ll help you. I promise.’
She ducked her head. ‘Why on earth should you?’
I set the glass on the bedside table and sat beside her. ‘My father told me something once. He said, in so many words, that we should take life seriously.’
‘Um,’ Meg said, and tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘He was right. We should take it very seriously. And laugh at it, too, but seriously.’
Meg’s hand crept towards mine and grasped it in a desperate way. ‘Oh, Fanny,’ she said, ‘and there was I thinking what a huge and awful joke life is.’
Will managed to rearrange his ministerial diary and, two days later, we drove over to Ember House. When it came to the point, I could not bring myself to walk through the front door. ‘Will, I can’t go in. Not yet.’
He put his arm round my shoulders and drew me close. ‘Come on, we’ll go round the garden.’
The grass was damp from recent rain, and the garden wore the drenched, drowning look that English gardens often do. I stopped to anchor a rogue spray of clematis by the wall and water showered down on me. Will brushed it off and kept his arm resting on my shoulders.
Soon it began to rain in earnest and he said, ‘We can’t put this off any longer,’ led me gently to the front door and inside. ‘Give me your hand,’ he instructed, and held it fast.
It was strange but even in that short period since my father’s death, the house felt quite different.
Will made coffee and I produced sandwiches. Will ate his hungrily but I only pecked at mine. I was thinking about the house, and how I could not bear to let it go.
‘Will, what do you think about living here?’
He looked thoroughly startled. ‘Live here? It hadn’t crossed my mind.’ He helped himself to an egg sandwich. ‘Fanny, are you serious?’
I knew it was mad and totally illogical, but I whispered, ‘It’s my home.’
Will put down the sandwich. Too late, I realized the implication of my words. ‘But it’s not mine,’ he said. ‘And I rather thought our house was our home.’
‘I don’t want to sell Ember House.’
He held me by my shoulders and searched my face. He seemed puzzled by what he saw, which irritated me. Was it so puzzling to be grieving for my father? ‘If you want me to think about it, of course I will. It’s just not what we planned.’
‘Oh, the plan.’ I shrugged him off, and witless with misery, slammed the coffee mugs into the sink.
‘Fanny, what is it?’
I stared out of the window and bit down on my knuckle. ‘I can’t get over the fact that Dad did not have me there when he died. It haunts me and I’ll never forgive myself.’
Will stood behind me and put his arms around me. ‘Hush, Fanny, hush.’
His mobile rang in the hall. Instinctively, he moved towards the sound. I leapt to my feet and blocked him. ‘No. Just this once, Will. No phones. Nothing.’
The phone fell silent. Will put his arms round me. ‘You think I don’t understand, Fanny, but I do…’ The old smile flashed, sweet and loving, and my sore heart lifted a trifle.
Now that I paid proper attention, I sensed a suppressed excitement in Will, a new tension. ‘What are you up to?’
‘This and that.’
‘You’d better tell me.’
‘OK.’ He went and sat down again. ‘Robert stopped me in the corridor. He said that in the next reshuffle the Exchequer was a definite possibility. But, Fanny, I have to get the car tax through.’
Just in time, I stopped myself laughing and pressed my hand to my mouth. I noticed it was trembling.
‘The deal was that if I backed the government on the National Health Bill I opposed, then…’
‘But as a minister you have to support the government. It doesn’t matter what you think.’
‘There’s support and support,’ he said.
Once or twice, Elaine and I had discussed power. What was it? In what sort of shape did it come? How did a wife fit around it? Very snary, we agreed. Power wraps a person up, as tight as liquor in a bonded store. Very snary are the courtiers, the adulation, the chauffeured cars, and the handing over of ideals in return for the commodity called power. Ideals are so much more uncomfortable than sitting warm and snug in the back of the limousine.
‘Well?’ He did not sound as sure as he looked. ‘What do you think?’
I struggled to assemble my thoughts. ‘Can we talk about this later?’
I abandoned Will and the kitchen and fled into the study. My father’s fountain pen rested on the desk where he had last put it down. The red light winked on the answer-machine. I picked up a book from a pile on a chair under the window, A Disquisition on the Grand Wines of Bordeaux, and dropped it back.
I grasped the edge of the curtain between fingertips that felt numb. Years ago I had got it wrong. Grief was not like a blade slicing into flesh. No, grief was dull, heavy: it made your limbs drag, your head ache. It mocked those who drooped under its weight, for I could swear my father was in the room. I could have sworn I could hear his voice.
‘After 1963,’ he was saying, and we are talking Bordeaux here, of course, ‘with its vintage of rain and rot and worthless wines, came 1964, badly undervalued because of the previous year. Nature, having taken away with one hand, now gave its lovely rich rounded elegant wines with the other…’
A tiny movement alerted me to Will’s presence behind me. With my back to him, I said, ‘There are so few people to whom one is joined, cell for cell, understanding for understanding. Far too few to lose or to betray.’
‘Fanny, darling, we’d better check over the papers,’ he said quietly.
We bundled up most of them, and conveyed them back to our house. Together, we worked through the obvious ones, stacking urgent bills and letters into one basket, less urgent into another. Finally, we came to a file with ‘Francesca’ written on it.
‘I’ll look at this later.’ I let my hand rest on top of it.
An eyebrow flew up. ‘I see.’
Will was not stupid. He invited me to share his work, his ambition, and I did not want to share the contents of a file belonging to my father.
Even so, I made sure that I opened the file in the privacy of our bedroom. I don’t know what I expected – legal or financial instructions, perhaps – but certainly not a child�
��s drawing of a house with a tiled roof, a large front door and pathway leading up to it. In front of the house were three figures: a stick man with a black hat, a stick woman with a bright red skirt and, suspended between them, a stick child with a bow in her hair.
It was a drawing I had done at nursery school.
The file also contained an essay written on lined paper. ‘Show the effect on European foreign policy of America’s isolationist stance during the 1930s, giving at least two examples.’ The mark had been C. There was also a poem, handwritten on pale pink paper: ‘Your absence grates on my skin/Which breaks into scarlet rubies/Until a red river slides towards the sea of my grief.’
I pressed my fingers to hot cheeks. The poem, a relic from a failed love affair – all right, the failed love affair with Raoul – was unutterably bad, but my father had chosen to keep it. Leafing through the remainder of the file’s contents, I discovered a wedding photograph of Will and me, an invitation for my father and me to the Chevalier du Tastevin dinner, which, once upon a time, I had coveted above all else, and a tiny curl of baby hair taped on to a photograph of Chloë at six months.
Eyes brimming, I shuffled them back into order – those small, telling pieces from my past had been carefully assembled by my father, my unsentimental father. As I replaced them in the file, I noticed another piece of folded paper. It was a sketch, made roughly in pencil, not professional. Whoever had been the artist had been impatient, stabbing the pencil far too hard on the paper. But the shape was obvious enough. It was of a house planned round a central courtyard with a loggia at one end. Underneath the sketch were the words ‘Il Fattoria. Val del Fiertino’.
Will was watching the television news.
‘Will…’ I sat down beside him on the sofa. ‘Will, I’ve decided to take my father’s ashes to Fiertino – as soon as I can get a flight. I know that’s where he wants to be. I’d rather not wait till September.’
The newscaster continued to talk.
‘Without me?’
‘Without you.’
‘And…’
‘I would like to go away. Just for a while.’
‘Of course you must, Fanny.’ He did not look at me. ‘If that’s what you want.’
15
Early on the Monday morning, I was almost ready.
I was saying goodbye to Will. A plumber banged away at a dripping pipe in our bathroom. Maleeka’s cleaning materials littered the hallway. The radio in the kitchen was at full blast. Will’s car was in the drive and the driver had kept the engine running. Will had lost his wallet and was rampaging upstairs in the search. In short, everything was perfectly normal – except that the following day I would be driven to the airport to catch a plane, and the scent of an unusual freedom in my nostrils was almost unbearable.
Will clattered downstairs, his briefcase half open. ‘Got it. What time are you flying?’
I tucked a copy of my flight schedule into the briefcase and zipped it shut. My husband’s mouth was set in a tight line, but it was not anger. It was something deeper and more worrying. Will was bracing himself against my going. I kissed him tenderly but with an almost palpable sense of relief, and he kissed me back, almost angrily. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘You will phone?’
‘Promise.’ I brushed my fingers over the set mouth. ‘Do your best.’
‘For what?’ he said, which was unlike him. ‘Is it worth it?’
I placed my hands lightly on his shoulders. ‘You know what for.’ As I had asked for comfort over my father, he had asked me to shore up his confidence and optimism. It was the least I could do.
His mouth softened, and he smiled down at me. I’m sorry about your father. I’ll miss him too. I’m sure you will find the best… the appropriate place to bury the ashes.’
I watched Will trudge towards the waiting car, fling his briefcase into the back and climb in after it.
Almost immediately, the phone rang.
‘Raoul, I’ve missed you.’
‘I’m sorry, Fanny, that I did not make the funeral, but you knew why.’
‘You were in Australia. Did it go well?’
‘I’ve got a nice deal shaping up that I will tell you about at a better time.’
‘How are the family?’
‘Larger and much more expensive. Thérèse says she feels a hundred but she doesn’t look it.’ His laugh was full of energy and conveyed deep admiration. ‘My wife is a beautiful woman.’
‘If I was very nice to her do you think she would tell me her secret?’
‘Living with me, clearly. We are going to Rome for a couple of years. Did I tell you?’ Like the Rothschilds of old, the Villeneuves frequently despatched their family members all round the wine world to consolidate business contacts.
‘Wonderful.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I need not ask if you miss your father. I want to tell you that I will very much. He was a good friend and I valued him the more because he was from an older generation. One does not have many such friends, and I am grateful for the trouble he took with me.’
‘Actually, tomorrow I’m taking his ashes back to Fiertino. I think that is where he would wish to be.’
To my surprise, Raoul did not endorse the plan – and, in the scheme of things, only Raoul, because of his friendship with my father, had the right to question my decision. Are you quite sure? Alfredo was a great romantic in many ways, Fanny, but his life was in Stanwinton. Perhaps… you are right. It will give you time. Give yourself a moment to investigate the wine. I would like your thoughts on the super Tuscans.’ He paused. ‘I would like to talk to you about the business. Will you contact me when you feel better?’
I promised I would.
The plumber called me, and I went upstairs to find out the worst, which was nothing much, but he charged royally for it. I wrote him a cheque and ushered him out of the house.
I was searching in the chest in the hall for my passport and came across a bundle of out-of-date ones roosting under a selection of scarves no one ever used. I had a particular fondness for Chloë’s old passports because I loved the photographs. The first was of a tiny minx with plaits. Then the half-formed teenager who glowered and sulked at the camera. Chloë had taken the up-to-date model with her, of course.
‘If you want to be a real friend,’ I begged Elaine, who had driven over the day before to console me over my father (Elaine had understood when I explained that, with my father’s death, I had been ordered up from the rear to the front line), ‘help me clean Chloë’s room. Please I couldn’t face it after she left.’
After lunch we went upstairs. As a pile of discarded clothes hindered complete access, I had to push hard on the door. I dumped them on the landing. Elaine surveyed the blasted heath. ‘Seen it before,’ she said. ‘It’s probably radioactive. Can’t Maleeka do it?’
‘She could, but she wouldn’t emerge for at least a year.’
Elaine picked up one of the Barbies that had migrated into a Barbie gene pool on a shelf stuffed with childhood objects that Chloë refused to relinquish. This one had long blonde hair, cone breasts, a wasp waist and nothing on. Elaine manipulated one leg up above the head. ‘I could sort of do that once,’ she said wistfully.
I laughed. ‘Chloë cherished great hopes of the Barbies, but they let her down. She never got over the fact that their legs wouldn’t bend into ballet positions.’
Elaine leant against the window-frame and looked out across the sunny lawn and the border, in which a few opportunistic delphiniums raised their plumes. ‘I am nearly forty-two,’ she murmured, ‘and I keep asking myself, “What else is there? Is this… me as I am now, is this all there is to life?”’
‘All’ is a big word and a foxy one. Ever since the Liz episode I had been wary of it. What did Elaine or I or Will expect from ‘all’? I don’t know. ‘All’ can mean soft, funny and silly memories placed side by side, like pieces of mosaic, which make up a picture that adds up to a great deal. They are precious, those memories. Chloë si
nging in her cot. Chloë winning the egg-and-spoon race at school. My father holding a glass of wine up to the light and asking, ‘What do you think, Francesca?’ Will lying with his head in my lap, at peace and drowsy…
I dropped a kiss on the minx in the earliest passport and tucked it away under a dark blue scarf patterned with red cherries that Chloë had once treasured and pulled out my own.
A movement made me turn round, passport in hand. It was Meg. ‘Fanny? Fanny, I’ve been thinking. Can I come too? I need a holiday. I wouldn’t mind seeing this place you and your father talked about so often. This special place.’
I was checking my passport details, and not paying much attention. ‘If you don’t mind, Meg, I think not.’
‘I wouldn’t be any bother.’
‘No,’ I said, with only a hint of panic.
‘I think it would be a good idea.’
I shoved my passport into my pocket. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to go alone.’
‘That’s quite clear, then.’ She pulled at a finger until the joint cracked. Her eyes narrowed and darkened.
To my astonishment, Will turned up at the airport. ‘I didn’t think we’d said goodbye properly.’
Weak with relief that I had got this far, I leant against him. ‘Must be a first.’
‘I’ve run away from school and the diary secretary was not amused.’
He felt warm, firm and, despite everything, reliable. The uncertainty had vanished and he was under control. Here was the embodiment of a successful politician who had come to see off his wife at the airport; the well-cut suit symbolized the fusion between his energy and achievements. It was Will at his most attractive and I never failed to respond.
‘Go carefully with the car tax, won’t you? Don’t lose patience and make a muddle,’ I said, then added, ‘If that’s what you want. If that’s what you still believe.’
‘I do.’ His gaze fixed on the bookshop behind me. ‘Why are you going, Fanny? Truthfully’
The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 16