The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

Signora Berto’s accent was difficult and I struggled to follow. But I think I caught, ‘Your grandmother was fine- looking. She was brave too. She worked in the fields, even when the guns were going, to bring in the harvest when there was no one else left to do it.’

‘My grandmother did that? My father never mentioned it.’

‘He was only a small boy. He could not know everything. We took good care to hide things from the children.’

My grandmother. Dodging mines, driving oxen, diving for cover when the shelling became impossible. Tengo famiglia, I muttered silently, to the shade of my father – which was as much to do with holding memory as with anything else.

The kitchen was tiny, the architect had followed instructions to be economical, and it was cluttered with religious pictures, church magazines, papers, tomatoes piled on plates, some with skins hardening and splitting from a scale disease. A Formica-topped table occupied most of the space but we squeezed round it and ate Benedetta’s famed spaghetti con verdura and veal fried with sage in butter.

The valley was changing, they told me. For one thing, the olives were now big business and everyone was hurrying to put in for subsidies. For another, the English had invaded, snapping up the older, more picturesque houses. ‘No matter,’ said Silvio, whose son was working on a conversion of a big house on the Rome road. ‘The English have the problems and pay the bills. We have the jobs.’

I told them I planned to walk up on the hills in the early morning. Signora Berto looked alarmed. ‘Be sure to wrap up warmly,’ she said. ‘You might catch a cold.’

The temperature in the kitchen must have been twenty-six degrees Celsius at least. I tried to catch Benedetta’s eye, but she was agreeing with her sister-in-law. ‘You can borrow my scarf.’ She patted my arm. ‘Tomorrow you will drive me around and I will show you everything.’

Benedetta was as good as her word. Talking non-stop, she piloted me around the village. I was shown the church, the piazza with its colonnade and fountain, and the ancient tethering stone where the merchant trains used to halt. Benedetta introduced me to the shop, which sold rosaries and prayer cards, the mini-supermarket, which operated from the ground floor of the bell tower, which was stocked with local olive oil, tubes of garlic pesto, dried tomatoes and out-of-date boxes of Baci chocolates, and the delicatessen, which sold bottled artichoke hearts and a mortadella sausage the size of a side-plate.

Afterwards we drove along the valley in bright, hot sun. ‘There,’ Benedetta said eventually, as I nosed the car between an avenue of chestnuts. ‘There is the fattoria where your father’s family used to live.’

‘Oh,’ I said, which was all I could manage.

The heat slapped at my flesh as I got out of the car. ‘The fattoria was old, very old,’ my father told me, ‘and the brick was the softest colour you can imagine. Surrounding the house was a garden with a statue and a box maze. I thought it the most beautiful place on earth.’

So what was this ill-proportioned, mean-spirited building? Grimy net-curtain tongues hung out of the windows; there was no garden, and the outbuildings were of the same prefabricated material.

‘Did your father not tell you, Fanny, that the old house was destroyed in the war?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

I circled the house. The sun reddened the skin on my arms while I considered the crude, blind execution. This was not the ancestral home of the Battistas but a substitute after war had done its worst. That was the best that could be said – this attempt to put a face, any face, on the violence and disorder.

I retraced my steps and my eye was caught by traces of a stone arch that had been incorporated into the concrete wall. A beautiful, graceful reminder of what had been lost.

Benedetta did her best to shore up my disappointment. ‘The bombardment was very bad.’

‘Who lives there, now?’

‘Strangers.’ Her tone was hostile. After the war, they came up from the south. We don’t know them very well.’

‘That was over fifty years ago, Benedetta.’ I started up the engine and headed back to the village. After a while, I asked, ‘Benedetta… do you think it would be possible to stay on at Casa Rosa?’

Benedetta’s face creased into a big smile. ‘Of course. We make the telephone calls now.’

When I discussed my decision with Meg to stay on in Fiertino for the rest of the month, she was her usual frank self. ‘It’s not like you to desert your post, Fanny. Will is quite upset.’

‘He’d better talk to me, then.’

‘I’m sure he will. I’m just repeating what he said. It’s been tricky for him. He got blasted in the press for refusing to appear on Newsnight. Accusations of cowardice, et cetera.’

‘Poor Will. I didn’t know. But he’ll survive. It’s the silly season, and everyone will be on holiday.’

‘I can’t imagine what’s keeping you out there that’s so important.’

A house,’ I confessed, savouring my rush of pleasure. ‘It’s called Casa Rosa.’

A house? I’ve never heard you express interest in a house before. If you had said wine, I would have understood. What’s this house got that’s so marvellous?’

‘It has rooms,’ I wanted to say, ‘beautiful rooms, each requiring contemplation, my utmost attention, the seriousness of rapt observation.’

Meg signed off with ‘I suppose I’ll have to stand in for you.’

Will was not happy. He rang as I was preparing to walk down to the village square to eat, on Benedetta’s recommendation, at Angelo’s cafe.

I tried to explain to him that I had fallen in love with the Casa Rosa and tried to point out – gently – that some time off would be good, perhaps for both of us.

‘You’re probably right,’ he conceded, ‘but… Fanny… is there something I don’t know, something we should talk about?’

‘I’m sorry. I know it will be a bit inconvenient.’

‘I don’t really get it.’

‘Try.’

‘Why now? You can go back any time.’

I felt as though we were at opposite ends of a large room, straining to make ourselves heard, but I was not going to move.

‘What’s this house got that’s so marvellous?’

‘I’ll bring you back photos and show you.’

‘I’ve checked with Mannochie. There are a couple of things that you really should be at.’

‘Does Mannochie ever give up? Get Meg to stand in for me. She would like that.’

He sounded doubtful. ‘It’s not ideal.’

‘It’s the first time, Will.’

There was an uneasy silence. ‘Fanny, am I losing you?’

Then I felt guilty, and guilt generally succeeded in making me lose my temper. ‘Will,’ I hissed down the phone, ‘I have looked after Chloe, run your house and… put up with Meg. I have smiled my way through endless charity functions, thousands of suppers, teas, meetings, and endless bloody surgeries. I gave up a job I loved to do so, not to mention my time, my weekends, and great chunks of my life. All I’m asking for is a few weeks off-duty. My father has died and I want to think about him. I need to think about him. I am tired and sad. I am missing our daughter.’ I might have added, ‘I am lost.’

I heard the snap of the cigarette lighter. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that.’

‘Well, you do now’

When I was fourteen, the dentist had removed the braces from my teeth. For years, it seemed, my mouth had been weighed down with metal and every day the sharp edges had nagged another area of tender gum into an ulcer. Smiling had been painful and never for one minute did I forget that I was ugly and awkward. The moment of release from their torture was to experience a miraculous airborne quality in my mouth.

I put down the phone, only to relive that miraculous airborne quality of pure release.

Of course I was sad, but the sadness was twisted into other strands – and to feel sadness was a part of being intensely alive. I sat on the stairs in the Casa Rosa and propped up my chin in my hands. How often do we have time to seek out our secret selves and bring them into the light? To examine and say, with delighted recognition, so