The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

this is what I am? This is what I might be? This is where I will go?

I had brought my wine books and embarked on a programme of study. I immersed myself in local history. I read about Punic wars, and of the chestnut woods which had supplied the timber for Roman galleys. Of Popes passing through, of civil wars, and of the pilgrim road – the via francigena – which connected Fiertino with the whole of Europe.

In the cool of the early morning, I walked the hills until I knew that Benedetta would be waiting to give me breakfast. In the evenings, I strolled along the road still pulsing with the day’s heat, with the cicadas at full cry, and ate at Angelo’s in the piazza.

By degrees, I explored the town, plunging into the noise-filled network of streets and houses where past and present muddled agreeably along side by side. In the church, modern stained glass sat uncomfortably in the fifteenth-century stonework and I went over to look at the frescos on the north wall, which were famous, and squabbled over pleasurably by art historians.

But if I had expected the glowing, gentle Christ of Bellini, or a massively reassuring Masaccio Divinity, I could not have been more wrong. The paintings depicted the erring human at the mercy of violent passions. A cauldron boiled a rich man and his wife. A stern angel speared a man in an obvious state of lust. Naked, screaming women clustered in the foreground. The corpses of children and babies were strewn upon the earth. A second angel bore down, sword in hand, upon a fleeing priest. Behind the scenes of retribution, this landscape of terror, an unforgiving desert stretched into infinity.

A notice on the wall informed the reader that the frescos, painted at the time of a plague visitation, ‘depict God’s displeasure for man’s eternal state of sin’.

Definitely not a God of love, then.

I went out into the sunlight, in no hurry to return.

Thirstily, I absorbed the shapes and nuances of this landscape. It was strange to me but, yet, it took only a trick of light, a glimpse of a building out of the corner of my eye, a snatch of a song, and a shutter in my mind folded back… and I was in bed at Ember House, slipping deeper into sleep folding over me to the sound of my father’s voice.

In the old days, Benedetta told me, the women beat their washing on the flat stone by the bridge. On St Anthony’s day, the men brought in hay to church and asked the statue of the saint to make their crops yield and the perpetual Tuscan rose, le rose d’ogni mese, flourished unimpeded everywhere. ‘It’s not like that now,’ she said. ‘Obviously’

Up in the churchyard, surrounded by the cypresses, lay generations of the Battista family, my family. They had names like Giovanni, Maria-Theresa, Carolina, Bruno, and I wrote them down in my notebook.

The week slipped by.

One morning I sat down to rest on the slope above Casa Rosa. The sun made me drowsy. I closed my eyes. From somewhere I could hear my father. Once upon a time, there was a family who lived in a bigfarmhouse.

I opened my eyes. For the first time, I noticed a line of pylons which marched through the farms and fanned out across the valley, then on into the distance. The heat haze shimmered above the house, giving it a trembling, insubstantial quality. I was afraid that, if I reached out to touch it, it would disappear.

It was going to be another scorching day.

I rubbed a sprig of thyme between my fingers, and sniffed, I saw a car drive slowly along the road and come to a halt outside Casa Rosa.

17

When I gave birth to Chloe, Elaine gave me her old baby clothes. A good quantity, to start me off, she said. They were a little worn, and stiffened from constant washing. The hem of one tiny dress needed mending, a button from a pair of dungarees was missing. But I loved that testimony to their previous life. In giving them, Elaine had welcomed me into the domestic pilgrim train. In time, I passed them on again.

It struck me then that, one way or another, the past has a way of keeping pace. Or, rather, it kept its hooks pretty firmly dug into the present.

Raoul, presenting himself at my front door, was definitely from the past. He did not offer any detailed explanations, saying only that he and Therese had been house hunting in Rome, Therese had returned to France and he had stayed on. ‘So here I am, Fanny.’

He had changed very little over the years, except to become – naturally – more assured; he fitted, as the French say, into his skin. He had always dressed well and taken care of his appearance, but never at the cost of the important things.

‘I’m so pleased to see you.’ I kissed him on the cheek.

‘I’m taking you to lunch,’ he said. ‘We are eating in a hotel owned by a friend of mine.’

We drove north towards Montepulciano. Raoul talked knowledgeably about the wine, its history, and, more importantly, its future. The hotel was a modest house tucked away in the village of Chianciano. ‘Don’t be fooled by the paper tablecloths,’ Raoul said, as we were ushered into a room filled with diners. ‘This place is a local legend.’

We fussed pleasurably over the menu but there was no debate about the choice of wine. We ordered a Prosecco with the rocket salad and plumped for a 1993 ruby Brunello di Montalcino to accompany our onion tart. It was complex and almost flawless. ‘The fruit of a perfectionist,’ I said, after the first mouthful.

‘But of course,’ Raoul said. ‘He dares everything; waits until the very last moment of ripeness before harvesting.’

Noses in our wine glasses, we paused. I breathed in summer and fruit, sun and mist – a voluptuous, lazy exchange – and searched for the words with which to describe it precisely.

There was a familiar concern in Raoul’s eye. ‘You haven’t lost your zest for the business.’

I shook my head and grinned. ‘I’m my father’s daughter.’

‘Who can predict what man and the elements can rustle up between them?’ he said. ‘Magic. And who could resist it?’

I put down my glass. ‘Sometimes it’s not the magic we seek,’ I said.

He gave the smallest of frowns.

‘Sometimes, I suppose, it is change. Diversion. A different way of looking at things.’ I found myself telling him about Meg, and some of the more difficult moments at Stanwinton. The sun, the wine were loosening my tongue and it was not unpleasant. ‘She once said she hated me for knowing when to stop…’

‘Lucky you. Knowing when to stop is one of the secrets of survival, Fanny. And knowing when not to. Speaking of which, tell me about Battista’s Fine Wines? What are your plans?’

‘I haven’t talked to Will yet. Dad’s assistant is holding the fort for the time being, but when I get back…’ I looked across at Raoul. ‘I couldn’t let his business go.’

Are you feeling better?’ he asked, carefully.

I took a moment or two to answer. ‘You were right in one sense, Raoul; there is not as much of my father in Fiertino as I had imagined. I had all of him back home. But I find there is a great deal of me. I am beginning to feel much more happy and peaceful.’

‘Not everyone can say that when they go abroad. Most of them discover bedbugs, bad stomachs and an extra dose of bad temper. You know, Fanny, I have often thought…’

‘What?’

‘Your father?…’ He leant towards me. ‘Forgive me if I am trespassing, but did he really want to come back to Fiertino? After all, he could have done so many times.’ Raoul shrugged. ‘He had such a strong ideas… and places change. They do not stand still, and your father was a clever man, he knew. It wasn’t realistic to come back and to expect it to be the same.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you are right.’ I changed the subject. ‘How is your wonderful family?’

Raoul took the hint. ‘Getting older, but there is nothing startling about that.’

And Therese?’