The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

Raoul pressed on: ‘“Nor did they share them.’”

18

Will had shocked me once by remarking that he reckoned MPs often had no idea as to what they were voting for: they just headed for where their whips were standing guard. He let this drop as we drove to Chloe’s school for a parent-teacher evening. Chloe was fifteen and at a tricky stage: i.e. life was a production in which she took the starring role.

We were late. This was because Will had missed the agreed train to Stanwinton. A deal in the tea-room. He climbed into the car at the station and said, ‘Don’t say anything Fanny. Sorry, sorry.’

I let out the clutch. ‘Last time, if you remember, we were so late we had to sit behind the headmistress on the staff chairs.’

‘You should give thanks. It meant we only had to look at her back view, not the front.’

Will could always make me laugh. I reached over and laid my hand on his thigh. ‘What was it this time?’

‘That’s it,’ he said, sobering up. ‘I must talk to you about it.’

If Will thought he could sneak unnoticed into the audience, he was wrong. As we entered the school hall, the headmistress bore down on him and whisked him into captivity with a posse of senior staff. I sought out an anxious-looking Chloe. ‘Your father wants to know if there are any terrible surprises.’

Chloe looked rather pale. ‘Only the sodding maths,’ she said.

‘Don’t swear, darling.’

She looked even more pained. ‘You don’t understand, Mum. Our generation doesn’t think of it as swearing. It’s just words we use.’

‘Could you not use them, then?’

She shot me one of her looks. ‘It’s as bad as when you try to lecture me about sex. We are the informed generation, you know.’

Not, as it transpired, that well informed. Chloe’s maths was dire, so were physics and chemistry; and the geography teacher was not convinced that Chloe had grasped the nettle.

‘At least,’ I said to Will, back at the Stanwinton house, ‘her Italian is forging ahead.’

‘Good.’ Will dumped a pile of washing on the kitchen floor.

I groaned. ‘There’s a laundry basket over there.’

Will achieved a look of utter surprise. ‘Oh, of course.’

I watched him stuff the clothes into the basket. ‘Fanny, can we talk?’ He draped his jacket over the back of a chair. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a drink anywhere? You haven’t hidden a shifty bottle?’

‘I wish.’

‘No. No. Of course not.’

Will and I had stuck to our decision not to keep drink in the house as it was unfair on Meg. The place to enjoy wine was London. It was no great deprivation, we agreed. But there were times…

‘It’s the vote on fishing and shooting.’

‘I thought that had all been sorted, that our side were to vote for banning them.’

‘That’s it,’ said Will. ‘I would never fish or shoot, but to forbid them makes me uneasy. It is to ban a fundamental freedom, and I am not sure I should agree.’

I tied on my plastic apron, a present from Chloe, with its picture of a cat spatchcocked over the seat of an armchair while its owner looked on crossly, with the words ‘Never give up’ written underneath, took out of the fridge a cheese and mushroom quiche I had made that afternoon, and put it into the oven to warm. ‘But you have to. You’re a whip.’

‘No, I don’t have to. I could vote against. After all, it is what I believe in. It’s a question of conscience.’

I handed him a couple of tomatoes – the cold, round English type. ‘Could you slice these for me, Will?’ I fetched a lettuce from the pantry, to give myself a few seconds to consider. ‘You’d lose the whip.’

Will sliced away, if not with skill, with diligence. ‘Chuck in the wrath of the animal-rights people, too,’ he said.

I froze in the act of shredding the lettuce into the salad bowl. That was different. ‘You can’t, then,’ I said flatly. ‘It might endanger Chloe. They’d find out where she goes to school. She’d be a target. We’d be a target.’

Will deposited the tomatoes in the bowl. ‘I don’t think Chloe would be in danger. They would choose better targets.’

‘How do you know?’

Will ignored that. ‘Fanny, I’d be cast out. There’s no question of that. Permanent backbencherdom. But I can’t quite bring myself to sell out.’ With a little jerk of anxiety, I saw that we had come to an unexpected crossroads and Will wanted me to choose for him.

‘Will…’ I heard myself say, and wrapped my hands in my apron. ‘Please don’t do this. Don’t sacrifice all you’ve worked for. The figures suggest the Bill is going to go through whether you vote for it or not. It would be… a wasted gesture.’

Will said quietly, ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

I turned away before shame got the better of me. ‘The quiche is ready,’ I said.

Later that night, when we were in bed, Will asked, ‘Is that your last word?’

I grasped the edge of the sheet and drove the point of the corner under a nail. ‘Yes, it is. You’re making your way, and that’s what you want and what I want for you. And there is Chloe. I have to think of Chloe. So do you.’

‘And conviction and principle?’

I wanted to say that the question was bigger than me. I wanted to be a coward and protest that I was confined to the business of stacking sheets and moving food from the oven to the table, and that some questions were impossible to answer. I wanted to say, too, that it took only the merest hint of a threat to Chloe to make me take the stand.

It would not do. If I still possessed a shred of honesty, those excuses were not the whole truth. Of course – passionately anti-hunting – I minded about the fish and the birds. Of course I would have died for Chloe. Yet, somewhere along the line, I had grown accustomed to the up-and-coming politician who was my husband. Painfully and slowly, yes, but I had adapted to fit the mould and learnt to relish his role and mine.

He rolled towards me. ‘Come here.’

I obeyed. Will used me roughly, carelessly and without finesse but, because I deserved it, I made no protest.

The following week, I joined Will at the mansion flat in Westminster.

He was sitting on the sofa. It was growing dark but he had not turned on the light.

‘You’ll have seen the vote, Fanny. But I don’t think I did the right thing.’

I sat down beside him and took his hand. ‘I don’t know what to say, Will, except that we have to make our way, too.’

‘You could say I’m a fool. A fool, furthermore, who has given in.’

There was no point now in not sticking to my guns. ‘Or is being realistic’

The sofa was covered with a cheap, rough-textured slub cotton and I picked away at it. Will disengaged his hand and got to his feet. ‘It was my call, my decision, Fanny. Nobody can make me vote one way or the other.’

I swallowed, tasting the acid of compromise.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I answered, but that was not true either. I did know.

Will stuck his hands into his pockets. He was already adapting to the situation, making the best of it. ‘That’s that,’ he said, and his smile was ironic. ‘These things come up. You deal with them and then you move on. We’d better get dressed for the reception.’

If I listened carefully, I could trace both mockery and disappointment – in himself.

And in me.