The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

‘I can only explain it as a loss of nerve,’ he said. ‘I find I’m not so sure any more. Facing things and fighting battles feels more difficult to me now than it did at the beginning. I used to be so certain about the things we needed to achieve. Now I wonder whether we do any good at all.’ He looked up at me ruefully. ‘I don’t know why I should feel that now, at the grand old, battle-hardened age of forty-eight.’

I looked at him and saw for the first time that it was only after blazing desire has turned to tenderness and familiarity, that true knowledge – the knowledge which I sought – was possible. And I thought with a little flutter of nerves of the degree of risk which I had taken. Not that I regretted it, but it was worth considering the destruction of what might have been.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What else.’

‘You disappeared out here and seemed so absorbed in a quite different world, and I didn’t think I could catch up. I thought you would vanish. Then I thought I had kept you against your will. No, I don’t mean against your will exactly, but caged, and when you had the first chance to fly away, you did.’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘I suppose I was jealous of Fiertino, and of you in Fiertino.’

I felt a pang of sympathy. ‘So the minute I go away you develop a first-class case of nerves?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.’

A little later, he said. ‘You really love this place… the Casa Rosa, and the town. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s in my bloodstream. But that is not to say it is my father’s Fiertino. That was different.’

Will stood by the window and looked out across the valley. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go back.’

I did not have any illusions. I understood perfectly that once Will got back within sound and scent of the Westminster arena, his ears would prick up and his nose would twitch.

‘Listen to me,’ I said and came and stood beside him and gave the gentlest of nudges. ‘You are fine. Absolutely fine.’

He bent over and kissed me.

The following day, I went to the priest and arranged for a small stone to be placed, with my father’s name and dates, among the rest of the Battistas. And then I turned my face homeward. We spent the last few hours at Casa Rosa setting it in order. I swept floors, stacked china, dusted the bedrooms. Together Sacha and I packed up Meg’s things and talked about her.

When evening came, and the sun flooded the valley with shadows, I sat by the window of the bedroom and drank in the last moments until Will called, ‘Fanny, please come.’

I loved Casa Rosa, and never more so than when I was saying goodbye to it. The last task was to fasten the shutters and I had insisted that I did it.

Will and Sacha waited in the car. I gave it a final, lingering inspection before we drove down to Benedetta, who had a present for me. It was a small, blurred photograph of a house whose roof had fallen in and whose blackened beams pointed burnt fingers to the open sky. I could just make out a fountain in the garden, which was filled with rubble and churned-up earth. I turned the photograph over: on the back was written, ‘1799-1944’.

‘The fattoria,’ she said. I put it into my handbag and kissed her goodbye. ‘Santa Patata’ she said, ‘you will be back.’

I looked back only once as we took the road for Rome, and the view shimmered into a brilliant radiance of olive tree, scarlet poppy and vine. I thought of Meg.

How cross she would be that she was not here to climb into the hot car and say, ‘Poor me, I’ve got the worst seat.’

I pictured the vines pushing their roots deep into the terroir and the sun on the grapes. ‘Allow the sun to shine on the grapes,’ my father would say, ‘until the last possible moment, and it will seduce the fruit into such richness and flavour.’

22

We brought Meg home and buried her in the Stanwinton churchyard. Will said he wanted time to think about a gravestone and I was to leave it to him. So I did.

Reclaimed by the charity suppers, the good works and the regular journeys to London, I went back to work. Mannochie had almost – but not quite – forgiven me for my defection. ‘Train tracks, Mrs S,’ he whispered into my ear at the Glee Club’s annual fund-raising evening when I had the misfortune to laugh after an excruciating rendition of ‘London’s Burning’. The eyelash-dye appointment was booked the next morning.

I was glad of it when, a couple of days later, I blinked back tears as POD artists in clowns’ motley wooed the children in the cancer ward into laughter. ‘Look,’ said a mother, who was standing beside me, pointing out her bald daughter. ‘She’s laughing, she’s really laughing.’ She pulled out a photograph from her bag and showed it to me. ‘Carla used to have the longest plaits,’ she said.

‘So did mine,’ I replied – and I was the lucky one: the lucky, lucky mother.

Elaine rang up. ‘So you didn’t: leave Will,’ she said. ‘I had an idea that you might.’

‘I did think about it,’ I said.

‘I’m leaving Neil,’ she said, ‘and setting up my knitwear business. Will you wear my jumpers, Fanny?’

I breathed in deeply. ‘Always.’

Probate for my father’s estate came through. There was little money and it was clear that there was no option but to sell the house. As for the business, I had plans for it. As I explained to Will, I would have less time for his side of things but I would do my best not to let him down.

He listened quietly. ‘I don’t have a problem with that,’ he said.

I touched his cheek. ‘Nor should you.’

He flashed his old grin at me. ‘It’s your turn. And while you are at it, Fanny, do you think you could make us some money?’

I rang Raoul and told him I was taking over Battista’s, and could we still do business his end?

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I look forward to it. And, Fanny…’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘Yes.’

Armed with cardboard boxes and cleaning equipment, Maleeka and I drove over to Ember House and began the task of packing up my father’s things.

‘Izt good mans,’ she said, as she cleared out the saucepan cupboard. ‘I know.’

As always, Maleeka was oddly comforting. ‘I know, too, Maleeka.’

It took us several days, and as the furniture – except for the pieces carefully chosen for Chloe – was removed, Ember House assumed the peeled, denuded aspect of a dwelling in which life had gone away somewhere else. I went through my father’s papers and sorted out the business files. The rest I burnt – letters from my mother and Caro, tax returns going back twenty years… anything. I was keeping his desk, the blue and white fruit bowl, the framed photograph of the Etruscans and a selection of books.

I rang my mother and asked if she wanted anything sent over. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I left it all behind.’ She was coughing. ‘A cold. I’ve been quite sick with it.’

It struck me that I could do more to breathe the mother-daughter relationship into existence, but there did not seem any point. My mother had made that choice years ago. ‘Get better soon.’

Sally protested. ‘And a person could die of coughing here before they get any sympathy.’

‘Art not paying you enough attention?’

‘Ouch,’ Sally exclaimed. ‘He’s just pinched my butt.’

After the final session at Ember House, I returned home exhausted and filthy. Sacha insisted on making supper. I watched him boil up the pasta and open a bottle of ready-made sauce. ‘Sacha, I want you to know that you’re wonderful.’

He placed a heaped plate in front of me and sat down with his. ‘This looks disgusting.’

I ate a mouthful, then a second. It was disgusting, and I was hit by such a longing for Benedetta’s fragrant sauces, for wine, olives and sun, that I almost cried out. Sacha stared at his plate. ‘I wish Mum was here.’ Then he pushed away the plate and cried.