Will deposited the tomatoes in the bowl. ‘I don’t think Chloë 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 Chloë. I have to think of Chloë. 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 Chloë 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 Chloë. 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.
And Will was right.
Back at Casa Rosa, I stripped to the skin and washed at the basin by the window that overlooked the valley. The water ran down from my shoulders to my toes, cool and sweet, and I thought of Lucilla’s sufferings – my unknown great-aunt – and of the terrible things that had happened to her. Poor Lucilla: she had imagined that in marrying she was satisfying her private desires. Yet on account of her husband’s politics they had become a public matter.
The towel crunched against my shoulders, which were a little tender from the sun. I rubbed cream into my legs and arms and bent down to clip my toenails. Their rims were white against my brown skin.
Raoul knocked on the door at precisely eight o’clock. ‘May I come in?’ Tonight, he had changed into a formal linen suit.
I stood aside. ‘Yes. Yes, do.’
Without further preliminaries, he stepped into the house and took me in his arms. I let him.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ Raoul ordered, holding me close.
‘But I should be,’ I replied.
He touched his finger to my lips. ‘Shush… I know’ He twined his fingers through my hair and tugged until my scalp rippled. ‘I have wanted to do that for a long time. Never cut your hair, will you, Fanny? So thick, and dark.’
‘When I’m old, I’ll have to.’
Raoul bent over and kissed me. His lips were dry, and there was a faint trace of wine on his breath and the smell of his expensive aftershave – a hint of unspoken and mysterious pleasures. I placed my hands on Raoul’s chest and pushed him away gently. ‘Won’t we be late?’
He released me. ‘Fanny, what I love about you is your innocence.’
Astonished, I looked up at him. ‘But I’m not innocent,’ I protested. ‘Not in the least.’
Raoul and I returned in the small hours to Fiertino, having dined lavishly en famille at La Foce and sampled wines from the golden year of 1970. The talk had been almost exclusively of wine: new methods, new production, the use of oak casks… The Italian slipped from me easily and fluently now, and the language of wine gave me no trouble.
The melon we ate was perfumed with summer. The meat was so tender that it fell apart at the touch of a fork. The grapes that accompanied the cheese were dark, and bursting with juice.
Raoul was at his best. The elegant rooms and furniture provided a setting that suited him. Every so often he sent me a look or touched my shoulder. Look, he was saying, at how seductive I can make seduction. Please enjoy it. This, here, tonight, is a taste of what we will have. Light, joyous, civilized, and full of sensual pleasures.
Helped by the wine, I talked and laughed, relished the feel of my linen dress on my skin, the fall of my hair on my shoulders.
I described my father’s interests to my host, and imagined being woken by Raoul. Still drenched with sleep, I would be warm, face washed smooth by unconsciousness, naked, and I would allow him to do what he wished. It would be a moment of pleasure and sensation: to be tasted, savoured and noted. Exquisite. Complex. Flawless.
My hostess offered coffee in tiny brittle cups and I told her about my daughter. She was clever, she would be beautiful… and, suddenly, I was gripped by a terror at how easy it would be to destroy Chloë’s optimism and trust. As easy as it would be to drop and break one of my hostess’s coffee cups.
We drove back over the hills in bright, intense moonlight. The cypresses pointed dark fingers up into the sky. Raoul parked the car outside Casa Rosa. ‘I’m asking you again, can I come in?’ He leant over and brushed back the hair from my hot face. ‘I can’t not ask. I don’t want to ask. I am desperately afraid, but I have to ask.’
Again he kissed me, and I was startled by how different it was. With Raoul there were no accustomed pathways that had been followed across the years, no previous knowledge, except for what I now saw was an imperfect memory of what happened in the tree-house. Had it been so very bad?
‘I have always loved you,’ he said. ‘It has been a long time. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love Thérèse. I do, and she would die if she ever knew what I was saying to you, and I would never harm her. Am I making sense?’
I touched his cheek. ‘Lovely sense.’
It was an extraordinarily intimate moment.
The interior of the car was growing very hot and I opened the door and climbed out, conscious of the arrangement of my arms and legs, of the texture of my dress, of the sweat on my body.
I looked up at a night sky sprayed with pinpoints of light. ‘I can’t get over what a difference a few hundred miles makes,’ I said to Raoul, who was standing beside me. ‘You never see
sky like this in England… nothing so beautiful’.
‘Has it been worth it, Fanny?’ he asked.
‘Who knows? A few years back I would have said yes, but I don’t know any more.’
‘That sounds quite healthy. As nothing is certain, we might as well own up to it.’
‘Uncomfortable, though.’
Raoul was not looking at the sky. ‘It took me a long time to get over the tree-house,’ he said, and we had arrived at the point of the evening. ‘It haunts me. It also amazed me how sex can destroy something so quickly. Just like that.’
I let my hand rest on his arm. ‘You know… I knew nothing about sex, or not much, and I was frightened by the experience.’ I smiled. ‘But I got over it. It took a little while, and by then you had gone back to France. Life went on in a different way. It was bad timing.’
Raoul took my hand and we wandered towards the house. In the moonlight, Casa Rosa appeared larger than it was, mysterious, and its windows glinted darkly in the moonlight.
‘Are you unhappy, Fanny?’
‘I came to bury Alfredo’s ashes. I can’t quite decide where yet, but I don’t think he minds waiting. I think he would want me to take my time. And… I suppose… I came out here to escape, for a bit, and to think. I have been unhappy, but I don’t think significantly so.’
I touched the wooden column by the front door. ‘Even the wood is hot.’
Raoul pushed me up against the column. I felt beautiful, mysterious and elated. I felt like a bird climbing into flight. And why not? Once, Will had betrayed me. Why not I? Uncertainty, mystery, playfulness… could be mine. I could take them and bundle them up into an area marked ‘Private’, and Will would never know.
Raoul placed one hand on my breast, the other at my waist and pressed his fingers into the curve of my back. It was a confident gesture. ‘Second time luckier, Fanny.’
I stretched out my neck and waited for my surrender. Willing my surrender.
The past dug in its hook. What was it I had promised myself so long ago? If I worked where Will did and watched the prowling men, I would have fought to keep the faith, to cherish a perfection.
And then I thought of Will, clearly and properly, and I knew that if Raoul and I went into Casa Rosa together, that would be the moment at which our marriage died. And what would remain? A man and a woman living under one roof, and the rooms under that roof would be empty and echoing.
‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘Raoul, I’ve made a mistake.’
‘Fanny…’
‘I wish I hadn’t, but I have. I can’t get away with it.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Not in that way. I can’t get away with it. With what’s in my head.’
‘Could I point out, Fanny, that at this moment I’m not interested in what is going on in your head?’ Raoul’s hand tightened on my flesh and fell away.
‘I’m very sorry. I don’t expect you to understand.’
‘That is beside the point,’ he said, and moved away.
While we had been talking, a figure had stepped round the side of the house. It was a woman dressed in a cotton skirt that adapted itself smoothly to the lines of her body as she moved.
‘Hallo,’ said Meg. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to return. I wasn’t sure that the taxi had dumped me at the right place. Then I spotted a wine book on the kitchen table.’ She moved forward and the moon outlined her in a sharp, silver light. ‘Hallo, Raoul, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Fanny always keeps you to herself whenever you come over.’
Raoul did not miss a beat. He went over and kissed Meg’s cheek. ‘Fanny did not mention…’
Meg submitted to Raoul’s embrace. ‘That was nice.’ She touched her cheek. ‘We should meet more often. Come to that, Will didn’t mention that you were here.’
‘Will doesn’t know,’ I said.
Meg looked from Raoul to me. ‘Oh, well,’ she said.
Raoul laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I will be in touch. Maybe we can all have dinner somewhere before I go home.’
All three of us knew this was a fiction.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Meg. ‘That would be cosy.’
19
‘Just what are you doing here?’ I demanded after Raoul had driven away.
‘Arriving in the nick of time, it would seem,’ she said drily.
There was no answer to that.
Meg followed me into the kitchen and dropped her suitcase on to the floor.
‘If I said, Fanny, that it seemed a little greedy of you to have all this space in a lovely house in Italy and not to share it… or I could say, that I missed you. So does Will. He does love you, you know. And…’ She bit her lip, but spoke with her usual mockery, ‘I love whoever Will loves…’
Her eyes shifted away, and I knew she was frightened as to my reaction.
Meg commandeered the single chair in the kitchen, leaving me to stand. ‘He was nice. My darling brother is always nice to me. But he made it plain that he didn’t wish me to appear at his side. He said…’ She grimaced. ‘He said it was your place, not mine. But before you go all dewy, he had probably calculated that if I stood in for you people would talk.’
‘Meg -’
‘Will never gives up. When he dies you’ll find “percentage swing” engraved on his heart.’
‘Who taught him to be like that in the first place?’
‘I suppose it might have had something to do with me.’ Meg nudged her suitcase with a foot. ‘I’m sorry to have surprised you, Fanny, it was not nice of me, but you can make room. We’ve lived together long enough.’
My energy had returned and I knew I had to confront Meg. The compromises were over. ‘Go home,’ I said. ‘I won’t have you here. This is my breathing space.’
Meg’s lips quivered. ‘Don’t be nasty, Fanny. I’m not sure I can bear it.’
‘Try.’
‘I have tried, and I need you.’
It was close to midnight. It was hot, I was bone tired, the airport was miles away and, as usual, Meg had brought her baggage of the funny, the sad and the monstrous with her, and there was nothing much to be done.
We cleared a space in the second bedroom. Inhaling camphor, I knelt down by the chest of drawers in the corridor and searched among its contents for extra sheets. Eventually, I found a pair with embroidered initials, MS, at the corner and we made up Meg’s bed.
‘Clearly, this was meant,’ she said.
Heated with the effort of dragging furniture around, we went outside and walked up the road.
‘What will you do with me in the morning?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
Our feet stirred up a wake of white dust as we passed. Cicadas sang in the undergrowth. The darkness was scented – basil and marjoram, a hint of lemon – and far, far removed from the cool, rain-laden, sodden air of Stanwinton.
I broke the silence. ‘I’ve been out of touch. Is there any news?’
‘The polls show that support is slipping,’ Meg sounded troubled, ‘but what can you expect? Everyone needs a change. People get fed up with continuity and good intentions.’
We walked past the clump of olives and the vineyard where the vines grew straight and disciplined. At the end of each row there was a rosebush.
‘Nice detail,’ observed Meg.
I pinched a leaf or two of wild thyme between my fingers and sniffed. ‘Smell this. You’ll never buy herbs in a bottle again.’
At the point where the road divided, we halted. One fork led down into Fiertino, whose lights, a bright contrast against the dark sky, were strung in a necklace of brilliants. The other snaked up past Casa Rosa and over the hill. Meg pushed back her hair. ‘It’s hot.’
‘That’s its point, to be as different from Stanwinton as possible.’ I spoke more passionately than I’d intended.
‘Poor you, you’ve got it bad.’
‘I have. But I’ve sorted out a few things while I’ve been here.’
‘If you call Rao
ul sorting out,’ she said.
We walked on. ‘Raoul and I are good friends. I knew him long before I met Will.’
‘If you say so, Fanny.’ Meg scuffed at a stone with a sandalled foot. ‘I have been good, Fanny,’ she said. ‘I’m as clean as a whistle. I have tried.’
I was touched by the halting admission.
‘I wish I’d been different, Fanny. I wish I’d done things differently. I would never have ended up so… wanting. So under the spell of a substance.’ Meg tugged at her hair so hard it must have hurt.
I sighed deeply and Meg heard. She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Drink destroys. A girl fetches up with no friends, no husbands, no lovers. Only… only a son, and he has grown up and gone away. That leaves you and Will.’ She paused. ‘You managed it better. As you always do, Fanny… the good Fanny.’
‘OK, Meg,’ I said. ‘We’ve had this conversation before.’
Meg did a swift volte-face. ‘Two old lags, then.’
‘Less of the old.’ In the moonlight, Meg’s face looked odd, strained. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m trying to frown. I’ve had Botox shots. I reckoned if I couldn’t frown, life wouldn’t seem so dreadful. But I keep forgetting.’
I found myself standing – an adulteress manquée - on the dusty, moonlit road with the lights of Fiertino blazing in the distance, helpless with laughter.
‘You should have some too, Fanny,’ Meg suggested, when she could get a word in edgeways. ‘You’re getting a few lines.’
I tucked my hand under her brittle elbow. ‘Meg, why don’t you consider doing that university course you once talked about?’
She froze but did not draw away. ‘I’m not clever enough for that.’
‘Actually, you are.’
We walked back up the path to Casa Rosa. ‘I’m frightened of not winning my particular battle,’ Meg admitted, in a rush. ‘For the rest of my life, I will be on twenty-four hour watch. But the demon will try to slip under my defences, in the dark, when I’m sleepy and sad. It will try to outwit me in the sunshine, and the boredom of the day when nobody minds if I’m there or not.’
The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 20
