At four o’clock there was a final altercation with the Natural Earth candidate over spoilt ballot papers. That sorted, the returning officer made his way to Will and me. ‘I’m sorry.’ He spoke directly to Will. ‘You win some and some you don’t.’ Will swallowed. The gaze of the returning officer drifted towards the winning candidate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.
Will stood on the platform, as upright and unflinching as he had trained himself to be, and I was proud of him. The final figures were read out and he did not falter, not once, not even when he heard how his majority of 7,005 had been wiped off the face of the earth.
The victorious candidate bowed, grinned, and made a speech in which he individually thanked most people in Stanwinton.
Then Will took the microphone… and we were back to the beginning. He spoke about change, the need to rethink and recharge, and how he had fought to hold on to his ideals. He thanked his supporters and told them that nothing had been wasted.
Every word drained him, I could see that, and I willed him to the finish in this gladiatorial death. At the end, head bowed, he listened to the applause. Then he raised his eyes and sought mine.
It did not end quite there: we had to speak to so many people who required to be reassured and reminded that there was a tomorrow and it would come.
On the way home, Will said suddenly, ‘Stop the car.’
He wrenched open the door and stumbled out. I followed him.
Then he was sick.
I held him until the bout was finished. ‘Sorry,’ he managed.
After he had got his breath back, I made him walk with me as far as the oak tree at the corner of the field. The sun was just poking above the horizon and, after the heat and frenzy of the town hall, the air was fresh and cool. We leant on the gate and looked across the field to the dawn, where the light was picking out the pattern of leaves on the hedgerows. The birds were stirring in the beech trees.
Will laid his head on his folded arms. ‘I always wondered how I would deal with it when it came.’
‘The answer is, fine. In fact, more than fine.’
His voice was muffled. ‘We will have to think again about everything. How we live, all that. What we do.’
Back at the house, I made him tea which he drank thirstily. ‘Let’s see what’s happening on television,’ he said.
But I stopped him. ‘No, that’s finished for the moment.’ The dark eyes were dull with misery. ‘I suppose you are right.’
Although I knew he had not had any dinner the night before, he refused to eat anything, and I led him upstairs. He submitted obediently as I unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off. His body was soaked in sweat and, every so often, he gave a shuddering sigh.
In bed, I eased myself close and held him.
After a few minutes he fell into a twitchy sleep, but I kept on holding him until my arm grew numb. When I could not stand it any longer, I detached myself from Will and went downstairs to phone Chloë.
It took a bit of determination to track her down but, eventually, I got through. It was very late at night for her, and she sounded terrified when she came to the phone. ‘Mum? Nothing bad has happened?’
‘Nothing so terrible, but Dad did lose his seat last night. He wanted me to ring you.’
‘Oh, poor Dad. Is he very upset?’
‘Yes. He’s sleeping at the moment.’
Once Chloë was reassured that, basically, her family hadn’t been wiped off the face of the planet, she sounded quite cheerful. ‘He can do something else. Tell him lots of people do. It’s the spirit of the age. It’s good for you to have a change. Tell him he’s lucky to have another chance of doing something.’
‘Darling Chloë, I do miss you. I want to tell you about a lot of things and what I saw in Italy.’
It struck me that it was time I talked to Chloë about the family and its history.
‘Oh, Mum, I miss you too…’ She chatted on for quite a time, and it was only towards the end of our conversation that she dropped in the following information: ‘Mum, I’ve met someone… His name is Paul…’
I surveyed my domain. I tidied the kitchen, checked the food and wine supplies. Without a doubt, Mannochie and the team would be coming over in droves and they would require feeding in defeat as much as in victory. I would cook bowls of pasta and open bottles of wine and we could sit round the table and go over what had happened until it was shaped enough to consign to memory. Then we had to move on.
I picked up the diary and leafed through it, resisting the temptation to score through the dozen or so pre-Christmas constituency engagements. That would be to snatch too small a victory from the jaws of defeat.
‘Fanny?’
I looked up from the diary. Will was in the doorway. ‘I’m here,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said and, unable to resist, disappeared next door to switch on the television. The nation had spoken. The party was out. The other one was in and everyone was either licking wounds or looking smug or pious, or both.
We discussed what this would mean for various colleagues, and by how much this pushed back Will’s dream of the Chancellorship. Privately, I knew that it was unlikely Will would ever realize it now. But it was not the moment to say so.
‘I’ve rung Chloë. You’ll be pleased to know that she thinks you should look on this as an opportunity for a second chance.’
‘Cheeky monkey,’ he said, and dropped into a chair, smiling wryly. ‘But she’s right.’ He frowned painfully. ‘I’d give anything to see her.’
‘Do you want more tea?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’ I bent down to inspect the bottles in the wine rack. ‘I never want to drink tea again. Lots of lovely wine instead.’
Now that Meg was not here, I felt I was at liberty to say that sort of thing.
Will went quiet.
We were both busy with our thoughts – and mine were principally preoccupied with how I was to shore Will up until he felt better.
‘Will,’ I said gently, ‘you never know, you might like being free for a while.’
He shrugged. ‘Easy to say’
It was not as though he lacked courage, Will had masses of that. It was just that, at the moment, he was used to thinking along one set of lines. I would have to persuade him that trying out another set would be uncomfortable, but intriguing and perfectly possible.
He tied and retied his dressing-gown cord several times. ‘What did Italy do to you?’ he asked. ‘And can I have some of it? At one point, I wondered if you were going to stay there.’
I replaced a bottle of claret – a disappointing 1997 Haut-Marbuzet – in the rack and straightened up. ‘I might have done/ I said. ‘I thought about it.’
He ran his hands through his hair, as if in search of the old Will, the one who had been so full of optimism and vigour. ‘I would have gone mad,’ he said, ‘or taken to the bottle.’
‘Not a good joke.’
‘Not a good joke,’ he admitted.
‘After I’d got over the relief of being on my own, Will, I realized I wouldn’t like being without you either.’
‘Good.’ Will got up to check the latest figures on the television. ‘That’s very good.’
I picked up the full rubbish bin and carried it outside. Daylight was well advanced and a shaft of light fell on the garage door. With a curious half painful, half pleasurable squeeze of my heart, I perceived a suggestion – a hint – of the texture and colour of the Casa Rosa.
‘Francesca,’ said my father. ‘You live here in Stanmnton, of course, but you are a Fiertina.’
Well, I was, and I wasn’t. I cherished his metaphor, and the story of making the hillside bloom. From bare hillside to the lushly fertile – ‘my grandfather’s wood, my father’s olive-grove, my own vineyard’ – in three generations, went the saying. But even he would have to concede that he had been talking about a time that was long ago. My father had not been in Fiertino when the workmen rolled up the road in the mec
hanical diggers and constructed the row of pylons which marched up the slope. Nor had my father been sitting in Angelo’s where the talk was of olive subsidies and of house conversions.
But I would not think about Casa Rosa now. Not yet. I walked across the lawn. The house was behind me, an emptier house than it had been for years, in which the movement of things and people had dwindled. My territory. After all, after everything, I had grown used to its spaces and awkwardness. We had rubbed along together, it and I – the ugly windows, the laurel hedge, the kitchen that never quite gelled. Even the kittens on the tapestry stool and I had come to an understanding. Like it or not, the house had been the terroir in which Will and I had conducted our marriage and made the effort to shape our lives. And, yes, I too had grown powerful within it.
I went back inside and folded up clothes and tidied papers and unopened post. As I moved through the rooms, I listened out for that elusive trace, that tiny echo, of the presences that had once filled them.
Will had gone back to bed and I discovered him huddled on his side. I slid between the sheets, pulled my mother’s quilt over us and put my arms round him. He felt cold and lifeless. I kissed his cheek and my hair fell over his face, and I whispered to him that we would survive, it would be all right, and that I loved him.
‘I was thinking about Meg,’ he said. And what more I could have done. How do you think she would have felt? I know what your father would have said. “Look at it this way.’”
I laughed.
After a moment, Will turned back to face me. ‘I like it when you laugh,’ he said.
About The Author
Elizabeth Buchan lives in London with her husband and two children and worked in publishing for several years. During this time, she wrote her first books, which included a biography for children: Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit. Her first novel for adults, Daughters of the Storm, was set during the French Revolution. Her second, Light of the Moon, took as its subject a female undercover agent operating in occupied France during the Second World War. Her third novel, Consider the Lily, hailed by the Sunday Times as ‘the literary equivalent of the English country garden’ and by the Independent as ‘a gorgeously well-written tale: funny, sad, sophisticated’, won the 1994 Romantic Novel of the Year Award. An international bestseller, there are over 320,000 copies in print in the UK. Her subsequent novel, Perfect Love, was called ‘a powerful story: wise, observant, deeply felt, with elements that all women will recognize with a smile – or a shudder’. Against Her Nature, published in 1998, was acclaimed as ‘a modern day Vanity Fair… brilliantly done’ and Secrets of the Heart was praised by the Mail on Sunday as ‘a finely written, highly intelligent romance, without any of the slushiness usually associated with the genre’. Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman was described by The Times as ‘wise, melancholy, funny and sophisticated’. Her most recent novel is The Good Wife.
Elizabeth Buchan has sat on the committee for the Society of Authors and was a judge for the 1997 Whitbread Awards and Chairman of the Judges for the 1997 Betty Trask Award. Her short stories have been published in various magazines and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
For further information on Elizabeth Buchan and her work go to www.elizabethbuchan.com
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The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back Page 25
