The Good Wife (27 page)

‘Funny how we repeat the same things. I used to say that to Will. He was bullied at school and it took away his appetite.’

‘Will? Bullied?’

Meg seemed surprised. ‘Didn’t he tell you? No, well, I suppose he wouldn’t. He’d probably die rather than admit he’d been frightened. But he was.’

‘Go on.’

Meg wet the tip of her finger, picked up a crumb on it and put it into her mouth. ‘
I
was frightened of the grandparents. Not that they were evil or anything, but just so old and boring, and they preached all the time. I was always terrified I’d go home and find two dead bodies. That’s why Will always waited for me after school. That was one of the reasons he was bullied.
Loves his sis.’

‘And the others?’

Meg sounded impatient. ‘There were so many.’

A horn tooted. It was Raoul. He parked under a tree and walked over to join us. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. As it turns out, I can’t stay.’

Meg searched in her bag and produced a lipstick, which she proceeded to apply. Its dark pink glistened on her mouth.

Raoul’s departure did not surprise me. There was no point in his staying. We both needed a polite gap and to make the readjustments. I thought with a flash of bitterness and regret of how I would miss our conversations.

When Raoul got up to go, he bent over and kissed me. ‘I will be in the UK later in the year,’ he said pleasantly.
‘I will ring you. I would like to talk to you about the business.’

‘Have you decided where to bury Alfredo’s ashes?’ Meg watched Raoul’s car negotiate the traffic around the piazza and vanish.

‘No.’

‘I thought that was why you came here,’ she remarked innocently. Her attention was now drawn to a van unloading pallets of spinach and melons. Are you planning changes, Fanny? I didn’t
quite
buy the burying-my-father’s-ashes story. Especially when I saw that Raoul had put in an appearance. This little escape is more of a not-waving-but-drowning gesture, which must be to do with my brother.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking that the marriage has run its course. Marriages do. You start out full of good intentions, the
best
intentions, and life gets in the way’ She flicked me a look. ‘You’re well rid of Raoul. What’s it worth for my silence?’

‘I’ll tell Will. Of course.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she said.

I fiddled with a packet of sugar. ‘I bought myself some time.’

‘I’m sorry I cramped your style.’

‘No, you’re not.’ I gave Angelo the money for the bill. ‘Go home, Meg and don’t interfere.’

‘Consider me warned.’ Meg got to her feet. ‘Other people’s lives are just that. Other people’s lives. And a complete mystery’

*

Meg did not go home after a few days. Of course, she didn’t. Initially, there were difficulties in changing her ticket. Then it appeared there were no available seats to London for a couple of weeks. Then she said. ‘Look, I might as well stay on until you leave. It’s only one more week.’

Each day that I spent in the valley, I grew more detached from my former life. I looked back at it, dim and blurred, through the glass, without nostalgia, only half remembered, imperfect in detail. An inner sleepiness folded around me, almost smothering, and I was happy to sit and do nothing as the light deepened, turned brassy and the heat set in.

I thought about Chloë, the thick rope of feeling that bound me to her, and how, after she was born, I was no longer a separate person. I thought of Raoul, my first lover, from whom I had fled – for a second time. Of Will, my great love. The shapes of our lives and the spaces between them.

When Meg woke, we walked into Fiertino, took a table overlooking the piazza at Angelo’s and ordered coffee. Sometimes, the piazza was almost deserted. Sometimes, summoned by a mysterious force, there was an influx of the puttering vans the Italians favoured, and fumes mixed with the odour of coffee and vegetables from the supermarket next door.

I drank my coffee and worked through my wine books while Meg read a novel or gazed at nothing much. I liked it there, and I think Meg did too – she seemed content. Our only major expenditure of energy was to move our chairs into the shade as the sun shifted.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘Will would like this.’

‘Will?’

‘Don’t you see? He’s never had a chance to sit and do nothing. He has always been so driven. Right from the word go.’ She cupped her chin in her hands. ‘My brother’s a brave man and it’s not his fault that the world is so difficult and awful. Anyway, Will wasn’t going to let it get the better of us.’ The eyelids closed on the dark eyes. ‘See?’

Each day, from either the shop or the market, we selected a different vegetable as the main ingredient for lunch. Tomato or aubergine? Zucchini or big fat mushrooms? I did the chopping. Meg confected the dressings. (She had a knack for balancing the balsamic vinegar, oil and mustard.)

In the afternoons we took a siesta, and in the early evenings we braced ourselves to get into the car and do some sightseeing. More often than not, we drank iced coffee in a nearby village.

I took Meg to the museum in Tarquinia and asked her if she recognized the couple. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘of course I do. The happy couple.’ She peered at the inscription. ‘They died so young that there wasn’t time for hatred and boredom.’

‘No,’ I said.

Then I took her to see the frescos in the Fiertino church. She stared at them for a long time. Finally, she moved away – ‘Too hellfire for me,’ she said.

After that, by mutual agreement, we dropped the cultural trips.

20

Instead, Meg and I were perfectly happy to shop. When the sun dropped behind the hill, and it grew cooler, we browsed through boutiques and markets, tried on neat Italian jumpers, discussed handbags. We bought pretty straw baskets and silk scarves for Meg.

Maria tipped us off about a shoe-shop tucked away in a street behind the church. ‘All the shoes from Rome,’ she said, and winked. ‘But not the prices.’ Meg and I agreed that we had a duty to shore up the local economy.

The shop was in the medieval quarter of the town. Hot, dark and womb-like, its interior smelt pleasingly of leather and varnish – a craftsman’s smell. We spent a good half-hour hunting through the racks. Meg pounced on a pair of cunning high heels and I hovered between delicious red-leather sandals, which spoke to me, and a utilitarian black pair with ‘Stanwinton’ written all over them, which did not.

Meg slotted her feet into her shoes and turned a full circle. She seemed excited, alight with joy, almost a girl again, and I could see why Rob had fallen in love with her. Rocking on the heels, she said, ‘Will bought me my first pair of nice shoes. He took a job stacking supermarket shelves and saved up. He wanted to say thank you to me. I kept them for years.’

Our stay in Fiertino had had an unexpected consequence:
it had loosened Meg’s tongue. She had dropped quite a few bits of information into my lap. ‘Take them,’ she appeared to be saying. ‘They are my present to you.’

She was trying to tell me about the unknown Will: the one who had existed before I knew him. Scratch me for the facts, and I could tell you that Will’s favourite breakfast was fried bacon. I knew what kind of shirts he favoured, the way he turned over in his sleep and flung an arm over his head. I knew that he loved his daughter, that he had been unfaithful to me. I knew we had had many years together.

But I was ignorant about the slice of his life when Meg had held the reins in hands that must have trembled often – with fear and anxiety.

I replaced the red sandals on the shelf. ‘It’s too hot in here. Another time.’

‘More fool you,’ said Meg, and paid for hers.

At the end of the week Will rang. ‘Fantastic news, Fanny. Chloë’s got her results. Two As and a B. I phoned her and she was so pleased.’

A lump sprang into my throat. ‘Clever, wonderful Chloë.’

We discussed her university plans and which of her friends had got what. While we were talking, I entertained a vision of Chloë, now properly grown up, graduating in a black gown, getting married, coming home with a trio of grandchildren. Time was slipping this way and quickly, and I had to catch up with it.

‘Did you send her my love?’

‘Of course. How are you both?’

‘Practically comatose.’

‘Good.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The house seems very empty. But I have been in London quite a lot. The flat’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. I’m sorry you were invaded by Meg. I know you wanted a bit of a breathing space. But these last few weeks have been hell.’ He continued in the same vein. Dreadful weather. Tedious boxes. Finally he said, wistfully, ‘You seem a long way away.’

I brushed a dead fly on to the floor. Did I miss it in my cleaning frenzy? ‘Guess who turned up? Raoul. We went out for a marvellous dinner with his friends and talked vineyards and vintages.’

‘How nice,’ he said guardedly. ‘By the way, there’s a stack of papers from the lawyer waiting for you here.’

‘Yes, I know.’ I made an effort. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’

‘The polls are gloomy,’ he said, ‘but perhaps that’s to be expected…’

While Will talked, I stared out of the window at an olive tree which grew precariously but defiantly on the slope above the house. The undersides of its leaves appeared white in the sun.

I heard the rustle of a cigarette packet. ‘Fanny… as I feared, the second-car tax is to be dropped. It’s too sensitive. With an election coming up… so, very politely, I’ve been told to bugger off, keep my head down and someone will fling me a bone if I am very good. End of story. I suppose, after all this, I don’t care very much.’

This would not be true. ‘Then we needn’t waste any more time on it, Will.’

‘I thought you’d be a bit more sympathetic.’

‘I am sympathetic. Very. I’m sorry you’ve been disappointed, but it’s over.’

In the hall of the Casa Rosa, I turned myself round and the telephone cord twisted across my leg, but I wanted to look at the vines the other side of the road. How curious. Why had I had failed to notice that a pylon sat precisely between two cypresses on the hilltop?

‘Fanny, when are you coming home?’

I heard myself say, ‘I don’t want to come back. I feel at home here.’

Meg was not stupid and she had cottoned on that Benedetta did not like her. ‘Look,’ she said, later that evening, as we prepared to walk over to her for a pasta supper, ‘on second thoughts, I’ll leave you two to talk over old times. I’ll have something to eat at Angelo’s. I’d prefer it.’

It was agreed.

Dressed in her best print frock, over which she had tied a lace apron, Benedetta was in a cheerful mood. Radio Vatican provided a background commentary. ‘My son,’ she smiled broadly, ‘he has phoned to say that he is coming in the winter.’ She handed me a knife. ‘Make the salad, please, Fanny.’

Red and luscious, the tomatoes fell away from my knife. I snatched up a piece and crammed it into my mouth. It tasted of sun and earth. I arranged the slices on a plate, and scattered basil over them. The Madonna smiled down from her vantage-point on the wall. Cramped and cluttered it might have been, but Benedetta’s kitchen was a comfortable place, far more comfortable than my kitchen in Stanwinton, for all its modern conveniences.

We carried our food out on to the back porch, and while we ate we talked about my father.

Benedetta pressed another slice of her apricot tart on to my plate. ‘He never forgave himself that your mother left’

‘Why do you think he would never marry again? I never understood.’

‘And give you a stepmother? No. Alfredo told me he
never
wanted that for you.’

Best not to pursue the subject.

Back in the bedroom at Casa Rosa, I addressed the casket that held his ashes. ‘Where shall I put you, Dad? Where would you like to be? Will you tell me?’

An hour or so later Meg returned, and I sat on the stairs in my nightdress while she chatted away to me from the kitchen.

‘Tea?’ There was a clatter of water as she filled the kettle. ‘I had a good meal.’ The gas popped and she appeared in the kitchen doorway. There was a faint colour in her cheeks and her hair looked soft and shiny. ‘Sure you don’t want some tea? Angelo’s is fun at night, full of young bloods who make a lot of noise. I enjoyed it, even picked up a word or two of Italian, so you don’t have to worry about me.’

On the loggia the next morning, I was dreaming over my first cup of coffee when Benedetta puffed up the road. I sat her down and fetched her a glass of iced water. She drank noisily. ‘Fanny, you must be aware that foreigners in particular are noticed. And there are many eyes in Fiertino.’

‘I’m not a foreigner,’ I protested. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Santa Patata
. I lived for ten years in England and I was still a foreigner.’

I took a sharp breath and picked up her hand. ‘You were my mother.’

Benedetta rubbed her finger over my wrist. ‘I was and I wasn’t.’

‘How have I sinned?’

‘Not you. Meg. She was seen by Angelo going into the Bacchus with a couple of the younger men. Bacchus is not a good place. The women don’t go there. You must tell her.’

By the time Meg woke up Benedetta had long gone. I tackled her at once. ‘You’ve been spotted.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Meg slapped at an ant on her arm. She was pale and groggy with sleep, and her hair straggled sweatily over her shoulders. ‘It’s none of your business where I end up. I had a peach juice, that’s all. I just wanted some company. Is that so odd, or wicked?’

‘No, but why didn’t you mention it?’

She gave me a level look. ‘Think about it.’

My own hair felt hot and heavy and I scraped it back. ‘Angelo’s nice. He just wanted to warn you. It’s probably nothing much but they know things that we can’t. We are, as Benedetta has just reminded me, foreigners.’

Meg’s ravaged face was unreadable. ‘Angelo thinks I’m worth bothering about?’

‘Obviously.’

‘It’s just a bar with a few chairs, and a naughty picture stuck up on the wall.’ Her mouth tightened disagreeably. ‘Who cares?’

She was willing me to say, ‘I care’. But I could not bring myself to say it.