The Good Wife Read Online Free PDF

could I argue that the choices I had once made no longer offered me surety and comfort, or gave me validation. I forced a smile. ‘I’m fine, Dad. Just a cloud passing over the sun. And talking of which, I think you could do with some vitamins.’
    ‘Stop fussing,’ he said happily.
    A hem of the curtains that Caro, my father’s ex-mistress, had chosen so long ago required repair and I added that, along with the vitamins, to my mental list of Things To Do.
    My father tapped a finger against a bottle of Le Pin Pomerol – the gentlest, richest of clarets. ‘Think about this instead. Raoul put me on to it.’
    Raoul Villeneuve was the son of one of my father’s closest business contacts – not that ‘business’ adequately described the perfection with which trade and a lifestyle had been blended. Raoul was a friend. He had also been my first lover – but I don’t think about that.
    Yes, I do. Sometimes. I strain to catch the exact sensation, recapture the sear of my startled reaction. Not because I want Raoul, but because I had not worked out what went wrong exactly.
    ‘How is Raoul? I haven’t spoken to him lately’
    ‘Expanding the business. Busy with the family. Enjoying his reputation.’
    ‘Ah,’ I said. In material terms, Raoul had done better than Will, but he had had an advantage: his family’s wine empire had been waiting for him to assume command. Ithad been different for Will, whose background had been bare of luxuries.
    ‘What does “Ah” mean?’ asked my father.
    ‘Nothing.’
    My father was an Italian refugee, brought to England from the village of Fiertino, north of Rome, by his widowed mother who fled the war and settled in the Midlands. The Villeneuves were wine aristocrats who lived in an historic château. They made contact during the fifties and a close friendship developed despite their differences. That was the way with wine people.
    After I had Chloë, and found it difficult to juggle all my commitments, Raoul took my place at my father’s side for a while before returning to his family business. We still kept in touch. We still talked on the phone… oh, about many things.
    We discussed why the French drank their vintages young and hopeful. We discussed oak casks, sandy soil, the amount of sun for that year, the use of technology in Australian and American wine-making. The results? ‘Simplistic,’ concluded Raoul, the Frenchman. But perhaps that was not a bad thing. Clean, stable, sediment-free wine suited our age better than the muddy, sometimes fractious, yields of the Old World.
    We agreed that the finest wine defied categorization. Any reasonably intelligent observer, we said, could point to the best soil, position and climate, the necessity of keeping vigil until the grape trembled at the peak of ripeness and say, yes, that was the formula. But good wine, great and successful wine, like a marriage, was a glorious fusion of nature, substance and will. It was a product of patience,understanding and knowledge, of great passion and love, which could never be quite regulated or predicted. One sniff, one drop balanced on the tongue, is all it takes to exult the mind and flood the senses with the delirium of discovery.
    My father poured two glasses of the Pomerol (the creation of an inspired Belgian vintner and the merlot grape) and waited for me to ready my palate.
    Rich ruby. Dark garnet. Depth and sweetness. I saw through the glass darkly, held its ravishments on my tongue.
    ‘Describe,’ ordered my father.
    ‘Fleshy… concentrated. It has a rich inner life.’
    My father was amused. ‘I hope you do, too, Francesca.’
    When I first began to work for him, travelling and learning, talking to clients, wine represented a mysterious combination of provenance, production and perception; I yearned to unlock its secrets and become proficient in its lore. But then I fell in love with it, and learned that wine was life, and for life. It was sun and warmth – it could be bitter,