Robbie's Wife Read online

  I spent the next hour with Terry, watching him stride about the kitchen, waving his arms, coming back to the laptop screen to read another line, speaking the words with obvious relish. He’s his father’s boy, I thought. He’s watched his father and he’s got his manner, even though he doesn’t know it. And for the first time in my life I wished that I, too, had a child who would have mimicked me.

  Maggie came in soon after, carrying grocery bags, and shortly Robbie arrived.

  “Did you find a calf?” Terry asked, and Robbie said no, they were a sorry lot, but he’d be off first thing in the morning to a farmer in Winterbourne who said he had some likely animals and how was I?

  We had tea and afterward Terry and I read our script to the applause of Maggie and Robbie and after Robbie had gone upstairs to put the boy to bed Maggie said, “Not many men would do that with a ten-year-old, Jack Stone.”

  “I enjoyed it. He’s a good boy.”

  “He likes you.”

  Jack the dog had curled up at my feet and I said, “Dogs and little boys seem to like me.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Jack Stone. Robbie likes you, too.”

  “And you?”

  “And me. I get the feeling you’ve been burned enough times so that you’re afraid to reach out. You might be surprised.”

  “And what happened to our walk this afternoon?”

  “I looked in on you but you were sleeping like a baby and I didn’t have the heart to wake you. And I had shopping to do, so I left you alone. But tomorrow, first thing, after the boys are off, we’ll take that walk. I promise.”

  As she said that, Robbie came back into the kitchen. “Promise what?” he asked.

  “Promise that if he asks me to run away with him to Majorca next week, I’ll go, but you’ll have to find someone to cook and do the washing and get Terry off to school on time.”

  “Not easy,” Robbie said with a grin. “But there’s that bird who lives in the council house just down from the store. I’m not sure what kind of a cook she is.” He paused and Maggie said, “You’ll have to get in the queue behind the Strykers, Robbie. I think she’s booked for next week!”

  “I’m not promising anything,” I said.

  “A likely story,” Robbie said.

  Robbie asked if I wanted to go down to the pub for a pint, but I begged off. I was suddenly very tired. Upstairs in the room I lay on the bed for a while, listening to the rise and fall of their voices in the kitchen, wondering if I were a part of whatever it was they were talking about. Don’t flatter yourself, Jack, I thought. I turned on my laptop and tried to write for a while and I wrote out the scene where Maggie and I had stood at the weir. I invented a long dialog between us in which I told her how beautiful she was and then I wrote a scene in which the two of us stepped onto a white beach and Maggie stepped out of her old skirt and stripped off her blue sweater and plunged naked into the sea. I could see her swim out to the breaker line and then watched her head just above the water as she swam parallel to the shore, occasionally raising her arm to wave to me. When I read over what I had written, I knew it was good, but I also knew it was a fantasy that had no ending, only dream-like scenes that floated, disembodied, linked by nothing except my longing.

  Maggie and Robbie’s voices grew louder as they came up the stairs and then I heard Maggie say, “Quiet. We’ve got someone in the guest room,” and Robbie saying, “Fuck him. You’re not paying attention to what I’m saying at all,” and Maggie’s voice, insistent, sharp, “I hear you Robbie Barlow, but you don’t hear me anymore. You talk but you don’t listen,” and then they were behind their door and the voices were muffled and I went back to bed and shut out their voices and willed myself to sleep.

  15.

  The next morning I slept in so that once again Robbie and Terry were gone when I finally came down.

  “Do you fancy that walk?” Maggie said, pouring me a cup of tea. Behind her the curtain was lit by sunlight.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Then finish your tea, and I’ll be ready.”

  A few minutes later she came back into the kitchen wearing her yellow pants and red sweater again, this time with a huge black scarf wrapped around her neck.

  “Quite dramatic,” I said.

  She twirled the end of the scarf and said, “My life is full of drama. When I’m dead and gone someone will write it out and it will be called The Sheepheaven Chronicles and every village wife will read it and weep.”

  “I’m afraid I heard you and Robbie last night as you came up the stairs.”

  “Not to worry, Jack Stone. We argue all the time. It’s called married life. You should be familiar with that.”

  “I’m sorry I said anything. It’s none of my business.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Let’s take our walk,” and she reached out and took my hand, pulling me through the door into the farmyard.

  “Sun!” she called out, raising her face to the weak sunlight. And she released my hand and began to run across the farmyard toward the stone wall, pausing to look back, calling out, “Come on, Jack Stone! Stir yourself!”

  I caught up with her and we climbed the field but this time we turned the opposite direction at the top, headed for a distant copse of trees. We stopped once to look back down at the farm and she pointed out the spire of the church in the next village, and further on the rise of Bulbarrow Hill. As we stood there she leaned back against me and it seemed natural to put my arms around her, and she remained, reaching up to pull my arms tighter around her body, her hair a tangle just below my face and she said, “I can feel your heart racing, Jack Stone.”

  “I’m not used to walking so quickly,” I said.

  “Oh dear, I thought it was racing because of me.”

  “It probably is.”

  “Then you will take me off to Majorca to lie in the sun?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t make it this afternoon. Not unless we can be back in time to fix tea.” She turned her head so that she could see me and said, “You’re a funny man, Jack Stone.”

  “You mean an odd man?”

  “No, I mean funny. You have a sense of humor but you keep it hidden. You keep nearly everything hidden, don’t you, Jack Stone?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Look.” She pointed toward the copse where there was a low bank just before the trees. “Look at that rise, tell me what you see.”

  I looked at the long low rise, uneven ground that was dotted with shrubs and bracken, and I wondered what it was that I was supposed to see.

  “It’s just a rise in the field,” I said.

  “No. Look again. Really look.”

  I stared at the rise and then I noticed a slight movement and as I looked there was another movement, as if there were something on the rise and, as if the stretch of rough ground were being brought into focus by some unseen hand, I saw more movement and it became rabbits, one and then two and then dozens, browsing along the rise, moving imperceptibly as they ate, and I said, “Rabbits! There’s dozens of them!”

  “Yes. And if I hadn’t told you to look, by the time we got closer they would all have gone to ground and you would have been none the wiser. You need to know when to look and where to look, Jack Stone. You’re a writer, you should know that.”

  She turned around so that she faced me, still within the circle of my arms and she said, “I think you’re like that, Jack Stone. You’re like that rabbit warren. If anyone gets too close, you go to ground, leave a blank slate so they won’t know you’re there. But I can see the rabbits, Jack Stone. There’s more to you than meets the casual glance.”

  She pulled away and walked toward the copse, turning to say, “Come on. We’ll walk to Shilling Okeford and have a cup of tea. We can pretend it’s a seaside cafe in Majorca.”

  That evening, as we finished supper at the kitchen table, Terry said, “I don’t have any grandfather. Would you be able to be one for
me?” He looked at his mother and father. “I don’t mean you’d be a real grandfather and have to live in England. You could still live in California and we could write to each other.”

  “I don’t see why not, Terry.”

  After the table had cleared and Terry had gone off to watch the telly, Robbie said to me, “You’ve made a casual promise, Jack. But it’s not casual to him. He expects that if he writes to you, you’ll write back to him. But you’ll be half a world away and he’s not important to you. Don’t make promises you won’t keep.”

  “If he writes to me, I’ll write back.”

  “Easy to say now, Jack.” Then he added, “Not to worry. I doubt if he’ll remember you once you’ve gone. You’ll drive out the gate and you’ll disappear from our lives. We’ll stand at the gate and wave to you, Jack. What was it Hamlet said? ‘Adieu, adieu! Remember me.’”

  I looked across the kitchen to where Maggie was stacking dishes on the drain board. She had her back to us but something about the way she held herself told me that she was listening intently.

  “I’m no ghost, Robbie.”

  “No, you’re here all right. Flesh and blood. An exotic thing, like one of those barnacles on a freighter in the harbor at Southampton that comes here from some foreign sea and detaches itself and finds an easy home.”

  “You think of me as a foreign barnacle?”

  “No, Jack, I think of you as someone who has spiced up our lives, brought a bit of pepper to the stew. Stay on through Saturday night, Jack. We’ll go to the pub and you’ll see what village life is really like!”

  He rose and went to the cupboard, brought down the bottle of scotch and said, “A nightcap. Maggie, how about you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll take Terry up to bed, read him a story. You two can sit here and get pissed by yourselves.”

  Robbie and I shared half the bottle, and when I went upstairs I was woozy, falling asleep immediately.

  16.

  I awoke to the sound of rain. It drummed steadily on the roof and the window and then there was the noise of the Land Rover engine starting. My head felt delicate and I didn’t feel like eating. What I wanted was a cup of coffee and I debated whether or not I should go downstairs and ask Maggie to make one for me. I got dressed, sat at the laptop and I pulled up the paragraphs I had written about Maggie, our walk, the Strykers in the pub, trolling down the screen, looking for something to stitch them together into some sort of relationship, trying to find a story that would link them, as if they were patches I could make into a quilt if only I could find the design. I didn’t hear Maggie and was startled to look up and see her in the doorway, holding two mugs of tea.

  “Here, Jack Stone,” she said, holding out one of them. “Time for a break from your opus.”

  I took the mug, set it on the table next to the laptop. When I turned back she was leaning in the doorway, watching me. She said nothing, simply looked, and I waited, wondering what she was thinking. Then she spoke:

  “You’re a watcher, Jack Stone. A looker. That first evening you were here you were watching me, and the afternoon when you were pretending to write with Terry and at tea every evening. Even when you’re talking with Robbie I can feel your eyes on me, and I’m wondering what you’re looking at. What do you see in me that holds your attention, Jack Stone?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. She had caught me by surprise.

  “Out with it,” she said. “You’re a big boy. What is it that you’re looking at so intently?”

  She still leaned against the door jamb, raising the mug of tea to her lips and sipping at it, but her eyes never left mine.

  “Am I that obvious?” I asked.

  “Not to Robbie. Or Terry. But I can feel you watching me even when I’m not looking at you, and I’m wondering what you see in a Dorset farm wife in an old jumper and a raggedy skirt. Come on, mister writer, give me some words.”

  I took a deep breath. “I watch the way your neck rises from your shoulders and the way you move barefoot across the floor and I try to memorize the way you move so I can come up here and write it down.”

  “It’s all just fodder for your story?”

  “There is no story.”

  “There is no story? You mean all that stuff about your rubbish assignment was just a lie? You’re not really a writer, you’re a spy from the tourist board come to see if we treat our guests right?”

  “No, I’m a writer. I’ve told you all about that. But now I have no story, just fragments. Bits and pieces. I’m hoping that something will happen to me, and it will all fall into place.”

  “So, I’m bits and pieces, am I? And what else do you see?”

  “You’re a remarkable woman. I wish I were twenty years younger.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself, Jack Stone. And that twenty years older rubbish isn’t becoming.” She had raised one hand to the nape of her neck and was absently braiding her hair with her thumb and forefinger again. “You’ve a quiet manner about you, but I’ll bet you’re a real menace in Los Angeles.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m nothing of the sort. I’m a rather ordinary man who is, according to his ex-wife, coming apart at the seams, and watching you has helped to stitch me together a bit. I’m sorry that I’ve been so obvious.”

  She smiled. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Jack Stone. Drink your tea.” She straightened as if to go but stood in the doorway a moment longer. Then she spoke again.

  “If the truth be known, I fancied you that first afternoon when you came downstairs, hung over, looking fragile, as if I could clap my hands and you would fall into a hundred thousand tiny shards, and yet you were trying to make a conversation with Terry, telling him you had a rubbish assignment, too, and for some unfathomable reason I said to myself, there’s a handsome, gentle man and he’s only going to stay one night and what would happen if I went into his room in the middle of the night and fucked him but of course I didn’t do that, would never have done it, but it crossed my mind. And you stayed more than one night.”

  I held my breath. I could not tell what she was doing or what it was that she was telling me. Was it just more of her acerbic wit? Or was she drawn to me? What could she possibly see in me that could match the way in which I was drawn toward her? It was absurd to even think about it. She had turned toward the hallway and she said over her shoulder, “And now I’m off to take a bath. Drink your tea, make a movie.” And she was down the hallway and I listened to the door of the bathroom close and the water begin to run, filling the tub. I waited, listening, and then the water stopped and it was quiet and I imagined her in the tub and I sipped the tea and turned on the laptop and wrote down the exact words she had said and then read them back to myself, silently mouthing them, read the line, “would never have done that,” and then listened again for the voice in my head as she said, “what would happen if I went into his room in the middle of the night and fucked him.”

  I sat at the laptop, watching the words until they suddenly disappeared and the screensaver began to whirl. It was silent in the house and I waited, as if expecting someone or something, and then I rose and went down the hallway and listened at the door of the bathroom. I could feel a steady thump in my head, and my heart raced as I turned the knob and opened the door. I could see her in the tub, the half-finished mug of tea on the floor, and she looked at me and said, “I don’t remember inviting you in, Jack Stone.”

  “If you tell me to leave, I will.”

  “I’m finished,” she said, and rose from the water, her body wet and shining. “Hand me the towel, please.” She pointed to the towel folded on the edge of the sink.

  I took the towel and held it, just out of her reach. She stepped out of the tub and stood, dripping on the tile floor. I began to towel her off, rubbing her shoulders dry, her arms, her breasts, and she stood silently. I knelt, toweling off her back and belly, wrapping the towel around each leg, pressing the cloth up into her crotch, my cheek pressed against her damp belly. Neither o
f us said anything. I felt her hands pull my head against her belly and we stayed that way for a moment and then she said, “Come up here,” and I stood and she unbuttoned my shirt and pressed her breasts to my chest and she said, “It’s good to be naked,” and I held her tightly. Then she pulled back, reached over and took her blue sweater, pulled it over her head and said, “I’ve got some knickers around here someplace.” She picked up the briefs from the chair, stepped into them. She took the damp towel from my hands, wrapped her wet hair in it and swirled it up into a turban.

  “And now I’m off to get properly dressed and you’re off to add another fragment to your bits and pieces, mister Jack Stone.” She picked up her skirt and stepped out into the hall.

  “If you get tired of arranging pieces, come down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.”

  I went back to the little bedroom and sat at the laptop and wrote everything out, exactly as it had happened, Maggie standing at the doorway, Maggie rising from the tub, her skin wet and glistening, her shining wet hair, the damp softness of her belly, and when I was done I had several pages and I read them back and I liked what I had written, felt as if somehow I had been sleepwalking and now I was awake and I thought, yes, I could write about Maggie and Robbie and Terry and Jack the dog and the Stryker brothers and the crows that swirled up from the field outside the window.

  I read over what I had written again and tried to work out what Maggie must have been thinking as she stood in the doorway and whether or not she expected me to follow her into the bath. “It’s good to be naked,” she had said. I knew I would stay another night at Sheepheaven Farm.

  17.

  When I came downstairs to the kitchen, Maggie was standing at the sink, shucking broad beans, dropping the green hulls into a paper bag at her feet. The kitchen was cold and she had a gray scarf around her neck.

  “Supper?” I asked.