Robbie's Wife

by Russell Hill

  “Don’t get yourself wet,” he said. He wore boots so he could walk through the wide pool of water.

  “This time of year it puddles up in here. The stones were set a hundred years ago and they’ve slumped. I could put a new floor in, pour concrete over it, but I like the stones and when summer comes, if it ever does, it dries up. Bit of a cockup in winter, though.”

  We went back outside to the wall and stood, watching the sheep on the slope. Jack, the dog, had appeared and was close behind Robbie’s heels.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Sheep are strange creatures. They’re silent all day and then all night they talk to each other, crying out like some chorus of lost souls.” He paused, watching the still white shapes, their heads down, grazing. Then he spoke, his voice not much more than a whisper: “Lords, I protest. My soul is full of woe.”

  He turned to look at me, his face indistinct in the failing light. “But they don’t look much like King Richard’s court, do they, Jack? Did they keep you awake last night?”

  “No, I slept like a log.”

  “You’re lucky. Maybe it’s because I depend on the dumb things to feed us. Christ, they can do stupid things, one starts to run, the others follow, they’d go over the edge of the world unless Jack, here, stopped them.”

  The sun had dropped now and it was cold. “Would you fancy a beer, Jack?”

  “Me or your clever dog?”

  “He’s a teetotaler, this Jack is. How about you? You haven’t sworn off, have you?”

  “No.”

  Inside, the kitchen was warm and Maggie was taking something out of the oven that Terry called toad and I would learn was Toad In The Hole. It was another pie, with a thick crust and brown gravy oozing from cracks in it. Hidden inside were sausages, and it was obvious that it was a favorite of Terry’s. I asked Robbie why it was called toad in the hole and he laughed.

  “You may not want to hear this one right now, Jack.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a bit rude.”

  Maggie said, “Save it, Robbie,” and he grinned at her.

  “You want to hear it, Jack?” and when I hesitated, he said, “Toad comes from Old English, and the word was closer to turd, which, as you can see, a sausage resembles.” He speared a sausage from his plate and held it up.

  “Story is, they took a stale loaf of bread and punched holes in it and either they poked stale turds in it to feed the starving or the sausages looked like turds so they called it turd in a hole. And a toad, all shiny among the leaves, looks a bit like a fresh one, too.”

  He took a bite from the end of the sausage.

  “That’s enough!” Maggie said. Terry was hunched over his plate, his shoulders shaking as he fought to control his giggles.

  “Maggie, this is scholarship. It’s what I came away from university with.”

  “And it’s my tea you’re calling turds in a hole. Mister Stone must think we’re a bunch of savages.”

  “No,” I insisted. “It hasn’t spoiled things a bit.”

  “Maggie’s bark is worse than her bite, Jack.”

  “You can show him some teeth marks, then,” she said, spooning another portion onto his plate.

  Robbie quizzed Terry about his school, and they made plans to go off the next morning to bring some sheep back from a field where, Terry said, “There’s rabbits! Lots of rabbits, Mr. Stone. Would you like to come, too?”

  Robbie smiled at me. “You’re welcome to come along, Jack. It’ll take us most of the morning. I think of it as my Sunday morning church.”

  “I’ll pass on this one, Robbie. And, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay on a few more days. Today was a good day for me. I’ll spend my morning in church writing.”

  “Suit yourself. If you change your mind you’re welcome to come.”

  Maggie was looking at me as if she were studying me, and I wondered if she had noticed how much I had been studying her, watching the way she broke off a bit of crust from the pie, placing it in her mouth, her lips closing over the tips of her fingers; how she absentmindedly traced her finger along the ridge of bone just below her neck, sliding it along the neck of her sweater. I stayed in the kitchen as Maggie cleared away the dishes and washed up while Robbie and Terry went to watch the television.

  “You’re not much of a talker tonight,” she said, her back to me as she stood at the sink.

  “I’m enjoying the warmth and the softness of this house,” I said.

  “It’s not always warm and soft. We’ve got on our company manners.” She turned to face me. “It’s not always what it seems, is it?”

  “Perhaps not. Still, I like watching the three of you.”

  “You have any children, Jack Stone?”

  “No.”

  “Watching you with Terry this afternoon, I thought, you’d make a good father.”

  “More like a grandfather at my age.”

  “Rubbish. He likes you. You don’t talk down to him the way most adults do with children.”

  “He’s a smart boy.”

  “He is.” There was a subtle change in her voice. “I suspect his father was like that in this house when he was that age. It’s a shame we can’t freeze them so they can’t change.”

  I lay awake for a long time that night, unable to sleep, listening to the bleating of Robbie’s sheep. He was right. They seemed to be talking to each other in some strange language, crying out, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m over here,” as if afraid that light would come again and they would be alone.

  10.

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

  “You’re keeping banker’s hours, mister Jack Stone,” Maggie said, pouring me a cup of tea. A weak sun slanted in through the open curtain at the window above the sink.

  She offered to fix what she called a proper breakfast but I told her no, I was late and she needn’t bother, just some toast and a piece of cheese.

  “What’s on your menu today? The sun is out, first time in weeks, it feels like. Off for a walk?”

  “What will you do?”

  “Take a bit of a walk, take a bath, straighten up the house, have something ready to eat when those two come back all covered with mud.” She lifted her hair with both hands, stretching it back behind her head, and began to tie it into a knot.

  Invite me to walk with you, I thought, but she said, “You’ll be wanting to write now, won’t you? You’ll have the house to yourself for a bit. We’ll all be out of your way. Take your tea up to the room if you want, or bring your machine down here. The Rayburn keeps this room warm.” I must have looked puzzled, since she added, “The cooker,” gesturing toward the big old stove. She went to the hallway at the back door and took a jacket off a hook.

  “If you decide to go out, don’t worry about locking up,” and she closed the door after her.

  I went back up to my room and stood at the window and watched her go across the farmyard, disappear around the end of the shed and emerge a few seconds later in the field, walking toward the rise above the farm. I watched as her figure grew smaller until she topped the rise, turned and stood, facing the farm. I wondered if she could see me standing there at the window. Then she disappeared over the rise and I sat at the laptop and wrote out a paragraph describing Maggie breaking off a piece of the crust of the pie, her lips closing over her fingertips, only I kept writing, following her finger as she touched the neck of her sweater, watched as she slipped her hand down inside her sweater, cupped her breast in her hand, turned to look directly at me, as if inviting me to touch her as well, and when I had finished the page I realized that I was writing erotica, and I deleted it and wrote another scene in which a woman crosses behind a stone wall and walks up a field and I thought, I should have asked her if I could walk with her.

  I tried again to write but nothing came and finally I went downstairs, put on my jacket and went out. I thought of following in the direction Maggie had gone, perhap
s finding her somewhere on the hillside, but instead I walked along the road until I came to the village. I went into the post office store, bought a cellophane-wrapped sausage roll and a soft drink in a plastic bottle and went back onto the road, walking through the village, until I came to a crossroads. I sat on the stone wall and ate the sausage roll, a foul thing that tasted of sawdust and grease, and washed it down with the soft drink, some sort of orangeade that was mostly sugar and water. Then I walked back to Sheepheaven Farm where I found Robbie in the farmyard changing a tire on the Land Rover, cursing the frozen lug nuts.

  “Fucking piece of shit!” He noticed me and said, “Sorry about that, Jack. Local dialect.”

  “I’ve heard it before. You do it very well.”

  He stood, wiping his hands on the legs of his trousers. “What exciting things did you find to do in this country backwater?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. I wrote a bit this morning, went for a walk, had a plastic sausage roll from the post office store.”

  “Oh shit, Jack, you should have asked Maggie to make you a sandwich.”

  “She went off for a walk. I didn’t want to bother her.”

  “So you’ll be staying the night? Having supper with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Would you do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Would you steady my shoulders? I’m going to stand on the lug wrench and see if I can’t jar this fucker loose.” He put one foot on the arm of the wrench, raised up the other foot and as he balanced on the arm of the wrench I reached out to steady his shoulders. I could feel the muscles beneath his jacket, and his wiry shoulders, and I thought how hard he was compared to my own soft body and I suddenly envied him, his age, his handsome face, his dark hair and beard, the energy that seemed to emanate from his body. He raised himself and brought his weight down hard on the wrench, rose and repeated the motion and there was a crack as the nut came loose.

  “You’re a good man, Jack,” he said. “I owe you a pint for that one.”

  I watched while he finished changing the tire and then followed him into the house where he washed his hands in the kitchen sink only to be interrupted by Maggie who came into the kitchen and said sharply, “How many times have I told you that you wash up somewhere else! Not in my kitchen sink!”

  “Sorry, love,” he said, wiping his hands on his trouser legs.

  “Jesus, Robbie, you’re worse than a child!”

  “Come on, love,” he said, approaching her, but she turned and rose on her toes to pull something from the cupboard.

  “I’ve been properly rebuked, Jack,” Robbie said with a grin.

  Supper that evening was quiet, and I felt as if there were some sort of undercurrent running through the house, some disquietude I had not noticed before. I went up to the room early, leaving Robbie in front of the telly and Maggie clearing up the kitchen. I tried to write but it was no good and I turned out the light and lay on the bed listening to the noises of the house, the faint chatter of the television, and later the footsteps as they came up the stairs, Terry’s voice as he said good night mum, good night dad, and the ticking of the dog’s claws on the stairs as it went back down to the kitchen.

  I slept badly, waking often. Once I turned on the light, tried to write, but again no words came. I finally got up when it began to grow light, went down to the silent kitchen. I thought about making myself a cup of tea but decided I might make noise that would wake them and instead put on my coat and went out into the farmyard. It was cold, wet, water dripping from the eaves, the bleating of sheep somewhere, and the trees on the far side of the field were indistinct, hazy. I walked along the road for a while. Somewhere there were doves waking in the trees. When I came back, Maggie was in the kitchen, it was warm and she wordlessly set a cup of tea on the table.

  “For me?” I asked.

  “You look like you need it,” she said. “And where were you walking to at this hour of the morning?”

  “No place in particular.”

  “I came down just in time to see you go across the field,” she said. “I almost went after you. Would you have minded the company?”

  “Not at all. I wish you had.”

  “Perhaps later, we’ll take a proper walk before you go,” she said.

  She busied herself making breakfast and Robbie appeared. He asked me if I had slept well.

  “No,” I said. “It was a restless night. Sorry if I woke you.”

  “Didn’t wake me,” he said. “I heard the sheep and I listened. Sometimes there’s something worrying them, maybe a dog. Sets off an alarm in my head.”

  “Was it anything?”

  “No, they were just complaining. Pissed off that they’re sheep and not lions.” He pulled up a chair. “Well, Jack,” he said. “You’re off this morning?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “Bound for where?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Must be lovely to be footloose and fancy free, come to a crossroads and flip a coin.”

  “I came here to work,” I said. “I thought I’d be able to write something new, get a fresh start, but it doesn’t seem to be working out.”

  We finished breakfast and it wasn’t until Robbie had left to take the flat tire into Gillingham for repair, shaking my hand and wishing me luck as he went out the door, that I realized Maggie had said nothing since Robbie had entered the kitchen. Terry went off to school and I was left in the kitchen with Maggie, who busied herself clearing up the dishes, washing them, stacking them on the counter to drain.

  “I’d like to take that walk with you,” I said.

  She smiled at me. “All right. Give me a minute to put something on,” and she went upstairs. I waited at the table, noticing that Terry’s copybook was still there, open to the essay on Roman hill forts. I turned it around and there was a careful drawing of the fort with stick figures loading a rock thrower and others with spears climbing over an earthen bulwark. Underneath were the words, “bugger off shouted Hadrian’s men.”

  Maggie came into the kitchen wearing pale yellow corduroy trousers and a red sweater with a red scarf around her neck.

  “No chance of losing sight of you,” I said.

  “When it’s gray like this, I sometimes crave a bit of color. Otherwise I’m afraid I might disappear.”

  “Not much chance of that.”

  Maggie stopped by the kitchen door to pull on her Wellington boots and said to me, “Here, put on Robbie’s. Otherwise you’ll be mired in muck before we get back.”

  We crossed the farmyard and went up the hill, the same direction she had gone the day before, and she was quick, moving up the slope easily. I felt my chest tighten but I tried not to let on. I was glad when the slope leveled off at the top and we turned toward the trees on the far side.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “I’m a bit of a mountain goat, so if we’re going too fast, just pull on my leash.”

  Jack, the dog, had come with us, and he was ranging in front, head down, working back and forth as if he were on the hunt for something.

  We paused to look down at the farm and I said, “You were quiet during breakfast. I don’t think you spoke a word.”

  “There wasn’t much to say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that. There are times when I think words just fill the air. Robbie did enough talking for the both of us.”

  “He didn’t say much.”

  “He said enough. I’m glad you wanted to walk with me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I like you, Jack Stone. You have a kind face and a kind manner and I feel easy with you.”

  “You can’t know me.”

  “I think I do. I think you’re the kind of man who would listen to me if I wanted to tell you something important.”

  “And what would that be?”

  She continued to look down at the farmhouse. It was misting again, and the farmhouse began to disappear as
we watched, as if it were being erased by some unseen hand. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head but Maggie stood still, her hair wet and shining.

  “Perhaps it’s because you’re a stranger and I know that you’ll leave and I’ll never see you again. So I can tell you things that I can’t tell someone who will see me tomorrow.”

  “And what would you tell me?”

  “That sometimes a black cloud comes over me and I see the women in the store in the village and I see myself standing among them and I cannot stand the idea of being that kind of a woman and there seems to be no way out.”

  “Somehow I don’t see you becoming that sort of woman.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like. It’s like quicksand. Only it sucks the life out of you and you end up standing there on the corner watching them go into the pub and you’re talking about which one is shagging that girl with the short skirt in the next-but-one council house and that’s what’s left of your life.”

  “Why don’t you and Robbie leave?”

  “I’d go in a flash. With Robbie it’s different. I keep waiting, hoping it’s not too late.”

  She turned toward me, pulling her wet hair back with one hand, touching my cheek with the other. “So, Jack Stone,” she said, “here you are with a woman who sounds as if she’s auditioning for the National Theater, or, more likely, an episode of East Enders on the telly. Didn’t bargain for this when you asked me if I wanted to walk, did you?”