Robbie's Wife (19 page)

I began to work on the screenplay again, and I spent hours at the laptop writing scenes in which Maggie and Jack were together: in a tiny flat along a beach in Italy, the sun blazing on the water; in a cottage in the middle of a hillside vineyard in France, the workers’ voices coming through the open windows at first light, the two of them stroking each other’s bodies in the afternoon heat. Jack and Maggie became two people whose lives I chronicled separately from the Jack and Maggie of Sheepheaven Farm.

At the end of the first week I thought about telephoning Mary at the pub in Mappowder, making the excuse that I had left something there and asking her if there were any news about the Barlows. But I didn’t, fearing that the worst might happen and she would relay my call to the authorities. I would wait at least another week before going down to Dorset to see how things had turned out. If Robbie were dead, he would, no doubt, be buried in the village plot where his parents were. And I wouldn’t want to arrive too soon after that. Things needed to settle down.

I spent another week holed up in the hotel room, hemorrhaging money, walking back to sit at the laptop and re-read the scenes where Maggie and I had made love. I wrote another scene in which the two of them lay on a hilltop, and when I had finished that scene I realized that it was a California hilltop where I had located them, their clothes off, their bodies glowing in the sun. I think I kept putting the two of them into sunlit scenes because the English weather continued to be gray and foggy. It was no wonder, I thought, that the English fled each year to Spain and France and Greece where they took off their clothes and burned their skin.

Sometimes the scene in the shed in which Robbie’s startled gaze met me as I swung the timber came flooding back and I would put on my coat and walk at top speed, take the underground to another part of London and walk my way back to the hotel until I was exhausted and I could only think of Maggie in her blue jumper, barefoot, her voice saying, “what would happen if I went into his room in the middle of the night and fucked him.”

The fourth week I changed to a room in a boarding house behind the crescent, a dingy rabbit warren filled with marginal human beings. I tried not to think of myself as one of them. I was counting days now, and at the end of the sixth week I made plans to go back to Sheepheaven Farm. I found another cheap car hire agency and arranged to rent a car.

The village looked the same. But, I thought, it’s probably looked the same for a hundred years. I slowed as I went past the pub to make sure the Land Rover wasn’t parked in the little parking lot next to it. I saw no one as I passed through the village and that was good. Somehow I didn’t want to see anyone, only find Maggie at the farmhouse. I rehearsed what I would say, how I would profess shock at Robbie’s death, how tragic it was, could I do anything? We would have a cup of tea, sit in the kitchen and I could reach across the table and stroke her hand, and then, when it began to get dark I would ask if I could stay, only a bed to sleep in, nothing more, and I would be in the same house with her and Robbie wouldn’t be there, she would be alone in her bed, and if she came to me only for comfort that would be good, too.

I was at the farm, and as I turned in at the gate I saw a different car drawn along the side of the house, a blue Saab sedan, and a woman hanging clothes on the line only it wasn’t Maggie. Perhaps, I thought, it’s a sister or someone to help her in her grief, but the farm looked different somehow, the curtains in the windows strange. I waited, the car drawn just inside the gate, and the woman stood at the line, clothespins in her mouth, watching me. A dog came around the corner of the house toward the car and it wasn’t Jack. It was a heavy-set dog, the kind that ends up next to the fire, not running after sheep in the field, and I put the car into reverse, backing out into the road, turning back toward the village. I would go to the pub, ask Mary how things were in the village, ask how the Barlows were, did they still take people in? My temples were pounding. Had I waited too long? Was Maggie gone?

There was a beat-up Land Rover next to the pub but it wasn’t Maggie’s. It was piled with farm tools and one fender was crumpled and I recognized it as the Strykers’.

Inside it was dim and familiar and there were the Stryker brothers along the tiny bar, pints in front of them. One of them turned as the door opened.

“Hey, it’s the Yank!”

I came to the bar and stood next to them. Mary stood expectantly opposite, as if I hadn’t been gone for weeks, had been in the night before.

“Hello, Mary.” I turned toward the Strykers. “What am I drinking?” I asked. “It was some sort of animal beer that’s made nearby, right?”

“Badger, mate. That’s what you was drinking.”

“So,” I said as I eased onto the remaining stool. “How are things in the village?”

“Same thing. Only the army’s gone and the plague went with them.”

“Did they kill all the sheep around here?”

“Only our uncle’s and Billy Gray. Turned out the others weren’t infected. Or so they said. Ask me, and I’ll tell you there wasn’t no plague, just Blair buggering farmers.”

“How are the Barlows? They still taking in tourists?”

There was a stillness. Nothing moved except one of the Strykers began turning his glass on the bar, sliding it gently in a circle before lifting it and draining it. He set it on the bar and Mary picked it up, holding it under the spout, expertly drawing it full, setting it wordlessly in front of him.

“Is that a bad question?” I asked. “Nothing wrong, I hope.”

“You wouldn’t know, you not being here and all.” It was Will Stryker, the tall one, who turned to face me. “Just after you left they was an accident out at the farm. Robbie got hurt bad.”

“Hurt? How? Is he still alive?”

“Something went wrong with the shears, he got fried by the electricity, hit his head something awful, Maggie found him in the shed hardly breathing.”

“But he’s alive?”

“Worse than that. He’s alive all right but he’d be better off dead. He’s paralyzed, can’t do no more than shake his head and shout at you in some gibberish. They say he’s all right inside his head but he just can’t tell anybody what happened and he can’t take care of himself, can’t even shit by himself.”

“Are they still out at the farm?”

“No, they was there for a while, but Maggie couldn’t deal with Robbie and the sheep and the boy. So she up and sold it. It went quick at auction, she put it up two weeks ago and some toff from Southampton bought it only he don’t run sheep, now, he just comes down on weekends, says he’s going to retire in the countryside, live the life of the squire.”

“Where did she go?”

“Maggie? Nobody knows. The boy went up to an uncle in Yorkshire, right, Mary?”

Mary spoke for the first time. “Maggie couldn’t bear to have him around Robbie. Robbie was all the time shouting and you couldn’t understand him and there was no way to quiet him down so she sent Terry and Jack off to her brother and his wife.”

“And Maggie? You say she’s gone, too?”

“A few days ago.”

“To her brother’s?”

Will Stryker spoke. “Nobody knows. She didn’t tell nobody. Although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she wasn’t somewheres with that poufter who could dance.”

“Shut up, Will Stryker,” Mary said. “You’ve no cause to say things like that.”

“What poufter who could dance?” I asked. “Somebody from here?”

“No,” Will said, “he was a nurse what the county sent to help Maggie out, lift Robbie, take him to the shitter, clean him up, he stayed out to the farm and we all thought he was a poufter. I mean, what’s a man doing being a nurse? But he wasn’t no poufter, was he Mary?”

Mary didn’t reply. She picked up a pint glass, carefully polished it with a dish cloth and, turning, put it on the back bar with the others.

“Well, I think he got a leg over Maggie if you know what I mean and maybe it wasn’t just Maggie, now was it, love?”

Mary turned back to Stryker and said, “Shut your gob, Will Stryker or you’ll be doing your swilling in some other trough.”

“Touched a nerve there, I think, Yank. Anyway, Maggie, she ups and puts Robbie in one of them car parks for cripples down at Bournemouth where he sits all day in his wheelchair drooling and shouting in a strange tongue and she sells the farm and goes off with the kid, don’t tell nobody where she’s going, and if you was to ask me I think she went with the nurse who was maybe doing some extra nursing. So, Mags is gone, so is the kid and the dog, and Robbie is in a nursing home in Bournemouth and some arsehole who talks like he’s got a stick up his arse has bought Sheepheaven Farm and it’s a shame because it was a good farm, but that’s the way things is going in the village, Yank. Ain’t you glad you asked?”

I had waited too long. Maggie was gone. And Robbie wasn’t dead, but he might just as well be dead. Luckily for me, he couldn’t tell anybody what had happened that night.

“Are you sure nobody knows where Maggie has gone?”

Stryker lifted his glass, half-emptied it and put it down slowly on the bar. “Not a word to anybody. Unless Mary, here, knows. The two of them was thick as thieves, wasn’t you, love?”

Mary said nothing.

“How would I find Robbie?” I asked. It wasn’t that I wanted to see Robbie, but I wanted to hear his gibberish, know for sure that Robbie couldn’t say anything about what had happened in that shed. And maybe the people where he was hospitalized would know where Maggie was.

“Mary, here, knows. She’s been down to see him. Takes him a can of lager. He takes it through a straw, don’t he love?”

“You’re a pig, Will Stryker.”

I drank my pint and bought Will and his brothers another. I changed the subject, asking them about the foot-and-mouth and they told me it had run its course, they had only destroyed the uncle’s sheep and Billy Gray’s and then it surfaced again in Devon and the army went north. “More cowshit from Labor, no different from the Tories,” he said. “They don’t give a tinker’s damn about us country folk. They’d rather eat goose shit from Froggyland than pay attention to us.”

Eventually the four of them rose and went off, leaving Mary and me in the pub, the silence so thick I could hear the clock behind the bar ticking.

“So, Mary,” I asked, “Do you think Maggie went off with that fellow?”

“No. He wasn’t nothing to Maggie. He wasn’t nothing more than a few hours without Robbie. He was company for her. I went out to the farm and Robbie was a trial, he was, shouting all the time, they had to tie him in his wheelchair or in his bed, he kept trying to get up but he couldn’t get up, he fell on the floor, sounded like he was cursing somebody or something. And he never let up. Not unless Simon, he was the nurse, give him an injection. Then he was just a vegetable, looking off into space. Simon liked to dance, same as Maggie. They’d come here sometimes for an hour when Robbie was drugged, get Mrs. Gray to watch Robbie for a bit.

“Maggie danced something marvelous. But she wouldn’t dance with nobody but Simon. The Strykers, they wanted more than a dance, that’s for sure. They’re good lads but they can be pigs, they can. I liked Simon. But he and Maggie weren’t having it off, that’s for sure.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“She went up to Yorkshire to get Terry, up at her brother’s place. But she isn’t there no more. I sent her a letter, it come back.” Mary leaned against the back bar, neatly folding the bar rag, leaned forward and placed it next to the taps.

“Will said you went down to see Robbie.”

“I did, yes I did. I took him a can of lager. He shouted something awful at me, thrashed around in his chair. He did have some of the lager, though. Through a straw. That’s how they mostly feeds him. He’s nothing but skin and bones.”

“Maybe I’ll go down and see him.”

“He might know you. They say he’s got some brain left and it’s mostly his body what don’t work. ‘Course he can’t talk so’s anybody can understand him and his head lolls about something awful, like one of them dolls with a rubber neck. They has a kerchief tied around his forehead to lash him to his chair.”

“And Maggie? Does she see him?”

“Not that I know of. For a while she come down from Yorkshire to see him but she told me it was too painful, him jabbering and shouting at her. She wouldn’t bring Terry after the first time. She said it wasn’t Robbie no more, just some sack of flesh what made awful noise. It wasn’t her Robbie no more.”

“You mean she just left him and she hasn’t come back? That doesn’t sound like Maggie.”

“No, it don’t, but you take yourself down to Bournemouth and see him and you’ll understand.”

She unfolded the rag and ran it over the clean bar top.

“But she has a brother in Yorkshire?”

“That she does. I don’t know if she’s there or not. Maybe she just don’t want no more letters from me. Maybe what they had at the farm was all spoilt and she wants no part of any of us.”

“I’m probably going to be up there next week. If I had the address of her brother I could stop in, tell her how sorry I am. And if she’s there, I could let you know.”

Mary leaned back again, folding the bar rag.

“I’d leave her alone if I was you, mister Yank. Now, if you’ll not be having another one, I think it’s time you went.”

“And if I wanted to see Robbie?”

“You be my guest. He’s down to Bournemouth at a place called Precious Care Home. It’s owned by a chap named Alfie Precious, which is why it’s called that. Them what lives there says it ought to be called Precious Little Care Home since they get precious little. It’s in the directory.”

Mary turned her attention away from me and it was obvious that she had no more to say. Or wanted to say. But if I went down to Bournemouth, saw Robbie, perhaps I could get Maggie’s address, or at least the place in Yorkshire where her brother lived. And perhaps Maggie did come to visit Robbie from time to time. And I would find out if Robbie could say anything about that night in the shed.

The quay in Bournemouth was a broad street that curved along the sea. Along one side were shops and hotels facing the water and on the other was a low stone wall that fronted the wide flat beach below the street. Across the curve of the harbor green hills were a dim outline. In the cold gray light of early afternoon it had none of the charm of a seaside resort. Summer was not here, and the paddleboats were stacked against the stone wall, the shacks that sold fish and chips and candy floss were shuttered. There were few people on the wet sidewalks and the beach was deserted except for a bundled old man with a dog on a leash. Seagulls walked boldly on the pavement, scattering momentarily for the occasional bus. I drove to the end of the quay, turned and came back and then turned off into the town. The blocks behind the hotels and shops were filled with guest houses, continuous rows of Victorian town houses, steep steps going up the front of each one, each block a single long building with a brick facade, only the trim on each house different.