Robbie's Wife (9 page)

I pictured her leaning against the door jamb, tea mug in hand, saying she fancied me the afternoon I came down, hung over, into her kitchen and I could see her gliding across the floor, rising up on the balls of her feet as if she were floating, and I thought no, this is some old man’s fantasy, don’t make anything more of this than there is. Let it be a scene in a movie script you’re writing, nothing more. Don’t make a fool of yourself. I think that’s the thing I feared most at that moment. That I would say or do something and she would think of me as an aging bumbler, that I would miss all of the signals and be thought of as a stupid old man who had the arrogance to think that an attractive younger woman would suddenly want him, and I resolved to go back to the farm and pack my things and move on. But something in the back of my head told me I would not do that.

I turned again to the wet road and began to walk, this time more slowly. A track went off the road into the trees and I walked along it and found, to my surprise, an encampment consisting of two old buses that looked as if they had been municipal coaches at one time, both with metal smokestacks, a thin greasy smoke trailing off. The windows were boarded up and there were several old cars parked, along with crude lean-tos of corrugated iron and tree limbs against the buses and there were old chairs, various kinds of junk, and in the midst of it a vintage Mercedes Benz, obviously in good condition. I stood there, taking it in, and then I realized that there was a figure just beyond the buses who was looking at me, a dark man with long hair and a beard who was motionless so that he blended in with the trees and he was watching me and I turned and went back toward the road, feeling his stare on my back.

I went back down the road and followed the signposting into the village and on through the village, past the post office shop where two women, deep in animated conversation, stopped talking and watched me and as I passed one of them said, “Afternoon,” and I nodded and I knew they, too, were watching me as I went along the road out of the village. I was the American who was staying with Maggie and Robbie. No doubt everyone in the village knew that by now. Perhaps even the dark man at the encampment knew who I was. And how much else did they know? Did they know that I was in love with Maggie and that I had held her naked body that afternoon and she was there in the kitchen at this very moment, rising on her bare feet, waiting for me to come in out of the gathering evening?

At that moment, walking the wet pavement in front of the post office store, nodding to the village women and trying to bring the image of Maggie back into focus, I wasn’t aware that I had chosen the perilous fork in the road. It wasn’t until much later after everything had unraveled that I would begin to understand what had happened between Maggie and me. And by then I wouldn’t be sure whether I had fallen in love with Maggie or I had fallen in love with the idea of Maggie. I often turned over in my head what she saw in me. Eventually I came to believe that Maggie was never in love with me in the same way that I was in love with her. I came at a moment in her life when she was filled with unease. Her life with Robbie had become something expected with no secrets or surprises and I was something different and I was from far away. I don’t think she ever believed that I would fall in love with her and I know she had no idea I would threaten her very existence. Oh, I don’t mean Maggie and I weren’t in love. I think she loved me on some level that was fraught with peril as if she wanted to walk a tightrope, see if she could tiptoe across a chasm that was opening in her life. It was easier for me. I was flattered by her attention, drawn into her eroticism, swept away by passion that I had forgotten I ever had. She had awakened me from my sleepwalk, and still in the midst of a dream I did terrible things.

I kept thinking about how much of my life was accidental. I drank with the Stryker brothers and ended up in Maggie’s house. I could just as easily have stopped at the next village. I could have stopped at the second beer and left Glastonbury, gone on to London and, even now, I would be in Los Angeles in a rented room rather than walking a country lane thinking of Maggie. Or, the cottage at White Church Farm could have been warm and cozy and I would have stayed and written the script about the coast-watcher and it would have been competent and perhaps would have brought a small option and I would have drifted back to Los Angeles, like flotsam washed up on the beach at Santa Monica. But it hadn’t happened that way. I would not reflect on those events until it was too late.

I was tired and my legs ached when I came to Sheepheaven Farm and turned into the farmyard. Robbie’s Land Rover was there and the lights were on in the house. I came to the back door, opened it and stepped inside. It was warm and inviting and Terry was at the kitchen table, bent over his copybook. Robbie was next to him, cupping a mug of tea with his hands. He looked up at me and grinned.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned?”

“Horatio, there, was supposed to say ‘Look my lord, it comes,’” I replied, nodding toward Terry. Terry didn’t look up.

“Jesus, Jack, you impress me. I thought Americans only knew the lyrics to pop tunes.”

“Then I won’t say anything about English farmers who quote Shakespeare,” I said.

“Maggie! The ghost of Hamlet’s father needs a towel. He’s dripping all over your floor. And he needs a cup of tea.”

Maggie came into the kitchen with a towel and handed it to me wordlessly.

“So, Jack,” Robbie said, “where have you been off to? Not the pub and the Stryker brothers again?”

“No. Up on the hill near a woods where there were some old buses. Some sort of encampment. Strange place with a nice old Mercedes in the middle of it.”

“Travelers. Best to stay out of there, Jack.”

“Who are they?”

“Gypsies. They’ve been up in that copse most of the year. The police let them alone as long as they don’t nick anything around here and they’re clever enough not to foul their own nest. Still, they’re not to be trusted and you’d best give them a wide berth.”

“Real gypsies?”

“As real as they get around here. Sometimes you’ll see a cart and a horse but mostly they trade autos and live like you saw up in the copse. I had one put a curse on me last year. She came to the door and asked if she could get the mistletoe from the oak trees up the field. They sell it at Christmas. I said no, I didn’t want her climbing around up there, break her fool neck. Once you let them in, they’ll take advantage, be here for water, things go missing, so I told her no and she pointed her finger at me and said, ‘A curse on you!’ and she spat on my shoe and that winter I got laid up with a bad back, twisted something and got so I had to lie on the floor to get any relief and Maggie here said it was the curse. Right Mag?”

Maggie, who had been bustling around the stove didn’t turn, just said, “Served you right, you skinflint. You didn’t plant any mistletoe in those trees, it just grew there.”

Robbie grinned at me, reached back and slapped Maggie on her thigh.

“Watch yourself,” Maggie said, still not turning.

Supper, or tea as the Barlows called it, was a salmon pie, chunks of canned salmon in a pie crust with slices of hard-boiled eggs and some sort of cream sauce, and it was good, fragrant, with spices I couldn’t identify. Robbie said that the talk in market was of the news that foot-and-mouth disease had surfaced in the North, the army was already in and destroying animals, burning cows and sheep and pigs in huge pyres in the field. “Some arse of a pig farmer fed slops to his pigs and there was diseased meat from some kid’s lunch, Packy kids or something, some kind of meat that came from granny in Pakistan and now they’ll all be keen to run dark-skinned folk out of the country. They’ve found it on a farm in Wiltshire and God help us if it comes here.”

He looked at me intently. “You didn’t go into Wiltshire when you went north, did you?”

“No, I went to Glastonbury, climbed the Tor, and went to the pub. I drove back that same night. You found me in the farmyard in the morning.”

“And glad we were to find you, Jack. You’re welcome to stay on as long as you’d like, right Maggie?”

Maggie looked at me, then rose and began clearing the plates. “Maybe Jack has had his fill of us, Robbie. I’m sure there are more interesting things to write about than Sheepheaven Farm. That is, if you’re writing about Sheepheaven Farm. Is that what you’re writing about, mister Stone?”

“Not exactly, although there’s lots here that I find interesting. You have to remember that all of this is new to me. It’s old hat to you because you live it.”

“Then you need to get out and about. Walk Eggerton. Go look at the Cerne Giant. There’s not much here for you, Jack Stone.”

“Maggie, don’t be hard on the poor man,” Robbie said. “If he finds it easy to write here, let him be. Who knows? Maybe he’ll write about us and we’ll all be famous some day. Right, Jack?”

Saturday night at the Flying Monk wasn’t like the quiet afternoon when I drank with the Stryker brothers. The pub was crowded, thick with cigarette smoke, music from a jukebox, the room filled with shouting voices. It seemed like half the village was jammed into the low-ceilinged room. Robbie found us room on the bench along one wall, half a dozen little round tables scarred by cigarettes and beer ranged in front of it. Robbie fought his way to the bar, returned with three pints. He leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from my ear.

“Local color, Jack. Put this in your fucking movie!”

Maggie rose and reached out toward me. “Dance, Jack Stone?” At least that’s what I thought she said, her voice barely audible above the hubbub.

“Did you say dance?”

“Yes.” She took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“Where?”

She turned her head toward the far end of the room and towed me through the crowd. I looked back at Robbie and he raised his pint toward me, grinning.

There was a space at the far end of the room with a tiny dance floor and a huge jukebox that looked decidedly American. Although it was crowded around the edge, the space was kept open enough so that three or four couples could dance, and there were people I recognized from the village, a woman who had stared dourly at me from the village store and who was now dancing, her head thrown back, laughing.

Maggie slipped into my arms and we danced to a Frank Sinatra song, Frankie crooning strangers in the night, and it was as if Maggie weren’t there, she moved so gracefully. She flowed with me, her body touching mine, and I could hear her singing along, her voice buried in my shoulder. The record stopped and she continued to dance, and I felt self-conscious, as if the whole village must be watching us, but nobody was paying any attention and the next record came on, a polka, and there were stomping farmer lads all around us and we worked our way back to where Robbie was sitting.

“She’s not half bad, is she?” Robbie said.

“She dances beautifully.”

“You play a tango and you watch her and it’s like watching fucking with clothes on. Oh my, my Maggie can dance, right, love?” He leaned across me toward her.

“What’s right?”

“That you can dance.”

“You want to dance, Robbie?”

“Not now, love. Maybe when we get back to the farm we’ll do a bit of dancing.” He nudged me in the ribs.

“Don’t be too sure of yourself, you cheeky bugger,” she said. “Come on, Jack Stone. Dance with me again.” The polka was over and the jukebox was playing another Sinatra song.

“Go ahead, Jack,” Robbie said, “warm her up for me.”

I think, at that moment, I could have killed the bastard. Picked up the little pub table and beat him over the head with it, crushed him down to the floor until he was lifeless and gone off to dance with Maggie. I felt a surge of jealousy, thought, you lucky prick, you don’t have any idea how good you have it. Yes, you do know how lucky you are, and I would give anything if you could, at this moment, disappear, be swallowed up, go out to the loo to take a piss and get beaten to death by the Stryker brothers who mistake you for a feral dog that attacked their sheep or you suddenly remember that you’re already married to a woman in Tasmania.

Maggie and I danced again and when we came back to the table, Robbie raised his glass to us. “If I was a bit more steady, Jack, I’d go out there and show you how it’s really done. Christ, I need to take a piss.” He rose, a bit unsteadily, and said, “Come on Jack, time for a bit of relief from all these happy arseholes.”

We went to the loo, which required that we go outside the pub and around the corner of the building, a stone shed on the back of the pub where there was a metal trough along one wall, water dribbling through it, and Robbie leaned one hand against the wall as he fumbled with the fly of his trousers with the other and I could tell that he was slightly drunk. Another man came into the shed, stood between us, and as he unzipped his trousers, Robbie said to him, “Your fucking dog was worrying my sheep again. You let him loose one more time and he’ll come back to you one leg at a time.”

“For Christ’s sake, Barlow,” the man said, “that dog is thirteen years old. He’s not going to worry your sheep.”

“You heard what I said.”

“Well, piss off, Barlow,” and with that Robbie turned, and a steady arc of urine cascaded onto the man’s shoes. Robbie stood there, holding his cock in his hand, aiming it at the man’s feet and the man jumped back. “Jesus Christ, you bloody fucking nutter!” he shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Robbie said nothing, just stood there, pissing on the cement floor, the urine spattering at the man’s feet and soaked trouser legs and I thought, Oh shit, someone’s going to get hit but Robbie only stood there with a grin on his face, as if it were all a huge joke, but it wasn’t a joke. His eyes were fixed on the man and they glittered and he didn’t look drunk at all, even though he swayed slightly as he carefully shook his penis and tucked it into his trousers, zipping his fly, his eyes boring into the other man. It was as if a switch had been flicked and the Robbie who called his dog to his heel and talked about Roman hill forts to his son and slapped his wife on the thigh had disappeared, replaced by something that was dark and dangerous and the man knew it because he backed out of the door, muttering “fucking crazy son of a bitch,” and Robbie said, “Well, Jack, you fancy another dance with my wife?”