Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill Page A

washing up, trot off to bed like a good girl.”
    “Somehow this doesn’t sound like you.”
    “You don’t know what I sound like, Jack Stone.” Her voice had a hard edge to it, as if she were about to accuse me of something.
    “No, I suppose I don’t.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening. “That was uncalled for. It’s just that when you drove off, I suddenly wanted to be driving off with you.”
    “You would have had an ugly experience.”
    “Maybe we wouldn’t have gone to Glastonbury. If I had gone off with you, Jack Stone, where would you have taken me?”
    “Majorca. Spain. Morocco. Some place where there’s lots of sun.”
    “I’d like that,” she said. She sipped again at the scotch, set the glass on the table and rose. “Time for me to become the farm wife, Jack Stone. There’s things to be done. If you’re up to it, we’ll take a walk later. Go listen to the river. Go on up to the room, draw yourself a bath, take a nap. Come down when you feel like it.” She drank the rest of the scotch, squeezed my hand before releasing it. “I’m glad you came back,” she said.

14.
    I went upstairs and drew a bath and then fell asleep and woke in the failing light of late afternoon and came down to the kitchen to find Terry sitting at the table.
    “Hello, Terry.”
    “You’re back, sir.”
    “Yes. Looks like you can’t get rid of me.”
    “Mum says you nearly got turned over in your car by some bad men.”
    “Let’s say I had a bit of an adventure, but nothing terrible happened to me.”
    “Are you going to turn it into a movie?”
    “Not a bad idea.”
    “If you had your computer we could write it out,” he said.
    “Should I go up and get it? You won’t get in trouble for neglecting your schoolwork, will you?”
    “I’m almost done.”
    So Terry and I sat at the table, writing dialog for a movie in which an American tourist gets attacked by English thugs and, according to Terry’s version, leaps out of the car and thrashes them thoroughly.
    “You make me out to be a hero,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m a rather ordinary man who wouldn’t stand a chance in real life.”
    “Mum said to Dad that you were a tough nut to crack.”
    I wondered what the conversation had been about. How had I come up between Maggie and Robbie? I thought of asking Terry to tell me more about what he had heard but then thought no, not a good idea, Jack. Leave it alone.
    “So, Terry, what do you think of our movie?” I asked. “Should we read it out at supper for your mum and dad, just like they do in Hollywood?”
    “You mean make a real movie?”
    “No, they get a couple of actors to read the script out loud, see how it sounds, pretend that it’s the movie before they decide to make it. What do you say? We’ll practice it, and surprise them?”
    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