Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill Page B

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,