Robbie's Wife (15 page)

“It seems to have let up,” I said.

“Well, you’ll have to come back to Lyme when the sun is out. It’s lovely down by the quay. That’s where they made that movie with Jeremy Irons.”

“My wife saw it on American television.”

“Did she now? And where is your wife, Mr. Stone?”

“I’m afraid she’s not my wife anymore.”

“Oh dear. I’m sorry about that,” she said, obviously embarrassed by the answer.

“That’s all right. It happened years ago.” Or at least it seemed as if it had happened years ago.

I escaped Mrs. Salt and walked in blustery wind down to the quay. There was a narrow channel that came into the small harbor with ghostlike surf and the white noise of waves coming in. Lyme Regis Head was no more than a dim outline fading into the gray sky that became the gray of the surf and the sea and sometimes a big roller came in through the channel, spume drifting off the top, spilling along the sides of the channel and still the continuous surf pounded and rushed in a long noise that never stopped and shore birds ran ahead in the wet sand inside the harbor, fading into the fog. I found a telephone box and went into it, out of the wind, debating whether or not to call Maggie again. I rehearsed what I would say, that I needed to see her one more time, I would promise not to bother her again, I was going home to Los Angeles, she would never see me, but I wanted to see her alone, without other people at the next table. Could she trust herself to come away for an hour or two tomorrow?

Finally I picked up the receiver, dropped in the coins and waited. There was the distinctive double ring of an English telephone, once, twice, three, four times. I waited, counting the rings and had almost given up when I heard Maggie’s voice.

“Sheepheaven Farm.”

“Maggie, it’s Jack.”

Long pause. Then, “Where are you?”

“I’m still in Lyme Regis. Maggie will you do one last thing for me?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you see me one more time?” Now I rushed into my explanation, not letting her interrupt, hoping that I would be convincing enough and when I came to the end I waited.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said.

“Just for an hour or two. I’ll find a place where we can be alone.”

“Just for an hour,” she said. “That’s it. Promise me, Jack Stone.”

“Yes.” It was more than I could have hoped for. “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning and tell you where I am. All right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice, though, was guarded, and I wondered if she would answer the phone in the morning. I wanted to end the call quickly, before she changed her mind.

I collected my things from Mrs. Salt’s B&B and drove to Blandford. I remembered that there was a visitor center at the bottom of the town where the board outside had advertised holiday rentals. Perhaps I could find a cottage where Maggie and I could meet.

Mrs. Salt had been right about the River Stour. It was a wide brown expanse, spreading across the fields, turgid with streamers of white foam slowly swirling. At the bridge entering Blandford the river pulsed against the stone wall, and the car park was underwater, the river lapping at the shops that fronted it. The holiday center was in a small octagonal building at the end of the bridge and I expected it to be closed but there was an older woman inside, and when I entered she got up from behind the small desk and said, “Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a cottage for a night for my wife and myself. Something simple, inexpensive.”

“You’re on holiday, are you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been a terrible spring, and I’m sorry you don’t have better weather. But perhaps we can find something.”

She crossed to a rack of brochures and began going through them.

“Perhaps a bed-and-breakfast?”

“No, something where we can be off by ourselves.”

“Here’s something. The Fulhams have a cottage just north of their village. And I suspect, in weather like this, that it won’t be occupied.” She took out a sheet with a photograph of a stone cottage. It looked vaguely like the one I had rented at White Church Farm.

“If the river isn’t too high, that is. The cottage is across the river from the farm, but they’re quite a distance up the river from here and the bridge is an old one, quite safe. Would you like me to give them a ring, see if it’s available?”

“Yes, please.” I waited, browsing through leaflets for the steam fair and the miniature village at Wimbourne while she telephoned.

“Yes, it’s quite all right,” she said as she hung up. She gave me directions and I drove north from the town, up through Stourpaine, toward Wintercombe where, after several tries, I found the farmhouse. I rented the cottage for two nights, and drove in the lowering light a short distance to where a bridge crossed the Stour. The river was high and brown here, too, but it was narrow and it funneled safely under the low arch. The cottage was another fifty yards down a graveled track, but unlike Mr. Orchard’s pig shed, when I entered this one I found whitewashed walls, a big bed and several chairs, a neat kitchen and an oil stove that lit as soon as I turned the switch. Within minutes the cottage was warm and I wished that Maggie would arrive immediately and spend the night with me.

I worked for a while on the script, wrote out a scene in which the two of us were together in the cottage, and it wasn’t until well after dark that I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat since my mid-morning biscuit and tea in Lyme Regis. I decided not to look for a place to eat. In the darkness I didn’t trust myself to find the cottage again. There would be time enough tomorrow when I went into the village to telephone Maggie.

I woke several times in the night, each time looking at my watch only to find that I had slept fitfully for an hour. At dawn there was a faint light at the window and when I pulled the curtain aside I could see a weak sun over the edge of the trees. It was a good sign, I thought. I waited until the sun was well above the trees and I knew it was past breakfast time at Sheepheaven Farm. Maggie would be in the kitchen by now, Robbie off working, Terry at school.

I drove into Wintercombe and found a red telephone box next to the post office store. Maggie answered immediately and I quickly told her where the cottage was. I didn’t want to hear her say she had reconsidered, and she said she would be there. She could get away late in the afternoon, she said. It would only be for an hour. She sounded upbeat. I was ecstatic.

The post office store had nothing in the way of wine or champagne, only bottled water and soft drinks. No, said the shop assistant, a teenage girl wearing a blue smock, they didn’t have any alcohol. I’d have to go to the pub for that. I bought a sandwich wrapped in plastic and a package of cookies and an apple and I drove back to the cottage. The sandwich turned out to be stale and the apple was soft but I didn’t care. Maggie would be there in six hours and the time couldn’t go fast enough. I walked along the edge of the river for a while, watching the water swirl at the edge of the field. A heron picked its way along the edge of the water across from me, stepping delicately in the spongy grass.

The weak sun began to fade and I walked back to the bridge, stood at the center and looked down at the river, dark now, the water no longer a soft brown, but cold and nearly black. I thought about how quickly the sun had gone. One minute it was flooding the vale and the next it had gone over the hill and it was if someone had pulled a shade over everything, the wind rising in the trees, and I zipped my jacket tight. She had said she would be there by four o’clock and it was already four, but she had to come a long way and I knew I would stand in the center of the bridge where I could see the graveled track coming down from the highway. There was no point in going back to the cottage and waiting there. The river was shadowy now, and the rushing water through the stone arch was louder, a continuous sound like the wind. I walked to the far side of the bridge, then came back to the center and I tried to picture Maggie, her long hair and her gray eyes, imagining that she was making the turn from the motorway, accelerating up the long straight stretch that led into the now black line of trees, switching on her headlights. If she made the turn at this moment — I looked at my watch — she would be here in fifteen minutes. Perhaps she had already made the turn and was, at this moment, turning off above me, winding down the lane toward the bridge. I listened, but there was no motor, only the wind in the trees and the continuous background of the river.

Or perhaps she wasn’t coming at all, was now in her kitchen, starting supper, looking out the black window over the sink and wondering if I were still waiting for her. I heard a motor and listened but it was on the road above and it faded. The wind had turned cold and I hugged my arms to my chest. Birds popped erratically out from beneath the bridge, darting low over the water, and when I turned and looked downstream I could see the light from the farmhouse among the trees and it looked warm and inviting.

I walked to the near side of the bridge and thought about going back to the cottage, but I turned and walked back toward the center of the bridge. It was dark now, the river barely visible, and then I saw the headlights coming down the track toward the bridge, and they blinked once, twice, and I knew it was her and I felt more than just relief — it was as if I had never really expected her to come. Yes, she had said she would be there, and yes, I had believed her, but seeing the car, headlights dipping and rising as it came over the lip of the bridge, knowing that she was at the wheel, driving toward me, filled me with a kind of wonder, as if I had won a lottery, had bought a ticket and held it until it was crumpled in my hand, hoping that the number they drew from the rising column of tumbling numbered balls would miraculously be mine and now, as the car came onto the bridge, the planks on the bridge vibrated and rumbled and as she drew abreast I could see her face and she was smiling, looking straight ahead as if she could not see me next to the rail and she drove on across the bridge toward the farm. I broke into a trot behind the Land Rover, watching the brake lights glow red as she stopped at the far side of the bridge and I began to run.

When Maggie got out of the Land Rover I took her in my arms, held her tightly, and said, “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I said I would,” she said. “I have no idea why I agreed and all the way here I kept thinking, I should turn around, this isn’t what I want, but I’m here, Jack Stone, and it’s just for an hour and then I’m gone. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I felt like some part of me had been amputated and then there was your voice on the telephone.”

We went into the cottage and I hugged her again, and I could feel her pressing against me and I said, “Come to bed with me, Maggie.”

She said nothing, only slipped the old blue sweater up over her head and stood there, naked to the waist and she said, “It’s good to be naked,” and pressed against me again.

We lay on the bed side by side, and I told her that I was working on the screenplay and it was filled with images of her and she said she was glad that I was writing again.

“You’ll take that back home with you, Jack Stone, and it will be a piece of me to remember.”

I touched her face as she was talking, trying to memorize her features with my fingers, and then she rose, straddling me, lowering herself and I slipped into her body as if she had sucked me in. She arched her back, her breasts taut against her chest and she began to slide her hips forward, then back, rotating her body slowly, her head back, mouth open, and it felt as if I were rising through her body all the way to her throat, beyond her throat, until I touched her brain, and I lifted my hips in time to her movement, her head back so far now that her long hair touched my legs, and I heard her cry out, come with me now, and I thought of the magician who sweeps off his top hat, shows it to the audience, shows that it’s empty, runs his hand inside the hat, turns it over and taps it and then places it on the table and covers it with a silk cloth and a beautiful woman comes to his side and he weaves his hands back and forth and she whips off the cloth and he reaches inside and out comes an endless stream of silk and he reaches in again and brings out a bouquet of roses and reaches in again and out comes a white rabbit, held by the ears, struggling, and he hands it to the beautiful woman and reaches in again and out comes a dove, cupped in his hand, and he raises his hand and the dove opens its wings and rises into the lights and disappears and he picks up the hat and shows it to the audience and it’s empty.

And I felt that way, as if she had taken the silk and the flowers and the rabbit and the dove from my body, sucked them up into her body, into her brain, leaving me like the empty top hat, and I felt my body filling again, this time with love, and she leaned forward, pressing herself against me, kissed me and I was whole again.

We lay on the bed, spent, touching each other tentatively, and then Maggie asked, “Do you ever feel like you’re someone else?”

“You mean, like you’ve lived some other life before this one?”

“No,” she said. “I mean like you’re inside someone else’s skin. Somebody made a mistake. As if you went to a party and went into the bedroom and picked up a wrap that you thought was yours only when you got home and took it off you realized it wasn’t yours, it belonged to someone else. It’s as if I’m wearing someone else’s skin, and there’s somebody out there wearing mine, living the life I was meant to live. I don’t mean I hate my life. I like it, I do well in it, but there’s this sense of unease, as if...” She let her voice trail off.

“As if what?”

“I don’t know.”

“As if you were meant to be a dancer and not a farm wife?”

“I should go now,” she said.

“Stay with me.”

“No, Jack Stone. It’s been an hour and we promised that’s all it would be. I know that when I get back to the farm I’ll feel badly about this. I’ll make tea for Robbie and Terry and I’ll soak in the tub for a long while and I’ll wonder why I came one more time.”