Free Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill

and stepped out into the hall.
    “If you get tired of arranging pieces, come down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.”
    I went back to the little bedroom and sat at the laptop and wrote everything out, exactly as it had happened, Maggie standing at the doorway, Maggie rising from the tub, her skin wet and glistening, her shining wet hair, the damp softness of her belly, and when I was done I had several pages and I read them back and I liked what I had written, felt as if somehow I had been sleepwalking and now I was awake and I thought, yes, I could write about Maggie and Robbie and Terry and Jack the dog and the Stryker brothers and the crows that swirled up from the field outside the window.
    I read over what I had written again and tried to work out what Maggie must have been thinking as she stood in the doorway and whether or not she expected me to follow her into the bath. “It’s good to be naked,” she had said. I knew I would stay another night at Sheepheaven Farm.

17.
    When I came downstairs to the kitchen, Maggie was standing at the sink, shucking broad beans, dropping the green hulls into a paper bag at her feet. The kitchen was cold and she had a gray scarf around her neck.
    “Supper?” I asked.
    “That’s what you call it in America?”
    “Sometimes it’s supper, sometimes it’s dinner. Depends on where you grew up.”
    “I grew up calling it tea. Dinner was at noon when Dad came home from the shop.”
    “Can I help?”
    “No.” Her answer was quick. “You need to take a walk, Jack Stone, clear out of here, go up the field and give me room to breathe. Now.” She went into the hallway at the kitchen door and brought back a pair of green rubber Wellington boots. “It’s raining again. Here’s Robbie’s wellies. Put them on. Have you got a mac?”
    “What’s a mac?”
    “Oh, Jack Stone, you’re hopeless. It’s a waterproof. A coat that will keep off the rain.” She looked out the window. “It’s just a fine mist but you’ll be soaked without a mac. Take this one.” She pulled a jacket off a hook by the door. “Put this on and put the wellies on and get yourself off up the field, go any direction, and don’t come back for an hour.” She kissed me lightly, held the jacket out so I could put my arms in and turned me, zipping it up. I felt like a schoolboy being sent out to play.
    “I’d rather stay and watch you here in the kitchen.”
    “You’d rather stay and do more than that,” she said and she pushed me toward the door. “Put on the wellies and go.”
    I did as I was told, went out into the mist, crossed the farmyard and went into the field. The trees at the far edge were soft in the mist and the hill beyond disappeared into the gray. A few crows picked ahead of me, swaggering, rising with hoarse calls as I approached. I walked until I came to a road, crossed, and began to climb the next field toward the top of the hill. Below me Sheepheaven Farm disappeared in what now seemed no more than a thick fog. Everything was indistinct and I labored up the wet slope until the walking became too difficult and I went laterally until I came to another lane, found a break in the hedgerow and came out onto the narrow road. My temples were pounding now and I slowed and came out onto the top of the hill.
    I stood on the wet road looking back where it curved down toward Sheepheaven Farm. I imagined Maggie in the kitchen and tried to reconstruct her body standing next to the tub, tried to reconstruct the curve of her belly and I thought, perhaps it didn’t happen. But it had happened and I wanted to know if she had let me dry her off as a lark or if it was more than that. She couldn’t possibly be feeling what I felt, that much I was sure of. I was twenty years older, a graying tourist who had shown up a week ago, and except for our walks across the fields, we hadn’t spoken more than three dozen words, most of them in the company of her boy and her husband.
    I pictured her leaning