Robbie's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

and I thought perhaps it could be worked into the coast-watcher story, the one I had invented for Nigel. But I found myself thinking of Maggie, reconstructing her, jotting down phrases I had heard her utter at the dinner table, the way her blouse pressed against her when she reached into the cupboard, the way her voice fell at the end of each sentence.
    I worked that way the rest of the morning and when I stopped I looked again at what I had done. They were paragraphs, disconnected, no story there, only scenes, like sketches an artist might make as a study for some painting that hadn’t yet formed in his mind. There was Mr. Orchard in his yellow slicker, and his cloudy-eyed dog, and Robbie at the table, and Maggie putting on her coat. But they were good, that much I knew, and I wanted to share them with someone. It felt as if I were on the verge of something new and I felt energized as I had not felt in more than a year.
    I went downstairs to the kitchen but it was empty. I went outside into the farmyard. The Land Rover wasn’t there, so evidently both Maggie and Robbie were still off someplace. I was hungry now, and I thought about getting in my car and going in to the village to the pub, but I felt hesitant, as if that would break the spell, and I would come back to find my paragraphs dull and lifeless. I explored the farmyard, looking into the big shed where a cow shifted in a stall, and a pool of water glistened on the stone floor. Beyond the shed was a low stone wall and beyond that the field rose, gently at first, then steeper, and there were sheep dotted on it, as if someone had taken a salt shaker and sprinkled the green slope with them.
    Back inside the house I found the remains of the Shepherd’s Pie in the refrigerator and spooned some onto a plate. Although it was cold, it still tasted good, and I made myself a cup of tea. When I was finished, I washed the plate and cup, carefully replaced them and went back up to my laptop, but I found myself watching out the window, and eventually I saw Terry turn in through the gate and heard the door below open and close.
    I unplugged the laptop and carried it downstairs. Terry was at the kitchen table, his copybook open, laboriously working on his drawing.
    “Mind if I join you?” I asked.
    “No, sir,” he said, without looking up.
    I set the laptop on the table, opened it. The screen glowed blue and Terry glanced at it.
    “Want to learn how to write a screenplay?” I asked.
    He looked at me.
    “The script for a movie film. It’s how movies start. Somebody writes it all down and then the actors and actresses act it out and the director films it. It’s what I do for a living.”
    “Is it hard?” he asked.
    “Not really. Here. It works like this.”
    I opened the program, keyed in CHARACTER and then typed in JACK .
    “There,” I said. “There’s one character. That’s Jack. Now, all I have to do is put down what Jack says.”
    I typed in, Hello Terry. How was your day?
    I touched the character key again, and typed in TERRY . “Now I’ve got two characters. Here. You do it. Put in what Terry says.” I swiveled the laptop in front of him.
    “You don’t have to plug this in, then, do you?”
    “No, it’s got batteries inside. We could do this for the next six hours before I have to charge it up again. Go on, tell us what Terry says.”
    He paused, looking at the screen, then with one finger he pecked out: OK. How was your day?
    I swiveled the laptop back, hit the key and JACK popped up. “See, it remembers who I am.” I typed in: I went to London, bought a new Aston Martin, drove down the motorway at a hundred miles an hour and had lunch in the Flying Monk.
    “You did that?” Terry asked.
    “No, I’m making it up. That’s the fun in this sort of thing. You can make up whatever you want. You don’t have to put down the way things really are. You can put down anything the way you want it to be.”
    “How do I get Terry back?”
    “Here, press