Robbie's Wife Read Online Free PDF

this.”
    He did and TERRY popped up. He carefully pecked out: Did you get pissed again?
    At that moment the door opened and Maggie came in, carrying bags of groceries. We both watched while she set them on the counter, shucked her coat.
    “Well,” she said. “What are you two doing?”
    “We’re writing a movie,” Terry said. “Mr. Stone and I are writing a movie story.”
    “Will we all be rich when it’s finished, Jack Stone?”
    “We have to finish it first. Then my agent has to sell it. Then some producer has to make it into a movie and Terry will be at university by the time your ship comes in.”
    She smiled and began putting the groceries away. Terry was pecking away again at the keyboard and I watched her as she brushed her hair back over her shoulders, bent to put cans in a cupboard, reached up to take a pot from above the stove. As she did so, her sweater rose and I could see the roundness of her stomach and where the old skirt hung against her hips and I thought, there’s another scene I can write and then she turned and looked at me and I looked back at Terry, suddenly feeling I had been caught out.
    Terry stopped typing and I looked at what he had written.
    You must have got pissed because you wet your trowsers.
    I looked at him and he looked back solemnly, but I could tell that a grin was close to the surface.
    I hit JACK and typed: No, I didn’t wet myself. I spilled tea on myself.
    Terry hit the key and began to peck again.
    TERRY: Was the tea hot?
    My turn. JACK: Yes, it was hot. Oooh, did it burn!
    TERRY: Poor Willie. Does he have to go to hospital?
    And Terry was giggling uncontrollably, head down on the table.
    “What are you two doing?” Maggie asked, coming toward the table. I hit the DELETE key and the screen went blank.
    “Whoops,” I said. “I’m afraid I erased it. We’ll have to start over again.”
    At that moment Robbie came in and Terry asked, “Did you find a calf?”
    “No, nothing worth having. You working on your paper, are you?”
    “Mr. Stone and I were writing a movie story.”
    “Is that so? You giving lessons, Jack?”
    “No, just having a bit of fun.”
    He opened Terry’s copybook. “You need to get this done, lad. Thank Mr. Stone and then get at it.”
    “He was working on it when I came down. I’m afraid I was the one who interrupted him. My fault.”
    “Not to worry, Jack. He knows what he’s got to do.”
    I took the laptop back upstairs and wrote out a scene in which Maggie rose on her toes, took the pot from the shelf, and when it was done I looked at it again and realized that it bordered on the erotic and I thought, get hold of yourself, Jack. But it was good writing and I saved it, along with the other pieces I had done that day, and went downstairs to the kitchen. Maggie was telling Robbie that he needed to lighten up, that Terry wasn’t headed for Cambridge the next morning, and Robbie was telling her that they had to start early, he didn’t want his boy to end up shoveling cow shit the rest of his life, and I felt guilty, since my interruption of Terry’s work had obviously triggered the argument. They stopped when they realized I was there and Robbie asked if I wanted to look around the farm before tea. We put on coats and went out into the chill air. The sun was low in the field, barely over the hedgerow on the west side, and it was a misty evening, the air heavy with the promise of more rain. We went out to the shed where Robbie raked the old straw out of the stall and replaced it with new straw.
    “Don’t get yourself wet,” he said. He wore boots so he could walk through the wide pool of water.
    “This time of year it puddles up in here. The stones were set a hundred years ago and they’ve slumped. I could put a new floor in, pour concrete over it, but I like the stones and when summer comes, if it ever does, it dries up. Bit of a cockup in winter, though.”
    We went back outside to the wall and stood, watching the sheep on the