Robbie's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

slope. Jack, the dog, had appeared and was close behind Robbie’s heels.
    “Jesus,” he said. “Sheep are strange creatures. They’re silent all day and then all night they talk to each other, crying out like some chorus of lost souls.” He paused, watching the still white shapes, their heads down, grazing. Then he spoke, his voice not much more than a whisper: “Lords, I protest. My soul is full of woe.”
    He turned to look at me, his face indistinct in the failing light. “But they don’t look much like King Richard’s court, do they, Jack? Did they keep you awake last night?”
    “No, I slept like a log.”
    “You’re lucky. Maybe it’s because I depend on the dumb things to feed us. Christ, they can do stupid things, one starts to run, the others follow, they’d go over the edge of the world unless Jack, here, stopped them.”
    The sun had dropped now and it was cold. “Would you fancy a beer, Jack?”
    “Me or your clever dog?”
    “He’s a teetotaler, this Jack is. How about you? You haven’t sworn off, have you?”
    “No.”
    Inside, the kitchen was warm and Maggie was taking something out of the oven that Terry called toad and I would learn was Toad In The Hole. It was another pie, with a thick crust and brown gravy oozing from cracks in it. Hidden inside were sausages, and it was obvious that it was a favorite of Terry’s. I asked Robbie why it was called toad in the hole and he laughed.
    “You may not want to hear this one right now, Jack.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s a bit rude.”
    Maggie said, “Save it, Robbie,” and he grinned at her.
    “You want to hear it, Jack?” and when I hesitated, he said, “Toad comes from Old English, and the word was closer to turd, which, as you can see, a sausage resembles.” He speared a sausage from his plate and held it up.
    “Story is, they took a stale loaf of bread and punched holes in it and either they poked stale turds in it to feed the starving or the sausages looked like turds so they called it turd in a hole. And a toad, all shiny among the leaves, looks a bit like a fresh one, too.”
    He took a bite from the end of the sausage.
    “That’s enough!” Maggie said. Terry was hunched over his plate, his shoulders shaking as he fought to control his giggles.
    “Maggie, this is scholarship. It’s what I came away from university with.”
    “And it’s my tea you’re calling turds in a hole. Mister Stone must think we’re a bunch of savages.”
    “No,” I insisted. “It hasn’t spoiled things a bit.”
    “Maggie’s bark is worse than her bite, Jack.”
    “You can show him some teeth marks, then,” she said, spooning another portion onto his plate.
    Robbie quizzed Terry about his school, and they made plans to go off the next morning to bring some sheep back from a field where, Terry said, “There’s rabbits! Lots of rabbits, Mr. Stone. Would you like to come, too?”
    Robbie smiled at me. “You’re welcome to come along, Jack. It’ll take us most of the morning. I think of it as my Sunday morning church.”
    “I’ll pass on this one, Robbie. And, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay on a few more days. Today was a good day for me. I’ll spend my morning in church writing.”
    “Suit yourself. If you change your mind you’re welcome to come.”
    Maggie was looking at me as if she were studying me, and I wondered if she had noticed how much I had been studying her, watching the way she broke off a bit of crust from the pie, placing it in her mouth, her lips closing over the tips of her fingers; how she absentmindedly traced her finger along the ridge of bone just below her neck, sliding it along the neck of her sweater. I stayed in the kitchen as Maggie cleared away the dishes and washed up while Robbie and Terry went to watch the television.
    “You’re not much of a talker tonight,” she said, her back to me as she stood at the sink.
    “I’m enjoying the warmth and the softness of this house,” I