Robbie's Wife Read Free

kick the door several times to dislodge it. “Rain swells everything,” he said. “Get a sunny day, it works like a charm.” But his accent, something I would learn later was Broad Dorset, made it sound like “Roinswellseverting. Gor asunnydai it works loik a germ.”
    There was a single bulb hanging from a cord and he screwed in the bulb, lighting up the room. A bed was against one wall, a small table under the window next to the door, a chair, a small sink against the wall and a gray-painted armoire. There was a shelf along a wall with what looked like a hot plate, and a door that he opened to reveal a toilet in what was apparently a lean-to added to the cottage. He seemed quite proud of the toilet. “En suite,” he said, “just like the advert says.”
    “Well,” he added as he stood at the door looking out toward the sea barely visible through the trees. “I reckon you be anxious to get settled in. We be having our tea about naow. Like the advert says, there’s breakfast at the house. We be having it about seven but if you be the kind what lies in, the wife will be happy to fix something up to eight. After that we be working and she be in an out.” And he was gone, trudging up the muddy path with a rolling gait, a yellow beach ball in green rubber boots, and I was left to sort out my new digs.
    They were as bad as they looked. The bed was damp, the only sign of heat was a tiny fireplace with a bucket of coal next to it. It took me a half an hour to get crumpled newspaper to catch the coal on fire and finally I had a fire going but it made the room smell like fuel oil and I opened the window for fresh air, defeating the whole purpose. There was a lamp on the little table, and I set up my laptop, looking for some place to plug it in, connected my little transformer, and when that was done I felt better. I was armed, ready to do battle with words again, and I put on my coat, changed into some old tennis shoes and went out into the gathering dusk. I had a good feeling that something would happen here. I was as far from Los Angeles and failure as I could be. I would break the pattern in this grotty stone hut, write something that was fucking brilliant although I hadn’t a clue what that would be. A dog came wagging up alongside me, one of those blue and white and black sheepdogs with the puzzling eyes that look cloudy and strange, and it kept at my heel while I walked toward the sea, through an iron stile next to a gate, across a close-cropped field that slanted into the open. Pieces of yellow and gold sliced the clouds at the horizon and I wondered if it would be possible to find someone who had been a coast-watcher during the war, find a story here like the one I had invented for Nigel.

5.
    The next morning I ate breakfast with the Orchards. She was a sunny woman, built like her husband, two fireplugs who chattered in a language that sounded vaguely like English while I wolfed down eggs and bacon and toast and jellies and tea in a big mug. I went back to the cottage to work but ended up taking a long walk toward the sea. It turned out to be too far off to get to, and I came back to the farmyard and drove until I found Lyme Regis on the coast where I looked for a store to buy food. I would have to do lunches and dinners on my own and I needed canned things I could open and heat on the hot plate. Mrs. Orchard had offered room in her refrigerator but I sensed that I was expected to keep to the cottage.
    I wandered around Lyme Regis, went out onto the quay where they had filmed The French Lieutenant’s Woman and scenes from the Jane Austen series my wife had watched on TV, and I half expected people in costume to pop up but it was midweek and quiet and I was back at the farmyard by midafternoon. “Gor-blimey, you’re gonna write the fookin’ thing, you daft bugger,” I said to the dog who greeted me as I parked the car. The dog cocked his head. Obviously I needed practice.
    But by the end of the week I had