Owen Marshall Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

staple remained there, and then drained his cup with a gulp. ‘I can’t see things getting any better,’ he said, and brightened at the thought.
    Witham and Heather went down to the sheds when Tinsley left. George was on his way back to the fence, but the girl had no other reason than to watch Tinsley go. As he turned the motor-bike to face up the hill it overbalanced, pulling him with it so that he nearly fell. Heather and George laughed and for the first time Tinsley recognized a family similarity. ‘Is there any flat piece at all on this bloody farm of yours, George?’ he asked with mock bitterness.
    â€˜None at all,’ said Witham contentedly and went off to his work.
    â€˜You’re not hurt, are you?’ Her eyelashes were darker than her hair, and her upper arms were round and smooth. ‘Sorry I laughed but it looked quite funny. Why don’t you have a car? It seems strange to have a bike for business?’
    â€˜Are you completing a degree in that too? Studying occupational transport patterns?’ For all her apparent forwardness she was easily rebuffed, but Tinsley watched her flush without a sense of victory.
    â€˜No need to be nasty,’ she said.
    Tinsley felt compelled, as a form of oblique apology, to answer her question. ‘My family had an agency for British bikes,’ he said.‘I’ve got used to having motor-bikes, I suppose; I don’t usually fall over them.’
    â€˜I like all the chrome bits. Would you take me up to the turnoff?’ She clasped him firmly as they started off, and on the way up Tinsley left the track, sweeping up and down the grassy bank along the side, giving voice to the easy power of the four cylinders.
    At the top road he halted. The flat sea was a vacuum on three sides, and the insistent salt wind sucked away his breath. They sat overlooking Witham’s farm; so foreshortened by the incline that the house seemed to be set in the sea itself, and the sheds to have slipped to the beach as Tinsley had imagined. Heather told him she had no lectures on Fridays, and often came to Witham’s for weekends, to reduce boarding costs. The wind raised goose-pimples on her round arms, and blew the hair back from her face. She had broad shoulders to match her hips; small breasts, set rather low. Tinsley found himself looking often at girls’ breasts and legs since his marriage broke up.
    â€˜I had a letter yesterday,’ she said, ‘from my boyfriend. Saying we were finished.’
    Tinsley accepted the almost impersonal frankness. ‘Why was that?’
    â€˜He’s found someone else I suppose. He kept on about getting married, but I wasn’t sure. On and on all the time about getting married; now he’s found someone else.’
    â€˜I used to be married,’ said Tinsley. It was as if another person was speaking. Tinsley could not believe he was telling a stranger about his life. ‘I was married for six years. I learnt the difference between men and women; men accept their isolation, women see the world as an extension of themselves.’
    â€˜I don’t know much about people. My boyfriend and I never seemed to be honest with each other. When I saw you come today I made up my mind I was going to be honest with you, whoever you were.’ She smiled at him again, as if pleased with her resolution, and how she had stuck to it. They watched each other for a momentwithout speaking, both aware that the game grew harder not easier as they knew more of each other. ‘Will you come out and see me again?’ Ten years before he would have taken the invitation in only one way; he would have drawn her into the pines and kissed her as a prelude, but he had grown more cynical. He had suffered the outcome of such things blithely begun.
    â€˜How old are you?’ he asked.
    â€˜Twenty.’
    â€˜I’m thirty-four. If I came out again what would we do? Talk of the intricacies of human