Free Harlequin Rex by Owen Marshall Page A

head shit, and not just cabbage.’ She asked the price. ‘A little gift,’ he said, and she thanked him, but showed no inclination to stay and talk. ‘I’ll come over some time and see how you’re holding up.’
    ‘Okay, yes, but not for a few days,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m no company at present, and getting a fair belt with initial treatment.’
    She stepped into the greyness of the drizzle, and her dark jersey and hair bobbed through it towards her own block. What a thing it was, that she should get so far in her life and then be dragged down through no fault of her own. You can’t know how you’re going to act if such a thing happens. David wasn’t a great one for television, but she used to front a show about the lives of single people, he remembered. A documentary-style programme full of assured, artistic or professional people of a sort he rarely came across in his own life. And Lucy, with so much going for her, had stood out among them.
    He didn’t think that he’d go and see her, despite the sharp black and white of her looks, and her approach for shit. Who wanted to be a witness when Harlequin put her through the hoops? Who wanted to give up the personal secrets that a sincere friendship demands?
     
    His father had just cut a lettuce, and the milk of its blood marbled his hand. He stood upright, then swayed back that little further to ease the spine after stooping. The lawn, the   vegetables, the trees and pasture beyond were part of Beth Car. ‘Someday,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to take care of all of this. You know that.’ His father enjoyed the exploitation of the cliché and David’s smile in response. His father had been to a wedding: his suit trousers were tucked into his dark socks, and he wore unlaced, old shoes from the porch. And he’d removed the red and black tie from the collar of his best, white shirt. A cool, scoffing day, and the breeze brought the smell of the rain that was falling in the hills at the head of their valley. With his free hand, his father drew the collar ends closer across the base of his throat, and tugged at the grey hair tufted there. ‘Your mother’s already begun to worry whether there’ll be enough graduation tickets. She wants a mass of clan witnesses again. ’
    ‘You know how boring it is. The stage so bloody far away, and it seems like thousands going up to get their degree. It pays to be well up the alphabet: the clapping gradually gets less and less.’
    ‘In my day there was just one ceremony for everybody.’
    With a twist, David’s father took the rank outside leaves from the lettuce and spun them towards the compost heap. Greenfinches and sparrows darted over the garden. A couple of the dogs rattled the pipe and netting gate, wanting attention.
    ‘Congratulations, anyway,’ he said. ‘A good degree. No one can take that away from you. People think it’s all brainpower, don’t they, but there’s no end of bright students who can’t hack it for one reason, or another. No discipline, or something going wrong in their life — just loneliness even. Cheever said that loneliness is a kind of madness. ’
    Had he been more than a passing fancy of pregnancy for the Bah a’i woman of Llama Heaven, maybe David would himself have remained a perpetual, contented student. Sex can be a kind of madness too.
    ‘Gordon Aimes complained to me that his daughter never used her degree,’ continued his father. ‘As if it were a power   saw, as if you can go through those years and then live without any influence of them. Right? ’ His father extended a cool hand to shake, slightly wet with the dew from the heart of the lettuce and its white blood. ‘Anyway, go in and see your mother,’ he said. ‘She’s been so looking forward to you coming.’
    ‘Come in with me, ’ David said.
    ‘I’ll be in shortly.’
    As long as he could remember that had been their way: neither of his parents comfortable in the presence of the other when they wished to