Oh, Gulliver, Gulliver, please roll over!
Shit, I left the lights on in the house. Never mind. It’ll put the burglars off.
She was walking to clear her mind. The mind she had worked so hard at cluttering. All I want is stability, she thought. I did think we had it. But no, he wants more.
Why all of a sudden? What’s going on in his — sorry, her — tiny mind? She never tells me anything now.
‘It’s just us, Pen,’ Liz had once said. ‘You and me for ever now.’
And now Penny was thinking, Am I just being jealous?
‘We’ll be here for each other,’ Liz once promised. ‘Mother and daughter.’
‘Whatever,’ Penny had replied. ‘But yes, we will.’
When she was twelve her father told her about the facts of life.
They were sitting in front of the washing machine at four o’clock in the morning. He had a mirror placed on top of it and he was shaving off his beard. Penny listened and watched with great interest. She had never seen her father with a bare face. Even in the ancient hippie photos, the ones with her mam, back in the sixties, he had his beard. It had grown and grown and now he was sick of it. As he talked about sex and love and trust, they had the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds playing. When Penny imagined the kind of relationship she was meant for, the kind of love she deserved, it was always to a faint strain of Beach Boy harmonies. Sexy boy sopranos in concerted voice, promising her the world.
‘You see, Pen, there’s this thing that they tell you is out there in the world, and they call it sex. Apparently it’s something that men do to women and it’s how babies are born. And it’s the thing young men are encouraged to go out into the world to find, like a good job, and when they find it, they’re supposed to marry whoever it is that gives it to them.
‘Then they can start having sex with other women, if they like, and go out to look for that. Most of them feel obliged to. A lot of men believe it is the women who give them sex and many vice versa. They don’t think about it much, but it just kind of happens. It’s a process involving the penetration of the female by the erect male member and the discharge of various fluids.
‘Love, too, is something they are told is out there, and sometimes they go looking for that as well.’
‘I see,’ Penny said thoughtfully. She had been told all this already, at school.
‘What I want to say is this, Pen. Sex is not something “out there” at all. It’s not something you hunt or that you are forced into finding, hiding or secreting. Neither is love. Sex is a thing that makes you fall in love with another person, another body, for an uncertain span of time — however long, however short — and you have that time to accommodate that person into your physical space in whichever way you both prefer. Sex is open and free. Admission free to the public, open to all comers. It is not something forced on you from the outside. Ever.’
‘Right.’
‘The same thing with love. Love is a thing that can make you have sex with another person, another body, for an uncertain span of time. That time is for accommodating that person into a particular place in your heart. Usually they stay there.’ He finished shaving and turned to face her, looking very strange with a complete face. ‘I’m telling you this now because it is something I will never have again. I’ve done everything I want to. I’ve shared that private space. Now I’m just making myself comfortable with the space I have left. And I’m going to be looking after other people.’
Penny stood looking out over the new golf course. Flags were bent in the rinsing wind. The moon was out and thick with suds.
He changed so quickly. As if he had died and come back as someone else. I thought I had a chance to catch up. I did have a chance. I fell in love with him all over again. He was my hero… my heroine. I was so proud. He became so much lighter as a woman, younger and funnier. It’s nice to have a mam like that. I’ve had both parents… and only had to get to know one real person. He’s a bargain. He was all for me, she was all mine. He promised.
Penny wept a little at the foot of the golf course and glared at the moon. ‘You’re going there, Penny. You’re going to the moon.’ When had he said that? She knew that he had, but couldn’t remember when. Typical him. Typical her.
‘Fat fucking chance!’ she yelled at the moon. ‘I’m not going where he wants to go. If he wants to start fucking around and being tarty, that’s fine. I’m no longer part of his space. I know where I’m going. And I’m not going to the fucking moon!’
And then she remembered exactly when her father had told her about the moon. Penny could feel the night breezes on her baby face, and she could picture herself there. Later her father said they were struck by lightning. For hubris, he said. Daedalus and Icarus, and they hadn’t even
