‘Couldn’t we take her with us?’
‘It’s very sweet of you to ask, but Penny has her own travelling to do.’
* * *
This walk tonight put Penny in mind of where she and her father had walked in Durham. Forests by the river, winding through hilly, ageless countryside. On nights when their pretend laundry seemed dull or the car outside too claustrophobic, they took torches and explored the misty, squelching woods. Not for nature rambles. Neither of them were into nature. In the dark you could see nothing anyway. They went for the atmosphere and the magic. She was never afraid of the dark places with her father there. She grew up with a high tolerance of fear. Tonight Andy was jumpy. Vince was stroppy, quiet and drinking. Penny wandered along, quite at home.
In the forest when she was little there were particular magical places. Her father gave these names for her, some of them based around books she had read. Once, when she said a leafy gap in a hedge led to Narnia, he pulled a face. He said she should watch out for people with a subtext. He thought Narnia was too much like godbothering. Penny didn’t really know what he meant. It was just magical to her. She didn’t see why it had to be exclusively Christian, middle-class or elitist, even if her father did.
She could see him here tonight, her father, standing in the blue light at the foot of the ash tree. Andy was crouching there, staring at the moon. Her father was in his intermediary stage, very thin and skeleton pale. It was as if he was waiting to put on new flesh, new clothes.
But aren’t you off up the motorway with the bus driver? she wanted to ask. Here heshe was, making herself apparent.
Do you know who you’re like? she thought, gazing at Liz’s blue and gold smear of light in the glade. You’re like Alec Guinness in Return of the Jedi, coming back as a know-it-all ghost. Shimmering and edifying and explaining the past. Use the force, Luke. Or you’re like Marlon Brando and Suzannah York in Superman: the Movie. When they made holograms of themselves for their son when he grew up to be Superman. All around them Krypton is burning and Marlon and Suzannah are emptying crystals of knowledge and advice into the baby’s crib. That’s what you’re like, Dad, Mam, Liz.
Liz was saying, ‘This light is from the moon, Penny. Sometimes the moon is said to be entirely feminine. This is wrong. This kind of light is the harshest to be under; it is the light women are often under. In this sense it is feminine. It is the light that forces you to reflect upon yourself, as the sun reflects upon it, as the day reflects upon night. Where we are now, we might as well be on the moon. When you were born, I told you you would go there, didn’t I?’
She looked at her blackened, lightning-struck fingerends. Did she still believe a single word he said? Oh, but his tone was seductive. She would listen to anything he said.
And here I am, in moonlight once more. Andy here, Vince here. Andy was scrutinising the bark of the ash. ‘There are so many things living in a tree,’ he said. His voice was harsh. His face was wet with tears. She had seen before, as they walked through the woods, that he was upset. She hadn’t know what to say to him at all. Something was going on between him and Vince. Vince didn’t seem to care. This reminded her that she hadn’t seen him for a few minutes.
Penny followed a familiar hissing noise across the glade and through the rough, sticky grass. There was an enclosure, accessible by a narrow gulley through the trees. Here she found Vince, the hissing sound petering out, standing nonchalant at the mouth of this hidden province.
Penny pushed him aside. ‘Vince! You’ve been pissing on Narnia!’
He tucked himself back in with an amused laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’ He walked off to see what Andy was doing.
Andy was staring at the insects lining the bark. In the moonlight they were glowing, globular bodies invested with a radiance of their own. They ran up his wrists, into his jacket. He didn’t try to stop them. Four-legged insects with antlers, black eyes, in primary colours.
‘I’m going back to my roots,’ he breathed.
‘Typical. I have a piss, you have an epiphany.’ Vince walked away from him. ‘You were always seeing things I wasn’t.’
Only Penny was listening to him as he tramped away, back out of the dell.
It was a wonderful surprise. Not really a surprise, but wonderful. The Dog Man did what he said he was going to do.
I love him more than ever. He brought our disguises in from work with him. I have just tried mine on and I look terrific. Now I’m waiting for him to show me his.
Fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking bloody hell!
It was backbreaking work. Jane had to pull herself across the slanting landscape like a bear on all fours. Her tights were in shreds, she had leaves in her hair, and she was swearing like a bastard. It felt good to have a good swear. When you’ve got kids you can’t swear. You have to pretend that it’s only kids who swear.
Fucking fucking fucking nothing! Not a sausage. Not a single scrap of evidence that Nesta hadn’t simply shot off to Barbados or somewhere for a while like that Shirley Valentine in the film. Jane had liked that video. She’d watched it with Fran and a couple of bottles of Country Manor one Sunday afternoon. They both thought that whoever wrote it must have known a lot about women and what they have to put up with. ‘Don’t you wish you could just piss off to Greece then, Fran?’
‘I haven’t got the guts to do that. Who
