The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
Autolycus grinned and punched his shoulder. “Nothing to be nervous about! She’ll love ya. But there’s no rear seats in the roadster. How ya gonna make out?”
Zel dropped his head. “She’s not that kind of girl.”
“Let’s have no lying. That’s only fit for politicians.”
“I need something easy on the gas. She’s an environmentalist.”
“Then take her for a walk.”
“I worked all night to get it ready.”
—
Clo came out of the museum.
“All these cars here for rental?”
“Yes sir-ee. And the music comes with them. Zel! Turn on the radio in that whitewall, two-tone, flared-fin on its way to Thunder Alley!”
Zel leaned in and turned the Bakelite knob. “Rock Around the Clock” blasted onto the forecourt. Autolycus spun Zel under his arm before the boy could back off.
“Clo, Clo—take your pick. Every rental costs just one dollar.”
“One dollar?”
“The other five hundred or a thousand or two thousand bucks, whatever we charge, we write down as a donation to the Motormobile Museum. Cash is good if you got it. I like to stay on the wrong side of the law.”
Clo held out his hand. “You know, it’s been great meeting you an’ all—I’ll bring my dad—but I gotta go; I just had my little sister texting me, and…”
Autolycus stretched up and slapped both their foreheads like they were a pair of faulty lightbulbs.
“I got an idea! For the gift! For your father!”
“What?”
“I’ll sell you the DeLorean.”
“You said you was screwed!”
“I did, I did, I was, I was! I’ll sell it to you half price. I paid a hundred thousand dollars. I shudda paid fifty. You can have it for twenty-five.”
“It’s broken down on the highway!”
“I’ll have it running in time for your party. Your dad is seventy, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Wouldn’t he like to wind back the clock? Your little sister said use your imagination. Bet she wasn’t thinking of a DeLorean. No sir-ee! That’ll show her who of the two of you is boss. That car is more than a car—it’s a Time Machine. You’re buying Time, and who wouldn’t want the gift of time for their seventieth birthday?”
“You reckon?”
“I know it, I know it, I know it! Bingo! High-five! Let’s dance…”
Autolycus grabbed Clo by the hand and started jiving to “Rock Around the Clock.” It was like dancing with a lighter flame in the wind.
“Hey! I don’t dance with guys! You gay or something?”
“Do I look gay?”
“You gotta lotta hand movements.”
“I was trained in puppet theatre. CONGRATULATIONS, CLO!”
“One! Two! Three! Four!”
“If you wanna know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss, that’s where it is.”
The Separations were great. They had a sound they called Hillybilly Soul Banjo and snare-drum, girl-group harmonies, steel guitar played hard on pedal and plec. Tall bass, thumb- and finger-plucked, and a Pentecostal piano; every chord a call to Judgement Day. That was Shep.
They called themselves The Separations because Holly, Polly and Molly were BabyHatch kids. The group had started out as the Orphans but that was too sad.
Anyway, Perdita was literal-minded and HollyPolly Molly couldn’t be orphans because orphans are children whose parents are dead. The girls were foundlings—but who wants a girl group called the Foundlings?
Then Holly read something at school about six degrees of separation and, as they were all fans of vinyl retro soul, like The Three Degrees…and as they had been separated from their parents, it was obvious.
The three girls, HollyMollyPolly, were Chinese triplets. No one ever found out who had left them in the BabyHatch in Guangzhou. They’d been adopted by English missionaries. Their father was a minister from High Wycombe who had ended up in a Baptist church in New Bohemia via a mission to China. He had his own ideas about the End of the World, and Shep didn’t agree with them, but—Apocalypse or Armageddon—the two of them were friends.
HollyPollyMolly were a year older than Perdita. All the children had played together from the beginning, and in the beginning Shep took Perdita to church with him.
Holly had a stammer. It was Shep who noticed that when she sang she didn’t stammer—and to help her feel less awkward he had started all the little girls singing those old soul songs while he played the piano.
He had more faith in those days—these last ten years he had lost faith in his faith. The world was getting darker, not brighter. The poor were poorer, the rich were richer. People were killing each other in the name of God. What kind of a God wanted his followers to act like they were gun-slung avatars jihading it through “World of Warcraft”?
If this was the end of time then fire it right back into eternity and get it over with.
He supposed that the point of time was that it would end—if it went on forever then it wouldn’t be time, would it?
What to believe? What to believe in?
But Perdita was a kind of faith in her own right. He believed in her.
—
HollyPollyMolly were zipping each other into their sleeveless V-neck girl-group stage-wear. Perdita was brushing her pink suede shoes with a toothbrush.
“So do you think I should date your brother?” said Holly. “He’s asked me out.”
“Clo? He’s twice your age!”
“I like older men.”
“I don’t think you should date a guy who’s still living at home in his thirties,” said Polly.
“He’s not living at home—he’s managing a business.”
“He said that?” Perdita pulled a face in the mirror at Holly, who was fixing her lipstick.
“Well, I think he’s cute.”
“He’s not cute.”
“He’s your brother. How would you know?”
“He votes Republican and he can’t pass his accountancy exams.”
“I can add up for both of us. You’re just being mean.”
“She’s nervous. Her boyfriend’s coming.”
“He’s NOT my boyfriend!”
The girls put their heads together in a row and sang, “And if you wanna know if she loves him so—it’s in her kiss.”
Perdita blushed and bent over to examine her shoes.
“Don’t tease him, OK? He’s shy.”
“Is it him who’s shy or you?”
Perdita sat up. “It’s crazy. He’s just a boy. I’m just a girl. It’s so normal it’s weird. It’s like eating a boiled egg—do you ever eat a boiled egg and look down at your plate and think, eggcup, egg, spoon, toast, salt, and somewhere in the background, out of sight, some kind of a hen who laid this thing, and you think, this is weird?”
HollyPollyMolly were staring at her. Perdita guessed the egg thing had never happened to them.
She tried again. “I’m not explaining it right—it’s just that—wherever you look—all the movies, books, TV shows, songs. You know? You know how it goes. Boy meets Girl—Romeo and Juliet. Girl meets Boy—The Great Gatsby. Girl meets Gorilla—King Kong. Girl meets Wolf—Little Red Riding Hood. Girl meets Paedophile—Lolita—not so good. Boy meets Mother—Oedipus Rex—not so good. Boy meets Girl with problems—Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel. Girl meets Boy with body issues—The Frog Prince.”
She stopped. HollyMollyPolly were still staring at her. Egg or no egg, she wasn’t making sense.
“Let’s stick with the singing,” she said.
—
Zel backed the tartan-red MGB Roadster out of the lot. He loved the wire wheels and chrome centre spinners and the big wooden steering wheel. The seats were deep scuffed leather.
It was a nice feature of the classic cars that the radios had a retro button. Pre-selected songs from any decade you wanted: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Press it and what you heard fro
“I’m not in love so don’t forget it…”
—
Zel drove; wide roads, narrow roads, dirt roads, back roads, out-of-town roads. Roads that he imagined. Roads he hoped were real. He’d ridden this way before, leaving his motorcycle outside the bar and standing just inside the door. She sang on Fridays at the bar.
Everyone crowded in. He didn’t. He could only look at her through the kaleidoscope cutouts of the crowd.
Last week she had asked him to dance with her and he had shaken his head right down through his body like a dog caught in the rain.
She didn’t know where he lived. She didn’t have his phone or his Facebook. Sometimes he didn’t come to the bar for a few weeks. Then he’d be there, standing at the back again, so clean, so upright, so still, like he was made of polished metal.
And he never knew what to say. She wanted to kiss the hesitation of his throat.
But she had asked him to the party and he had said “Yes.”
And now he was standing at the gate, slicked-back and sweet-smelling, in clean Levi’s and a white shirt so obsessively unwrinkled it looked like it had been ironed with Botox.
Perdita heard his car. Perdita saw him across the fence.
She moved back. Her heart was overbeating. Why do I feel this way? And what is this way that I am feeling? How can something so personal and so private, like a secret between myself and my soul, be the same personal, private secret of the soul for everyone?
There’s nothing new or strange or wonderful about how I feel.
I feel new and strange and wonderful.
—
And now they were standing either side of the welcome sign, looking at each other.
And she wished that everything that had to happen had happened. That time would intervene and free them. That they could begin.
And he wished he could touch her and everything would pass through him and she would know him and they would begin.
She said, “Hi.”
He said, “I brought you these flowers.”
—
Clo had finished the bunting and the flags. He was sitting with his sleeves rolled up, having a Diet Coke with Holly MollyPolly. They were so pretty. And only half his age. What was that old saying? Why have one at thirty-six when you can have two at eighteen? And here were three of them. I’m loving it.
—
Perdita and Zel came over with a plate of crabs and sardines.
“Hey! It’s you, I knew it was you!” said Clo.
“You know him?” said Perdita to Zel.
Zel was wishing this wasn’t happening but it was. “He knows my boss.”
Holly had her iPad out. “Can you shut up with the work talk? I found this quiz. Invented by some old, maybe dead white psychologist called Arthur Aron. It’s called The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness.”
“Huh?”
“It means how to fall in love without really trying. You ask each other a set of questions and then you get married.”
“We’re sisters—we can’t get married.”
“ROFL.”
“And who are we supposed to be falling in love with anyway?”
“You can fall in love with me,” said Clo. “I can take it.”
“Yeah, but can we?”
Polly in pink. Molly in jade. Leaning forward, bright and beautiful. All things. Holly in purple, the leader, her thick black hair down to her waist. She bongo’d the table.
“Come on, people! Thirty-six questions. Let’s just start—if anybody feels like they are falling in lurve with Clo, put up your hand and we can stop. Perdita—are you in?”
Zel looked sideways at Perdita. She didn’t look at him at all.
“All right, question one—‘Who would be your favourite dinner guest of all time any time?’ ”
POLLY: Martin Luther King.
MOLLY: Janis Joplin.
HOLLY: God.
MOLLY: You can’t have GOD!
HOLLY: Why can’t I have God?
POLLY: He doesn’t eat, so what’s the point of inviting him to dinner?
HOLLY: Where in the Bible does it say God doesn’t eat?
MOLLY: Why would he want to eat? He’s God.
HOLLY: Why would he not want to eat? If I were God I’d eat all the time ’cause you’d never put on weight.
POLLY: Can we SHUT UP about God?
HOLLY: OK, OK! Perdita, who’s your guest?
PERDITA: Miranda.
MOLLY: Miranda who?
PERDITA: She’s fictional. She lives in Shakespeare.
HOLLY: You can’t have a fictional character.
PERDITA: Why not? Celebrities are fictional characters. Just because they are alive doesn’t make them real.
CLO: That’s too deep for me.
PERDITA: Anyway, she chose GOD, for God’s sake.
CLO: Don’t let Dad hear you takin’ the name in vain.
PERDITA: Dad doesn’t believe in God anymore. Didn’t he tell you?
CLO: WHAT?!?!?
HOLLY: We are playing a GAME! Let’s try another question. “When did you last sing?” That’s easy. “When did you last cry?” Uh-oh…“Why did you last cry?” That’s too personal.
CLO: Sure it’s personal! How can you fall in love if it’s not personal?
HOLLY: Don’t you know? I can’t believe you don’t know this! Nobody FALLS in love—love is a hot mix of sex and despair, sex because you gotta have it, despair because you’re lonely. WHO you fall in love with is really irrelevant.
CLO: You can have sex with anybody…
HOLLY: Listen to him!
CLO: But love is different—Dad loved Mom like the moon loves the earth.
PERDITA: He always says so.
HOLLY: I’m just telling you the latest findings about love.
ZEL: But they don’t know, do they? Who really knows anything about love?
Clo grabbed the iPad. “ ‘Complete this sentence—I wish I had someone I could share a…’ ”
HOLLY: Dog with. Though it should be WITH WHOM I could share a dog. I wish I had a dog: a Labradoodle?
CLO: A dog? What about a joint? Cool date, low lights…
MOLLY: We already share all our clothes, so I’d like to meet someone WITH WHOM I need not share my knickers.
CLO: Apocalypse Now! I don’t want to think about your knickers—OK, so I do, but not in front of my sister.
PERDITA: You are gross.
CLO: Zel gets me, don’t you, Zel? He didn’t exactly come all this way for the Foo-oo-ood and the Wi-ine.
PERDITA: Are you my brother? Somebody tell me it’s a mistake. He came because I invited him.
CLO: What? You invited him for the food and wine? Oh, pardon ME! Zel, Zel! Can you complete this sentence? “I wish I had someone I could share a…” Easy, now—there are ladies present.
ZEL: Book. For me it would be a book.
PERDITA: Me too. Book.
HollyPollyMolly ggiggggled with six gs and turned away—as discreetly as triplets wearing pinkpurplejade can do—to give Perdita some space.
ZEL: What book?
PERDITA: I’m reading a book my dad gave me by some nineteenth-century guy named Thoreau.
“Walden? You’re reading Walden?”
“Yes! You know it?”
“My dad was always trying to get me to read it—which was pretty stupid as I wasn’t even talking to him.”
“It’s about only doing enough work to make enough money to live simply so that you can live in a more meaningful way.”
“Yeah. My dad tried that—a long time ago, when he was, like, our age. He lived in a van, drove round to festivals, had no possessions.”
“Does he still do that?”
“No. He’s rich.”
They laughed, a little bit awkwardly, and Zel said, “I’m not rich. I work in a garage. But I can fix your car.”
“What book would you give m
Zel opened the palms of his hands and studied them. “I read obscure things—I mean, Walden is pretty obscure—I never read it because of my dad, sorry—so right now I’m reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. The guy on the hundred-dollar bill? I mean, we spend the money and we don’t know anything about the people on the bills. Benjamin Franklin said that if you have to choose between liberty and security, choose liberty.”
“I guess they didn’t have world terrorism back then.”
“That’s just a way of scaring us.”
“I don’t agree. People get killed.”
“Yes, they do, but some guy with a bomb in a backpack—how often does that happen, and to how many people? But no work, no home, no health care, no hope—that’s the everyday life of millions, billions of people. To me, that’s the threat. And climate change is the threat. And war, and drought and famine…”
“OK—so we need security. A secure future.”
“No! We need to be free from corporate control that runs the world for the few and ruins it for the rest of us.”
Perdita watched his mouth as he talked. She liked what he was saying. But he could have been saying Yogi Bear Eats Peanut-Butter Sandwiches. She lifted her hand, because her hand, all on its own, was going to touch his lips. Halfway there her brain noticed and she brushed back her hair from her eyes instead.
She said, trying to sound provocative and cool, “So if you don’t care about security—what are you afraid of?”
“Me?” (Zel sighed and looked at his palms.) “I guess I’m afraid of not being like other people. No, that’s not true. I’m not afraid of not being like other people. I’m afraid I won’t find anybody who doesn’t mind me not being like other people. I’m not ambitious for money or power. I want to find some real way to live.”
She looked at his eyelashes, long and dark. He looked at her skin, pale and freckled. He had grey eyes like a cat. Her eyes were brown with her brown hair falling into them. She was like a close-up too far away to touch, her eyes so serious and beautiful, watching him. They were both leaning forward now in a mirror of the other.
Burst of laughter from the table.
CLO: Last question. LAST QUESTION. Everybody! Sister! You first! “If I could go forward in time I’d like to be with…”