The Spider Truces

by Tim Connolly

  “That’s next Friday. I’ll think about it and call you back, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “It’s really sweet of you to invite me and I really appreciate it. I’m just not sure what I’m up to that evening.”

  “OK.”

  “Bye, Ellis.” She hung up.

  Ellis held the receiver against his chest and smiled. He had crossed the threshold. He had invited a girl out. It hadn’t gone quite to plan and she wouldn’t accept, but the ordeal was over and he could now say he had done it. He felt elated. He flopped back on to the bed, alongside his sister, emotionally exhausted.

  “Talking sodding Heads?” Chrissie whispered.

  Ellis shrugged. “There’s no way she’d go to a Whitesnake gig.”

  Ellis sat in the living room, hoping the phone wouldn’t ring. Denny turned the lights off and he and Ellis watched the horizon catch fire. The sky arched its crimson back across the village. Its blackening ribbed patterns reminded Ellis of the markings of the Cheiracanthium species he had been forced to read about during the truces.

  What, he asked himself, if the entire world is the belly of a huge spider and we’re all inside it? Beyond our universe is the outer body of a spider bigger than known existence and beyond that spider we call the universe are a trillion other spiders. And those trillion spiders live in just one spider well and there is a world full of wells.

  “Spiders are little and we are big, they are big and we are little. It makes no difference either way round.”

  “None at all,” Denny agreed.

  And if it makes no difference, Ellis resolved to himself, it makes no sense to be scared of anything.

  In the near darkness, he looked at the shape of his father’s body and a faint glow of dusk on his face.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes, dear boy?”

  “You know … I am going to do new things.” His voice was gentle and strong. It was a new voice and it was as alien to him as it was to his dad. “I’m going to travel and seek out things. You know that, don’t you?”

  He got no response. Denny was motionless. There was more movement in the sky beyond him, as it gave up its last colour and detail to darkness.

  Katie Morton rang three days later and said yes. Ellis was devastated.

  “You have to tell her immediately that she’s not going to see Talking Heads,” Chrissie told him.

  Ellis agreed absolutely. Definitely. Obviously. But kept putting it off until, suddenly, it was Friday and Katie was waiting for him at the foot of her parents’ driveway on Wickhurst Lane. She opened the door to Mafi’s car before Ellis brought it to a standstill, and was in a hurry to get away. Her parents, she said, were in a “foul mood, as usual”.

  Ellis had memorised the map of the London Underground during the week. He found it easy thanks to the colour scheme, which his brain could immediately make sense of. He did a last dummy run to calm his nerves as the train approached Victoria station. On the pale blue line, they sat opposite a row of seven long-haired men, all of whom wore Whitesnake T-shirts. Katie Morton looked at them curiously and turned to ask Ellis a question, but he cut her off.

  “Where did you live before?”

  “Near Brighton,” she replied.

  “I’d like to go to Brighton,” Ellis said.

  “It’s great.”

  “Do you miss it?” Ellis asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m not too bothered for now. I’ll tell you something that no one is meant to know,” she said, leaning close to his ear. “My parents would kill me if they knew anyone knew.”

  “What is it?” Ellis said.

  “My brother’s in prison. That’s why we left Brighton.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Not much. He’s only in for a year.”

  Ellis didn’t know what to say. He wanted to know what the crime was but feared that to ask again would be immature. Maybe everyone except for him knew someone in prison. If so, he shouldn’t find it too amazing. But it was amazing, so would she think him dull for not asking more about it?

  More David Coverdale lookalikes boarded the train at Highbury and Islington and Ellis decided it was time. He pulled the carefully resealed envelope from his pocket and ripped it open. “Jesus!” he said. “I don’t believe it!”

  “What?” Katie Morton asked.

  “They’ve sent the wrong tickets!”

  As Katie Morton studied the tickets, Ellis doubted the wisdom of messing with a criminal’s sister. She laughed. It was a laugh Ellis couldn’t begin to decipher. He didn’t say anything else about it and neither did she. At the entrance to the Rainbow, he asked her again if she wanted to go for a drink instead or to just go home and she pushed him towards the door with the same knowing smile.

  They saw a support band called Redfoot but they never did get to see David Coverdale’s Whitesnake. As they waited for them to come on stage, a very large woman stood alongside them, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. She was huge, more than six feet tall, broader than Ellis and fat; very, very fat. Her hair was long and bushy and dyed black. Her skin was talcum-powder white and she wore dark make-up around her eyes and black lipstick. Ellis saw that she was crying as she swigged from the bottle, as if the vodka was streaming out of the pores of her skin. She smiled at Ellis and Katie through maroon mascara tears and pulled down her leather jacket to reveal a denim jacket beneath, and on the back of it an intricate spray-on picture of a smiling young man holding a guitar. Around it, in metal studs, were the words Ronnie, 1961–1983, Gone But Still Loved.

  “This is my first concert without him,” the enormous woman said, hauling the leather jacket back across the vast expanse of her rounded back.

  Katie Morton placed her hand sympathetically on the huge woman’s arm. When she did so, Ellis had no idea that Katie was drunk, but moments later he found out just how drunk she was.

  “Did you eat him?” Katie asked the woman.

  With four thousand people pressing against them, Ellis’s world, miraculously, fell silent. His mind sank into a numbing incredulity at what had just been said. The woman turned, it seemed to no one in particular, and screamed, “Bunny!”

  “She’s sorry!” Ellis said urgently.

  “BUNNEEEEE!” Her face contorted with anger.

  Ten feet away, a tall, Caucasian version of Mr T heard the huge woman’s call of distress. His face sank immediately into a darkness, as if already expressing regret over what he was yet to do to whoever had upset his friend.

  “Did I say something?” Katie shouted.

  Bunny moved towards them.

  “We’re leaving,” Ellis yelled, pushing Katie away as the huge woman lunged at them so drunkenly that she seemed to be aiming to simply fall on top of them and squash them to death.

  This was the first time Ellis had taken the initiative with a member of the opposite sex. He held Katie’s arm so tight he was almost lifting her, and as Bunny chased them through the syrup-thick crowd Ellis took advantage of being half the width of his pursuer and weaved and ducked himself and Miss Morton out of the arena to the now empty bar, from which they ran without looking back. The Seven Sisters Road would never look so attractive again, nor would the air of Finsbury Park ever taste so fresh. On the tube and train that carried Ellis and his liability of a date back to the garden of England, it occurred to Ellis that a trip up to London to see Whitesnake had been in no way diminished by not actually seeing Whitesnake. His attachment to hard rock and big-hair bands was, he concluded, a little cosmetic. He would check out this David Byrne bloke tomorrow.

  The lights of the village nestling in the valley were benevolent and welcomed Ellis home.

  “You can’t drive down to the house,” Katie said. “My parents are arseholes.”

  Ellis parked by the primary school and walked her home. As they crossed the top of the village green, a truck drove past, catching the couple in its headlights. It sounded its horn in friendly recognition.

  “Who was that?” she
asked.

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  They picked their way across the rutted surface of Wickhurst Lane in the darkness. She stumbled and took hold of his hand.

  “You don’t like London much, do you?” she said.

  “Scares me rigid.”

  “Just remember, all those terrifying-looking people in London would be scared stiff walking down here in the pitch dark. They’d shit themselves at every animal sound.”

  He dared to stroke her hand with his fingertips, in a way that could have been accidental if she objected.

  “I liked the way you didn’t try to hide how scared you were up there,” she said.

  “I did try to hide it,” he said, “all evening.”

  Katie Morton smiled but Ellis couldn’t see it. They parted at a small stone bridge that crossed a stream at the foot of the Mortons’ driveway. Ellis told her that at this time of year, if she walked a hundred yards up the stream to the line of pollarded willow, and if she waited in the stream downwind of the line of exposed tree roots as evening fell, she’d see badger cubs playing.

  “Have you seen them?” she whispered.

  “Yes, every year,” he said. “I know this village like the back of my hand.”

  “Now that I do believe,” she said. “I think you and I should just be friends, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah, definitely. I agree,” Ellis said.

  As he stepped into Bridget’s shop the next afternoon, Ellis was scolding himself for talking to Katie about badgers when she might have been waiting for him to fondle her. Perhaps it was this that had put the kybosh on things between them. The bell above the shop door was still ringing when Bridget’s voice met him like a physical barrier.

  “Here comes lover-boy. Better luck next time.”

  Mrs Hawking was at the counter, dropping loose change into her purse. She winked at Ellis, saying, “She’s too old for you. You’re a nice boy.”

  “I’ve forgotten my money,” Ellis stuttered, untruthfully, and left.

  Emotionally and mentally exhausted by the aftermath of going on a date, Ellis was happy to lie low at home and do work on the cottage for his dad. He went into the town to collect floorboard pins and varnish, and in the window of the Small World Travel Agency a poster told him that for £126 he could buy a train ticket that would take him anywhere in Europe for a month.

  “Oh my God …” he muttered, as he stood inside the travel agents reading the leaflet. And he began to shake with excitement.

  A truck arrived on the Saturday morning and hoisted antique floorboards on to the driveway. For a decade, Denny O’Rourke had wanted to replace the flooring in the downstairs of the cottage and his pleasure at the job ahead made him eager and boyish. Mafi sat in the garden and watched Denny and Ellis as they worked side by side, co-ordinating instinctively, rolling up their sleeves in the exact same way and sharing mannerisms as if they had handed them to each other from a shared tool box at the start of the day. Their thoughts, however, were not in harmony, for Ellis could think only of the rail map of Europe he had bought and of the thin black lines that spread across the continent, some solitary and remote, others converging in thick swirls on Madrid and Munich, Paris, Rome and Milan.

  On the Monday morning, when his dad had left for work, Ellis shoved the small, folded document with its orange boxes under Mafi’s nose.

  “It’s just to do with the summer and work experience and everything … I forgot to get dad to do it,” Ellis said rapidly. “I’m really late, Mafi. Just sign it there.”

  She signed inside the orange box, unwittingly confirming herself as Ellis’s next of kin.

  The next weekend, they ate a Sunday roast outside, by the side lawn. The living room windows were open and a smell of floorboard varnish laced the air.

  Denny breathed deep with contentment. “We’ve been here ten years and it’s taking shape … on a perfect day. It’s never finished, but today … it feels great.”

  And Denny O’Rourke did, indeed, feel truly great for a few seconds more, until his son spoke up, with the exquisite mistiming of a teenager.

  “Dad …”

  “Yes, my dear boy?”

  “I’m going inter-railing in Europe this summer. For a month. On my own.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “I am.”

  The afternoon changed.

  “Maybe next year.”

  “I want my life to get going,” Ellis complained.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” his father said.

  Mafi smiled at Ellis and faintly shook her head, to steer him off the subject.

  “If you’re feeling desperate to go abroad for the first time, then we’ll go somewhere together this summer. How about that?” His dad smiled encouragingly.

  Ellis slumped. Just when he needed his dad to create a rift between them, from which Ellis could justify escape, he did just the opposite.

  “I’ve already got a ticket,” Ellis said, without defiance.

  “How? You can’t have,” Denny said, trying to sound unperturbed. “You’re only seventeen. You’d need my permission.”

  “You’re wrong and I’ve got one.”

  There was silence. “How?” his dad finally asked.

  Ellis shrugged his shoulders.

  “I know how, don’t I, Ellis?” Mafi said.

  “It doesn’t matter how. What matters is I’m going.”

  “If you think I am going to let you walk out of here when you’re still just a child and get yourself ripped off or hurt or killed in some foreign country then you must think that being your dad is some part-time hobby I don’t give a shit about, which makes you just about the most stupid little bugger I’ve ever met.”

  Denny marched inside.

  “Could he possibly have a more negative view of the world?” Ellis muttered.

  “I can’t believe you tricked me like that, Ellis. I really can’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter about that. It’s just important that I get going somewhere.”

  “You’re not even going to apologise to me?”

  Ellis looked at his feet. “I’m sorry. But he’d sailed round the world four times before he was twenty-one, that’s the ridiculous thing!”

  “He wasn’t on his own,” Mafi reminded him.

  Ellis went to his bedroom and found his dad there, looking through his belongings.

  “Where’s the ticket?” Denny asked softly.

  “I’m not giving it to you.”

  They both sat on the bed in silence.

  “You’re not to go. Do you understand?”

  Ellis said nothing.

  “Please,” Denny said.

  There was that word again, sounding strange coming from his dad.

  “Ellis … if anything ever happened to you, I would be devastated.”

  “If nothing ever happens to me, I’ll be devastated.”

  “You’ve a clever answer for everything today. You’re not ready. I do not want you to go.” Denny let his voice trail away.

  “Then I won’t go,” Ellis muttered.

  “So, give me the ticket.”

  “No.”

  “Ellis …”

  “I said I won’t go. That’s it. If you think I’m not ready, that’s one thing. If you think I’m untrustworthy, that’s another. I’m giving you my word.”

  In the silence, the air between them calmed. Denny felt relief so close to elation that he had to control himself not to show it. “I trust you,” he said, and left the room.

  That day, and the sixteen that followed it, Ellis tried all of his magic places in the village: every tree he loved to climb, every field he loved to sit in. Each of these places was a favourite and familiar face and every one of them looked Ellis in the eye and reminded him that all other seventeen year olds were having the time of their lives.

  On 1 July, Ellis packed and stood in his bedroom perfectly still, clutching the bag, as if he were a photograph of himself, taken moments before leaving the room
. But he didn’t leave the room, because he was terrified. That night, he couldn’t sleep for taunting himself that his life was destined to be a small, monochrome one. The morning brought with it a morsel of courage, fed by nothing more substantial than the comfort of daylight, and he convinced himself that if he hesitated again and failed to embark on this small adventure, then he would never embark on any.

  He gave himself the hour-long train journey to Folkestone to justify his going. His fear of inertia was real but not reason enough to inflict this agony on his dad. But, just when he needed her, his mother flew to his aid. He knew nothing about her. He had been dissuaded from asking all his life. This failure on Denny’s part, as he suddenly felt able to see it, was his excuse for going and it was strong enough to withstand the increasing nausea he felt at every revised point of no return, as he boarded the ferry, as the ropes slid from the quayside, as the hull passed the line of the harbour walls on to open sea.

  By dinner time he was in France, his only companions the taste of salt air and the smell of ferry fuel. He was hungry but having booked into a room in a drab area near to the harbour he was too nervous to leave it. In the darkness, the idea of justifying his trip with the memory of his mother crumbled before him. It was irrelevant. He had never pushed for information about her. He’d never truly confronted his dad and demanded to know. He had taken little dissuading from the subject because he was happy if his dad was happy and his dad was not happy when they talked about his mum.

  Once again, the arrival of morning boosted Ellis. Great journeys must be planned at first light, he realised, when the heart is fearless. He rang Chrissie from a call box in Paris and after he had spoken to her he stepped out on to the boulevard de Magenta and, for the first time, the adventure began to outweigh the fear. Europe beckoned. If he stayed four weeks then he had six pounds a day to spend. He would sleep on trains and in train stations to make the money last. This, he had read, was what everybody did. On the train to Nice he slept in the heat of the window. He took a roll-up mattress on the roof of a youth hostel where the dormitories were full. The roof was a free-for-all for latecomers and Ellis watched through the gaps of his folded arms as grown men and women undressed and slept within sight of him. He felt the unfamiliar musty, warm air of the Mediterranean cling to his skin and climbed out of his sleeping bag and lay on top of it in his jeans and T-shirt. At midnight, he woke and imagined how angry his dad was and bitterly regretted not calling him. When he had called Chrissie instead, she had laughed and told Ellis he was going to get “the bollocking of all time”.