Spiderweb

by Penelope Lively

  Within a week she discovered that she had committed a minor solecism.

  ‘What’s that you’ve called that dog of yours?’ enquired the postman, as she tried to keep the dog from assaulting him in frenzied propitiation.

  ‘Bracken.’

  The postman laughed. ‘Hound name, that is. In these parts. You only get hounds called that. Better take care you keep him inside when the hunt’s exercising.’

  Stella had grown up in Enfield, where fox-hunting is not rife. She decided that it was hardly worth mentioning this in mitigation. The postman was an invaluable source or information; the occasional firm correction was a fair price. And so far as the name went, it was too late now. The dog already recognized his label. I’m sorry, Stella told him. Put it down to my suburban upbringing. We’ll just have to keep this as a matter between ourselves.

  And what about the postman himself, with his name from the Welsh valleys? Stella had presumed once to ask him if his forebears had come over the water to the mines up on the hill. He had shrugged. Didn’t know. Didn’t much care. That was then, this is now. Suffice it that he was of this place, and knew what was what. Unlike some.

  Names, names … she thought. The ultimate signifier for those of us who like to ferret away at such things. Inside the cottage were card indexes and notebooks in which she had diligently recorded hundreds upon hundreds of names. These harvests could then be assembled into patterns – clusters of similar sounds which made kinship groupings and lineage structures. We all of us bear witness to our genes and are labelled accordingly. As a child she had been fascinated by the litany of the Old Testament – and Jared lived an hundred and sixty two years, and he begat Enoch … and Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah … She had savoured the outlandish names, chanting them aloud, noting the piling up of generation upon generation. Perhaps this early addiction counted for much.

  But she had savoured also the names on the map of Greater London, noting how they appreciated in flavour from the muted streets and avenues and terraces of her own suburb to the metropolitan splendours of Trafalgar, Piccadilly, Victoria and Waterloo. She had compared her own homely no-frills English family stock – Brentwoods on her father’s side, Nordens on her mother’s – with the more suggestive surnames of certain schoolmates. Elizabeth Cremona, whose father was Italian. The McTaggart sisters. May Chang. Fernanda Rodriguez. She approved such a freight of reference. What did Brentwood tell you, for heaven’s sake?

  She had learned about this landscape from its names. Topographical history left her somewhat cold, but she had borrowed the Somerset volume of The Place-Names of England from the library and become interested in the betraying dissection of the names of farms and villages. Here was the relentless Anglo-Saxon plod, there was a faint Celtic whisper. Here a hint of Roman, there a Norman reference. Nothing was arbitrary, each name a coded signal.

  Similarly the more intimate surroundings, for each and every one of us. ‘Don’t need to be much of a detective to know you’ve spent time out of this country,’ the removal foreman had said, perched on a pile of cases with a mug of tea in his hand, watching one of his henchmen carry in the big khelim rug, the Turkish brass tray. ‘And all these books. Dead give-away.’ He sat upon three book boxes, his feet upon another. He did not specify what it was that was given away, but the thought hung in the air. One kind of person as opposed to another.

  The books were now unpacked, and continued to bear witness, as did the contents of Stella’s desk, of the drawers of her bedroom chest. Possession of this, absence of these and those. We are defined by what we own, by what we are called.

  ‘Come along then, you,’ she said to the dog. ‘Time for a walk.’

  The favoured direction was always up the old mineral line. The dog, too, now automatically headed that way. Once oft the track over the field, you were on to the sheltered sunken lane which had once been the route of the railway incline and you could go as high and as far as you wished – on several occasions Stella had been right up to the ridge of the Brendons. Once in a while she would meet another walker, or someone on a horse, but for the most part the route was deserted. Knowing its original function, she found it impossible not to imagine the industrial bustle of that other time – the waggons grinding up and down the line, the gangs of miners at the winding-houses. But if you knew nothing of this, the place was just an agreeable and apparently fortuitous path for a country walk.

  Stella thought of the miners today, as she walked between hedgebanks that rippled with birdsong. She saw them in the mind’s eye in monochrome, an effect prompted presumably by old sepia photographs – short dark men done up in that complicated garb of the Victorian working man which is a parody of respectable dress: the battered jacket, the waistcoat, the scarf at the neck, the cap. Talking Welsh, presumably. Conspicuous and alien. Immigrants. Nothing left of them today but this track, a scattering of Baptist chapels and the postman, who was not interested in his ancestry. Fair enough. It is perhaps only the nicely adjusted who can afford to dismiss their antecedents. Those passionately interested in their roots are usually either the historically oppressed or the oppressors, both needing to prove a point.

  Today she went only as far as the waterfall, where the track briefly ran parallel with a stream just as it tumbled down over rocks set in woodland. Bracken had a drink. Stella rested on a fallen tree and then headed back.

  Coming out on to the lane she saw the Hiscox boys with their bikes propped up against the hedgebank. They squatted alongside, examining a wheel. Hearing her step, they turned and abruptly stood up. Bracken, running ahead, approached and sniffed tentatively at one of the pairs of grubby jeans, his ears laid back ingratiatingly. At once the boy shoved at him with his foot – something nearer a kick than a push: ‘Fuck off!’

  Stella was jolted. The harsh adolescent voice hung in the bright morning. The dog had retreated to her side and she slipped on his lead. ‘He wasn’t going to hurt you. He’s just curious.’

  ‘I don’t like dogs.’

  ‘Really?’ said Stella. ‘Well, some don’t, I suppose. He’s the first I’ve had, as it happens.’

  The boys stared at her. They were almost identical. Sunburned sullen faces under mops of dark hair. Twins, you would have thought, except that one was slightly taller. With one accord they turned their backs on her and squatted down to the bikes again.

  ‘Puncture?’ said Stella determinedly. ‘In my day it was that palaver with a bucket of water, looking for the bubbles. No doubt the technology has improved.’

  Silence. Then the bigger boy swung his head fractionally in her direction and mumbled something.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Piss off, will you? We’re busy.’

  The following things are in the drawers of Stella’s desk. It is a pine knee-hole desk of no particular distinction, topped with a rectangle of imitation leather embossed in gilt.

  Brown envelopes labelled Orkney, Malta, Nile Delta, Miscellaneous. These envelopes contain photographs. Some of the photographs are scenic, others show groups of people. Occasionally these groups include Stella. Other incarnations of Stella. She stands under a palm tree, flanked by beaming men in galabiehs. A tanned Stella wearing a large straw hat poses with a black-clad priest in front of a baroque church. She perches, laughing, on the seat of a tractor; a big man with a mane of ginger hair leans with his hand on the steering wheel, like a groom curbing a stationary horse.

  An assortment of card-index boxes in varying degrees of decay. These are the boxes which are filled with names. Packed, stuffed, crammed with names. They are a distillation of humanity, these boxes, a reduction of flesh and blood and bone into a compact mass of cards, 5” x 8 “. There are hundreds upon hundreds of people in here. Pietru and Victor and Pawlu and Maddalena and Tereza. Ahmed and Saleh and Fawzia and Fatima. Neil and Isobel and Mary and Fergus. They are bleached, shrunk, stripped of life and stashed away here as silent witness to patterns of human behaviour.

  A string of b
lue beads.

  A bundle of letters, tied with string. The letters are all addressed to Stella in the same hand but the provenance is global. Smudgy illegible postmarks from goodness knows where, clumps of gaudy stamps.

  A stack of notebooks, also labelled: Orkney, Nile Delta, Malta. And Birmingham, Sheffield, Milton Keynes.

  Several passports in Stella’s name. The corners are cut off to indicate that they are out of date, the pages are liberally spattered with immigration stamps.

  These things are on, in or around a large deal table with a single long drawer in a small room adjoining the sitting-room in the Hiscox bungalow. Karen Hiscox refers to this room as her office.

  A metal spike on which is impaled a column of bills, many inches high. Electricity and telephone bills are almost invariably in red: second demands.

  A packet of rat poison.

  A stack of back issues of the North Somerset Herald.

  A tin of flea powder.

  A calendar for 1989, turned to the May page, showing a woodland vista, with bluebells. This item hanging from a hook on the wall.

  A shotgun. Also hanging from a hook.

  A battered wooden box with hinged lid, which looks as though it may once have housed a croquet set. Inside the box are a dog collar and lead, a Johnny Walker whisky bottle (empty), several cartridge cases (full), a large torch with no glass or bulb, a bundle of bank statements, a lipstick, packets of Disprin and Elastoplast, a bulldog clip holding three documents, one recording the birth of Michael John Picton, another that of Peter Keith Picton, and the last notifying Edward James Picton that he has been declared bankrupt. There are also Twix and Mars Bar wrappers, loose change, pieces of string, torn stamps and assorted further detritus.

  In the Hiscox bungalow, in the bottom drawer of the chest in Gran’s room, there is a knitting bag. Inside the bag are knitting needles and the half-finished sleeve of some blue garment, grimy with age, still on the needles, along with various hanks and balls of wool, these, too, old and grubby. There are also some knitting patterns, rolled up together and held by an elastic band.

  Within the core of this knitting pattern tube are other items. The estate agent’s particulars for a house in Kingston-upon-Thames, called the Larches, with four bedrooms, sitting-room opening on to a conservatory and a half acre of landscaped gardens.

  A letter. The letter is on thin lined notepaper and is dated 11 February 1986. It is apparently minus the last page.

  Dear Milly: It’s not my business, I dare say, but I feel I’ve got to speak out. I tried to ring you the other day and got Karen. Told me you were out. At half past nine in the evening? I said, Milly never goes out after dark. Then she became offensive and I put the phone down. Milly, Karen has been trouble from the word go, frankly, and if she were my daughter, I’d make it plain enough’s enough. You and Arthur did everything for her any child could ask and a fat lot of gratitude you’ve had. If she and Ted have bitten off more than they can chew with this garage business and come a cropper, then it’s up to them to pick themselves up as best they can. They’ve no right calling on you to bale them out. Your home’s your own, Milly. Arthur would have been horrified. He died easy, knowing you were comfortably set up. Well, not easy, given he was only fifty-six, but easier, put it that way. As for Karen saying you’ll be better off with them in any case, let me just point out that Karen’s not the easiest person in the world to get along with and you should know that better than anyone. Look after you, she says, does she? That’ll be the first time I’ve ever heard of that young woman looking after anybody except number one. I don’t like the sound of this, Milly, and since I doubt if anyone else is going to say so loud and clear, I’m doing just that. It’s my duty as your sister, that’s now I see it, though I dare say you won’t thank me. And if Karen and that Ted …

  That woman had come out of the field when they were trying to fix Peter’s broken spoke. She’d come up suddenly so it took them by surprise, and then the bloody dog started sniffing around. So Peter kicked it. Afterwards they both wished he’d kicked it harder, but it felt good at the time as it was. And Michael told her to piss off and that was good too.

  Stupid cow. What business was it of hers? Asking a stupid question like that.

  If we had proper bikes, they told each other. Decent bikes like other people got.

  They sat in their place behind the sheds and worked themselves up about the bikes. If we say to her we’ll do without our birthdays and Christmas. We’ll muck out the pens every day, after school. Half an hour or so of this and they’d got up enough head of steam to ask. She’d been in quite a good mood the last few days anyway.

  She was in the room she called her office. Where the gun was. She was sitting at the table where she put bills and stuff, sorting through a pile of papers.

  They stood at the door. Even just looking at her they knew it wouldn’t be any good. The way her mouth was screwed up into a hard knot. The good mood was over, for some reason.

  ‘Clear off, I haven’t got time for you.’

  Peter said, ‘Mum …’

  She slammed the papers down on the table. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? D’you want me to say it again? Louder? Longer?’

  They went.

  She’d be doing the accounts. That stuff with piles or figures and bits of paper. Their father wasn’t any good at that and she was. She’d been to business school, way back, she said. And before they were born their parents had the garage, they’d had people working under them, there’d been a turnover of thousands. She had plenty of business experience, more than any of these people around here. Her in the village shop. The farm people they dealt with. They’re rubbish, she said. Just you remember that, if anyone tries to come it with you. Remember we’ve been in business in a bigger way than they’ve ever dreamed of.

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, got her rag more than people not reckoning with who she was. Like the man from the farm shop, that time.

  The farm shop was nothing to do with any farm, really. It was just a shop. On the main road, where cars could pull in, selling fruit and veg and a lot of other things. The man had come to see if their mother would like to be one of his egg suppliers. Eggs and maybe frozen rabbit pieces. He’d said a price and apparently that had been OK, because she had him in and they’d sat talking half an hour or more and you’d have thought they were getting on like a house on fire. Presumably the man thought that. And then, right at the end when he was going, he made a mistake. He said, ‘By the way, I’ve got a vacancy for a part-time salesperson if you’d be interested. One of the girls left to have a baby. Be nice to have you in the shop.’

  That did it. She went all stiff but he didn’t notice. Got into his car and went.

  And then she blew up. ‘Just who does he bloody well think he is? Who does he bloody well think I am? Part-time bloody salesperson! I’ve owned a shop bigger than he’s got.’

  They backed her up. Michael said, ‘Stupid git. He’d got no business, talking like that. Silly bugger.’

  Later, Peter said, ‘Was it a farm shop, Mum?’

  ‘Was what?’

  ‘The shop you had, that was bigger than that man’s?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  So they shut up about that. Maybe she’d meant that garage. Where they had half a dozen people working for them and a turnover of thousands.

  When the man came back later in the week, thinking to pick up the eggs and the rabbit pieces, she let him have it. She stood with her hands on her hips as he got out of the car, saying nothing. She let him start talking, start saying things about the eggs.

  She said, ‘What eggs?’

  He’d stopped being all cheery by now. The smile wiped off his face all right. He went on again about the eggs. And the frozen rabbit pieces.

  She let fly at him. She bawled at him that if he thought he could pull a fast one on her he had another think coming and she traded where she chose thank you very much and he needn’t
think he could come down here acting like Lord Muck just because he’d got a tacky little business flogging a few rotten cabbages.

  She kept it up the way she could, on and on, and the man stood there gobsmacked and beginning to get angry himself, you could see. When she stopped for a moment he began: ‘Now, look here, Mrs Hiscox …’

  The boys had come up to stand just behind their mother. Michael said, ‘Don’t you talk to my mother like that, you stupid git.’

  The man turned round and walked to his car. He got in and slammed the door. He didn’t hear her shouting at him to get away from her and not come back because he was revving the engine and crashing the gears as he backed out on to the track.

  A week or so later they had seen the man from the farm shop in Minehead, when they were taking Gran to the bank. Their mother was in the supermarket. The man saw them, too. He stopped and stared. Then he said, ‘I know you, don’t I?’

  They started to move away.

  ‘You’re Mrs Hiscox’s boys.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said Michael. The man was standing in front of him, blocking his way.

  ‘As disagreeable a woman as I’ve come across. And you could do with a lesson in manners yourself.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘The same to you, young man. But first of all you can give a message to your mother. You can tell her …’

  They elbowed past the man and took off round the corner. In the car they told her about what had happened.

  ‘So I said to him, piss off.’

  ‘That’s right. Show him he can’t mess with us. He wants taking down a peg or two, that man.’

  Peter said, ‘We told him any time he comes near our place again he’ll get a punch on the nose.’