The Spider Truces (21 page)

He slept briefly and woke to the half-light. He found Chloe in the kitchen cooking breakfast for her husband and her lover. He didn’t stop. He had put his boots on in the bedroom so that he didn’t have to. Although he was hungry, very hungry, he moved straight through the kitchen, pulled his jacket off the peg and left the house without saying a word. He knew that Tim would still be in the milking shed. He couldn’t think about it. He just had to drive away. And that’s what he did.

It was mid-afternoon when he saw the coast again. For the first time, the familiar sweep of houses on Borstal Hill and the tower in the harbour and the glistening sea failed to inspire him.

I am for ever the person who did that. No matter what happens in all the years, I can never undo today.

He sought the quickest route he could to numbness with what he had in his tin. In the dream that followed, he was sitting on a hillside overlooking a great desert. Far away, alone on the great plain of sand and rock, was a gigantic nuclear power station in meltdown. It looked like a chewed toffee. Snowy the dog appeared at Ellis’s side. They watched a tame sparrow on the ground. Ellis tried to pick the bird up, to stroke it, but couldn’t get a proper hold of it. He fumbled and the sparrow disintegrated in his hand.

He woke and it was already dark. He smoked a spliff and the savage self-loathing washed over him again, leaving in its wake a residue of disappointment. Disappointment at the discovery that he was who he was. He smoked more and curled up on his bed and drifted in and out of sleep. Later, a shiver of cold disturbed him and he pulled the blankets across his body. Then he slept deeply and a curtain appeared in front of him. The curtain was amber and made of millions of wasps. He stepped closer and peered through the droning curtain and saw himself and his mother lying together. It was very hot and the whole world was swamped by a deep orange hue. Ellis’s right forearm was swollen and hurting. The skin on his arm broke open and thousands of spiderlings emerged. They poured out of his arm and converged on his mother and ate her. He woke abruptly, his back prickling with sweat. He was thirsty beyond measure. There was a weight pressing down on his forehead. Opening his eyes, he saw a spider resting on his face. It was the size of an adult hand. The palps were sunk into the soft crease between his lips. The spider didn’t move and neither did Ellis. He breathed through his nose and kept his mouth shut tight. He remained motionless for hours. His vision was obscured by the spider’s abdomen but he began to sense light appearing in the window. The ceiling became washed with daylight. He heard the incoming tide reach the shallow rim of pebbles at the top of the beach. The waves dragged a little of the shingle away and then, in time, retreated to the silence of the mudflats. The day moved slowly from one period of intense thirst to another. In the peace of crystal clear crisis, Ellis felt calmer than he had for some months.

Late in the afternoon, he felt the spider move. He held his breath. The spider walked away. When he was sure it had gone, Ellis rolled on to his side and curled into a ball. He heard his own voice some way away. It was the faintest of whispers. A single word, dissipating into the air.

“Daddy …”

Late one night there was a car crash on Graveney Marshes in which three young men were killed. The local radio was full of it next morning and Ellis woke to find a man peering in through his bedroom window. The man was in his seventies, wore old-fashioned tweed and had the look of a Victorian gentleman. He was giraffe-like, tall and thin, with tight waves of grey hair. All of which made him noticeable, but what made him appear positively strange was the way his hands were cupped together in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Ellis called, through an inch of open window.

“Ah, excellent,” the man said.

“What’s excellent?”

“That you’re alive and well. All in one piece, thank God.”

At that moment, a frog leapt out of the man’s hands.

“Damm!” he said, and scrambled after it.

Ellis threw on some clothes and followed the man – who followed the frog – off the beach, across the railway bridge and on to Joy Lane. At the bottom of Medina Avenue the man stopped to straighten up a wonky road sign, whilst the frog continued up the avenue to the furthest house. The road sign was home-made but convincing. It was a triangular warning sign with a red border, inside which was a frog.

“What’s that sign for?” Ellis asked.

“Ah!” the man exclaimed. “Excellent! Excellent!”

“What’s so excellent now?”

“That you’re here.”

“You’ve got to be the tallest man I’ve ever seen,” Ellis said.

“Got to be,” the man replied.

“How tall are you?”

“Six seven.”

“And is this your sign?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it all about?”

“It’s all about the fact that I am a preserver of frogs. Rare frogs. They come to my pond and I protect them. They are wild. They are free to come and go. Those that want to come and go near the road need protection.” He gestured to the road sign, then smiled benevolently. “I am glad you followed me,” he added. “I like curiosity in youth.”

“Why were you peering through my window like a pervert?”

“Just checking you and your chum were unharmed. More neighbourly than perverted, I hope you’ll agree. Come on, I’ll show you the clan.”

“It’s OK.” Ellis retreated. “I don’t want to disturb you.”

But the old man was already walking away, his long back stooping noticeably. “It’s no bother at all. We’ll have some tea. My name is Hedley, unusual nowadays I know, but it was fashionable once.”

Ellis followed the man to the furthest bungalow, keeping his distance. It was the one house that backed on to fields. Hedley led Ellis down the side of the house and straight into the garden and, as promised, Ellis’s eyes and ears fell immediately on a colony of frogs in a corner, where a pond nestled in the shadow of a scarlet willow.

A lady appeared. “Would you chaps like some tea?”

She seemed unsurprised to find Ellis there.

“Yes, please, old thing,” Hedley said. “Darling, this is Ellis.”

“Good-oh. Hello, Ellis.”

Framed by a chorus of frog-song, Ellis managed a bemused smile.

“Make yourself at home,” the lady said. “I’m glad everything’s all right.”

Amusing though it was to discover that there were people who actually said “Good-oh”, Ellis felt uneasy. He didn’t know why. He lit himself a cigarette. Hedley pulled two garden chairs out of the shade. Both men sat and looked across the layered bungalows at a view of the sea.

“Bit cold for tea on the lawn but I don’t expect you want to come inside,” Hedley said.

“This is fine,” Ellis said defensively, exhaling smoke.

“Can you spare me a cigarette?” Hedley asked, and proceeded to puff it in the manner of a man who has never smoked a cigarette in his life.

This does not add up, Ellis told himself.

“Well, I like your frogs,” he said, feeling uncomfortable with the silence.

“Thank you. I won the MBE for them.”

“I don’t believe in all that.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then why did you accept it?” Ellis asked.

“For the experience. Life’s too short to dodge them.”

“A bit hypocritical.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

Soon after, having discovered that in Hedley he had met his match when it came to carving out long silences, Ellis left. It was hours later, when he was slipping from rational thought into hallucination, that Ellis realised why he had felt perturbed by the old man. When Hedley had introduced him to his wife, Ellis had not, he was quite certain, told him his name.

Ellis gave Jed six months’ rent in advance when he broke the news that he could no longer work for him.

“Why can’t you?”

“Too many spiders. It’s coming back a bit.”

“What is?”

“Nothing. I just need a different sort of work.”

His money lasted three weeks, at which point he sought credit at the shop on Joy Lane for the first time.

“You look like shit,” said Raj, the shopkeeper.

Ellis realised that he was being watched by Hedley, the frog-man, from behind a carousel of KitKats. He ignored him.

“It’s just the once, Raj,” Ellis said.

“Yes to the milk, eggs, potatoes, onions and corned beef, but no tobacco and Rizlas on credit. If you’re too broke to pay you’re too broke to smoke that shit!”

Hedley joined Ellis at the counter.

“Excuse my language, Mr Wilkinson,” Raj added.

“Quite all right, Raj, couldn’t agree more.” Then Hedley smiled at Ellis. “Good morning.”

“Hello.” Ellis was guarded.

Hedley laid down his shopping basket on the counter and removed his wallet from his jacket pocket in his own unhurried manner.

“Wait for me outside, young man,” he instructed Ellis.

Ellis left the shop and stood on the kerb, in two minds whether to stay or go.

He can’t molest me on the street, he told himself. So he stayed.

When Hedley emerged, he tossed a packet of cigarettes at Ellis with a flourish.

“Asking for tobacco and those other fiddly things would have lacked subtlety on my part, so you’ll have to make do with those,” Hedley said, and wandered away to his bungalow.

“Er … thanks,” Ellis called out, uncertainly.

Three days later, Hedley was back, standing amongst the bird tables in torrential rain, unnaturally tall despite his stoop, under a large black umbrella with brass tips and a polished wood handle. He wore a shin-length raincoat, more suited to a Manhattan sidewalk in the fifties. The coat was immaculate and without a crease, even in the wind and rain. Hedley smiled and made a half-wave and Ellis went to the door.

Hedley raised his voice above the downpour. “I won’t come in, but I needed to talk to you.”

Oh, Jesus! Ellis thought.

“My wife and I need someone to do some paid work whilst we’re on holiday.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ellis smiled, unaware of his own pained expression.

“Frog-sitting. It’d be four hundred pounds a week and we’ll be away for two weeks. I make that eight hundred pounds.”

Ellis’s mouth dropped open.

“Are you interested?”

“It seems a lot of money,” Ellis said.

“It’s the going rate for a qualified frog-sitter.”

“I’m not a qualified frog-sitter,” Ellis said, raising his voice as the wind picked up. “I’m not a qualified anything.”

“You have a backside, don’t you?”

Ellis glanced at the heavens and wondered if he ought to invite his unfathomable visitor in.

“And, presumably, you know how to sit on it?”

“I know how to sit on my arse, yes.”

“Splendid!” Hedley triumphed. “I’m going to stick my neck out and say you’ll be able to perform the dual role of sitting and frog-watching.”

Feeding the cat would have been more strenuous, though less time-consuming. If any frogs left the garden and headed for Joy Lane, Ellis was to stand in their way. They would, Hedley assured him, “hop back home” when he did.

“If it’s terribly rainy, I suggest a large golfing umbrella as the garden shed is somewhat riddled with creepy-crawlies.”

“Right …” Ellis said, struck yet again by the sense of things not adding up with this man.

“Some people are averse to creepy-crawlies,” Hedley added. “If you’re not, then by all means take shelter in the shed. But I suspect you might be.”

Hedley advanced him one hundred pounds. Ellis’s hours were nine in the morning until noon and two in the afternoon until five.

“Do they understand they’re not supposed to hop off during the two-hour lunch break?” Ellis asked, his bemusement undiluted.

Hedley ignored the question. “Bring some kind of contraption for your cigarettes with you. I don’t want cigarette butts all over the garden.”

“Are we talking about an ashtray?” Ellis replied.

He watched the frogs do nothing, read an account of Cornish wreckers and pored over a book of Cornell Capa’s photographs that inspired him to buy a Kodak Retinette camera from a junk shop in Swalecliffe, in which his first film became irretrievably jammed. On three occasions in the fortnight he walked alongside a frog as it made an excursion on to Medina Avenue and back. Ellis couldn’t be sure whether or not it was the same frog each time but he liked to think it was. A lone voice of dissent. A troublemaker.

Hedley paid him a hundred pounds in cash on his return and the remaining six hundred pounds he wrote out as a cheque. “You do have a bank account, I take it?”

“A Post Office book.”

“Fine. Just pay it in and use it steadily. And eat something healthy from time to time, I implore you.”

It was a fortune and nothing could convince Ellis that what he had done was deserving of it. In fact, he wasn’t convinced that it had been necessary to have him, or anyone, babysit the frogs at all.

“What do you normally do when you go away?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got you now,” Hedley said.

In the winter, Hedley found Ellis a succession of small and largely unnecessary tasks, for all of which he was overpaid. Occasionally, Hedley would be sitting on the sea wall outside Jed’s place and Ellis would join him and they would look at the estuary together and have a chat. Hedley would always ask Ellis if he was all right and in good health before leaving.

“You can turn to Mrs Wilkinson and me if you are in trouble,” he once said. “Any sort of trouble, or no trouble at all. Turn to us for anything.”

A towering sky arched across the coast, revealing the earth’s curvature to those who cared to stop and look. Far out on the low tide the noises of the town were distant and mottled, as if the world were underwater. The houses on Joy Lane Beach seemed no more than a raised scar on a muddy skin. Ellis roamed amongst the stooped bait-diggers and nervy oystercatchers as thin streams of seawater trickled across the bay, painting the estuary floor with silver streaks of reflected sky. Then he saw a man crossing towards him.

The first blow was graceful. It flew not from an isolated fist, but from Tim’s entire, momentarily airborne, body. Ellis peeled himself out of the mud and up on to his knees, where he received the second blow. Thereafter, he made no attempt to defend himself as Tim kicked and punched him to the edge of consciousness. His only retaliation was to show nothing. When it was over, Ellis rolled on to his back. His ribs contracted and groaned and he felt his eyes closing over. Tim pressed his boot down on Ellis’s head, inviting the earth to swallow him. A mussel shell, lodged in the mud on the sole of Tim’s boot, pierced Ellis’s skin and made a tear in the vein on his temple.

“That wasn’t about her,” Tim said. “If it was about her, I’d keep going till you were dead and then I’d bury you. That was just about you and me.”

The redeeming quality of being kicked half to death, it occurred to Ellis, as ice-cold water trickled from the mud around him into his clothes and his ears, was that so much pain invades your body so quickly that the rest doesn’t hurt at all. It damages, but you barely feel anything.

Tim had gone. Ellis was deaf and almost blind but he knew that he was alone. He stared at the sky through slit eyes and felt his way through rolling a skunk reefer. With short, sharp breaths he lured himself to the threshold of comfort and became oblivious of the freezing bed of mud he could not rise from. It occurred to him that spiders the size of pylons might be advancing towards him across the flats. He plastered the ash-coloured mud over his face, and they passed by without seeing him.

Some time later came the chugging of a diesel engine and the sensation of being lifted. His body was laid down on to something hard and he wondered if he was dead.

“Hello, Mr East,” he heard himself slur, from somewhere beyond his own body.

Baldie East, the whelk-man, peered down at him. He was old and shrunken. His face was lined and his eyelids were creased and his head was crowned with thick, snow-white hair. The smell of mussels and whelks streamed into Ellis’s nose and he lay blind again as his body jarred and rattled with the movement of the trailer on which he lay as Baldie’s tractor dragged it back to shore.

Still caked in mud, Ellis found the Welsh boys in the Rose In Bloom pub on Joy Lane. There were seven of them and they lived together in a two-bedroom flat above the sweet shop on Harbour Street. They drank heavily every night and impersonated Richard Burton whenever they were close to passing out, which was often. Four of the seven were called David Jones. They were distinguished as Dave, Davey, Jonesey and DJ. All seven men were mighty drinkers.

“You’re looking pretty this evening, O’Rourke,” Skip Williams said. He was the calmest of the seven.

“You look like a corpse covered in crap,” Davey said.

“Lowering the tone, you are, O’Rourke … lowering the fucking tone!”

“Nose suits you, spread over your face like that.”

“It’s been there once before,” Ellis said. “I’m only stopping for one. I’m freezing cold. And I need crisps, loads of the fuckers.”

By ten o’clock they were drunk. The roar of their laughter and foul language carried to every part of the pub, intimidating the regulars and provoking two warnings from the landlord. If Hedley and his wife had been pubgoers, this would have been their local. It served the gentlefolk who inhabited the sea-view bungalows on the hillside above Joy Lane and the gentlefolk were not happy.