The Spider Truces (11 page)

“You’re lucky,” Chloe told him.

“Yeah …” He adored her.

“What sort of thing do you get up to there?” Mrs Purcell asked.

“All sorts, bringing the cows in for milking mainly, throwing out bales into the fields from the flat-bed, mending fences …” Ellis chose randomly.

“Sounds very exciting,” Mrs Purcell said.

“It’s brilliant,” Ellis beamed, and encouraged by the blissfulness of being in Chloe Purcell’s kitchen on his birthday, he forgot to disengage his mouth from the free-fall of pictures in his mind.

“We just recently rented a bull to make the heifers pregnant and its thing was the length of a broom handle, but thicker, much thicker. And once it started to, you know …”

They shook their heads in unison.

“… once it started to … once the spunk started pouring out, it didn’t stop. It just went from heifer to heifer gushing out this stuff.”

Mrs Purcell’s mouth had dropped open.

“Poor cows,” she muttered.

Chloe sat back and flashed Ellis an adoring smile and replayed in her head the sound of the words “gushing spunk” being said in front of her mother. Ellis interpreted her smile as a signal to continue.

“When Reardon had gone we went skating on the concrete in the farmyard ’cos it was so slippy with all the stuff.”

Mrs Purcell slid the biscuit tin firmly towards Ellis. “Shall we talk about something else now?”

Chloe stepped in. “Let’s talk about the barn dance. Would you like to come to it with us?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” Ellis said immediately.

And in the living room, filled by the fragrance of Lent lilies in a vase, Ellis felt the foreign softness of a deep carpet beneath his every step as Mrs Purcell played the piano and Chloe taught him how to dance for a barn dance. Ellis said nothing. Now that Chloe was taking hold of his hand, now that she was putting her hands on his shoulders to position him, now that he was so close to her that he could smell the fragrance of her sweater, now that all these things had happened, he could not speak. He was a mute in paradise. The afternoon became a succession of smiles and nods and piano notes and his voice failed him.

It was dark outside when they stopped so Mrs Purcell told Ellis she would drive him home.

“We can put your bike in the back.”

Ellis looked at her as if she were daft. “Put a bike in a car?”

“It’s no trouble.”

“No thank you, Mrs Purcell. I cycle home, always.”

“Isn’t it a bit dark?”

He shook his head. “It’s just winter,” he explained, unnecessarily. “I hate cars. I like bikes and trains, and that’s all.”

“What about planes?” Chloe asked.

“I haven’t been on one,” Ellis said. “We could go on one,” he added, then felt like a fool for doing so.

“As long as you’re sure you’ll be OK,” Chloe’s mum said.

“More than OK.” Ellis beamed. “From the top of Hubbards Hill you can see lights all the way to the Crowborough Beacon. I bomb down there like a bullet.”

That wasn’t exactly what Mrs Purcell wanted to hear but Ellis was already putting on his shoes and coat. He wanted to get out of the house as quickly as possible because he felt like an idiot for saying that he and Chloe could go on a plane together and he realised that an invitation to a barn dance was not a declaration of love. Maybe she went to barn dances every week and each time with a different boy, or maybe he’d get there and find he was one of six or seven boys she’d invited.

I don’t like this, he thought to himself as he opened the front door. I don’t know where I stand or what I think and I don’t like it one bit.

He wanted to be at the farm right now, doing physical jobs and saying nothing. That’s what I really like, he told himself. Not girls.

As he bent over to tuck his trousers into his socks, his coat swung forward and engulfed his head comically. His heart sank.

I look like a tool, he cursed.

Chloe pulled the coat gently off his face, and as she did so she whispered in his ear.

“I’d love to go on a plane with you, Ellis O’Rourke.”

And in that moment, Ellis’s birthday flipped back over on to its stomach. Girls were the best thing he’d ever discovered, even better than the farm, better than Tim, better than anything he could think of. If we got married at sixteen, he told himself, we could move into Mrs Purcell’s house. We’d meet on Oak Lane after school and walk home arm in arm and in the morning I’d come down to breakfast and everyone else in her family would know we’d been in bed together all night.

“Is your dad grumpy in the mornings?” Ellis asked.

Chloe looked at him curiously. “No, he’s nice.” She smiled her disarming smile.

“Thank goodness for that,” Ellis said, somewhat seriously.

Eleven days later, Chloe’s father opened his front door to a polite-looking young man.

“You must be Ellis.”

“Hello, Mr Purcell.”

Mrs Purcell appeared. “Hello, Ellis.”

“Hello, Mrs Purcell. I’m sorry I said spunk last time.”

When they took their places for each new dance, Chloe pressed her little finger into the soft flesh at the base of Ellis’s thumb as a signal for him to start. He spent each dance writing conversations in his head but when the music stopped the words had gone. The more he tried to think of something, the further he got from saying anything. They stopped for a cup of tea and sat on metal-framed chairs with canvas seats, on the perimeter of the dance floor.

You only get these chairs in church halls, Ellis thought to himself, and he opened his mouth to share this observation with his future wife before deciding that it wasn’t interesting enough.

“Well, what do you want to do now, go outside for a walk or have another dance?” Chloe asked, threading her arm through his.

Ellis wanted to go for a walk, with her arm threaded through his. He wanted it very much. But, paralysed by guessing what she wanted to do, he managed only to mumble, “I don’t mind. Dance, if you like.”

And she danced heavily, the light stolen from her face by the indifference of this boy who had declined her offer to step outside. And he, he avoided catching her eye because he felt suddenly so ugly and idiotic for his inability to speak to her. She went to the bathroom before they left and stared accusingly in the mirror at her plainness. He walked her home and asked himself why someone as beautiful as her would have asked him out in the first place.

When I get home I’ll look at my map of the world, he told himself, and tomorrow morning I’ll go back to the farm and I’ll forget all about tonight. I’m not cut out for this.

They said goodbye outside her house. He got on his bike and she watched him disappear.

Neither Tim nor Ellis was sure what the goat-lady did apart from minding Reardon’s small herd of British Tappenburgs.

“It can’t be a full-time job,” Ellis said.

“Search me,” Tim agreed.

She lived alone in a shabby cottage, tied to the farm, and seemed to know nobody. The cottage was low and dark and in summer it disappeared beneath creeping ivy. It backed on to the Great Field where Reardon grew wheat and barley as feed. Alongside the cottage was a deep-furrowed track linking the Great Field to the lane. On the other side of the track was a ruined cart shed which Tim and Ellis called the sun barn because there was so much roof and cladding missing that the sun shone in there like being outside.

The goat-lady was about fifty, had short straight hair and wore excessive rouge on her cheeks. They presumed she cut her own hair, as it was bowl-shaped. At all times of the day, she wore a bright pink dinner-lady’s overall.

She had never spoken to the boys or acknowledged them until one summer’s afternoon when she put out two glasses of lemonade on the garden seat and disappeared inside. Tim and Ellis climbed down from the rafters of the sun barn and sat for a while in her garden, which was wild and overgrown, enchanting and unnerving. They were discussing whether or not to go to the front door to thank her for the drink when she appeared again, carrying a cardboard box. She thumped the box down on the grass in front of them.

“I expect you’d like a look at these,” she said and disappeared inside, never to speak to them again.

The boys looked at each other curiously, then delved into the box. Lying inside, at the top of the pile, was a woman wearing a black bra and sucking her fingers. She was staring at Ellis and Tim. Her skin was very pale and her body was round and soft to look at. Her breasts were extremely large. Ellis looked between her legs but she didn’t look like the women in the encyclopaedia. For a start, her legs were spread impressively wide apart and her feet were sticking up in the air. She had forgotten to take off her high-heeled shoes but had remembered to take off her underpants. He stared at where the hair should be but there wasn’t any there. He didn’t quite understand what he was looking at in its place. Beneath that magazine were others, all similar. Ellis’s heart thudded and his penis seemed to be bursting at the seams. He felt thirsty and confused and wonderful and ill.

“Oh my sweet Jesus!” Tim muttered, holding a page up to Ellis. “Look!”

Ellis looked. There were half a dozen pictures on the page and the woman in them wasn’t alone. There was a naked man with her and they were doing “it”. Ellis stared and stared until Tim whispered, “What if she’s watching us? Let’s skedaddle.”

Ellis had to reach inside his trousers and adjust himself before he could stand up, for fear his penis would snap. The boys hurried away across the fields, stopping inside Eight Acre Wood to pee, only to discover that they couldn’t.

After that, for many months, whenever they played at the sun barn there was lemonade and the box of magazines. The boys spent as long as they wanted poring over the pictures but they never took a magazine away and they still didn’t know what they were meant to do with the erections that stirred as soon as they saw the pink of the goat-lady’s coat. Their tastes differed. Ellis liked it to be just two people, not of the same sex, and for the couple to start with their clothes on and for there to be some sense of a story unfolding as they undressed and he liked the man and woman to look as if they really cared for each other. He also found it helpful if one person was white and the other black because then he could unravel exactly which body part belonged to whom. Tim preferred orgies.

“Maybe … maybe she’ll do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Tell us what to do.”

“Or show us.”

They both feigned retching.

“Maybe there’s someone in the village who would let us do it with them for five pounds.” There was a hint of desperation in Ellis’s voice.

“There are prostitutes in Sevenoaks, apparently,” Tim said.

“I don’t want to go with a prostitute!” Ellis was horrified. “I meant, just someone nice who would be happy to help out, for a little cash.”

“I can’t think of anyone. Shall we get the gun?”

Ellis shrugged and nodded. Shooting something seemed a decent alternative to losing their virginity.

“But let’s keep thinking,” Tim said, “let’s bear it in mind and maybe we’ll think of someone who might help out.”

“We’ll write a list and just keep adding to it when we think of someone. My dad writes lists for everything. We’ll put down the name of every woman we know or know through someone else and then we’ll look at it and see if there’s anyone we think we can approach.”

“Except teachers. We won’t put our teachers on the list. The thought of sleeping with Mrs Stanton makes me want to puke.”

“I should think her husband feels the same way.”

Considering how adept Tim was at picking locks, it was a skill he abused less than many thirteen years olds would. Mr Wickham’s air pistol, kept in a locked cabinet in the kitchen, was easy pickings. The gun was wrapped in a duster and placed inside a blue Mappin & Webb cutlery box.

They returned to the sun barn where Ellis stood on a crossbeam and balanced himself, ignoring the thirty-foot drop to the ground. Tim had lined up bottles and cans on the beam at the opposite end of the barn. He climbed up and pressed the pistol into Ellis’s hand and sat on the beam, swinging his legs back and forth as he rolled himself a ciggie. Ellis shut his eyes. The sun bore down on his eyelids. In the heat, he felt his senses refine and heighten. He was as aware of the bright green leaves of hornbeam in Eight Acre Wood as he was of the first target bottle as he was of the Crowborough Beacon on the horizon as he was of the lone house on Bayley’s Hill as he was of the erect pink nipples inside the glossy pages inside the goat-lady’s house. Nothing was any nearer or further away than anything else. Everything was perfectly vivid.

He had a tendency to take too long over his aim and to squeeze the trigger late, after a shake had settled into his forearm. But today, handling the pistol so soon after having an erection, a combination that had not occurred before, he felt overwhelmed by clarity. He fired immediately and blasted the bottle away. Without taking his eye off the next target he took a pellet from his pocket, reloaded, fired and hit it dead centre. He stared at the next bottle as he reloaded, raised his arm and fired. Tim laughed under his breath as the bottle cracked and fell. This was not like Ellis.

The throaty ticking of a tractor grew in volume as it descended the lane. It came into view at the track to the sun barn. It was one of Sedgewick’s tractors, from Dale Farm. It towed a large wooden trailer and sitting in it, legs splayed out and arms draped over the side, was Des Payne, sixteen years old, shaven-headed, built like a brick wall, with hands like coppice stumps and a skull so square a nut and bolt would not have looked out of place through his neck. Des’s eyes were shut, his face screwed up against the sunshine, his thick arms straining against his T-shirt, his massive thighs tight against the stonewashed drainpipe jeans that were his trademark.

Ellis trained the pistol on Des’s head. He did so without thought or reason, knowing only that the trailer would soon disappear behind the hedge and this moment would be lost for ever. This unique opportunity to be bold would have passed him by. He locked his elbow and squeezed the trigger, shooting Des Payne in the back of the head. Des’s bear-like body sprang up on to its knees, clutching its skull. As the trailer disappeared, Des’s wild, darting eyes found Ellis, his outstretched arm steady and his pistol aimed still at the eyes that now fixed on him a glare of immeasurable menace.