The Spider Truces (17 page)

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”.

“… so you might as well enjoy it,” she had concluded.

“Might as well,” Ellis had replied unconvincingly.

Chrissie had agreed to tell their dad where Ellis was on the condition that Ellis called home within two days. He was looking ahead with dread to that phone call when a woman in her late twenties laid a mattress down alongside his.

“Bit of a latecomer,” she whispered, with a twang in her voice.

Ellis smiled and lay back, resting the back of his head in his clasped hands. The woman laid a white sheet on the mattress and removed her clothes, lying down on the mattress in her underwear. She smelt of suntan lotion. Ellis became aware of his own breathing. His toes tensed up and he wiggled his ankles.

“Mind if I have a smoke?” the woman said, sitting up on her side.

Ellis smiled and shook his head. He stole a glance. She was tanned and had long, straight, straggly blond hair. Her face was angular. She wasn’t pretty but she was handsome and healthy-looking and almost her entire body was visible and lying inches away from him. He forgot his fears. He forgot his home. The woman offered him a cigarette. He declined and pulled out his tin box and rolled one. She approved of this.

“Where you from?” she whispered.

“England. Kent,” he said, shyly.

“New Zealand. I’ve been travelling for three years.”

Ellis’s mouth dropped open. Three years! She smoked one of Ellis’s roll-ups after she’d smoked her cigarette and then she turned on to her back and slept. When the cathedral chimed for three o’clock, she moved in her sleep and her foot came to rest across Ellis’s calf muscle. He savoured the sensation and soon afterwards he fell asleep.

Mostly, they lay on the beach and read and went swimming, taking it in turns to watch each other’s belongings. She sunbathed topless and asked Ellis to rub lotion into her back, which he did with growing confidence. They swam together some of the time and he grew accustomed to the sight of her breasts. Accustomed, but not blasé. They were as magical and wonderful to him on their third day together as the first. Her thighs were strong and her calves defined. She could have been an athlete or a swimmer, or a manual labourer. A farmer, even. Her skin was extraordinarily tanned. He didn’t feel the need to speak much. She wanted to do the talking. After three years away she was feeling homesick and was thinking of going home. On their last evening, they ate a picnic on the beach at Menton and got blind drunk whilst she told him what she called “her life story”.

“Ours is a perfect friendship,” she said. “After tomorrow, nothing can ever damage it.”

To his surprise, Ellis realised that he wasn’t in love with her, even though he’d rubbed oil into her back. He didn’t idolise her, even though she was prepared to give him the time of day. He wasn’t aching with sexual desire for her. He just liked being with her. They slept side by side on the beach in sleeping bags that last night. The stars spun above Ellis’s head. He heard the woman crying to herself. She laid her head on Ellis’s chest and slept there. The weight of her body against him brought sobering stabs of joy to him. They swam in the morning, before they said a word, and their hangovers eased. Ellis swam only briefly, deliberately, so that he could sit on the beach and watch the woman from New Zealand walk out of the sea towards him one final time. He locked the image away for keeps, where it remained more fresh and magical than many of the more intimate moments since.

At the train station she said that they should not exchange addresses, that they would part now with their friendship untainted. They hugged tight but they didn’t kiss.

“Have a wonderful life,” she said.

He couldn’t speak.

She climbed the steps to the station and he watched until she was taken by the crowd. He made a wish for happiness to be with her all her life and as he walked down the Boulevard Gambetta towards the hostel, he felt lonely and burst into tears.

The phone call was made from a train station concourse.

“Dad, it’s me. I’m in Italy and I’m fine. Please don’t be angry.”

“Where in Italy?”