Spider

“Come on, son, I just want to talk to you.”

I sank down on my hams and covered my ears. A few moments later I felt his hand on my elbow. “Come on, son, come over to the shed.”

I allowed him to lead me back to his shed. He unlocked the door, ushered me in, sat me down in the armchair while he lit a few candles. Then he settled himself on a wooden box, elbows on his knees, head bent forward, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “What’s the matter with you, son? What are you so angry with us for?” He glanced over at me, looking weary and perplexed. “Eh?”

I was curled up in the armchair and gazing at the cobwebs. My heart was beating very fast; with some relief I felt the Spider begin to withdraw, I felt him crawl quietly away, leaving only a dusty empty cell behind: that was Dennis.

“Why did you say what you said to your mother?”

“She’s not my mother,” I said, though I hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

A snort of surprise. “Then who is she?”

But he would not trap me again.

“Who is she, son?” Anger stirring now.

I gazed at the cobwebs; Spider tried to creep into a hole.

“Who is she, Dennis?” The frown, the teeth.

“She’s a tart.”

“You cheeky monkey, I’ll smack your bloody head!” He was on his feet now, looming over the armchair.

“She’s a fat tart!”

He slapped me on the side of the head and I started to cry, I couldn’t help it. “You killed my mum,” I shouted through my tears. “Murderer! You murderer! You bloody murderer!”

“You what?” He sank back onto his box. “You having me on, Dennis? You know what you’re saying?”

I relapsed into sullen and defiant silence; much as the Spider wanted to stay in his hole that slap on the head had smoked him out, and the hot, ringing sensation prevented him from sealing himself off again. My father frowned; he said he didn’t know what I was talking about. Was I daft? he said. More scratching of his head as he sat there on his box. He kept glancing over at me as though he’d never seen me before, and then he’d look away. He started to tell me how daft I was acting, he said he didn’t know where I got my ideas from, he said I spent too much time by myself, he said I should have some mates, he’d had mates at my age, every young lad should have mates, on and on he went and as the hot, ringing sensation faded I found I could pull away, pull back into the dark secret places once more, and as I did so a peculiar thing happened: my father seemed to shrink. It was suddenly as if he was very far away, though at the same time I knew he was just a few feet from me. But to my eyes he was distant and tiny, and his voice sounded as though it were crossing an immense expanse of space before it reached me, and when it did reach me there was a hollow, tinny resonance to it that obscured the sense and meaning of the words so they were just echoes, empty echoes in a gloomy shed in which up among the rafters spiders spun webs that winked and glistened and twinkled in the candlelight and made me feel soft, and time stood still until I clearly heard him saying: “Dennis? Dennis? You still think I done her in?”

I said nothing. He had swelled again to substance and reality, and the soft feeling went away.

“Answer me, son. You still think I done in your mum?”

What could I do? He frightened me. I shook my head.

“Well thank God for that,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

We left the shed and made our way down the allotment path, him pushing his bicycle. As we passed my mother’s grave it occurred to me that he hadn’t offered to dig up the potato patch, but of course I didn’t say this (though I doubt we’d have found anything, she’d risen by this time, but he didn’t know that). Hilda was waiting for us in the kitchen. She looked anxiously at my father, who had a hand on my shoulder as we came in through the back door. Spider had by this point withdrawn to one of his most obscure holes. “All right then?” she said, and my father nodded, and with manifest relief she began to bustle. “Sit yourselves down,” she said, “I popped out and got something nice for your supper.” It was eels.

So I sat there quietly in the kitchen and ate my eels, but not for one minute did I forget that for all my father’s talk they still planned to send me to Canada.

It is very late at night as I write this, and I don’t know if you can understand the anxiety I feel at committing these thoughts to paper. If she should find this book the consequences would be appalling, and I don’t like to think about that, not in the light of what later transpired at Kitchener Street—when you learn the full story you will understand my trepidation. I am fairly satisfied with the fireplace as the site of concealment, although it does have the drawback of being very sooty in there—after only a few days the book became so filthy I had to put it in a brown paper bag before stuffing it away, using my mittens so as to keep my hands clean. This system worked well until yesterday morning, when I realized that if she found the sooty mittens her suspicions would be aroused and she’d go poking around in the fireplace to see what I was up to—which left me the problem (I’m being fastidious to the point of absurdity, you’ll say, but believe me, I cannot afford to take the chance) the problem of finding a safe place of concealment for the mittens (under the linoleum perhaps?) or, alternatively, of getting rid of them. I chose the latter, I threw them into the canal yesterday afternoon, and watched them become waterlogged then finally sink. What this means is that (a) I have to wash my hands every time I extract and replace the book (which necessitates a trip down the corridor to the bathroom), and (b) at some point I shall have to explain to her that I have lost the mittens, and as you can imagine this is not an interview I look forward to. But here is why it is so imperative that she hot find the book: you see, I think I know who she is.

I was coming into the house one afternoon a few weeks ago after some hours spent walking the streets. I was crossing the hall, making for the stairs, when I happened to glance toward the kitchen, which is located at the end of a short passage at the back of the hall, off to the left of the staircase. The passage was dark, but the light was on in the kitchen, and she was standing in the middle of the room leaning over the table with her sleeves rolled up and a rolling pin in her hands. Nothing unusual in this, of course; she was helping the little woman, who was attempting a steak-and-kidney pudding, perhaps she was instructing her in the English method. But what riveted my attention to this brightly lit scene, framed as it was in the kitchen door at the end of that short dark passage, was the way she handled the roller, the way she rose up on her toes and leaned on the thing so that all the strength and weight of those beefy shoulders was transmitted down her powerful arms, through her wrists, and into the thick fingers of her hamlike hands, the nails of which, I saw with a very real thrill of recognition and horror, and despite the powdering of flour upon them, were filthy. For a moment past and present slid seamlessly together, assumed identity, and there was one woman only leaning on that rolling pin, and that woman was Hilda Wilkinson; at that moment the woman in the kitchen was transfigured, her hair was blonde with black roots, her bosom strained against the fabric of an apron not her own, and her sturdy legs were planted on the kitchen floor like a pair of tree trunks, lifting and sinking as she rose on her toes with every downward thrust! of the pin upon the pastry. I had drawn close by this time, I had entered the passage and was gaping at her as she turned, panting hoarsely, to the door, and brushed a strand of damp hair from her forehead. Her chin! How could I have missed it? She had Hilda’s chin, big and puggy, prognathous, the very same! “Ah, Mr. Cleg,” she said—and I was back in 1957 with my landlady once more.

A pause; I could think of nothing to say as she stood there at the table, turned toward me, a question in her face. “Did you want something, Mr. Cleg?”

“No,” I said, but it came out in a sort of croaky whisper. “No,” I said, more successfully, and it was only with the greatest of effort that I managed to get moving again, for I had become, for those few moments in the passage, uncoupled.

“No?” she said, as I shuffled away, and the familiar spike of mockery was in her voice. “A nice cup of tea, Mr. Cleg?” But I had to get upstairs, so off I fled without another word. Once I’d gained the safety of my room I stood at the window and gazed down at the park and attempted to roll a cigarette; but my hands were trembling badly, and I spilled half the tobacco onto the floor, and it was some minutes before I was sufficiently recovered to get