And then, suddenly, Marsha left. She gave in her notice and didn’t come back.
After that we went all over the place on the back of the giant spider. But mostly we went to the bottom of the sea. The bairns were happy. They couldn’t remember a time without the giant spider, without the green laddered legs, the thick red abdomen, the afternoons spent lazily at the bottom of the sea.
By August’s end none of them even remembered Marsha and how the summer began. Summer this year was spent on the giant spider’s back.
And as August played itself out I began to miss the whole thing before the event. Everything took on a certain tinge. Up at the assault course we heard that Neil was marrying Michelle. Because of their bairn on the way they’d get a house, no bother. They were lucky. I got a silly crush on that Andrew for a bit, but that fell through. I think it was just the bairns urging me on with their bizarre sense of symmetry and anyway, I think he was queer. The bairns had a laugh, they played and fought and there were a few minor mishaps, only one major one, when Horrible Ruby got pushed over by accident when she was out by the community-centre bins. She brushed herself down, shaken and furious, and I apologised effusively, promising to give Martin a good talking-to.
Horrible Ruby just gave me a sickly, triumphant smile. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I know it won’t happen again. And it definitely won’t happen again next year, will it?’
It turned out the skating injury was worse than anyone imagined and Marsha and her parents were suing the council for the loss of her artistic arm and her place at art college in Newcastle. In view of that the council was dropping all future schemes. Horrible Ruby filled me in on this gossip beside the community-centre bins while the kids around us blinked, half understanding, fascinated by the trickle of blood coming from Ruby’s nose. Next year seemed so far away. Could they even see a time so far away?
Things stop being prosaic and normal when it seems that they’re coming to an end. How many more trips on the back of the giant spider?
Not many. Then I was back on the income support and the kids at school again.
I’d go past the park every now and then. On the way to the shops, usually; not on the way back. I’d look silly sitting alone on the spider’s back with a bagful of groceries. I’d sit for a while.
During late Indian summer, through mid-autumn, then the early, circumspect days of winter, the giant spider never felt like travelling anywhere.
Each time I checked on the spider I’d check on the brick Pavilion too. In the alcove behind the rosehip bushes I’d gather my nerve and bend to peer in through the dark gap.
Whoever it was still looked out at me each time. By the end of the year I’d started to find that oddly reassuring, actually.
THOSE IMAGINARY COWS
Either I stayed where I was and endured another end-of-party 4.00 a.m. showing of Room with a View, or I pursued the repressed Catholic boy I had earlier propositioned to his hiding place upstairs, or I went out into the garden for a smoke with Esmé.
Outside it was spitting on to rain and the garden furniture glowed like old bones on the lawn.
Esmé’s stark bald head swayed and bobbed across the table from me. She lit our cigarettes, poured more wine, and launched stridently into complaints about Michael, her new lover. As if the neighbours couldn’t hear, and as if I had known her for years, which I hadn’t.
I’ve heard all this before, I thought. Maybe I should have told her at the start about Michael.
She was an American friend. In my experience Americans have made friends with me quite easily and quickly. Often without my being aware of the fact. All it took in Esmé’s case was a quick introduction. She found me suitably acerbic and quaint, and she was flattered by my pointing out that she must be named after a Lolita in a Salinger story or a hyena in one by Saki. After that we were best buddies and almost immediately she began taking liberties.
One night when the telly wouldn’t come on she got on to talking about sex.
She was a dancer and general physical performance artiste, so she was sitting on the floor. She propped her recently shaved head on her hands, delicately rested her elbows on my knees and asked if I thought anal intercourse was passé.
This was the beginning of our period of intimacy. Which ended—in as much as such intimacies can ever end—with my punching her in the mouth in an effort to restore her to life.
‘I wouldn’t go in for it again,’ I said, thinking that would be an end to the matter.
‘Me neither,’ she said, nodding. ‘It sucks.’ She laughed and stopped abruptly, giving me an appraising stare. ‘I knew you were gay. I was talking to Michael about it, but he wouldn’t say anything. I mean, it isn’t that you’re camp or anything…’
She let it tail away. She pronounced ‘camp’ with a drawling vowel, as if there were an h in it. Her accent, a sunny Denver-Colorado staccato, was drenched already with mismatched vowel sounds she assumed were English. Eventually she came out of her
