Spider by Patrick McGrath Read Free Book Online

ceiling was a haystack, or a cottage, or a loaded wagon—she’d grown up in Essex, and had never lost her feeling for the countryside. And as she talked, and the tapping of her needles resumed, a restful, rather dreamy expression softened her features, and the dark terrors of my own tale would be dispelled, replaced by a mood of lyric tenderness, by pictures of fields and farms, birdsong in summertime, fresh cobwebs glistening in the elms at sunrise. She used to tell me about the spiders, about how they did their weaving in the quiet of the night, and how, early in the morning, she’d cross the field and see the webs they’d woven draped in the branches like clouds of fine muslin, though as she got closer they’d turn into shining wheels, each with a spider motionless at the center. But it wasn’t the webs she’d come to see, she said, for hidden in the lower boughs, if you knew where to look, you’d find a little silk bag the size of a pigeon’s egg hanging from a twig by a thread. Inside the bag, she’d say, was a tiny ball of orange beads all glued together and no bigger than a pea—and those were the spider’s eggs. She’d been busy all night, spinning from her own insides the silk she’d need to weave the egg-bag and the coats it wore to keep it warm and dry. And look, Spider, see how perfect her work is! Not a thread out of place! Then in my mind’s eye I’d see the little egg-bag dangling on its thread, and yes, it was a perfect thing, a tiny bulb of compact white satin with black silk and brown laid across it in broad ribbons, in spindle-shaped patterns, in elaborate wavy lines. I imagined cutting it open and finding inside a thick quilt of wadding, and under that the fine silk pocket in which lay the tiny eggs themselves. But it was the ending of the story that I loved best: What happened to the spider, I’d say. My mother would sigh. When she’s finished (she said) she just crawls off to her hole without a backward glance. For her work is done, she has no silk left, she’s all dried up and empty. She just crawls away and dies. The knitting resumed. “Put the kettle on, Spider,” she’d say, “and we’ll have a nice cup of tea.”
    I’d be in bed by the time my father came home. Sometimes I heard nothing; I knew then he was sullen and silent, unresponsive to her talk and her concern. Soon I’d hear him come heavily up the stairs, leaving her to see to the lights and the doors. At other times he came home angry, and then I’d hear his voice raised, the sharp bite of his sarcasm, the quiet tones of my mother as she tried to soften his temper and blunt the spike of his drink-quickened grievance against the world and her. Often he reduced her to tears, he abused her with such fierce spite, and once, I remember, she came hurrying out of the kitchen, along the passage and up the stairs into my room, where she sank onto the edge of my bed, clutched my hand and sobbed into a handkerchief for several moments before bringing herself under control. “I’m sorry, Spider,” she whispered. “Sometimes your father upsets me so. It’s my fault—you go to sleep, it’s all right, I’m fine now.” And she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead, and I felt the dampness of the tears on her face. Oh, I hated him then! Then I would have killed him, were it in my power— he had a squalid nature, that man, he was dead inside, stinking and rotten and dead.
    I was feeling better, much better, by the time I closed the book and pushed it back under the linoleum. I think it comes of talking about my mother, or at least talking about the hours I spent with her alone. It was different when my father was present; then there was tension, and ugly silences, and neither of us could properly be ourselves. I pushed back my chair and rose to my feet and stretched. I really did feel remarkably well. I leaned on my hands on the table and gazed out of the window. The rain had stopped, though droplets still clung to the