The Spider Truces by Tim Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

we’re not moving! So get dressed and come down for breakfast.”
    Chrissie followed her dad to the kitchen.
    “Nice one, Dad. What a hero!”
    “Help me get the breakfast, Chrissie. We’re all late.”
    “Dad, look, I don’t particularly like spiders either but I don’t talk to them and demand meetings with their elders. Ellis does. So telling him to snap out of it really doesn’t cut the mustard. You’re going to have to be more creative.”
    “I’m not creative.”
    “Then get creative!”
    And because Chrissie sounded like her mother, her challenge stuck with Denny, though at first he had no idea how to rise to it. When an idea did come to him, he bought a book about spiders, did some research and took notes in his unreadable handwriting. But when he thought about putting the idea to Ellis, when he imagined saying it out loud, he felt foolish and hoped instead that in time Ellis would forget his fear.
    One evening soon after, when Denny went to Ellis’s bedroom to say goodnight, he found the room empty. A glow of light outside drew Denny to the window, where he saw the children’s tent erected, unsteadily, on the side lawn.
    Denny stopped a few yards short of the tent and peered in. Ellis was reading a Whizzer and Chips annual by the light of a kerosene lamp. He had blankets above and beneath him. Denny crawled in on his hands and knees and lay on his stomach, beside his son.
    “Evening.”
    Ellis smiled.
    “Having fun?”
    Ellis nodded and returned to his reading.
    Denny watched him for a while and then he left the tent and circled it, moving the pegs further out and pushing them firmly into the ground. Ellis watched the canvas tauten around him then listened to Denny go back inside the cottage. There were two large house spiders in opposite corners of Ellis’s bedroom, down by the skirting board. Denny cupped them in his hands, one at a time, and ushered them out of the bedroom window.
    “They’re gone,” he called out.
    “Don’t care,” the glowing tent called back. “Never going inside again. Never ever.”
    Denny wrapped up warm and took a chair outside where he guarded the tent from a distance, without Ellis knowing. At nine o’clock Mafi joined him for a cigarette and together they watched Ellis’s shadow put the book aside and turn off the lamp. Later, Denny scooped his sleeping son up and laid him in his bed.
    Mafi had poured Denny a glass of whisky.
    “You’ve got to be pretty unhappy about spiders to take yourself outside to sleep, all alone, at his age,” she said.
    “Yes …” Denny said. He was distant. “I did think of one thing, but …”
    “But what?” Mafi asked.
    “I really don’t know if it will help him.”
    “Don’t know until you’ve tried. What is it?”
    Denny shook his head. “It feels a bit silly.”
    “Try me,” Mafi said.
    Denny remained tentative. “What I thought of is an ‘agreement’. It sounds ludicrous, but a sort of agreement between us and …” He laughed at himself. “An agreement between us and them. Based on a little science and a little mopping up of stray spiders on your and my part.”
    “Sounds good.”
    Denny blushed and hid his face in his hands.
    “What are you worried about?” Mafi asked.
    “I’m too embarrassed to put it to him, so I don’t know what to do.”
    “Embarrass yourself,” Mafi said.
     
     
    “I’ll pay you 50p to empty this shed.”
    Gary Bird opened the shed door and peered inside.
    “Easy,” Gary said. “Show me the 50p first though.”
    “I’ll give it to you up front. You’re my best friend. I trust you.”
    Gary looked at Ellis suspiciously and then at the shed again. “What do you mean exactly, empty?”
    “Take the mower and the cans and everything else out and put it on the path. Just leave the shelves and the shed.”
    “Obviously. I can’t take the shed out of the shed.”
    “I’ll wait inside.”
    “Am I going to get bollocked?” Gary asked.
    “There’s no one here,” Ellis