The Spider Truces Part 9

"I don't know how to," Ellis said.

The boy took the cigarette from his mouth and handed it to Ellis. Ellis placed it between his lips and watched, openly this time, as the boy rolled another. They rested back on the bales and Ellis copied the boy's nonchalant exhalation of smoke.

The fields nearest to them were flat and gave way to layers of hillside, which stacked up towards Ide Hill. There were cottages dotted amongst these rolling fields and, in the distance, a dilapidated barn at Reardon's boundary. Ellis felt dizzy and his mouth was dry but he liked the look of the cigarette between his fingers.

"Tim," the boy said.

Ellis copied the boy's detached tone. "Ellis."

A bull raised its head above the half-door of the oast roundel. The boys watched it as they smoked. Ellis wanted to ask Tim if the bull had a name, but he couldn't decide if this would be a mistake. It wasn't a pet, after all. Then again, if it did have a name, Ellis ought to know it.

"Let's go," Tim said, and headed purposefully out of the barn. Ellis took off his T-shirt and hung it on the same pitchfork as Tim's, then ran to catch him up.

"Never ever leave a gate open," Tim said, without breaking stride. "Reardon will kill you."

"I never do," Ellis boasted. "Has the bull got a name?"

"Yeah," Tim said earnestly. "He's called Bob."

I knew it would have, Ellis congratulated himself.

"And all the cows are called Daisy, you prat," Tim added. "Of course the bull hasn't got a name."

They reached a large bell that hung from a piece of rope on a gate. Tim took the bell and led Ellis up to a plateau of rich pasture where Jersey cattle grazed above a ribbon of small hills not visible from the farmyard. Tim rang the bell, the boys wafted their arms and the docile herd wandered obediently down to the farm.

Reardon was in the yard with Michael Finsey, his herdsman. The men saw the herd into the milking shed. Tim led Ellis through a metal door into a narrow, raised concrete alleyway where a wall of metal bars separated them from the cattle.

"You don't want to get squashed between these ugly f.u.c.kers!" Tim shouted, above the roar of the milking machines. "That's why we have to stand here."

Reardon and Michael Finsey pushed and punched the cattle into their bays and attached the pumps, using their shoulders to prise the cows apart. When he wasn't using it to prod the beasts, Reardon wedged his stick into his wellies to free up both hands.

Later, the farmer walked the herd with the boys. The heifers grazed the fields furthest from the farm and the dairy herd were kept on the pasture nearest to the milking sheds.

"A beast cannot graze if its feet and teeth are no good. If they seem bony, check the feet and teeth. If they hang back when you herd them in, check their udders for a thing called mast.i.tis because they can get sore from the milking. A healthy cow has a straight back and a large udder."

Then he was gone, marching back towards the farmhouse as if prolonged exposure to children would bring him out in a rash.

I will never leave my dad, Ellis told himself, as he watched Reardon go. If my dad was left all alone, he'd become like that. I will never leave his side.

The boys put their T-shirts on and sat again in the hay barn. Ellis looked proudly at the grazes on his arms and the grime on his hands. His skin smelled of cattle. They drank fresh milk and ate bread and jam. The black cherry jam was cold from Reardon's fridge and it was sweet and spread thick on crusty white bread. Food had never tasted so good to Ellis in his life.

Tim Wickham's parents lived in a former tied cottage on the northern edge of Reardon's land. The steep slopes of the garden were covered in black knapweed and wild dog roses tumbled to a fast-flowing brook. The gra.s.s was lush and long, especially in the shade of the apple trees, where a hammock was slung. The ground about the brook was never dry, not even in summer. The only flat piece of garden was alongside the lane where an unkempt medlar tree stooped towards croquet hoops lost in the gra.s.s.

Mr Wickham was a teacher and he always wore the same brown wool blazer and light green shirt, whatever the season. He was always nice but rarely laughed. Tim's mum was gregarious and loving. She deliberately embarra.s.sed her son by kissing him on the lips in front of Ellis. Tim called her "mad" when she did this and they both laughed about it. Ellis watched in awe.

Ellis liked Mrs Wickham a great deal but thought it strange that she never offered him anything to eat or drink. There were no biscuits or cake or bread or fruit for them when they got in from the farm. Ellis would have noticed this anyway, but was all the more aware of it because since going to the farm he had been perpetually hungry. At least, it was either working on the farm or staring inertly at the naked women in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. One of these was giving him an appet.i.te.

In the long gra.s.s by the brook, the boys talked about girls. The little that Tim had glimpsed was of his mum. She sometimes walked around the house in just a bath towel, he said, and every now and then he had got a peep when she was rewrapping it round her body.

"That's so good," Ellis sighed.

"Have you seen your sister doing it ever, with whatsisname?" Tim asked.

"Not actually doing it, I don't think. But messing around. No, I don't think I have."

"I reckon you'd know," Tim said.

They closed their eyes. Ellis felt the blades of gra.s.s pushing against his skin and wondered exactly what he hadn't seen Chrissie and James doing. He pictured Mrs Wickham taking him upstairs and explaining to him that the way young boys find out about women is for their new best friend's mum to get into bed with them and show them. He imagined Mrs Wickham taking off her clothes and climbing into her bed and telling Ellis to climb in beside her for a cuddle. Ellis fell asleep with his head pressed against her skin and her fingers drawing lines over his clothed body. When he woke, the gra.s.s was cold in shadow. He was alone. He went into the kitchen. Mrs Wickham was cooking supper. Her husband was drinking a gla.s.s of water at the kitchen table and reading the post. The cottage was dark inside. None of the glorious sunshine of that first summer at Reardon's seemed to make it through the windows.

"Tim's taking a bath before supper," Mrs Wickham said.

"I fell asleep," Ellis muttered, disorientated and embarra.s.sed.

Mrs Wickham ruffled his hair, took his hand and led him into the sitting room. She sat Ellis down on an old sofa with a pattern of faded ivory flowers against pale green. The sofa cushions were deep and swallowed him up.

"You make yourself at home."

She planted a kiss on his forehead and shut the door behind her. Ellis looked at the room. There was no TV and there were no books. The ornate moulding in the centre of the ceiling had been painted carelessly. The room was dark and hollow. He wondered if they ever used it. The black slate fire surround looked as if it belonged to a room twice the size of the house. On the chimney breast there were brown photographs of faded people. From beyond the closed door came the sound of the Wickhams' dinner time. Cutlery sc.r.a.ping on plates and Mrs Wickham's laugh. Ellis slung his legs over the arm of the sofa, cuddled the cushions and fell asleep again. When he woke the next morning he was in his own bed and his stomach was churning with hunger. Mafi was sitting by his side.

"How did I get home?" he whimpered.

"Mr Wickham drove you home and carried you up to bed and you never stirred for a minute," she whispered.

He smiled and turned on to his side, clasping Mafi's hand.

"I've never known a boy sleep like you, Ellis O'Rourke."

Chrissie's bike was leaning against the front of the cottage. She sat on the front step drinking a cup of coffee. Ellis poked his head out of the window above her. He knew from her sungla.s.ses, bikini top and skirt that she was going to see James at the reservoir.

"If you're trying to get a look at my t.i.ts from up there you're a sad, pathetic b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said, without turning.

"What t.i.ts?"

"Cheeky boy!" she muttered, pretending to care.

Ellis ran downstairs and joined her on the step.

"More coffee, pesky rat!" She held her mug out to him.

"Yes, your grace." He came back with her mug filled and with a gla.s.s of milk for himself. "I've seen better t.i.ts than yours anyway," he mentioned, casually.

"I'm happy for you, earthling." She soaked up the sun.

"Are you going to see James?"

"Si."

"Are you going to be a journalist?" he asked, following his own, weaving train of thought.

"I'm going to train to be one, from September."

"So you're not leaving home, you're going to be a commuter?"

"I'm not leaving home."

"Are you absolutely sure Dad doesn't mind? I think he was looking forward to it just being me and him and Mafi living here."

"Nice try, p.i.s.s-face," she said, delivering an effortless slap to the back of his head. "He's over the moon about it 'cos I'm his favourite child."

"You're his favourite daughter."

She gave Ellis a lift to Longspring Farm on her bike. He had, after all, brought her coffee. Gary Bird was waiting for him at the gate where Treasure Island Woods ended and the farm track began.

"Where have you been?" Gary asked accusingly.

"Don't know," Ellis mumbled.

"I've been waiting for you at Treasure Island every day!" Gary yelled and marched off.

"What was that about?" Chrissie asked.

"Dunno."

"Ellis! You can't just ditch friends like that. You go and say sorry!"

Ellis watched his sister cycle away. He thought of doubling back through the woods to find Gary and apologise. He could ask Reardon if Gary could come with him to the farm and then, from tomorrow, they'd go together and both be friends with Tim. He hesitated, torn between turning left into the woods or right to the farm. He squinted against the sunlight and headed up the farm track, ignoring the bad feeling in his stomach and aware that for some reason he didn't want to share with Gary Bird the new world beyond the lime trees. Everything was coming together on that blazing hot morning. The naked bodies of women lined up for him on a page at home, the smells of cattle and diesel drifting under his nose at the farm, the sight of a rolled cigarette between his fingers, the dark red of his own blood scabbing painlessly on hairline cuts across his forearm and making him feel so very grown up, the feeling of straw p.r.i.c.kling his back, the bikini tops his sister would be wearing for the next couple of months, the satisfaction of herding cattle into the yard and the sensation of belonging at Longspring Farm.

Then, Ellis felt a new sensation. Rather, he felt a series of them in quick succession. First, a stinging sense of rock-hard impact across his face. Then a howling noise pouring through his ears, joined by the illusion of ice-cold fluid trickling into his throat. Then a scorching numbness across one eye socket. Finally, a piercing pain at the bridge of his nose and the sound of cartilage squelching as he instinctively and blindly pushed his nose back into place.

He lay with his head in the dust and s.h.i.t, listening to the storm in his ears abate, feeling his heartbeat roar out of control. He saw the world through liquid eyes but he wasn't crying. He knelt up and rubbed his face. There was blood and snot streaked across the back of his hand. He blinked his eyes to clear them of fluid and saw Gary Bird walking away down the farm track, a large piece of wood in his hand. He climbed over the gate and disappeared into Treasure Island Woods.

Ellis hid all day, knowing that when his dad saw him he'd not let him out alone again. At the hospital they told Denny that if Ellis had been brought in earlier they'd have been able to do a better job of fixing his nose. The doctor asked Ellis his name and what day of the week it was.

"He doesn't necessarily know that at the best of times," Chrissie said.

Ellis refused to reveal who had hit him.

"I can't remember a thing about it!" he insisted.

Denny banned Ellis from the farm. Then, after rehearsing his lines with Ellis in a phone call, Tim appeared at the cottage with his father.

"It was me, Mr O'Rourke ... me and Ellis were mucking around and I belted him with a plank of wood accidentally. He wouldn't let me tell 'cos he thought I'd be in trouble."

Denny looked to Tim's father, who shrugged.

"We weren't fighting. It was just messing about and I overdid it a bit ..."

"You did a bit, didn't you?" Denny said. "Why don't you go up and see Ellis in his room?"

Tim ran upstairs.

"I'd like to believe it," Denny said.

"Then do," Robert Wickham replied.

Having shut his bedroom door, Ellis opened the encyclopaedia at page 252 and laid the five naked women down on the bed.

"f.u.c.king lovely," Tim said, admiringly.

Ellis took a piece of paper from the desk in the corner of his room and laid it over the page. He had cut a square out of it so that the girl and the oldest woman were hidden, leaving only the three women in the centre visible.

"That's better," Tim muttered.

"Yes," Ellis said, expertly.

Ellis put Chrissie's Led Zep 3 alb.u.m on, glanced in the mirror to admire his facial injuries and leant out of the window. Mafi disappeared round the corner of the cottage, working her way along the flowerbeds with a weeding fork. The boys shared a cigarette and looked out across the village at their known universe.

"Page 252 ..." Tim reflected, dragging lazily.

"Page 252 ..." Ellis confirmed.

7.

Bright green gra.s.shoppers appeared in the meadow on Philpotts Lane where Ellis went when he wanted to be alone. He could lay himself and his bike down there and disappear from view. The edge of the meadow was flanked by durmast oak and when he saw the green acorns he knew that it was time to start at his new school.

Ellis knew kids who liked school and kids who didn't. He and Tim were kids who didn't. Their cycle ride home was rushed and breathless. It took them twenty minutes to change out of their uniform and meet at the farm.

Only an encounter with Chloe Purcell on Oak Lane was worth delaying for. Chloe Purcell had been at Ellis's school in Orpington until she was eleven, when her parents put her into the convent school. The bus dropped her in the old high street from where she walked two miles home along Oak Lane, in the deep blue of her convent sweater. She had short, straight black hair and a small brown birthmark beneath her left eye. She was quiet and plain and unextraordinary but in the first weeks of that school year Ellis saw that she was the most beautiful girl in the world and decided he loved her. He felt excited and terrified whenever he saw her up ahead on the lane.

On the day that Ellis and Tim had discovered they would be at the same school they were so ecstatic they invented a dance of celebration, which they called "The Goose" because when they performed it in the farmyard the geese got agitated and attacked them. They celebrated because they loved being together, but when Ellis saw Chloe Purcell on Oak Lane he always wished, just for these few minutes, that Tim wasn't with him.

However early in the morning Ellis and Tim set out to pick autumn mushrooms, there was always a light coming from the kitchen at Longspring Farm. They found parasol mushrooms on the path leading into Eight Acre Wood. They picked eight large stems and wrapped them in a piece of cloth. The temperature dropped as they walked into a dip in the fields. Emerging from it, they saw the farmhouse caressed by a slow-drifting, head-high mist.

"Ghosts ..." Ellis muttered.

He watched the ghosts drag themselves across the farm buildings. He sucked the cold air in and it tasted of dewy pasture. Reardon emerged from the milking shed, crossed the farmyard and headed into the flat fields where his Highland herd were. Today, he would move them on to the high pasture and bring the heifers down alongside the bullpens for mating.

It was best to avoid Reardon first thing. He was notoriously grumpy until noon, even on a good day. It took that long for the night to leave him. It was at night that the pain in his shattered leg returned, darting into his spine and filling his head with worries and the memory of two women who had loved him but whom he hadn't wanted to marry. He slept under the same heavy bedding he had known as a child, in a single bed tucked into the corner of a cavernous, sloping bedroom. He had been on the farm for forty years and every single night of them he had felt that he was struggling against gravity, crushed under the weight of bedding and solitude. He didn't know that he could change that. He didn't know how acceptable it would be to reserve for his own life some of the enthusiasm he showed for other people's. It would not be selfish. It would not be immodest. It would not be vain or too earthly. It would not offend G.o.d. But this kind, inspirational man did not know that. He knew how to farm. He knew how to tell a story in a delightful way. He knew how to inspire other people into action. He knew how to talk gregariously with people and never allow the conversation to centre on himself. He knew that to read the poems of John Clare and look at the paintings of Constable, Piper and the Wyeths brought him profound pleasure and helped to form his faithful image of what heaven might be. But he didn't know that to buy a double bed and to level the floor around it and to purchase lightweight bedding would be to transform the nature of his nights' sleep. He didn't know that it might change the dreams that plagued him and the moods that were their legacy.

This morning, he appeared weary. Ellis felt a short, painless stab of affection for him and decided to leave some mushrooms for his breakfast. The kitchen was warm. A half-drunk mug of tea stood lonely on the table. Ellis washed the mug up and put it on top of the Rayburn next to the teapot. He unfolded the cloth rag and took out four of the mushrooms. He washed them and dragged the skin off with a blunt knife. He sliced them and left them on the bread board next to the hotplate.

The sun struggled to burn through. When its first beams perforated the sky, the mist departed, looking over its shoulder at Ellis with a vow to return.