Read Online The Spider Truces by Tim Connolly - Free Book Online

names he and Gary had given the four streams: the Medway, the Rother, the Panama and the Mississippi.
    “Some rivers feel as wide as the ocean,” Denny said. “I would love to see the Mississippi.”
    They went on to the wooden gate at the far end of the wood. The sensation of his son leading him by the hand and the cold water swilling around his boots sent ripples of happiness through Denny O’Rourke.
    “This is as far as I go,” Ellis said.
    Opposite the five-bar gate, across a narrow lane, was the entrance to Reardon’s farm. Ellis sat there often to look for activity in the yards or to watch Reardon in the fields. The farmer was rugged-looking and strong, despite some sort of injury to his left leg, for which he used a stick. His face was expressive and his cheeks were lean and bronzed. His hair was wavy and thick and silver grey. He remained defiantly handsome in the face of old age. His was the face of a man who has done many interesting things, Ellis had decided. He felt drawn to him and scared of him at the same time.
    The yard lights of the dairy lit up the moisture in the dusk air. Ellis longed to be under those lights doing whatever work it was that went on there. It was dark when he and his dad got home. Their faces were flushed and their heads full of the images that only woodland in twilight can conjure up.
     
     
    In the Wimpy Bar in Orpington high street, Ellis saw Chrissie kissing a boy. The boy’s hand crept up his sister’s skirt. What the hell for, Ellis couldn’t fathom. He wondered if his dad had done this with his mum and concluded that it was highly unlikely.
    Ellis found out that the boy was called Vincent and that he was in the final year, a year above Chrissie. He was the first boy she ever brought home. Denny was welcoming but formal. Mafi overfed him. Ellis watched Vincent as if he were a lab rat, which in some ways he was.
    “Have you had sex with Vincent?” he asked his sister, having made the trip up to her bedroom especially to use this word he didn’t comprehend.
    “No.” She was reading the spider book.
    “Are you going to?”
    “Yes. Definitely. Someone has to be first and I’ve decided he’s got the gig.”
    “What if he doesn’t want to?” Ellis asked.
    She laughed disdainfully. “He’s a boy.”
    “So am I.”
    “He’s a boy of seventeen. Boys of seventeen want to. You’re eleven and a half. I don’t know what boys of your age want to do.”
    “When?”
    “When what?”
    “When are you and Vincent going to have sex?”
    “At eight twenty-three on Tuesday week.”
    “Really?”
    “I don’t know when! When you’re not around.”
    She pushed Ellis to the ground and knelt on his chest. This made him laugh, automatically. She held the spider book open above him.
    “Don’t show me pictures!” he screamed.
    “This’ll make you hurl, spider-boy!”
    “No pictures!”
    “I’m not going to show you any fucking pictures. I’m here to educate you.”
    He loved her to swear.
    “Get this, freak-boy … ‘Throughout the whole of their development, spiders may fall victim to other predators. From the egg stage to adulthood they may be eaten by insects, other arachnids (including spiders), birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Perhaps the only thing worse than being eaten alive is being eaten alive slowly. Some parasitic wasps lay their eggs in spiders’ egg sacs or on the spiders themselves. The larvae hatch and either eat the eggs, or feed on the living spider as it moves around.’”
    She slammed the book shut triumphantly. “Feel sick?”
    Ellis shook his head. “Uh-uh. We’ve got to get loads of wasps next summer.”
    Chrissie climbed off Ellis’s chest and stood over him.
    “Ellis, I don’t think you’re getting your head round this truce thing at all.”
     
     
    Gary Bird’s arms and legs were twice the thickness of Ellis’s. The two of them spent most of their time on Gary’s dad’s allotment at Long Barn. Gary told Ellis that