Spider Read online

  Two or three evenings later he was in the public bar of the Dog and Beggar when he heard Hilda’s gusty tones issuing from the snug. He drained his pint of mild and made his way out onto the street and along to the door of the snug. He pushed it open; Hilda was seated at the table with three of her friends. They turned toward him. Hilda’s face was flushed, and at the very moment my father appeared in the doorway a glass of port was halfway to her lips. There it stayed as she lifted her eyebrows and smiled that puggy smile of hers. Nora sat on one side of her; on the other, a dark, tarty-looking woman and a thin young man with long hair. It was a dry, cold, moonless night in late November, and in the sudden silence that descended on the room only the distant murmur of traffic was audible from three streets away, and the muted hum of conversation in the Dog’s other bars. Hilda’s eyes shifted from my father to the three others seated at the table. Then she set down her glass—my father still stood in the doorway—rose to her feet, and swept across the snug and past him into the street. As he let the door swing closed behind him a ripple of quiet laughter erupted at the table.

  Using the alleyways that ran between the backs of the houses they made their way down toward the canal. Hilda was in good spirits. She’d forgotten his first name though. “Horace!” she exclaimed. “Always been one of my favorites. I’d a cat called Horace once.” She talked about the weather. “Nippy, eh?” she said. “I’m glad I’ve got me fur.” What was going through my father’s head? What did he think was going to happen? He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was marching along with her shoulders hunched and her hands deep in her pockets. “Lovely job you did on them pipes,” she said. “Barely a squeak out of them now. Smell didn’t go away though.” They talked about plumbing for some minutes. Hilda knew very little about it, and appeared impressed by my father’s obvious mastery of the trade. She was a jovial woman, and soon had him silently chuckling. Most people, he remarked, were bored stiff by plumbing. “I don’t believe it!” she cried. “Well, not me, Horace. I love plumbing.”

  They had reached the bridge over the gasworks canal. She led him to a set of slimy stone steps that gave onto a narrow quay just above water level. “Come on, then, Horace,” she murmured, gingerly descending, “down we go.” They were now effectively hidden from the view of any passerby. Hilda opened her coat, unbuttoned her cardigan and showed him her breasts. Then she slid an arm round his waist and with her other hand rubbed his trousered groin, grinning at him as she did so. “How do you like that, Horace?” she whispered. She was exactly the same height as him in her heels, but probably a little heavier, and to feel the big swelling weight of her pressed against him almost overwhelmed the man. He slipped his hands inside the fur coat and hesitantly touched her breasts, then tried to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned her face aside. His penis was stiff in his trousers; Hilda continued whispering to him as she rubbed it with the inside of her palm, then deftly undid the lower buttons of his fly and pulled it out. “What’s this then?” she murmured. It was an unusually thin penis, my father’s, but stiff as a pencil, and twitching. Hilda spat on her hands. “Ooh, Horace,” she whispered. She brought him to climax in half a dozen quick strokes, then shifted aside as he spurted into the canal. She stepped away from him then, tucked her breasts back into her cardigan, and closed her coat with a shiver. My father was standing at the edge of the quay with his back to her, urinating into the canal. He could see his sperm drifting away through the black water, filmy strings of the stuff, grayish and translucent. “Hurry up then, Horace,” said Hilda, her teeth chattering, “I’m bloody freezing.” But my father wanted to be alone; he told her he was going to stay out and have a smoke. “Suit yourself,” she said cheerfully, “I’m off back up the Dog.”

  When my father reached the top of the steps a few moments later Hilda was marching up the street. Frowning, he leaned against the railing and groped for his tobacco. He watched the fur-coated figure pass under one streetlamp after another, trailing clouds of smoky breath behind her as the tap tap tapping of her heels on the pavement grew fainter and fainter, and when it had vanished altogether he was still standing on the bridge in the cold night air.

  There was a time when we were happy. My mother was so quiet, so patient; even when my father began spending all his spare time on his allotment or in the Dog she never became shrill or bitter, she never turned into a shrew, as most of the women on Kitchener Street did; her sweetness of temper persisted against all odds. Sometimes we would sit together in the kitchen, she and I, in the evening, and we’d play games of the imagination. There was a large stain on the kitchen ceiling, and the game was to make up a story about it. Mine were always horrible—I’d see a twisted dwarf up there, and describe to my mother in lurid detail the evil done by this creature at dead of night when good people were asleep. My mother, her knitting in her lap and her needles peacefully clacking, would shiver at the things I said. “Spider, what an idea!” she would murmur. “However did you think of such a thing!” When it was her turn she would set down her needles and tell me that the stain on the 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 bare branches of the trees in the park, glinting in the light of the streetlamp then dripping onto the dead leaves below. A figure with an umbrella went hurrying along the pavement, and somewhere a dog began to bark. The moon was a slender crescent of yellow light, and I imagined that light rippling on the dark swells of the river a mile or so to the south. I knew I would sleep well tonight, and there would be no more of this business about gas. I think it’s the house that’s to blame—I am a sensitive individual, highly strung, and Mrs. Wilkinson’s establishment is not suitable for such as I. Tomorrow or the next day I would hand in my notice and find more sympathetic accommodations. I might even move away from the East End altogether—the memories it arouses are so relentless, somehow, and so grim, for the most part, perhaps if I was away from here I could think about the past with more detachment?

  I was up early the next morning, and still in excellent spirits. The day was gloomy and damp, and this I welcomed, for I have always enjoyed rain and mist and darkness. I sat at my table until I heard the bell for breakfast, smoking, gazing at the blanket of cloud, and working out what I would say to Mrs. Wilkinson. I was one of the first in the kitchen that morning; I sat at the table, drumming my fingers, and as the dead souls appeared one by one I greeted them loudly. Little response, of course; in they came, shuffling and grunting, settling down to their porridge with lowered eyes. I couldn’t eat; I drank tea instead, cup after cup, with plenty of sugar and no milk. My fingers were drumming, my feet were tapping, I was smiling at the world. I announced to the dead souls that I would shortly be leaving them. Little response to this either, though a few fishlike eyes did flicker up from porridge bowls and cast glances my way. Yes, I told them, soon they wouldn’t be seeing Mr. Cleg anymore, I was taking lodgings elsewhere in town (I remained vague about precisely where). Yes, I said, I should be taking a suite of rooms, my residence in the garret—I pointed at the ceiling—was purely temporary, a stopgap measure while I found my feet. In Canada, I told them, I had been accustomed to certain amenities, a billiard table, a library—how could a person live in a house that lacked a library? I drank more tea; I expanded upon my theme. But barely was I launched than I saw them turning toward the door. Mrs. Wilkinson was standing there with her arms folded across her chest. I fell silent. “Go on, Mr. Cleg,” she said. “This is most informative.”

  Her sarcasm was like acid. “Mr. Cleg,” she said, advancing into the room. I turned sideways in my chair, averted my face to the wall and crossed my legs. I began to fumble with my tobacco. “Mr. Cleg,” she said, “I do sincerely wish I could provide you with a billiard table and a library, but this is not a rich house, and so we must shift for ourselves—as you do, Mr. Cleg, I wish more of the residents would get out for a stroll.”

  Still sideways in my chair, my face still averted, I grew rigid. I burned with humiliation. From my trembling fingers shreds of tobacco spilled onto my trousers. Several moments passed. A weary sigh, then, from my tormentor. “Mr. Cleg, how many shirts are you wearing? What about our agreement?” Agreement! I was frozen stiff by this point. I abandoned the effort to roll a cigarette. My fingers hung poised and immobile, a paper between two fingers of the left hand, a pinch of tobacco in the right. Silence. What was she doing? Then, from one of the dead souls: “She’s gone, Mr. Cleg,” and I slowly relaxed, though my fingers kept twitching for at least another quarter of an hour.

  Not until I was safely out of the front door did my spirits begin to rally. The woman is a monster! But I put her out of my mind, I was in much too good a humor to let her spoil it, and soon I was bubbling with exuberance once more. For some reason I felt reluctant to sit by the canal, and I wondered, as I do every morning, whether today I would cross the bridge and revisit Kitchener Street. But I didn’t revisit Kitchener Street, not that day, nor did I go to the canal, I went to the river instead, for I knew that I should only become morbid if I watched the rain spotting the black surface of the canal, for the rain carries ideas, this I learned in Canada, where it rains almost all the time. Along the towpath I went then climbed up to the main road—how fast everything seemed to be moving in the rain!—crossed over, then threaded my way through narrow streets to an alley between the warehouses, then to a set of worn stone steps descending to the river itself. Oh, the river! Great broad swirling stream, old Father Thames in the raw gray day! On the far side, the cranes of Rotherhithe poking at me through the mist like fingers, or insects. On the lower steps, as I gingerly descended, a creeping green slime, and one of the steps was eaten away and the rest were crumbling and pocked. At the foot of the steps the water churned and eddied, gray-green like the sky, the thick, lowering blanket of sky, spitting rain, soaking me through, my cap a soggy, useless thing by this point so I tossed it into the river and watched it float away. I love the wetness of a day like this, I love wetness and darkness and skies like thick gray blankets, for it is only at such times that I feel at home in the world.

  I made my way in a state of some exhilaration back across the main road (there was some honking and emotion in the traffic, for I had one of my forgetful moments, I became uncoupled), then back along the towpath. Close to my bench I left the canal and quite on impulse moved up the hill to Omdurman Close, until I stood on the bridge across the railway lines. Far below me the rails glistened, bedewed iron cobwebs, but no imps could terrorize me in weather like this, this was my day! Over the bridge then, a damp ecstatic squelch it was, for the rain was really very heavy now—and at the other end I stood and gazed upon the allotments spread beneath me, strip by strip, in a sort of haze, each one fenced off, tenanted by its shed. Nothing, nothing had changed here! Down the path I shuffled, muddy, puddled path though it was, careless of its mud and its puddles, until I stood again at the gate to my father’s allotment.

  Nothing had changed. I opened the gate and advanced down the path, the potato plants to either side of me bedraggled and flattened like prostrate courtiers, as the rain splattered onto the soil and formed pools in the troughs between the rows. Set back from the shed, off to the right of it, the compost heap, a soggy thing this day, its eggshells and peelings congealing in a slick moist fecund mash, and there before me the shed itself, cleansed by the rain, I felt no black horror from it, none of the sheer giddy waves of horror that my father provoked from the place and which came in time to haunt him to the very threshold of his sanity—none of that, nor, as I turned toward the soil again, did I feel the horror there either, there was peace in the soil, for the rain brings peace to the living and the dead, to all things under the ground and under the water, they all rest in the rain, I knelt down in the potato patch and laid my head on the soil; and then a voice said: “Here! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Here! Here! Here here here here here! It echoed as I turned, stumbling, toward the source, a bearded figure in a cap and raincoat on the other side of the fence. Here! Here! Here here here here here! The imps took up the cry, damn them, damn their filthy souls to hell! Oh, I fled, I went squelching and weeping back up the path and over the bridge with the sounds of their filthy voices ringing in my ears until I was back on the bench, a damp and heaving wreck, I should have known, I told myself, I should have known, they never rest, I must be cunning, I must be like the fox.

  Mrs. Wilkinson saw me coming in, soggy bit of flotsam that I was, and she wasn’t at all happy t
hat I was so wet. But I ignored her as I shuffled upstairs, heedless also of the dead souls who emerged from the dayroom to peer at my dripping and beleaguered shell. I sat on the side of my bed with my elbows on my knees, a sad and sorry water-spider indeed— and then she came barging in, without knocking, all brisk matronly zeal. “Out of those wet things, Mr. Cleg,” she said, “we don’t want you catching your death of cold.”

  I was totally debilitated by this point, my exuberance, my energy, all evaporated, vanished like the mist. I rose rather wearily to my feet and permitted her to make a start on my buttons. After a moment I felt more engaged, I brushed her fingers from me and continued with the buttons myself. She swept out. “A hot bath for you, Mr. Cleg,” she cried, “I’d no idea you’d get yourself soaked to the skin.” I could hear her in the bathroom down the passage, humming to herself as hot water came coughing and gushing from the old brass taps. When I was ready I wrapped myself, shivering, in the faded old dressing gown I’d had since the colonies, and padded down the passage.

  It is an old house, Mrs. Wilkinson’s, with an old bathroom; the tub itself is a vast, claw-footed, cast-iron affair that stands beneath a sloping skylight on a floor of black and white lozenge-shaped tiles. When the pipes are coughing forth their scalding torrents the room quickly fills with steam, and this is how it was when I appeared in the doorway. Mrs. Wilkinson was bending over the tub, one hand on the rim and the other testing the water. Turning her head toward the door she stared at me for a moment or two then straightened up. “Come along, Mr. Cleg,” she said, “let’s warm up those chilly bones of yours.”

  I hung my towel on the hook on the back of the door and cautiously approached. The water in this house always has a faintly reddish-brown tinge to it, copper oxide in the pipes, I imagine. Mrs. Wilkinson stood by her bath of steaming brown water with hands outstretched to take from me my dressing gown. Naturally I drew back. “Don’t be bashful, Mr. Cleg,” she wheedled, “I’ve seen plenty of men in this bath.”