"Why are you always in your room doing homework nowadays?" he asked.
"They"re called O levels and they"re the devil"s work," she replied. "But they"ll be over in June and then I"ll never work again."
"Until your A levels."
"Not for me, buster."
"Dad won"t like that."
"He"ll get over it. You can be his golden boy."
"You know I"m rubbish at school. I"m having an allotment."
"That"s not a job, Ellis. That"s a hobby, like chess or riding or peeking at my friends through the curtain when they"re taking a pee."
"I don"t!"
"Never said you did, derr-brain. Is lunch ready? Is that why you"re up here?"
"No. I wanted to ask Dad something but he"s busy, so I came to ask you instead."
"Do I want you to go to boarding school in China? Yes please." She beamed him a psychotic smile.
"Have spiders got eyes? Can they see us?"
Chrissie slumped and pulled a face. "That"s worth failing an O level for? What sort of a question is that, Ellie-belly?"
And as he started to protest at being called that, she jumped off her chair and tickled him until he begged for mercy and agreed to be her slave for the rest of the day.
The spare room at the top of the stairs was bare and sun-filled. It sucked in warm rays of light even in winter, as if awaiting the arrival of someone wise. The vast cherry tree laid its fingertips on the window sill. Denny decided this room should be Mafi"s bedroom and her bedsit downstairs a proper living room.
"We don"t need a spare bedroom because we don"t have any visitors," Chrissie muttered, as she and Ellis helped Denny carry Mafi"s bed into the room. Chrissie slipped and the bed fell against the wall, tearing a hole in the wallpaper. Behind the tear was a black-painted beam. It was set back into the wall and the wallpaper had been pasted over it, shoddily, leaving a gap between the two. As Denny peeled the wallpaper away, Ellis watched the beam emerge. It was colossal. Near the corner of the room, it disappeared behind plasterwork into the centre of the cottage.
"How could anyone slap wallpaper over a beam like this?" Denny sighed. "We"ll sort this out next weekend. Can"t leave it like this."
"Then Mafi will have a lovely beam in her bedroom and we can paint it shiny black and hang stuff on it."
"That"s right," Denny said. "These things matter."
But they didn"t matter to Mafi. She decided that the best place for her wardrobe was against that wall. It would cover the beam anyway and there was more pressing work for Denny to do on the cottage. When she made decisions they tended to be final, owing not so much to a profound strength of opinion on her part as to her preference for keeping debate on trivial issues brief. Chrissie pinned a paper horseshoe to the beam for good luck and then the beam disappeared behind the wardrobe, to remain out of sight for as long as Mafi lived.
At six o"clock every morning, Mafi took a cup of tea back to bed and watched the cherry tree. She called it her special time, when she felt lucky to be alive, and she called the years since she left the pub her "borrowed life", the life after hers was meant to have finished. Ellis encouraged her stories of being landlady at the Gate Inn. His favourites were of Mr Prag getting stuck inside the grandfather clock, the piglets falling into the beer cellar, and the war: of Nissen huts going up along the ca.n.a.l, doodlebugs and Mafi refusing evacuation to Hampshire. She taught him and Chrissie how to clean a gla.s.s properly and how to shuffle a pack.
In spring, the garden looked dewy and luscious from Mafi"s bedroom window. Ellis studied her face. She was lost in thought and had barely noticed him come in. From beneath them, in the dining room, came the sound of Denny"s electric shaver. Ellis wondered what part of her life Mafi was revisiting. She had never married. Chrissie claimed she had been engaged to a man in the war and he died of TB. Ellis didn"t know if this was true. He liked Mafi as she was, old and unmarried and inclined towards throaty laughter.
"Ellis, old thing," she said, "I"m afraid to say that cherry tree is not well."
The woodsmen came on the same day Ellis found spotted jelly bubbles in the pond on Eggpie Lane. They said the tree had to come down. Before they returned, Ellis visited the pond four more times. The black spots grew into semicircles and by late March the jelly had fallen apart and a sprawl of wriggling tadpoles appeared. When he took his dad to see them they found a ma.s.s of froth on the water"s surface.
"They"ve disappeared," Ellis said.
"They do," his dad replied.
In April, Mafi showed Ellis how to tap a bird"s nest and set off the calls of baby blackbirds inside. Sometimes, the young poked their heads out and Ellis caught a glimpse of their open beaks clamouring for food. By the time the woodsmen came, the nests in the garden were empty and the shrubs nearby filled with birdsong. Cats prowled beneath the bushes. Chrissie tried to adopt them and Mafi shooed them away.
Denny O"Rourke took photos of the cherry tree and Mafi unravelled the roses from its trunk and laid them out across the lawn.
"We"ll plant a new one," Denny said.
"How long will it take?" Ellis asked.
"When you"re as old as Mafi, the new tree will be half the size of that one," Chrissie said.
Ellis sighed. That was far too slow.
"You plant trees for the next generations," Denny explained.
Chrissie joined her hands together and chanted "Aaaaa-men." Ellis copied her. Their dad marched them away in a head lock, one under each arm.
"I"ve a pair of idiots for children," he told the woodsmen.
Ellis watched from Mafi"s bedroom window. The woodsman with a thick orange beard dangled from a rope within touching distance. A chainsaw hung from his waist and a cigarette was wedged behind his ear. Ellis felt Mafi"s breathing on his neck as they watched. After lunch, a young apprentice woodsman turned up on foot and was bullied by the two men for being late. They barked orders at him all afternoon. Later, the apprentice was caught sharing his cigarettes and hip flask with Chrissie. The bearded man dragged him away and struck him.
After nightfall, from his pillow, Ellis heard shouting and doors slamming. Chrissie ran past Ellis"s bedroom to her own and his dad thundered after her. Later, Ellis found Chrissie lying under her blanket, still dressed. She had been crying and now she was staring at nothing and twisting the ends of her long hair round her fingers.
"What happened?" Ellis whispered.
She pulled him close. "Dad caught me crawling back through the hedge," she whispered.
"Where had you been?"
"Drinking beer in the skittle alley with that lad."
"The man with the drink in his pocket?"
"It"s called a hip flask."
She held Ellis"s face in her hands. Her eyes twinkled.
"Ellis ..."
"What?"
"I saw a man and a woman doing it, in the toilets. I saw them actually doing it."
Ellis stared at her wide-eyed and she saw the need for clarification. "Having s.e.x, Ellis. They made these ridiculous noises. Don"t mention it to Dad or Mafi or anyone."
Ellis nodded his head earnestly. He didn"t know what she was talking about. But, feeling that he should respond to what she clearly considered momentous news, he said with equal seriousness: "Another interesting thing is that the man with the chainsaw never smokes the cigarette behind his ear. It just stays there all day."
The Formula 1 racetrack in the hallway was renowned on the F1 circuit for its challenging combination of breakneck quarry tiling and slow rug. Because the ceiling beams were lushly decorated with berried holly from Dibden Lane, the pre-Christmas Grand Prix was coming from the jungle, somewhere in South America Ellis"s commentary didn"t specify where. Or it was, until the appearance of a house spider straddling the chicane caused a cancellation. The spider was huge and made Ellis"s stomach churn and his feet tingle, as if he were standing on a cliff edge.
"Right!" he hissed. "That"s it! I want a meeting with the most highest-up of spiders. It"s not fair!"
There was no reply and the sound of his own voice embarra.s.sed him. He wondered if Ivy had heard him. She was the only other person in the cottage. Ivy, who was unfeasibly old in Ellis"s opinion, lived on the lane and babysat for Denny O"Rourke on the rare occasions when Mafi couldn"t do it. She was reading the local paper in the kitchen. Ellis had shut her in there so that he could commentate on his F1 race without feeling self-conscious. Ivy did not remove spiders. She had made that clear from the start.
Ellis grabbed his toy cars and made a run for the kitchen, leaping over the spider and slamming the door behind him.
"Impersonating a stampede, Ellis?" Ivy muttered, without looking up.
"When are Dad and Mafi getting back?" Ellis asked.
"Don"t know," she murmured.
Ellis walked on the spot to relieve himself of the last shivers of repulsion.
"Do you need to go to the toilet, Ellis?"
"No, thanks. Do you?"
"Don"t be cheeky." She put down the paper and lit a cigarette.
"Don"t suppose you want to come outside and play in the garden?"
She shook her head.
"Are they my dad"s cigarettes?"
"No, they"re mine, thank you for checking."
"Wasn"t checking. He wouldn"t mind." Ellis put his boots on. "You"re not like a real babysitter."
"Aren"t I? How"s that?"
"Not out. Well, you don"t seem to like being with children very much and you"re not very chatty and you don"t like playing."
"If I wasn"t here they wouldn"t be out buying you Christmas presents and you"d get nothing."
Ellis thought this through. She had a point. He stamped his boots on and threw on his coat. He felt braver with boots on.
"You don"t like doing stuff with me," he concluded. "That"s what I"m getting at. I like you but you"re not much fun."
On the bookshelves in the dining room Ellis found a large hardback volume of Jane"s Fighting Ships. An idea had come to him as he was putting on his boots. He hadn"t decided on the idea exactly, nor advanced it once it had appeared in his head. He simply realised that he was going to do this certain thing and that it was better for him not to stop and think about it.
From halfway up the stairs, he leant out between the stairwell beams and dropped the book on to the floor below. Then he went outside to play and the voices of accusation and denial began in his head.
Mafi used a damp cloth to remove the carca.s.s of the spider from the book cover. When she kissed Ellis goodnight, she whispered, "If you want to live and thrive, let a spider run alive."
Ellis woke with itchy nipples. This was happening more and more. He knelt up on the bed and resolved to speak to Mafi about his harsh polyester pyjamas, the purple ones with gold trim. He yawned and stretched, and as he thought of breakfast Chrissie glided past and, without breaking stride, pointed under Ellis"s bed in horror.
"Jesus, Ellis! Under your bed! Three huge tarantulas!"
She screamed, a cheesy horror-movie scream, and ran downstairs.
When his dad found him, half an hour later, Ellis was marching on the spot on his mattress. Denny stepped forward to hold his son but Ellis became hysterical.
"They"ll kill you, Dad! They"ll bite you and kill you!"
Denny rocked him and soothed him with whispers. "You"ve got to do something about this," Denny said.
"About what?"
Chrissie appeared at the doorway, holding a volume of her encyclopaedia. "I"m sorry, Ellis," she said.
Denny pointed an accusing finger at her. "We"ll talk about this later." He looked his son in the eye. "Come on, Ellis, you"ve got to get over this."
Chrissie found the page she was looking for and read from it with mock seriousness. "The tarantula lives in a burrow and darts out to catch pa.s.sing prey. It can inflict a painful bite if molested but, despite the legends surrounding it, it is not a dangerous spider."
"I don"t care if they"re dangerous, they freak me out!"
"Only trying to help." Chrissie slammed the book shut, put it under her arm and swung one-handed on the doorframe. "It also says the only place in the world you could live and be sure not to see a single spider at all is Antarctica."
Ellis tapped his dad on the arm. "Can we move to Antarctica?"
"It"s very cold, Ellis. Me and your sister wouldn"t fancy it at all and it would probably kill Mafi instantly."
"Please."
"Too cold."
Ellis crossed his arms defiantly. "Well, I"m not staying here with them."
"We could send Ellis to Antarctica on his own," Chrissie offered. "I"d chip in if it were a matter of the fare."
"Chrissie, shut up!" Denny snapped.
Ellis began to shiver. Tears streamed down his face.
"They keep appearing out of nowhere and scaring me. I call out that I"m coming in and give them time to get out first but they don"t. It"s not fair. It"s our house and we were here first."
"Well, that"s not strictly true, I"d imagine, Ellis," his dad said. "You don"t mind the glow-worms and things like that though, do you? Up at the bonfire?"
"No, they"re amazing," Ellis said.
"Well ..." Denny sighed, "just try to think of spiders the same way. You"ve really got to snap out of this." He lifted Ellis off the bed.
"Don"t put my feet down!" Ellis cried.
"Come on, Ellis! This isn"t like you."