Free The Spider Truces by Tim Connolly Page A

those years ago, that water could be in this stream right now. It could be the same water, couldn’t it?”
    His dad thought about it. “In a roundabout way, yes.”
    “Don’t you think that’s amazing?” Ellis exclaimed.
    “Yes, you’re right, Ellis. It is rather amazing.”
    “In the time it took you to grow up and leave the merchant navy and meet Mum and have Chrissie and me, in all that time …” Ellis stretched out his arms, “for all those years, the water in the photo was slooooowly coming and going in all the seas and rivers and today it ended up here. That is absolutely amazing!”
    Denny’s upside-down smile looked like a grimace. He felt the blood rush in his head.
    “But …” Ellis went on, “why don’t you have a photograph of Mum next to your bed instead?”
    Denny took his glasses off and threw water on to his face. He splashed his son and challenged him again to give up. Ellis refused.
    “Then you win.”
    Denny heaved himself up on to the bridge. The railway lines began to chime and Ellis leapt instinctively to his feet and moved towards the tracks. Then, remembering he had a visitor, he smiled innocently at Denny and sat down again before the train roared past.
    They dragged their feet through long field grass. Ellis’s flares threshed against the stalks. From her bedroom window, Mafi saw in their walking a reluctance to return home, and it made them look like brothers, not father and son. They helped each other over the fence and on to the lane as a tractor passed. Denny waved to the driver.
    “Who was that?” Ellis asked.
    “Reardon,” his dad replied.
    “Reardon the farmer?”
    “No, Reardon the ballet dancer who drives to the theatre on a tractor.”
    Ellis laughed so much he squirmed and Denny chased him home, calling him a fool.
    Ellis went straight to his room and because he felt so happy he knew it would be safe to go to his shoebox, to see his mum. Inside the box were war-torn ping-pong balls, Plasticraft paperweights, used Instamatic flashbulbs and Top Trump cards held together by elastic bands. From beneath these objects he took a matchbox. He slid it open and took from it a solitary slide, which he held up to the window. He held one eyelid closed and moved his open eye up close to the photograph. This slight head movement took him into an Ektachrome world, where he stands as a four year old in the back garden in Orpington. He is wearing wellington boots that reach his shorts and a mac and a thick mustard-coloured sweater. The garden is wintry and a little overgrown. The shadows of the trees are long. The grass is tingling with dew. Standing at the garden gate is Ellis’s mother. She is holding her hand out to Ellis and saying something to him. She has a smile on her face. She looks happy and her expression is the embodiment of what Ellis perceives, to this day, to be beauty.
    The next thing she will do is place her hand in Ellis’s hand and lead him out of the garden. Whenever he returns to this scene she is waiting for him, offering to take him by the hand.
     
     
    He knew from Chrissie that she had called him “Ellie”. Sometimes, when he dreamed about her, it was of her voice calling “Ellie-boy … Ellie-boy …” But it was only her voice. He could never see her for all the sunlight glaring into his eyes. Chrissie remembered her vividly but not her death. She knew that her mum was going on holiday and then that she was very ill and that they couldn’t visit her. Not even their dad could go. Then she died. Once, she asked if their mum had died of cancer and her dad nodded and said yes. Another time, when Ellis was alone with Mafi, the old lady said she had “died of adventure”.

5
     
     
    No matter how he worded the conversation, Denny O’Rourke felt as if he was asking his children for permission to stay out late.
    “Guess where I’m calling from?”
    “Where?” Ellis asked.
    “Longspring Farm.”
    “You’re so lucky! What are you doing