The Spider Truces by Tim Connolly Page A

weren’t intentionally trying to make you nervous. You just stay calm and in time you’ll be fine with them. On the occasions when you accidentally kill a spider without even being aware you’ve done it – which happens a lot, by the way – they have agreed to accept that this is an innocent accident and not to retaliate.”
    “They’d better not,” Ellis said.
    His dad looked him in the eye. “It’s a generous, helpful offer on their part. Can I go back to them with your agreement?”
    Ellis thought about it, looking as serious and thoughtful as he could. Then he nodded, gravely.
    “Good.” Denny put his notes into his breast pocket and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
    Ellis felt exhausted and very grown up. He climbed on to his dad’s lap. They hugged and rocked back and forth.
    “There’s nothing for you to be worried about,” Denny whispered, in a way that sent a rich, warm chocolatey feeling through Ellis’s heart.
    “OK,” Ellis whispered back.
    “Can I tell you one more thing?”
    “My brain’s full.”
    “One more.”
    “All right, then.”
    “See those beams?” He pointed to the ceiling beams.
    “Yeah.”
    “If it weren’t for them, you know our house would fall down?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, guess who it is that protects those beams from the woodworm that would eat the beams up, given half a chance?”
    “Spiders?”
    “You said it.”

4
     
     
    Ellis and Chrissie sat by the open fire and watched their father gardening in the last vestiges of daylight. Shin-deep in willow leaves that refused to dissolve into the earth, Denny stopped to rest. Steam rose from his head. Momentarily, his broad shoulders slumped and he appeared defeated. Then, catching sight of his children, he slung the rake over his shoulder, stood to attention and saluted them. He smiled and his flushed cheeks rose to transform his face.
    His limbs were long and lithe and he laboured relentlessly. He warned himself against becoming obsessive or joyless in renovating the cottage. It remained an act of love. What he did he did well, with care and to the best of his abilities, but he did not confer or seek advice, as if he and his family were living on an island, beyond reach, or as if he wanted them to be.
    When Denny worked on the cottage Ellis was beside him, watching, learning, hoping to be asked to help in any way. And even though on this island there was no one to show off to, Ellis bragged nevertheless to imaginary observers of his life. He bragged not about the fact that he was his dad’s right-hand man or that he knew how to mix lime mortar and straighten old floorboard pins and plant bare-root hedging without creating air pockets. He bragged about having a dad whom the spiders respected enough to do business with.
     
     
    The cottage walls had contours that appeared tidal, but they were dry and the rooms warmed quickly when the fires were lit. The contours hinted at the huge old timbers within the walls. Sections of these brutal beams were exposed here and there and one vertical post stood proudly, two feet thick, in the middle of the dining room. Chrissie snaked gold tinsel around it at Christmas. The brick-floored dining room was a room that prolonged winter. Ellis preferred the living room, where he would sit at dusk and watch the silhouettes of furniture and familiar objects take on a new appearance in the low light as he waited for the sky above Ide Hill to fill with crimson, which it would from time to time, especially in autumn.
    The evenings grew longer by a few precious minutes each day and Ellis became impatient for spring. The snowdrops stayed late on the front lawn, exchanging glances with the violets as they departed.
    Before it all, Denny O’Rourke would pick the first violets of the year and give them to his wife in a posy tied so delicately it defied the apparent brute strength of his hands. How she had loved violets.
     
     
    Denny stock-fenced the garden boundaries and hid the