THE COBWEB
Sarah's story
The cobweb… 4
(16.02.2021)
It was an old house, and full of dim corners where spiders might make their home. James was near-sighted and hardly bothered about the state of the house so long as it was reasonably clean and meals were on time and savoury. He even helped with the peeling and the washing-up, but after that his interest in domestic affairs shrivelled. Joanna herself was preoccupied with her garden and her cooking and her reading club, and took the house with equal complacency; as she said herself, she had never been “house-proud”. Their friends were easy-going, not acquaintances that it was necessary to impress, and they had no children.
But Joanna’s sister had, and when one day they came to visit, her son Will, coming into the upstairs corridor, let out a shriek. “A spider!” he screamed and would not budge. He was eight.
Joanna had a look. “I don’t see one,” she said finally.
“There, there!”
Joanna inspected the corner again and said, “There’s no spider there. It’s only a web.”
But he still would not advance. Her sister’s mother-in-law had accompanied them, and she came up the stairs as well.
“That’s easily enough settled,” she said and grasped a broomstick which Joanna, hastily sweeping before their arrival, had not put back in its closet. With one expert move she twirled the cobweb round the broom handle and whisked it away. She looked inquiringly, not to say imperiously, at Joanna, who indicated a waste bin nearby, but the woman making no move herself, Joanna took the broom and disposed of the offending article, and they were all able to proceed to the guest bedroom they had been headed for. The mother-in-law inspected it briefly, and, satisfied, set down her things.
“If you wouldn’t mind giving me that broom again, Joanne” she said, however, and proceeded to perfect the house-keeping. Joanna smiled and left her to it.
Joanna’s sister and husband and two children were to take the back bedroom , which was very large, and once this was inspected and approved, they moved their things in as well. The mother-in-law came in to take care of the finishing touches, and then she gave the broom back to Joanna.
They had a nice lunch, and a walk down the lane, and a tour of the garden before tea, and finally an evening of parlour games, and everyone agreed that life in the country was very pleasant indeed.
“We do miss the cinema a little,” said Joanna, “now that the local one has closed down.”
The mother-in-law beamed benevolently. “One can’t have everything.”
The next morning went well enough, as most of them lay in, and the mother-in-law, who was not a late sleeper, busied herself with a broom and a duster, and seemed quite pleased with herself. They went out for lunch and visited a model village and came home for tea , which was a pleasant and restful meal except for the presence of a few bothersome flies. The next morning was much the same, and then Joanna and her sister got another nice lunch ready for the crowd and they all sat down.
“My, my!” said the mother-in-law, “you do have a great number of flies in the house!” She shooed them away with her napkin.
“Humph,” said James, absently, “we didn’t use to have so many.”
“It is the country, you know,” said Joanna. Then she added, “But James is right. We don’t usually have so many.”
“You’re not suggesting we brought them?” asked the mother-in-law, and Joanna and James assured her, smiling, that such a thought could not have been further from their minds. But the flies were very bothersome.
“I think I’ve heard,” said Joanna after a moment, “that spiders are good for that. They eat the flies, you know, that’s what their webs are for, to catch them.”
“Drat these flies!” said the mother-in-law again, and switched her napkin left and right. She looked as if her favourable opinion of the country was losing its brilliance.
“They eat flies?” asked Janey, Will’s sister. “How disgusting!”
“Someone might think it disgusting that you eat chicken,” said James mildly.
“Shall we not have an entomology lesson during lunch?” suggested the brother-in-law, brushing a fly from the side of his plate.
“And don’t bother Janey with the views of vegetarians,” said Joanna’s sister.
“Is there nothing you can do, Joanne,” asked the mother-in-law, swatting furiously, “to control these insects? I really cannot eat my lunch!”
Joanna smiled again, though her smiles were becoming forced, and she sighed. “One can’t have everything,” she said. Now what did that have to do with the situation, thought her guests. But she was right.
Annemarie's contribution:
The water is a murky green, the sun sprinkling diamond spots on the surface of the pond as I struggle to climb up the reed. I've been sitting in the shallow water near the margins of this pond basking in the warmer water for some time and occasionally popping my head out to learn to breathe the air.
Today is the the day I will finally emerge as an adult. I cling onto the knobbly green reed and I feel the warmth of the sun rays. My head, my thorax, legs and wings feel tight and constrained until they struggle out of my larval coat. Damp and wobbly I wait until my legs firm up and feel strong; cra-a-ack - what's happening? Oh, it's my external skeleton splitting open and my trapped abdomen is released like an extending telescope.I am still weak so I wait while my wings spread and my abdomen firms up. Around me I can see other dragon flies going through the same body-hugging, body-freeing process. I gaze in wonder at their iridescent green wings glinting in the sun and watch as they gingerly flutter them and their long bodies dip up and down.
It's my first day out of the water and a new set of dangers lie in wait as I metamorphose from aquatic larva to aerial dragon-fly. I lift off but my maiden flight is woefully weak and I land bumpily in the grass, watched by a prowling blackbird. One glimpse of my shimmering emerald wings and I will be dinner for her fledglings. Panic seizes me as I struggle to free myself from the matted grass; I lurk among the tall green blades, camouflaged but wary of the mornings dewdrops heavy on my fragile wings. With a final effort I’m up at last and I can fly - straight up, straight down; I whirl about, I hover, I fly in jet straight lines, then swivel round - I'm a helicopter, I’m a robot, I’m swooping up in the air and feel the sun on my bulging eyes.
These aeronautics trigger my hunger. No more swimming after my food for now I must catch it mid-flight. But beware - malevolence crackles in the air. My big round dragon fly eyes catch sight of the slightest movement. There's the blackbird strutting along the low branch in the nearby hornbeam hedge, studying me surreptitiously. I soar straight up , grabbing a small fly with my feet and eat it while I fly. This is so easy; I weave this way and that following a misty stream of midges, snapping them up with my feet and devouring them. I stop suddenly, my four gossamer wings whirring, and veer off in pursuit of a fat shiny bluebottle. The warm sunshine switches off suddenly as I fly into a barn and as I clasp my quarry I’m caught in an insubstantial, sticky mesh of diaphanous thread. I bounce back but cannot extricate myself from this sticky, suffocating web, the bluebottle still clutched in my feet. I twist and turn, my frail, lacy wings wreathed in spun silk; staring at me from the centre of the cobweb is a rapacious black spider, crouching patiently, expectantly on her springy, vibrating bed while I struggle, while I exhaust myself in the now cocooning filaments. My eyes are shrouded by the mesh of threads and from faraway I hear the persistent call of the blackbird getting louder and louder. I’m being held, shaken... Hot and sweaty I slowly open my eyes, and emerging from a tangle of sheet I see a familiar face bent over me.
“Wake up! Wake up! Your alarm has gone off and you've got your exam today.”
Geraldine's story
It was this dream that kept coming back to Fiona, but it was blurred, and shapeless, but still there.
It was somewhere in Gabrielle’s house (her grandmother),who would be reading her a story she would listen to, her eyes ferreting around the room where they would be sitting next to the open fire place.
From floor to ceilling, around the 4 walls, Fiona’s eyes would be looking at everything around her : the old grey polished stones on the ground, the fireplace with it’s stone shining mantelpiece and the burning logs, the walls covered with shelves full of books, all types, all colours and all different sizes.
Here and there, there would be an object like a vase, or a stone, or a picture, or a statuette which had, of course, a story to tell. Then a few boxes, either filled with games like chess or snakes and ladders, or big or small puzzles, a solitaire game with the red, yellow, black, white, blue and green pions and the odd game of cards. A few sepia photos would be stuck here and there with old faces that were usually looked into to find a resemblance with someone still alive in the family.
Then her eyes would fall on the ceiling trying to track the flyes, mosquitos or spiders settled along the wooden beams. But when they would encounter the various cobwebs comfortably set up there, she would starts shivering for she was just scared to death by the spiders, above all the big ones.
Yes, she had tried to get Gabrielle to get rid of them or to kill them like lots of people in town, or at school or in public places would have done. But no way, Gabrielle explained over and over again :
- Now look sweetheart, these little arachnids are completely harmless and extremely useful, as they love feeding themselves with flyes, small insects, ants, mosquitos and they keep them out of the way. You see, the animal world knows how to behave and regulates by itself. When man interferes, he destabilizes the whole system.
Of course, Fiona knew her grandmother was right, but she still couldn’t help hating looking up there, and nevertheless peeping an eye at the ceiling. Brrrr…..
Anyway, she grew up, and as she did so, saw her Granny less and less often, as she had many activities in and out of school, College, sport and music.
She then became a Mum too and loved spending time with her children, helping them grow up, playing with them, giving them a hand with their schoolwork, developing their artistic skills, helping them discover which sport they liked and were best qualified for, and all these everyday natural things one does daily with children : singing, cooking, sewing, knitting etc..
And from time to time, this blurred dream would haunt her again, and then disappear.
So, the day her Mum disappeared for ever, when the coffin went down in the grave, at the cemetery, everything became clear as if it had been yesterday ! There it was, she could at last catch her timeless dream !
She remembered her own Mum with red swollen eyes, her Dad very pale but making this huge effort to show how a Man behaves when he is deeply touched by something, and herself asking them :
« Please Mum, please Dad, can we collect the cobwebs from Granny’s ceiling and put them in her coffin, she really loved them so dearly » !
Jackie's story:
They were out for the day into the old town of Troy to blow away the cobwebs. Sophie and her mother.
Sophie at ten years old was precocious, and had insisted on wearing her mothers high heeled shoes and had painted her finger nails bright red. Fire house red as it was called on the bottle. They had set off to the fair but wearing high heels at the age of 10 hindered their walk on the cobblestones considerably.
Her mother, happy to be out after a long depression following the divorce with Sophies father was pulling her daughters hand trying to get to the fair a little faster. In fact she couldn’t wait to get there as she had been in contact with someone on a dating website and she had sort of said she’d be at the fair on this day. She had described herself but what she hadn’t mentioned was that she had a daughter.
There he was she was sure, tall and refined like she had imagined, smart jeans jacket, dark glasses and he was scanning the crowd looking for a lady alone by herself dressed as she had described. As she was desperate to chat and get to know him she sent Sophie on one of those rides that would shoot her into the sky and send her round and round for quite a while.
It was going well, she liked him, and they seemed to be getting on like a house on fire and were compatible. He had a sense of humour, seemed kind and gentle and in a short space of time they were laughing and getting on fine
Sophie appeared. Cross that her mother had left her on that machine for such a long time – she tugged at her sleeve and demanded attention. Mom Mom Mom cotton candy please …
“You have a daughter” the man astounded asked. “I don’t like children” he stated his face darkening, evil eyes hooded now and a frown arched across his forehead. Sophie yelled back I don’t like you either and you leave my mother alone she screamed kicking him in the shins and digging those red red nails into his arm causing him to flinch.
He went over to the sweet stand. The pink cloud of sugar wobbled and swayed as he quickly made his way back through the crowd –here you are you little fiend
and promptly plonked it over the little girls head. The rose coloured sugary solution covered Sophie from head to toe, hardened and solidified in a lace like cobweb oozing down her pretty pale green dress, ran down her legs and stuck to her shoes – ooh ooh ha ha ….mocked the man you are going to make those creepy crawly spiders jealous – Sophie who had a fear of spiders dating from babyhood hearing a thousand times “an itsy bitsy spider …..” launched into another session wailing and screaming punching out and insulted her mother like nothing on earth. A crowd developed around them all trying to disentangle her from the mess.
As her mother joined in to peel off the now hardened sticky substance from her daughters clothes she reflected on one hand that you could never be too sure about anyone. Thanks to her daughter this relationship certainly was not for her and got her out of a sticky web of trouble.
