Part XII

"The Spider Chronicles" - Living with Ed and Frances

by Michael Eldridge

The Argument

Inevitable really.
Glad I wasn't here though. Happened yesterday when I was paying bills at the oldest and worse bank in Italy.

Gossip

This is what Rosie tells me.
She says, there they were, piling up their goods to take to tomorrow's craft fair in Florence.
And there was Alfredo without his knickers in the veggie patch.
Now is this acceptable?
I'm blowed if I know.
Difficult isn't it?
It's not as if it's a moral issue.
Or maybe it is.

Rosie said she shouted at him.
You can do what you friggin well like in that ashram you hang out in with your weird friends,
but here please, pay us some respect. There are ladies around who'd be embarrassed at such a frightful sight. Or some such words, delivered you can bet in the way only Rosie, and most of her more articulate gender, know how. Straight to the balls, as they say here. Which in this particular case were more than evident.
(I can only imagine).

Frightful sight indeed.

Susie just called me from London to say a spider has just fallen out of her hair and could it be Ed?
She was down here last week and got wrapped up in my notions.
She's imaginative, is Susie. Some would say plain nuts but I don't think she's yet that far down the road.
She's a photographer, a film script writer and is subject to creative flights of fancy.
She can get as close as two millimetres away with her new digital camera and it records sound too.
She spent hours with them in the bathroom.
This is what she would say on and off for four days.
Hey these little guys are posing for me.
Come and look - they're dancing to your new age music.
(I don't have New Age Music).
They're making noises!
This one I did react to but of course they were mute time I'd got there.
I swear, they were sorta singing.

Wouldn't surprise me, I said.

I've just checked on Ed and Francis and they are there, as ever, behind the brown hinge.
Silent. (Yes they always were silent). But this time they are silent.
You realise what I am saying don't you?
They are this kind of silent because Susie has put it into my head that they make noises.
I call Susie and say don't worry, maybe it was his double.
Do you really think so?… hey that's amazing! And do you remember the sounds I recorded?
I've sent them to Andy in the sound lab. He says he'll play with the tape, she says.
You mean to see if they are talking, I say.
Talking? Hey do you think they were actually talking to me?

I moan and mumble that the custard is boiling over and I must rush. Goodbye Susie.

By the way. Susie is from San Francisco.

The Argument

Rosie tells me that eventually Alfredo bowed a retreat, covering his shame with a cucumber.
Since then he's been seen sporting a nifty pair of khaki shorts and avoiding the midday sun.
Avoiding Rosie too, if you ask me.
What's more, the nifty shorts must have had some positive effect in the ashram.
Since the acquisition of said shorts, our Alfredo has been visited by not just one, but two, flowery type ladies.
And moreover, they have bought such delicacies as home made jams and bunches of dried flowers to his table.
You can always tell if a woman fancies you, he tells me.
She makes jam for you in your very own kitchen out of anything remotely jammable.
It's like a meditation, he says. A way of saying I want to be in the centre of your life.
I ask him if he read that in the Ashram or just made it up.
He says he thinks he made it up last time he was threatened with the jam routine.
I say it's probably just about jam and nothing else except a covert desire to control everything and everybody at the Ashram.
I leave him worrying about this and make my way through the chickens to what's left of the parsley in the orto.
It's hot, it's dry and the soil drinks the water from the watering can and cares little about the parsley.
The quietness back in the house unnerves me.
Bessie is quiet. Leone is quiet.
It's oppressive and it has a substance to it and the air is water and I'm floating in it and gravity is gone.
And it starts. The sound that isn't from anywhere but is everywhere. Inside me and outside of me.
And I know it's them. It's Ed and Francis.
And they are up to their tricks.
And it annoys me enough to snap back into mind.
Bessie buries her head into my lap and Leone purrs at my feet. The cicadas are chirping again and somewhere out there a dog yelps.
The phone rings and it's Susie.
She says Andy has called in sick.
Says he's got severe migraine and won't be back until Monday and she thinks the tape has upset him.
I say it's hot, what's it like where you are? And she says, it's cold.

Tales from the Garden