Tagmata
By Anthony Richardson
The old man always talked at me with his face too close. His dull rambling was my soundtrack as I waited for the bus. He’d once been a foreign ambassador. Had faked his suicide, he said. I don’t know much about politics. He talked a lot, that’s all I knew. As he hobbled towards the end of an anecdote his chin would get closer until I could only see white flecks of spit. Then I’d have to say a ‘Yes’ or an ‘Oh really?’ which would cause his head to snap back to its original position, ready to begin the talk-and-lean process again. He reminded me of a typewriter.
He faked suicide with his own halitosis.
‘… And of course, you see, I soon learnt in the forties that if you did this to the top of a lady’s knee (he extended an arthritic fist to demonstrate, stretching his fingers outwards as flat as his bent joints would allow), you would give her an eighth of an orgasm.’
I cut in. ‘Really?’ This took us both aback – his chin was only halfway through its lean. But this was crucial stuff. Tagmata!
The old ambassador knew that my ‘Really’ was genuine, and his teeth flashed yellow like European headlights.
‘No doubt about it, young man!’ His white flecks fizzed. ‘I learnt it in the foreign office. Closed fist downwards on lady’s knee. Fingers out. Bang!’ He leant back, satisfied, before remembering that at this point he was supposed to be leaning in. As a result his head hung in an awkward no man’s land.
Pause.
I put him out of his misery.
‘Really?’
His head jerked back, order restored.
‘Yes! An eighth of an orgasm! It’s better than nothing.’
‘It is,’ I replied, although this new sexual technique was so much more than that to me. To me it was the whole shebang. She’ll go crazy… With eight legs she’ll…
‘I’m here to help,’ he leaned. ‘That’s what the Government’s for! Information! You should try it with your lady friend.’
‘I will,’ I said.
‘Can I watch?’ he asked.
‘No.’
He blew his nose. We never spoke again.
I’d been having trouble with my wife during that period of my life. She was a nurse, working nights. I was a primary school teacher. At weekends we would talk. The 36 bus would follow a fumbled greeting with Jane as we passed on the stairs.
I found a pair of socks in the drawer that weren’t mine. I contemplated turning up home unexpectedly at lunchtime, but what would that do? Vengeful in spirit, a temperament that had grown in me from being talked at by an old man every morning for eight years, I needed to do something. I plotted to sleep with a teacher from work. This pursuit was flawed from the outset. I couldn’t bring an equal into this, that way I’d only get even with her. I wanted to destroy Jane, to humiliate her with my depravity.
For a week I attempted to seduce nine year olds in my class. Paired reading seemed a good time. I targeted a little red haired boy who was halfway through The Animals of Farthing Wood. We had nothing in common. His index finger crawled along the page underneath each word, his eyes turning towards me when he finished a sentence. I took that as a come-on. I asked him to put down the book and take my hand. He replied that he wanted to finish the story. Annoyed and upset, I informed him that his speech and fluency were well below the national average. It wasn’t true. He read well.
It was in the playground at break time that I found my next target. Dicken, the strange greasy child that no one approached. Strange kids are generally easier, by all accounts. His trousers: always brand new but always an inch too short. His face: round as the moon. He stood by the Number Tree whispering to some sparrows.
Dicken must have felt my presence behind him.
‘I know what you want, sir.’
I paused. Vulnerable children weren’t usually so forward.
‘I…What do I want, Dicken?’
He turned to face me. A snail was sitting on his shoulder. I thought that if it got down to it we’d probably have to take the snail off.
‘You’ve seen me, sir, haven’t you? You want what I’ve got.’
Dumbstruck, I nodded. Children were so wise.
He looked around him for other teachers. ‘Well come on then, sir, if you want it. Come with me behind the Number Tree.’
Come with me behind the Number Tree.
I followed him behind that big old oak tree, forgetting my job, my colleagues, myself. Dicken reached into his pocket and pulled out an inch wide strip of his grey school trousers. The torn off hem lay in his grubby palm.
‘Here it is, sir. You want it or not?’
‘What…that’s not…What is it?’
He took a breath, lowered his squeaky voice. ‘It’s Dolittle.’
‘It’s your trousers, Dicken, that’s what it is.’
‘Don’t mess about, sir. It’s Dolittle. You want some or not?’
I tried to chuckle, but the boy’s stern face jammed my laugh down my throat.
‘What’s Dolittle?’ I mumbled.
Dicken rolled his eyes at the snail on his shoulder as if every primary school kid knew this word in the playground and adults were on the other side of a great big hole.
‘Dolittle, sir! This new drug. Everyone’s going mad about it.’
He studied my face for any sign of response.
‘Come on, sir, get with it! Cat chat. Whale song. Parrot-cetamol. The Really Wild Show. A bit of Cheeky Weasel, sir! That’s why you’ve come to me. This drug! You want to talk to the animals!’
I looked around the Number Tree at the playground and suddenly I saw. Girls talking to a cat, the cat yawning, the girls giggling as if that cat were its own pyjamas. Boys showing football stickers to a duck. I knew. I knew. I knew. Dicken had seen my troubles and found the solution. I paid that baron of school trouser drugs mixed with his own grease a whole month’s wages.
I sucked until there was no charcoal grey left.
I stared at the duck looking at the boys’ football stickers, quacking away in its own tongue. Gradually, it squeaked out of range like a radio tuning until something snapped and my ears could hear it all.
Quack…Quack…QUEAAACK…QUEEEEEEAK…. QUEEEEEEEED…NEEED! NEED! GOT! I’ve got that one, mate. Is that West Ham’s badge? I’ll swap you it for a shiny.
The duck pored over that Merlin Premier League sticker album with the boys from 4K. Dicken was doing a roaring trade.
Trying to have sex with animals was no easier than with children. I courted a couple of stray dogs, a goat, a shrew. We didn’t make love, I hadn’t the guts. I went to all sorts of measures to get caught. I stroked them after work, left hairs under my pillow, but she never found out. I grew tired. Mammals were dull and subservient. I spent a period basking near lizards without much success. Something about their tongues. Fish were plain irritating – their memory made it impossible. Intercourse? Sure, darling…Who are you?…Have you come about the water bill?
Desolate, I gave it all up. Dolittle coursed through my veins and compounded my suffering. Jane and I nodded as we passed on the stairs.
That April, I came across a spider whilst clearing out the shed. She was reclining on her web, which shimmered in the gentle breeze. She noticed me and, perhaps feeling awkward, stood up. It was then that I caught sight of those delicate legs. I excused myself, averted my eyes, mumbled that I hadn’t meant to pry. Her voice was beautiful, like Velcro. I don’t recall her reply. I shuffled my feet and asked if she’d caught any flies. She said that yes, she had, it was sort of her job. We smiled, and I left, bumping my head on the watering can.
I found myself creating reasons to visit the shed. I bought a trowel that required hanging up. I checked to see if we had a weeding cushion. We didn’t. I bought us a new weeding cushion. She was always there, spinning part of her web or examining the carcass of a beetle. Conversation was often stilted.
‘What a lovely watering can,’ she remarked after a period of silence. ‘It would make a great place to hatch my young…’
She stopped, embarrassed. ‘Oh, not that I have a mate, or that I’m ready for anything like that.’ She squeezed a strand of web with her foot.
Tentative small talk became lengthy conversation. Her name was Tagmata. She’d had a difficult upbringing. Her embryonic stage had been tough – she came from a large family and had fought for attention. Only in the larval period had she asserted herself. Rebellious, she would refuse to eat her mother’s yolk supply. But she’d survived, while her siblings fell around her. She found a mate during her nympho-imaginal stage, a large harvester from my garage. They’d fallen out over something silly. She enjoyed catching flies (how we laughed at my first awkward attempt to make conversation!) and although prone to instinct, she was a good listener. My thoughts were no longer on revenge.
I kept my background short. I said nothing of my wife, the teachers, children, mammals, reptiles, fish. She didn’t want to know. Besides, her life expectancy was approximately eleven months. There was simply no time to disappoint her.
Jane was visiting her brother for the weekend. I prepared a meal of two captured earwigs and a bluebottle. The old ambassador’s advice couldn’t have been timed better.
We sat at opposite ends of the dining room table. Our eyes met as her cylindrical mouth sucked up the liquid parts of her prey. She finished her meal, then scurried sobbing into a corner by the cabinet.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed, uncovering herself. ‘I just feel so vulnerable after feeding.’
‘There there,’ I there-there’d, covering up her blushes with my own vulnerabilities. ‘You should see me during OFSTED inspection week.’ But spiders didn’t have OFSTED or any national schools inspection, and it only served to confuse her.
Barriers.
We sat on the settee. I’d rented Antz. As the trailers began I yawned, stretched, and eased my finger around her thorax.
During the film I stroked her abdomen. She winced, explaining with a gasp that I was blocking the openings on her ventral surface, denying her adequate respiration.
When it ended I brushed her pedicel with my forefinger and her eight eyes dilated as her spinnerets emitted silk.
‘Go upstairs and wait for me,’ she whispered.
Undressed, I waited on my bed for twenty minutes. I turned over the photographs of Jane and me. Finally, she entered the room, breathing heavily. She told me that she’d been to powder her palps. I expect she’d had trouble on the stairs.
She climbed up onto my torso and sat on my chest. I stroked each of her delicate legs. She moaned, limbs supple. The barriers between us shattered and the tension of those socks in that drawer, my drawer, rushed out of me until my brain turned to butter and I said those seven excruciating words that a man having sex with a spider should never say.
‘Oh yes,’ I groaned. ‘Who’s the daddy long legs?’
She stiffened and coughed. Three of her eyes met mine. The other five looked elsewhere. Silence. I’m sure she saw the photograph frames.
Later, I managed to get her back in the mood, but my fingers had turned to stumps, as arthritic as the old man’s. I outstretched them over her knees, easing outwards so the palm was flat. One eighth, two eighths, each of her knees. I gave her the full orgasm. She offered a weak smile and mouthed ‘Thank you.’ I think she faked it.
‘Do you want me to eat you?’ she asked. Her voice was too normal. She must have faked it.
‘Eat me? I-I don’t know.’
‘Eating the male aids the hatching process, and, well, it sort of turned on my…the…’
‘Oh.’
Even with me, she was thinking of the harvester.
We found that it wouldn’t be possible to devour me entirely. The gulf between us was widening. Putting on a brave face, she chewed on my little finger. I tried to enjoy it. I forced a groan.
‘Ah. Ah.’
The process stung.
‘Oh yes,’ I added.
She secreted a digestive fluid. I pretended not to notice. Each time she looked up I shut my eyes.
‘It’s not working, is it?’ she sighed, releasing me from her consumption tube.
‘No, no, it’s … it’s nice…’ I stuttered. ‘I have to get used to it.’
Perhaps it was residue from her cribellum, but I thought I saw a tear trickle from her eye.
I didn’t visit the shed after that. I left it a year, long after the Dolittle had worn off. In the corner by the watering can her body lay, her legs curled up and dry. There were no eggs or larvae or nympho-imaginae. Her web was torn, silk loosened by the autumn breeze.
Jane and I talk. She’s changed to day shifts. I don’t mention the socks; she ignores the scar on my little finger.
Tagmata was published in Wufniks Magazine 3, June 2008
