The Web Read online

  Dedication

  For Mum and the Clan Bruce

  Special thanks to Cathie Tasker

  . . . always ready to help

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Also by Nette Hilton

  Copyright

  I don’t know why Mum worried.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  ‘But your great-grandma is so old now.’ Mum fussed around opening and shutting the boot. She always fusses when she’s worried. ‘She’s 89. Are you sure you won’t get bored?’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ I put my suitcase in the car. ‘Of course I won’t get bored. There’s always plenty to do at Violet-Anne’s.’ I like calling her Violet-Anne. She said I could because that’s what Edward called her. Edward was my great-grandfather. Violet-Anne talks about him a lot, but I can’t remember him. He died when I was a baby.

  ‘She’s too old to be living alone in that dark old house.’ When my mum gets going she keeps right on. ‘She really should be in a nursing home. There’s a really nice one at Springwood.

  ‘It’s closer too. You could ride your bike over and visit her.’

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to visit Violet-Anne in a nursing home. I’d much rather go to 56 Brinsmead Street.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be all right.’ Mum clicked the radio on. ‘And it’s only till Saturday when I’ll be over to do the cleaning.’ She hummed a bit of the song that was playing. ‘Are you sure you’ve brought enough things to keep you busy?’

  Sometimes I don’t think my mother listens very well. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I’m always all right at Violet-Anne’s. And there’s heaps to do.’ I held up my fingers like my teacher, Mrs Cannagan, does when we don’t listen too well. ‘I can play with all those toy soldiers that Grandfather Edward had. I can make patterns with all the old buttons in the button box that Violet-Anne found for me. I can sort out all the ornaments in the box under the bed . . .’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Mum laughed. ‘Just so long as you don’t bother your great-grandmother.’

  She started to sing the song on the radio. Mum sounds a bit like Samuel O’Sullivan. Mrs Cannagan said sometimes Samuel sings like a frog. But I’d never tell Mum that. Just like I’d never tell her about Misty and Saffron. She wouldn’t understand things like that.

  Mum sang songs all the way to Violet-Anne’s.

  It took ages for Mum to leave. First she forgot her handbag, then she forgot to kiss me goodbye, and then she had to come back and kiss Violet-Anne goodbye.

  ‘For goodness sake, Valma.’ Violet-Anne started waving again. ‘You’ll be back on Saturday. Never knew anyone to make such a fuss. I suppose you’ll be bringing that noisy vacuum cleaner of yours again, too.’

  ‘And some spray.’ Mum finally made it to the front door. ‘We don’t want your house filling up with bugs again, do we?’

  Violet-Anne waved. ‘Wave!’ she whispered to me, ‘or your mother will be back again to tell us we forgot to wave. Never knew such a worrywart of a woman!’

  We waved until the car disappeared down the hill and around the corner.

  ‘Thank goodness.’

  Violet-Anne tap-tapped across the verandah. She has this old walking stick that used to belong to Edward. She said I can have it one day. It has a silver tip at one end and a tall silver egret balanced on one leg at the other. I can hardly wait. Sometimes I practise walking with it while Violet-Anne has a rest. But I can’t do it right yet. My feet leave it too far behind. Or my arms swing it too far in front. Then I have to run a little to catch up to it. Not like Violet-Anne. She always makes it tap-tap just right.

  ‘Come and see what I found,’ she said to me. Violet-Anne was always finding wonderful things.

  ‘What is it?’ I jumped right across the hall-runner in one go. ‘What did you find?’

  It was an old cigar box. There were bits of rust on the corners, but the Indian’s head in the middle still had all its colours.

  ‘Look inside.’ Violet-Anne rested her walking cane on the edge of the kitchen table and sat down. ‘When I found that I just knew you’d love it.’

  I tried to open the lid. It was a bit hard at first but Violet-Anne gave it a whack. Then it popped open easily. Layers and layers of brightly coloured glass shone out at me. They were just like the bits of glass in the front door.

  ‘It’s the best present yet,’ I said. ‘We could tie them up with bits of string and make a mobile.’ I held one up to show Violet-Anne how the light bounced off it. ‘It will be perfect. Where did you find them all?’

  ‘They were scraps that Edward had. He was always making things out of glass. He made that front door, you know. “Violet-Anne,” he said to me . . .’

  I snuggled down in the chair with the fat bottom. I loved it when Violet-Anne told stories about Edward.

  “‘. . . Violet-Anne, one day I’m going to make you a door. It won’t be an ordinary door with ordinary glass. It will have tiny coloured birds hidden in green glass leaves. They will be so well hidden that whenever you find one it will be like giving yourself a surprise.” That’s what he said, and that’s what he did.’

  I bobbed out to look at the front door. I’d never seen any birds in it before.

  ‘Where are they?’ I cried, ‘I can’t find any.’

  ‘Look right down there, in that bottom corner.’ Violet-Anne pointed with her cane. ‘There! Do you see it?’

  One tiny yellow bird peeked out at me from under a goldy-green leaf. It was so tiny I could cover it with my hand.

  ‘Oh, Violet-Anne.’ I traced the tiny bird with my finger. ‘Are there any more?’

  I looked as hard as I could. I could see crimson panes, and blue panes, and emerald green panes, and the sharp white diamond pane in the middle. But I could not see any more tiny birds. Anywhere.

  ‘How come he didn’t make any more?’ I peered out through the blue pane. The whole world looked blue out there. But Violet-Anne didn’t answer me. ‘Violet-Anne? How come he didn’t make any more?’

  Her walking cane tap-tapped quietly as she walked back to the kitchen. ‘I can’t remember.’ She didn’t even say it to me. She just said it to herself. ‘I just can’t remember what happened.’

  She looked so sad.

  ‘Never mind.’ I said. ‘I forget things all the time. Once I even forgot where Mrs Whiteside’s classroom was and I went to Mr Ellis instead. He got a bit cross because he said he doesn’t look a bit like Mrs Whiteside.’ Violet-Anne smiled a little bit. ‘My dad says I would forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on. Everybody forgets things sometimes, Violet-Anne.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m just too old.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ I gave her a hug. ‘Come on. I haven’t said hello to Saffron yet.’

  Saffron has been Violet-Anne’s friend since I was six. He has always slept out under the geranium bush in the backyard. He used to disappear in the wintertime, but now he only went as far as the old water heater in the laundry.

  ‘Good morning, Saffron. Time to come out for a sunbake.’

  I watched while Violet-Anne sprinkled water over the geraniums.

  ‘Come on, you lazy lizard.’ Violet-Anne sprinkled a little harder. ‘You can’t sleep under there all day. Come out and show yourself.’

  Violet-Anne always talks to Saffron. She talks to him like he really was a person and not just a big, fat, blue-tongued lizard. I used to be scared of him but I’m not now
. He doesn’t even hiss at us any more.

  ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ Violet-Anne tap-tapped up the path past him. ‘You can doze there all day if you want to. Jenny will bring you some meat in a minute.’

  Sometimes Saffron likes to eat little globs of mince. Violet-Anne puts her hand closer than I do when she feeds him. I’m a bit scared that he might think my finger is a piece of mince too.

  ‘Can I wake Misty now?’ I said.

  ‘Hurry up then.’ Violet-Anne was already under the big, old tree where Misty lived. ‘Mind you don’t step on Saffron.’

  I walked all the way on the grass. I certainly didn’t want to step on Saffron.

  ‘Is he there?’ I whispered. I put my ear right up against the trunk of the tree like Violet-Anne had showed me. ‘I can’t hear him.’

  ‘He’s there all right.’ Violet-Anne thwacked the tree with her cane. ‘Cop that, Misty!’ she said. ‘That’ll teach you to go thumping around on my roof all night. I heard you!’

  I listened again. I could hear faint scratch-scratching sounds. Misty was moving around.

  ‘I can hear him!’ I did a big leap like the man in the Toyota ad when he’s happy. ‘He’s scratching around.’

  ‘He’ll go back to sleep now. Won’t you, Misty? No cats’ll get you today now that I’m here.’

  I dragged Violet-Anne’s old cane chair into the shade. ‘You sit there,’ I said, ‘and I’ll go and get us another Milo.’

  I like getting Milo at Violet-Anne’s. She doesn’t care how much I put in. We have chocolate moustaches to lick when we finish our drinks.

  I put in two spoons of sugar for me — my dad would have a fit. He’s a dentist, and dentists don’t like too much sugar. I don’t think they like any sugar at all. I put in one sugar for Violet-Anne. Then I put in the Milo — one great big one for me, and one great big one for Violet-Anne. While the milk was heating I found the little bottle that Violet-Anne keeps in the stove. I know it’s there because I saw her hide it the last time. Mum would have a fit if she knew. I think nurses hate herbal tonics as much as dentists hate sugar. The last time my mum found the little bottle of Herbal Remedy that Violet-Anne had hidden in the old meat safe, she had poured it down the sink. She was really mad.

  ‘How can you take all this crackpot stuff?’ she’d said. ‘You know I don’t like it. And what would happen if you really were sick?’

  Violet-Anne had explained that she only had one tiny drop. But my mum didn’t care. She told Dad, and then they both started. They went on for ages. Poor Violet-Anne. I really felt sorry for her that day. Mum did too — after a while. She gave her a hug.

  ‘I worry about you, Violet-Anne,’ she said.

  I don’t know where she got this bottle. I suppose the lady next door bought it. She often does messages for Violet-Anne. She cooks dinner for her too, sometimes. I dropped a tiny bit on a teaspoon and dunked the whole lot in Violet-Anne’s blue cup. It took a long time to get it right.

  When I took it out into the yard the sun had crept a little higher. It made little splashes of light in Violet-Anne’s white hair. It rippled through the tree and made merry patterns on Violet-Anne’s slippers. But it didn’t wake Violet-Anne.

  Neither did I. I left her Milo next to her for later. I was a bit worried though that the ants might get it if she didn’t wake soon. I took mine inside, and drank it while I looked at the world through red and purple and emerald green bits of glass. Then I got the glue and the string. Maybe a mobile would help Violet-Anne remember.

  I made three mobiles. It took me all day to make the first one because we had to keep stopping to put band-aids on my fingers. And to mop up the blood. Violet-Anne made me wear gloves to make the others. I think she was scared my mum would get mad. I told her not to worry — my fingers would be better by Saturday. If they weren’t, Violet-Anne said, we would ring up and tell Mum and Dad not to come until next week. But they’d be better. Saturday was five whole days away.

  Violet-Anne liked my mobiles. She said she liked the sound they made. She went to hang one on the cane hatstand. It doesn’t have any hats on it any more and Violet-Anne thought a mobile would make it more interesting. That was when she found the web.

  ‘Oh! What a beauty!’ I heard her say. ‘Oh, just look at that!’

  I did my special sideways run all the way to the door. Elli Smith showed me how to do it. I don’t like to do it when there are people watching. Violet-Anne wasn’t watching. She was looking at a white lacy web that was floating from the hatstand. I stopped doing my sideways run and searched for the spider.

  ‘Did you ever see anything like it?’ Violet-Anne touched one long strand. ‘Do you know . . .’ she broke another strand and let it shiver and tremble a little, ‘my wedding veil was just like this.’

  ‘It looks like a spider web to me,’ I said.

  ‘No, look, just here,’ she said.

  I couldn’t see very well. I was too far away. I don’t like spider webs. And I don’t like spiders. Most of the spiders that I knew lived fairly close to their webs.

  ‘See here . . .’ I don’t think Violet-Anne cared very much whether I could see. ‘My veil went up and down just like that. And where each strand joined to another, there was a tiny pearl. Seed pearls, we used to call them. Oh, it took me so long to sew them all on. “Violet-Anne,” Edward used to say, “you’ll be too old to get married by the time you sew on all them pearls.”’

  Violet-Anne stepped closer to the web. I think she had forgotten all about the mobile. And me.

  ‘But I wasn’t,’ she said quietly, ‘I finished that veil the day before I was married. Edward kept it wrapped up in a cloth in his old trunk. He kept it for years and years and years . . .’ Violet-Anne touched the web again.

  ‘I don’t think you should do that,’ I said. ‘Spiders don’t like you to break their webs.’

  Violet-Anne handed me the mobile. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘Hold this. Now!’ She turned back to the hatstand. ‘Whoever built this web had better come out. Right now!’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why can’t we just leave him there until Mum comes with the can of spray?’

  ‘Did you hear that? This girl’s mother will come and spray you if you don’t come out. How would you like that?’

  I thought it was a good idea. ‘You can’t have spiders in the house, Violet-Anne. Some spiders are dangerous.’

  Violet-Anne made that noise that she makes when people tell her what to do. It’s a bit like a snort and a bit like a sigh. Danny Edwards’ father had a horse once. It made the same sort of noise. ‘Oh, very well.’ She gave the hatstand a good whack with her walking cane. The hatstand banged against the wall and almost toppled over.

  ‘Come on out then,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’

  Nothing happened for a minute. I thought that the spider might have already moved out. I didn’t like that thought very much. He might have moved out into my room.

  ‘There he is!’ Violet-Anne saw him first.

  He was creeping slowly over the top of the oval mirror on the wall. He’d been hiding behind it. He didn’t creep all the way over though. He stopped halfway and looked at us.

  ‘Hurry up then!’ Violet-Anne gave the hatstand another whack. I really wished she wouldn’t do that. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

  Two more legs appeared. Then three more. Then he stopped. That spider looked as scared as me.

  ‘You’re a biggy, aren’t you?’ Violet-Anne moved further back. ‘You build a nice-looking web though.’ She prodded at him with her cane. ‘Well, go on then! If you don’t get out you’ll get hit with a whole can of spray. You wouldn’t like that now, would you?’

  I watched the spider turn around. I wanted to be sure that I saw which way he went.

  ‘Well, will you look at that!’ Violet-Anne dragged me a bit closer. ‘That spider has only seven legs. Well I never. He’s old, too. Not young and shiny like those other ones out in the yard. Fancy that! A spider who needs a walki
ng cane.’

  Violet-Anne watched as he disappeared again, down behind the mirror. ‘All right then, Sam. You can stay there for now. But you best make plans to move before Saturday.’

  We took the mobile out to Misty’s tree.

  ‘I can listen to it while I’m dozing,’ Violet-Anne said as I climbed up the tree. ‘Wouldn’t do for Sam to get caught up in it.’

  ‘Sam?’ I said. ‘Who’s Sam?’

  ‘Sam.’ Violet-Anne nestled down in her cane chair. ‘Sam the seven-legged spider.’

  She was nodding off to sleep by the time I had tied the mobile in place. A very cross magpie was using me for bombing practice. I don’t think he wanted a mobile in his tree.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ I said as I tiptoed by. That’s what my dad says to me when I’m going to sleep.

  Violet-Anne smiled a little. She mumbled something that sounded like ‘wedding veils’. But I wasn’t sure. I definitely heard the next bit though.

  ‘Good old Sam!’ she said as she let her silver egret cane drop out of her hand.

  It was early. The sun hadn’t even made patterns in the hall yet. But I could hear Violet-Anne talking to someone.

  I crept along the hall. ‘Violet-Anne?’ I whispered. ‘Are you all right?’

  I crept all the way along to the kitchen. I don’t think the house had even woken up yet. None of the floorboards made the creaking noises that they like to make when I creep over them.

  ‘Are you here, Violet-Anne?’

  It was chilly in the kitchen but Violet-Anne didn’t seem to mind. She was sitting right by the open window. Her cane was resting on the side of her special chair with the tapestry back. And she was talking to something, right there, in front of her.

  ‘You’ll catch a cold, Violet-Anne, sitting there like that without your robe.’ I sounded just like my mother. ‘I’ll go and get it for you.’ My mother would have made me get it myself. But I didn’t think I ought to say that.

  ‘Hurry,’ Violet-Anne said, ‘before the sun spoils this.’