Anansi Boys

Fat Charlie’s mouth watered; his stomach made a noise.

A lurch and a bounce. Now the houses were older, and this time everything was familiar.

The pink plastic flamingos were still striking attitudes in Mrs. Dunwiddy’s front yard, although the sun had faded them almost white over the years. There was a mirrored gazing ball as well, and when Fat Charlie spotted it he was, only for a moment, as scared as he had ever been of anything.

“How bad is it, with Spider?” asked Mrs. Higgler, as they walked up to Mrs. Dunwiddy’s front door.

“Put it this way,” said Fat Charlie. “I think he’s sleeping with my fiancée. Which is rather more than I ever did.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Tch.” And she rang the doorbell.

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth—not to mention sweet potato pudding and spicy cabbage—and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte’s famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.

“So,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, scratching a crumb of pineapple upside-down cake from the corner of her mouth, “I understand your brother come to see you.”

“Yes. I talked to a spider. I suppose it was my own fault. I never expected anything to happen.”

A chorus of tuts and tsks and tchs ran around the table as Mrs. Higgler and Mrs. Dunwiddy and Mrs. Bustamonte and Miss Noles clicked their tongues and shook their heads. “He always used to say you were the stupid one,” said Miss Noles. “Your father, that is. I never believed him.”

“Well, how was I to know?” Fat Charlie protested. “It’s not as if my parents ever said to me, ‘By the way, Son, you have a brother you don’t know about. Invite him into your life and he’ll have you investigated by the police, he’ll sleep with your fiancée, he’ll not just move into your home but bring an entire extra house into your spare room. And he’ll brainwash you and make you go to films and spend all night trying to get home and—’ “ He stopped. It was the way they were looking at him.

A sigh went around the table. It went from Mrs. Higgler to Miss Noles to Mrs. Bustamonte to Mrs. Dunwiddy. It was extremely unsettling and quite spooky, but Mrs. Bustamonte belched and ruined the effect.

“So what do you want?” asked Mrs. Dunwiddy. “Say what you want.”

Fat Charlie thought about what he wanted, in Mrs. Dunwiddy’s little dining room. Outside, the daylight was fading into a gentle twilight.

“He’s made my life a misery,” said Fat Charlie. “I want you to make him go away. Just go away. Can you do that?”

The three younger women said nothing. They simply looked at Mrs. Dunwiddy.

“We can’t actually make him go away,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. “We already—” and she stopped herself, and said, “Well, we done all we can about that, you see.”

It is to Fat Charlie’s credit that he did not, as deep down he might have wished to, burst into tears or wail or collapse in on himself like a problematic soufflé. He simply nodded. “Well, then,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you all. Thank you for the dinner.”

“We can’t make him go away,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, her old brown eyes almost black behind her pebble-thick spectacles. “But we can send you to somebody who can.”

It was early evening in Florida, which meant that in London it was the dead of night. In Rosie’s big bed, where Fat Charlie had never been, Spider shivered.

Rosie pressed close to him, skin to skin. “Charles,” she said. “Are you all right?” She could feel the goose pimples bumping the skin of his arms.

“I’m fine,” said Spider. “Sudden creepy feeling.”

“Somebody walking over your grave,” said Rosie.

He pulled her close then, and he kissed her.

And Daisy was sitting in the small common room of the house in Hendon, wearing a bright green nightdress and fluffy, vivid pink carpet slippers. She was sitting in front of a computer screen, shaking her head and clicking the mouse.

“You going to be much longer?” asked Carol. “You know, there’s a whole computer unit that’s meant to be doing that. Not you.”

Daisy made a noise. It was not a yes-noise and it was not a no-noise. It was an I-know-somebody-just-said-something-to-meand-if-I-make-a-noise-maybe-they’ll-go-away sort of noise.

Carol had heard that noise before.

“Oy,” she said. “Big bum. Are you going to be much longer? I want to do my blog.”

Daisy processed the words. Two of them sank in. “Are you saying I’ve got a big bum?”