Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) (10 page)

After Victor had roared off down the lane, Isis went back to the garden with a paraffin lantern and a box of matches. It was late afternoon now. Clouds had covered the sky and a pesky wind got up. The dying grass swished coldly against her shins.

She went down the icehouse steps, lifted the padlock away and stepped inside for the shelter in which to light the paraffin lamp. The first bluish wisp of flame hardly illuminated anything, but as it grew and as her eyes adjusted, she began to see what she had feared, without knowing that she feared it. There were things down in the pit where the ice once was. There were colours. She must climb down to see.

She tried to secure the door open, but it was hung in such a way that it would swing closed. She took a last look outside at the blustery grey sky and the violent green moss on the steps, before letting the door clunk shut. The way the lantern flame fluttered made scary shadows but they were only shadows and shadows are nothing, a shadow could never hurt you.

She sat on the brink, the sharp, damp edges of the bricks digging into the backs of her thighs and taking deep steadying breaths of the paraffin tinged air. And then she let herself drop – it was just five feet or so, not enough to hurt her.

The interior of the ice pit was rounded like the inside of an egg and painted like a tomb, though the paint had not taken well. He had tried to whitewash it first, but the damp from the bricks had come through, wetting the paint, blurring the painstaking work. There were hieroglyphs and pictograms – boats, Rameses, Horus, eyes, birds, scarabs – and on the floor was a box, a painted cigar box, a miniature sarcophagus.

She crouched down. The paint glimmered gold and red and blue. A brutal fur of silence prickled around her. She opened the box and found a tiny mummy and some grave goods – a ping-pong ball, the skeleton of a bird, and there was Bastet too, glinting richly in the lamplight. There was a jam jar full of dark wet, but it was not jam. This was her kitten, she knew at once. Now a tight twist of cloth, thin and straight with a shocking bulge of skull.

She put him back in the box and replaced the lid. There were other mummies as well, less elaborate – one that almost could have made her smile: thin and straight as a poker, ridiculous, a grass snake, she guessed, or slow worm. Her hands felt grimy and so did the inside of her mouth and stomach and her soul felt grimy too.

She put Bastet in her cardigan pocket, but she couldn’t climb out with the lamp; she needed both hands. It was so thick and quiet she felt her breath go and her heart set up a fierce thudding, and she didn’t dare shut off the flame. It was quite safe there, it would stay alight until the paraffin ran out and then it would be dark again and dark forever more. The wall decorations fluttered and she turned her back and struggled her way up, hard to climb, the bricks were slippery, the sides almost sheer. When she finally got out she banged the door shut and stood panting in the grey and rust of autumn, in the cold freshness, feeling the first long spits of rain.

Her dress was stained with green and black, her knees were dirty, her hands unspeakable. And she was shaking as she walked towards the house. Mary caught sight of the state of her dress as she rushed through the kitchen and called her back, but she didn’t stop. She went straight upstairs and through the door to the nursery where Osi was crouching in his tiny chair, a heavy book across his knees.

‘I know what you did to Dixie,’ she said.

He gaped and she was almost gratified to see him react with surprise, with shock, like a normal human being. Shuddering, she hugged herself as she waited, staring at him, until at last he spoke.

‘I found him down by George’s shed. I think his back was broken.’

She examined his peaky face, the pupils of his eyes stretched big and black. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes, Icy, yes.’ There was a childish pleading in his voice. ‘Cats are sacred. I would never hurt a cat.’

She kept her eyes on his expression for a long moment, trying to divine the truth. It wasn’t so hard to believe that George had done something to the kitten, after all.

‘And I picked him up to bring him to you,’ Osi continued miserably. ‘But he shivered and went all stiff and died.’

‘Why didn’t you
tell
me then?’

Here he hung his head and shrugged his thin shoulders that were already hunched up around his ears.

‘I was searching and searching,’ she said. ‘You know I was distraught for
weeks
. And all the time you knew!’

‘Not at first and then I found him and I so wanted . . .’

‘You wanted!’

He shrugged miserably, ‘. . . to get it right.’

He stopped. There were tight strings of sinew in his cheeks and greenish hollows beneath his eyes. ‘I didn’t hurt him,’ he said. ‘Honestly, Icy, I just made him ready for the Afterlife. It was better than burning him to nothing. Mary would have burnt him, then there’s nothing for the ka to get back to, there has to be a way back you see or he’ll roam forever. He would have been lost,
lost
. And I know how much you loved him.’

Isis continued to stare at him, so very much like Evelyn – and Victor – so unlike herself, although he was her twin. ‘And I found this.’ She took Bastet from her pocket.

‘It was for him, for Dixie, to guard him in the Afterlife.’

She ran her finger over the bronze and gold, the lapis, the carnelian.

‘I thought it had been stolen,’ she said. ‘You could have got someone into most awful trouble.’

He continued to look down at the floor so that she could see the chaotic swirl of hair that was his crown. It was the one physical feature they shared. She felt her anger shrivel into misery, almost to pity. ‘Well I suppose that was kind,’ she forced herself to say. She knew that he was sorry to have upset her, though not sorry for what he’d done. As far as he was concerned, he’d done the best thing for Dixie. The right thing. In a way. And true to his own beliefs.

Numbed, she turned from him.

T
HERE WAS NO
time to hesitate or to procrastinate. Having finished his Bacardi Breezer, Spike was clearly eager to be off and would be if I wasn’t careful. The drink would act as something of a stiffener, I thought, and finished mine, banging the empty bottle down on the table.

‘Come on then, dear,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and visit my brother.’

He looked longingly over his shoulder at the door before he followed me down the channel between the catalogues and packaging, which is quite a squeeze. He was very quiet. At the foot of the stairs we stood and looked up. Curious how you see things afresh when you have another person in the house. I hadn’t taken in how much bird dirt there was from all the pigeons that live upstairs. The whiteness of their droppings all fluffed with down and spiked with feathers cascaded over the stairs like a frozen waterfall, strangely beautiful, though with a caustic reek that made your eyes water.

I saw Spike noticing the bucket and its contents, and I explained the system.

‘We haven’t seen each other or spoken for ten years,’ I said, ‘and it’s worked well.’ Aware of his uncertain expression, I added. ‘Really, it suits us very well.’

‘But what about . . .’ He hesitated, groping with both hands in the air for something. ‘What about
Christmas
?’

‘I send up a mince pie and a card. But Osi really isn’t bothered.’

‘But what about you?’

It was as if stuck inside me was a weight of something, call it sorrow, call it what you like, a weight of something I haven’t let myself acknowledge, creaking, straining against a door.

‘They do a Christmas lunch in U-Save,’ I said. ‘I treat myself on Christmas Eve.’ But my voice was strangled. I had to force out the words, aware that they might sound sad to anyone unacquainted with the whys and wherefores of my life. Our lives.

As long as no one is sorry for me, I am quite all right.

Pity melts resolve.

‘I’ve never been a great one for celebrations,’ I added.

Spike turned his face away, a glint in his eye. ‘Ma-am, I have to go,’ he said.

Ma-am! No one has ever called me that. It must have been his American upbringing coming out, of course, and it sounded childish too; made him seem not much more than a child, and a scared one at that. I was able to pull myself together as I always am. Pulling myself together is something I have down to a fine art. Perfected over the years till it comes as naturally as breathing.

‘Come on,’ I said, attempting to buck him up and I clutched his damp and woolly arm. It was the missing tread of the third stair that worried me, that and my cronky knee. ‘You help me up. There’s rugs galore up there. There’s all sorts.’

‘But I don’t see how . . .’ He looked up the stairs. ‘It’s dangerous. It’s a death trap.’

I suppressed a shudder. ‘Well, we can help each other,’ I said.

‘Oh my God, this is
weird
,’ he said, with a sudden laugh, shaking his head and reaching into his trouser pocket. ‘Mind if I have a smoke?’

‘When we get down,’ I said. I could feel him stiffen. ‘Please,’ I added.

He flicked his head so the pale snakes writhed, and then he shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘Thank you, dear.’ I squeezed his arm. ‘I warn you, Osi is not the easiest person. Don’t expect a normal welcome.’

‘Believe me, Ma-am, I don’t.’

He had to lift me like a parcel over the missing step before we clambered up the rest. Our feet stirred up clouds of birdy-flavoured dust that made us choke, the both of us. Osi had certainly not been down, there was no sign of footfall apart from the damage to the crusty mess that we were wreaking. He had not been down and not been eating.

‘And my brother might not be altogether in the pink,’ I added, when we’d reached the top. ‘This is something of a mission of mercy that we’re on.’

‘OK.’ He coughed. ‘Fuck,’ he said, wiping his eyes on the cuff of his jumper.

‘Yes, I do apologize for the . . . atmosphere,’ I said. ‘It all needs a damn good sweep.’ A pigeon swooped close and he ducked, covering his head with his hands. ‘Hate birds inside,’ he said, with an audible shiver. ‘Give me the fucking creeps.’ The pigeon had perched on the bannister and was studying us coldly with the round bead of its eye.

‘I quite agree,’ I said, thinking uneasily of my spudgies. But there was no need for him to see those.

We crunched along to the bedroom and stood outside the door. My poor heart had slowed now to a small, cold throb and my eyes were streaming.

‘This is like a dream,’ Spike muttered, and though his face was greenish white, there was a twist of something like amusement in his voice, or the promise of amusement to come when he related this tale to his friends.

‘Shall we?’ I said.

‘Sure.’

But we stood a few moments longer. Vainly I strained my ears for a sound of movement from behind the door, but there was nothing. My hand shook as I put it on the handle, and all those other times I’d stood on this landing came back to me; the years in layers pressing me in wafered versions. The house is full of moments, frozen. Oh pull it down, I thought, and welcome. Here’s to a great reverberating crash! Bring in the bulldozers. Bring them in; raze Little Egypt to the ground.

PART TWO

9

T
O HER OWN
surprise, Isis loved being on the ship. It was a good place to be a child and she wagged like a puppy from group to group, pretending to be younger than she was, shamelessly begging to be petted, spoiled, and fed with tit-bits.

Victor left her to it, there was a lady on board he had his eye on, and Osi spent most of the time in their cabin, being sick, or reading and making notes. He was writing a diary in hieroglyphs – though since he did nothing but sleep and vomit, she could not imagine what he was putting.

Aboard the Hieronymus she loved the dipping of the deck beneath her feet, and felt proud not to feel even a whiff of nausea when the ship lunged and creaked and lumber crashed and rumbled in the hold.
The Hieronymus
was a cargo ship that took some passengers, just twelve or so, who had a portion of deck segregated from the crew.

She loved the smells of the ship: gravy seeping up from the galley, wood and oil and the smell of wind that has scoured the sea for hundreds of salty miles. Sometimes she’d go up on deck, even in the stormiest weather and pretend to be a figurehead, stand with her face in the gusts, eyes streaming, hair stiff and tangly from the salt.

Mrs Grievous – at least, that’s how Isis understood the name
– was the best bet for tit-bits. She and her husband (who had grey hair but a black moustache) had ‘never been blessed to have such a pretty, clever, little girl.’ They had one son, but he was a man now, and they were on their way to visit him. Mrs Grievous was plumply silky and smelled of talc, and though really too big to be so babyish, Isis liked to snuggle against her and accept pieces of Turkish Delight from her handbag. Evelyn would have snorted with derision if she could have seen. Mrs Grievous had colourless moles on her neck which hung like fleshy tears. When her husband was there, she stammered – making a pickle of saying Isis –
Sisisisis
would come out first – but the stammer went away when Mr Grievous did. Mrs Grievous taught Isis to play cribbage, something she vowed to take home to teach Mary as a change from whist and rummy.

Isis and Mrs Grievous were sitting in a cold, sunny part of the deck one day, starting a game. Mrs Grievous had a rug over her knees and she had just dealt the cards into her own tartan lap, when Victor strolled past, behind the trailing scarf of Melissa, an actress with yellow curls and circles of pink on her cheeks. Victor flicked Isis a look and a wink.

‘My Uncle’s a sex maniac,’ she told Mrs Grievous, whose hand flew to her mouth.

‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘that’s not the sort of language little girls should use.’

‘Sex or maniac?’ Isis asked, though she knew perfectly well. She had heard the expression from Mary once in an eavesdropped conversation with Mr Patey, and had been longing for a chance to use it.

‘The ‘s’ word, dear. Whoever did you hear say that?’

‘Mother says it all the time.’

Mrs Grievous shook her head and rummaged in her handbag. The sea was choppy today and she had to suck barley sugar to stop her feeling queer. She handed one to Isis, who loved the comforting handbaggy taste. Mrs Grievous tucked a fold of blanket over Isis’ knees and they sat contentedly, sucking and watching a sea gull on the rail of the boat. Its eye was flat and yellow and there was such a hard, grim set to its hooked beak that Isis had to look away.

Mrs Grievous took her hand and stroked it.

‘I wish I had a mother like you,’ gushed out of Isis, just from the loveliness of being kept warm, and fed sweet things, and stroked.

‘Oh my!’ Mrs Grievous took a hanky from her sleeve and dabbed at the dampness that had happened round her eyes. ‘Oh, how I wish it too,’ she said, a creamy throb coming into her voice. ‘That’s quite the nicest thing a person has ever said to me.’

Isis watched the sea gull lift itself heavily off the rail and with a smirking cry, swoop out of sight, leaving a big splattered dropping on the deck. She undid her hand from the grasp of Mrs Grievous and for the first time felt a queasy pang.

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’d better go and see my brother.’

‘Take a sweetie for him,’ Mrs Grievous said. ‘Take the bag, I’ve got a supply.’

Isis accepted the crumpled paper bag and went down into the gloomy, vomit-smelling cabin where Osi was busy straining his eyes over his diary. She put the barley sugars down and spat the taste into the basin. There was a bulge in her throat as if she needed to cry, but she spat some more and cleaned her teeth instead. In the cramped cabin she felt grotesquely huge, and the babyishness that Mrs Grievous brought out in her seemed shameful and absurd.

‘Why not come up for some fresh air?’ she said.

Osi frowned and sucked the bristles of his brush into a point, leaving his lips smeared blue.

‘You can see gulls up there and the sea and Uncle Victor following a lady around – who’s no better than she should be,’ she added, wishing urgently for Mary.

Gazing at her blankly, Osi dipped his brush into the black. He had his tongue trapped between his teeth as he worked on a pictogram: an eye, delicate and elongated. She thought about him painting the inside of the icehouse. He must have spent hours down there, daubing on the walls, playing with his revolting dead things. It made her shudder.
He
did. She had not quite forgiven him for Dixie and the thought of that tightly-wrapped little skittle brought back her nausea.

Besides, it was too stuffy and annoying to stay in the cabin and she slammed the door as she went out and climbed back up onto the deck, legs weary on the stairs, the way she expected an old person’s legs might feel. Victor had got Melissa sitting down now and was leaning into her, saying something in French. The scar was hidden by a tartan scarf, and his elbow was casually pressing down on the knee of his trembling leg.

‘Will you play cards with me?’ Isis took the pack from her pocket and waved it between them.

‘Not now.’ Victor plucked two cigarettes from his case and fitted one into Melissa’s silvery holder.

‘Quoits?’

‘Run along.’

‘Charades?’ Though she knew this was ridiculous.

Melissa put the cigarette holder between her painted lips and dipped forwards as Victor clicked his lighter behind a cupped hand. She took a deep draw of her cigarette and smiled. ‘Poor kid’s bored,’ she said. She pulled Isis close to her silky knees and petted her hair. She smelled of strong violets and smoke. ‘I’ll tell you what, dearie,’ she said, and from her bag she pulled a book. ‘This is a good one, a little racy . . .’ She eyed Victor for his reaction, which was none.

‘Thank you.’ Isis gave up on them and took the book away. Out of the corner of her eye, as she walked on the sunny side of the deck, she saw Mrs Grievous beckoning, but she pretended not to see and went round to the port side where there was no sun and it was beastly cold. Mrs Grievous felt the cold, she always said, and only sat out in the sun for the sake of her health, so she was unlikely to follow Isis here. Someone had left a blanket on a seat and Isis snuggled into it and looked at the book.
Salamander Summer,
it was called, and there was a man with a black moustache and a lady with her dress coming off her pearly shoulder.

Isis read a page or two, but she wasn’t it the mood for reading. She put down the book, rolled herself up like a sausage in the blanket and lay flat on her back on the bench, looking up at parts of the ship that she couldn’t name and at the sky, pale blue like the sherry glasses at home, shading to lampshade white. She stared and stared at the blue, keeping her eyes wide open, not even allowing a blink, till they started to water and to close of their own accord. This she found a good method of getting to sleep – and after all, there was nothing else to do.

She
let
her
eyes
close
and
drifted
back
to
the
kitchen
to
teach
Mary
how
to
play
cribbage
–
she
could
ask
for
a
cribbage
board
for
Christmas.
Or
perhaps
Victor
–
or
Arthur
–
would
buy
her
one
in
Cairo.
If
they
have
even
games
like
that
in
Egypt.
She’d
enjoy
explaining
how
you
do
the
counting,
the
lovely
orderly
rows
of
holes
that
you
jump
the
matchsticks
over
when
you
count,
so
you
always
know
just
where
you
are,
and
where
your
opponent
is
too.

If only Mary would still be there when they got back and not run off with Mr Patey.

She saw a darkening through her eyelids and opened them to see Mr Grievous looming above her, and she sat up quick, smart, almost banging her head against his, which had been far too close.

‘You all right?’ He eased down beside her and took out his pipe.

‘Yes, thank you.’

He rapped his pipe on the edge of the bench till the sticky dottle came out.

She struggled out of the blanket and put her feet on the deck. He had shoes with a pattern of holes like in the cribbage board, only swirly, and all the holes were full of flour, or maybe Mrs Grievous’ talcum powder.

‘Rather nippy this side,’ he said. ‘Why not go and sit in the sun?’

‘I just felt like . . .’ It took her a moment to find the right word. ‘Solitude.’

Mr Grievous hooted, then straightened his face. His moustache was so black it must be dyed, and his teeth were beastly yellow.

‘Solitude,’ he repeated. ‘I like that. What’s your age?’

‘Nearly fifteen,’ she lied.

‘Don’t look it,’ he said, eyeing her.

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away.

‘You know we’re saying toodle-oo at Marseilles?’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning, that is.’

‘Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you,’ she said stiffly.

‘Maisie has formed quite a soft spot for you,’ he said, adding, ‘poor old fool.’

‘She’s good at cribbage,’ she said.

He snorted.

‘Well, I must be going.’ She stood to leave, but he grabbed her hand. His was hard and warm and squeezed her chilly bones until they nearly hurt.

‘Did she tell you why we’re going to Marseilles?’

‘It’s where your boy lives.’ She stood as far away from him as possible, her arm stretched till it felt as if it would pull right out of her shoulder.

‘She’s going to say goodbye. She’s dying, you know.’

‘She’s not!’ Isis said. ‘She’s perfectly all right.’

‘A few weeks, at most. We won’t be going back to Blighty. Not together, at any rate.’

Isis stared at him, his moist eyes and moustache and the bundles of hair crammed in his nostrils that surely must made it hard to breathe.

‘Won’t you go and sit with her?’ he said. ‘She’s taken such a shine.’ He let her hand go and she staggered backwards.

‘Of course,’ she said, recovering her balance.

The sea was growing rougher as she made her way back to the sunny side, where Mrs Grievous was still seated, blanket-wrapped, eyes closed. Isis held her breath and crept close. The slack flesh either side of her face had drooped and the folds were caked in orange stuff. The eyelids were blurred with green, but you could still see the blood vessels. She thought of the crossness of dead George’s face. Mrs Grievous had no expression, her face was merely slack. Sensing her presence, Mrs Grievous opened her eyes. At once her face stretched into a smile. ‘It’s my little angel,’ she said.

‘Shall we have a game?’ said Isis.

‘Of course! I thought you’d forgotten me.’ Mrs Grievous reached into her bag for her cribbage board. As she did so she coughed and Isis heard a rumble deep in her chest, like thunder a long way away that you know is growing closer. Mrs Grievous dabbed her mouth with a hanky and pulled out a box of Turkish Delight, big squares of pink, dusted in icing sugar.

‘Look what I’ve got, just for my favourite girl.’

Isis accepted a piece and the powder fluttered down the front of her coat. There was nowhere to put it but in her mouth. As Mrs Grievous dealt the cards on her lap, Isis’ teeth dug into the squashy sweetness. She could not look at the fleshy pendulums on Mrs Grievous’ neck, or the icing sugar on her lips, but stared instead at her hands, writhing with swollen veins, like a tangle of worms. She had to swallow hard to make the sweet goo slide down her throat.