Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) (17 page)

20

I
T WAS PAST
dawn when Evelyn woke Isis by crawling into the tent. The space was too small, and when she was crammed, crouching, knees cricking, beside Isis, her head made the canvas bulge and the light filtering through cast her skin in a greenish hue.

‘I’ve got some fresh water for you here. Hungry yet?’

‘Maybe.’

Evelyn put her hand on Isis’ brow. ‘Cooler, thank Heaven.’

‘I want to go home and see Mary,’ Isis said

‘As soon as you’re well enough to travel.’

‘I am well enough.’

‘Sure?’ Evelyn scrunched down so that her face was too close to Isis’ and peered at her as if she were a curious specimen. ‘So, you’re feeling more like it?’

Isis stretched her toes and fingers and moved her head, which felt like the right-sized head. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘More like myself,’ she added, but that was not quite right. What was herself? She could hardly remember. She propped herself up on her elbow to sip the water.

‘Then it’s about time you told me exactly what happened,’ Evelyn said. She sounded oddly nervous.

‘Don’t remember.’ Isis tried to shrink away from the stale tobacco on her mother’s breath. ‘I suppose I fainted or something.’

Evelyn was silent for a time, and there was a dry click as she swallowed.

‘Don’t be silly. You must remember. You can tell me the truth. I won’t be angry. No one is angry with
you
.’ She stopped between each sentence as if she was reading from a script, but her eyes were focussed hard on Isis’ face. ‘I do wish I’d taken more notice when we came out. . . So. Who was it?’

‘What?’

‘Who attacked you?’

‘No one.’

‘You were on the floor, your collar was ripped, there was blood on your frock. Which one was it?’

Isis stared up at the wiry hairs on the tip of her mother’s chin, and the dark caverns of her nostrils. Her muddy eyes, whites smeared pink, were like proper caring mother’s eyes, searching her own. Isis felt she must say something to fulfil her expectation.

‘Was it Haru?’ Evelyn’s voice was brusque. ‘Tell the truth. No one will be angry. Not with you. We’ve sent the cad packing, in any case,’ she added.

‘And Selim?’

‘And Akil. It’s only us – and Abdullah now. Abdullah at least can be trusted.’

‘Did you pay them?’ Isis said.

Evelyn hacked out a laugh of incredulity, flecks of spit flying from her mouth and sticking to the canvas.

Isis watched them glitter and fade. ‘It’s not fair if you didn’t pay them,’ she muttered.

‘Well?’ said Evelyn. ‘Haru? Or was it that boy – Selim, was it? Whichever it was, he shall be punished, don’t you worry. He’ll be sorry.’

Isis pictured Selim’s hands, those slim, delicate fingers. She would not have them chopped off. She would not have him stoned. She wasn’t even sure; he’d been close but . . . she’d wanted him to be close, hadn’t she? She’d wanted . . . oh
what?
There had been the blood on her dress . . . she thought of him sucking his knuckle, eyes so dark beneath the sweep of lashes. But he couldn’t have made her see what she saw, he could not have turned her into pigment on the ceiling or made her fall and forget herself or start the curse or have a fever.

‘
Nothing
happened. I was only ill,’ she said.

Was he helping her when she fell, or was there more, some sort of touching that she had willed?

‘Your frock was torn,’ Evelyn said. Her voice rose. ‘It was one of them, Isis. Which one?’

‘None, neither!’ Isis scrunched her eyes and shook her head against the slippery, sickly memory, which was all of a piece with the bloated, dirty ache and the eyes everywhere of rats and boys and gods and the white eye of the pedlar, all of a piece with the heat and taste of dirt. ‘I just fainted.’

‘Come
on
.’ Evelyn’s voice was beginning to crisp with irritation.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

Isis turned her face towards the canvas. Oh, it was so hot, so beastly hot.

‘Wasn’t Selim; wasn’t Haru,’ she said.

Evelyn struggled to say the next thing. ‘If it was neither . . .’ she began. ‘Oh, I wish I’d bally well taken more notice of who’d come out in what order. I got so absorbed with what Abdullah was saying, I just followed him out, didn’t even miss you till . . .’ There was a long ache of silence before she spoke again. ‘I should have been looking after you.’ Her voice cracked and Isis was startled.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she mumbled.

Evelyn swallowed, ‘Please tell me it wasn’t Victor?’

‘No.’

‘And of
course
not Osi.’

‘No.’

‘Then it
must
have been Haru or that boy.’ Evelyn sounded relieved.

Isis shut her eyes against the intensity of her stare.

‘Which one? Tell me, Isis, speak. We’ll get the blighter.’

Isis pressed her fists against her eyes and saw a fuzz of floating colour, bright as if still wet.

‘Tell me.’

‘It
wasn’t
Haru or Selim.’

‘But you said . . .’ Evelyn sighed. ‘Who then?’

Isis’ mind was scrambling. At least Victor would not be punished like them, no chopping off of hands or stoning. He was a hero, after all.

‘You have to say.’ Evelyn’s stomach made a loud, hard gurgle. ‘Look at me, Isis.’

Isis did so and was skewered like a creature on a pin. If she had to keep thinking about it, the feverishness would come back; she could feel it lurking like a bad smell at the fringes of her mind. She just wanted to be left alone and to forget. But Evelyn would not leave her alone, not till she said a name.
Someone
had been behind her when she’d thought she was alone. Selim? Her memory wavered like torchlight skidding over hieroglyphs. What if it had been Victor, after all? It came back to her how he’d looked in the tomb, the dark yellow of his teeth, like rat’s teeth, and she shuddered.

‘
Isis
,’ Evelyn insisted.

And so, with great reluctance, she mouthed her uncle’s name.

There was a long silence in which she could hear the drumming of Evelyn’s heart. ‘Are you
certain?
’ she said at last. Her nostrils gaped as if panicking for air.

Isis nodded once.

‘It’s vital to be certain.’

‘I know.’ Isis shut her eyes, retreating to saffron fuzz.

More silence, not silence, a creaking of bone and sinew, a clicking and swallowing, a scurry of heartbeat, until at last Evelyn crawled out of the tent and it was possible to breathe again. Isis lay looking at an ant walking upside down quite gaily, waving its feelers, and she felt envious of that ant with nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing on its mind.

She turned miserably onto her side, drew her knees up to her chest. Victor would not get into serious trouble, not in the way an Arab would. And she would put it right, as soon as they got home, she would set the story straight. She sipped a little water and let her eyelids close.

Later there was shouting and she lay with her hands over her ears. Apart from staggering out to the WC tent, she lay in a trance all day and no one came to see her until Osi brought her a biscuit and she found some appetite for it – though Mary’s food was what she craved: cheese pudding, perhaps, followed by pink blancmange.

And later still, when sunset flushed the fabric of the tent, she crawled out and blinked. Half the tents had gone by now, and Victor too, of course, and she quailed to think how angry with her he would be, how
disappointed
. They had always been such chums, such allies. But it would be all right. Once they were back at home she would make it be all right.

‘I am overjoyed to see you so recovered.’ Abdullah bent towards her. Despite the fatness of his lips, his smile was thin and slippery and she shrank from it.

Arthur blustered over and gave her a hard hug. ‘Come on, Icy, let’s get you something to eat.’ His voice was overly hearty, and he avoided meeting her eyes. She embarrassed him, she realised. What they thought had happened, had changed her in his view, perhaps in all their views.

They ate bread and white cheese and apricots – now that Akil had gone there was no more cooking, just the boiling of the tea can for tea and coffee.

‘Where did Victor go?’ Isis dared to ask.

‘Away. Obviously.’ Evelyn was abrupt.

‘After what you said,’ Osi told her.

‘It wasn’t
my
fault.’ Isis bit and chewed angrily. The bread was leathery. Akil’s breads only tasted good when they were warm and fresh with pockety bubbles of fragrant air. Her throat closed up so it was impossible to swallow, and she leant away from the others and let the gob of half chewed bread fall from her mouth.

‘Nothing is your fault, Icy,’ Arthur said.

‘Back to England?’

‘You won’t see Victor again, don’t you worry.’

‘But –’

‘No buts.’

‘But nothing bad will happen to him?’ Isis pleaded.

‘You have to understand, he’s not been the same since the war.’

‘I know that. He can only forget himself with the ladies.’

Arthur choked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s only what Mary said.’

‘Let’s drop the subject.’ Evelyn’s voice was flat and Arthur looked chastened.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Rightio. Subject dropped.’

Victor was Evelyn’s twin, just as Osi was hers. Of course she would be most terribly upset. Isis would take it back, somehow, soon, she would take it back so they could all be reconciled. She could hardly
now
say she didn’t mean it – not now he’d been sent away. And it wouldn’t make any difference to him at this moment. Perhaps he’d be on his way home, patrolling the ship for a new lady; perhaps he’d gone in search of Melissa. He would be all right, after all he had survived the war.

She got up and wandered away from the table.

‘Where are you going?’ Evelyn said.

‘Nowhere.’ She stopped. Evelyn never cared where she went. ‘Thank you for asking,’ she added awkwardly, feeling an odd sensation under her breast bone at this crumb of maternal care.

She approached the pile of broken pillars, looking for her pup. She had pocketed a piece of bread for him. It was very nearly dark now, the sky violet, the first stars prickling and, low on the horizon, a sneer of moon. She wandered around but there was no sign of any dogs. Away from the glow of the lamp-lit table, the darkness clotted around her and she looked back at her family lit by the kerosene lamps like a group of silly actors on a stage.

‘There were some dogs,’ she said, when she returned, standing just outside their circle. ‘A nice pup.’

‘Haru did for them,’ Osi said.

Isis stared at him

‘The little one came begging for food. He did away with them.’

‘It’s not true?’ Isis pleaded, looking from Evelyn, to Arthur to Abdullah.

‘They were only strays, Icy,’ Arthur said.

‘But one of them was
mine
,’ Isis said. ‘I’d trained him to sit.’

Abdullah cleared his throat. ‘You must understand, we don’t share the sentimental British approach to animals.’ He was making himself sound sympathetic, but Isis detected a cloaked triumph in his voice, and in the gleam of his heavy-lidded eyes.

Since her arrival in Egypt, Isis had hardly cried: not when Evelyn and Arthur failed to meet them; not at any of the discomforts, fears and disappointments of the journey; not during or after her ordeal in the tomb, but now she ran back to her tent, hurled herself down and cried hard into her pillow, sobs racking and hacking out of her till her neck and ribs hurt.

After a time, she felt the tent shake as Evelyn crawled in, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t stop or even turn over and look at her, thinking all the time of the sweet cocked head of her pup and how he’d trusted her. Maybe she’d made him trust Haru too and Haru had killed him and it was her fault.