Little Egypt

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘I’m making porridge,’ I called as I passed the nursery door. I went along the corridor to tap on the door of the Blue Room, and when there was no answer I pushed open the door with a tiny flare of hope – but the bed was empty and untouched since last I’d looked.

  Down in the kitchen, I opened the vent on the stove. To my amazed relief, it contained a glowing heap of ash – enough to coax into another blaze. I put a couple of sticks in, as I’d observed Mary doing, carefully balanced little coals on them and shut the door. I pressed my ear against the warm iron to listen and soon, sure enough, there was the crackle and catch of flame. I felt an odd little sensation of satisfaction that despite all and everything, one thing had come out right at least. I noticed that there was a scatter of salt on the table and that the cutlery drawer was lolling open. Last night it had been shut. So Osi must have been down and eaten something, and that was good.

  When I went outside to fill the coal scuttle, I found the ground littered with broken icicles. The air was thin as glass again, too cold to breathe. The snow, in its melt, had slid like lazy eyelids over the windows and frozen there, as if the house itself had given up and gone to sleep.

  Back inside, I poured oatmeal into the pan, adding water and a handful of raisins from a jar, as Mary had done sometimes for a treat. And I stirred the porridge this time, to stop it getting lumpy, and when it had glugged and thickened I pushed the pan off the hot plate and went upstairs to fetch my brother. This time I would not take no for an answer. He had to eat and I must make sure of it. Although only minutes older than him, I was the big sister, I was the capable one; I would be responsible until I was relieved.

  I noticed water on the landing floor, not water but drips of ice. I followed them to the bathroom. The door was open and the bath was full of half frozen water. Scattered on the floor was more salt.

  Passing the door to the attic stairs, I saw it was ajar. The nursery door was shut. I stopped outside. The handle was made of brass, so cold under my hand that it made my fingers ache as I hesitated, building up my resolve. I had to see what I would see though I longed to run to my bed and bury my head beneath the covers. I turned the handle and pushed hard enough to move the chair that he had jammed against the door. As the door opened I saw my brother kneeling on the floor, looking up at me – and even he seemed shocked by what he’d done.

  I shut the door against the sight, and stared at the paint, pale blue as on all the doors, chipped at the edge with nibble shapes as if a mouse had been at it. I breathed in and out three times watching the airy feathers bloom and vanish before I opened the door again.

  ‘Stop,’ I said, though he did seem already to have stopped. I could see the long pale blur of nakedness at the edge of my vision and also blood, roses of it, on the carpet.

  ‘I’m preparing her for her journey,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ I shouted and now my eyes went to the body, the arms and legs jutting at stiff angles, the hard blue bosoms, the cut that gaped up the left side of her abdomen. Osi stood up. His hands were bloody. ‘I’ve done it wrong,’ he said, ‘you’re supposed to remove the lungs and the intestines and …’

  ‘No,’ I said, my voice odd and wobbly. ‘No, you’re not.’

  Osi held his fingers apart and stared at them. Would the blood freeze onto him? Does blood freeze like water? By his feet was a heap of something dark and sticky.

  ‘I can’t find her liver. I don’t know which thing is which.’

  The light in the nursery was dim from the overhanging snow and yet it sparkled with a cruel clarity. I struggled to keep my voice level. ‘What you have to do is come and wash your hands and have your breakfast.’

  He blinked as if he’d just woken from a trance and looked down at Mary and at his hands and then at me, pupils stretched so huge his eyes were black.

  Someone might think he killed her, I thought. That’s what it will look like. No one normal could possibly understand this. Or even that we killed her together. Despite her gaping abdomen there was still a slit of shine in Mary’s eyes, one open a bit more than the other, and between her lips there was the glint of teeth.

  ‘There isn’t enough salt,’ he said.

  ‘Stop it, Osi.’

  ‘I need to find her liver.’

  ‘Stop!’

  A long shiver travelled from the soles of my feet to the skin of my scalp. I took a deep breath, the air rasping my sore throat, and a strange dream-like species of calm settled on me. I went into the bedroom and pulled the counterpane from Osi’s bed and then I covered Mary where she lay.

  ‘Come and wash.’

  I stood outside the bathroom door and watched him run his hands under the tap, red water becoming pink, becoming clear. ‘And empty the bath,’ I said. The gurgling was loud as the water ran away in a prolonged and greedy gulping, leaving splinters of ice, and a nest of Mary’s curls tangled in the plug hole.

  I dished up the porridge, put two dishes on the table, sat down and indicated that Osi should do the same.

  ‘Now eat.’

  I took a mouthful, warm and sweet with a sudden juicy squelch of raisin between my teeth – I flinched at the sensation. Osi ate steadily as always, almost mechanically. Spoon in, pause, and swallow. Spoon in, pause, and swallow.

  ‘You know it’s wrong, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ He put his spoon down. He seemed revived by the porridge.

  ‘It’s against the law,’ I said.

  ‘Whose law?’

  ‘British Law. The law of the land.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  I stared at his red, crusted nose.

  ‘It’s what happens, Osi. Dead people have funerals and are buried in graveyards.’

  ‘Soulless affairs,’ Osi said and I recognised Arthur’s voice getting into his, ‘the so-called decent Christian burial. I want to do it the proper way, otherwise,’ and just in time, before I lost my temper, his voice became anxious and his own again, ‘otherwise she’ll end up in the next world with nothing, Icy. She has to be preserved. She needs her things with her.’ He looked up and met my eyes. ‘But I’ve made a mess of it.’

  He put down his spoon and swallowed. I heard the hard click in his throat, and then he pushed his chair back and went out of the kitchen, and I listened to the creaking as he went back upstairs. I didn’t know what to say or do. He was only doing what he thought was best for Mary, I understood that, and knew I should not to blame him, though it made me sick.

  At that moment I could easily have hated him. If he hadn’t looked so scared I would have hated him. He had ruined everything. He had ruined the rest of our lives, though I didn’t understand that then. All I knew then was that this would have to be kept secret, if Osi wasn’t to end up in asylum, or both of us in prison. I sat staring at my porridge as it congealed.

  Mr Burgess had a toothache, his jaw muffled in a tartan scarf. He stepped into the kitchen smelling of eucalyptus, with a dewdrop on the end of his nose that trembled as he went on about the night he’d had of it. Everyone had the cold, he told us, it was going round like wildfire and what with this weather, we should be bally grateful he could do his rounds at all. He put the box of groceries on the table and looked around for Mary.

  ‘Chew a clove,’ I said. ‘It’s what Mary does for toothache.’ I winced as I spoke her name. ‘Do you want one? She’s gone to her sister’s.’

  He looked at the kettle, moustache drooping glumly, but I only handed him the list. The dewdrop fell from his nose onto his scarf.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about a sister,’ he said.

  ‘Could you send the telegram please and add it to the bill.’ My mind was flocking, with what I could put. Not Mary dead, of course, not now. ‘A telegram to my parents,’ I said.

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘I’ll write it.’ I picked up the pencil. Mary gone stop, I put, immediate return vital stop. I was pleased with the concision. Surely they would take notice of that?

  I held my brea
th as Mr Burgess took in my words. ‘She went away unexpected then?’ he said.

  ‘Her sister was taken poorly,’ I said. ‘Very poorly.’

  ‘How did she get word? I don’t recall a letter.’

  I stared at him. A new drip was gathering. ‘Someone came for her,’ I said.

  ‘It’s rum that she’s never mentioned a sister,’ he said. ‘I seem to remember her saying she had no one in the world, besides you two.’

  ‘They didn’t speak for years,’ I improvised. ‘Some falling out – and then they … fell back in again.’

  He was looking at me suspiciously. ‘Who was it came to fetch her then?’

  ‘Goodness!’ I said. ‘What does it matter? The fact is, she’s had to go, so you see we need to telegraph our parents.’

  ‘When’s she coming back then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She’s very cross, you know, about not being paid and so on.’

  He believed that, at least.

  ‘She might not ever come back.’ My voice cracked and I had to look hard at the table and crunch my teeth together to keep from wailing.

  He stared at me with his bleary eyes. ‘Will you manage on your own?’

  I sniffed and got my voice under control. ‘Uncle Victor’s coming – with a lady,’ I said. ‘We’ll be right as nine-pence.’ I forced a smile. ‘And Ma and Pa will be home before you know it.’

  Mr Burgess glanced wistfully at the kettle.

  ‘That’ll be all then,’ I said.

  ‘She left no word for me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, when you hear from her send her my … best regards,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘Oooch.’ His hand shot to his jaw.

  ‘Sure you don’t want a clove?’

  He shook his head and tightened his muffler. I waited till he was out of the door and then ran up to our bedroom, scritched a space in the frost with my fingernails, and watched his van blur into white.

  27

  AND THEN, DRAGGING my feet, I went to find Osi. It took all my will to push open the nursery door, but he was not there. Mary was; I’d had a wild magical idea that she would somehow have gone, but she lay as we’d left her, covered with the counterpane, a pale puff of curls escaping from one end. So cold and stiff, chilled to the marrow, she would have said, and now that was really, literally true.

  I found Osi sitting up in bed, shivering, arms clutched round The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

  ‘I’ve done it wrong,’ Osi said, voice cracking. ‘I’ve messed her up.’

  He’d lost his nerve. I understood; he had always dreamed of mummifying a human being and had woken from the dream to the reality of Mary dead and himself, a childish amateur with a knife, expecting a neat diagram of a body rather than the loose, unruly, stinking thing it is once you cut through the skin.

  I slumped down on my own bed and blew my nose. I longed to be warm. I longed not to have to think. In truth, I longed to climb into bed and stick my head under the pillow and not come out till this was all over. But it would never be over. The idea of running away flashed through my mind. But I had no money and no idea, really, how to go about running away, especially in such bitter cold. Running away with Osi in tow would have been impossible – and leaving him even more so. I was his sister and I was responsible, and despite all and everything, I did love him. Not a love that I had decided on, but a deep and visceral tugging in my guts and in my veins. Osi needed me and always would.

  His eyes were fixed on m, waiting for me to speak. At that moment I had the sensation of something, some sort of guard, falling away inside me as I admitted the thought that we would have to complete the process; that it was the only thing we could do. We could not, after all, undo it. We could not put Mary back together. We could not call police and doctors and all the normal things that people do when a loved one dies.

  It would be the best thing to get her neatly wrapped, rather than to leave her loose and oozing. She would be more comfortable, more complete, stupid to even think it, but somehow warmer that way; cared for, at least. Tucked up. Snug as a bug in a rug. And it would be something that Arthur and Evelyn would understand. They could scarcely be angry with Osi, or even surprised, that after all their encouragement he’d taken to behaving like an ancient Egyptian.

  And I thought it must be good for him, better for him, to complete the process he had started. I didn’t want him to feel that he had failed. Failed himself, failed Mary, just failed. So I told him he would have to finish. At first he refused, said he could not do it. I had to pull him out of bed and force him to get dressed. I could still make Osi do things in those days. And then I dragged him to the nursery.

  Jars and more salt was what he needed – though there wasn’t any more salt – and he’d need hundreds of bandages, which we didn’t have. He said he could not, would not, do it and so I locked him in the nursery with Mary. It sounds cruel, but it was the best thing for him. He didn’t bang on the door or shout like a normal person. He would carry on the process, I knew he would, it would be only thing he’d be able to think of to do.

  And the best thing.

  Dizzied with disbelief at what I was making happen, I went down to the pantry. He was right that there was no salt. Mary had wondered why we got through so much and now I understood that Osi had been purloining it for such an opportunity as this. I emptied out currants and tea and split peas for the canopic jars. I took the best linen sheets, beautifully ironed and folded by Mary, out of the press and all day, till my hands were raw, I cut and ripped them to ribbons. White mounds grew around me on the kitchen table, tumbling onto the floor, to be trampled on and nested in by Cleo into great bandage tangles. I didn’t know how many we would need, but I spared only the sheets that were on the beds, becoming hypnotised by the sound of tearing cotton.

  It was the time that Mary would have sat down with a cup of tea and put her feet up for five minutes, before I went up to check on Osi’s progress. When I unlocked and opened the door he stood up. There were great bruisy shadows under his eyes and he looked sick, desperate and dazed.

  ‘Are you done?’ I kept my eyes averted from the figure on the floor.

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Come then.’ I led him downstairs and sat him by the stove. He stared at the heaps of cotton that were like a snowdrift in the kitchen.

  ‘Will there be enough?’ I asked. ‘You need something to eat.’ I buttered him a piece of bread that he stuffed whole into his mouth. ‘It’s the right thing you’re doing,’ I said. ‘You look tired. Should we wait till tomorrow to do the wrapping?’

  ‘No. Tonight.’

  I put two big potatoes in the stove for later. Osi stood and stretched and I heard the popping of his vertebrae. He roamed around the kitchen gathering grave goods. Flour and sugar and currants wrapped in twists of paper; her rolling pin; a silver spoon.

  ‘We have to make some shabtis,’ he said

  ‘What?’

  ‘Servants for her, little people, so she doesn’t have to work her fingers to the bone.’

  Our eyes met when he said that, sounding for an instant like Mary herself.

  ‘Like dolls?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘From what? Pegs? I could make peg dolls. Or she could have my old dolls.’

  ‘The more she has the better – and get things from her room. Her treasures. Anything she’ll want to take with her.’

  I was pleased that he’d regained his energy for the task, but it was with reluctance that I left the warmth of the kitchen to go up to the attic. I lit a candle, and keeping my eyes from the dip in her pillow, I snatched up her wedding photograph, the little album, her brush and mirror set, her powder compact. There was a string of peeling pearls that she wore on high days and holidays, her photographs, a desiccated iris, a felt hat and a dangerous looking hat pin with a bumble bee design. As I gathered these items it was as if someone was behind me, breathing coldly on my neck, and once my hands were full I bolted down the stai
rs.

  On the landing I stopped. There was the sound of an engine outside. I threw Mary’s things on my bed and ran downstairs. Victor had come in through the front door and was standing in the dim light of the hall. He looked vast in his coat and driving helmet.

  ‘Dear little Icy,’ he said, voice blurring drinkily.

  ‘Have you got a lady with you?’ I asked.

  He shook his head and I gulped with relief.

  ‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll make you something,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s Mary?’ He peered behind me.

  ‘Still poorly.’

  He staggered and pulled a face. ‘Must be bad.’ He pulled off his gloves, scarf and helmet and threw them on a chair.

  ‘It’s her head,’ I told him. ‘And we’ve both got fearful colds. Mr Burgess said it’s going round like wildfire.’

  ‘Poor little Icy. We must make you a hot toddy.’

  He followed me into the kitchen where there were still mounds of sheeting strips on the table and tumbling onto the floor. ‘What the devil?’ he said.

  ‘Cut up for dusters,’ I said, which was ridiculous, you don’t dust with skinny rags like that, but he was not domesticated and anyway, too drunk to care. It gave me an idea, if I could get him even drunker he’d fall asleep and we could continue.

  While Victor shucked off his coat, I poured him a big glass of brandy.

  ‘I should go up and see Mary,’ he said. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, what a contrary minx she is.’

  ‘She’s sleeping now,’ I said quickly. ‘I just went. She’ll bite your head off if you wake her.’

  ‘She is a firecracker, that one,’ he agreed. ‘What’s for eats?’ He sat down at the table and shoved some ribbons out of the way.

  ‘I’m making potatoes in their jackets, but they won’t be ready for ages. I’m only doing two, but we can share them. Where’ve you been?’