Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction)

by Lesley Glaister

  They were way out of reach up there and they could have the ballroom to themselves – they’d only need seed and water. Cleo and the kittens would never catch them and nor would Osi.

  Thinking she caught a glimpse of movement in a mirror, Isis turned to catch her own white face, her hair in its awful childish pudding-basin cut, her face a plain, pale pudding too. She tore her eyes away, went out quick and shut the door.

  I HAVEN’T SET EYES on my brother for years. But I know there’s something wrong because the bucket system’s broken down. I will go up today. I’ve said it before, but today I really will. Those broken stairs – it’s like contemplating Everest. But really it’s the fear that stops me; I’ll admit it.

  Yes, I admit it. I’m scared of what I’ll find.

  The bucket system came about when we stopped talking, which was, I believe, 1992. Ten years! Gone like a flicker. Before that we used to eat together and have some sort of stunted conversation. Even in his heyday (did he have one? Did either of us?), Osi was never any good as company, not like a real person in the world. He’s not a real person in the world. He hasn’t left the house for decades or been seen by a single soul. The only person to whom he counts as anything is Mr Shuttle, the solicitor, for whom he exists as an occasional ragged wobble of ink on a dotted line. Mr Shuttle knows nothing and cares less about us. We are a task on his list of tasks, faceless. He pays his bill himself from our investments – easy money, I should say. Our scant and intermittent communication is conducted perfectly well by Royal Mail.

  Ten years ago he wrote to advise me that in order to remain solvent, we would have to sell another parcel of land, informing us that he’d had what he called ‘feelers’ from the U-Save Consortium.

  It was Grandpa himself who set the ball rolling by selling the land off to the railway board, before we were even born – around the turn of the last century, I believe. And then, in the 20’s, Victor sold the nut grove for the A road. And later we sold off the meadow, and after that parcels of land for the dual carriageway, which cut the estate in two. Those arrangements kept us in funds for years. Then U-Save bought the meadow on the other side of the road to build their supermarket with car park and petrol station. I saw no objection myself, and in fact it was a bonus, making shopping so much easier. But Osi refused to sign the contract, would only stick his fingers in his ears and hum like a demented hornet when I tried to tell him that we had no choice. So, of course, I had to forge his signature in order to sell the meadow, which is now my lovely spanking great big shop.

  Osi has never set foot inside U-Save; and even when we still spoke, he maintained a ridiculous pretence that it wasn’t there. But how I love it!

  If it weren’t for U-Save I would be stark staring mad by now.

  Once he’d removed his fingers from his lugs and saw from his window that the bulldozers were ripping up the land, Osi sealed his lips to me forever, rarely even venturing down the stairs again. But there was absolutely nothing else I could have done. What else did he think we were to live on, the stupid, stubborn bugger?

  Isn’t bulldozers a lovely word?

  Since U-Save arrived, my life has been arranged like this: each day I push my trolley across the bridge to lose myself in that sweet brightness, the million choices that there are. The store is open 24/7, as they term it, and in the middle of the night, if I can’t sleep, I go across the bridge and wander in the aisles, counting things. In Home Laundry for instance – I have counted 54 ways you can wash your clothes. There’s liquid and there’s powder and there’s capsules, there’s bio and non-bio, special stuff for coloureds, whites, blacks – (and that doesn’t count conditioning or stain removal.) However does a person make a decision like that? And that’s just one decision out of – perhaps hundreds. I’d love to hear Mary on the subject.

  Or I ride the moving pathway that sweeps you up to Clothing, Household and Electrical. They have a pharmacy, a Post Office counter, a bank machine, even a dentist who does a weekly clinic. I do my ablutions in the Ladies; eat and conduct my business in the café (with its panoramic view of Little Egypt); buy my food and clothes there (I have training shoes with flashing lights [£6.99], meant for children I know, but such a lark, how could one resist?); I buy books and batteries for my radio; even find my friends there – take Spike as a for instance.

  I devised the bucket system even before Osi and I ceased to talk, because he was such a lazy blighter and wouldn’t always deign to come down to eat, as well as the fact that my knees were getting bad. Besides, the stairs were becoming too risky for daily traverse – downright dangerous, to speak the truth. Osi would put a note in a bucket rigged to the banister, to indicate what he wanted. In actuality, there was little need for he ate the same thing almost every day – water biscuits and liver paté or Dairylee cheese triangles, and bars of blackest chocolate. And once we ceased to talk we simply carried the system on and it became our only communication. (Though occasionally I’d hear the distant rumble of the lavatory cistern.) From the deterioration of his handwriting I’ve charted his degeneration, but as long as the bucket was going up and down, I knew he was alive at least, and eating.

  I’ve never sent a drink up there so I must suppose he drinks from the tap in the bathroom, as he did as a child, angling his head over the basin and suckling on the steel. (I am partial to a Gin or a lovely drink called a Bacardi Breezer. And of course I like a cup of tea. Coffee I take in the café in my shop, where they make it better than ever I could.) Sometimes for a lark I’ll send Osi something unexpected, once a tin of squid (courtesy of Spike), which remained in the bucket travelling up and down for days until I took it out to try it for myself. (I wouldn’t bother.)

  It was a few weeks ago now that the bucket system began to become erratic. A note with nothing on it; a failure to haul it up; a failure to send it down; the bucket lowered but with contents untouched. Once there was a dead pigeon inside, and once something much, much worse that compelled me to discard the bucket and buy a new one (plastic, red, £3.99).

  I fear he’s lost his mind.

  I really, really must go up.

  3

  IT WAS WEEKS since Evelyn and Arthur had gone. Isis pictured her mother cantering through the desert, Arthur nose to the ground, hot on the scent of Herihor. When they found the tomb, he would raise his snout and howl. There would be a telegram, of course, and then what celebrations! A party in the ballroom, school, friends, perhaps a finishing school in France. And Isis would become tall and slim, she would bloom and win a heart or two, no doubt.

  The gate banged and shook her to her teeth. She was supposed to be helping Mary search out the last of the peas, but instead she was riding the gate – pulling the rusty wrought iron thing open as far as it would go and swinging back on it, a lurch of a ride that ended in a sickening jolt.

  She got off and leaned over the gate, wishing someone would drive by, or at least a person on a horse or a bicycle to say hello, but it was a quiet lane, leading to nothing but a scatter of cottages. George’s cottage was a mile or so away, and she had dared walk to it once or twice. But it was a dull walk to a dull dwelling – not worth the tongue lashing if Mary missed her. The only regular excitement was the trains, but none were due.

  She shut her eyes and listened to the high trill of a skylark, the faint swish of breezy leaves – and at last there was the sound of an engine and Mr Burgess’ grocery van came puttering along. Mr Burgess was very proud of the vehicle, though Isis was sad not to see his horse anymore. It had been a funny horse, mottled like a rainy pavement, with a hot velvet nose that would nuzzle in her pockets for biscuit crumbs. The motor van, which Mr Burgess boasted could do 25 miles an hour, was painted with beautiful swirly letters: Burgess and Son, General Provisions.

  Isis held open the gate and Mr Burgess saluted as he drove through. She began to call ‘Mary!’ but Mary was already approaching, a bowl half full of peas in her arms, her hair all s
narly, cheeks pink and dimpling.

  Mr Burgess doffed his hat. ‘Mary.’ He was beaming so hard that his moustache quivered as he went round to the back of his van to fetch the carton of groceries.

  ‘Any letters?’ Isis asked. Mr Burgess’ wife ran the village Post Office and Mr Burgess delivered the post to the far-flung customers on his round. Not that many letters came to Little Egypt. There were bills of course, but Arthur and Evelyn rarely sent anything except a hasty postcard.

  ‘Not today,’ Mr Burgess said and yelped as Dixie, the black kitten, ran up his leg.

  ‘Isis, shut that little beggar in the scullery and finish picking the peas.’ Mary put the bowl in Isis’ hands. ‘Fill it to the brim, there’s a dear, while I get Mr Burgess his cuppa.’

  Isis unhooked Dixie’s claws from Mr Burgess’ corduroy trousers, and snuggled her face in his silky fur. His body was tiny as a bird’s and he never stopped moving. She carried him out to the scullery, where Mary tried to keep the kittens shut up, and then she crept to the kitchen window and climbed onto the pile of bricks she’d constructed as a vantage point. Mary was laughing as she put cups and saucers on the table, and her hands went to her hair, patting and smoothing.

  Isis got down and sat on the bricks. With her thumbnails she popped a peapod and ate the five green peas, starting with the biggest, and then she crunched the pod between her teeth and spat out the stringy bits. Eventually she dragged her feet to the vegetable garden to pick more peas. She sneaked past the potting shed – there was no sign of George, for which she was grateful. Mary didn’t especially like George either, not because he was idle and ancient, but because he was half mad and most dreadfully rude. Though Osi would sometimes trail him round the garden, oblivious to the snapping and snarling and outrageous cursing this provoked.

  The garden was a scandal, Mary was always saying, but mention it to George and you’d get your ear bitten off. Arthur was supposed to be hiring a lad to help, but no lad ever arrived and now there was bindweed clambering over everything, quite smothering the raspberry canes, and dandelions and nettles between the rows of beans and peas. Isis stung her wrists trying to reach the pods. She soon gave up and went back inside.

  Mr Burgess’ hat was on the table but he was in the pantry with Mary and they were laughing. His was a pleased sounding chortle and Mary’s a high false trill. There was a fly crawling on his slice of cake and she let it.

  The kitchen door opened and Mr Patey, the coalman, put his head round. ‘Hello, there? Anyone home?’ He was holding an iris, just one, dark blue and splashed with yellow.

  Mary stepped out of the pantry, cheeks aflame. ‘Wilf!’ she said.

  ‘Mary.’ He handed her the iris and she smiled at it, at him, and at the floor. Though he had a dirty neck, Mr Patey was far more handsome than Mr Burgess, and younger too. His hair was dark, his skin smooth, his eyes warm and toffee brown. He had what Evelyn would call a common accent, while Mr Burgess, Isis grudgingly considered, spoke quite well for a grocer.

  Mr Burgess stepped out of the pantry, pinching his moustache.

  ‘Patey,’ he said in a chilly voice. He glared at the iris as if it was a snake.

  ‘That wants water,’ Mr Patey said. ‘How’s the wife?’ he added to the grocer.

  Mr Burgess picked up his hat. ‘Well, I’ll be off, Mary,’ he said.

  ‘And the kiddies?’ Mr Patey added. ‘They doing well? Only Mrs Burgess was telling me your nipper had a cough.’

  ‘Next week as usual,’ Mr Burgess said. He put on his hat, picked up the empty box, and giving Mr Patey a wrathful look, left, slamming shut the door behind him. Isis sat down on the low stool by the range and ran her tongue along the row of white bumps the stingers had left on her wrist that were fizzing like sherbet. From under her lashes she watched how Mary carried the drooping iris to the sink, Mr Patey close behind her.

  ‘Get on with them peas,’ Mary said, catching her looking.

  Isis picked one up and stuck her thumbnail in the green ridge. She liked the noise the fresh ones made when opened, a tiny sound between a click and a gasp, but the old ones made no sound at all and the peas were hard and floury. She rolled a pea for Dixie who sprang for it comically, and they all watched for a moment and laughed.

  Mr Burgess had promised to take the two tabbies when they were old enough to leave Cleo, but Mary had said Isis could keep Dixie if she must, if it was all right with Captain and Mrs Spurling. Dixie was entirely black but for three white hairs on the tip of one ear and his eyes were lantern yellow.

  ‘Come on Wilf, I must get on,’ Mary said now.

  ‘No time for a cup of cha?’ Mr Patey said.

  ‘Oh well! You are a terror.’ Mary’s dimples flickered as she cleared Mr Burgess’ cup away and put out a clean one.

  The coalman put his flat cap down just where Mr Burgess’ bowler had been. His hands were washed but dirty with the deep-down graininess that comes from handling coal, each fingernail outlined as if with ink.

  ‘Blooming mice in the pantry,’ Mary said. ‘Mr Burgess was helping me set a trap.’

  ‘Why don’t you put the cats in there?’ Isis asked.

  ‘You ask me in future,’ Mr Patey said. ‘Any little jobs want doing.’

  Isis watched and listened, noticing how different Mary was when Mr Patey was around, how she tilted her head and constantly lifted her arms to her hair, which made her chest lift too.

  The next pod contained not bright green peas but cottony mush and a tiny waving maggot. Isis shrieked and threw it down. ‘A bad ’un,’ she explained.

  Mary smiled at her. ‘You can run off and play.’

  ‘You forget my age,’ said Isis.

  Mary continued to look at her until she dragged her feet out of the kitchen and went upstairs to the nursery. When she opened the door, Osi looked up, dazed from his books.

  ‘The train will be coming soon,’ she tempted, but he just sat in his stupid baby armchair, finger in place in his book, waiting for her to leave. Once he’d liked to watch the train as much as she did. They would hold hands and scream when it went past. She banged the door on him and hurried down to the end of the garden, past the orchard and the vegetables, past the potting shed, past the icehouse and the compost heap, along the path she’d trodden through the weeds, to wait, face pressed against the fence, for the thunder of the train.

  One day, she vowed, she’d travel on the train to London, moving past this very spot, looking out of the window at the place where a girl stood waiting through the long, tedious ache of her childhood. Once she’d poked a stick through to touch the train, but it had been ripped from her hand with terrifying force. Today the train chugged sluggishly and the grey steam hung and sank in its wake, leaving Isis covered in smuts.

  She walked back in time to see Mr Patey leaving and ran to open the gate for his pony and cart. He saluted as he set off at a clip, shedding nuggets of coal as he went. She listened till the rattle of the cart and the trotting sound had faded away and then she swung herself on the gate, from which the black paint was flaking leaving orange patches of rust. Once, when she was younger, she’d licked the rust – it tasted nothing like oranges but rather how she thought the war might taste, deep blood and gritty metal.

  4

  ALMOST AS SOON as the sound of Mr Patey’s pony had died away, I heard another motor approaching. The third vehicle in one morning! It was Uncle Victor in his canary bright Bugatti, with a lady by his side. He had taken to visiting once every week or two, often with a companion – never the same once twice – and always no better than they should be, in Mary’s opinion. Isis opened the gate for Victor to drive through, which he did much too fast in a spray of gravel. She pelted after him up the drive.

  Victor took off his goggles, grabbed and tickled her. Though it was much too babyish, she squirmed and giggled. The lady unwound her scarf to reveal hair so fair it was nearly
white. She wore the sort of make-up that Isis recognised as common, though it was still rather pretty, on her lips and cheeks and round her eyes, which were hard and miniature as grape pips.

  Uncle Victor stopped tickling and helped the lady step down from the car.

  ‘Isis, this is Mademoiselle Mignon.’ He drew out the name as if it was comical. Mademoiselle Mignon was small as a doll with a tiny narrow waist and dainty, pointed, child-sized boots that made Isis feel like a clodhopper.

  ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle.’ Isis raked her mind back to her French. ‘Comment allez-vous?’

  Mademoiselle squealed out a laugh. ‘Oh, no need for that, French by name but not by nature.’

  ‘Don’t know about that,’ Uncle Victor said, and she squealed again, revealing that her top teeth were chipped.

  ‘But very well all the same, thank you, dear,’ she said. ‘Your uncle’s told me all about you twins. And,’ she patted Isis’ cheek, ‘you can call me Mimi, if you like.’

  Isis breathed in the sharpness of her scent, glamorous yet not quite pleasant.

  ‘I’ll take Mimi in to tidy herself up,’ Victor told Isis. ‘You run along and tell Mary there’ll be another two for luncheon.’

  Isis hurried to the kitchen with the news, but Mary had heard the motorcar arrive and was already scrubbing extra potatoes, her chest wobbling up and down with indignation.

  ‘There’s only the three chops,’ she said. ‘I can’t work miracles.’

  Isis looked at the chops, already laid out in pan – three small shards of bone with hardly any meat.

  ‘They won’t stretch,’ Mary said. ‘That means no chop for me nor you, and you children need your meat.’

  ‘What about a cheese pudding instead?’ Isis suggested. She knew for a fact that there was cheese.

  Mary frowned, considering, and blew out. ‘We can put them chops aside for tomorrow. Good girl. If they don’t like it, they can blooming lump it.’