Only when it was starting to get dark did she give up. ‘You must have seen him,’ she said to Mary, who was sitting by the stove with her favourite book – December Roses – on her lap, having five minutes before she got on with the tea.
Mary shook her head. ‘He couldn’t of got in the van with Mr Burgess?’ she suggested.
‘No, I was watching.’
‘Or shut in George’s shed?’
‘I looked.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Not today at all. He’d gone out already before I came down. Someone must have let him out.’
She stared at Mary, whose face was pink from the warmth of the stove. There was a basket of darning by her feet and the book with its flagrant, tragic cover was splayed on her knees.
‘He’s probably gone on an adventure,’ Mary said. ‘He’ll be back tomorrow right as rain, you see.’
Isis squashed down the wave of helplessness that tried to rise in her. Mary looked so comfortable there, so warm and dry and complacent.
‘I wonder how many kittens you’ve killed in your life,’ she said.
Mary tilted back her head and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t speak for a moment, but when she did her voice was low and tight. ‘Listen. I’m left alone here and have to use my judgement in all sorts of difficult things and I’m scarcely ever paid. Stay here, working my fingers to the bone and worrying myself into an early grave just for love of you – and your brother.’
The word love was like a flickering tongue of light. No one ever used that word, not in connection with Isis. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘I haven’t done anything with that wretched kitten and nor would I, not now you’re attached. Dare say I’m quite fond of the little scamp myself.’
‘Sorry,’ Isis said, ‘I know you wouldn’t really.’
‘Any more of that sort of remark and I’ll think myself at liberty to leave,’ Mary continued, ‘and then where would you be?’
‘Please don’t.’ Isis sank down beside Mary and put her head against her knee as she had when she was small. She felt a great big fool now, crouching on the floor, and it was a few moments before she felt Mary’s hand on her head, but it was just a grudging pat, as if she was a dog.
‘Can’t all sit about all day.’ Mary got up, slapped her open book face down on the kitchen table and picked up a knife. There was a scatter of vegetables waiting on the table and she picked up a carrot and began, in quick deft movements, as if she was sharpening a pencil, to peel it. Isis watched the golden shavings coiling on the table.
‘Don’t go,’ she said urgently. ‘Don’t go and marry Mr Patey.’
The knife fell from Mary’s hand. ‘Whoever said anything about that?’
‘I promise I’ll be good.’
Mary sighed. She went to the drawer, fetched another knife and handed it to Isis. ‘Make a start on them spuds then,’ she said.
Mary was upstairs with one of her heads. Weeks had passed with no more sign of Dixie and Isis had at last given up hope. Sometimes foxes take kittens, she knew, and there were foxes around, and badgers. And even hawks and owls will take small furry prey; Mr Burgess said he’d seen a kestrel. It was one of those things, and one of the dangers, Mary said, of getting yourself attached.
It was only early October, a shivery day that felt like a premonition of winter. Evelyn and Arthur hadn’t come home when the excavation season was over – and now it had begun again. It cost too much to keep travelling back and forward across the globe, and they needed to keep the money to unearth Herihor – if they ever found the tomb. It seemed to Isis that they really didn’t like to be at home at all. Even during the war, when all archaeological work in Egypt had come to a full stop, they had both stayed in London, Evelyn driving ambulances while Arthur, too old for the front, had had a desk job in the War Office.
At last Mary came down and into the kitchen, white faced, her hair all pillow squashed.
‘I thought you were staying in bed,’ said Isis.
Mary threw Cleo off the stove, stoked it up, filled the kettle, and then sank down, fingers pressed to her temples.
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ Isis said. Sometimes the word love would flicker in her memory like a flame and she would want to show Mary that she was also loved. ‘You just put your feet up,’ she was saying, when there was a perfunctory knocking at the door and Mr Burgess was standing there, blowing like a grampus, a box piled high with groceries in his arms.
Mary nodded at him but didn’t shift herself.
‘I don’t know what you want with all the salt,’ Mr Burgess grumbled as he put the box on the table. ‘Sure you didn’t over-order?’
‘We do seem to run through it,’ Mary said.
‘I’ve never known anyone get through so much.’
Mary shrugged. ‘Did you put the brandy in?’ she asked.
‘You seem to be running through that, too,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘Gentlemen callers?’
Mary pressed her lips together. ‘Go along outside now,’ she said to Isis.
‘Are the tabbies all right?’ Isis asked the grocer.
‘Dandy.’
‘What’s she called them?’
‘Don’t know. Little black ’un turn up?’
Isis shook her head and Mary frowned as if to say, don’t get her started. ‘Do you good to get some roses in your cheeks,’ she said.
‘Who for?’ Isis said. ‘Who cares if I’ve got roses in my cheeks?’
‘Mind your manners.’ Mary used the cross voice she never used in front of gents. Mr Burgess’ face was stiff. He reached into the box, brought out a liquorice pipe and shoved it at Isis.
‘Run along,’ he said.
‘Besides, it’s beastly cold out there,’ she said, risking a scolding by taking the pipe without saying thank you. It was, after all, a very childish gift. How old did he think she was? She went out through the kittenless scullery, clambered up the bricks and stuck the pipe in her mouth. It was a thick stubby one, decorated with scarlet hundreds and thousands to denote burning tobacco. Childish or not, she might as well enjoy it. It would last her for weeks if she could remember to suck and not to bite. Peering through the window she saw that the groceries were still in their box. Usually Mr Burgess would help Mary unpack as she checked off the items on her list. But Mary hadn’t moved and Mr Burgess was sitting with his hands on the table instead so that you could see the missing fingers where he had been injured in the war, just an ordinary war wound, nothing heroic.
Isis could hear the rise and fall of Mary’s voice, though not the words. Mr Burgess listened expressionlessly before he shook his head. He began to speak and she could nearly hear him, she tried to get her ear against the glass . . . but she toppled and slipped off the wobbly bricks, grazing her knee. It didn’t really hurt too much, only a little scrape, but she limped back into the kitchen as Mr Burgess was saying: ‘If you knew what I know.’
‘I told you. I’m not interested in your blasted gossip,’ Mary snapped, and then turned to Isis. ‘What have you done to yourself?’ She sat her down and went at her knee with a cloth and stinging iodine. There was an awkward silence in the kitchen, till: ‘Why don’t you feed the budgies?’ Mary suggested.
Isis took some crusts and stomped her way to the ballroom. While she was there she ran her forefinger up and down the piano in great crescendos high to low and low to high until it hurt and then she pounded and pounded with her fists, foot on the loud pedal till the birds screeched and flew about in a panic and the chandelier was ringing.
Mary came raging in. ‘What is the matter with you today?’ she said. ‘You might have a bit of consideration for my head.’
Even after Isis stopped, the noise stayed in the room, bouncing between the mirrors where Mary was reflected with her hair all wildly standing out, and the dark, wounded look of a migrain
e in her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ Isis said. ‘But I don’t know what to do with myself.’
‘Oh Lord,’ Mary muttered weakly.
‘I love you,’ Isis said, the phrase jumping from her mouth and opening Mary’s in surprise. They stood looking at each other reflected over and over back into the hungry mirrors and the birds settled back amongst their crystals, tiny pastel feathers fluttering down.
Mr Burgess came blundering in. ‘My goodness, this wants sweeping,’ he remarked. He went to the window and peered out at the wreck of the orangery. ‘And this wants bringing down.’
Mary turned from Isis. ‘I never stop,’ she said.
‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘I’ve had enough. Isis would you show Mr Burgess out?’
‘No, Mary . . .’ he said. ‘Don’t go getting all het up. Let’s have another cup of tea.’
‘You should be getting back to Mrs Burgess,’ Mary said wearily. ‘Oh, and by the way, I hear tell you’re expecting a happy event?’
‘A baby?’ Isis was incredulous. He was so old.
‘Patey,’ he said. You could hardly see his mouth move under the droop of damp moustache.
‘I would of heard anyrate,’ said Mary.
‘I was meaning to say,’ Mr Burgess bluffed. ‘I would of said.’
‘I should congratulate you and Mrs Burgess,’ said Mary. ‘Now I need to lie down.’ You could tell from the sogginess in her voice that she really was at the end of her tether. ‘Show Mr Burgess out, please. The list’s on the table as per usual.’
Mary went out, hand groping along the wall as if she’d gone blind, which was part of the migraine, and Mr Burgess and Isis returned to the kitchen. ‘She does gets real humdingers,’ she explained. She stared at his face. Above the beige moustache his cheeks were scrawled with red and blue, tiny veins that looked like scribble.
‘Are you really having a baby?’
He gave an irritated puff. ‘Patey been round and about much?’ he asked.
‘Now and then.’ Isis was cautious. Mary hadn’t said another word about the coalman, but after he’d visited she would be especially bright and cheerful, almost glittery, making jam tarts, and even finding time for a game of gin rummy at the kitchen table.
‘There’s things she should know about her precious Patey,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ He looked towards the kettle.
‘You can have water,’ Isis said. ‘And I dare say I could stretch to a biscuit.’ She took the last one from the tin. It was soft and only fit for the birds, but he chomped it as she ran him a cup of water. ‘What should she know? I don’t want her getting married either,’ she added.
‘Married!’ The word barged out of him on a spray of crumbs.
‘There’s been no talk of it,’ she soothed. ‘Just me wondering where it will all end.’
Mr Burgess sat down at the table, putting his bowler in its usual place. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, for one thing, did you know he was a shirker?’ He left a pause for her reaction, which was none. ‘A shirker, a slacker. Meaning he never fought. He left it to others to do his dirty work and most of ’em never came back.’ He looked down at his mangled hand, and his voice mangled along with it. ‘Lost both my brothers in France.’
‘Oh dear,’ Isis said. His moustache flopped lifelessly over his lips and his eyes filled up. She left a decent interval before she said. ‘Mary does know he didn’t go to war.’
‘Nay, but I don’t reckon she can know the whole story.’
‘What is the whole story then?’
‘He worked at the pits.’
‘I know. He was a miner before he was a coalman.’ It seemed to her a perfectly logical progression.
Mr Burgess sent out his big wet tongue to fish a crumb from his moustache. ‘He didn’t have to go, mining being what they called a reserved profession, but he could of gone. Most of his fellows went. He’s a coward, that’s what he is.’ He leant forward, ‘And worse.’
‘What’s worse?’ Despite herself, Isis was intrigued. ‘Did you know Mary’s husband died at the Marne?’ she added.
‘Aye.’ He shook his head. ‘And now she’s consorting with a coward.’
‘But what did Mr Patey do that was worse?’ she urged, fascinated.
‘He had to get married, if you catch my drift.’
She didn’t but nodded sagely.
‘Though there’s those that say she tricked him into it. Lost the babe and her looks with it. Then,’ Mr Burgess leant towards her, a repellent gleam in his eyes, ‘he started carrying on with Mrs Burke, widow of the coal merchant. Well, his missus goes and dies, doesn’t she, terribly convenient that, and before she was cold in her grave, he ups and marries Mrs Burke, though she had a good ten years on him. More.’
‘So he’s married?’
Mr Burgess sat back, swollen with significance. ‘That’s the best of it. No sooner are they wed than she pops her clogs too. What do you say to that?’
‘How terribly, terribly sad,’ Isis said. ‘Poor Mr Patey.’
‘It’s blasted fishy, that’s what it is.’
Isis stared at him. Surely he couldn’t mean that Mr Patey killed both his wives?
‘I’ve said nowt,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘And you never heard nowt from me neither. But . . .’ he let the word hang significantly, ‘if Mary should happen to find out . . .?’
‘She probably does know. She knows him quite well, after all.’
He exhaled noisily. ‘She can’t know the ins and outs. I can’t think that of her. And she should be careful, don’t you think?’
‘He’s a Quaker,’ Isis said. ‘That’s partly why he didn’t go. She told me. He was brave enough, standing up to all the insults, if he got one white feather shoved at him, he must have had a hundred, that’s what Mary said.’
‘Brave!’ Mr Burgess stood up abruptly and seized his hat. ‘Brave! Quaker! Exactly. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ He wobbled his hand. ‘Quaker, shaker, trembler, coward.’ His cheeks had gone dark as beetroot. He buttoned his jacket with fumbling fingers. ‘Well, time I got on. Tell Mary there’s a gift in there.’ He nodded at the box. ‘Lemons. Only a bit spoiled.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ said Isis.
‘You think on what Mary should know for her own good,’ he added, picking up his hat.
‘But it’s gossip,’ Isis said uncertainly. She began taking groceries from the box – a huge bag of salt, a string of onions, a slab of lard and six or seven shrivelled greenish lemons.
He jabbed a finger stump at her. ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ he said, snatching up next week’s list.
6
HOWEVER BAD HER head, Mary would usually drag herself downstairs in the morning, but today, even by the time the morning train juddered past, there was still no sign of her. Isis ventured up to her room and found her lying with the curtains drawn, a chamber pot with sick in it by the bed.
‘Mary?’ she whispered, but the only response was a groan. Isis took the chamber pot away, tipped the contents down the WC, and then sat with Mary, wiping her brow with a dampened flannel, the way Mary did for her when she had a fever, that cool dampness so terribly soothing.
‘Don’t fret,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to our lunch and so on.’
‘Wilf might come,’ Mary murmured. Isis’ eyes went to Mr Patey’s iris, quite desiccated now, on the bedside table.
‘I’ll send him away.’
Softly, Isis closed the door and stole downstairs. She stood on the landing listening to the quiet of the house, not quiet really, always a squeak or a creak or a gurgle of pipes as if the house kept up its own mumbling story. Idly, she wandered into Evelyn and Arthur’s room. On the dressing table sat the scarab and the ankh – but there was no sign of the cat goddess. When was the last time she’d seen it? Not for a while, certainly.
Perhaps Mary had put it away? Or Osi had it?
Isis opened the nursery door onto an empty room that stunk of unwashed boy and goodness knows what else. It was very rare for her to be there when Osi wasn’t. Though it had been the playroom for the two of them when they were small, it had become entirely his domain, a small dank outpost of ancient Egypt. Like a trespasser, she entered, holding her breath against the smell. The tree-of-life rug was ruined with a dark stain of ink or paint. The walls were scrawled with hieroglyphs and pinned with layers of scrolls. Books were piled everywhere, with tongues of bookmark sticking out in all directions, and there were brushes and paints and stacks of exercise books and papyrus scrolls; the vast brow and nose of some broken sandstone god propped against the wall, and on every surface a clutter of Osi’s ornaments – or artefacts, as he insisted on calling them – wooden dolls and animals, shards of broken pot and faience, stones with scratches. But there was no Bastet. Shutting the door behind her, she went downstairs and outside to look for her twin.
After the stuffy peculiarity of the nursery, it was a pleasure to be outside. The sun was hot and the air fresh, with just the first twinge of autumn. She stooped to pick an apple from the tangle of long grass in the orchard – there were plenty of windfalls. Soon they would gather them and Mary would start to turn out her chutney and apple cheese and apple cake – which at least would make a change from everlasting date. Munching the apple – too hard and sour and with seeds that were still white – she noticed a wasp’s nest on the wall, a clever papery thing, empty now? She put her ear against it and was startled to hear a grumble, a rustle, life still there amongst the fragile cells. Jumping away, she scrubbed her ear against the ticklish fizz of sound.
Osi wasn’t in the orchard, or the vegetable patch, or down by the fence. Passing the icehouse she checked that the padlock was secure before she went round to the potting shed. As she opened the door she was saying, ‘Sorry to disturb you, George, but,’ and then she stopped, hands crammed to her mouth. George was on the floor. He was lying neatly, hands on his chest, eyes open, quite plainly dead.
Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Page 5