As if to make up for his stilled heart, her own set up a hard, fierce clamour. She would have to do something, tell someone, disturb Mary; and then there was a sound, a creak, as if someone else was there and, despite the heat, the hairs on her arms rose stiffly.
‘Hello?’ she said with a sudden dizzying whoosh of dread, thinking it might be Mr Patey. There was only one place the person could be, and that was behind a projecting shelf of flowerpots. She swallowed. She had never fainted in her life but wondered if she might be about to do that now, the edges of her vision melting and a sort of buzzing inside her skull.
And then Osi stepped out, clutching a book. ‘He’s passed on, Icy,’ he said.
She exhaled dizzily. ‘I can see that, you clot.’
They both stared down at him.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Isis said.
‘I found him.’
‘When?’
‘He was just sitting there with his pipe in his hand.’
The deckchair was empty, the pipe was on the floor, a scatter of ash beside the bowl.
‘Did you put him on the floor?’
Osi knelt by the body and had his face about an inch away from George’s, which looked just as bad tempered in death as in life. It was disappointing how much the same he looked.
‘Move back,’ she said.
He looked up at her, baffled. ‘Why?’
‘Why didn’t you come and tell me?’ she said.
‘I wonder how old he was.’ Osi poked George’s cheek.
Isis crouched beside Osi and grabbed his hand. ‘Don’t touch,’ she said, peering at the body. The skin was waxy, the pale blue of the eyes dull. Flecks of dust or tobacco had settled on their surface, causing her to blink in sympathy.
‘We’ll have to tell Mary,’ she said. ‘But she’s having one of her heads. Even Mr Burgess would have been a help today.’ To her own mortification she began to cry, getting up quickly so as not to splash George with her tears.
‘We don’t have to tell her.’ Osi followed her out of the shed and caught hold of her sleeve, his nails catching and scratching.
‘Of course we do!’ She got hold of him by both arms. ‘Osi, be normal,’ she pleaded. His eyes were exactly the same greenish dun as Evelyn’s and were acutely focussed, as if he was really here, tuned in to this moment, and not in ancient Egypt for once. He looked not so much a child as a shrunken old man with his pallid indoor skin and stringy hair. The volume clutched to his chest was The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
‘We could send him on his journey, Isis, to the next world, with his spade and trowel pipe and food and –.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t be so . . .’ she struggled to find the word, ‘grotesque!’
After the bright sunshine, Isis was hardly able to see inside the house, and as she hurried upstairs to Mary’s attic, her sight was swimming with pallid after-images of George’s face. She tapped on Mary’s door before she opened it to find Mary lying in exactly the same position as before, eyes shut tight.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she whispered, hating herself for feeling a sort of pride to be the bearer of such momentous news, ‘but George has passed on.’
Mary opened her eyes, squinting against the light.
‘Are you sure?’ she murmured.
Isis nodded. She strained against the wail that wanted to come out and made a strangled gulping sound. Her cheeks were itching with the tears and she scrubbed them away. ‘What shall I do?’
Mary tried to sit up, clutching at her skull. ‘Oh Lord above,’ she said.
‘No,’ Isis said. ‘You don’t have to move only I don’t know what to do.’
Mary lowered herself back down. ‘Just a minute,’ she whispered. She lay thinking. ‘I’ll have another dose of powders.’
The doctor had been called out to Mary years ago, and had diagnosed migraine. The powders he’d given her didn’t help much, but Mary liked them and sometimes, she confided, took one when she didn’t have a headache so that she could enjoy it more.
Now, Isis unfolded one of the little paper envelopes and tipped it into a beaker of water. Mary sipped it slowly, eyes shut, grains of powder sticking to her lip.
‘You’re sure he’s gone?’
‘He’s on the floor with dust in his eyes and they’re open,’ Isis said, scrunching her own eyes against the sensation.
Mary handed Isis the empty beaker and lay back down. ‘Wilf’ll be here soon – he’ll take charge.’
‘We don’t want him here.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘But . . .’
‘He’ll help.’
‘But, but Mr Burgess said . . .’
‘Blast Mr Burgess,’ Mary muttered.
‘Well I for one don’t trust Mr Patey,’ Isis said stubbornly, and waited for Mary to ask her why, but Mary said nothing. In the distance there was the sound of a pony’s hooves and of wheels on gravel.
‘There you see, that’ll be him now.’
Mr Patey was already in the kitchen when Isis got down. ‘Proper Indian summer,’ he greeted her.
‘Mary’s ill,’ she said.
‘In bed? I’ll go up and see her.’
‘No.’ Isis stood in front of the door, though he could easily have thrown her aside. ‘She can’t see you today, but she wants you to help us with something.’
‘What?’
‘George.’
‘That old bugger.’ He’d taken his cap off and was smoothing his glossy black hair. There was a smell of clean sweat and coal dust coming off him.
‘Mary said you’d help us.’
‘Did she now?’ He narrowed his bright brown eyes – they didn’t look like murdering eyes – and she was struck by the thick sootiness of his lashes.
She turned her back on him and went outside. He followed her to the potting shed where Osi was sitting at the threshold muttering over his book.
‘Get out the road,’ Mr Patey said. Scowling at Isis, Osi inched himself aside.
Mr Patey knelt down and touched the old man’s cheek.
‘Osi found him, just a little while ago.’
‘He’s gone all right,’ Mr Patey said. ‘Mary not been down?’
‘No.’
‘One of her famous heads, I reckon?’ he said and Isis nodded. ‘Right then.’ He frowned and rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s get this sorted. Does he have a missus?’
Isis shook her head. ‘She died years ago.’ She watched Mr Patey’s face for a reaction to that, but there was none that she could see. ‘Will you get the police?’ she said.
‘What I reckon I’ll do is take him to the village. To the doctor’s. No one else around?’
Isis shook her head.
‘Then you kiddies’ll have to help me shift him.’
‘Or we could see to him here,’ Osi said.
‘Osi!’
‘Might as well get on with it.’ Mr Patey crouched down to get hold of George under his arms, the dead head lolling against his abdomen, and as he stood up the twins each took a leg. He wasn’t a heavy man and through the thick tweed of his trousers the shins felt thin and hard as sticks. His boots were like something historical and there was a smell of wet beds about him, and a damp patch left on the floor where he’d been lying. They managed to lug him to the cart and prop him in the back amongst the sacks of coal. Despite herself, Isis was impressed by the efficient, fussless way Mr Patey handled the corpse and trotted it away so briskly in his cart.
‘Mr Burgess said that Mr Patey killed two wives,’ she said to Osi, once the creaking and clopping had diminished. The statement sounded ridiculous brought out into the light of day. ‘Of course, I don’t believe him, but I should tell Mary, don’t you think?’
Osi failed to reply. He was staring longingly after the cart.
Still he didn’t answer and, irritated, she swung the gate hard in the hope of catching him with it, but he jumped out of the way, stuck out his bottom lip and stalked off. Riding on the gate, she let her head hang back and it was as if she soared, dizzied, up into the cloudless blue. George’s was the first dead body she’d ever seen, human anyway, and her eyes still hurt with the grit in his.
There was a light scrunch of gravel and Mary came out, wraith-white and shading her eyes.
‘Mr Patey took him,’ said Isis.
‘He coming back?’
‘Didn’t say.’
Mary winced at the rusty grating of the gate and Isis jumped off and hugged her until she struggled free. ‘Get on with you,’ she said. ‘So the poor old boy has really gone?’
‘Even dead he looked just as cross as ever.’ Isis remarked as she latched the gate. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Barely. Least I’m still here though.’
Isis took Mary’s hand and led her back into the kitchen. ‘You sit down,’ she said.
‘The stove needs filling.’ Mary sank down onto her chair.
Isis rattled coal from the scuttle into the stove and put the kettle on the hob. ‘Have you seen Evelyn’s Bastet?’ she asked.
Mary blinked. ‘Her what?’
‘The jewelled cat?’
‘Oh that thing. No, not now I come to think of it.’
‘It’s worth a fortune,’ Isis said.
‘I expect Osi’s got it.’
On the other hand, Isis thought, having strangers like Mr Patey about the place, going up the stairs, well you never knew what might go missing.
‘Mr Burgess said Mr Patey killed both his wives,’ she said, looking not at Mary but at the blackened kettle as she spoke. But when she sneaked a look, Mary’s expression was merely weary.
‘Poor Mr Patey’s been bereaved twice, and I for one know about bereavement,’ she said, and buried her face in her hands.
Isis took two cups and saucers from the dresser and put them on the table. Neatly she poured a drop of milk into each. As soon as she’d been tall enough to reach the kettle, Mary had taught her to make a good cup of tea, which, she’d predicted, would be a comfort to Isis all her life. She tipped out the old leaves, rinsed the pot and warmed it with the nearly boiling water.
‘Careful,’ Mary said, when she lifted the kettle. ‘Always pour away from you.’ Her voice was still frail from her migraine and with the twist in it there always was when Gordon Jefferson was in her mind. Isis was sorry to have reminded her of him, but she couldn’t quite let the subject drop now that she had dared to broach it.
‘Do you know how they died?’ Isis spooned fresh leaves into the pot. The tea caddy was nearly empty. ‘We need to put tea on the list,’ she added.
‘There’s more in the pantry,’ Mary said. ‘The second Mrs Patey had the influenza.’
‘Oh.’
‘And the first was to do with down below,’ Mary’s hand went to her own curved belly. ‘That and her nerves, I believe, poor thing.’
Isis filled the teapot and squeezed the knitted cosy onto it. ‘That’s what he told you.’
‘Don’t you go listening to that bally grocer.’
Isis was silenced. She studied the tea cups, chipped along their rims and faded inside from years of Mary’s scourer. All right then, he didn’t do for his wives. Of course he didn’t. Not with that kind brown light in his eyes. She’d never really thought he had.
‘He’s still a coward though,’ she said, in an effort to retain some grudge.
Mary gave a sort of yawning sigh. ‘He’s a Quaker and them’s pacifists. You know that. He’s entitled to his beliefs.’
Isis knew she should drop the subject, but she was in a fidget of irritation at Mary’s refusal to hear a bad word about Mr Patey. ‘Uncle Victor’s no pacifist, he’s a hero with a medal,’ she said.
‘And don’t we all know it,’ Mary muttered, adding, ‘Give it another moment to brew,’ as Isis lifted the pot. ‘There’s heroes and there’s heroes.’
‘Even Mr Burgess went to war,’ Isis said. ‘Did you know he lost his brothers as well as his fingers? What if everyone in England was a pacifist? Where would we be then?’ She was proud of this argument, that she’d once heard Evelyn voicing. ‘A colony of Prussia,’ she added more uncertainly. ‘Ruled by the blessed hun.’
‘Get on with you and pour that tea,’ said Mary.
IT WAS SO peculiar to take another person into Little Egypt, I cannot tell you. It was like opening a door in my skull and letting someone into my brain to tramp their boots and jab their elbows, to spy and judge the murk. I nearly changed my mind, but Spike was right behind me, eager to get in. The hail was rattling down, he was wet and I needed help, I did need help. And so did Osi. I had to put him first.
So I opened the door into the scullery, left my trolley there, and led Spike into the kitchen. And I saw it through his eyes, dim and cold with all the rubbish, my brown toothbrush on the table beside the sleeping Nine, who was curled up on a dirty plate; an old game of patience (arrested halfway through and stuck forever by food spills to the table); a slither of papers; a puff of hair pulled from my brush adhering to spilled egg yolk; a mouldy jam jar crawling with flies, and indeed yes, now that I was tuned in to it, quite a drone of flies. You get used to such sounds in your own place until they do not register. In any case they sound like thoughts, the thoughts that happen as a backdrop to your mind; passive thinking they would call it nowadays. Yes, that has the drone of flies.
Spike stood with hailstones melting and dripping off him. ‘Jeez,’ was all he said. He reached out to stroke Nine, but she spat at him and he withdrew his hand.
‘Not used to company,’ I said. ‘I call her Nine, really she’s Cleo number nine, the ninth generation or dynasty, but I keep clear of anything Egyptian.’
Spike eyed me warily.
‘Perhaps a cup of tea then?’ I suggested. I saw him looking at the stove top where sat the heavily encrusted kettle. My hands were trembling as I filled it. Behind me Spike had cleared a space on the table and was putting my groceries there. ‘Where’s the ice box?’ he said.
I thought he said icehouse, and I started, dropping the caddy so that it bounced away.
‘Refrigerator?’ he supplied, sensing my confusion.
‘Just put it in the pantry,’ I told him, hiding my face as I bent to grope for the ruddy caddy.
‘Jeez,’ he said again when he went inside the pantry.
Now, I know there are things in there that have gone vastly past their sell-by date. I expect that’s where the smell comes from – and the flies. Curious how I hadn’t noticed the flies, but now that I was aware I saw that there were piles of them on the windowsill, dead or dying, and plenty more buzzing wirily around. It was all rather embarrassing. And it struck me like a blow: what on earth would Mary say that I had let her kitchen get in such a state?
‘What about a Bacardi Breezer?’ I suggested, hand not steady enough to deal with tea.
‘Sure,’ he said, lifting his eyebrows – studs and all.
There were two bottles of the blue variety in the pantry and he had the caps off in no time and was taking a copious swallow.
After I’d retrieved the caddy I straightened up and looked at him. Within the setting of my kitchen he appeared smaller, diminished, you might say, younger and rather pale.
‘Are you quite well?’ I said.
‘Not used to being . . .’ He waved his hand around. ‘Inside.’ He spoke as if he was trying to avoid breathing through his nose.
‘Where do you sleep then?’ Curious that I had never thought to ask.
‘I have somewhere,’ he said. ‘A bender in the woods.’
‘A bender?’
‘
Tent,’ he said. ‘Kinda like a tent, made of branches and carpets – hey, you don’t have an old rug or two to spare?’
‘Take what you like,’ I said.
‘Sure?’ He looked dubiously about him.
‘You can’t sleep outside all winter, dear, surely?’
‘A couple extra rugs would be good.’
‘What do your parents think of your life-style?’
He flinched and seemed to shrink still further. Next to the virulent blue of the drink his eyes were drained of colour.
‘My folks are on a different planet,’ he began. He told me that his parents were tight-assed Republicans, how all they cared about was money and appearances. They had sent him over to grad school before he joined the family firm. He’d argued with his father on the phone, dropped out of his course and been living outside of all the shit (his word) ever since. He began to trot out his anarchist manifesto, which I’d heard before, but I could scarcely listen. My heart was like a grasshopper in my chest and my breath thin and thread-like. It was a worry that I might go first and then where would Osi be? Keeping him safely tucked away had been my life’s work and I could not let him down now, not so near the end.
‘Drink up,’ I said. I forced in some air before I added, ‘Oh by the way, I’m not alone.’
He paused mid-swig.
‘I am a twin,’ I said.
He eyed me cautiously.
‘I have a twin brother,’ I elaborated.
He nodded, taking this in. ‘Is he still . . . I mean, where?’
‘Upstairs.’ I had to steady myself against the table. ‘Would you like to meet him?’
He finished the drink and banged the bottle down. ‘That’s OK,’ he said, as if about to take his leave.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t go, not yet.’
‘Got to get on the road,’ he said (by which he meant stand by the road and stick his thumb out till some ‘sucker’ as he called them, picked him up. I thought that an ungrateful way of putting it. But anyone who lived in ‘the system’ was a sucker to Spike and I’ll admit to being flattered that he didn’t count me amongst their numbers. But now he’d seen the conditions in which I lived, I could see that he was shaken. Even operating outside the system, it seems he had his standards!).
Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Page 6