Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction)

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’d better go and see my brother.’

  ‘Take a sweetie for him,’ Mrs Grievous said. ‘Take the bag, I’ve got a supply.’

  Isis accepted the crumpled paper bag and went down into the gloomy, vomit-smelling cabin where Osi was busy straining his eyes over his diary. She put the barley sugars down and spat the taste into the basin. There was a bulge in her throat as if she needed to cry, but she spat some more and cleaned her teeth instead. In the cramped cabin she felt grotesquely huge, and the babyishness that Mrs Grievous brought out in her seemed shameful and absurd.

  ‘Why not come up for some fresh air?’ she said.

  Osi frowned and sucked the bristles of his brush into a point, leaving his lips smeared blue.

  ‘You can see gulls up there and the sea and Uncle Victor following a lady around – who’s no better than she should be,’ she added, wishing urgently for Mary.

  Gazing at her blankly, Osi dipped his brush into the black. He had his tongue trapped between his teeth as he worked on a pictogram: an eye, delicate and elongated. She thought about him painting the inside of the icehouse. He must have spent hours down there, daubing on the walls, playing with his revolting dead things. It made her shudder. He did. She had not quite forgiven him for Dixie and the thought of that tightly-wrapped little skittle brought back her nausea.

  Besides, it was too stuffy and annoying to stay in the cabin and she slammed the door as she went out and climbed back up onto the deck, legs weary on the stairs, the way she expected an old person’s legs might feel. Victor had got Melissa sitting down now and was leaning into her, saying something in French. The scar was hidden by a tartan scarf, and his elbow was casually pressing down on the knee of his trembling leg.

  ‘Will you play cards with me?’ Isis took the pack from her pocket and waved it between them.

  ‘Not now.’ Victor plucked two cigarettes from his case and fitted one into Melissa’s silvery holder.

  ‘Quoits?’

  ‘Run along.’

  ‘Charades?’ Though she knew this was ridiculous.

  Melissa put the cigarette holder between her painted lips and dipped forwards as Victor clicked his lighter behind a cupped hand. She took a deep draw of her cigarette and smiled. ‘Poor kid’s bored,’ she said. She pulled Isis close to her silky knees and petted her hair. She smelled of strong violets and smoke. ‘I’ll tell you what, dearie,’ she said, and from her bag she pulled a book. ‘This is a good one, a little racy . . .’ She eyed Victor for his reaction, which was none.

  ‘Thank you.’ Isis gave up on them and took the book away. Out of the corner of her eye, as she walked on the sunny side of the deck, she saw Mrs Grievous beckoning, but she pretended not to see and went round to the port side where there was no sun and it was beastly cold. Mrs Grievous felt the cold, she always said, and only sat out in the sun for the sake of her health, so she was unlikely to follow Isis here. Someone had left a blanket on a seat and Isis snuggled into it and looked at the book. Salamander Summer, it was called, and there was a man with a black moustache and a lady with her dress coming off her pearly shoulder.

  Isis read a page or two, but she wasn’t it the mood for reading. She put down the book, rolled herself up like a sausage in the blanket and lay flat on her back on the bench, looking up at parts of the ship that she couldn’t name and at the sky, pale blue like the sherry glasses at home, shading to lampshade white. She stared and stared at the blue, keeping her eyes wide open, not even allowing a blink, till they started to water and to close of their own accord. This she found a good method of getting to sleep – and after all, there was nothing else to do.

  She let her eyes close and drifted back to the kitchen to teach Mary how to play cribbage – she could ask for a cribbage board for Christmas. Or perhaps Victor – or Arthur – would buy her one in Cairo. If they have even games like that in Egypt. She’d enjoy explaining how you do the counting, the lovely orderly rows of holes that you jump the matchsticks over when you count, so you always know just where you are, and where your opponent is too.

  If only Mary would still be there when they got back and not run off with Mr Patey.

  She saw a darkening through her eyelids and opened them to see Mr Grievous looming above her, and she sat up quick, smart, almost banging her head against his, which had been far too close.

  ‘You all right?’ He eased down beside her and took out his pipe.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  He rapped his pipe on the edge of the bench till the sticky dottle came out.

  She struggled out of the blanket and put her feet on the deck. He had shoes with a pattern of holes like in the cribbage board, only swirly, and all the holes were full of flour, or maybe Mrs Grievous’ talcum powder.

  ‘Rather nippy this side,’ he said. ‘Why not go and sit in the sun?’

  ‘I just felt like . . .’ It took her a moment to find the right word. ‘Solitude.’

  Mr Grievous hooted, then straightened his face. His moustache was so black it must be dyed, and his teeth were beastly yellow.

  ‘Solitude,’ he repeated. ‘I like that. What’s your age?’

  ‘Nearly fifteen,’ she lied.

  ‘Don’t look it,’ he said, eyeing her.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away.

  ‘You know we’re saying toodle-oo at Marseilles?’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning, that is.’

  ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Maisie has formed quite a soft spot for you,’ he said, adding, ‘poor old fool.’

  ‘She’s good at cribbage,’ she said.

  He snorted.

  ‘Well, I must be going.’ She stood to leave, but he grabbed her hand. His was hard and warm and squeezed her chilly bones until they nearly hurt.

  ‘Did she tell you why we’re going to Marseilles?’

  ‘It’s where your boy lives.’ She stood as far away from him as possible, her arm stretched till it felt as if it would pull right out of her shoulder.

  ‘She’s going to say goodbye. She’s dying, you know.’

  ‘She’s not!’ Isis said. ‘She’s perfectly all right.’

  ‘A few weeks, at most. We won’t be going back to Blighty. Not together, at any rate.’

  Isis stared at him, his moist eyes and moustache and the bundles of hair crammed in his nostrils that surely must made it hard to breathe.

  ‘Won’t you go and sit with her?’ he said. ‘She’s taken such a shine.’ He let her hand go and she staggered backwards.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, recovering her balance.

  The sea was growing rougher as she made her way back to the sunny side, where Mrs Grievous was still seated, blanket-wrapped, eyes closed. Isis held her breath and crept close. The slack flesh either side of her face had drooped and the folds were caked in orange stuff. The eyelids were blurred with green, but you could still see the blood vessels. She thought of the crossness of dead George’s face. Mrs Grievous had no expression, her face was merely slack. Sensing her presence, Mrs Grievous opened her eyes. At once her face stretched into a smile. ‘It’s my little angel,’ she said.

  ‘Shall we have a game?’ said Isis.

  ‘Of course! I thought you’d forgotten me.’ Mrs Grievous reached into her bag for her cribbage board. As she did so she coughed and Isis heard a rumble deep in her chest, like thunder a long way away that you know is growing closer. Mrs Grievous dabbed her mouth with a hanky and pulled out a box of Turkish Delight, big squares of pink, dusted in icing sugar.

  ‘Look what I’ve got, just for my favourite girl.’

  Isis accepted a piece and the powder fluttered down the front of her coat. There was nowhere to put it but in her mouth. As Mrs Grievous dealt the cards on her lap, Isis’ teeth dug into the squashy sweetness. She could n
ot look at the fleshy pendulums on Mrs Grievous’ neck, or the icing sugar on her lips, but stared instead at her hands, writhing with swollen veins, like a tangle of worms. She had to swallow hard to make the sweet goo slide down her throat.

  Victor and Melissa came staggering by, her hand tucked in his arm, his face flushed with success.

  ‘Hello!’ Isis called.

  ‘Windy enough for you?’ Melissa pulled up the furry collar of her jacket. She shrieked and giggled as a gust of wind lifted the edge of her skirt.

  ‘Weather’s closing in,’ Victor said, shading his eyes with his hand and looking out to sea as if he was an expert.

  Melissa was studying Isis’ face. ‘Come and play quoits, dearie?’ she said.

  Victor looked at her with surprise.

  ‘Mind if we steal the kiddie away?’ Melissa asked Mrs Grievous.

  Isis jumped up, too eagerly, scattering her cards. ‘Would you mind awfully?’ she said.

  ‘No, you run along,’ Mrs Grievous said.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ Isis promised and hurried across the tilting deck to take Melissa’s outstretched hand. But it was really too rough for quoits; anyone could see that. Big clouds had boiled up out of nowhere and soon there was the spiteful, sideways spit of rain.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ Victor said, as his quoit was caught in a gust and almost blown overboard.

  ‘Fancy a stiffener instead? Melissa asked, and she and Uncle Victor went below clutching each other and giggling. Isis wandered back to Mrs Grievous, but her seat was empty and the whole deck deserted now. Isis clung to the rail watching the struggle and surge of the waves until she was chilled to her bones.

  In their cabin, she found Osi flat on his back, hieroglyphs abandoned, eyes shut tight, a bucket sliding to and fro on the floor beside his bunk. She climbed the ladder to the top bunk, got under the covers and strained her eyes over Salamander Summer. She could taste the lingering rosiness of the Turkish Delight and felt an uneasy squashiness in her stomach as the man and lady – whom she pictured as Victor and Melissa – kissed.

  The storm had died down by the time the ship berthed in Marseilles in the early hours of the morning. Isis stayed in her bunk listening to the clanks and shouts, till she was certain that disembarkation was underway. She got up to the deck in time to see Mr and Mrs Grievous make their slow way down the gangplank. Mrs Grievous stopped and looked back, searching for Isis, and Isis waved her handkerchief. She waved till the couple disappeared amongst the crowds on the quayside – and then she stayed at the rail till the gangplank was pulled in, watching the wheeling of the gulls above the bilgy harbour water.

  And then Uncle Victor was beside her, face raw from shaving, eyes red and glassy. ‘That old duck was looking for you,’ he told her, ‘and she asked me to give you this.’ He handed her the drum of Turkish Delight, thin wood with a picture of a veiled dancer on the lid.

  Later, when they were out to sea again, Isis lifted the wooden lid and watched the breeze swirl an icing sugar ghost into the sky. And then she took the sweet and fleshy lumps and one by one she threw them to the gulls.

  10

  AT PORT SAID, Osi came alive. The stink and roar of the harbour drew him, pale and blinking, into the daylight, and opened his mouth to a stream of facts. Victor snapped at him to pipe down and Isis was made sorry enough by his crestfallen expression to say, ‘Tell me about the Ptolemaic Temples again,’ and to pay attention for 5 minutes.

  Once they were on solid ground and out of the ship-board breeze, the heat was glorious, like nothing Isis had known before – or like the lovely heat of the bath where every bit of you can move and relax and you feel as if you could grow an inch all round.

  Melissa was going to work in Alexandria, and she and Victor kissed goodbye on the quayside where a taxi was waiting to carry her away. The kiss was the long sort on the mouth and Isis saw a man look daggers as he went past and spit on the ground, but Victor and Melissa didn’t care. Uncle Victor emerged from the kiss with red smeared round his mouth, his whole face damp and swollen.

  Victor took the children to the Hotel Cecil, where they were to meet the guides who would take them to Evelyn and Arthur. They strolled through an avenue of towering palms to enter the hotel, and sat in a cool, mirrored lobby drinking crushed lemon with ice and sugar you could spoon in yourself, as much as you liked. In her greed, Isis made her own drink rather too sugary, even for her own sweet tooth. Victor drank beer and ordered a plate of sandwiches. It was quiet in the hotel after the noisy quay, and Isis shook her head as if to dislodge water in her ears. Osi was staring with his mouth agape at the frieze of hieroglyphs that ran round the walls.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘I expect it’s decoration,’ said Victor.

  ‘But it’s not proper. It’s not right. It should be right.’

  ‘No matter.’ Victor raised his eyebrows at Isis.

  The sandwiches came stuck together with cocktail sticks. As Victor unspeared his sandwiches, Isis collected the sticks, which would do very well for her cribbage board.

  ‘You’ve still got lipstick on you,’ she told Victor. She pointed to the place and with a thick cotton napkin he wiped the last trace of Melissa away.

  ‘Are you sad to say goodbye?’ Isis said, examining him for signs of being love-lorn. ‘When you write her a letter, can I add a line?’

  Uncle Victor shook his head. ‘She’s not the type you write to,’ he said.

  ‘What type would you write to, then?’

  His answer was a scowl and she saw his leg was jumping. Well, even if he didn’t, she would to write to Melissa. When they’d said goodbye, Melissa had crushed Isis against her thin silky dress so that she could feel the complications of flesh and straps and smell violets, smoke and sweat. The pale fluff on her face had been clouded with perspiration and her feet squashed much too tight into high-heeled sandals. You could see the clefts between her chubby toes pressed tight together by the shiny leather. Isis was fascinated by the way her body was there, hidden by her clothes, but still shouting here I am, while most people’s bodies were simply hidden and gave you no cause to think about them. Victor had certainly kissed Melissa in the dark of the cabin and perhaps been allowed to move aside the straps and silk to see and touch her pearly, naked skin.

  Victor lit a cigarette and Isis left him alone and nibbled a sandwich, egg with cress, wondering if he was putting on a brave face. He’d certainly seemed extremely sweet on Melissa. When Isis had returned Salamander Summer, Melissa had given her another book: Desert Longing, and said that she could regard it as a parting gift.

  ‘Eat your sandwich,’ she said to Osi, and without taking his eyes off the wall, he reached out and she watched as the cocktail stick spiked him up the nostril. She sniggered and he swung his leg and caught her on the shin. It really hurt and mortifying tears jumped into her eyes.

  ‘Don’t kick me,’ she yelled.

  Osi stuck out his tongue, clotted with half-chewed sandwich.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Uncle Victor snapped. Isis rubbed her shin and looked round, but there was no one taking any notice, only the brown man who had brought their food and drinks standing with his back to the door, a perfectly neutral expression on his face.

  The sandwich had a funny taste, something was different, the kind of egg or butter or cress or something, and it wasn’t quite nice. But still she finished one and reached for another. Osi had discarded his cocktail stick, but she left it, not wanting one that had been up his nose.

  Victor had had another beer and smoked two more cigarettes before the guides arrived. One of them was old, one young, both dressed in white jellabas over dark trousers.

  ‘I’m Haru,’ the younger man said, extending his hand to Victor, who was in the act of unfolding himself from a low chair. ‘I apologise for our lateness. This,’ he stood back and gestur
ed to the older man, ‘is my Uncle Akil, he’s a cook and a very fine one too, though his English is not so good.’ Haru’s English was perfect and only faintly accented. Both men were bearded and wore skullcaps, and sandals that revealed their naked, dusty toes.

  ‘Why should it be?’ Isis said kindly. ‘I don’t speak a syllable of your language.’

  Haru smiled. ‘You must be Isis. And Osiris. Grand names! Welcome.’ His teeth were startlingly white against his coffee-coloured lips and the thick black of his beard, and his eyes shone damson dark. His smile flashed on and off like the beacon of a lighthouse, and when it was off he looked rather frightening.

  Victor and Haru moved towards the hotel doors to converse about the journey south, and Osi followed, rummaging through his satchel, to show Haru something. Isis remained at the table finishing the rest of the sandwiches and sipping Victor’s abandoned beer. Akil had stayed just where he was, face to the floor and so it was safe to stare. It seemed queer to have a cook who was a man. She had a pang thinking of Mary all alone in Little Egypt where it would be so cold. How she would enjoy this warmth. One day they should bring her here, to this hotel where people would serve her with drinks and sandwiches and she wouldn’t have to lift a blessed finger nor skivvy in any perishing kitchen while she was at it. Isis smiled. Though Mary liked to say perishing kitchen, it was really the warmest place in the house.

  Akil’s small black cap perched on hair like wire wool and there was a deep scar on one side of his face that dragged his eyebrow down over half his eye and pulled his mouth out of line. How did you do it? she longed to ask. It could have been a fight, or even an attack by a lion. Or maybe, like Victor, he’d been in the war. Was Egypt in the war? She didn’t even know that. Akil’s skin was thick leathery brown, so unlike the pearly stuff Melissa was covered in, or the flaking slackness of Mrs Grievous’, who might be dead by now. A rosy taste filled her mouth at the thought of that poor old duck and she swallowed more of the sour, flat beer.