Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction)

by Lesley Glaister

  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 stairs.

  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?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ He swallowed his brandy in one gulp and grimaced. ‘Poor show. Get Mary to order Cognac next time. Around and about, don’t you know? I posted the letter.’

  It took me a moment even to remember what he meant.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, wrinkling his nose at his glass, ‘what I’d really like is a cup of tea. Any cake?’

  I shook my head. ‘You look tired,’ I said. ‘Have you come to stay?’ My eyes kept going to the door; any moment Osi might come in and give the game away.

  Victor sipped his drink and nodded. ‘Thought I’d put up here for a day or two.’ Elbows on the table, he sagged his head into his hands. He looked grey, exhausted, scoops of shadow under his eyes and the light gleaming on the bony ridges of his eye sockets and the thin bridge of his nose. He looked uncannily like Osi had done as he sat in the same chair an hour before, shattered by his gruesome task.

  I filled the kettle and put it on the stove.

  ‘I’ll just get these out of the way.’ I scooped up armfuls of bandages and carried them upstairs. I kicked the nursery door till Osi opened it, and shoved them into his arms.

  ‘Victor’s here,’ I said. ‘Don’t come down. I’ll bring your food up. We’ll have to wait till he’s asleep. I’ll keep him busy till then.’

  He darted me a startled look before I shut the door.

  Victor was absorbed in reading one of the old newspapers. He’d mo
ved nearer the stove, and I was glad to see he’d topped up his brandy. I watched his eyelids grow heavy and the nod of his head as he kept approaching the precipice of sleep, but always he pulled back. When the potatoes were ready, I slavered them in butter, pepper – there was no salt – and shared them between three plates. I took a plate up to Osi, and watched Victor shovel his down. He left the skin, as usual, and I put on more butter and rolled it into a delicious tube. I thought it quite a marvel that part of me could stay hungry and normal when I knew what was going on upstairs.

  ‘Cup of tea, Icy?’ Victor asked. I’d managed to deflect him so far, afraid that tea might perk him up, but now I had an idea. Some of Mary’s headache powders were on the kitchen windowsill. She rarely took them since they knocked the stuffing out her, she said. I bleated feebly as the horribly apt expression entered my mind.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ I waited till he’d looked back at the paper before I unfolded a dose of powders and sprinkled it into his tea. I wondered about giving him two, to make sure, but didn’t want to kill him. And then I filled a hot-water bottle.

  ‘Why don’t you get cosy in bed?’ I said. ‘You can take your tea up. You do look tired, Victor, what you want’s a good night’s kip.’

  He was sitting forward in such a way that he could lean his weight on his jumping leg, and he looked up at me with a weary twist of humour. ‘Quite the little housekeeper, aren’t you, Icy? When you’re not going round spreading slander.’

  It was as if I’d been slapped. ‘I said I was sorry,’ I muttered.

  He got to his feet with a stagger. I put the hot-water bottle into his arms and he carried it upstairs, while I followed with his cup of tea.

  On the landing, beside the attic door, he paused. ‘Perhaps I should go up and see Mary,’ he said.

  ‘She won’t thank you,’ I told him. The tea was spilling into the saucer with the tremble in my hands. I could sense Osi frozen by our voices behind the nursery door. ‘Have your tea first,’ I urged. ‘Honestly, she just wants to be left alone.’

  The tea cup rattled on its saucer as he stood swaying, undecided, on the landing.

  ‘I’ll pop up later,’ I said. ‘Bed for you.’

  To my enormous relief he shrugged and followed me to the Blue Room, where I turned down the sheets and put the hot bottle where his feet would go. My eyes were darting round looking for the key so that I could lock him in. He’d never know; I’d unlock it before morning. But there was no sign of the key. He shucked off his outer clothes and in his long wool underwear collapsed onto the mattress. I pulled the covers up and as I tucked him in I was overcome with a convulsion of grief as I remembered all the times Mary had tucked me in snug as a bug, all those times, and now she was no no, no, no.

  I doubled over as if someone had slammed me in the stomach. But pull yourself together she was saying, her voice lodged inside my head where it always was and where it has stayed. And I did pull myself together. I took a deep breath and straightened up and turned back to see that Victor was oblivious.

  ‘Drink up,’ I said and watched as he propped himself half upright to take a sip of tea, screwing up his face at the taste.

  ‘It’s a new blend Mary chose,’ I said. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s cold,’ is all he said, swigged the rest of it back and handed me the cup.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘Now you’ll sleep the sleep of the just.’

  ‘Just what?’ he said with a weary smile. He yawned and lay down. ‘Night night, Icy.’

  ‘Night night,’ I said. ‘Bugs bite and so on.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  I would have been curious to wait and see how long it took him to get to sleep, but I crept out and shut the door firmly behind me. The brandy and the drug would surely do the job of a key, and keep him there till we were finished.

  28

  THE NURSERY LIGHT was poor and dim, draining everything of colour. I drew the curtains across the frosty black of the windows. Osi was kneeling by the corpse, trembling, his face grey. He looked almost elderly.

  ‘We wrap the head first,’ he said.

  The body was messily sewn, with wiry stuffing poking between the stitches on her abdomen.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  He nodded at his little armchair and I saw he’d pulled some of the horsehair stuffing out. ‘It should have been salt,’ he said.

  ‘Needs must,’ I said in Mary’s voice, and winced.

  Her eyelids were held down with coins and her face was quite blank as if she had no opinion about what was happening to her. She was drained of any Maryness, but for the wild spring of her hair. I tried to get a brush through it but it was too snarled and I could not bear the thought that all the snagging and tugging would cause her pain.

  ‘Come on then,’ I said.

  He knelt by her head and lifted it, quite tenderly, while I passed a ribbon of sheet underneath and wound it round.

  ‘Tighter,’ he said. ‘It must be firm.’ My instinct was to be gentle. I didn’t want to squash her nose, but I obeyed him and pulled it tight, finding myself grateful as the features flattened and disappeared. Together we wrapped the head until it was a blank wad of white, a landscape hidden under snow, and once that was done the task grew easier, except when it came to her hands.

  I chose the thinnest sheeting, for the delicate business of wrapping the fingers – strong, scarred and so familiar they might as well have been my own. As I wrapped I remembered all the things they’d done: the stroking of hair, the patching of grazes, the drying of tears, the wiping of noses, the pinching of pie crust, the podding of peas, the loving of Gordon Jefferson – and perhaps of Mr Patey.

  By the time we’d moved onto the legs and body I’d almost stopped thinking and we were working together in a smooth, efficient rhythm. Osi kept up a murmur of Egyptian spells and I kept my lips pressed together tight, concentrating on making Mary safe and neat. Between the layers, Osi slipped pictures of amulets to make Mary safe on her journey, a journey in which I was almost starting to believe.

  I became so engrossed that I didn’t hear Victor moving about and it was too late to hide what we were doing when the door flew open.

  ‘Icy,’ he was saying, ‘where’s the –’ and then he stopped. He looked at the part-wrapped body on the floor and at Osi and at me. He took in the canopic jars and the pile of grave goods and the blood-stained rug.

  ‘It’s Mary,’ Osi said and I actually thought I saw the hairs rise on Victor’s head, as his eyes stretched wide and his hands went to his mouth and he began to scream.

  ‘Uncle Victor,’ I jumped up, my legs all cramped from kneeling for so long, and tried to get hold of him, but he flailed away from me. He would not stop screaming and staring so wide and hard that I thought his eyes would surely fall from their sockets. It was the scream from his nightmares, only now he was awake and what could be worse for his nerves than a waking nightmare? It seemed to wake me too from the strange lull I’d entered and all the energy ran out of me. I wondered feebly if I could get him back to bed and we could pretend it was all a dream, but that would be impossible.

  ‘Please, Victor,’ I said. ‘Please, come on, let’s get out of here.’

  Eventually he calmed down enough to allow me to hold his arm and guide him out of the nursery. I shut the door behind us with my foot.

  ‘What have you done?’ he said. ‘I can’t believe my eyes, I . . .’ His head was doing the spastic jerk and his entire body shuddering. ‘You!’ He recoiled from my attempts to hold him, and ripped his arm away from me. ‘You Isis, you!’

  ‘You’re cold,’ I said, making my voice as level as possible. And I found that I was shivering too. Strange how I had been suspended from my own discomfort during the wrapping of Mary and I had lost track of time – hours must have passed. I ran to the Blue Room
and fetched his medication, came back and handed him a pill. He stared at it, before he sighed and swallowed it in a dry gulp.

  I started down the stairs. ‘Come on, Victor,’ I said. ‘If you’re not going back to bed, let’s get you a stiffener.’

  He stood at the top of the stairs looking down with a dull space where his eyes should be, awful twitching spasms running through him. There was an animal stench of fear. ‘Come on,’ I urged and at last he did follow me down and into the kitchen. I poured a brandy and wrapped his coat round his shoulders. I fed the greedy stove, and then I knelt before him, held his hand and explained what had happened.

  He listened quietly at first, but then the horror rose in him once more. ‘Blood and guts,’ he yelled. ‘But this is here.’ He waved his arm wildly. ‘Not in here.’ He punched himself on the side of his head so hard I thought he’d knock himself out.

  ‘Don’t.’ I grabbed his head and held it tight and looked into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have seen it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have seen it!’ He spat out a laugh.

  ‘What could I do, though?’ I said. ‘I thought if anyone saw her like that they’d think Osi killed her. I have to look after him.’

  I let go of Victor and he folded in on himself, rocking and mumbling. Cleo was sitting by the door, eyeing him warily and when I opened it she fled into the scullery. Victor hadn’t touched the brandy and I took a sip of it myself and felt a calming as it ran hotly through me. I put a hand on his shoulder to let some of the calm stream down my arm and into him, and I do believe it soothed him, just a bit. It was four o’clock in the morning, I noticed. I had never been up at that time before.

  ‘Do you see?’ I said.

  ‘Mary,’ he murmured. ‘Lovely Mary.’

  ‘I know.’ I had to brace myself against a fresh flood of knowing that this was real: that that thing upstairs was really Mary.