Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Read online

  ‘What beauties,’ Victor said. ‘Bit lost in here though, eh?’

  The drawing room was only used when Evelyn and Arthur were home and Mary had already swathed all the furniture in dustsheets so that the poor creatures were surrounded by nothing but hulking white shrouds.

  Isis made kissy noises through the bars and the birds moved away from her with disconcerted chitters and huddled together in a puff of feathers. ‘I hate to see birds in a cage though,’ she said. ‘You’ll never guess what Osi’s gone and called them.’

  ‘Something Egyptian at a wild stab?’

  ‘Rameses and Nefertari,’ Isis said. ‘Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?’

  ‘You could call them something else,’ Victor pointed out. ‘They’re hardly going to know the difference.’

  ‘Mary was livid,’ Isis told him, and mimicking Mary’s voice: ‘What we need’s a new tutor for the twins, someone else to help about the house, a lad to help George in the garden and what do they come up with? A couple of blasted budgies!’

  ‘Fair point,’ Victor said.

  ‘Thing is, Uncle Victor . . .’ Isis took his arm again. She didn’t know how to put it, not quite. ‘I worry that Osi . . . that he might . . . get them.’

  Victor frowned. ‘Don’t catch your drift.’

  But Isis stopped. One of the budgies and then the other began to cheep, hard chips of glassy noise that rattled against her teeth.

  ‘Lunch,’ called Mary.

  ‘Coming,’ Isis yelled back, sending the birds into a frenzy.

  She knew she should not worry Victor. Anyway, she had a plan to keep the budgies safe.

  At the table, Isis noticed how the spoon shook in Victor’s hand, and as he moved his head, the silk cravat slipped down to reveal a scar, like a livid bacon rasher sizzled to the side of his neck. Dizzied, she put down her spoon. The soup was too thin with the water Mary had added to make it stretch. Peas and cubes of carrot floated on the surface. It was a grudging soup – you could always tell Mary’s mood from the way her food came out.

  Victor was trying to have a conversation with Osi. ‘Been out and about?’ he said.

  Slurping, Osi shook his head.

  ‘Have a fine time when the folks were home?’

  Osi nodded eagerly and opened his mouth to tell him all about Herihor, but Victor held up his hand and grinned at Isis, almost like his old self for a moment. ‘No Egypt over lunch, if you don’t mind old chap?’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Isis.

  Osi scowled at her. ‘Have you got your medal with you?’ he asked Victor. ‘Why aren’t you wearing it?’

  ‘Prefer to leave all that behind me.’

  Isis saw that the tablecloth was jumping where he sat. He saw her looking. ‘My bally leg,’ he said, a note of panic in his voice. ‘It jerks and jumps, I can’t . . .’ He was leaning on it and pressing with all his weight.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Isis said. ‘Have a slice of ham, Cleo’s having kittens, perhaps you’d like one? There’s dates in the pantry, Mary makes a lovely date and walnut loaf but she says there’s enough dates there to last us till judgement day . . .’

  Victor snorted dryly. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘No need to gabble.’ But he continued to press down on his leg and pushed his soup aside. He said nothing more and they sat in silence except for Osi’s terrible slurping.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of me,’ Victor said at last. ‘Didn’t mean to be so sharp.’

  ‘It’s quite all right! After luncheon perhaps we could go for a walk? Or perhaps a drive? It’s a lovely motor Osi, you should go and look.’

  Mary came in, pushing the door with her hip and carrying a bowl and jug. ‘I’ve resurrected a bit of stewed apple for you, and there’s cream,’ she said. ‘And I expect you’d like some coffee.’

  ‘And a spot of brandy,’ Victor added.

  ‘Very good, Sir.’ The door banged a little too emphatically as she went out and Isis darted a look at Victor to see if he minded, and saw that his eyes had gone lost again, and cloudy.

  ‘It seems unfair of Evelyn not to wait and see me,’ he said. ‘It was an arrangement.’ His leg began jumping again.

  ‘They’d booked their passage,’ Isis said. ‘Will you take some apples? And she really was upset to miss you.’

  ‘Nothing’s as important as their blessed expedition though,’ said Victor.

  ‘No,’ agreed Isis. ‘Never.’

  Osi pulled a gruesome face at her. He was eating with his mouth open as usual and she saw the churn of apples on his tongue. ‘Don’t be so putrid,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid then.’

  ‘I’d rather be stupid than putrid and anyway I’m neither.’

  ‘Are.’

  ‘Not.’ This was unspeakably childish but Isis could not help it. ‘You bloody idiot,’ she said.

  ‘Now then.’ Victor’s face had gone ghastly grey. He picked up a spoon but it dropped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. He bent to retrieve it but couldn’t reach. He was half under the table, contorted, arm stretched out towards the spoon, panting with frustrated exertion – as if it mattered!

  When she bobbed beneath the edge of the tablecloth to retrieve it for him, Isis saw how his leg was jumping and caught the awful frightened tang of his sweat. ‘Forget the blasted spoon,’ she said as she emerged. Her heart flowed out to him, this ruined man, her uncle. ‘Oh Victor I’m so sorry about your neck,’ she blurted. ‘About your leg, poor Victor.’

  He gulped, jaw twitching, his whole being trembling with the effort of control, but it was too much. Something in him broke apart and he began to shake. Tears spurted shockingly from his eyes and Isis darted a panicked look at Osi, but he was concentrating on spooning up his apple.

  ‘Osi! Wake up you fool!’ she shouted.

  Victor began to jerk all over now as if he was having a fit.

  ‘Mary!’ Isis yelled. ‘Mary!’ and she ran towards the kitchen where she collided with Mary who was carrying a coffee tray.

  ‘Lord above, what’s got into you!’

  ‘Quick. Victor’s gone berserk.’ Isis took the tray so that Mary could hurry.

  ‘Mr Carlton,’ Mary said, having to shout above the noise he was making now, a frightful, inhuman yowling. ‘Captain Carlton. You’re upsetting the twins.’

  She got hold of one of his hands and when she got no response, his shoulders. ‘Captain Carlton!’ She shook him until he met her eyes, his all red and flinching. ‘Come now,’ Mary said. ‘Come to the kitchen with me and we’ll see if we can’t get you calmed down.’ Victor was gasping as if he couldn’t get his breath, but he consented to go with Mary and she flicked a look of alarm at Isis as she led him out.

  ‘Osi!’ Isis went and shook him.

  ‘Not my fault,’ he said, staring at his empty bowl.

  ‘No of course not but . . .’ Sometimes I could kill you, she thought. ‘How can you just carry on eating? Don’t you care?’

  ‘Finished now,’ he said, got up and left the room.

  2

  LATER, ISIS CREPT along the corridor to listen at the door of the Blue Room where Mary had settled Victor for a rest, but there was nothing to hear and she went down to the kitchen.

  ‘Is he staying the night?’ she asked.

  Mary was whipping butter and sugar together as if she was punishing it. ‘Can’t send him off in that state, can we?’

  ‘You making a cake?’

  ‘He’ll have to have something for his tea.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Guess. What’s he doing visiting just when they’ve gone? That’s what I want to know, and if you ask me he’s in no fit state to be out and about.’

  ‘Date loaf?’

  Mary harrumphed.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Isis said. />
  ‘You can break a couple of eggs for me,’ Mary said. ‘Your fault? How do you make that out?’

  Isis picked up an egg and tapped it on the side of a basin.

  ‘Harder than that.’ Mary took the egg from her hand and gave it a sharp crack so that it split obediently, its contents slithering into the bowl. ‘And don’t be daft. It’s the war that sent him, not you!’

  Isis went back upstairs and listened outside the Blue Room. In hospital Victor had had treatment with electric shocks, but now he only needed to take pills when he had an episode. Mary had made him dose himself and he was sleeping it off and mustn’t be disturbed.

  Isis wandered along to the nursery door and there was Osi with his books. He didn’t even look up. I might as well be a ghost, she thought, and imagined skimming over the worn carpets and the creaky floorboards. There must be ghosts here, of the people who’d lived in the house before – maybe of people who lived here before the house was even built – but they were discreet ghosts and never bothered anyone.

  Little Egypt was miles from anywhere – ten from the nearest village. Isis dimly remembered when they used to go there – the grocer’s, the church, a pub, stocks on the village green where people had been pelted with rotten vegetables in the olden days. But now that Evelyn and Arthur were so set on their mission they were always away and the outings had stopped. Mary, left in charge, didn’t allow the twins to stray from the grounds of Little Egypt where she could keep her eye on them. A good school was too expensive and Evelyn wouldn’t dream of letting them be educated with common children. And even the last tutor – a straggly, limping French man, grandly called Monsieur de Blanc – had gone away last year after a row about his pay. Arthur had promised, next time he was home, to hire another tutor. Once they found Herihor, they would be rich, of course, and able to send Isis to the best school in the country. She wasn’t so sure how Osi would get on. Maybe a school would turn him normal?

  In her parents’ room it was cold, the sun had gone round to the other side of the house and the papyrus scrolls on the walls, with their men and animals and gods, gave her the creeps. She opened the wardrobe and sniffed Evelyn’s most glamorous dress: green chiffon, sewn with thousands of sequins. The fabric under the arms was whitened with sweat and the sequins were cold as fish scales against her cheek.

  She had only one memory of Evelyn in the dress. When Grandpa died it turned out that he’d left Little Egypt to Evelyn, and Berrydale, thirty miles away, to Uncle Victor. Evelyn had been livid because Berrydale was worth more and she needed funds for her expedition, while Victor was bound to fritter his inheritance away.

  To raise money for the excavation, she’d sold most of Grandpa’s precious collection of paintings – he was still whirling in his grave according to Mary – and held a ball before they left. Four-year-old Isis and Osiris had been dressed up as their namesakes in long white robes with black kohl caked around their eyes and great tall head-dresses, to be cooed at by all the ladies and gentlemen. Evelyn, the horse, had paced about in the slithery frock, smoking and neighing with Arthur panting faithfully at her heels.

  Despite a stab of disloyalty, Isis grinned. If only she could draw, what a funny picture it would make. And after all, Egyptian gods could be people or animals, so why not her parents? She shut the wardrobe and wandered back to her bedroom where she found Cleo crouching on a fallen dressing gown, tail lashing from side to side, quietly yowling.

  Cleo was forever having kittens, which vanished overnight. Mary used to claim that she’d sent them by coach to a stray cats’ home, which, at first, Isis had believed, until early one morning she’d found a wet and heavy sack outside the kitchen door.

  Years ago, and it still made Isis sicken to remember, she’d discovered Osi with a litter of dead kittens in the nursery. The tiny creatures, all hard and stiff, their tabby fur dried into spikes, had been lined up on the floor as if for some kind of ritual, and his eyes had been bright, cheeks rosy with excitement.

  Isis had shrieked for Mary who’d spirited the kittens away, muttering about disgusting, morbid little boys, and Osi hadn’t spoken to Isis for months. But he had never stopped being obsessed by anything dead and the nursery windowsills were cluttered with the skeletons of birds and mice.

  Kneeling down now to stroke the cat, Isis was just in time to see a neat wet purse slither out from under her tail on a trickle of pink water. The purse twitched and squirmed and Cleo twisted round to split the silk with her teeth and extricate the first kitten.

  Isis cried out with a pang of pleasure. She’d caught her! This time Mary could do nothing about it; Isis would protect the kittens and Victor would back her up. In fact, a kitten might be just the thing to lift his spirits.

  Cleo nipped through the little string that came from the kitten’s belly and rasped it with her tongue until it opened its toothless mouth and gave the tiniest squeak.

  ‘Clever Cleo,’ Isis said, settling down to watch and stroke and give encouragement. After the kitten came something frightful, wet and red that Cleo ate, and then there was another kitten, and another two. Four kittens, though the last never moved when Cleo freed it from its purse and its mouth stayed sealed despite a frenzy of licking.

  The three blind kittens found their way, with a little nudging, to Cleo’s teats and, kneading with their tiny paws, began to feed, their pipe-cleaner tails twitching with the rhythm of their suckling.

  Once she was sure that all the kittens had come, Isis went to tell Victor the good news. Of course, she shouldn’t disturb him, but surely tapping softly on the door wouldn’t wake him if he really were asleep. There was no answer. She opened the door and peered into the dim, smelly room. The curtains were drawn and Victor a hump beneath the eiderdown. Drawn by curiosity, she crept inside.

  He was facing away from the door and she skirted the end of the bed to see his face. His eyes were closed, face sagging to one side, peaceful. The scar showed on his neck, shiny and raised and so much like a rasher that she almost expected the smell of bacon, but there was only the whiff of brandy and an empty glass on the bedside table beside a phial of pills. She leant very close to look and was startled to see his eyes open.

  ‘Icy,’ he said groggily.

  She jumped back. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I came to tell you that Cleo has had her kittens and I thought you might like one?’

  He drew himself up so that he was half sitting against his pillows, and patted the mattress. He was wearing a pair of Arthur’s pyjamas, dark red paisley, and his skin was the colour of raw pastry.

  ‘There’s one black and two tabby I can’t tell if they’re girls or boys and one dead, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Come here,’ he said and opened his arms. Isis hesitated. She didn’t want to touch the scar or to be too close to the smell of brandy and something else, stale and unappealing, but afraid of offending him, she leant forward awkwardly into his arms. ‘Dear little Icy,’ he mumbled into her hair and his arms were tight around her.

  ‘Isis!’ Mary came in with a tea tray on which sat a slice of date-flecked cake.

  Isis jumped from the bed, blushing hotly. ‘Cleo’s had kittens and I was telling Victor and saying he could have one,’ she said. ‘I didn’t wake him, honestly.’

  ‘Kittens! Whatever next! I’m sorry.’ Mary put down the tray. She swished open the curtains, her expression unreadable. ‘As if Captain Carlton wants anything to do with kittens!’

  ‘I will have to decline the kitten, I’m afraid. But it’s perfectly all right.’ Victor added to Mary. ‘She’s quite a tonic, don’t you know?’

  ‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ Mary said, and yanked Isis through the door. ‘Whatever were you thinking? Going into a gentleman’s room on your own!’

  ‘He’s my uncle.’

  ‘And him not well in the head.’

  ‘He didn’t mind.’

  ‘Lord above.’ Mary rubbe
d her hands through her hair causing it to stand up madly. ‘And where are these famous kittens?’

  Isis led the way to her room. Cleo was giving the black kitten a vigorous licking and the two tabbies were suckling. ‘That one’s dead,’ Isis pointed out.

  ‘That’s one small mercy,’ Mary muttered.

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ Isis knelt down. ‘Clever Cleo.’ She stroked the cat’s head, and she arched her neck for more.

  Mary tutted. ‘Well, you can’t keep them here for a start.’

  Isis clutched Mary’s sleeve. ‘Please don’t drown them.’

  ‘They’ll have to come down to the scullery.’

  Isis scooped up the dead kitten, took it down to the kitchen, wrapped it in a duster and, muttering an apology, pushed it in the stove before Osi could get his hands on it.

  She left the kitchen quickly before the flames crackled round the little corpse. Now was the time to carry out her plan for the budgerigars.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered to the panicking birds as she dragged the cage across the hall to the ballroom. That the ballroom was a vulgar extravagance, out of kilter with the rest of the house, was Arthur’s oft stated opinion. In his heyday, before the twins were born, and in a fit of grandeur, Grandpa had had it built on to the back of the house, along with the adjoining orangery, but for years there had been no parties and no need for it at all. Now its tall mirrors were dull and spotted and the windows looked through to the broken orangery with its wizened fruit.

  Isis closed the door behind her and unlatched the cage. At first the budgies took no notice and then the blue one hopped through the entrance into thin air, and with a frightened screech wheeled out into the room on unpractised wings, clumsily looping round the ceiling and bashing itself against its reflections before finding a perch on the chandelier. The other bird soon followed, sending a squitter of droppings down onto the parquet and shrieking until at last it found its mate and they huddled together amongst the startled tinkling of the crystals, crooning and preening.