Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) (6 page)

5

O
NE MONDAY MR
Burgess took the two tabbies away. He knew a widow who would like them, he said, and they were going to live the life of Riley. Mary found a box, poked holes in the lid with a knitting needle and tore up newspaper so they should be comfortable on their journey. Isis kissed each on its nose before they were stowed, with a lot of twisting and hissing, into the box, and she stood watching the van diminish down the lane.

Cleo sat at the backdoor licking her paws and seemed not the slightest bit disconcerted – perhaps she had a streak like Evelyn’s in her. ‘Not a natural mother,’ Isis had once overheard Mary say, and though she’d minded on Evelyn’s behalf, she could hardly disagree.

Once the sound of Mr Burgess’ engine had dwindled, she went to search for Dixie whom she hadn’t seen that morning. There was no sign of him in or around the house and she combed the garden, calling his name. She went past the icehouse, down to the potting shed and opened the door. George was sitting in his chair, legs wide, in a dense cloud of pipe smoke.

‘Clear off,’ he said, his voice a thick, phlegmy gurgle.

‘I’m looking for my kitten. A black kitten.’

‘Boy then girl what do they think I am?’

‘Just a tiny black kitten,’ Isis insisted. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘Clear off, blasted hun,’ he said. He took his pipe from his mouth and shook it at her. ‘Blasted animals, bloody liberties, bugger off with you.’

She squinted through the pall at the grim twist of his face, the smoke-yellowed eyebrows jutting forward like filthy tufts of shaving brush.

‘You’re the one taking the liberties,’ she said and quickly shut the door.

She searched the end of the garden, stirring the weeds with a branch. She looked round the icehouse, safely locked, and right through the vegetable garden and the orchard, and she found a toad, old birds’ nests, the china arm of a doll and a broken saucer, but no sign of Dixie.

Once more round the house, she tried every room that wasn’t locked. Osi stood defensively at the nursery door but swore he hadn’t seen the kitten. In the ballroom she was spooked by shivers in the long bleary mirrors that seemed to wobble and bulge as if the glass was melting. The birds had settled very happily onto their glassy tinkling home and now there was a crusty white patch on the floor beneath the chandelier, fluffed with tufts of fallen feather and down.

She looked in the bathroom under the great tub and behind the pipe. She searched around the shrouds in the dining room and went up the attic stairs to peep into Mary’s room.

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 migraine 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.