Little Egypt

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘Poor Mary.’ I stood up. ‘You should get properly into bed, at least. Shall I cover you?’ She was on top of the blankets, but I knew her Sunday coat was in the wardrobe. I took it out and spread it over her. ‘Shall I take off your shoes?’

  ‘Just leave me be.’

  ‘I’ll empty this.’

  I carried the chamberpot away and emptied it and brought her a glass of water in case she should need it in the night.

  ‘Bless you,’ she whispered, without opening her eyes.

  BUT YOU DO carry on.

  A broken heart can hold together.

  Or am I simply hard?

  Some time after Spike had left, I don’t know how long, I stoked the stove and made a cup of tea. I couldn’t stomach food. The stirred up silt was filthing up my head. I put the radio on, loud, to try and sink it down, but the adverts for taxis, pop songs, a phone-in quiz all set my teeth on edge. The batteries were old, and Radio 4, where they’re more civilized, would only hiss and buzz.

  That Osi could no longer fend for himself was clear. And it was equally clear that I couldn’t cope with going up and down those stairs all day and night, nor could I bring him down and even if I could, he wouldn’t settle. And truth to tell, I didn’t want him in the kitchen: Horus in the kitchen in all his naked glory, squawking like an idiot? No, it simply would not do.

  I looked round at the chaos that I live in. I never meant it to be like this; it just crept up. I was ashamed, mortified, now that Spike had seen it – and even he, the anarchist, was shocked! How had it come to this? I didn’t know what to do with myself. What now? What next? There were the cards stuck in their game of patience for donkey’s years. I can’t remember why I stopped and left it there.

  I took a knife and pried it under the cards to loosen them. Those in the pile were all right, if sticky. I lost the backing of some of them, the card fused to the wood. It had been an Egyptian pack with pictures of the Great Sphinx on the backs. The faces of those laid out (most of the hearts) were so splattered with food drips you could hardly read them. But still I played a game of patience. I did not let myself cheat. I played for an answer: if it came out then I’d sell and we would go. I don’t know how long I played for until I won. Fair and square. Some of the cards were missing so I had to make allowances, and some you could not read and had to guess, but still I played and played and fate or luck was with me. The cards decided it. I’d have to sell; we’d have to go. The time had come. In Sunset Lodge it’s home from home and every need is catered for. (Although I fancied Osi might prove something of a challenge.)

  So, I would go and see Stephen and tell him yes indeed I’d sell. As soon as that decision was made I was in a lather of anticipation. I could hardly imagine his expression! To give someone what they long for – a gift for the giver, I’d say. If Spike were correct that U-Save would not let anything hold up its progress, then nothing awful would come out. Of course I’d check that Stephen was of the same opinion.

  Oh, what a comfort it was to think that soon a bright place, all shiny new, a modern megastore, would lie on top of here, like a sort of temple. All glass and steel and gleam and normal people with their trollies and their wallets, picking out their sofas and their curtains, their beds and scatter cushions right where I sat. Oh yes, I thought, that was the way to go.

  The next day was Tuesday, one of Stephen’s days. His routine was to meet me in the U-Save café, first thing in the morning, to see if I was ready yet, was how he put it, if I’d come round. Oddly, I’d taken to Stephen, though he’s a developer. He said seeing me of a morning was the highlight of his week. (Of course he exaggerated – still, what a charming thing to say.) It makes me smile to think how different from Spike he is, surely as different as it’s possible for two young men to be. In Spike’s parlance, Stephen is an archetypal sucker. Curious that I like them both, they’re my best friends. I like young men, I do.

  I pushed the trolley onto my bridge and watched the traffic flow beneath me. It was a glittery early morning, sun after rain, sharp enough to cause the eyes to stream. Three police cars, sirens screaming; the lumbering hulks of lorries, snarl of speeders, all moving, rushing somewhere with such purpose. I stood above inert, eyes wet, heart punching; in each of those cars one heart, at least, beating to its destination, all that rush of blood, the road an artery, petrol and oil and blood pumping along it, roaring, always, always, whatever the time of day or night.

  A few cigarette butts – someone had been on the bridge. I nudged them with my toe and watched them fly to join the rush. There were two dead things smeared on the road, a crow, one wing flapping in the traffic’s draught, and a poor hedgehog. People could get on the bridge but my gate, with its metal bars, its serrated top, was locked in three places. The postman left my letters in a box, a system that worked, and no one else had any call to mount the bridge but still they did, sight see-ers and council people, developers, vandals with their spray cans and their bikes and so on. But I have my portcullis and I let no one in. True until Spike. Why should I?

  No sign of Spike in the service area and I didn’t hang around to wait. I went round the front of U-Save and through the doors that open of their own accord and suck you into warmth and light and wonderful aromas. Always it made my heart lift to enter U-Save, so orderly, so full of goodness and availability. There’s no dark corners, nothing that stinks or crawls. Nothing is there that shouldn’t be there. Really it is like heaven.

  In the Ladies I washed my face and hands. No one was there so I took off my cardigan, blouse and vest and had a go under my arms with worms of soap from the dispenser and, with the blower, roared myself hot and dry. I have been caught at my ablutions, but simply stared the culprit out and nobody has ever said a word about it. After all, what harm?

  Once I was fresh I went to the café – but it felt different and wrong. I’m Doreen how may I help you? was not there. Why I’d depended so on seeing her, I don’t know, but I felt a dip in my spirits. Someone had spilled a drink on the floor by the counter; there was a fizzy orange puddle and a danger sign. A boy I’d never seen before, a youth with stippled skin, brought my cappuccino over without a murmur of complaint. Not so much kindness as a lack of interest. They were short of pastries, no croissants or pains au chocolat, so I choose a muffin – overblown fairy cake with a hard lid of so-called icing on the top.

  ‘Where’s Doreen?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ooo?’ is all he said.

  ‘The usual assistant?’

  He merely shrugged, jaw working like a camel’s at his chewing gum. I let him go without a ticking off, without pointing out who I am. I was preoccupied with looking for Stephen, of whom there was no sign, though it was his day. I’d counted on Stephen coming, hadn’t even considered that he might not. What would I do if he did not? The coffee wasn’t its usual cheering self, but cool with scarcely any foam. The muffin was a dry catastrophe. The clock clicked round and Stephen failed to come.

  I waved the boy – I’m Brian etc. – over from where he was mopping the floor. He dripped a trail across to me.

  ‘You need to wring it out,’ I said.

  ‘Uh?’ His mouth hung open to reveal his wad of gum.

  ‘The mop. Has a young man with a briefcase, touch of the tar brush about him, been here looking for me?’ I asked.

  He chomped blankly before deciding, ‘Nah.’

  ‘It is Tuesday, isn’t it?’ I checked.

  ‘Nah,’ he said again. ‘It’s Monday innit?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Summink else?’ He regarded the coffee, hardly touched and the crumbled ruins of the cake.

  I opened my mouth to complain about the quality of my breakfast, to complain about his shoddy service, and the orange drips, but only, ‘No,’ came out. ‘Thank you,’ I added, as an example to him.

  I stared out of the window from which you could see the roof of Little Egypt and get a sense of how grand it must once have looked. Now it was cramped between two roads and a railway l
ine, as if on an island, a triangle, trapped in a pell-mell of ceaseless movement. The look of it, the thought of being back inside that house, sickened me.

  For once, the brightness of the aisles, the moving floor, the warmth, the ranks of flickering screens in Electrical, the plastic toys, the food, oh all that food, all those cleaning products, the buckets, mops and brooms, the brush-and-dust pans, so neatly, brightly, snugly packaged, held no allure, promised no comfort. I bought painkillers from the Pharmacy, lovely ones, that send you off to sleep, and swallowed some before I set off back.

  Outside I looked again for Spike, but still no sign of him. How did I get the day wrong? I never get the day wrong. There was a smell of rotting cabbage and a scrabbling in the skip, not Spike, but vermin. With heavy legs, and oh my knee, I pushed the trolley back, unlocked the gate, entered the house. How dim and filthy and what a din of flies. I got a sudden flash of warmth, of Mary dimpling as she rolled out pastry, but it was only the flutter of a page of memory.

  I’d have to go up those stairs again, alone this time.

  I took some liver pate for him, had a Breezer as a stiffener, and scrambled up, hauled myself by the banister rails, though some of them were loose, some missing, but I managed, inelegantly, clawing and clutching, and who cares about blasted elegance, and who ever cared? Hands white with bird muck, eyes astream, knee ascream, I got there and scrambled to my feet. In the bathroom I washed my hands – the sink that once was white and garlanded with roses was grey and black, with the verdant green around the overflow of something thriving.

  Before entering the bedroom I allowed myself to procrastinate and had a look inside the nursery, where I had not set foot for many years. Procrastination is the thief of time – well time’s the thief of me.

  You couldn’t see much, the window so dirty, but sunshine came through a crack, illuminating the toy box, a shrouded cube of grey. Books were towered and scattered like the ruins of an ancient civilization. Osi’s armchair, a child-sized piece that he hunched his lanky form in, used to be red velvet but had turned to black, springs struggling through a rip, a blurt of horsehair stuffing. Under the dust I knew how deeply stained the rug was; I could not allow myself to think of that. I stepped out and shut the door.

  And once more I found myself hesitating on the landing outside a door, trapped between the layers of my own life, thick and airless as the pages of a book.

  When I’d gathered myself sufficiently to step into the bedroom with a soothing greeting on my lips, there was no sign of Osi. Not on the bed, not on the floor. He could have left the room, of course, he could have been wandering in the house, but I knew he wasn’t and my feet were drawn towards the gaping window. Standing on the wet squelch of curtain, I looked out and there, below me, on a raft of broken shrubbery he lay, wings spread out, quite still.

  Half slithering, knee blasting like a trumpet, feathers rising as if there’d been a massacre of angels, I got downstairs and outside to fight through the undergrowth and get to him. No need to touch to know he’d gone, but still I did, fingers on his stiffened hand, the nails, that shocking tangle, snapped and scattered. Below the beak, amongst the fuzz, there was a shrunken smile. And I knew enough Egyptian claptrap to guess what had happened – Osiris had been transmuted into Horus, and Horus had flown away. I stroked his cold cheek bone. ‘Goodbye, my dearest dear,’ I said. There was a wrenching inside me as if something was being broken off.

  My twin was gone.

  24

  I WAS SHIVERY FROM the bath and my hair was still wet, but at least the kitchen was warm. In fact the stove was roaring, sounding dangerous, eating coal, Mary would say, and I closed it down a bit. I went into the pantry for the milk to make cocoa. There was an odd grimy smell in there as if something was going off, and I couldn’t see.

  I’d turned to go and fetch a candle, when the door slammed shut. I went for the handle but there was someone there, the scratch of tweed, an off smell and I screamed and screamed until a hand clamped over my mouth.

  ‘Shut up,’ said a voice, not Mr Patey’s, but Victor’s.

  I gasped for breath, my legs gone watery. He let me go. ‘Now shut up,’ he said again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I blurted into the pitchy blackness. ‘I nearly died of fright.’ It was as if my heart would fling itself right out of my chest. His breath rasped hotly by my ear.

  ‘I knew there was someone here,’ I said.

  I heard him swallow. The stench of him was overpowering.

  ‘Uncle Victor, can we open the door?’

  ‘Uncle ,’ he mocked, but he did open it. I stepped out into the kitchen, never so grateful for a bit of light in my life.

  ‘You little cunt,’ he said.

  I staggered back against the table. I’d never heard the word, and didn’t know the meaning of it, but I understood that it was a terrible thing to say.

  ‘How could you have told them that?’ he said. ‘You fucking little liar.’ He was snarling at me, lips pulled back from dirty teeth. He was filthy, bearded, hair wild and stiff, eyes far too wide, far too red.

  I couldn’t speak. I backed away, stumbling on Cleo who shot off with a yowl. I pushed myself back against the burning heat of the stove. He stank of strong drink as well as sweat, tobacco, grime and I don’t like to think what else.

  ‘It was you,’ was all that I could say, ‘who took the cheese …’

  ‘Cheese!’ Spit flew from his mouth, hitting me on the lip but I didn’t dare wipe it away. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ he said.

  My throat had closed up now and I had to try again before I could make any words come out. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I said. The ball of spit seemed to burn and I had to scrub it off if it was the last thing I did.

  He grabbed the top of my arms. ‘Because of your fucking lies I have to stay away. If I come anywhere near you, she says, my sister’s husband, my own twin sister’s husband, will set the police on me. The Police, Isis. After all I’ve done for this country.’ More spit was coming from his mouth and I shrank back into the corner beside the stove, feet sliding on the messy pile of newspapers. ‘And all because of a stupid lying little bitch.’ His sour breath was getting in my nose and I could see red veins standing out in the yellow-white of his eyes. His fingers dug painfully into my flesh.

  I kicked his shin as hard as I could and he yelped and let me go and I scrubbed the spit away and made sure to get the table between us before I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll tell them I was wrong. Honestly Victor, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why did you say it?’ He was bellowing so loudly that I thought surely Osi would hear and come down. Sometimes he would react to things, and I prayed that now would be the time.

  ‘I was confused,’ I said. ‘Honestly Victor.’

  ‘Confused!’

  His head was jerking now, spasms that tore it back and sideways on his neck, as bad as it had ever been, and it was my fault.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I will tell them. ‘l’ll write. Tonight, you can watch me. I’ll tell them I was wrong. I didn’t mean it.’

  He was leaning against the table now, watching me with eyes like dying fires.

  ‘You didn’t mean it,’ he repeated flatly. ‘Oh that’s all right, then.’

  ‘Don’t hate me, Victor,’ I said. ‘I was confused.’

  ‘Confused!’ he mocked, but he was losing energy. He staggered and steadied himself with a hand on the table. ‘So what did happen to you exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. I don’t even know if it was anything at all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Evelyn kept on and on at me. I had to say something. If I’d said it was Selim or any of the Arabs he would have had his hands chopped off. You told me.’

  We stood staring at each until I tore my gaze away.

  ‘Victor.’ I struggled to quell the tremble in my voice. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Something stronger,’ he
said, and slumped down at the table.

  Though I was scared to go back in there, I went into the dark of the pantry and stood on a stool to reach the bottles of strong drink, fumbling in the cobwebby space till my fingertips encountered the brandy. I brought it out and before I could fetch a glass he’d snatched it, wrenched the top off and was swigging it back.

  I edged around him, quiet as could be, slicing bread, grating the remains of the cheese. Mary made Welsh rarebit properly with a white sauce and Lea and Perrins, but I was too trembly to do it properly, too aware that Victor might shout at, grab at, me again. But for now he seemed to have forgotten I was there and sat with one hand round the bottle, the other loose on the table, staring at something that I couldn’t see.

  As soon as the toast was ready, I called Osi down and waited in the hall for him.

  ‘Victor’s here,’ I whispered, ‘and he’s angry, he’s really angry with me, and drunk.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said and pushed past me into the kitchen. ‘Hello, Victor.’ He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jumper.

  ‘Use a handkerchief,’ I snapped, keeping behind him.

  Victor’s mouth stretched into something like a smile. He was halfway through the bottle now.

  ‘Where’s Mary?’ Osi glanced at the miserably scanty toasted cheese. He looked quite dreadful in the kitchen light, hair much too long and dried into messy tails, nose red and chapped.

  ‘In bed with her head,’ I said.

  ‘Fortunate head,’ Victor slurred and gave an ugly laugh.

  Osi munched his food, but Victor pushed his away.

  Now that Osi was there I felt a mite braver and sat down and took a bite of toast. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked Victor. ‘I knew someone else was in the house, I told you Osi, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’ve got every right,’ Victor slurred. His face sagged and dragged against his supporting hand. It was as if all his bones had melted and his face, apart from the shock of the eyes, had gone into a stubbly blur.