29

I SLEPT TILL NOON. Beside me was the neat impression of Osi’s head on the pillow. It seemed oddly light. In a daze I went to the window and parted the curtains. The sky was a pure, pale blue and the sun was shining. There was no frost, the snow had fallen away from the window, and the view was clear.

And then I remembered what had happened.

‘You are so hard,’ Victor had said.

I looked down at my hands, the fingers chafed from all the wrapping. In the bathroom I splashed my face with chilly water and watched the drips run down the hardness of my cheeks. I saw a woman not a girl, and not a pretty one. The roundness was falling away revealing not the swan I had hoped for but a perfectly plain duck. Plain and hard. The curse had started and I knew how to deal with it and I would have to deal with it myself. More blood, more rags.

Victor was already in the kitchen and the kettle was rising to a boil. His face was bleared with stubble – and in fact I don’t think I ever saw him cleanly shaven again. The crinkled mix of fox and grey softened his mouth and the thin jut of his jaw, but was ugly beside the scar, the shiny puckered rasher shape, where no hair grew.

‘Where will you put her?’ was his greeting.

‘Good morning,’ I said. The bowls from our bread and milk were still on the table, dried and crusty. I didn’t know whether to prepare breakfast or go straight on to lunch.

‘I’ve been thinking. It might be possible to get away with it,’ he said, in a flat, dead voice.

I pressed my palms on the table and spoke without quite meeting his eye. ‘She got in a right old tizz about her pay and upped and left. Bags and baggage and all. And who can blame her?’

He looked at me queerly. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t ape her speech like that.’

‘Well it’s her as brought us up,’ I said.

The kettle squealed. I tipped out the old leaves and made a fresh pot. There was scant tea in the caddy. I would have to learn to pay attention to such things. More coal, too. Victor could go to the village and enquire about that.

‘The icehouse.’ I eased the felted old cosy down over the handle and spout of the pot. ‘That’s where he puts his other . . .’ I didn’t know how to put it. ‘His birds and kittens and so on.’

He considered. ‘And if anyone comes looking you can say she went off in the night. You didn’t hear a thing. I wasn’t even here.’

‘It’s more or less what I already told Mr Burgess.’

‘Does she have a beau? Anyone who might come looking?’

‘She did,’ I said, ‘but she fell out with him.’

‘Good. What about her family?’

‘Just a sister in Bristol. And she’s poorly,’ I said and then remembered that was not the truth but my lie to Mr Burgess. I must keep things straight. The milk in the jug, left too near the stove, had curdled. I went and fetched the last of the fresher milk from the pantry, and as I passed him, saw the effort with which Victor was pressing down on his leg, knuckles fisted white.

‘When Evelyn and Arthur get back, they’ll know what to do,’ I said. ‘And they will come back,’ I reassured us. ‘They should have the telegram by now. And Mary can stay in the icehouse till then, at least.’ I watched the tea leaves clump together in the strainer as I poured.

Victor banged his hand down on the table so hard it made me jump. ‘I’ve just thought – they won’t get the bally letter before the telegram! If they hare straight back they’ll miss it.’

He was right. I had already thought it and hoped he wouldn’t. I kept my voice soothing as I said, ‘Well, as soon as they get back, I’ll tell them. Better face to face, anyway. I’ll tell them it was all a mistake in that bally tomb. Some kind of delerium or something, I was feverish after all. I’ll tell them you are blameless, make them see it. I promise. ‘

Victor stared at his tea for a long moment before he took a sip.

‘They will come back, won’t they?’ I said.

As his eyes met mine, they flinched. ‘Of course they will,’ he said.

 

 

Victor drove to the village to order coal and fetch some groceries from Mr Burgess.

I’d gone through the pantry, deciding all we’d need for the next few weeks and making a long list. I wanted to feel secure that whatever happened next we’d at least have plenty to eat. I thought seeing Victor in person would reassure Mr Burgess and stop him quibbling about the account. And Victor could make a business of fussing about how Mary had gone and left us in the lurch, in case the grocer was still suspicious.

I made some shabtis by drawing faces on clothes pegs and wrapping them in scraps of tea towel. I made six and then forced myself to go upstairs to the nursery. I hadn’t seen Osi all morning and didn’t want to. I never wanted to go in that room again. I found him kneeling staring down at the dog’s dinner he’d made of painting Mary’s shroud.

‘It’s difficult to paint on cloth,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be her.’

‘It’s good,’ I lied, looking at the dabs and smears, and handed him the shabtis. He glanced at them and nodded. From the toybox I unearthed my old doll Madeleine, with her shabby china face and flaccid limbs. She looked a hopeless type – not liable to be much use to Mary in the Afterlife, but Osi said we should still put her in. There was a tin pony and a leather camel, both of which we added to the pile of grave goods.

‘I wish we had a sarcophagus,’ he said. ‘Something wooden or stone that I could paint properly.’

‘Well, we haven’t,’ I said.

He stood up and with his fists rubbed yellow smudges round his eyes. ‘She must begin her journey as soon as possible.’

‘It’s nearly over, Osi,’ I said and reached out to put my arms round him. It was strange and awful to feel his thinness, his exhausted quivering, and breathe the stench of blood and paint.

I had thought that making him complete the process was the right thing to do. That it would be good for him.

But I don’t think he ever got over what he’d done.

 

Between us we struggled her downstairs. She wasn’t heavy. Osi held her head and I her feet. He was muttering prayers or spells all the way through the kitchen and out and down the garden, through the orchard where I stumbled and we almost dropped her. Resting for a moment under the plum tree, I looked up through the winter branches at the thin blue of the sky and noticed the first swelling of the leaf buds. It seemed unbelievable that nature was going on as if nothing had happened, that the seasons would turn as usual.

We carried her down the steps to the icehouse and gentled her onto the ground outside the door. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock and swung open the door.

‘How will we get her down there?’ I stepped in and peered into the darkness of the ice pit. The black, musty stink of the place got in my nostrils and made my heart beat fast, wings of panic fluttering at the edges of my vision. I stepped out quickly, tripping over Mary in my haste to breathe fresh clean air.

‘Mind out,’ Osi said, breaking from his Egyptian muttering. ‘Will you go and fetch the grave goods and the jars?’

Gratefully, I hurried away towards the house. The thunder of a train reminded me that this was just a day among other days. I didn’t know what day it was. When the train went past, it had meant that Mary would be preparing luncheon. She would be in the kitchen making a soup. I stopped and let my head fall back to stare into the clear, pure blue above me and felt dizzied by the depth of it as if I could fall upwards and away, plummet through all that blue.

It took three trips to bring the things we were sending along with Mary and though I didn’t believe in the journey, still I went into our parents’ room and took a pair of jet earrings from Evelyn’s jewellery box and a silk nightdress from her wardrobe. Evelyn didn’t much care about such things and would understand. She would want Mary to have them. The worst things to carry were the jars that held bits of her innards. They were stoppered earthenware kitchen jars labelled raisins, tea, and sugar in Mary’s own neat hand and smeared now with her blood.

I put the jars and all the things outside the icehouse. I could hear Osi inside muttering his incantations and I ran away. I could not be there when he put her down into the cavern of the icehouse. I should have helped but I was sickened by the close dark space, and the harshness of the Egyptian words that seemed to whisper and breed in that dankness. And I was sickened by Osi, by myself, just sickened to my soul.

I went to swing on the gate as if I was a child again, waiting for the distraction of a car. I was hoping for Victor, but the road was quiet. Nobody would be calling me for lunch or telling me to wash my hands or to change my frock. Victor would want something to eat when he got back, unless he stayed in the village. He liked the pub, where they made their own pork pies – and I expect he liked the landlady, too.

I went out of the sun into the kitchen, such a mess of dirty plates and dishes, Cleo winding round my feet and crying for her food. How Mary had managed for all those years, all alone, to keep it warm and tidy, to keep us well fed and in clean clothes, I do not know. Now I picked one of her aprons from the back of a chair and tied it round my middle. The floor was in need of a sweep and a mop. The table was strewn with crumbs and cat hairs and streaks of dried-on food. I was overcome with a wave of helplessness thinking of the filth in the nursery, the growing mounds of laundry – though there were hardly any sheets left to wash, at least – all the dirt and mess swelling and growing, and I understood so well, so much too late, Mary’s crossness. In fact, I thought it a wonder she was ever cheerful at all, with all she had to do and then me on top, pestering her for company, for games of cards, for love.

There was hot water from the stove and I grated soap into the bowl and set to washing up every plate and bowl and cup we’d used. Osi came in and stood staring at the empty table.

‘All done?’ I said.

He nodded and met my eyes for just one bleak moment.

‘I gave her Bastet,’ he said.

‘Good.’ I wiped my hands on my apron in a Mary gesture and fetched bread and jam for us. I was hungry too and must make more bread, must think of a meal to cook for later – Victor was supposed to be bringing back fish, milk, sugar, cheese, chops, butter, and Mr Burgess would deliver the rest on Monday as usual . . . my mind went sliding along the tracks Mary had left. And she had even found time to make us cakes. Arthur often said she was a wonder, and he was right, and again I almost doubled over with the sudden punch of missing her. I had to keep my mind away from the slight and shrouded thing we’d carried down the garden, and from the silver padlock, big as a bath bun, locked now and that would stay forever locked.

‘Ma and Pa will be back before you know it,’ I said, and though we never called them that, it felt the right thing to say and he nodded as if comforted. We ate our little lunch in silence and then Osi went upstairs to sleep. I felt sleepy too and allowed myself five minutes with my feet up beside the stove, before I got out the bowl and prepared to make the bread.

I SAT AMONGST THE flattened shrubs by my poor Osi for I don’t know how long, hearing the ebb and flow of traffic roar, the important racket of the trains. A blackbird came and sang his song, and I could hear its beauty though it didn’t touch me. Other birds arrived, a silly chitter of them, and a chaffinch landed on Osi’s arm. What would the birdies do when they brought in their bulldozers and all? Whatever would my spudgies do?

I wasn’t cold; oddly it wasn’t cold, though Osi was, chill and absolutely stiff. The shadows were more solid than the light. There was a secret language in the creaking and the clicking of the shrubs trying to right themselves after the catastrophe, and the bush that Osi broke breathed sourly from underneath him. Nine came picking through the shrubbery to see what was happening, sniffed Osi’s scalp, marbled her eyes at me and stalked away, tail lifted in eloquent disdain.

And then I heard ‘Sisi,’ and a battering in my chest swept away my breath, until he called again and I recognized the voice as Spike’s. I got up, so stiff, chilled after all, sitting in the damp for hours, perhaps, I don’t know, time gone strange and slippery.

Spike was on the other side of the gate. Rust on the bars, you could taste it on the air, reminding me of the old gate where I used to swing – that would be right in the middle of the dual carriageway now – the ghost of a girl swinging, longing for a motorcar to come, as the traffic ploughed right through her.

‘I came to say I’m going home,’ said Spike.

He looked different in some way; I couldn’t place it. In the bright light I could see a spot beside his mouth and a sprouting of young blonde whiskers.

‘Home?’

‘The States. Are you OK?’

I looked down at my filthy self, crusted white with bird all on my clothes and Lord only knows about my face and hair.

‘You are an angel, dear,’ I told him.

He looked a little shifty, embarrassed. ‘Thank you, Ma-am.’

‘Is there anything you want?’ I said. It was the stud on his eyebrow that had gone, all the studs taken out, leaving him punctuated with tiny holes.

‘See.’ He bit savagely at his thumbnail. ‘See, I wondered if, you said I could take anything I wanted from the house, well if you had something I could sell, then I could buy my ticket home.’

I was touched that he asked. He could have taken anything. Stolen anything from me. You hear the vilest things on the wireless. Talking to him through the bars it seemed as if one of us was imprisoned.

‘I don’t want to ask my folks,’ he said.

I could see that, after all his anarchist bluster, to have to crawl back with his tail between his legs would have been humiliating.

‘I’ve got a little job for you, and in return you can take anything you like,’ I said. ‘There isn’t a fat lot left of value, but there’s still some pieces, some jewellery of Evelyn’s – my mother’s, that is.’

‘Pleased to oblige,’ he said. His hands were curled around the bars of my portcullis.

I went into the house to get the key. My legs were soft, knee jagging viciously, hot while the rest of me was cold. Everything takes so long now. Oh how I used to flit about when I was a girl, everything working without having to give it a thought. Moving around now is like operating a complicated machine, one that grows stiffer with every passing day.

‘It’s Osi,’ I told him as I opened the gate.

He blenched but said, ‘Sure, no problem.’

‘Come on,’ I said.

Without another word he followed, and took my arm and helped me struggle through the undergrowth. I don’t know what he must have been expecting, but when he saw Osi flung face down in an attitude of flight he gave a startled yelp and dropped to his knees.

‘He flew,’ I explained, deciding that he might just as well understand the logic of it. ‘Horus rescues Osiris from death, you see, the falcon, see his beak.’ As I spoke I saw the paling of Spike’s lips and added swiftly, ‘Of course, I know he is a man, really, but that is what he thinks, thought, I’m sure of it, so you see for him it was a good end and not as bad as it might appear.’

His lips moved silently.

‘So you see, it’s quite all right,’ I added.

After a few moments he gathered himself enough to ask, ‘Have you called the cops?’

‘No dear, no need for that. You see, I know what he would want me to do now.’

It was difficult to convince him that there was no need to bring any authorities in. It took time. I was surprised how law abiding he was deep down. But with the promise of items to sell to fund his journey home, he overcame his scruples. Though he was slightly built he proved strong. I could not look or take part while he shouldered Osi and took him down the garden.

 

 

It took us hours to uncover the icehouse door, or took Spike hours, it was too much for me. Brambles had grown over the icehouse like a crown and what a shame it seemed to rip them up, disturb the creatures: a hedgehog, centipedes, birds’ nests and all manner of scuttling, buzzing creatures; quite a little world destroyed. And Mary’s resting place. The padlock was still there and still locked, but the wood of the doorframe had rotted and Spike managed to prise it open. No bad smell came out, I’ll have you know, only the scent of earth, of darkness; breath of the end.

I could not be there when he put Osi inside and it took all my flagging strength to carry things out of the house and down the garden ready for the burial: three tins of paté, some Dairylee, there were no cream crackers left so I brought oatcakes. I brought the tin opener and a gravy boat that might be silver. I lugged out some of his more portable artefacts and a few books, including The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which would surely be useful. Hastily I cut a row of hand-holding shabtis. I brought out soap and a pair of Arthur’s cuff links, silver with a greenish stone. I put these offerings on the ground while Spike worked away, ripping his forearms on the brambly thorns.

During the work he stopped every hour or so to smoke a cigarette, rolling a big one and adding herbs to it. Each time he stopped I offered to make tea, but he would drink nothing except water from his own bottle. His eyes were red, and dusk was falling by the time Osi was safely tucked away down there with Mary and Dixie (I did not stay to watch for that) and all his grave goods with him.

For Osi to join Mary in the Afterlife (his Afterlife, I want no such thing) is correct and I know it from the peace that settled right through my bones when Spike had hauled the brambles back across the icehouse, obscuring it from sight.

 

He’d worked all afternoon and I was touched by the scratches on his arms and cheeks, the leaves caught in his snaky hair, his breathlessness, and all on my behalf. You see, Spike was like an angel, to me, setting me free. And once it was done he consented to stay for tea, though insisted, while he was rinsing his hands, on washing some cups and plates in readiness. I endeavoured not to take offence. We dined on blackcurrant tarts, feta cheese, spicy peppers from a jar and, as well as tea, drank gin and tonic, ready-mixed in handy tins. I lit the lamps and the candles to dispel the gloom and it was a pleasant and melancholy little wake we had in all the flickering. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want to be alone in the house, not that Osi had been any company at all, but still he had been there.

‘Go upstairs,’ I told him, and described where he would find Evelyn’s jewellery box, in the bottom of her wardrobe. He was rather reluctant to go upstairs in the dark, what with the pigeons, but went off with an oil lamp and I heard a creaking to tell me he was upstairs and he was up there long enough for the house to start up its whining and wingeing and for tiredness to roll over me in waves. There were tears like beads of wax stuck in my eyes but they wouldn’t melt till I was alone. My knee throbbed and the house throbbed along with it as if it was the centre, the heartbeat, and Mary was there, scolding me for something with that flick of dimple and when I was a girl I used to hold pencils to my cheeks, digging hard in to train dimples in, but all I got was graphite smudges.

Spike drove Mary away by coming in surrounded by a cloud of bird stink, bearing the leather box in his arms like one of the three kings, I thought, bearing gifts from Orient are and the tune of that got in my head. When Grandpa was still alive and all the servants, there used to be a Christmas party in the ballroom, oh that fox with the feathers in his mouth, oh my poor dear spudgies.

In the box were necklaces with glittering stones, a scarab brooch, a bracelet that looked like diamonds, but surely not? Rings and earrings, pearl and jade and amethyst. Evelyn rarely wore a jewel but for her plain gold wedding band and where had that gone? Stolen by some Egyptian devil, I must suppose. Victor’s medals were in the box too, tarnished against their stripy ribbons.

We spread the treasures on the table amongst the crumbs, and in the waxy light they glittered and gleamed. Nine sprang up to look and sat, neat chinned as an Egyptian cat, as Bastet, eyes aslit, tail tidied round her legs.

‘Are you sure?’ Spike picked out a pair of dangling ivory earrings.

‘Take them and that and that,’ I said. In truth I didn’t care; the things were jabbing and pricking and pinching at my memories of Evelyn and her distance; anyway, she never liked them very much, only wore jewels when she dressed up and that was seldom.

‘My mom would love these.’ He was dangling a smaller pair, garnet and gold, shaped like tiny birds, up to the light.

‘Your mom?’ I repeated, and oh, he looked so young then, such a silly baby boy run away from home. ‘Give them to your mom, by all means,’ I said, ‘but take something else to sell for your ticket. This, maybe?’ I held up the bracelet. What if it was diamonds? Surely Evelyn would have sold it to fund her wild goose chase.

‘Tell me about your mom,’ I said. What a sweet little bob of a word. Evelyn never even let us call her mother and that was mean of her, when we, or I at least, so wanted to. ‘Mother,’ I said now.

‘Pardon?’ said Spike.

‘Tell me about her,’ I said. ‘Your mom.’

Spike shook his head, making the snakes dance. ‘Oh she’s OK, she’s cool,’ he said, and looked as if he might be fighting tears. I averted my eyes to allow him to compose himself. He took a sip from his tin before he continued. ‘It’s my pop that’s the prick, excuse me, Ma-am.’

‘Prick,’ I repeated and laughed.

‘He sells white goods,’ he said. ‘Washers and dryers and dishwashers. Kitchen stuff. Iceboxes, microwaves. Wants me to join the firm.’

‘So you ran away.’

He looked abashed. ‘Didn’t go home,’ he corrected. ‘And fought with my brother who’s all like yes sir, anything you say sir.’

‘Make it up,’ I said. ‘You need your family.’

He had blackcurrant in the corner of his mouth and a blurring in his eyes. ‘OK if I take these?’ He lifted the bird earrings and the diamond-effect bracelet.

Stephen had told me that once I’d signed over Little Egypt I’d never need another penny in my life. U-Save would take care of all my bills, all my living expenses. I didn’t need this stuff. ‘Take it all,’ I said, then changed my mind, ‘I’ll keep the scarab,’ I decided. It was carved from a dark stone inlaid with carnelian, jasper, lapiz. If I’d known that it was there I would have sent it off with Osi, but too late. And Osi had flown away on falcon’s wings.

Spike put the other jewels in his haversack. ‘They’ll think I stole them,’ he said.

‘If anyone says that, refer them back to me.’ I liked the grand sound of that.

He fingered Victor’s medals.

‘My Uncle Victor was a hero.’ I told the story of how he’d tried to save his whole battalion and risked his life, but sustained such terrible injury to his mind. Spike listened, rapt as a child. And Victor was there in the kitchen, nodding at the lie. I could see the bony structure of his nose, the hollows of his temples, the length of his thin lips. The scar was sizzling on his neck. And Mary was shaking her head at him, that exasperated smile, the spring of curls, that raising of her blue eyes to heaven. Osi came in, a child again, hair in his eyes; Mary stretched out her hand.

‘Are you OK, Sisi?’ Spike was saying. ‘What are you looking at?’ His hand was on my arm, warm; I hadn’t even felt it.

‘Tired out,’ I told him. ‘Only tired.’

‘You want to sleep?’ he said.

I nodded. Oh I was so tired it caught me suddenly in its folds so I could scarcely speak.

‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Ma-am.’ He patted the pocket in his haversack and hoisted it on his back.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for being my angel, for being my friend.’

 

 

The night was long, peopled with ghosts, deep pits of sudden sleep, a dream from the womb, the packed-tight squirm of twinnish flesh. And, of course, I cried, I roared and all the eyes blinked open in surprise because you should not make a fuss nor make an exhibition of yourself. The tears were hot wax and with the flame in my knee I was the candle that showed myself up in a transport of grief and it was like a transport or a transfer as it was my last night, would be, must be, my last night in Little Egypt, all the fabric of the house aching round me. My last night in the kitchen among the litter and the traces of the people, even Mr Burgess there, the ghost of a damp moustache, but never Arthur, never Evelyn, who I don’t remember in the kitchen ever. Never Mother.