Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) (15 page)

Isis was careful only to go behind the ruins when Haru was away from the camp. With some success she was training the pup to sit, and she planned for him also to learn to play dead and to walk on his hind legs. Once Evelyn and Arthur saw him at his tricks, how could they resist him? On the day she first got him to sit on command, she looked round, bursting with pride and wishing someone could witness her success – and discovered that Selim was watching.

If she had not already been so hotly red she would have blushed. He was leaning against a broken pillar, arms folded, definitely watching her from beneath the sweep of his lashes. She lifted a hand and he smiled, teeth dazzling in his brown face, and her own mouth stretched into a grin.

‘Hello,’ she called softly.

He only continued to watch and smile. She ordered Sweep to sit again, but perhaps there was less conviction in her voice now and he only jumped up at her legs, yapping for a treat and when she looked back over her shoulder, Selim had gone.

16

F
LOPPED ON HIS
side in the shadow, Sweep was fast asleep. Isis longed to poke him awake, but it wouldn’t be fair. His paws were twitching as if he was running in his dream. She sat on the giant toes that projected from the sand, it was quite comfortable if you wiggled your bottom into the cleft between the big toe and the next one, and hugged her knees. With her ears full of the hum of flies, she was on the brink of dozing off, when she sensed movement. She turned her head and found that Selim was standing close beside her, his robe almost brushing her shoulder.

He said something, pointed to the pup and smiled. She loved that smile, she thought, and was shot through with fright. Love? Such smooth lips, the colour of milky cocoa, such white teeth, eyes deeper black than ink. How could anything so black be so bright and sparkling? His eyes held hers and she flushed and looked away. No, not
love
, just a beautiful smile in the midst of all the boredom.

Still smiling, he crouched beside her, pointed to the pup and said a word, tilted his head on one side.

‘Dog,’ she said.

‘Dog,’ he repeated.

‘That’s right! Dog!’

‘Dog,’ he said again, and they both laughed with the pleasure of this communication.

She put her hand on her own chest. ‘Isis,’ she said, although he probably already knew her name, but it was lovely to hear him say it in his heavily-accented, slightly gruff, boy’s voice. It was probably the proper Egyptian way of pronouncing it and she repeated it back, like him. He was close enough for her to smell – not aniseed, just a healthy scent of skin and hair. The pup twitched and whimpered in his sleep and they smiled at each other.

‘Hair,’ Isis said, pointing to her own, then wishing she hadn’t drawn attention to it, such a dirty mess.

‘Hair,’ he said, pointing to his own.

‘Mouth.’ She touched her lips.

‘Mouth.’

His face was very close to hers and as if someone else was lifting her hand, she reached out and with her index finger touched his exquisitely straight nose. ‘Nose,’ she said.

His eyes flickered, but smiling steadily he touched the tip of her nose and a bolt of electricity shot through her.

‘Nose,’ she said, her voice faltering.

Akil called and he stood abruptly.

‘Nose,’ he said and grinned before he walked away.

She sat blinking, hardly able to believe that she had dared to touch his nose and that he had touched hers. There was a feeling as if a firework was trying to go off in a cramped space inside her as she went over it again and again, the surprisingly cool, firm feeling of his nose, his finger pressing on hers. That flicker in his eyes. And then she looked down at her thick, red, bare knees and groaned. What must he see when he looked at her but a girl with dirty hair and bitten legs, bursting out of her too-small dress? What ever must he think?

She waited till she was sure he had gone before she trailed back where Victor was sitting under an awning on his canvas chair, smoking.

‘They better bally well arrive soon or he’ll slit our throats,’ Victor said nodding across at Haru, who chose that moment to eye them fiercely.

‘Don’t be such a chump,’ she said. ‘What a perfectly ridiculous thing to say.’ She tore her eyes away from Selim, who was telling Haru something. They both laughed, looking at her, she was sure. Her face burned. Haru was saying something and moving his hands in the air, making rounded shapes like bosoms. No, he couldn’t be, he wouldn’t be, she must stop imagining things to do with bodies, she was driving herself demented.

‘Oh, I dare say they’ll arrive soon,’ Victor said. ‘Perhaps today, you never know.’

‘Or we could insist on being taken to them?’ Isis said.

‘No, best stay put. They know best.’

Isis unfolded a little canvas stool, and though she guessed he’d rather be left alone, seated herself beside him. ‘Victor. I don’t feel at all myself,’ she said.

Victor smoked silently for a moment. His beard was thick round his mouth now, flecks like iron filings amongst the messy gingery thatch.

‘No more do I,’ he said, at last.

His fingers were dark yellow from all the smoking, and his teeth too, and with his red and staring eyes he looked really frightful, as if he were metamorphosing into something from his own nightmare. She recalled the terrible sounds he’d made in the night, the deep terrified bellowing, followed by the retching.

‘You had another of your dreams,’ she said. He grunted. ‘What’s in them?’ she dared to ask and watched as his leg began to jump. He sucked in smoke and held it down.

‘Mine are frightful at the moment too,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘I keep dreaming about being lost, or hearing bad news.’ She stopped and frowned; she’d forgotten until that moment how last night she’d seen Evelyn and Arthur, tiny as dolls, dead and floating on a tea tray down the Nile.

‘Rats,’ said Victor. Roughly, he grasped her hand and held it against the jumping leg. ‘The rats were bloody enormous in the trenches,’ he said. ‘You know how they got so big?’

Isis shook her head.

‘By eating flesh. They were like this.’ He let her go and jerked his hands a couple of feet apart. ‘And their heads were white from eating all that man-meat. They were like fucking great luminous ghosts. But they were real. And they weren’t scared. They’d look up at you and go right on gnawing at a fellow’s face.’

‘Oh,’ whispered Isis, squeezing and rubbing her eyes to try and rid them of the image. It was stupid of her to have asked, and now his leg was jumping as if it wanted to be free of him and hop off on its own. ‘Oh, fuck, fuck,’ he was saying and trying with his fists to press it still. He shouldn’t be saying that awful word, but he couldn’t help it, she could see that, he was
beside
himself. What could she say? She looked for help to Haru, who was with Akil and Selim on the far side of the stove, but when she met his eyes he crossed his arms and turned away.

‘Remember, you’re a hero,’ she said in a small voice.

He hacked up a rotten bit of laugh.

‘They’ll be here soon,’ she said. ‘And then everything will be all right. You see, Victor, it’ll turn out all right.’

He laughed again, but it was more like vomit than anything joyful. Selim was staring at her, as if to see what she would do.

‘I’m going to lie down,’ she said, and slunk off to her tent.

Late the following morning, she lay propped on her elbows in her tent, draped in mosquito net, scratching at a swollen bite – flea, mosquito or some other desert creature. Her mind was in another desert, more picturesque than this, and her mind was filled with Lady Fleur and Lord Greatorix, and the love affair they conducted, even as they fled the handsome Arab Prince who, now that they had kissed, wanted Lady Fleur for his harem.

The Prince had a hooked and noble nose, eyes of liquid black, long, hard limbs; Selim, she thought, but older, and she changed the hooked nose to one that was beautifully straight, and she added thick shadowy lashes. Although he was bad in the book, the Prince made Isis’ heart beat faster than Lord Greatorix did, especially when he tried to force his way into Lady Fleur’s tent.

Lady Fleur had a tiny waist and tumbling, unruly curls and whenever she read that description, Isis’ hand would go to the flat and dusty greasiness of her grown-out pudding-basin cut and it almost hurt to think what a fright Selim must think her. She thought about Victor, about the mewing sounds of Mimi and of Melissa’s flagrant fleshiness, but always her thoughts returned to the darling straightness, the firm coolness, of Selim’s nose. She rolled over on her back and mouthed the words on the final page.

And at last Lady Fleur was enfolded in the safe masculine strength of his embrace. ‘Forever,’ he murmured into the rosy shell of her ear.

‘Truly? ‘ she questioned, exquisite lips aquiver.

‘Forever,’ he repeated, stilling her mouth with his fervent kiss.

She turned over to stare at the sun-bleached canvas above her. ‘
Forever
,’ she whispered, ‘
forever and everandeverandever
.’

17

I
T WAS CHOKING
hot in the tent within the mosquito net; her underarms itched and there was a real pain in her belly now. ‘I don’t feel quite well,’ she said aloud. ‘I really don’t feel myself.’ But that is ridiculous, how can you not feel yourself? Though you can be beside yourself, or beyond yourself. When Victor had his nightmares that is exactly what he was:
beyond
himself.

She realised that there were new voices out there – longed-for voices. She sat up, struggled with the mosquito net, fought her way out of the tent and flung herself at Evelyn, who embraced her, though rather crossly, then pushed her away and stood looking at both twins.

‘Look what a state they’re in!’

Evelyn herself was darkly burned and, peering out from beneath a pith helmet, looked horsier than ever.

‘It’s not our fault!’ Isis said. ‘Where
were
you? Why didn’t you meet us?’

‘Well, evidently we were unable to come immediately.’

‘But –’ Isis’ mouth hung open. All the worry and the waiting and the disappointment, even the fear, shrivelled in the scorching light to nothing but silly childish temper.

‘And we’re here now, aren’t we? And you – you’re here safely. What’s the matter then?’

Isis’ bottom lip begin to curl down as it used to when she was small, and then it would pull cords in her neck and make her sob. But not now, she was too grown-up now for that, and besides, Selim might be watching.

‘Icy!’ Arthur came striding across. His beard was a ridiculously whiskery fuzz reaching halfway down his chest, he was wearing a dirty pith helmet too and his pipe dangled from the corner of his mouth.

‘Are we going to the excavation?’ Osi said. ‘Today? Now?’

Arthur cleared his throat. ‘We’ve had, um, a bit of a . . . hiatus.’

‘Another wild goose chase?’ Isis said.

‘Truth is,’ Arthur continued, ‘most of our labourers have gone off to work on Lord Carnarvon’s dig. That bastard Carter seems to be getting warm.’

‘Warmer than you?’ Osi said. ‘No! Let’s go.’

‘While we, um, regroup and so on, we thought we’d take you for an outing.’

Isis looked out at the hopeless desert.

‘Children like outings,’ Evelyn told her.

‘Hello, there.’ Victor had crawled out his tent. Isis saw how Evelyn recoiled when she saw him – bearded, red-eyed, shambling, the borrowed robe streaked filthily with food and coffee. ‘You took your bally time.’

‘Well, we’re here now. I say, you do look a sight, Victor. Are you all right?’

‘He’s dreaming every night, of rats,’ Isis told them. ‘He needs more treatment, electric shock, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Arthur eyed him dubiously and exchanged glances with Evelyn. ‘Come here, Icy.’ He gave her a hard hug amongst the smoky tickle of his beard and turned to Osi. ‘How’s my boy? As predicted, Haru’s making a fuss about the funds,’ he remarked to Evelyn over the children’s heads.

‘I’ve had devil of a job keeping him sweet,’ said Victor.

Arthur grunted. ‘Sweet’s hardly the epithet I’d choose!’

‘What’s the matter with the fellow?’ Evelyn said.

‘We were stuck with no money and no nothing and not even a
toothbrush!’
Isis could not prevent her voice from rising to a shout
.

‘Aren’t children supposed to be pleased to see their folks?’ Evelyn said. ‘Aren’t they supposed to smile?’

Osi did make some sort of boat shape with his mouth, but Isis was too furious and her lips pinched tight against her teeth. Victor stood swaying, seeming not to know what to do. Arthur went back to Haru, who was in a huddle with Akil and Selim. Selim lifted his lashes and his eyes met Isis’ and held for a second and there was the stupid flush again, boiling up like red ink under her burning skin.

Osi trotted after Arthur and stood beside him as an argument began. It was almost comical how son mimicked father’s stance and his gesticulations, but Isis didn’t feel the least bit like laughing. She went back into the tent, tied the fastenings and pulled down the mosquito net, though none of these soft fumblings were as satisfying as the slamming of a door would have been. She lay face down on her flat, grubby pillow and no, she didn’t cry, not quite, but ground her face against the fabric, feeling idiotic. After all, they were safe and sound and none the worse, except . . . She jumped up and fought her way out of the tent again.

‘The trunk’s gone,’ she yelled, ‘with all and everything and even your soap too.’

‘Victor told me,’ Evelyn called back. She was sitting on a stool beside him, emptying grit out of her boots. ‘How very careless of Haru.’

‘Wasn’t his fault,’ Isis called back, though it must have been, she thought, at least in part.

She went back into the tent and reached for
Desert Longing
, but really she was bored with it. In the trunk there had been a few more books, and what she wouldn’t give for something new to read, a story set anywhere but the desert.

Evelyn and Arthur were here, but they were just their disappointing selves, and what a terrible, ungrateful thought that was. There was an empty slump inside her, and she wondered if she had a fever. Her hands felt big and stiff and there were dazzling after-images in her eyes, specks of white; greasy blurs like the faces of Victor’s rats. She bit her the inside of her arm as hard as she could and watched the colourless oval of tooth marks turning pink. Her head hurt and there was a weary feeling in her legs, a dirty sort of nagging in her belly.

‘Come on, Icy,’ Arthur called. ‘Do buck up.’

‘Do I have to come?’ She could see the shadow of him looming over the canvas.

‘We can’t leave you here all alone, can we?’

You could
, Isis thought,
and if it suited you, you would
. But she crawled out of the tent and straightened her dress.

‘She’s grown,’ Evelyn said, eyeing the tightness of the dress across Isis’ chest and the plump knees showing under the hem of her frock. ‘Looks like someone’s been at her with a bicycle pump!’ and she hooted with laughter.

‘Yes, she’s growing up all right,’ Arthur said, more kindly, and gave her a queer and curious look.

Isis flinched and looked towards Selim, but he had his back turned. ‘Why have you come back now?’ she hissed. ‘Why not just leave us here for ever?’

‘Icy!’

‘And why did we have to come at all?’

‘We thought you’d like it,’ Arthur said.

‘I like it,’ came Osi’s voice from somewhere. ‘Are we going to the Valley of the Kings?’

‘That place is over-run,’ Evelyn said drily.

‘But can’t we go and see?’ begged Osi.

‘And join that throng of opportunists?’ Arthur said.

‘What about
your
king?’ Isis asked.

‘He’s not a king, he’s a general,’ corrected Osi.

‘Oh shut up,’ Isis said.

Evelyn and Arthur exchanged dreary looks.

‘And what about the map?’ she said. ‘You said it was definitely genuine. You said –’

‘Well, that turned out to be bogus,’ Arthur interrupted, ignoring Evelyn’s scowl. ‘But we do have new information,’ he said. ‘It turns out some scoundrel pulled the wool over our eyes, but Abdullah’s sorted him out and now we have another lead.’

‘But how do you know
Abdullah’s
not a scoundrel?’ demanded Isis.

‘
You
don’t know anything about it, Isis,’ Osi said. ‘You’re not even interested. Please can we go and see Mr Carter’s excavation?’

‘No!’ It was rare for Arthur to raise his voice and they all looked at him.

‘There are the fools and those that prey on them,’ Isis said into the silence and the rush of her heart caused a crackle of stars at the edges of her vision.

‘What did you say?’ Evelyn stared.

‘You need eyes in the back of your head.’ Isis heard Rhoda’s voice in her own. And she remembered the blind white eye of the pedlar in Luxor. They should have bought something from him, that little turquoise cat, or a scarab for luck. Luck is what they needed. From the corner of her eye she could see the pup and looked away, afraid he’d come trotting across to greet her and earn himself a kicking.

There was the sound of an engine and a cloud of sand became visible in the distance.

‘Ah ha, here’s the transport. Punctual, eh? There you are, that’s Abdullah for you, not your average Arab,’ Arthur said.

Isis darted a look at Haru and Selim, who were surely near enough to hear.

The ball of dust came closer and out of it emerged a truck. The man who climbed out was fat, heavily stubbled and hatless. His hair was thick and grey and he wore European dress: dusty white trousers and a sweat-stained linen jacket. ‘This is our excellent Abdullah,’ Evelyn said. ‘And here’s Osiris, and this is Isis.’

Abdullah nodded and greeted the children with handshakes. ‘I’ve heard so much,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Isis said stiffly. She wiped the sweat of his palm onto her dress.

Osi began to bombard Abdullah with questions, and he held his hands up as if in defence and laughed. ‘Steady on!’

‘By the time he was twelve he’d mastered the three written forms of ancient Egyptian,’ Arthur boasted. ‘Something of a prodigy, aren’t you, son? Give him a few years and he’ll be out here himself.’ He clapped Osi, who seemed likely to burst with pride, on the back and Isis wandered away to watch Haru, who was angrily slinging food into the back of the truck. Selim lugged a sack of flour across and swung it high, but it hit the side and some of the pale powder spilled onto the sand. Haru shouted and clipped him on the ear. Selim flushed and slunk away.

‘That’s not fair,’ Isis said. ‘He didn’t mean to.’

Haru made a noise in the back of his throat as if he’d like to spit.

‘Why did we have to stay here?’ Isis demanded of Evelyn who was tapping her foot and smoking a cigarette as she watched the scene through narrowed eyes. ‘What about your house in Luxor? I thought we were going to stay in a proper house.’

‘We no longer have a house,’ Evelyn said shortly.

Isis stared as her mother sighed and sucked on her cigarette. She looked almost defeated and Isis felt a little stir of hope. ‘Things have gone rather . . . pear-shaped, you might say.’ And in a flat and uncharacteristic tone, Evelyn explained that there was a problem with money and that they seemed to have got themselves on the wrong side of the authorities, made some enemies, so to speak.

‘
Enemies?
’ Isis’ voice came out in a screech. ‘Why? What do you mean?’

Evelyn lifted her chin and sent out a stream of smoke.

‘Why don’t you give up then?’ Isis said. ‘Just for a while. Why don’t you come home with us?

‘Impossible. Too much to sort out here.’

‘Why?’ Isis tried to catch her arm, but Evelyn flinched away and raised her eyes to heaven as if it was obvious.

‘
Why
is it impossible
?
’ Isis insisted.

‘Don’t be tedious, Isis. It’s getting more and more difficult to get a concession – a license to dig. They’ve got so many ridiculous rules and regulations now! They’re getting quite officious. Quite above themselves, if you ask me.’

Isis noticed Abdullah glancing over as she said that.

‘But Abdullah’s our man.’ Evelyn continued in her loud embarrassing voice. ‘Abdullah will pull strings and wangle one if anyone can.’

‘But why should he?’ Isis whispered.

Evelyn gave her a mystified look.

‘Why would he want to help you find the treasure? Why doesn’t he just get it for himself?’

‘That’s not how it works,’ Evelyn snapped.

‘After all, it is
Egyptian
treasure, not English.’

Isis caught Abdullah’s smirk, before he turned his face away.

The lines between Evelyn’s eyes were dark and gritty, grains were caught in her sparse eyebrows and her almost lashless eyes were rimmed with red; she looked as if she were going mad.

‘Who’ve you been talking to?’ she snapped.

‘Oh, loads of people,’ Isis said, gesturing towards the desert. ‘All my throng of friends.’

‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’ Evelyn took out her cigarette box and lit herself another.

‘But what if he’s tricking you?’ Isis said quietly, looking across at the man who appeared to be absorbed now in securing the picnic equipment to the back of the lorry.

‘Why should he? We’re the ones with the . . .’ She frisked her fingers together to indicate money. ‘Now, surely we must be ready.
Abdullah
!’ she called imperiously as she stalked towards him.