Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Read Free Page 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
    L ATER, 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