Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) by Lesley Glaister Read Free Book Online Page A

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