Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Read Online Free PDF

in a chilly voice. He glared at the iris as if it was a snake.
    ‘That wants water,’ Mr Patey said. ‘How’s the wife?’ he added to the grocer.
    Mr Burgess picked up his hat. ‘Well, I’ll be off, Mary,’ he said.
    ‘And the kiddies?’ Mr Patey added. ‘They doing well? Only Mrs Burgess was telling me your nipper had a cough.’
    ‘Next week as usual,’ Mr Burgess said. He put on his hat, picked up the empty box, and giving Mr Patey a wrathful look, left, slamming shut the door behind him. Isis sat down on the low stool by the range and ran her tongue along the row of white bumps the stingers had left on her wrist that were fizzing like sherbet. From under her lashes she watched how Mary carried the drooping iris to the sink, Mr Patey close behind her.
    ‘Get on with them peas,’ Mary said, catching her looking.
    Isis picked one up and stuck her thumbnail in the green ridge. She liked the noise the fresh ones made when opened, a tiny sound between a click and a gasp, but the old ones made no sound at all and the peas were hard and floury. She rolled a pea for Dixie who sprang for it comically, and they all watched for a moment and laughed.
    Mr Burgess had promised to take the two tabbies when they were old enough to leave Cleo, but Mary had said Isis could keep Dixie if she must, if it was all right with Captain and Mrs Spurling. Dixie was entirely black but for three white hairs on the tip of one ear and his eyes were lantern yellow.
    ‘Come on Wilf, I must get on,’ Mary said now.
    ‘No time for a cup of cha?’ Mr Patey said.
    ‘Oh well! You are a terror.’ Mary’s dimples flickered as she cleared Mr Burgess’ cup away and put out a clean one.
    The coalman put his flat cap down just where Mr Burgess’ bowler had been. His hands were washed but dirty with the deep-down graininess that comes from handling coal, each fingernail outlined as if with ink.
    ‘Blooming mice in the pantry,’ Mary said. ‘Mr Burgess was helping me set a trap.’
    ‘Why don’t you put the cats in there?’ Isis asked.
    ‘You ask me in future,’ Mr Patey said. ‘Any little jobs want doing.’
    Isis watched and listened, noticing how different Mary was when Mr Patey was around, how she tilted her head and constantly lifted her arms to her hair, which made her chest lift too.
    The next pod contained not bright green peas but cottony mush and a tiny waving maggot. Isis shrieked and threw it down. ‘A bad ’un,’ she explained.
    Mary smiled at her. ‘You can run off and play.’
    ‘You forget my age,’ said Isis.
    Mary continued to look at her until she dragged her feet out of the kitchen and went upstairs to the nursery. When she opened the door, Osi looked up, dazed from his books.
    ‘The train will be coming soon,’ she tempted, but he just sat in his stupid baby armchair, finger in place in his book, waiting for her to leave. Once he’d liked to watch the train as much as she did. They would hold hands and scream when it went past. She banged the door on him and hurried down to the end of the garden, past the orchard and the vegetables, past the potting shed, past the icehouse and the compost heap, along the path she’d trodden through the weeds, to wait, face pressed against the fence, for the thunder of the train.
    One day, she vowed, she’d travel on the train to London, moving past this very spot, looking out of the window at the place where a girl stood waiting through the long, tedious ache of her childhood. Once she’d poked a stick through to touch the train, but it had been ripped from her hand with terrifying force. Today the train chugged sluggishly and the grey steam hung and sank in its wake, leaving Isis covered in smuts.
    She walked back in time to see Mr Patey leaving and ran to open the gate for his pony and cart. He saluted as he set off at a clip, shedding nuggets of coal as he went. She listened till the rattle of the cart and the trotting sound had faded away and then she swung herself