Pier Pressure

Shortlisted entry

by K S Dearsley

People passed the glass case without pausing to glance at it. Derek received more attention and he was only the museum attendant. He wanted to grab the visitors by the collar and make them look. The Ancient Egyptians exhibition was the most popular since Derek had been transferred to the museum service from the parks department two years earlier. People loved the mystery and the grandeur, the tales of curses and the golden tombs. The bundle of dusty bandages in the case had no chance of snagging the attention of those expecting magnificent sarcophagi and jewels. Even Derek had to admit that the mummy had seen better days.
        'What a way to end up!' Derek rubbed smears from the glass with his uniform sleeve. 'Not what you expected when you had yourself wrapped up, was it?' The mummy's face wore a snarl of contempt and frustration. Derek felt a kind of affinity with it. He had not expected to end up in the museum either.
        Until the last round of cutbacks he had looked forward to serving out his years before retirement pottering around the town's parks planting begonias and mowing the grass. It was a choice of redundancy or dusting the likes of Ammon-het. Now there were more cuts being whispered about and the eyes of those wielding the knives were beginning to linger on the museum. Maybe the success of the exhibition would persuade them to lop something else. Like the visitors who saw only a bundle of bones and old linen in the case instead of the human being who had felt the warmth of the sun, suffered pain and shared laughter, the council lacked imagination.
        Ammon-het's family had probably gone without to provide for his immortality. If they had known he would spend it here, would they have bothered? Perhaps he would have understood about down-sizing and unemployment. He might have called in the pyramid department one day and told them: 'Sorry, lads. The committee says you're not cost effective.' The explanatory card on his case said he had been an official in Pharaoh's government.
        'O-oh.' Derek straightened. 'Better stand to attention, old chap, here comes the Lord High Executioner.' He slipped back to his place by the door feeling like one of the exhibits as the curator all but bowed the chief officer into the gallery.
        'Urn, we seem to have caught it at a quiet time.' The curator blushed as if caught out in a lie. 'The exhibition's attracted record numbers, isn't that right, Dennis?'
        'Derek,' he corrected.
        'Hardly a moment to rest, eh?' The chief officer grinned like a moneylender about to foreclose on a debt and send in the bailiffs.
        The curator moved him on, pointing out the highlights of the exhibition.
        'Yes, very impressive. I particularly like the interactive technology. We must counter this view that museums are boring places full of dusty glass cases and mouldering exhibits.' They had come full circle, and all three pairs of eyes fixed on the mummy. The chief officer did not have to say more.
        The curator swallowed. 'This section deals with the Egyptian way of death—it seemed appropriate. It's the only mummy we've got.'
        'It lets the exhibition down. Couldn't you have spruced it up a bit? Or used a model?'
        For a moment Derek had an image of a trick cigarette box where the lid lifts and a skeleton sits up.
        'It could do with some conservation work, but, frankly, our budget won't allow for it, and we did think it important for people to see the real thing.' The curator turned his hands over as if knotting an imaginary handkerchief.
        'The most important thing is to get people in here. Exhibitions have to pay for themselves these days—we owe it to the taxpayers. If it doesn't earn its keep, get rid of it.' The chief officer's eyes swept over Derek as he headed for the exit.
        The curator changed colour, feeling the axe at his own neck. He stared in at the mummy. The two were almost the same colour. Derek resisted the urge to tidy the leaflet rack. The curator turned on him.
        'Don't just stand there, man. Look useful!' He strode after his superior.

*

Derek was glad to get out into the fresh air at closing time. Being outdoors was one of the things he missed most about his old job. That, and watching the things he had planted grow. He needed a walk to clear the smell of hypocrisy and disrespect from his nostrils. Since the day when the parks manager had congratulated him on doing such a splendid job while handing him a letter telling him that his services were no longer required, Derek had avoided his old workplaces. Today, his feet took him to the nearest park before he realised where he was going. He hesitated. The sight of overgrown rosebeds full of discarded burger wrappers and worse would probably only make him more depressed, but there was something going on in one of the borders where he had planted ornamental shrubs. Derek could not resist.
        'What's going on?' The answer was all too obvious. Workmen were ripping everything out.
        'We're putting gravel in - too many complaints about litter and youths hanging about,' said one.
        Gravel. Derek made sure he did not look on his way to the museum the following morning. There was a gap in the exhibition too. Ammon-het had gone. The blood began to sing like a kettle in Derek's ears. He collided with the curator in the swing doors to the storage basement.
        'Ah, Dennis - just the man!'
        Derek gritted his teeth as the curator ushered him into his office, manoeuvring around several black plastic sacks.
        'We missed the rubbish collection—could you drop these off at the tip on your way home?' The curator was knotting his invisible handkerchief again.
        'I don't think I can do that.'
        Their eyes locked.
        'You can if you want to carry on wearing that uniform,' the curator said. He slumped at his desk as if all the air had been pumped out of him. 'We've no money for conservation. It'll all be dust soon anyway.' His look took in the whole office.
        Derek picked up the sacks.

*

It felt good to be working in the earth again, not that the hole took much digging; the park workmen had already done all the hard work. Derek wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers and looked at his handiwork. Ammon-het's teeth grinned up at him in the light of the street-lamp. As Derek filled in the hole and scattered gravel back over the surface, he hoped that the Ancient Egyptian would appreciate the joke. If another archaeologist should ever dig him up, Derek would like to hear him explain how a mummy came to be wearing a museum attendant's jacket. He had no further use for it. He bowed his head over the grave. He had no regrets. Maybe what was rubbish and what was worth keeping was merely a point of view. One thing he did know: neither Ammon-het nor he were going to end up on the scrapheap.

List of shortlisted entries