Miss Benson's Beetle

by Rachel Joyce

  Enid stamped on the brakes. The shantytown boys crashed into one another, like dominoes. “That’s exactly what I mean. You’re criticizing me.” She began to cry.

  “I think you’re the best driver in the world.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. But I think you need to eat something. You look starved. Also, there’s something I need to speak to you about.”

  “Are you saying I can’t be a mother?”

  “No, Enid. You’ll be a wonderful mother.”

  “Do you think my baby’s all right?”

  “Of course your baby’s all right.”

  “I love you, Marge.”

  “Thank you, Enid.”

  “I never had a friend like you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You saved my life. You saved my baby’s life. You never forget a thing like that.”

  “Enid, I just did my best. Can we drive to Poum now? It would be nice to get there before dark.”

  Enid smiled like an angel, put the car into first gear, and on they went.

  The shantytown was still strewn with palm leaves and debris, and its inhabitants were busy fixing their roofs and walls. It struck Margery how little she’d understood when they first arrived. The mud huts and sheds looked as they did because they had withstood cyclones. Poum was the same. Buildings were covered with tarps and ropes, like wrapped gifts. It was not a scattering of ramshackle sheds. It was a small town that knew how to survive. They went to the café, where the owner greeted them joyfully as if they had just returned from war, and ordered a feast: a plate of fried oysters, boiled mud crab with fire-red claws, bright yellow lemon chicken with yams, and a salad of choko and sliced pawpaw.

  Margery wanted to take Enid to lunch because she had news to break to her, and she felt safer doing it in a public place. She’d been dreading saying it, but it could no longer be avoided. She’d been thinking carefully about the expedition and, from now on, Enid would have to stay behind at the bungalow. It was far too dangerous for her up the mountain. There might easily be another cyclone, and if Enid fell she could lose the baby. Clearly Enid was in conflict: she needed to find the beetle because—having lost so many pregnancies—she was trying to make this one different. But she was ignoring her physical condition. So Margery would take the decision out of her hands. She was going to dose herself up with aspirin for the pain and do the rest of the expedition on her own. She would return every few days with new specimens; Enid would rest. She’d be safe and she’d have her dog for company. No harm could come to her. Then in February they would go back to Nouméa—possibly not in the stolen jeep—and she would make one last attempt to complete her unfinished paperwork before they began the journey home.

  However, when Margery had carefully planned this conversation, she hadn’t carefully planned it with Enid on the receiving end. It was so much easier to have difficult conversations with Enid when she wasn’t there. Now that they were sitting at the table, Margery couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Enid talked nonstop. A crowd of old men gathered, setting up chairs just to watch. For every mouthful of food, she said about fifty words. Margery found herself taking deep breaths on Enid’s behalf.

  “Marge, I never had someone like you. I never even had my own family. I wish I’d known my mother.” Gulp. “I think a mother would have told me what to do. She would have loved me. That’s what mothers do.” Slurp. “I was just passed around other families. But the men always got ideas. You know what I’m saying?” Swallow. “And the women didn’t believe me. They treated me like I was trouble and got rid of me.” Slurp. Enid cracked open a crab claw, scattered more salt on her fried oysters, and crammed them into her mouth, one after another. “Perce was the only person who was kind. We had such fun. I know he liked the lads an’ that, but it wasn’t about sex for us. We were pals. He said being a mother was my vocation. I wish you could have met him. Don’t you want your chicken?”

  “No, Enid. You have it.”

  Enid took Margery’s plate and tucked in to a drumstick, then went on to the subject of the beetle. She couldn’t stop saying what a great team they were. She couldn’t wait to get back on the mountain. She knew this time they would find it. She had her free hand on her belly, and she patted it like a kitten on her lap. Even in the time they’d been eating, she seemed to have got more pregnant. Then she said, “What was the thing you wanted to speak to me about?”

  Margery reached for her glass. There was nothing in it, but she drank it anyway.

  Enid started talking again. “No one else would’ve stuck by me. But you’re my friend, Marge. The thing about friends is that they don’t give up on one another. We’re a team. We’re stronger together than we are on our own. We are going to find the beetle, and then I will have my baby.”

  The inside of Margery’s head bent, like a spoon. She thought she had learned things since meeting Enid, but once again she had that feeling of being in something that was too big. “Enid, the beetle has nothing to do with your baby. Don’t you see?”

  Enid reached for Margery’s hand. Her grip was a vise. She might be an expectant mother, but she could still really hurt a person. “I know it is. My baby won’t be safe until we find the beetle.” Even when she let go, her hand still seemed to be round Margery’s. “We have to find it, Marge. We still have time.”

  There was nothing Margery could say. In the absence of anything holy, and probably also in the absence of much that was kind, Enid had built her entire world around superstition. It would be as hard to knock it down as flatten a cathedral.

  Enid finished the chicken and soaked up the sauce with an entire basket of bread. Then she laughed as if she’d just thought of something funny. “When you said we should come to Poum, I thought you were going to tell me you wanted to do the rest of the expedition on your own. I know I’ve been holding you up these last few days. I know I’ve been difficult. And up and down, too. I know I’ve been up and down. The truth is, that cyclone put the wind up me, Marge. But I’m ready. Now that we’ve had this lovely feast, I’m ready again. I’m sorry I doubted you. It’s because I’ve had too many bad people in my life. But you’re different. You and Perce. You’re the only good things. We came out here together, Marge, and we’re going to finish this together, too.” At this point, Enid pulled out her handkerchief and burst into tears.

  Margery couldn’t take any more. She trudged inside to pay the café owner. Seeing her, he did a double take, as if something terrible had landed on her head and he didn’t like to alarm her. In all the tension, she had forgotten about her hair. Her eye drifted to the window and found Enid, caught in a bright slant of sunlight as if she were lit up on a stage. Enid had picked up a newspaper and was leafing through it in a hurry. She read with a strange, terrified look on her face, holding it at arm’s length like something she could not bear to look at too closely.

  But the café owner was still talking in French to Margery. He seemed to be asking her a question. He kept doing a mime of someone searching for something. Then his hands shaped the silhouette of a very thin person, and he did another gesture, pointing at his own thick hair and then shaking his head, as if he was trying to say he had lost it. Or maybe he was referring to hair dye again. She had no idea. Besides, she was trying to work out what was going on with Enid. She had two people who made no sense, one inside the café and the other out.

  By the time Margery made it back to their table, the newspaper was gone. Enid scrambled to her feet, closing her handbag.

  “Did you find a British newspaper, Enid?”

  “No.” She didn’t even flinch. Instead she made a salute. “Enid Pretty reporting for duty!”

  Mr. Rawlings turned and began to bark at nothing. This should not have been odd: he was a dog after all. But Margery had never seen him do anything in his life that was even vaguely doglike, except trot after Enid with his tongue hanging o
ut. Enid picked him up and covered him with kisses. “What’s all that fuss?” She laughed. “What’s all that fuss, you silly dog?”

  Margery watched Enid, dressed in the purple frock that was so big on her it trailed the ground, and her tiny sandals. Behind: the ramshackle sheds and buildings, the old men, the tall pines, the odd goat. The sky was a pure spangled blue, with the outline of the peak firm against it. It was one of those moments when you see a person you know as if you’ve never seen them before. Maybe it was just the way she was caught in the sunlight or the brilliance of the sky. Whatever it was, the sight of Enid gathered up Margery’s breath and hit her like a graze or a rip in the air. Once again, she had changed. Enid was not the woman who had leaped off the jetty on that first morning in Poum. She had entrusted Margery with her life. She had followed her to the other side of the world, then up and down a mountain. And seeing her now, in the terrible old frock, Margery felt a rush of tenderness. So even though she knew in her heart it was the maddest thing she had done yet, she gave in. Of course, she would take Enid with her.

  Mountain: here we come.

  In one week alone, they found more than a hundred specimens. They were like a machine. A beetle barely had to move its antennae, and zip: Enid was sucking it up with the pooter. She wasn’t even swallowing them. Margery dispatched them in the killing jar; afterward Enid wrapped them carefully. If Margery needed something, she didn’t have to ask: Enid passed it. They had been together so long their differences seemed to dissolve. And while they couldn’t share their past lives, they existed inside each other’s thoughts and work.

  When the dust blew, they closed their eyes to slits. If the path was steep, they took it, arm in arm, like a crab. In the places the cyclone had destroyed it, Margery started again, hauling back the rocks, slicing through undergrowth, untying the toughest scrolls of creepers, while Enid put her feet up. Neither of them was in a position to make rapid progress, and Margery knew that if they did, they might miss what they were looking for. They tossed a coin every night as to who should get the good hammock, though she often cheated so it would be Enid—her belly had grown yet again. She found it hard to sleep at night, and she was always peeing. Margery donated most of her supplies of Spam, and stuck to coffee and bananas. It might have been seen as a sacrifice but, in fairness, she would happily never set eyes on another tin of Spam in her life.

  Their boots were worn to the point at which they could see the shape of their feet inside them; for some reason Enid began to talk about shoes. They were in the middle of a rainforest, soaked with sweat, on hands and knees, their clothes not even patterned anymore, but so filled with dust they were just red, and suddenly Enid said, “Marge?”

  “Yes, Enid?”

  “When you’re a famous beetle collector at the Natural History Museum, what shoes will you wear?”

  “Boots?”

  “I don’t think you should wear boots at the museum. I think you should wear a small heel. The good thing about a heel is you can hear yourself walk. I never like people with quiet shoes. It doesn’t feel honest.”

  “But could I pull off a heel? You think that?”

  “Definitely, Marge. You have the legs.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should try. What about you? When you’re a mother?”

  “Well, it’s important I have comfortable shoes. But I don’t see why they can’t be a nice color. Or have a gold buckle or something.”

  Then, back to collecting beetles.

  Besides insects, Enid found other things she claimed were lucky and would help her keep her baby. A heart-shaped stone. A gold feather. She made little bargains with the world that she repeated to herself as she went. She’d say, “If a bird flies overhead in the next minute, I will keep my baby. If a spider lands in my dish, I will keep my baby. If I touch that tree three times, I will keep my baby.” She was constantly greeting butterflies and asking them to bless her child and look after her. Meanwhile, Margery kept pouring iodine onto her legs and binding them. The pain had reached a level where it didn’t seem painful anymore, and at least the infected areas weren’t getting worse.

  She would always be a big woman. She would never be light on her feet, and even in her dreams she wasn’t jumping over gullies and streams. But she felt she’d found her rhythm at last. Margery loved the vastness of the forest. The aristocracy of the trees seemed to link with something inside her, and she had the strangest sense that, even though she was on the other side of the world, she was in a place she’d known all her life. The more time she spent in the forest, the higher they traveled, the smaller she felt, overwhelmed but also liberated by how much space was around her, as though the trees went on forever. She loved Enid’s ridiculously strong coffee—especially the first cup of the day. She loved lying in her hammock at night, side by side with Enid and the dog, listening to the rustling of palm leaves and the pines high above and beyond them the fretwork of stars—sometimes she woke just to watch and listen and know they were there. Her favorite time was still that brief stretch before full daylight when silver filtered into the sky, light blossomed where the stars had been, the air was sweet and fresh, and everything came back to life. It seemed full of such hope.

  Sometimes she paused, thinking a wild pig was close, or a giant lizard, or maybe even one of the boys from the shantytown, but seeing nothing, she pressed on. Sometimes Mr. Rawlings turned and barked and wouldn’t stop until Enid picked him up. It left Margery disquieted, with a pricking sensation she couldn’t quite identify. She watched Enid, trying to read her face for the same uncertainty, but Enid’s head was bowed, her hand was on her belly, and she was telling herself little things as she lifted herself over one rock after another, doing her best to keep up. Clearly her attention was in another place. Often she was so lost in thought, she didn’t even notice the flies in her hair—it was Margery who flicked them off. They pressed on, and then Margery would become so swallowed up by the search, she’d forget the unsettled feeling.

  At the end of the week, they began following the familiar path back to the bungalow. The haversacks were empty of food, but stuffed with specimens; Margery was even carrying them in her pockets. She helped Enid over the larger stones and held back the ropes of liana so that she could pass. They were almost there when Mr. Rawlings scampered ahead, barking.

  “Quick!” said Enid. “Catch him!”

  Margery struck forward, thrashing through the undergrowth. She ducked beneath creepers, brushed past ferns, followed at a distance by Enid. When she finally caught up, she saw he’d found the bathing pool where they’d swum on that first day. It lay below, as blue as a peacock, reflecting the half-forgotten sky, with the waterfall knifing down a wall of rock and sending out spray. Enid hauled herself to Margery’s side. She didn’t have to say anything. She just looked.

  “You want to swim, don’t you, Enid?”

  They clambered over some rocks and made their way toward the pool, carefully sliding down on their backsides. The trees were silver and green, leaves sprouting out in giant fans. Mr. Rawlings stayed at the top.

  Enid threw off her clothes. She didn’t even think about it. Her body was soft and pulpy, the skin streaked with silver threads. Her stomach swelled out from the rest of her, her belly button sticking out, like a doorknob.

  Margery removed her shorts and her top. She folded them carefully. And even though Enid was wearing nothing, Margery had the strange feeling that keeping on her bra and knickers made her the naked one. She stepped out of the knickers. She unhooked her bra. Her bosoms fell heavily, and she felt the warmth of the air. But it was a good feeling. She liked it. While Enid admired her belly, Margery quickly untied the bandages from her legs. Then they held hands and waded into the pool, their full-fleshed bodies in the sunlight, and lowered themselves into the ice-cold water and sang out, “Yahoo! Oh, Jesus!” then lay in the water and disappeared and came up, the wet shining on their ski
n, their hair. Margery pushed off and swung her arms and swam a few strokes, though she kept one foot close to the stones on the bottom, so maybe it wasn’t quite swimming, but whatever it was, she felt heavy and clumsy but also graceful and free, as if the water was holding her. It even seemed to freeze the bites on her legs and lance the pain. Then Enid lay on her back and began a stroke that made her look like a delicate bird with a large boiled egg on top of her, and her hair frilled out around her. Margery lay on her back, too, and tickled the water with her hands, just like Enid. She stretched out with her eyes open to the blue sky above. There they floated.

  “Do you mind?”

  “What, Enid?”

  “That I have my baby and you don’t have your beetle yet? I know what it meant to you. Of all people, I know that.”

  Margery wiped her face. Tears pricked her eyes, and she didn’t want Enid to see. “No, Enid. I have a good collection. Even if I don’t have the gold beetle, it’s still a very big collection. And it’s worth a lot of money. Any entomologist would be proud.”

  “Is that right, Marge? It’s worth money?”

  “If we sold it privately, we could make a few hundred pounds.”

  “But we won’t.”

  “No, Enid.”

  “We’re gonna take it to the Natural History Museum.”

  “We are.”

  “We can wear our nice shoes.”

  Margery didn’t know why she was so moved, other than that she was on the other side of the world and this was a place so beautiful it almost hurt to think about it. She was lucky, she was so lucky, yet Enid knew her well enough to understand that a part of her still longed to find her father’s beetle. And then there was the fact that Enid was going to have a baby when they got home, and there would be a day when they went to the Natural History Museum, both wearing new shoes. Somehow it was all too big to take in, and maybe that was why the tears had come. She couldn’t honestly see how life could be more perfect.