by Rachel Joyce
Mrs. Pope took a deep breath. She dialed the operator. Prepared her best voice.
She had wanted to be an actress when she was young. People always said it: “What a little actress! She should be on the stage!”
And even though her parents resisted at first, she had persuaded them to let her try. She’d had a private teacher who taught her how to walk with a book on her head, how to tuck in her derrière. An elocution teacher taught her how to stand on a chair and recite Shakespeare—she could still summon the lines—“Make me a willow cabin at your gate”—and if she did, she could feel the expectation. The certainty. The fierce thrill of being watched.
She felt it now.
“Number, please?” asked the operator in French.
But Mrs. Pope hesitated.
She was remembering the day she had auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. It was a memory she kept away from herself, but suddenly it was back. She remembered waiting outside the audition room, in her best frock, with other young women who looked more bohemian. She remembered walking with her straight spine into the audition room, wishing the panel a very good afternoon and clearly stating her name, asking for a chair and getting on top of it without bending her spine, and reciting “Make me a willow cabin” in her best frock and hat, with her white gloves, and in her best clear voice.
It had occurred to her she was shouting. It had occurred to her she should not be on a chair. It had occurred to her she could not remember what came next.
A delicious warm sensation down her legs.
The appalled politeness of the examiners.
The bohemian girls noticing the back of her frock as she fled. Putting their hands to their bohemian mouths to hide their bohemian laughter.
Her mother slapping her in the car because she couldn’t stop crying in front of the chauffeur.
Her parents packed her off to all the parties. She was engaged within six months, and on her way to the South Pacific a year later. And her life, which should have been one of Shakespeare and touring and greasepaint, was a round of cocktail parties and staying thin, and sheer stockings even when the thermometer hit ninety-six. It was going to bed fully made up, not because you had a play to do but because your husband must never realize your eyes were on the puffy side, and you had new wrinkles spreading out like feathers. Her life was not about remembering Shakespeare’s verse, but people’s names, and being interested in nickel mines when she couldn’t have given a damn. It was about keeping out of the sun for fear of freckles, and dressing up like Cupid in homemade wings, and never saying the wrong thing—how she wanted to swear—and not wolfing an entire plate of canapés even though her stomach was so starved and empty it was crunching inside her sodding Playtex girdle. It wasn’t even that she disliked the two women. Not really. It was that they had found a way to be themselves.
“Number, please?” repeated the operator.
Mrs. Pope cleared her throat, and spoke in her best French.
“Good afternoon, Operator. Please will you put me through to the French police, and afterward the editor of The Times in London?”
She felt almost calm. They were back in the jeep, they barely had enough fuel to get halfway up the island, let alone to the far north, but they had money and she could do this. Enid sat in the passenger seat with Gloria in her arms, shrieking every time a bird so much as flew overhead. Margery drove north methodically, thinking of nothing except where she was going, just as she had driven south only a week earlier, though this time it was broad daylight. With no license plate, and no paperwork, she must take care to keep out of trouble.
Dolly Wiggs had come tearing toward the summerhouse, screaming at Margery to hurry because they would soon be at the villa. No time to grab anything except the basics. Diapers, formula milk, a wad of banknotes from Dolly, and baby clothes for Gloria. “Quick,” she had shouted. “Quick!” She would hold off the police for as long as she could, and if they asked questions, she would send them in the wrong direction. In parting, Margery had taken Dolly in her arms and hugged her hard.
“I gave the game away!” Dolly sobbed. “I let you down!”
“You didn’t, Dolly. You saved our lives. And I will pay you back, as soon as I’ve sold my collection.”
The jeep spluttered and banged, but Margery kept her foot on the accelerator, scanning the rearview mirror for police cars, steadily making her way past the port and shantytowns toward the west coast road. They passed banana groves, abandoned trucks, goats, some boys on bikes—
“What is that?” screamed Enid.
Margery braked so hard that Enid flew forward in her seat and saved Gloria only by jamming her hand against the dashboard. Trees. Ahead, the west coast route was entirely blocked by trees. They lay, felled across the road, as vast as pillars. But even worse than the trees were the number of police cars parked in front of them. The officers stood around, laughing and smoking, while others batted a cricket ball. It was practically a police party.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” yelped Enid.
Margery shifted into reverse but the gearbox got stuck, and the jeep jerked forward instead. She tried again: same thing. An officer noticed and began a slow swagger toward them. “I can’t look!” yelped Enid. “I can’t bear it!”
Margery said, in her calmest voice, “Enid, you really have to stop doing this. Can’t you fall asleep?”
Enid tried. She slid down the seat with Gloria, and slapped her free hand over her eyes. “We’ll never make it.”
Margery swung the car to the right. No alternative but to cut across the island and use the east coast road. Briefly Enid unhid her eyes and had the presence of mind to check the Reverend Horace Blake’s pocket guidebook. “He doesn’t mention any problems with the east coast road,” she said. “There are just some pictures of banana trees.”
The landscape quickly transformed from lush green to a red and scarred terrain, cat-scratched by mining exploitation, the hills terraced into scores of concentric circles and rivulets. The road was bony with ridges; the tires struck potholes every ten minutes. Margery had to swivel the wheel sharply to avoid them. But there was little sign of life—it was more like a wasteland—and the road was now no more than a track, the mountains to their left looking bare and gouged, almost decapitated in parts.
“Is anyone following us, Enid?”
“No, Marge. It’s all clear.”
The track climbed. It twisted. It rose like a wall. Skin glued with sweat, Margery kept her nerve. The jeep forged on. Enid scanned the horizon, but there was still no one coming after them. Briefly the wind picked up, and the air clouded with dust, but Margery held firm to the steering wheel.
Then, just as she thought they were safe, the dust cleared, revealing a parked police car straight ahead. Blue light flashing. Enid tightened her grip round Gloria. “Oh, no, oh, no,” she groaned. “This is it. We have no license plate. What will we do now?”
Margery slowed. It was too late to go back the way they’d come, and impossible to plough forward. The policeman stepped out of the car and motioned at her to stop. She did so, not as smoothly as she might have hoped but at least she hadn’t run him over. He threw away a cigarette and then yanked at the waist of his trousers. A pair of handcuffs hung from his leather belt.
“Enid?” Margery whispered. “Can’t you do something? Can’t you open your top?”
Enid gasped, appalled. “I’m a mother. What do you take me for? You do it.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You have plenty up there. You open your top. Or flash him your legs. Show him what you’re made of.”
“He’ll think he’s being assaulted by a music hall act. Have you looked at me recently?” She was staring straight at the police car. The policeman had gone back to check his cigarette was properly extinguished. There was something unexpectedly careful about the way he lifted his b
oot and twisted the toe on the ground. The truth hit her. “Enid? Opening my top will not work. And neither will flashing my legs. He’s a woman.”
“Wait. The policeman is a woman? How can that be?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a woman.”
“No. I have never seen a policewoman. When did that happen? They don’t have women policemen in New Caledonia.”
“Well, maybe on the east coast they do. Or maybe she’s the policeman’s wife and the policeman is sick today so she’s doing the rounds on his behalf. I don’t know. We have no time to debate this fascinating subject. She’s coming toward us, Enid.” She tightened her fingers around the wheel to still the tremor in her hand.
The policeman/woman was now standing right beside the jeep. She was as broad as the uniform, with her black hair tied in a ponytail and two small curls hanging on either side of her face in loops. She gave a polite knock on the window.
“Bon shoor,” said Margery, incredibly sweetly.
“Ou allez-vous?”
“She wants to know where we’re going,” said Enid.
“We can’t tell her where we’re going,” said Margery. Followed by “Bon shoor,” again to the policewoman, who was waiting patiently.
“Passeports?”
“She wants our passports.”
“Yes, Enid. I know. I worked that one out.”
“We don’t have any.”
“I am aware of that, too.”
“You have no visa. Your visa has run out. What will we do? This is terrible.”
“Enid, could you possibly stop talking and just smile?”
“Passeports,” repeated the policewoman. “Papiers.”
Margery pulled out her handbag and produced a wad of Dolly’s cash. The policewoman looked briefly taken aback. Not only had they just met the only policeman in the world who was actually a woman, but she had principles. “Non,” she said. “Merci, mais non.”
“Marge?” hissed Enid. “What are you doing? You think you can bribe her?”
The policewoman cast her eyes over the inside of the jeep. Margery watched, barely daring to breathe, as the woman carefully took everything in: the steering wheel, her handbag, the Reverend Horace Blake’s pocket guidebook, a jerrican of water, the red valise, Enid, the baby. She nodded and then stepped back to examine the exterior….The handcuffs at her waist gave a little clink clink.
“It’s over now, it’s over,” said Enid through clenched teeth.
There was no arguing with her. In a matter of moments, the policewoman would see the jeep had no license plate. Then she would ask again for their papers. Margery’s mind went blank. She couldn’t move. She was conscious of a dull stinging somewhere in her body, an aching, a tremendous heaviness. All she wanted was to sleep. And then an idea came to her. Without even thinking about it, in fact before she could think about it, Margery knew what to do. She knew how to rescue the situation. As if it had shot straight from the sky, a useful everyday French phrase landed in her mind. She spoke in perfect French, complete with rolling r’s and buzzing s’s: “I am going to the next village to sell my grandmother’s hens!”
The policewoman paused. She blinked. “Comment?”
Margery said it again.
The policewoman stared, she cocked her head, she stroked the two little looped curls on either side of her ears, then suddenly she grinned. And that was it. That, apparently, was all the situation required. That one terribly useful everyday French sentence. “Ah, bien sûr! Bien sûr!” She stepped aside, merrily waving them goodbye. Merrily Margery waved back. They were through.
After that the road was quiet. They stopped every now and then so that she could refill the jerrican with water from a fountain. She bought more petrol. They traveled without speaking, barely able to believe they had got away, and because it was better for their thirst if they kept their mouths closed. It was a strange journey, this new one, where the only question was what would happen next. Clearly they needed to get off the island as soon as possible. No more waiting to be done.
Margery took a corner, narrowly missing a man gesticulating at them wildly, then turned another corner and swerved to a complete halt. She was lucky to slam her foot on the brake in time.
“Oh, no, oh, no!” gasped Enid yet again.
The Reverend Horace Blake was prone to exaggeration. Moments of poetry. Margery could forgive him those. Besides, one of his useful everyday phrases had just saved their lives, or at the very least put the police temporarily off their trail. But what he’d failed to mention anywhere in his passage on “The Beautiful East Coast Road” was that it stopped south of Hienghene, on account of the river. And not a stream, not a brook: a great channel of foaming dirty water, thirty feet wide, gushing down the mountain, like sand from a chute, complete with whirlpools, vapors, and spume, and rising even as they watched. The noise was extraordinary. There was no bridge. No tunnel. There was just road. Raging wild river. Then, across on the other side, happy road again.
“I reckon I can do it,” said Margery.
Enid screamed. “Have you lost your mind? I have a baby. There’s only one way to cross this.” She flung out her arm and pointed to the water’s edge.
A collection of the world’s most villainous-looking mules waited, overseen by a band of boys, whose collective age could not have been more than thirty. Barefoot, smeared with mud, their bare bellies distended above the elastic bands of their gym shorts, they were already waving at Margery and shouting, “Thees way! Vite! Vite! Thees way for tourists! We take voiture! You go by moool!”
“We are not going by mule,” said Margery.
“Are you joking?”
“We can wait for the ferry.”
“Margery, there is no ferry. Get on a mule.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“I’m terrified of mules. I got bitten once. Enid, I cannot go on a mule. It will bite me.”
“Margery, if you do not get on a mule, I will bite you.”
Margery would not have done it to save her own life. Whether she would have done it for Enid was doubtful. But she gave in. For Gloria’s sake, she gave in. She agreed to mount a mule.
* * *
—
The arrangement was that they would cross the river through the shallows, while the boys drove the jeep. According to the boys, they knew where the rapids lay, and the most dangerous currents. But she needed to hurry. Vite! The river was rising because of the cyclone, and if they did not leave straightaway, it would be too dangerous: they would have to wait at least a few days. But the money they were asking was extortionate. She offered half. They laughed and walked away. “Marge!” yelled Enid. “Just pay!”
The river rushed by, full of fast-moving driftwood, jetsam, leafy boughs, and several trees. In the end she gave the boys all but twenty francs.
A scrap of a child, no older than ten, leaped into the driving seat of the jeep and began to rev the engine. In moments he was zooming toward the water. The other boys hurried their animals closer.
Margery had been right to spend her adult life avoiding mules: they were not supposed to be ridden. Also, owing to her size, and possibly her attire, the boy in charge had allocated her one that looked like the kind of mule people didn’t normally mount. The kind of mule that carried bags at the rear. It couldn’t even be bothered to stand up.
The mule boy thwacked Margery’s mule. This seemed foolish. The mule rose, one furious leg at a time, and stared at her, then drew the black skin from its gums to reveal a full working set of hideous yellow teeth. It was like a direct message. Mule to Margery. Actually, less a message, more an extremely nasty threat.
“Quick! Quick!” shouted Enid, whose sweet, docile mule had actually bent its legs—bent its legs—to enable her to take hold of the reins, and spring up. Within moments she was si
tting astride her mule, holding Gloria.
Margery grabbed the part of the mule that looked least mule-ish: the leather saddle. As she lifted one leg and hauled herself up, the saddle promptly slid toward her, dumping her in the river. To add insult to injury, the mule splashed her.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mule Boy.
She had no choice but to pitch herself over its back, her head and arms on one side, her rear and legs the other. Mule Boy thwacked it again, and the mule pitched forward. It was everything she could do to stay on top. Hanging on by her arms, she hauled up her legs so that she was at least in a vertical position.
No one in their right mind would describe Margery as a natural horsewoman. And nothing about riding a mule struck her as something that should happen. She knew, as she clung to the mule’s lower half, and it repeatedly smacked her over the head with its tail, that she would never, ever do this again. She wouldn’t even pat one or offer it a cube of sugar. But at last they were heading into the water: the other side of the river was clearly ahead. And then, just as she thought things could not possibly get worse, her mule decided it was having such a lovely time with Margery, it would take her for a swim. It was no longer going straight ahead to the other side, it was doggy paddling, with Margery hanging on, in splashy circles. Already, Enid had dismounted on the other side, and waited with Gloria. The jeep was dripping water, but also parked on the other side.
It came to her suddenly that Barbara had once said, “Well, if you think I’m cross, you can think again. I simply won’t notice you until you finish your greens.”
Margery pretended she was indifferent. She said to the mule—which was probably not an English speaker but so what? She was desperate: “I don’t care. You can swim as much as you like. I’m not bothered.” She affected an attitude of bored indifference. She even whistled.
The mule gave up its swim and trotted calmly to the other side.