by Rachel Joyce
“Did I teach your sister?”
“No.”
“You work at the Natural History Museum?”
“Of course I don’t.” He gave a nervous laugh, like a child beginning to lose confidence.
This was worse than being stuck with Rumpelstiltskin. The guessing could go on for years. He said, “You didn’t want me to lead your expedition. But you were wrong. I came, too.”
With an almighty thud, she got there. She remembered where she’d met him. Lyons Corner House. The man who’d been a prisoner of war. But what was he doing here on the other side of the world? Shivering in the front room of a bungalow that barely anyone knew about? Her heart began to move like a train.
She said, “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” he repeated, as if he hadn’t thought of this question before or, rather, as if he was no longer sure of the answer. “What do I want?” He wandered in a loose zigzag from the door, and back to the window. Watching him, she felt suffocated. “What do I want?”
“You look ill. Are you ill?”
He ignored her. “I was on the ship. I found you at the bottom of the stairs. I took you to the nurse. If it wasn’t for me, you would never have got here. I have been following you all this time. I saved your life, Miss Benson. We’re together now.”
She barely moved yet she caught Enid’s eye, and saw the terror there. Her mind was trying to shift back to the ship, but it was so hard to think of anything except the present. He glanced at Enid briefly, as if she was some kind of hindrance. And then Margery got it. Dimly she remembered the ship’s sick bay, a man helping her to her feet, how she had curled into him briefly, wanting to stay asleep.
“I told you,” said Enid, in a steady, quiet voice. “I told you someone was on our trail. I just thought it was me he was after. Not you.”
“I have been with you all the time,” he said. “But I’m sick. It’s over now. It’s time to finish this, once and for all.”
She went white. She could feel it. Her breath emptied from her chest and her blood froze over. She had no idea how to move. Then, carefully using his free hand, he dug into his pocket and pulled something out. The hand opened, and at first it was hard to see because his palm was so dirty and cut, but there in the middle was her missing beetle. Its pin was gone and so was the label, its legs were not splayed but squashed, at least two were missing, the elytra gone, the antennae mangled. It was one of the most pitiful things she’d ever been given.
“You see?” he said.
“Yes. I see.”
“I brought this back.”
Her mouth dropped but the voice that spoke was not hers. It came from Enid: “Marge, be very careful.” She had her hand cupped over Gloria’s head, the way she did when it rained. “What’s he got in his other pocket, Marge?”
Mundic ignored Enid. He just kept staring at Margery. His face continued to pour sweat.
“Mr. Mundic, you should go now,” said Margery. “You should leave.”
“I made notes, too. Like you said.”
He leaned down and placed the squashed beetle with great care on the floor. Standing upright, he flapped impatiently through his pocket, still not using his right hand: that remained hidden.
“Don’t go near him, Marge,” called Enid. “Keep your distance.”
He grunted, twisting his hand in his pocket, frustrated with the effort of trying to free whatever it was.
“Marge, I don’t like this,” said Enid.
At last he had it. He pulled out a notebook and thrust it forward. He held it toward her, stabbing the air.
“You want me to read this?”
She took it, but her hands had begun to shake. Inside, the pages were yellowed, many coming loose, and others marked with rust from the two thin metal staples holding it together. The writing was tiny, as if a child had been doing pretend writing. The words went up pages, down them, even at a diagonal slant. She couldn’t make sense of a single one.
“Is it good work?” he said.
“Yes. Very.”
“Read it out.”
“What is it?” Enid’s voice came again from the door, stripped and thin. “What’s he given you?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Mundic flipped. Too late, she remembered the balls of spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted at her in Lyons Corner House. “Read it!”
Mundic’s right hand shot from his pocket and instinctively Margery ducked, while Enid screamed from the door.
He was pointing Taylor’s gun straight at Margery. The barrel was no more than a foot from her chest.
Something fell right through her. She staggered backward and crashed into a hard edge with her shoulder that turned out to be the hurricane lamp. It swung, it dropped, it hit the floor. It struck hard but didn’t go out, so now they appeared to be lit from the feet upward. She snatched a glance at the chair. Enid and the baby were gone.
Suddenly Margery felt a strap of tightness round her chest. Had she been shot? Was she hurt? She hadn’t heard the gun, and if she’d been shot, surely she’d be bleeding, or on the floor, or in actual pain, but she wasn’t, she was still standing, and Mundic was still pointing the gun at her. Never in her life had she been so unsure what would happen next.
When her voice came it sounded rusty. “Please, let’s put down the gun. I will read your notes. If that’s what you would like, I can do that. But please, please, put down the gun. It’s not safe, Mr. Mundic.”
He kept the gun pointed at her. He shifted the weight on his feet, as if he couldn’t find his balance. He didn’t seem to know what should happen next, either. If anything, he seemed to be waiting for her next move.
At this point something pink charged through the door. Enid was wielding a frying pan as if she were about to offer someone a cooked breakfast—but no: she raised the pan and smashed it over Mundic’s head. The assault seemed not to concuss so much as baffle him. He dropped the gun. It went skittering toward the corner.
“You?” he said, delivering a punch to Enid’s rib cage that sent her reeling. “Why are you always in my way?”
Gloria? Where was Gloria? Margery cast around, desperate.
“She’s safe in the kitchen,” gasped Enid.
Like a demented chef, Enid now produced more culinary items with which to bang Mundic. Sticks, spoons, a tin bowl: they came whizzing through the air with the force of missiles. Mundic ducked left, he ducked right; only a few hit home. Coconuts, tinned Spam, half a yam, her Miss Lovely Legs trophy, a shower of loose hair grips. She even grabbed her Baby Jesus painting and smashed it over his head, following this with a knee to the groin. Mundic screamed.
“Run, Marge! Get out!”
But before Margery could move, Mundic twisted round and grabbed Enid by the neck. With a roar, he hauled her off the floor. She kicked and jabbed at the air; it made no difference. Teeth bared, he kept hold of her throat so that she could do nothing but wriggle.
Margery lunged toward him. A white dart of pain shot through her hip and sent her sideways. She grabbed another tin of Spam, and hurled it at his head. It missed. He staggered with Enid toward the door and pitched her through it, so that she went flying over the veranda. He had just thrown her best friend out of the bungalow.
Margery had never been a violent woman but she had—with reason—been an angry one. Now she saw red. Everything—the bungalow, her hands, Mundic’s face—was ablaze. The pain in her hip was unbearable, but she made a lurch forward, her legs so weak her feet were all over the place, and grabbed hold of Mundic’s shoulders, shaking him hard until his face began to wobble. She did not see the next part coming—his fist. It launched from behind his back and whacked her so full in the mouth it bloomed like a hot stinging flower. Struggling to keep her balance, she caught Mundic in both arms.
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nbsp; An awkward embrace, but all Margery needed was purchase. While he blinked with confusion, and reached to touch her mouth, she leaned far backward and then returned, slamming her forehead smack into his nose. A terrible crack. A hot wetness splattered Margery’s face. Blood everywhere.
Mundic howled. Margery howled. Stumbling, flailing, Mundic reeled. Stumbling, flailing, Margery reeled but remained upright. She had just headbutted Mundic.
He seemed stunned. So was Margery. Her head split with pain, and flashes of white lightning obscured her sight. She could barely see. Who knew that inflicting pain on another person could be so painful? Then a hand seized her by the shoulder. Before she knew it, he was clamped to her back, riding her as if she were a mule.
She yelled. Outraged. She swung, this way, that way, trying to throw him off, but his hand was smothering her face. Only just in time did she avoid the rug that hid the dangerous weak spot in the floor. She shunted him off with one jab from her elbow, and he deflated and fell from her to the ground, knees curled in tight.
She turned to run after Enid, but he reached to catch her foot and brought her down.
This time, the fist was inevitable and swung into Margery’s belly, driving the breath out of her. Blood in her mouth, blood in her hair. Impossible to tell now which blood belonged to whom: it all seemed to be outside the bodies, instead of in them. And a smell, too, a terrible smell of vinegary wet meat.
Was she dying? She didn’t know. There was a pulpy substance all around her that she assumed was bog, until she remembered she wasn’t in one. Then, opening her eyes, she saw, in an unfocused way, the bloodied face of Mundic peering over her.
The gun was back in his hand. But he was no longer pointing it at her. He opened his mouth to cram it inside. His eyes bulged.
Fear turned back to rage. Margery was one bleeding mass of flesh, she was winded and ready to pass out, but she crawled to what she hoped were her knees and roared, “No. You will not. You will not do this to me. No.” As she made a lunge to stop him, pain shot through her legs, like bolts of electricity, so that she crashed into Enid’s eel bucket and it fell on its side. Water tipped everywhere.
Then: “Snakes!” he screamed. “You said there were no snakes!”
It must have been the rain that had brought them out. Two tiny eels were moving in scribbling loops across the floor. It was the light of the hurricane lamp they were after, but Mundic didn’t know that. They had no wish to harm him. He didn’t know that, either. He dropped the gun, his face caught open in a silent scream, and leaped backward, crashing into the hurricane lamp, so that he lost balance and tripped over the rug, falling into it.
Beneath him, the floor opened like a trapdoor. Lamp, rug, Spam, Mundic. Everything shot through the hole and disappeared.
* * *
—
It was dark but the moon was full. The land was lit like a photograph. Whitened palms, and where there were gaps, the whitened ocean. No sign of the mist, except a few threads snagged in the highest branches. The first stars had begun to flicker.
Enid was lying in the dust just beyond the steps. Her body wasn’t curled over, or twisted. She didn’t seem in pain. She lay in her pink travel suit with her eyes closed, as if she’d fallen asleep, a boulder as a pillow. On her feet the tiny sandals she loved with the pom-poms. Her skin was dark, a patch flaking on the end of her nose, her hair loose. If anything, she looked like a child.
With great difficulty, Margery dropped to her knees. Somewhere in her mind she had known the moment she caught sight of Enid that she was too late. She’d known as she lumbered down the broken steps, as she dragged herself through the grass and red dust, even now as she felt for Enid’s pulse. But she kept searching with the tips of her fingers, pressing Enid’s wrists, loosening Enid’s collar, pressing her throat, looking for the smallest flicker of life. She called Enid’s name repeatedly. She told her to come back, come back, Enid, stop this right now. Throw any surprise you like at me, Enid, but not this one, please. I’m not ready. She even shook her—not very hard—but hard enough. Then, with her two hands, she pulled Enid’s face toward hers, and yanked her fingers inside Enid’s mouth, and pushed her own over Enid’s. Live, Enid, damn you. You wanted life. Live. For as long as she kept searching for a trace of life, it was possible to hope it was there, waiting, just the tiniest flicker, and Margery would not give up, she would stop at nothing, she would find it. She had saved Enid’s life before: she could do it again. Enid still smelled of Enid, after all. But her efforts to make her alive came to nothing. Whatever she had been, it was gone. Suddenly Margery felt so cold.
She took Enid’s hand. She held tight. Fragments of pictures passed through her mind, small but uncannily distinct. She saw Enid totter across Fenchurch Street station, trying to carry four suitcases and wave with her foot. “Ta-da!” Here was Enid, throwing open the door of their cabin on the RMS Orion, with flowers, a whole mountain of flowers, borrowed from first class. She saw her wiggling through rainforest with her little dog until she hoicked her frock up to her knickers and ran free. Enid had rescued her from her stunted life and Margery loved her more than she could make sense of. She kissed the back of Enid’s hand and pressed it to her face, and when her tears came, she didn’t try to hold them back even though they hurt like great big stones. She just held Enid’s hand and sobbed. In the darkness, one face, then another, then another moved closer. The boys from the shantytown. They bowed their heads.
This was not Margery’s last day in the world: she had many more to come, though barely one would pass without some memory of Enid, however faint, either in a gesture that Gloria made, or the movement of light in the trees. The cold she felt now would lessen but never go away, because her friendship with Enid had been one scorching flame. If life must go on, then so must death, and, like life, it would be a continuing story.
In the meantime, Margery had a man with a broken neck to deal with, the imminent arrival of the French police, not to mention a fishing boat making its way to Poum. But for a moment she wanted nothing more from life than to hold this human hand.
A baby’s cry echoed from the bungalow. It was time to feed Gloria.
Several years after the disappearance of Margery Benson and Nancy Collett, an anonymous parcel was delivered to the Entomology Department at the Natural History Museum, postmarked Borneo. Inside was one leather-bound notebook, sixteen drawings of a beetle no one had ever seen before, and three pinned pairs of specimens, male and female. The diagrams were impeccable. The notes gave exact descriptions of the beetle’s size and appearance, its habitat—a remote peat swamp forest in Borneo—as well as accounts of its mating patterns, diet, and the wormlike larvae the female buried in the roots of swamp trees. The beetle’s presence in the ecosystem was vital: its larvae fed on bugs that were attacking the roots of the swamp trees. It was labeled Sphaeriusidus enidprettyi.
In the next thirty years, more anonymous parcels were sent to the Entomology Department, not regularly but every once in a while, and from all over the world. They always contained a leather-bound notebook and sixteen anatomical drawings of a new beetle, as well as three pairs of perfectly preserved specimens. No one had any idea who was sending them, but they became a mystery that the department enjoyed. For a while a story went round that one of the deceased curators had faked his own death and was actually back in the field.
Thirty years after the first parcel came one more, addressed not to the Entomology Department in general, but specifically to Freya Bartlett, the only woman working there at the time. Freya had heard about the strange packages that turned up occasionally and, like everyone else, she was curious as to who might have sent them. She didn’t know why but she had a feeling they were the work of another woman. Maybe it was just her fantasy. She was lonely, that was the truth, really lonely. Her working hours were so long she’d given up on the idea of having a family—she couldn’t even hold down a rel
ationship—and when she went on an expedition, she was set apart from her male colleagues by problems they didn’t have to think about. Not only periods, or where to pee safely, not even the endless jokes about her physical strength. But the sense she was never really going to get what she wanted. More than a few times a colleague had reached out a hand when she didn’t need help, and squeezed too hard. She’d been talked down and talked over. She’d missed a couple of promotions she should have got.
And yet, deep down, she knew she couldn’t really blame anyone else. Out of some strange mad desire not to upset the status quo, she’d become complicit. She had laughed when she should have been angry, or said nothing when she should have said a lot. She’d belittled her own achievements, calling them small or unformed or even lucky when they were none of those things. And it wasn’t simply opportunities at work she’d lost out on: she had—and, again, this was her own choice—missed the weddings of her closest friends, just as she’d missed their children’s christenings. Only a month ago her oldest friend had written, inviting her to Scotland for her godson’s birthday, “But I guess it will be difficult for you to get away.” And it was true. Some nights Freya worked so late, she took her sleeping bag out of her locker and slept on the floor under her desk. She actually kept a toothbrush there and a set of spare clothes.
She felt the parcel. It was thin. Too thin to hold anything of interest. Postmarked New Caledonia. She opened it.
There was no leather-bound notebook. No sixteen drawings. No perfect specimens. Just an envelope. Inside the envelope, a black-and-white photograph.
It showed two women. An entomologist and her assistant. The entomologist stood right in the center, a pretty young woman with a big smile on her face, her hand stretched out to meet the camera. Her face was round, proud, happy, as if she’d found something really exciting that she wanted people to see. Her fair hair was loose and thick; she was dressed in a frock and boots, a pair of binoculars round her neck. Freya fetched a magnifying glass. The young woman had a beetle in her hand. Hard to say from a black-and-white photograph, but it was clearly brightly colored. Maybe even gold. Couldn’t be a scarab or a carabid. It wasn’t round enough. Surely not a soft-winged flower beetle. No one had ever found one of those. No wonder the woman looked happy.