Miss Benson's Beetle Read online

  “Marge, what are you doing here?” said Enid.

  “Didn’t you hear? She’s looking for lions,” piped up the unpleasant woman from the back.

  Margery had no choice. She had to say her private word to the whole room. “Enid, I owe you an apology. I behaved badly. I let you down. But I’ll never find the beetle if you don’t come with me.”

  “Beetle?” laughed the unpleasant woman. “You lost your beetle now, lady?”

  “That’s right,” said Taylor, laughing. “This crackpot thinks she’s looking for a gold beetle.”

  Nothing she had suffered so far was as terrible to Margery as the laughter that met her now. She was one smelly, moist, furious lump of shame, and she had no one to blame but herself. Enid was the only one who didn’t laugh. Her head hung low.

  “You’d better leave, Miss Benson,” said Taylor. “Walk her to the gate, Enid. And mind you come straight back.”

  Enid stepped forward and opened the canvas door. A slice of hot white light filled the room. “Come on, Marge. This is no place for a lady like you.”

  Outside, she picked up a shard of glass and scraped the dog mess from Margery’s boot. Margery waited, balanced on one leg, helpless. Now that they were alone, she was sure Enid would say she had changed her mind, but she didn’t, she just kept cleaning the boot and talking in a fast way about all the lovely people she’d met at the camp. It was late afternoon, and the sun still showed no interest in setting. There was one baby cloud in the sky that looked lost up there. Abandoned.

  “Well, thank you for coming!” said Enid as they began to walk, sounding less like a woman in a migrant camp and more like a hostess at a cocktail party.

  “Enid, I know I’m ridiculous. I do know that.”

  A huge bird flew past and settled in a spindly tree, bouncing up and down on the branches.

  “I can’t come with you to New Caledonia, Marge. I already told you that on the boat.”

  Now would have been the moment for Margery to open up, but there was no way of telling her story that would make it acceptable. Besides, she had been raised in a house of women whose skill at not saying a difficult thing verged on professional. The truth had become such an elusive entity, she could as easily talk about her feelings as ride a mule. So she said beetles had two pairs of wings. She knew it wasn’t good but it was the best she could come up with.

  “They have one set called elytra and they’re like a shield on top of the second set. When the beetle needs to fly, the first pair splits and lifts, and then the second set—they’re very thin, like film—unfolds. Nothing can fold as tightly as a beetle’s wings.”

  “You’re so clever, Marge.”

  “A beetle can’t fly with one set of wings. It needs both. It needs the hard set to look after the complicated ones. Butterflies have it easy.”

  Enid gave a big sigh that didn’t seem to produce any words. Then she said, “Look, I’m sorry. You have to get a new assistant.”

  “You’ve traveled to the other side of the world just to stop here?” Margery pointed at the Nissen huts and the baking hot road. Another dog limped past, covered with sores.

  But Enid wouldn’t listen. She had it all worked out. Taylor could put a roof over her head. He was just waiting for his paperwork. Then they’d leave the camp.

  “So this is your life? It’s like holing up with Bill Sikes.”

  “Who, Marge?”

  “A man in a book, Enid. Not a very nice one.”

  They passed a group of women on chairs, with their frocks over their knees and their feet in a huge shared trough of water. The women were laughing about something, and when they saw Enid, they waved and called, “What a scorcher, Enid!” and she waved back. She said this was her friend Marge from the Natural History Museum. The women called, “Hello, Marge from the Natural History Museum!” They trudged on.

  “Enid,” said Margery. “About that—”

  But Enid interrupted. “You want to know how I got on the boat at Tilbury? I stuffed some cash down my bra. That’s how.”

  Despite the heat, Margery had to stop again. She didn’t know which was worse: that Enid had done such a thing, or that it was an acceptable alternative to owning a British passport. “Why?” she said. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not the kind of woman you need. You’ll only get in more trouble if I come with you. Forget me, Marge. Start again.”

  They were almost at the gates. The high fencing was ahead. Ripping a page out of her notebook, Margery wrote the address of the airport. “The flying boat leaves at eight tomorrow morning but you have to get there early for the weigh-in. I think you’ll be fine with all your suitcases—you’re small and the limit is two hundred twenty-one pounds—though, to be honest, you could lose the fur coat.”

  Enid took the piece of paper and stared, as if she was seriously thinking about changing her mind. Then she said, “I should go back. Taylor doesn’t like it when I wander off.”

  “And what about your husband?”

  This time, when Enid looked at Margery, her face was raked and twisted. “It’s too late, Marge. Anyway, Taylor has a gun. He’s not the kind of man you leave.”

  Here came that heavy feeling again, as if Margery were being filled with sludge. They went the rest of the way without another word. The gun had put their conversation into a whole new place. Nothing she could think of was big enough to bring Enid back. At the gates they shook hands, like polite strangers. Then Margery opened her handbag and passed her a packet of traveler’s checks.

  “Here,” she said. “Take this.”

  “You already paid me, Marge.”

  “Enid, please don’t be a woman without your own means. Take the money.”

  Enid tried to object again, but Margery was already on her way to the gate. It was only once she was on the other side of the fence that she heard Enid shout her name.

  “Marge! Thank you! I can’t believe you came to look for me! No one else ever did that! Good luck! Find the beetle!”

  Enid clung to the wire, continuing to laugh and blow kisses. Sick at heart, and far too hot, Margery trudged away and did not look back. She had come all this way to ask Enid to help her, when she should have been doing the opposite: she should have been rescuing Enid. Yes, she had given her cash. But she sensed that wasn’t really the point; that, under the circumstances, much more was required. She remembered Enid on the morning of her miscarriage, how Margery had taken one look at her and run. She got the feeling she was always looking at life through a glass wall, but one that had bobbles in it and cracks, so that she could never fully see what was on the other side, and even when she did, it was too late. Then she thought of the group of women with their feet in the big trough and how easily they had sat together, as if they had no secrets. It occurred to Margery that something inside her was hurting, and the thing that was hurting was the knowledge that she would never be that kind of woman. She would always be on the outside.

  The bus appeared, throwing up dust, and she clambered on. The driver wished her a happy day and Margery didn’t thank him, she just paid for her ticket and found a seat. Enid had come into her life only to disturb it, and now that she had gone it felt not only smaller, and empty, but shabby, too. She pushed at the window but, again, couldn’t open it, so she sat there, getting hot.

  Her loneliness felt closer than her hands and feet.

  He was so close he could touch her. He could reach out with his hand and go knock-knock-knock on top of her helmet.

  When he was a kid, it was like he never understood the rules. Or, at least, not the ones the other kids knew. He’d push a boy in a fight, but he had to go a step further and kick him, then everyone would join in and pile into Mundic instead. Or he’d hear a joke and he’d go ha-ha-ha, finding it funny long after everyone else had stopped, so they’d poke fun at him and call him a retard. And it was
like someone had struck a switch and there was this anger shooting up inside him and he had no idea how to turn it off.

  His mother used to cry when she saw his bruises. It broke her heart. He was her special boy. Every time he got hurt, it hurt her, too, and he didn’t want to hurt her. She said he had a flame inside him, but not everyone understood, so he must keep a lid on it like a good lad, or one day he’d get into serious trouble. But sometimes the flame was there before he saw it coming.

  He had been okay until the ship docked in Brisbane. He’d had his little cabin on the RMS Orion and the bed. He’d found Miss Benson alone on the deck that time, and after that he had saved her life. He wrote all the facts in his Book of Miss Benson so he wouldn’t get confused. Then he’d noticed the blonde with a new feller. He’d followed them and heard them talking about Brisbane. And he knew it was going to be okay now, because Miss Benson would need someone else to lead her expedition, and he was right there. He had the map and everything. He was ready. But then he’d lost her in the crowds at Immigration. The doctor took one look at him and moved him aside for questioning, and Mundic had to make up a whole story about how he’d been posted in France, and had never had a tropical disease. By the time he’d got out the only person he could spot was the blonde, so he took the bus with her, and it went all the way out to an immigration camp. But there was no sign of Miss Benson.

  He’d got into trouble after that. It was seeing all those huts and the barbed wire. It took him right back. He found himself bang up against a bunch of guards. “What you doing, Pommie?” they asked. And instead of creeping off quietly, like his mother had said, he lashed out with his fist and felt the soft squash of a wet mouth, and he hit another right in the eye, until they grabbed hold of him and kicked and kicked, and he didn’t do anything, just lay there till they’d had enough. There was blood in his mouth and on his hands, but he couldn’t feel it. He had just stayed where he was and he was so hurt, it was like it was all peaceful and still inside him, so he could sleep.

  Then today he had gone back to follow the blonde and he couldn’t believe his luck because Miss Benson was there, and she was following the blonde, too. It was like they were all following one another.

  It was really funny.

  And he wanted to write that in his notebook but he couldn’t because they were on the move and he didn’t want to lose her again.

  Then the blonde had gone into her hut and he’d watched as Miss Benson stood outside and she’d looked so big and hot, he’d wanted to laugh again. He waited while she went inside the hut and when they came out, he followed them again, and he saw Miss Benson give the blonde money, then trudge away alone.

  And now they were together on the bus. He was sitting right behind and he was about to say, “Boo! It’s me!” and go knock-knock on her helmet, and then he remembered how punched-up he was and he thought he’d better have a wash first. The bus stopped at the Marine Hotel, and she got off and walked so slowly, it was like she was made of lead.

  Soon they’d be on their way. The blonde was gone. He was leading the expedition now.

  It was a neighbor called Mrs. Clark who went to the police. The house belonging to the couple on the opposite side of the road had gone quiet. The curtains had been closed for five weeks, there was a wad of post against the door, and so many milk bottles outside that the milkman had stopped coming. Mrs. Clark’s husband, Mr. Clark, thought he might have seen the wife leave early one morning with suitcases, but his sight wasn’t so good on account of being caught in a gas attack at Verdun, so he couldn’t be sure. What was certain was that there had been no sign of life across the road for five weeks. Mrs. Clark had knocked a few times. She had checked round the back, though, to be honest, the wife had never been the kind of woman who paid too much attention to things like the garden—she wasn’t even that bothered about scrubbing her front step. But a lovely young woman, Mrs. Clark said. Heart of gold. The husband was a bit…“You know,” she said, wiggling her finger as if she were curling the air with a stick. “He has his bad days.” It was the war. He was too old but he’d signed up anyway. Lost a leg during training. Didn’t even make it overseas. Sometimes the wife put him in the garden along with the laundry, just to get a bit of sun on him.

  “Lovely woman,” she said again. “She works nights.”

  The police had barely broken down the door when the smell hit them. Not murderous, more like something rotting. This, it turned out, was exactly that. A vase of flowers in the kitchen that had turned nasty. There was no smell from the body because the house was so cold. At first, they thought he was asleep, but the inspector pulled back the blankets, and one of the younger officers threw up on the spot. It was a bloodbath. Mrs. Clark, who’d managed to follow them up the stairs, saw the sheets and screamed.

  They calmed her down with smelling salts. “Just tell us her name,” said the officer in charge. “You need to give us her name.”

  She took gulps of air as if it were medicine. One, two, three. “Nan,” she said at last. “Lovely woman. Nancy Collett. Oh, God bless her. What has Nan done?”

  Within two days, a notice appeared in The Times: “Wanted: Information relating to the whereabouts of Nancy Collett, last seen on 19 October, carrying a red valise.”

  Almost dawn: Margery queued alone with her suitcase and Gladstone bag for the weigh-in at the port. Heart going thump, thump, thump.

  Ahead, uniformed officials beckoned passengers to step, one by one, onto a giant weighing machine. The rule was the same for everyone. You mounted with everything you intended to take: the 221-pound allowance included both passenger and luggage. The longer she waited, the more anxious she got. Everyone suddenly looked small and neat, even the men, and none of them were carrying insect nets, let alone wearing pith helmets. And even though she’d lost weight during the first month on the ship, it had piled on afterward. If anything, she’d gained more.

  For some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking of Professor Smith, and she’d managed to not think of him for years, though the day she’d read his obituary in the paper, she’d sat in the staff room, unable to move, as if yet another part of her had been rubbed away. But maybe it was inevitable he should come into her mind now. It had been Professor Smith, after all, who had smiled at her in the Insect Gallery and then—over ten years—had taught her everything he knew. He had introduced her to the private archives he curated at the museum and even allowed her to help with his work. She had loved the display cases, as she pulled them out like drawers. She loved the orderliness of the lines, the tiny pins, the smell of preserving liquid, the minute white labels and the spidery writing with the Latin name of each specimen, along with the date and place it had been found.

  Now, waiting for her turn to be weighed, she couldn’t stop remembering the first time he’d shown her how to kill an insect. She had placed the square of lint on the bottom of the jar with a few drops of ethanol, just as he’d shown her, and then she had lifted the beetle with needle-eye tweezers, careful not to damage it in any way, and placed it inside the jar. She had screwed on the lid. But the beetle would not die quickly, as she’d expected: it flailed and sucked at the burning air, lifting its antennae, cramming its legs at the glass, calling her—or so she imagined—to stop, amazed and appalled at what she was doing after she had taken such care to lift it gently with her tweezers. In the end, she’d had to look away, until the beetle lay on its back, legs screwed up, wings tightly packed, as if it had never lived at all. She had gone so pale that Professor Smith had taken her to a tea shop, just to revive her.

  “Miss! Miss!”

  The man in front had already been weighed, and waved through the barrier. Now it was Margery’s turn. The official signaled her forward as if she were a dangerous animal. “Miss! This way, please!”

  She clambered up with all her luggage, only the step was higher than she’d thought and someone had to give her a shove from behind. Th
e delicate needle on the scale moved more and more slowly—she seemed to be putting on weight, even as she stood there. Maybe it also weighed the heaviness in your heart.

  Her total was recorded on a piece of pink paper by an official with shaving soap in his ear. He showed his notes to another man—this one wearing a toupee. He shook his head.

  “No,” said Toupee.

  “No?” she repeated.

  “You’re too heavy. You can’t get on the plane.”

  And that was it. She had suffered weeks of seasickness, lost her assistant, and just as New Caledonia was finally in her sights, she had met a dead end in the form of two bureaucrats with a bad wig and some shaving soap.

  Then: “That bag is mine!” called a voice from the back of the crowd. “Let me through!”

  Margery could have danced. Here came one pink travel suit, one perky hat, hair like a yellow lightbulb, three items of luggage, plus the red valise. In addition, a great big pair of sunglasses that seemed to prevent Enid from running in a straight line.

  “Two pairs of wings!” she yelled.

  No time to ask how she had got away, or what she had done about Taylor’s gun, let alone the truth about her marriage and her husband at home. Enid leaped to the scales, tottering under the weight of not only her own luggage but also Margery’s. Mr. Shaving Foam happily waved her through, without checking her weight or writing anything on his piece of pink paper, urging her to put down her heavy luggage because it was too much for such a lovely lady and would be loaded on to the plane separately. Before Margery could object, Enid had her gripped by the elbow, and was hurtling her toward Passport Control. There, she pulled out her purse and undid her top buttons, winking at the official, while saying to Margery, “I just need a quick moment with this feller,” but Margery—who could not bear the thought of Enid exposing her underwear to any more officials—produced her passport and pointed at the photo, insisting Enid was the brown-haired woman in the background, while Enid put away her purse and fixed her top buttons, and now backed Margery up, or at least provided a smoke screen, with a complicated nineteen-words-to-the-dozen story about the wonders of hair dye, how nice the man was, how much she liked his lovely uniform, and how excited she was about her awfully big adventure with her friend.