Miss Benson's Beetle Read online

  “Where is my equipment?” said Margery.

  In answer, the delivery boy pointed again to the suitcase he had delivered. He could point as much as he liked; it still wasn’t Margery’s. For a start, it was brand-new. Enid said they should check the case anyway, but when she tried to open it, the lock wouldn’t move. Margery was about to make an emergency phone call to the airline when Enid came up with a better idea. Enid’s better idea was to pick the lock on the suitcase, open it, and see what was inside. It was inconceivable to her that they would return a suitcase that didn’t belong to them without even taking a look.

  Margery counted on the lock stumping Enid, but she might as well have laid bets against her running out of things to talk about. Enid examined the lock with one eye rammed against the shaft, fetched a bobby pin, and had the thing open in seconds. She pulled out sundry items: Bermuda shorts, short-sleeved shirts—some plain, some patterned with flowers—socks, garters, and a large jacket with pockets.

  “Are you an idiot?” shouted Enid. “Of course this stuff isn’t hers. Have you any idea who this woman is?”

  The delivery boy shook his head, surprisingly upbeat for someone who had just brought a full set of male safari clothes to a hot lady and her volatile friend.

  “She’s a famous explorer,” said Enid. “That’s who. She’s going to find a beetle and take it back to the Natural History Museum.”

  “But my equipment?” said Margery, again. The Gladstone bag contained everything she needed. She felt hollow. “Where is it?”

  At this point Enid took over. Sensing disaster, she tipped the delivery boy and ushered him out of the room. She got Margery a chair and sat her down. “Marge, I need you to be calm. I need you to tell me exactly what you’ve lost.”

  “A killing jar, a pooter. Oh, no. I have no ethanol—”

  “Marge, that’s not being calm. That’s flapping. Tell me what those things are for.”

  But Margery could barely think in a straight line. Without her collecting equipment, there was no way they could continue. “We might as well cut our losses and go home. I could try to get another teaching job.” Her voice ran out even as she said it. She couldn’t think of anything more desolate.

  “No!” Enid practically shouted. She twisted her hands and paced up and down, followed at close quarters by Mr. Rawlings. “There has to be a way round this. Can we buy the stuff?”

  “Where? And, anyway, I can’t afford it.”

  “Okay, okay. What is a pooter?”

  “What is a pooter?”

  “Yes. Marge. What does it look like? Don’t go blank on me. Think.” Slowly, and with much faltering, Margery managed to explain that a pooter was a small suction collector with two rubber tubes going into it, one of which you placed over the beetle, the other you sucked.

  Enid stopped her pacing and listened.

  “How long are the tubes?”

  “About eighteen inches.”

  “Like in a chemistry set?”

  “I suppose like a chemistry set. Yes. I suppose.”

  “All right,” said Enid. “What else?”

  “Naphthalene.”

  “What is naphthalene?”

  “It stops other insects from eating the specimens.”

  “Okay. Naphthalene. Got that. What else?”

  “Pins. I need pins.”

  “Like ordinary pins? Dressmaking pins?”

  “Yes, they would do. They must be very small.”

  “What else?”

  Forceps. Tweezers. Pitfall traps. A sharp knife. A brush. Not to mention blotting paper, ink, pens. Her head began to spin. It was worse than being on the ship.

  “I get the gist,” said Enid. “There are a few inquiries I need to make, but I won’t be long.” Before Margery could ask anything else, she was out of the door.

  Margery had no idea of whom Enid might possibly make inquiries in Nouméa. It was true she often wandered off and found something in the market: a bag of mangoes, a terrible painting of the Baby Jesus, a square of brightly colored fabric. And she always had a story of some poor, unhappy person she’d befriended on the way back. But she’d made no mention of meeting anyone normal, let alone a person who owned insect equipment.

  She returned after ten minutes. She remained just as evasive after her inquiries as she had been before them.

  “Well?” said Margery.

  “All sorted out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, leave it with me.” Enid changed into a pair of slacks and gloves and put on her baseball cap. Margery began to object that whoever she was going to meet, Margery should meet, too, but Enid cut her off. Margery had nothing to wear except a pile of clothing belonging to a big man they had never met. Either that, or her best frock. “And I’m sorry, Marge, but we need to sweet-talk this chap, not put him off.” She kissed Mr. Rawlings and told Margery not to worry. When Margery tried to give her money, she said she still had her traveler’s checks, so it would be fine.

  Never had time passed so slowly. Enid was gone for the whole evening. The sun lowered and, in the distance, the mountains glowed like pink whales. Margery walked Mr. Rawlings beneath the palm trees, though he was so distraught he kept laying his head on his paws and letting out sighs that seemed to deflate him. He really was the most useless dog in the world. The last post was delivered—with one letter for Margery—but there was still no sign of Enid. By the time she turned up, it was dark. There was a full white moon, and low purple clouds lay over the horizon. She kicked the door open, bearing a box of supplies that was so big her torso was hidden. She was just two thin legs and a head with a baseball cap on top. Her face was popping with happiness.

  Two bottles of ethanol, three of naphthalene, Kilner jars, Band-Aids and bandages, lengths of rubber tube, specimen jars, safety pins, a box of pins, a broom handle, scalpels and blades, scissors, tweezers, insulating tape, several small empty tins, as well as a pair of old soccer cleats—

  “Enid? How did you get so much? Where’s it all from?”

  Enid mumbled something about a nice doctor who liked helping people. Then she threw herself onto the bed, like a child in snow. “You’ve got your equipment. I have a pair of boots. Now can we do this thing? Can we get out of here?”

  Margery beamed triumphantly and stood taller in her girdle and stockings than she had ever stood before. “I, too, have news, Enid. My efforts have not been in vain. An invitation came in the evening post from the British consul. We are going to a garden party at six P.M. tomorrow.”

  He was stuck in Brisbane. She’d left the Marine Hotel and boarded a plane to New Caledonia without him. The first he’d heard about it was when he went to Reception, and said he was there to see Miss Benson about an expedition.

  The receptionist had looked at him like he was dirt. “But don’t you know she has already gone?” she’d said.

  He had hit the desk so hard that the receptionist flew out of her chair, and the next thing he knew two big blokes in porters’ hats were escorting him off the premises.

  Mundic had hung round the harbor all week, but no one would let him board a tourist steamer without a ticket, and that would cost more money than a man could make in a month. He’d pulled off a cruise to the other side of the world, but when it came to a boat to a little island, he couldn’t even get past the barrier.

  At the jetty, a knocked-up old cargo ship had come in, heading for New Caledonia. The crew were loading crates before they let the steerage passengers on. He called up to the deck to ask how long it would take to get there. They said a month. He asked if he could take a look. They yelled at him to clear off.

  He missed the RMS Orion. It was so crowded in Brisbane, with the blinding sea on one side, the cranes on the other, and all those people shouting and smelling of sweat. Then, mingled with all the noise and color, the heat a
nd the haze, there were the faraway sounds, if you listened, of people eating and laughing. It got him confused. He couldn’t remember sometimes where he was. He even thought he was in Burma. Besides, his feet were beginning to play up and he was afraid it was the beriberi coming back. It had started at the camp when they’d had nothing to eat but a cup of rice, and he’d got so weak and breathless he’d be throwing his guts up and it was like his legs were made of paper. There’d been times in Burma he’d had to tie a length of liana creeper from his big toe up around his knee, just to keep marching—he’d seen men fall over and die, right next to him, unable to take another step. Now all he wanted was to get to New Caledonia.

  He’d slept on benches after he lost Miss Benson. Hung around the port. Tried to stay where no one could bother him. It was like he’d lost all direction. He kept his passport safe in his pocket, and he took it out and said to himself, “I am a free man,” but he didn’t write anything in his notebook. There was no point.

  Ahead, the cargo ship was loaded up, and they were beginning to admit the first passengers. He scanned the crowd, looking for a weak link.

  * * *

  —

  There was a delay leaving. A woman on the jetty began to kick up a fuss. She was shouting that her tickets had been stolen. Someone had taken her purse. The captain refused to let her board without them, and she said it wasn’t her fault, one of her kids had been crying. She was getting hysterical. The captain made an announcement on the loudspeaker, asking if anyone had seen this woman’s purse, and Mundic, who had got himself a seat right at the front of the boat, kept very still. He watched the shocked face of the man beside him, how his mouth dropped, so Mundic copied and made the exact same face, like he was shocked, too.

  The ship pulled free of the jetty, and the woman with kids was left behind. But he had her purse now, so he could buy food.

  Another month and he’d be in New Caledonia.

  The British consul had never heard of a golden beetle. And he thought Margery was joking when she asked for help with her visa. “I’m afraid that’s not something I can do!” He laughed. “French bureaucracy!” Then he said, “It was smashing to meet you, Mary,” and moved on.

  His home was a large French villa on Mont Coffyn, overlooking the bay and Îlot Maître, a small rocky formation in the middle of the sea with the look of a hairy pimple. The consulate garden was beautifully kept, the grass as green as an English lawn, sloping down to a thicket of fig trees, bananas, and papery red hibiscus flowers, where someone had hung homemade Union Jack flags. It was a small party: men in tropical suits and old-school ties, dabbing their necks with handkerchiefs, as if they were covered in tiny cuts, and their wives in cocktail frocks that stuck out from the waist like lampshades. Dark-skinned staff moved between the guests, dressed as British waiters, with white gloves on their hands and hats attached to their thick hair.

  “These people have slaves,” hissed Enid. Despite her reluctance to attend, she had sprayed her hair until it stood up by itself and put on a tight spotty outfit that left nothing to the imagination.

  Meanwhile, Margery had washed her best frock. That was as much as you could say.

  “They are not slaves, Enid. They are staff.”

  “I don’t like this place, Marge. This is a very bad idea.”

  A waiter gave them drinks served in half coconut shells, with straws and foil umbrellas. Enid downed hers in one suck, and took another. “We don’t belong here,” she said again.

  “Actually, we do. We are British.”

  “If this is being British, I’d rather be something else.”

  “Like what, for instance? What else could you possibly be?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Enid. “But not this. I don’t want this.”

  The consul’s wife interrupted to introduce herself as Mrs. Pope. Mrs. Pope was one of those neat, thin women who made Margery feel the size of a tree. She tried to lessen herself by stooping. Now she resembled a hunchback. Meanwhile, Enid said she was off to check Mr. Rawlings, whom she’d left looking devastated at the gates. Secretly Margery was relieved. It would be easier to tell Mrs. Pope about the beetle and traveling north to Poum without Enid butting in to ask about babies. Besides, she hadn’t said this outright, but when Mrs. Pope asked if she was from the Natural History Museum, Margery had nodded as if she might be.

  Mrs. Pope laughed when Margery told her it was the dream of a lifetime to come to New Caledonia. “Oh, but it’s such a hellish place,” she said. “Absolutely nothing happens. And the north is even worse. You can go miles and not see a white face. Wouldn’t you rather be anywhere else?” She introduced Margery to a group of women who were all variations on the theme of Mrs. Pope. Neat, immaculate, sweet smelling. And all blond—like Enid, but without the chemicals.

  “Miss Benson is an insect collector,” Mrs. Pope said.

  “Gosh!” sang the women.

  “She works for the Natural History Museum.”

  “Gosh!”

  “She’s going to find a gold beetle in the north. She is heading for Poum.”

  “Gosh!”

  “I’m just waiting for my lost luggage and paperwork,” said Margery. The women agreed that New Caledonia was an awful place. The heat and the insects, and it was so far from home—you could spend whole months without a scrap of news. Their husbands were there to manage the nickel mines. They couldn’t wait to leave. Several wives had gone already. (“Emotional difficulties,” said Mrs. Pope, tapping the side of her nose.)

  “You should get in touch with my husband,” said a woman with a little-girl voice. Her frock was covered with white frills. It was like talking to a wedding cake. “Peter manages a mine up north. Here is our address. He will be home for Christmas.” She wrote her details on a piece of paper with their names—“Mr. and Mrs. Peter Wiggs”—at the top.

  Margery had no intention of visiting them, but she put the note in her handbag out of politeness.

  The women were desperate for the latest stories from home. (“The last British newspaper I saw was from summer,” said Mrs. Pope.) Was it true things were as hard as they’d been during the war? There was still rationing? What did Margery know about the murderer Norman Skinner? Did the hangman really botch the execution, and have to hang him a second time? They reeled off great lists of things they missed. Queues, gray drizzle, properly stocked shops, Branston pickle, English fields. Or what about the Festival of Britain next May? Would Margery be back in time? Wasn’t she terribly excited?

  And Margery, who had never really enjoyed any of those things, even when she was bang in the middle of them, found herself saying, “Yes! Yes!” She couldn’t wait, she said, for the Festival of Britain.

  “You should join us for coffee,” said Mrs. Pope. “We meet every Friday.”

  “Just the wives,” said Mrs. Peter Wiggs. “We do craftwork. Don’t we, Mrs. Pope? We make all sorts of things.”

  “We’ll be hosting a Three Kings party on January the sixth to mark the end of the festive season. You must come.”

  “We all dress up as kings!” said Mrs. Peter Wiggs. “It’s such fun!”

  “How long are you here, Miss Benson?”

  “Only three months.”

  “Oh, lucky you!” chorused the women. “Going home in February!” Then a waiter produced a tray of tiny sandwiches, and they held up their gloved hands. “No, boy! I couldn’t! I couldn’t!”

  Margery wished she couldn’t, either, but she was starving, and since the sandwiches were the size of postage stamps, she said yes, please, and took one.

  Unfortunately, the sandwiches were not so tiny or stampish as they looked. As her mouth met one end, the entire filling spurted out of the other. She didn’t even have a napkin. At the same moment, Mrs. Pope said, “I expect you’ve heard the shocking news, ladies?”

  It must have been politeness, but
Mrs. Pope chose to address her shocking question to Margery and consequently everyone was staring at her. She managed to say, “No,” but with a mouthful of bread and a handful of egg filling, it was hard to express any further interest without also sharing the sandwich. She was mortified.

  “There was a break-in at the Catholic school last night. Someone stole supplies from the chemistry department. As well as all sorts of equipment.”

  Briefly the world stopped and then started again at a different speed. There were scandalized gasps from the women.

  “Have they caught anyone?” said Mrs. Peter Wiggs.

  “Not yet, Dolly. But they will soon. It will be one of the natives. The GIs, Miss Benson, introduced the natives to all sorts of things. Life on the island isn’t the same since the war.”

  “That’s right,” agreed the women.

  “And it gets worse when you leave Nouméa. It’s simply not safe up north.”

  “People have got lost,” said Mrs. Peter Wiggs. “They go north and never come back. And aren’t you worried about the cyclones? The whole island gets shut down.”

  “I assume you have a man with you?”

  But Margery failed to reply. All she could see was her assistant, now on the other side of the lawn, surrounded by a group of husbands, like the brightly colored center of a pale wheel. She was telling them something hilarious. The British consul was laughing so much, he had his hand on her bottom.

  Margery turned back to Mrs. Pope but too late. Everyone had followed the direction of her gaze, and they were all staring at Enid. Mrs. Pope’s face was an aghast O. At this point, Enid gave a laugh that Margery wished she hadn’t: exposing, as it did, even more of her already highly exposed cleavage. It was only a moment, but judgments are made in the blink of an eye, especially harsh ones, and Margery knew that Enid had been cast as an outsider, and trouble.

  “Who is that person exactly?” said Mrs. Pope.