Miss Benson's Beetle Page 15

  But right now Margery hated it. She was furious with herself for getting it wrong, furious with this filthy hovel for not being a well-appointed bungalow. She even kicked it, which was silly, really, because her foot went through the floor, causing a hole with a six-foot drop beneath it, and that was just another thing to deal with.

  Outside, a bird gave a squawk, like a person being slowly strangled.

  * * *

  —

  Enid became a different woman. Literally. She pulled off her frock and, in no time, was in a leopard-print bikini with an apron round her middle, running backward and forward. She was like Miss Lovely Legs on turbocharge. (“Don’t you think you should put some clothes on?” said Margery. “Marge,” said Enid. “Relax. No one’s looking.”) Followed by Mr. Rawlings, she lugged water in pots from a freshwater creek beyond the bungalow. She pulled from the jeep anything that vaguely resembled a cleaning object, and by the afternoon she had scrubbed every inch of the bungalow with water and pink soap, not stopping once to lie down, or even say very much. She hauled out the pieces of scrap iron and pushed an old mangle over the veranda. She collected a load of cigar butts and porn magazines, and made a fire of them in the garden, then scrubbed the bungalow a second time until it smelled almost entirely of pink soap. She caught an assortment of lizards in a net and took them to the other side of the track, where she set them free, convinced that lizards were either too obedient or frightened to cross roads. (They followed her straight back.)

  In the garden, she found two old cane chairs that she hoicked up to the veranda. There, she said, it would be possible to rock gently and admire the view, not because they were rocking chairs but because they had dodgy legs. She dragged two mattresses out to the balcony and whacked them free of dust and mildew, then made up the beds with sheets from the jeep and mosquito nets. Now that it was semi-clean, the bungalow seemed much less frightening. She said a table could go here, the hurricane lamp there, perhaps some shelves. It was as if Enid, with all her bashing and scrubbing, had jolted it back to life. And Margery, who had for most of the day followed Enid in a completely useless way with a broom, and attempted to make something edible out of yams—which was so awful that even insects steered clear of it—now carried heavy items up from the jeep. Somehow in all of this she had become Enid’s assistant. She had become her assistant’s assistant.

  Enid drove to Poum for nails and matches, and returned with a selection of boys from the shantytown—“They wanted a ride”—as well as an old rug. The boys came into the bungalow and made a thorough inspection of all their camping gear. They touched the tent, the hammocks, the Primus stove, the pots and pans. Enid handed out chewing gum and sent the boys packing, though they came back later, trying to sell her a goat. Enid said no to the goat, but did her expert mime of the gold beetle, which the boys enjoyed so much they returned yet again with lots of friends and a selection of clown beetles, as well as a giant coconut grasshopper that was the size of her hand. It took more chewing gum to get rid of them. She put her Miss Lovely Legs trophy on display, and nailed up her picture of the Baby Jesus, with his fat legs and fat feet, a look of sweet pleasure on His face, as if He was full of milk.

  So it was that Enid, who had been wildly sloppy on the RMS Orion, became passionate about this hovel she now shared with Margery. By the end of the day, there were two semi-habitable bedrooms at the back, a makeshift kitchen, and a washing line in the garden. She even found a sheet of old hardboard under the bungalow and repaired the damage Margery had done to the floor, though it would always be a weak spot. To avoid a fatal accident she put the rug over it as a reminder.

  “Look!” she said. She was covered with insect bites, like spots, all over her back. “Look, what I made you! A study!” She bounced to the little room at the front, swatting things as she went.

  For the first time in her life, Margery stood in her own study. Through the window, ferns the size of trees bowed as if welcoming her, and the air was laced with pine. Enid had already unpacked the naphthalene and the wooden trays for storing specimens, as well as Margery’s books. She’d even donated some of her empty bottles and jars.

  “Do you love it?” she said.

  Margery was overcome. It was possibly the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her. She had no idea how she deserved it. And she didn’t know if it was because she was dressed in shorts, like a man, but Margery took in that view and got the strangest sense that everything she wanted was ahead and available, so long as she was brave enough to claim it. Then she thought, No. It’s not because I am dressed as a man. It’s because I am a woman who is ready for adventure. I’m not here because I am someone’s wife or sister. I am here because this is what I want, and now I have a place for my work.

  She said, “I love it. Thank you, Enid. I love it.”

  * * *

  —

  It took ages to get to sleep. She was nervous about the next day and in the dark the room felt even more alien, and then she had to move the mattress because something was chewing the roof directly above her head. Clearly it wasn’t enough to worry: she also had to lie awake worrying because she was worrying. But she must have drifted off in the end because she was woken by Enid asking if she was asleep.

  “I had a nightmare, Marge.”

  Margery struggled to switch on her flashlight. Moths with wings like paisley shawls flapped out of nowhere and banged uselessly against the walls. Blue moonlight poured through the window and lit Enid as if she were a ghost. The night was quiet.

  “What was your nightmare, Enid?”

  “I dreamed I only had a year left to live. It was terrifying.”

  “But that was a dream. It wasn’t real.”

  “Supposing it wasn’t? Supposing it was one of them things?”

  “A premonition?”

  “Yeah. Suppose my head knows something, and I don’t.” Enid plumped herself on the end of the mattress and drew her knees up to her chin, but her foot kept jigging. Even in stillness she was full of movement.

  “I don’t see how a dream could be a premonition, Enid. I don’t see how your head would know a thing like that.”

  “Well, it put the wind up me, Marge. How could I have a baby if I only have a year left to live?”

  “But you don’t have a year left, Enid. You’re young.” Enid was the most alive thing Margery had ever met. Like grabbing hold of an electric current.

  “I’m twenty-six, Marge.”

  “Exactly, Enid.”

  “My time’s running out. What were you doing when you were twenty-six?”

  “Nothing, really. Research.”

  “Exactly. You were fulfilling your vocation.”

  “Your dream wasn’t a premonition, Enid. You’re just nervous because we’re going to start searching tomorrow. I’m nervous, too. It’s natural.”

  “What would you do, if you only had a year left? Would you keep looking for the beetle?”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you want to be a mother?”

  “But how could I look after her if I only had a year left? Who would love her when I was gone?” Enid flexed her toes. She stared as if she hadn’t seen them before. “What about if you had a month? You’d still look?”

  “Yes.”

  “One day?”

  “What about it?”

  “If you only had one day, wouldn’t you want to give up?”

  Margery shook her head. She didn’t even think. But Enid sighed. “If I had one day left, I’d give up on my dreams. I’d just want to hold another human hand.”

  Margery stared. Enid was telling the complete truth. She remained lit by the moon, jigging her toes, her hair almost white, her arms slick with sweat. Faraway thunder rumbled; a flash of lightning struck the room. And despite the closeness of the air, sharp pimples stood out over Margery’s skin because she saw that Enid knew herself far better th
an Margery did. The fact was that she had no idea what she’d do if this was her last day on earth. Probably dig a hole and wait for the end, hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much. And it hadn’t really been true to say she was fulfilling her vocation when she was twenty-six.

  She said, “We should sleep. It’s a big day tomorrow.”

  “Can I stay with you? I hate being alone.”

  “If you like.”

  “Will you tell me about them beetles? Like you did on the ship?” So Margery told her about the African Goliath beetle, as big as a hand. The flightless bess beetle; the blue Lepicerus inaequalis, so tiny it could pass through the eye of a needle. Enid was snoring in minutes.

  But Margery couldn’t sleep now. She sat, head bowed. All she could think of was Professor Smith.

  He had taught her all she knew, this man who was old enough to be her father. They talked beetles, beetles, beetles. It started with him smiling at her across the Insect Gallery, and after that he invited her for tea. No man had ever bought her tea and cake, and no man had ever asked so many questions. Where did she live? Were her parents alive? When had she first become interested in entomology? She kept gulping and flapping her hands, unsure how to keep her mouth closed to eat her cake, while also opening it to reply. They met the following week, the week after that, and it became their routine. When she was with him, life seemed to move at thirty miles an hour, shimmering with so much color she felt breathless. Everything was beautiful, even the hook where he hung his coat. He was maybe in his late forties, but she couldn’t be sure. He lived for his work, and the thought of his loneliness made her heart contract, as though squeezed by an invisible hand.

  He explained that the discovery of new species was increasing at a fast rate, but so was the disappearance of known and unknown ones. Species were vanishing without ever having been found. In order for scientists to understand what they were losing, and why, they needed to discover first what they’d got. It was a race against time. He showed her beetles that before now she’d only read about; he taught her the hundreds of thousands of tiny differences that marked them apart. And when she dared at last to mention the undiscovered golden beetle of New Caledonia, he didn’t laugh at her or say no. He promised to make inquiries. In that moment her life seemed to balloon outward because it was possible: the glory she had imagined the first time her father had shown her his book of incredible creatures was not a fantasy or a pipe dream; it was within her reach. It was everything she could do not to hug him.

  Professor Smith wrote to a colleague in Belize. His colleague in Belize wrote back. The next time they met, he was so excited he forgot to take off his hat. “We know there are golden scarabs. We know there are golden carabids. Golden weevils. There’s also the golden tortoise beetle, of course. But as far as we know, no one has ever found a golden soft-wing flower beetle. To find it would be something special. And important, too. It would be very important for the museum.”

  She laughed, he laughed. And it was so tremendous to see him happy, and know that it was at least a little bit because of her, that she could feel herself blooming inside, like a new flower.

  “Now find your evidence.”

  So she did. She found it. Suddenly her life had purpose. He sorted out a pass for her, and she was in the British Library every day. She discovered Darwin’s private letter to Wallace, the missionary’s journal, and the account by the rare orchid collector. She learned about other entomologists who’d collected in New Caledonia—a French priest, Xavier Montrouzier, who had lived on the island from 1853 until his death in 1897; Émile Deplanche, who had made two trips between 1858 and 1860, along with the ship’s pharmacist, Monsieur Bavay. There had also been Alexis Saves, and Monsieur Godard and a Mr. Atkinson, as well as, more recently, several GIs who’d got interested in beetles while they were posted there. She scoured their notebooks, their journals, their letters. Several had heard of the gold beetle, but none had made the link with the white orchid.

  “Now work out why the beetle will be there,” he said. “And nowhere else.”

  She did that, too. It was like piecing together a mystery. She followed every clue, and when she met a dead end, she didn’t give up; she retraced her steps and started again. If the orchid collector was right, the male probably fed on the nectar of the rare white orchid. The female might bury her eggs in the damp leaves surrounding it. And so the larvae probably fed on the invertebrates that would otherwise eat the seeds of the white orchid.

  At last, she presented him with a set of notebooks. “It’s amazing. The white orchid needs the gold beetle as much as the gold beetle needs the white orchid.” She could barely breathe.

  “Good work. Very good.” He brushed her arm by mistake—she blushed. “Now find out more about the orchid.”

  She spent months researching orchids of the world. There was one, a small white orchid, that had only ever been seen growing at high altitude on a mountain in New Caledonia. “Very good. So where is the mountain?”

  She discovered an unnamed peak in the most remote and northern part of the island. It looked like a blunt wisdom tooth. No European collectors had gone that far. Or they’d tried and been eaten.

  “Fortunately, cannibals aren’t a problem now,” said Professor Smith. He was being humorous. She laughed way too much. Hiccups followed. He offered her his handkerchief. It smelled of him. A surprisingly feminine smell. She kept the handkerchief.

  “You must go to New Caledonia. You must find this beetle.”

  “With you?” she wanted to say, but she didn’t. In her mind she already pictured him leading the way on a mule, her following, not on a mule but very happily on foot, bearing cooking pots and equipment and whatever else he might need.

  “And, of course, you will have to kill it. I know you won’t want to. But you will have to do that, Margery.”

  She didn’t need to hear the argument, but he gave it anyway. If the golden beetle of New Caledonia was real, it was her job to know as much about it as she could. And you couldn’t find out everything you needed to know by simply watching it chew a leaf. You needed to study it under a microscope. You might need to discover what was inside. She would have to bring home three pairs. That was all. Besides, beetles multiplied rapidly. Three pairs were nothing.

  She nodded: he’d said it so many times that she knew the argument word for word. But she let him talk. Even if he talked, and she didn’t, it still counted as a conversation.

  “The entomologist is not a beetle murderer. It is a case of killing what you love in order to preserve the whole species.”

  Love. The word turned her pink. Her visits weren’t once a week anymore. She went to the museum at least two or three times. The aunts remarked occasionally that she was late for dinner or running too fast up the stairs, but they never inquired what she had been doing all day. They probably didn’t want to know. She accompanied Professor Smith to the private archives of the Entomology Department, where she took notes for him. She pinned new specimens. She described them exactly as he’d taught her. And even though this wasn’t an official job, she knew she was lucky. Most women behind the scenes at the museum were either pot washers or cleaners.

  She was in love with a middle-aged man who was devoted to his work, and no one knew anything about it. Not her aunts; certainly not him. If Barbara knew, she referred to it obliquely. A paperback manual once appeared on Margery’s bed, Mainly for Wives, with chapters on how to cook a proper meal for your husband, and how to look attractive when he came home from the office. Margery read it from cover to cover and discovered she needed to be more interesting and also wear rouge. But really there was no hope of being his wife: he was much too clever for marrying. She resolved on secrecy—whatever happened, he must never know her true feelings, must never realize how daft she was. In silence and with every part of her, she loved the mumbliness of his voice, the brilliance of his mind, the way he combed his hair
to hide the bit of his head where there wasn’t so much. And when his hand reached for her leg one day beneath the tea table, she sat very still, certain it must be a mistake and too polite to point it out. If she could have cut off her leg to spare him embarrassment, she would.

  But it seemed to be a mistake his hand kept making. After that first time, it was always reaching for her leg beneath the table. Sometimes it even stroked and squeezed.

  Margery said nothing. She would happily have spent the rest of her life with his hand on her knee, if she could remain at his side, helping with his work.

  She was woken by a block of white at the window. No trees, no sky. There wasn’t even a mountain. The world had apparently vanished in the night. She rushed to the door.

  Pressed against the bungalow on all sides was a thick felty whiteness that sucked the sound out of everything. She couldn’t even hear insects. The air smelled oozy, and was very cold, while the ladder from the veranda seemed to disappear after two steps. For a terrible moment she thought the bungalow had cut loose and drifted into cloud. They’d crossed the world to find a beetle and suddenly they’d be hard put to spot their own feet.

  The world stayed white and not-there for three days. There was no way they could start the expedition. Enid tried to drive the jeep to Poum but bumped into a tree, and decided to walk. Margery sat in her study under a blanket and wrote notes in her journal, but there wasn’t anything to report beyond that they were stuck. Even her watch had stopped working. Enid came back from Poum with a new battery for her radio, followed by yet more boys from the shantytown, who took advantage of the mist to climb up the bungalow and peer in at the windows: Margery found six pairs of eyes watching her and shrieked. Enid tried to get a radio signal but failed. In her boredom, she arranged the tinned food into towers; five in all. They went over how to identify the orchid and the beetle—Margery drew Enid an oval-shaped specimen with long antennae. Enid even had a practice at sucking things up with the pooter. But it was the worst kind of waiting. They were lost and they hadn’t gone anywhere.