Miss Benson's Beetle Read online

  “Are you all right?” someone asked, which she clearly wasn’t—she was a large woman, lying at the bottom of the stairs—but people will ask these things. “I am fine,” she said in her best BBC voice. And then she did the best thing possible in the situation. She passed out.

  * * *

  —

  For a while, Margery had no idea who she was, or how she was, or why. She visited landscapes no one had ever seen before, and pinned hundreds of previously unidentified beetles. When she finally came round, she was in a freshly made bed in a room that was large and sunny and smelled not of vomit or Enid, but of lovely clean things, like disinfectant and menthol.

  “You had a nasty fall,” said a kind voice, while a nurse’s hat loomed into focus, complete with a nurse beneath it. “Can you move?”

  Briefly Margery thought she was a child again, back at the rectory, her mother in her bedroom, her father in his study, her brothers playing cricket on the lawn. “Where am I?”

  “You are in the sick bay,” said the kind nurse. “On the RMS Orion.” With a thud, Margery remembered: ship, Enid Pretty, villainous frock. She felt weak.

  “How did I get here?”

  “A passenger found you. Do you not remember?”

  Now that the nurse said it, Margery did remember, but only faintly, as if the memory belonged to someone else. She remembered lying on the floor and wanting to stay there, with her eyes closed, until a man had helped her to her feet. She remembered the shame of being so helpless and how he had put out his arm to steady her, and how she had wanted nothing, except to remain asleep.

  “You’re lucky you’re not on crutches,” said the nurse. Clearly she was one of those Pollyannaish women who breaks one leg and is happy because the other is still functional. “Take it gently,” she said, with a voice like ice cream. She was so lovely that Margery could barely resist the urge to ask if she fancied a one-off trip to New Caledonia. But she did: she did resist because she already had an assistant. It was just that she was covered with blood in their tiny shared accommodation somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Enid was less in the Pollyanna camp, more the Lady Macbeth one. Margery tried to move again and failed.

  “No need to rush,” said the nurse. “You’re going to have a nasty bruise. And you’ll be pretty sore, too. I’m going to give you iodine and some bandages. But when we get to Brisbane, you’ll have to put your feet up. Have you got someone to look after you?”

  Margery didn’t even answer.

  * * *

  —

  By the time she got back to the cabin, it was midday. Her assistant lay on the top bunk, wrapped in her prawn-pink dressing gown. As well as the iodine, Margery had a walking stick, which wasn’t necessary but felt like having a backup leg. Miraculously her hip was in one piece, but her knees were badly grazed and it hurt to sit.

  “Enid?”

  Enid was asleep—or, at least, she was lying in a very still position with her eyes closed. Margery knew she was alive because she had an ashtray resting on her chest and it bobbed up and down, like a little boat, as she breathed. Her frock had been washed and was hung over the chair. She opened one eye. “What happened to you?”

  “I fell.”

  “Oh,” said Enid. Then she said, “In case you’re interested, I think I must have lost my baby last night. So thanks for running away. Just what I needed.”

  Margery had the feeling of a lot of heavy objects falling on top of her all at once. It was everything she could do to stop herself passing out a second time. “Enid?” she said. “You were pregnant?”

  Enid nodded, but not to Margery, only the ceiling.

  “How far?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know, Enid. I don’t know.” Margery thought about Enid’s miniature knitting and the way she’d touch her stomach sometimes, with a look of tentative awe. Then she tried to haul from her memory what she knew about Enid’s husband, Perce, but all she found was that she seemed to know nothing.

  “I wasn’t sure,” said Enid at last. “I wasn’t showing or anything. I thought the baby might come about May.”

  “In May? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You wouldn’t have given me the job.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t have given you the job. This is a five-month expedition. We might not even have got home in time. And how could you possibly climb a mountain if you were pregnant?”

  “Well, it’s not a problem now, is it?” said Enid, with a snap in her voice.

  “Did anyone know?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “About the baby, Enid. Did anyone know?”

  “No.”

  “Not your husband?”

  Enid groaned, as if Margery was failing to spot something that was staring her in the face. But when she turned, her eyes spurted tears. “I lose them. I always lose them. Every time. Do you want to know how many I’ve lost? One, two, three…” Enid cradled each of her fingers, as if it were a tiny child. She counted until she got to ten, then stopped and just cried. “I want a baby. That’s all I want. A baby. I thought this one would be different.”

  “Enid, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t help. I’m frightened…” She couldn’t even say the word at first. “I’m very frightened of blood.”

  Enid made a sarcastic noise, like an explosion in her mouth. “Well, that’s great for a woman.”

  “I know.”

  “Still, Marge, you didn’t even try to help. I know I’m your assistant, but I’m not your maid. In case you didn’t notice, that went out with Queen Victoria. And you’re no duchess, either. Your clothes are as shabby as mine.”

  Margery hung her head. She felt she had been called to give something of herself that was way beyond anything she had given to another person, but everything about her felt too big for the situation. Ideally, she would have liked to sit, only the frock had got to the chair first. Instead she dithered, waiting for Enid to get better all by herself. She asked if she might like a cup of tea.

  Enid didn’t hear. She spoke to the interesting patch of ceiling above her head. “I should have known I was going to lose my baby. I wasn’t sick once. And that’s a sign. It’s a sign the baby’s healthy if you’re sick.” She gave a laugh that had nothing to do with being happy. “Ha,” she said. “Well, I suppose it’s over for me. I’ll never have a baby now.”

  * * *

  —

  At her mother’s funeral, Margery had not cried. She was only seventeen. Her aunts had told her not to make a fool of herself in public, but she hadn’t done it in private, either. She had watched the coffin being lowered into the ground and she had taken a clod of earth, just like her aunts, and thrown it down, but it had been like scattering mud into a hole. It had meant nothing. She had become aware of a strange snuffling, like a small animal being wrung at the neck, and, turning, had been astonished to find that the noise was coming from Barbara, who did not own a black veil like her aunts, but whose nose was red and whose features were mangled, as if her face had been shoved against a wall. Later, Margery had stared at her reflection in the mirror and screwed up her mouth like Barbara’s and tried to cry, but nothing would come. She knew she missed her mother, and she knew she loved her, but missing her mother seemed to be in one place and Margery seemed to be in another, with nothing to join them up.

  Enid was not like that. After her miscarriage, her crying was loud and messy. It wasn’t just the pain, though sometimes she turned white with it and tensed her body like a fist. She said she couldn’t believe her body was doing this. She couldn’t believe it was taking away the one thing she wanted to keep. “It was a girl,” she cried. “I know in my heart she was a girl.”

  Enid said she was afraid she was disappearing. When she was pregnant, she knew she was alive, and with every baby she lost, another part of her slipped free. Margery fe
tched treats to distract her, an egg sandwich, a bottle of nail color. It made no difference. Enid stayed on the top bunk, crying and beginning to smell, with her new battery radio pressed to her ear so that she could hear the General Overseas Service. A few people knocked on the door, but she wouldn’t see them, not even Taylor. Margery had no idea you could be so slight and yet carry something so painful inside. And it wasn’t as if what Enid wanted was glorious. She just wanted to be a mother, one of the most ordinary achievements in the world. When it had occurred to Margery in her late thirties that she would never have a child, she had not allowed herself to grieve. It had simply been another of those things that marked her apart.

  And nursing. That didn’t come at all naturally. Unlike Enid, who would happily have cared for every lonely or sick person who so much as coughed at her, Margery was uncomfortable with the role. No one in her life had ever asked for her help—in fact, they’d done the exact opposite: her aunts had endured illness as if it were vulgar to admit defeat—and Margery was afraid of getting it wrong. She suggested Enid might like a walk, but Enid said she couldn’t bear to go where she’d see kids. She didn’t want to be alone, either. So Margery hung up her frocks and put the lids on her jars, then sat on the yellow chair and talked about whatever she could think of, and since she ran out of things pretty quickly, she told Enid about the gold beetle, then showed her other specimens in her books.

  “The gold beetle will be about the size of a ladybug but not as round. And it will have very long antennae, you see, because it is a pollinator. It lives on the white orchid. Now this one is a leaf weevil.” She held up the book for Enid to see a picture. “It is bright green and covered with fine hairs. You see?” Or “This is a shiny rose chafer. It lives on rose petals.” She went through page after page, showing her favorite beetles and describing them. “This is a rhinoceros beetle. Look, Enid. Look at its long horn. This is an African flower beetle. Do you see how green and red it is? Its big white spots? Or what about the devil’s coachhorse? This has an orange head and large black mandibles.” Enid would stare at every page and nod when she was done. She didn’t exactly say she liked them, but at least she’d stopped howling.

  “It’s nice,” she said once, in a small voice.

  “What is?”

  “This. You telling me about beetles. It’s cozy.”

  So the last thing Margery expected was what Enid did next.

  * * *

  —

  Three days from Brisbane, the party mood on the ship had changed. Many passengers were on ten-pound tickets to immigrate, and suddenly there was a lot of worried talk about the future. Rumors had begun to spread about migrant camps and the lack of work, how families were sharing Nissen huts. There was even a story about no lavatories in the whole of Australia.

  Margery was reading when Enid crept down from her bunk. She had her slip on, nothing else. She looked shockingly pale.

  She said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to stay in Brisbane. As soon as I get a job, I’ll send the money for my ticket. I’m going to try to have a baby in Australia.”

  All this Enid said clearly, hands behind her back and staring straight ahead, as if it were a bit of poetry she’d learned by heart.

  Margery’s mind went into overload, then jammed. She heard “Brisbane,” “ticket,” “baby,” and the rest tipped over the edge. “But what about the expedition? What about your husband? And, in case you’ve forgotten, you don’t even have a passport.”

  “I’ve thought it through. This is the best thing, Marge. You need to hire a new assistant.”

  And that—as far as Enid was concerned—was it. Margery waited, stunned, as Enid left the cabin to shower. She even wondered if she’d misunderstood. But when Enid returned, making a trail of wet footprints and with her hair turbaned in a towel, she began rummaging through her pots and bottles.

  “I bet you’ll be glad to see the back of me,” she said, laughing.

  “Is it because of the ethanol?”

  “The what?”

  “Is it because of killing the beetles? Because you wouldn’t have to do that, Enid. I will do it. You don’t even have to watch. I couldn’t look the first time I did it.” In fact, Margery had almost passed out. But she didn’t say that.

  “It’s not because of the killing, Marge. I just changed my mind. Do you think you could pay me up front? I’m a bit strapped for cash.”

  After that Enid puffed up her hair and did her makeup, though after a month at sea her jars were practically empty and she had to whack them on her hand to get anything out of them. She wriggled into a frock, stuck her feet in her ridiculous little sandals, and off she went to find her friends. It was impossible to link the woman who had stayed in bed, grieving for her lost baby, with this whizzy updated version, who was going to start a happy new life in Brisbane.

  Margery was beside herself. She actually felt that way, as if she was the anger and Margery was a stupid lump standing next to her. She tried staying in the cabin, but it was too small. She paced the deck—“Another lovely day!” called the happy woman in a hat—and Margery had to curb the urge to squash things. Enid had done only what Margery had been planning to do a few weeks previously—she had, in effect, dismissed herself—but Margery couldn’t forgive the ease with which she had chosen to give up the expedition. Had she ever intended to go to New Caledonia? Or had she been using Margery from the start? And then to pretend she was doing her a favor by letting Margery down. That was the worst kind of cowardice. After all Margery had been through in her life, Enid’s abandonment took on an intolerable weight, as if she was being injected with poison, limb by limb, and the life was being squeezed out of her. She felt stupid for trusting Enid. Stupid, too, for liking her. She paid her the cash she owed as wages, but she wanted never to see her again. She wanted the whole thing done.

  So if Enid came into the cabin, Margery took her walking stick and left. The stick wasn’t necessary anymore, but she felt an impulse to limp when she saw Enid, just to make a point. Meanwhile, Enid went to the beauty salon on board and had her hair dyed the color of a sherbet lemon. She spent more and more time with Taylor, who’d got fat and bought a cheap new suit. There was something absurd about the man, yet at the same time something else, a sort of arrogance that made Margery uneasy. She saw Enid chattering away with him on the other side of the deck, laughing at the dull things he said, clinging on to his arm as if she couldn’t even walk a few steps anymore without his help, and it left Margery feeling dried up inside. Then the woman with the hat came over on the last day and said she’d heard about the awful way Enid had let her down.

  “Between you and me, she’s that kind of person,” she said.

  They approached Brisbane in a vicious southerly swell. Margery spent another night with the bucket—surprise, surprise, no sign of her assistant—and was just about to change the labels on her luggage when Enid waltzed in.

  “Oh, hello!” she said. She seemed almost surprised to see Margery, as if they had bumped into each other at the bus stop.

  She began shoving things into her suitcases, straddling them to fit the lids. The ship’s funnel sounded for the last time, and she swung out her red valise—whatever she kept in there was very light. She said, “I know you’re angry. I know you’re upset. But I have to start again. I want a baby.”

  “Well, it seems to me you’re going the right way about it. Though how you will settle in Australia without a passport, I can’t think.” Margery tried to get past, but Enid shoved her foot in the way.

  “What would you give to find the beetle? Would you give everything you had? Cos that’s how it is for me. I want a baby so much it hurts. I’m sorry I let you down, but you said it yourself. You said it the first time you saw me. I was never right for the job. Finding the beetle is your life’s work and mine is having a baby. It’s our vocation, Marge. If we don’t do it, we’ll die of s
adness. Giving up isn’t an option.”

  This was an exceptionally philosophical speech for Enid. Margery even wondered if she’d got it from a book, except she never read any. The word “vocation” stood out like fruit on a winter tree.

  “Friends?” said Enid. “Let’s part friends.” She grabbed Margery’s hand. And the way she held on, refusing to let go even though it hurt, fixing Margery with an expression that was both as frail as a bubble and stone hard, convinced Margery that Enid was right: it was the same for both of them. They would never be happy until Enid had a baby and Margery found the beetle. Despite their differences, they were the same. And it would take everything they had to get what they wanted.

  It was too much, meeting herself in Enid like that. Margery made herself solid and pulled free. “Goodbye, Mrs. Pretty.”

  Enid staggered out with all her luggage. She didn’t wave. Only as she closed the door, Margery caught her reply: “Well, fuck you, Margery Benson. Fuck you.”

  Margery picked up her insect net, her helmet, her suitcase and Gladstone bag. Suddenly the tiny cabin seemed to expand and swing around her head. She had not felt so alone since she lost her mother.

  It was strange. She’d never been much comfort to Margery, but her mother had been a solid presence in her life, like a piece of furniture that stands in the way of everything else. Whatever Margery did, her mother would be there, sitting in her chair at the window, the light shining through to her tender scalp, a cup of tea gone cold on the table. After her death, Margery had felt even more sheared off from the rest of the world. She’d also had another growth spurt. Her frocks hung inches above her ankles, and she was always cold. Sometimes her aunts stared up at her as if she were growing on purpose, just to be difficult.