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. The 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.
The man hid his face. “Go! Go!” he cried, looking like a person who’d been kissed and told off at the same time.
They had done it. They were through.
A motor launch carried Margery and Enid to the flying boat. It was fully light, and the illuminated portholes reflected in the water like smashed jewels. As the driver cut the engine, the launch drifted beneath a high, broad wing. Inside, the fuselage was divided into cabins with comfortable seats and tables, and there was a heady smell of grease and paraffin. A nice stewardess showed them to their places and gave them a fully illustrated guide to air travel, while a steward offered barley sugar to stop their ears popping, though Enid—speeding now with excitement—swallowed hers without sucking and had to be whacked on the back to dislodge it.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “This thing lifts out of the sea and flies?”
One by one, the engines started. Slowly the plane began to move forward, twisting from left to right, stirring up a zigzag of foamy water, the port float rising a few inches as the wings tilted to starboard. Enid screamed and gripped Margery’s hand so tightly that she lost all feeling from the elbow down. As waves buffeted the plane from both sides, it moved faster, water foaming at the portholes and filling the tiny interior with green light. Enid went from terrified to ecstatic in the space of a second. “Yes, yes, yes!” she shrieked. The nose began to lift, the sea level dropped down the windows, speckling it like pearls, and, with a scraping, boomy sound, the plane finally rose clear of the water and lumbered upward into the morning sky. Every muscle in Margery’s body strained to keep the plane air-bound. Even the ones in her feet.
The plane climbed. Up. Up. Shuddering. Shaking. An improbable amount of noise. Margery’s ears popped. The boomy sound seemed to have taken residence inside her chest. Do not look down, she told herself. Do not look down—
“Look down, Marge!” yelled Enid, also yanking her by the neck, so that Margery had no choice. She looked.
The plane’s shadow traveled the ground below, like a black beetle. Already things were shockingly small. Houses had shrunk to the size of cotton reels. Roads were no wider than string, with dots for cars. Everything looked so fragile—she felt she could pick it up in her hands. And now here were clouds, little puffy things, while far down, the sea was a sheet of tin.
A tingle like an electric shock ran up from the soles of her feet. If the world was wonderful enough to contain jumping fish, and green sunsets, and these tufty clouds—even crazy, wild women with yellow hair—there must also be gold beetles…and then what else? How many other beautiful things were out there, waiting to be found? The stewards served lobster and champagne, followed by ice cream and coffee in little white cups, but she could barely tear her eyes from the window. Here was the endless expanse of the Pacific, cobalt blue, dotted with islets that floated like precious stones. Liners the size of the RMS Orion that were no bigger than ants. Then, at last, the archipelago of New Caledonia: emerald islands with pale coral frills as if a child had scribbled all round them with chalk, and—finally—one in the shape of a long rolling pin.
As the plane dropped, the emerald became a patchwork of dark trees with huge mushroom-shaped crowns. Pale scrubland, lagoons of clear water, a heart-shaped green swamp, pointing fingers of white sand and, running the length of it, a red mountain range like a bumpy spine.
The sight grabbed the breath from Margery’s chest. For once, even Enid was stuck for words. Britain and rationing and rain seemed to belong to another planet.
“Enid, I have to tell you. I am not an explorer from the Natural History Museum. I taught domestic science for twenty years.”
Enid barely shrugged. “That’s okay. I can’t speak French. I just know bon shoor.”
Suspended in the blue vault of the sky, and side by side with Enid, there was no other place that Margery wanted to be.