Enid had only gone to buy a watermelon for breakfast, but she came back driving an old U.S. Army jeep. Taking the corner at high speed, she appeared in a tide of red dust, accompanied by a loud screeching noise, and when she cut the engine and leaped out—the jeep appeared to have no roof—she was bright orange and so was the dog. It was even in his teeth and ears. A small crowd gathered to watch, including a woman with a pot on her head, and several toothless fishermen.
Margery could barely speak. “Enid? How did you get this?”
“I saw a sign. It was going cheap.”
“I didn’t know you could drive.”
“Yeah, well, I drove an ambulance for a while.”
“You did?”
“During the war. I used to be on the night shift. I took Pall Mall once at fifty miles an hour.”
They packed the jeep until the rear end sagged. All the new collecting equipment, plus the tea chest of supplies and camping gear, and other miscellaneous items that Enid kept producing, like her Miss Lovely Legs trophy, the Baby Jesus painting, and her battery radio. She seemed to be in a hurry. She finished with the red valise, which she hid beneath a jack and a shovel, along with a couple of short planks for easing her way out of mudholes.
“Enid?” said Margery, as she loaded a last few things. “Have you noticed anything different? About me?”
She waited for Enid to finish ramming whatever she was ramming, and look. When Enid did, she shrugged, and went back to her ramming. “No.”
“I am dressed in a man’s clothes.” Margery pointed at the Bermuda shorts and flowery shirt she was now wearing, along with her pith helmet and boots. The truth was that once she’d got over the shame of slotting one foot inside a trouser leg, and then the other, once she’d zipped up the fly and secured the button at the waist, and found it was not too loose but not too tight either, once she’d slipped her arms inside the lovely, colorful shirt and felt the generosity of the sleeve, she had given a large sigh, as if she’d just emerged from an underground hole and could finally breathe. She’d dug her hands into the pockets, and they weren’t so small you could barely keep a thimble in them. They were proper places where you could store a compass, a ball of twine. Besides, it wasn’t utterly strange to wear male clothes: it was just like being a girl again, in her brothers’ hand-me-downs. She hadn’t even put on stockings. “Would you say,” she asked, beginning to color, “would you say I look odd?”
“No.”
“Will people laugh?”
“Marge, you’re looking for a gold beetle on the other side of the world. You think people haven’t already laughed? Anyway, half the men in New Caledonia wear skirts. Now, are we going to stand here talking fashion, or can we leave?” She whistled for Mr. Rawlings, and scooped him into her arms.
Again, Margery balked. “The dog, Enid? The dog?”
“Of course. He’ll sniff out danger.”
Margery had never seen Mr. Rawlings sniff out so much as a ham baguette, but she let that pass. “You can’t take a pet on an expedition. It’s not fair.”
Enid didn’t bat an eyelid. She lowered the dog into the back seat and hopped in through the nonexistent roof. “It’s me and Mr. Rawlings, or you go alone.”
Enid went with terrifying speed for a woman who had once been an ambulance driver. Even if people had felt well when they got into her ambulance, they must have been very sick by the time they got out of it. And it was worse when she talked: she seemed to forget she was driving. Margery tried to object but got a mouthful of grit and dust. Meanwhile, Mr. Rawlings had scrambled from the back seat into her lap, still quite orange and nervous from the first trip, and now trembling uncontrollably.
“Enid,” she managed to say. “Enid. This is too fast.”
“You should close your eyes!” yelled Enid. “Get some rest!”
Margery could not have closed her eyes if she’d been drugged. Parts of the city whirled past at dizzying speed, like objects on a conveyor belt. La Place des Cocotiers—an elegant French square with fountains and flame trees—came and went with a flash of red. Palm trees were no more than a hairy blur. The jeep rattled past the market, kicking up more dust, and skidded over a curb, narrowly missing a street vendor with a selection of hens tied upside down by their legs to a pole. They reached the port, and careered toward the edge-of-town shanties, where banana trees leaned heavily over the road. After that it climbed upward, and there was nothing but forest. Pine and mangoes and huge banyans tangled with bougainvillea. Above them rose the teeth of the basalt cliffs, like black lace. According to the Reverend Horace Blake, they should take the coastal road that ran west of the island, snaking between ocean and mountains. “It will provide a delightful opportunity for the curious traveler to experience charming native villages, and colorful restaurants and bars.” There were illustrations of women in grass skirts cooking things on the fire, and several chieftains.
As far as Païta—about twenty miles—the road was in tolerably good condition. But there were no charming villages. No colorful restaurants. Certainly no women cooking things on the fire. And neither was there anywhere to refuel. From Païta to Boulouparis, another thirty miles, the road was broken and haphazard. Sometimes it was just a faint scar, or a spill of rocks indistinguishable from the rest of the mountain’s rubble. At others it disappeared completely. On several occasions it gave up being a road and became a stream.
At Boulouparis, Enid spotted a makeshift store advertising food and fuel, and jerked to a halt. She leaped from the jeep and picked up Mr. Rawlings. Her hair stuck out in quills, and her mouth—when she opened it—seemed exceptionally pink against the rest of her.
“Coming?” she said.
Margery sat in shock. Even though the jeep was finally stationary, parts of her body still appeared to be on the move. She hauled herself out.
After the glare of the road, the store was very dark. Enid hunted for British newspapers but found none. In the end she bought a French fashion magazine.
“What kind of food do you sell?” she asked the owner, miming a very hungry person wolfing lunch. She paid for petrol and ordered an omelette and oysters from the menu.
They ate outside. Across the track there were a few mud huts, and some children came out to wave at Enid and point at her hair. Around them, trees were every color of green—from bright yellowish to one that was almost black, and the sky was hot blue. But there was still no sign of a mountain shaped like a blunt wisdom tooth.
“Enid,” said Margery. “Is it necessary to travel so fast?”
“I’m just excited about getting there.” Enid slurped an oyster out of its shell. She didn’t even use a fork. “At least we should be safe now.”
“Safe from what?”
Enid failed to answer. She took a mouthful of omelette.
“And you’re sure?” Margery said. “About what I’m wearing? You don’t think people are staring?”
“You’re on the other side of the world. Who cares what people think? You can be what you want. Anyway, you look better in Bermuda shorts than you did in that frock. No offense, Marge—”
“None taken, Enid.”
“—but you looked like a beached whale in that thing.”
“I see. Well, thank you.”
“I caught the way the women laughed at you at the British consul’s party.”
“They laughed? When did they laugh?”
“It made me sick. I had to walk away.”
Margery paused a moment. All of a sudden, the awful picture that the schoolgirls had drawn turned up in her mind—the way things do sometimes, things that you’re sure you’ve left in the past. She remembered hobbling like a hedgehog through corridors, unable to breathe. Then she looked at her arms, easy now inside a man’s shirt. The memory of that day still hurt. And the idea of the British consulate women laughing—that hurt, too. But Enid was not laughing. She was tearing off chunks of bread and feeding Mr. Rawlings under the table. So the pain Margery felt was small, like a bruise that has turned yellow. It was bearable.
“And just so you know,” said Enid, “you have very good legs. You ought to get them out more often. You’re the one who should have got the trophy.”
The road from Boulouparis worsened considerably. There was no change in the landscape: the mountains stretched to their right with the sea to their left, though between the road and the sea there was now an extremely vertiginous drop. The road kept climbing, twisty as a corkscrew, mist clinging to the lower slopes of the mountain, and suddenly they were looking down on thin spires of colonial pines, splashes of red poinciana, groves of coconut palms, the decorated roof of a thatched building, while the Pacific waited, blue as an iris flower, to their left.
They passed several large trucks—presumably there was a mine nearby: men hooted and waved at Enid to pull over—but then the land turned to a bald expanse of scrub where the forest had been cut down and burned to make way for plantations. It came as a shock, after so many trees, and the smell was awful. Enid glanced in her mirror. Her eyes grew wide.
“Is there a problem?”
“Not at all, Marge.”
Not true. Margery checked over her shoulder. A police car had emerged behind them. The landscape was still very open and flat. But instead of slowing, like any normal driver, Enid stamped on the accelerator. Margery’s heart dropped toward her bowels.
“Enid? That is a police car. We have to slow down.”
Apparently not. Slowing down appeared to be the exact opposite of what Enid had in mind. Her face was set like a clamp. Her hair blew wild. The police car flashed its blue light. Enid went faster. The jeep rattled, bouncing over potholes. The police car followed, bouncing over potholes. Enid took a bend on three wheels. The police car sounded its siren and also took the bend. Enid zoomed faster. So did the police car. A tree appeared. More rocks. Several goats. Enid screeched the tires, only just missing obstacles as she flew past them.
“Enid! Enid!”
Margery couldn’t take any more. Enid seemed to have lost her mind. Even though she had never driven a car in her life, Margery grabbed hold of the wheel and yanked it. They went swerving violently toward a precipice. The ocean flashed directly below, dotted with ships and fishing boats. Enid screamed and managed to swing the jeep back to the road just in time. It came to a skidding halt in another cloud of dust. “What the hell?” she shouted. “You almost killed us.” There was no time to say anything else. The dust was clearing. The police car had drawn up. A policeman was getting out. Even the insects fell silent.
The policeman was as slow as a walking house. It took an age for him to reach the jeep. He knocked on Enid’s window. An unnecessary preliminary since, of course, the jeep had no roof. She wound it down a few inches. Also, unnecessary. Politely he leaned over the window.
“Bon shoor!” said Enid. She gave a huge smile and revealed a pair of dimples Margery had honestly never seen before.
The policeman replied in French.
“What did he just say?” said Margery.
“I have no idea. Keep smiling.”
Momentarily the policeman wiggled his finger in his ear and then examined whatever he had found there. At least he seemed distracted.
But Margery was not distracted. She felt made of wire. She whispered, “Paperwork.”
“What about it?”
“Enid. We don’t have any.”
“Marge, could you possibly look less terrified, and just smile?”
The policeman had now finished his ear inspection and was ready to give Enid his full attention. “Bon shoor,” she repeated, incredibly sweet.
He said something French again.
Margery fumbled through her handbag. She pulled out her guidebook and flipped to the Reverend Horace Blake’s Useful Phrases. They included “Can you direct me, boy, to the nearest lighthouse?” Also, “Help, help, I am drowning!” and “I am going to the next village to sell my grandmother’s hens!” She abandoned the Reverend Horace Blake and produced her passport. She began to explain in very clear English that Enid was the brown-haired woman in the photograph, but the policeman was not remotely interested. He patted the hood of the jeep as if it were an extension of Enid. He said, “Voiture?”
Margery slunk down in her seat. “It’s because of my clothes,” she said hopelessly. “He has stopped us because I am dressed like a man.”
“Marge, this has nothing to do with the way you look. It’s because we have no license plate.”
“Why do we have no license plate?”
“Because I took it off. When I stole the jeep.”
“You stole the jeep?”
“Marge, please stop shrieking. Yes, the jeep is stolen. You think I’d pay for this?”
Margery’s heart had lifted from her bowels and was now banging wildly in her throat. Quite a lot appeared to be going on. Not only had she been stopped by the police—when she had no paperwork, no extension to her visa, and was dressed like a man—but she had also just discovered she was traveling in a stolen vehicle. “Cash,” hissed Enid, still smiling sweetly. “Try giving him cash.”
“Are you suggesting I bribe a member of the French police force?”
“Yes, Marge. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. You were the one who caused the jeep to stop. I could have shaken him off if it hadn’t been for you.” She went back to smiling at the policeman. She adjusted her top as a form of distraction. It worked. His eyes rooted in her cleavage and flowered there.
Margery pulled out her purse and found loose change. Her hands were shaking. She held out the coins, in the midpoint between Enid’s bust and the policeman. It felt like offering cake to a vulture.
“Are you serious?” said Enid. “We are bribing him, not giving him his bus fare home.” She grabbed the purse.
It took ten notes. He counted each one solemnly and, for some reason, also licked it. Satisfied at last, he beckoned them out while Enid reversed, the way men do sometimes, as if a woman cannot successfully maneuver a vehicle unless someone gesticulates wildly, while at the same time standing in the exact space she needs to get into. But he could gesticulate as much as he liked. They were free.
“Well, that went smoothly,” said Enid. “Next stop, Poum.”
She was right, of course. They were safe. But it took several minutes for Margery to regain the power of speech, and even then, her words came in a rush and in the wrong order. She told Enid this was too much: there must be no more stealing, and no more bribery. “I am an amateur beetle collector, Enid. I am out of my depth.” In turn, Enid said she was awfully sorry, she wouldn’t do it again, but at least they would soon be free to start looking for the gold beetle. She gripped the wheel tightly as they took another bend. “You said you’d do anything, remember? You told me you’d risk everything to find what you want.”
This was true, though it was beginning to occur to Margery that her notion of everything was not Enid’s. When she’d decided to stop playing by the book, she hadn’t meant to lead the life of a criminal.
“Anyway,” continued Enid, “we can hide the jeep. Once we get north, there will be no need for it. Now, why don’t you start looking for your mountain?”
Margery kept her eyes fixed on the horizon—the mountains rose like waves as far as she could see, many bladed, but there was still no sign of one shaped as a wisdom tooth, blunt or sharp or otherwise. As the sun sank, the entire range gave one last bright flare of gold and then the sky went the color of a blackberry and night happened so fast it was like someone had switched off the light. The jeep’s headlamps poked through the dark. Above, the dome of the sky was crowded with stars, occasionally fractured with faraway splinters of lightning. Enid slowed. Even in the dark, Margery could sense her excitement, and though she could not see the mountains, she felt their presence all around, sloping and peaking and falling, more ancient than life itself.
“Look at that. Just look, Marge. Did you ever see anywhere so beautiful?”
It was nine before they reached Poum. “Delightful Poum,” wrote the Reverend Horace Blake, “where the native huts stand on stilts and the Kanak people spear tropical fish and dance merrily by the fire.”
Margery was beginning to wonder if he had actually been to New Caledonia. Poum wasn’t even a town, it was so small. It was just a few ramshackle sheds, some old men, and a lot of goats. Since the café where they were to collect the key for the bungalow was closed, they had to sleep in the jeep, covered with a net and interrupted only by mosquitoes, the sound of the ocean, and the odd murmur of drunken laughter.
At dawn, they washed in rust-colored water from a tap in the square while a silent group of old men—both Kanak and lonely Europeans—gathered round to watch. Afterward Enid led the way to the only shop, which had a total of two shelves, selling eggs, corn and guavas, yams, coconuts, small sweet pineapples, and green bananas, alongside bags of salt, hardware, batteries, and some old tins with a picture of a fish on them. Margery bought fruit.
Since the café was still closed, they walked to the water’s edge where the Pacific met the Coral Sea, and the waves were the biggest they’d seen yet, hitting rocks and sending up towers of spume. Ahead, islands of diminishing size poked out of the ocean, like broken-off fragments floating toward the horizon. It really was the end of the world.
Enid climbed onto a wooden jetty, hopping between the missing slats while the breeze tossed her hair. Britain seemed another life. And it wasn’t just home that was as far away as it could be. Neither of us, Margery thought, is the woman we were when we met.
Enid must have been thinking something similar because, as she jumped down from the jetty, she laughed.
Then they turned their backs on the ocean and faced the mountain. It looked so close suddenly, rising to the highest point where nothing grew—there was just red stone—and topped—exactly as the missionary had described it—like a blunt wisdom tooth. Enid reached out as if she could touch it.
“You’re going to find the beetle,” she said. “And I’m going to have a baby. I know it in my heart.”
They set off to collect the key for the bungalow.