Dusk came fast. Or, rather, day went. One minute there had been occasional pins of light between trees; the next darkness was flooding in. Enid rushed to find the hurricane lamp. Once lit, it shone like a small moon.
“What I don’t understand,” she was saying, “is why you never tried putting up this tent before?”
“Because,” Margery was saying, “I didn’t need to. I live in a flat.”
“You taught domestic science for twenty years.”
“That doesn’t mean I put up tents. I taught girls how to iron men’s shirts, and boil vegetables.”
“That’s all?” said Enid. “That’s all you taught them?”
They had filled the jerricans and moved on from the bathing pool. The forest was thick again; so was the insect life. And even though Margery had brought towels, the humidity had got into them and they were soaked. The euphoria she had experienced in the bathing pool was gone. Now all she felt was very wet. Meanwhile, the separate pieces of the A-frame tent were spread at her feet. The truth was that she hadn’t dealt with the tent before now because she’d had no idea what to do with it, and so—in her mind, at least—this was a task she had allocated to her assistant. But her assistant was currently busy unrolling the hammocks and studying the ropes and hooks.
“I would just have expected,” continued Enid, “that you might at least have tried the tent before now.”
“You may not be aware of this, Enid, but I had a flat filled with tinned supplies and equipment. I could barely move.”
Margery fitted the poles together and threaded them through the tent’s roof. Now what she had was a piece of canvas on a stick, more like an enormous flag than accommodation. Margery took it apart, tried again. She rammed the poles through the sides. She tried to pin the ropes into the ground to keep it upright. Mr. Rawlings brushed past. The tent keeled over.
“You have done this before?” said Enid. “You have put up a tent before?”
“No.”
“You haven’t?” Enid paused. “But you’ve led an expedition?”
“I haven’t.”
“But you’ve been on one?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’ve never been on an expedition?” repeated Enid, spelling this out with such force she might as well have hit Margery over the head while she was at it.
“What? Never?”
“No, Enid, I have never been on an expedition. I told you. I was a teacher.”
“Bugger,” she said, followed by a slower “Okaay.” She sucked the end of one of her plaits. “So maybe we should cut our losses and go to the bungalow tonight.”
The idea of dragging her body one more step appalled Margery. Besides, she wasn’t entirely sure that if she went down the mountain she’d ever come back up it. “No,” she roared. “We can’t go to the bungalow. The whole point is that we keep moving forward.”
Enid held up both hands as if stopping traffic. “Suits me. I’ll sit and watch you put up the tent. It’s very entertaining.”
“Enid, you could at least do something useful. You could put up the hammocks.”
“Marge, I don’t want to upset you again. But aren’t the hammocks supposed to go inside the tent?”
“Enid. Why don’t you just work out how to put them up?”
And she did. She had them hanging securely in minutes, just like that, two perfect hammocks, strung low between trees, as if Enid had camped in tropical rainforests all her life. She even draped them with mosquito nets. Afterward she took Mr. Rawlings to fill the jerricans with more water from the bathing pool, and then she gathered stones the size of Ping-Pong balls, which she arranged into a fire pit, laying it with fronds of dried palm, though the flames wouldn’t take and she wasted one match after another. Since they had no heat, they had to mix the dried oats with cold water, which just floated like bits of sawdust in a bowl. After that they had more Spam, spiced up with more curry powder. Occasionally one of Enid’s matches took light and a leaf burst into flame, while above glowed the enormous pines and giant ferns, freckled with quick shadows, but never long enough to last.
Margery was too exhausted to write anything in her journal apart from a brief description of the terrain. Bolts of pain seemed screwed in the space between her eyebrows. Besides, the pages of her book were sopping wet, and the pen just made holes. Meanwhile, the tent—despite her best efforts—resembled a coffin. They could either sleep in the open on Enid’s perfectly assembled hammocks, or lie squashed beneath a bit of canvas. It was already crawling with red ants.
Margery took off her boots. Her bare feet were mushy and hot and the smell was rancid, like something that had been kept in a dark place for too long. She smothered them in talc.
“You need to do this,” she said, passing the tub to Enid. “You don’t want to get foot rot.”
Enid’s feet were red, a few blisters forming on the heels. She sprinkled them with so much powder they looked like socks.
“Do you want to know,” she said slowly, “how I got away from Taylor?” She lit another match. “I left while he was asleep.”
Margery nodded. It stood to reason that you wouldn’t leave a man like Taylor while he was awake.
“You were right, Marge. He was not a nice man. It’s a habit I have.”
“What is?”
“Falling for men who aren’t nice. I do it every time. It’s like I can’t help myself.”
“Is your husband like that?”
“No.” Enid balled her hands so hard the knuckles went white. It was like looking straight at the bone. Then she said, “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come to find me. I’d have got myself in all sorts of mess. No, Taylor was not a nice man. He tried to lock me in after you left the camp. And he took all the money I had. But at least I got his gun.”
For a moment, the entire forest seemed to fall over. Margery was aware she needed to sit, then realized she was already doing that, so probably what she needed was to lie down. “Enid? You stole his gun?”
“It’s in my haversack.”
“You mean you have it with you?”
“I thought we might need it.”
“No, Enid. We do not need a gun. We will never need a gun. A stolen jeep I can manage, but a gun is not even an option.”
The words came from Margery with a force that shocked her. And—as if that wasn’t enough—here were…not tears as such but noises like gulps, as if she were drowning. All she could see were the open French windows of her father’s study.
Enid threw out her arms and grabbed hold of her. She held Margery’s head clamped against her chest. It was both painful and strangely reassuring, like being a football. She could even hear the wild thump of Enid’s heart.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never meant to upset you. Here.” Enid passed something improbable that turned out to be a handkerchief. It would barely cover a nostril. “Blow.”
Margery did. She blew as small as she could, though technically there was nothing to blow out, she was just overcome.
“Better now, Marge?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll get rid of the gun.”
“Thank you, Enid.”
“We’ll bury it in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s one more thing I need to say.”
“Is it as bad as the gun?”
“Marge, it’s my husband—”
But Margery interrupted. For a terrible moment she’d been convinced Enid was about to confess to further weaponry. “Oh, Enid, I’ve worked that out.”
“You have?”
“I worked it out ages ago.”
“You did?”
“Well, of course you’re divorced. You don’t even wear a ring. I don’t know why you tried to cover it up.”
In reply, Enid said nothing. Lit by another match, she looked only half familiar. Her eyes blazed, like chipped glass.
“Enid? Whatever happens, we won’t need a gun.”
“You really think that?”
“I do.”
“Hm,” said Enid. Just a noise.
“Come on. We should sleep.”
How does a woman get into a hammock, when she has not got into a hammock before? Enid asked if she needed help, but Margery—still piqued after the business with the tent and also her confession that she had never been on an expedition before—insisted she could manage. Enid seemed to mount her hammock with no difficulty whatsoever. One moment she was on the ground. The next she was in a hammock. She even had Mr. Rawlings with her, his ears glowing in the dark.
“Sleep well, Marge!”
Margery’s hammock was less amenable. She tried one leg first. It went swinging off with her a little bit on it, but mostly not. She tried taking it by surprise, mounting suddenly. The hammock accepted her weight, then performed a full cartwheel and tossed her out the other side, dumping her in a load of spikes. In the end, she gave a leap and pitched herself. She landed on her front, her mouth mashed against the canvas, rocking violently, but still, she had done it. Technically she was in a hammock, no one could argue with that, though she could barely move without the risk of depositing herself back on the ground. It took a lot of effort to roll herself the right way up. She pulled the mosquito net round her.
But sleep? How could she possibly do that? Who in their right mind would even close their eyes? The bungalow was one thing, but at least there had been the pretense of a roof and some walls. This was terrifying. Her senses felt sharpened like pencils—her flashlight was about as much use as a paddleboat in the ocean. She heard whistles and screams from creatures she’d never even had nightmares about, let alone seen. Rough cawing, lunatic whooping, once a clang. When a pale shadow took shape, she lay taut as a trap, her eyes so wide they could have popped, until it gave a snort and became a pig. More whistling. More twitching. Another animal that screamed as if it was being eaten alive. She thought of Enid, the gun. Then something landed on her face.
Possibly it meant no harm. Possibly it mistook her for something friendly, or at least inanimate. But Margery did not feel friendly, and neither did she feel inanimate. Her first instinct was to bat it. Unwise. It got meshed in her net. Flapping and squeaking. A bat. She had batted a bat. And now Margery was panicking and the bat was panicking and there was something in her mouth, but it was not a bat, it was her net, and even though the bat had flown free, she was swinging wildly—up, down! Up, down!—like an awful ride at the fair, while a hundred mosquitoes zoomed in to bite her.
The dawn chorus came miles before dawn. It was actually the middle of the night. Nevertheless, every bird in New Caledonia woke early and decided to sing about it. Then the cicadas joined in, less a chirruping than heavy marching. Gradually, silver light seeped into the dark, and shapes came to life. A banana tree. A rock. The birds went back to sleep. The cicadas settled down. She told herself that if anything was going to eat her, it would surely have started by now, and dared to close her eyes. She managed thirty minutes. Then she woke again. Rain was falling all over her.
It had been the most awful night of her life. The gap between making a plan and actually doing it was unbridgeable: nothing Professor Smith had taught her had prepared her for this. Nothing she’d read had prepared her, either. She was covered in insect bites—they had even got inside her ears. She was soaking wet, possibly rotting, and she felt wrung out from lack of sleep. Worse, her body had seized up. The only way to get out of the hammock would be by extending herself in segments, like a foot rule. She had no idea how she would walk another step. Already she knew she was in something she was not made for.
She thought of the British wives at the consulate party listing everything they missed from home: Branston pickle, gray drizzle, perfect English grass. They were right. Faced with the rainforest, she felt desolate. Back at home she had a flat with a bed in it, clean sheets, and a nice bedside lamp. She missed streetlights, windows, curtains, roads with proper names. Rationing was better than this. And even though her aunts had taught her it was wrong to cry—even though she hadn’t done so at her mother’s funeral—a million tiny dots seemed to prickle her nose, culminating in a salty rush as tears filled her eyes. She hadn’t a clue why she was lying in a hammock on the other side of the world, already half crippled, looking for a beetle that had never been found—she could die out here, under these alien stars, and no one would know. She thought of her father, her mother, her brothers. She thought of the professor, Barbara, and her aunts. And the more she thought about the people she’d lost, the more she wanted them back. Her crying wasn’t about missing home anymore. It wasn’t about Branston pickle, or green grass, and roads with proper names. It was something else. It had been with her ever since her father had walked out of his French windows and left her behind. You might travel to the other side of the world, but in the end it made no difference: whatever devastating unhappiness was inside you would come, too.
Margery lay in her horrible hammock and sobbed.