They were lucky to be alive. They made their way down the mountain slowly, stunned, exhausted, gripping each other tightly, too shocked to feel hungry. Their clothes hung wet and shriveled to their bodies, and their boots creaked. All around there was nothing but felled trees and uprooted trunks and moving channels of water. The bungalow—if they ever got to it—would have been flattened and carried away.
“Are you all right, Enid?”
“Yes, Marge.”
“That’s it, Enid. Another step. It’s nearly over.”
They had been caught up the mountain in the storm for forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours of gale-force winds and rain. “In the case of a cyclone,” wrote the Reverend Horace Blake, “be sure to secure all doors and windows. It is advisable to sit under a table or mattress for the duration of the storm. Unplug all electrical appliances. Do not on any account go outside.”
It was everything they could do to stay upright. Margery had found a deep crevice between two boulders, and there they had wedged themselves, clinging to one another, the dog, and as much of their kit as they could grab. They had lost one net. Several traps. A bottle of ethanol. Even Enid’s baseball cap. The noise had been a roar. Margery had never heard anything like it. Wind had come in slashes—pointless wearing her helmet: it was worse than repeatedly knocking herself on the head. The tallest pines bent at an angle, and bananas shot through the air, along with coconuts, leaves, branches, a flock of birds. Splinterings, crashings, hissing, sucking, cracks as loud as gunfire. Now and again came the faraway roar of breakers against the reef. Incessant lightning—flashes of violet, yellow, silvery-white that briefly lit some new part of the forest and then snapped it away. The storm was so intense it was hard to see how it could ever stop. Their hair flew wild.
“We will die!” Enid had shrieked. “We will die!”
In her terror, something happened to Margery that had never happened before. As everything imaginable whipped through the air, too fast for her to see, she began to talk. And not even about anything meaningful. She said to herself, “Margery Benson, you are now a talking machine and you will not give up.” While Enid cowered and sobbed and screamed that it was over, Margery voiced whatever came into her head. She named an animal for every letter of the alphabet. She did the same with countries of the world, market towns, and capital cities. So long as she talked, she kept her terror at bay.
“Marge?” Enid shrieked. “What does it matter? What do I care if you can think of an animal that begins with X? Shut up. We are going to die!”
But Margery did not shut up. She kept talking. Stuck up a mountain in a cyclone, Margery felt she and Enid were like kites flying in opposite directions while held by the same hand. But it was vital that she did this. It was vital that she kept her terror at bay, and looked after Enid, who was not only pregnant but also convinced this was her last day on earth. So Margery leaped from one subject to the next, while Enid continued to scream that it was over. And the more Margery talked, the more she voiced every word in her head, the more certain she felt that she was alive, she was not going to die, and she would not let Enid die, either. All she had to do was keep talking.
Boys’ names. Girls’ names. Dates of famous battles. The wives of Henry the Eighth. Every British king and queen since Alfred the Great. Lists of saints. Lists of poets. Lists of ingredients for wartime recipes. Lists of anything she could think of.
Night fell, the wind howled; Margery kept talking. So cold now she was shaking from head to foot, Enid cried, “We’re going to freeze to death!” But Margery would not give in to the cold in her toes, the cold in her ears, the cold that was so cold it began to feel like heat and made her want to sleep. She held Enid hard and bullied her to keep awake by listing months of the year, then spelling them backwards until it occurred to her to list entire families and subfamilies of beetle species, including all their Latin names. She had thought she was at the end of her tether, had believed she wanted to give up, but faced with the very realistic possibility of death on a mountain, and with Enid’s terror at losing another baby, she had realized she was not fragile and neither did she want to die. She wanted to live. She wanted Enid and her baby to live. She wanted that so much. All she had to do was keep talking.
As the wind screamed to new heights, the palest light showed in the sky and began to brighten, very slowly. She could not tell exactly how long it took to get light enough to see, but it was a long, long time.
Then the rain came, and it was like no rain she had ever felt, not even in New Caledonia. It fell from the sky in rods. It coursed down the trunks of trees, it tipped from leaves, it hurtled down as far as she could see, drowning the forest, crushing and mashing it, until the roar filled her head. It bounded from the summit in foamy red brooks, exploding before her eyes. Now trees were not flying past, and neither were boulders: they were swimming, tossed and bullied and half submerged by the water. Nothing seemed rooted or solid anymore. “We will drown!” Enid cried. She cried again when she dirtied herself. “We will get hit by rocks! We will get hit by trees!” Enid clutched her belly as if the storm might take that, too. And throughout all this Margery continued to talk.
Did Enid know how many different types of beetle antennae Margery could name? “No!” Enid yelled. “I don’t!” Never mind: Margery would take Enid through every single one of them. And she did. Short. Stubby. Resembling a toothbrush. Resembling a feather…Another hour was gone.
Did Enid understand the complicated mating patterns of the stag beetle? Did she understand the differences between a weevil and a carabid? “Of course I don’t, Marge!” Excellent. Sit tight, Enid. We’ll run through those as well.
Then the mountain gave a monumental crack and the earth swayed and a whole side seemed to break off and slide past, like a table upended. Tree trunks, broken-off branches, boulders, a boiling avalanche of water and leaves and stone. Margery clung to Enid, and Enid clung to her dog. They cowered in their hiding place while the ground shook and roared as if the entire earth was being washed away, while Enid sobbed and sobbed, and Margery continued to talk about the anatomy of a beetle. Never in her life had she been so grateful there were so many species. If necessary, she had enough source material to go on for weeks.
Toward the end of the second day, the wind dropped and the rain paused. The return of calm felt like a question in the air, waiting. Margery dared to crawl out to check the path but had barely gone a few yards before the wind took up again. It was even worse than before. Too late it occurred to her that this was the eye of the storm, the dangerous moment of hiatus before things got even worse. The wind snatched the hurricane lamp out of her hands and smashed it on the ground, where it went crashing and shattering as if it were at least twenty times its size. She lifted a foot to get back to Enid, and was hurled to the ground. Crawling on hands and knees, she was assaulted by branches and leaves and stones. She even accidentally punched herself. “We will die!” roared Enid, for the twenty-three hundredth time. “We will die and no one can help us!”
Another night on the mountain. Another night of talking. Then at last the wind lowered, light came, the cloud drifted away, rain fell more softly. Margery pulled herself out of the crevice, then helped Enid.
Now they made their way down, moving as if tied together by a rope. Enid was weak. Margery’s voice was hoarse. Somehow the killing jar was still safe in her haversack and so were her helmet and the insect net. The dog was also safe. But they had lost nearly everything else. The path was filled with rubble and stones and fallen trees. Giant boulders the size of furniture blocked the way. Stones rattled beneath their feet like china, and in other places rivulets came up to their knees. Steam rose from every part of the earth. The air was filled with whistles and birdsong. Margery took both haversacks. She helped Enid over one fallen tree after the next; they waded through water, while Enid held her tummy with one hand and Margery with the other.
“Enid? Is the baby all right? Can you feel it moving? One more step, Enid. You’re doing so well. Keep going. One more step. That’s it. And another. Keep going, Enid. Look. The wind has almost gone. We did it. We’re safe. Are you all right, Enid?”
“I’m okay. The baby is, too. But could you please stop talking, Marge? I can’t think.”
A bird of prey circled overhead, wondering if they were dead enough to eat.
A miracle. The bungalow was in one piece. It was still standing. In fact, it looked the same—if not slightly better. A few palm leaves were missing, but they could be fixed. There were no broken steps because the steps had already been broken; the same with the wraparound veranda. The tarp on the roof had not flown off but slightly flattened itself. The door seemed to be hanging at less of an angle. The bungalow, it occurred to Margery, had been through so many cyclones, it couldn’t get any worse. It was, in effect, cyclone proof. And seeing it again, she felt a whoosh of love. It struck her as the best bungalow in the entire world.
“Home!” yelled Enid. “Marge! We did it! We’re home! We did it!” But she couldn’t make the steps. Margery practically had to lift her to the top. Afterward she had to go back and fetch the dog.
Enid wasn’t just weak, she was jumpy, too. When Margery opened the door and a quantity of wildlife spilled out, including an eel, she shrieked. Then she blinked, bewildered, at the threshold, surveying the mess. The floor was a lake of water and strewn with branches, papers, tins of Spam, and the floating remains of all the specimens they’d risked so much to find. The Baby Jesus painting had fallen from the wall. Some of Margery’s display cases and jars had been blown from the study, and many were smashed. Her books were soaked.
“It’s not so bad,” Margery said slowly. “It’s not so bad, Enid.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not at all. I’ve seen worse.”
She led the way. The most important thing was that she did not despair: Enid was watching her like a hawk. Her boots swished through the water and cracked on broken glass. But the roof had kept hold at the back of the bungalow. The bedrooms had not been flooded. The mosquito nets were intact. It would not take too long to set things straight. “Yes, Enid. It’s all right.”
“We did it! We did it, Marge!” whispered Enid, who had switched to happy again but only on a faint setting. She clung to Margery’s arm.
In her bedroom, Margery helped Enid remove her boots. She peeled off her shorts and top. Briefly Enid ducked to check her red valise was safe beneath the bed, then allowed Margery to help her into a slip. It was the first time Margery had seen Enid naked since the day she’d swum in the bathing pool, and her body was dark and thin and muscled, except for the very pale torso, which looked like a vest. Her breasts were fat and blue-veined, her belly already swelling. Suddenly she seemed too small for it. Despite herself, Margery laughed. Maybe it was just relief. The relief of being safe. Enid gazed down at her belly and stroked it as if she was proud of it, and laughed, too. Then Margery rigged a canopy above the bed with a tarp and sticks so that Enid would stay dry if it rained again. She pulled the insect net all round her.
“Marge, we did it!” whispered Enid, in weepy wonderment. “There’s nothing that can stop you and me finding the beetle now.” She dropped off instantly, one hand cupping her belly.
Enid slept on and off for the rest of the day. She got up to eat, and drink a gallon of water, then picked up her dog and went back to bed. She said she just needed to rest. After that she’d be ready to keep searching.
In her absence, Margery became a swarm of activity. She actually made herself dizzy. She swept away the broken glass, mopped the water, banged in hardboard at the broken windows, and another nail to rehang Enid’s precious Baby Jesus painting. She made new towers of what was left of the tinned food and threw away the packets of oats that were inedible. Outside she collected armfuls of sweet bananas to feed to Enid; she fixed the leaves back on the roof and secured them with rope; she fetched more water from the freshwater creek, which had swollen considerably with the rain. She scrubbed their clothes to get the red and sweat out of them—though their original colors had mostly gone now. She patched the worst of the holes, and used Enid’s knitting needles to pierce their boots so that when they got caught in rain in the future, the water could run through. She made something with yams and eggs that smelled so good Enid got up and ate it without talking. She hung out everything to dry.
As darkness poured in, she lit the only remaining hurricane lamp, and focused on her beetle collection. She found the specimens she could salvage. She wrapped them carefully, ready for transporting home. She retrieved what she could of her books and paperwork, and nailed loose pages to the walls to dry them. She sat up into the early hours of the morning, rewriting her notes. Outside, the sky was a huge glass ball, very dark, with sprinkles of stars. There was the murmur of insects and, far away, the ocean, and everywhere the scent of the very sweet flowers that seemed to be opening in the dark like candles, and pine.
Enid had been right. They could have died up the mountain. But they hadn’t. They had not been killed by floodwater or falling rocks or bouncing coconuts. They had survived. Margery had failed Enid on the ship, she had failed her at Wacol, she had failed her repeatedly on the mountain—it was shameful how much she’d failed—but now she was going to take charge. Wherever life had seemed to be going before, it was going to get there differently, with Margery at the helm.
It was as if forty-eight hours of nonstop talking had unlocked something new, and she felt not only big on the outside but big inside, too. So even though she had begun to fear she was wrong about the beetle—that it might not be in New Caledonia, or if it had been there once, it wasn’t anymore—she was going to get back on that mountain and keep searching. Who cared about a visa? This was her second chance.
Something about the words “second chance” pulled her up short. They seemed familiar. She had to stop and think hard. Then she remembered. When Enid had confessed she was still pregnant, just before the cyclone, she said she’d been afraid on Christmas Day that everything was over—and then she’d realized that the baby was her second chance. But there was something strange about that. Why would Enid have thought everything was over? She’d done nothing on Christmas Day except make paper hats and fiddle with the radio, trying to find a signal. Margery wished she could ask Enid exactly what she’d meant.
But even if Enid was awake and they were sitting on the veranda, Margery realized she wouldn’t ask. The differences between them—all those things she’d once found so infuriating—she now accepted. Being Enid’s friend meant there were always going to be surprises. Her red valise. That was another one. As she’d watched Enid doing her best to wriggle beneath the bed to check on it, she’d wanted to laugh and say, “Enid, what on earth do you keep in that thing?” But respect for Enid had stopped her. However close they were, it didn’t entitle her to Enid’s memories, and neither did it allow her to be part of Enid’s life before they’d met. Being a friend meant accepting those unknowable things. It meant saying, “Look! Look how big my leg is! And look how small yours is! Look how marvelously different we are, you and I, and yet here we are, together in this strange world!” It was by placing herself side by side with Enid that Margery had finally begun to see the true outline of herself. And she knew it now: Enid was her friend.
She took a pencil and paper and counted how many tins they had left. Enough for a month. No more. That would get them as far as early February. She fetched her purse and counted the money. If they were careful, she could afford the fuel back to Nouméa, with a little extra to spare. Their clothes and boots were in a bad way, and one of the hammocks would last barely another week. But it was her legs that were the real problem. She fetched the magnifying glass and a knife.
Margery unrolled her socks and took off the bandages. The skin was red-hot and swollen where the bites were infected. She took a pen and drew a ring around each one. Ten in all. Then she placed the tip of the knife over the first, and looked away as she sliced the blade into her skin, as if it were a peach, trying to lance the pus. Pain showered right through her. It was like nothing else—though, conversely, she completely forgot the agony in her hip. Afterward she washed the wound and applied iodine. She wrapped it in lint and a clean bandage, but it went on stinging like mad. Attracted by the blood, a cloud of mosquitoes billowed up.
Only five weeks ago, she’d spent her first night in a hammock and felt desperate to stop. Now her assistant was pregnant, and Margery’s legs were a write-off. Most of her equipment was gone, and they were down to the last of the tins. But she was hanging on by her fingernails to find ways to keep going.
She took the knife, wiped it, and braced herself to lance another bite.