Enid’s loss resembled an endless forest in which she could find no landmark. She kept staring at nothing, bewildered, as tears ran down her face. Everything came back to the dog and made her cry, even things that had nothing to do with him. “He was such a good dog,” she said all the time. “He was such a good dog. Why would he run off like that, Marge? I don’t understand.”
They buried Mr. Rawlings near the spot where she’d hidden the gun. Margery didn’t ask why. It made sense to Enid, and that was all that mattered. If Enid had asked her to construct a mausoleum, complete with a statue, she would have done her best. Enid had not lost her baby, but she’d lost the nearest thing, and even though it was almost unbearable to watch, Margery knew she must allow Enid to grieve. She had climbed down the ravine, gripping hold of roots that came away in her hands even as she pulled at them, her feet shooting away from beneath her. She had lifted him, this solid weight, in her arms, and struggled to carry him back to Enid. He’d seemed so much heavier than she remembered. She’d never made any secret of the fact she disliked the dog, but his importance to Enid made Margery humble. They did not think of music as they buried him, but it rained—pearls spilling from the sky, then the giant leaves—and that was music of a kind.
Every day, Enid went back and sat by Mr. Rawlings’s grave, her legs wide, fanning her face with her hand.
“He was lucky. He was a lucky dog. I’m frightened everything will go wrong now.”
She had a belly like a whale. But still. She seemed to diminish, as if she’d lost something that wasn’t just a dog but deep inside her. She became an even more concentrated version of herself, pared back to her essence, both fierce and starkly vulnerable. No matter how far they went—and they really didn’t get very far anymore, certainly nowhere near the top of the mountain—she always wanted to come back and sit with the dog. She collected stones to take to him, and as she arranged them on his grave, she talked about him endlessly. She blamed herself for going into the bathing pool. She blamed herself for letting him out of her sight, then being too slow to catch up. And even though Margery had tried not to think about him, as they sat by the dog’s grave and Enid wept, and talked and talked, and piled new stones on his grave, there was something untrammeled about her pain that reached inside Margery, too. It was the professor who came back to her. It was his loss she felt now.
History is not made up by events alone, but also by what lies between the lines. The friendship Margery shared with the professor lasted ten years. Not that he called it that, and neither did she. By leaving it nameless, it remained secret, and without obligation. She felt lucky. Lucky that this great and distinguished man had chosen her, of all people, to work at his side. She accompanied him to his lectures, having copied out his notes and put them in order, and she sat not at the front where people might notice but hidden in the middle. They went to tearooms, where he always introduced her to the waitress as his niece, reaching beneath the table for her knee, and a little higher. He gave her a present every Christmas and birthday, small things like a new notebook, but he could have given her an acorn and she would have been happy. She called him Peter, which was not his first name, but it was as if everything was a secret between them, and that gave her a feeling of being special, even if no one said it.
She was twenty-seven when her aunts died. They did it without fuss or, indeed, pain relief. They refused to rest. The bronchitis that killed them took one and then the other; in death, they went in a pair. Margery inherited everything, including the now almost-blind Barbara, who refused to wear glasses so that life was an infuriating blur and she was constantly bumping into it. She died a year later. Finally Margery was alone.
One afternoon she was in Professor Smith’s office at the museum, pinning specimens, when she said, in a rush, “Professor, there is something I need to say. I now have the means to go to New Caledonia. I could fund our expedition.” It was not a speech she had planned—or, rather, it was not a speech she had planned to make—but now that she was in it, she didn’t dare stop. That she should not make a fool of herself or even hint at her true feelings had been such reliable guides until now, and it was like pushing herself into an unknown country where everything grew wild. She staggered on. “I’m in love with you, Professor. I love you with all my heart. I have loved you for years.”
There was a pause during which she felt she would pass out with anticipation, and he turned wax pale. He confessed the truth. The truth took less than a minute. Afterward, he asked her forgiveness and wept, and said he did not know how he would live the rest of his life, but at least she was young, and there would be plenty more opportunities for her. His distress seemed to take up all the emotion in the room, so that what was left was a small, strange neutrality that made her say things she didn’t mean and also without emotion. She suggested that perhaps it would be better if she did not come to the museum again, simply voicing the worst scenario so that they could build back from there. Instead he thanked her for being so sensible. He had always known she was a strong young lady.
And that was it. It was over. Ten years of her life had been snatched away, and yet he was actually wiping his eyes and opening the door. She put on her coat, her hat; she picked up her handbag, feeling that she had somehow done this to herself, wondering how it could be reversed before it was too late. Waiting for him to call her back. She left, her cheeks burning, her legs weak but still behaving like sensible legs, still moving, people glancing away as she passed—the cleaners, the pot washers—as if she had become a difficulty, an embarrassment, even a joke, that no one wished to see. The shame was crushing. She had no idea how a person could get over it.
The truth had been as plain as it had once been about her father and brothers. Any other woman would have spotted it a mile off. And even though she was ransacked inside, she still could not connect with what that really felt like. In every glass case of the museum, she saw the reflected and slightly red face of a stranger. A young woman who was not good enough for pot washing, let alone love, yet who’d stupidly dared to lift her head above the parapet and believe she might be. The impossibility of her life was apparent to her as it had never been before. Most women of her age were already pushing baby carriages.
Later, she trudged up the stairs to her flat. She got every photograph of herself that she could find and—meticulously, methodically—she cut her head from each one.
A week later, she took a teaching job. She exchanged her love for a career in domestic science. There would be no more searching for beetles. No more wild talk of New Caledonia. She threw out her insect net, her killing jars; she put her notes into a box. She never saw him again. She was a woman who’d had a period of excitement, who’d dared to dream of adventure and the unknown, but who had retreated instead and made no further disturbance. She had not killed her love. How could you kill something that wasn’t there? She’d simply walked away.
They were sitting by the dog’s grave. Enid was adding more stones. It wasn’t a mausoleum yet, but if they hadn’t been due to go home in a few weeks, it could easily have got there. Enid said, out of the blue, “He was married, wasn’t he? He had kids. That’s the reason Professor Smith broke your heart. That was the complication. The reason you gave up.”
“Yes, Enid.”
“Did he pay for your work?”
“Of course not.”
“He didn’t even pay you?”
“I believed we were above that.”
“Oh, Marge. That man took you for one hell of a ride.”
It came back to Margery as if she had never felt it before, the hurt and humiliation, the limitation, too, like being squeezed into a tin, when you heap your love somewhere so small and thin. Sensing there was nothing she could say to heal this wound, and honest enough not even to try, Enid laid her hand on Margery’s. It was as neat as a shell.
“We never had much luck in love, you and me.”
“No.”
“Or maybe we just looked in the wrong places.”
“Maybe.”
“But we have each other now. We’ll be okay.”
Margery looked at her, and her eyes smarted with tears. “Yes, Enid. I think we will.”
Enid lifted another stone. But she didn’t add it to the pile she’d made. She passed it to Margery. And, without having to ask, Margery understood what she needed to do, and put it on top of the pile. Enid passed another, another, another. A blue one, a round flat one, a stone with a hole through it. Margery added them to the grave. She thought of nothing except balancing them carefully so they would not fall. And gradually Professor Smith was yet another thing there was no need to carry, not even in the darkest recesses of herself. There was no need to keep Professor Smith or any memory of him. The man was gone.
Enid hoisted herself up to get more stones. She said she wanted to find some real beauties to finish Mr. Rawlings’s grave. Margery continued to arrange those they had. She even began to make a little ring of ochre-pink ones toward the top. Then suddenly Enid shouted as if she’d been hurt and Margery sprang to her feet.
Enid wasn’t hurt—she was clutching her belly—but her face had lost all color. She stood pointing at a shallow hole in the soft red earth, freshly made, leaves pulled back, pine needles in a heap.
“The gun,” mouthed Enid. “The gun. It’s not here, Marge. Someone’s taken Taylor’s gun.”