“Again?” said Margery. The rushing, the crushing, surely they had already done that. Enid grabbed her suitcases as if they were the hands of children and pelted through the door. Outside, people crowded the jetty, waving balloons and shouting. They were hemmed in on every side—it was like pushing through a wall. There was a brass band, there was bunting, there was a woman sobbing her heart out and, to top it all, there was rain, the fine British kind that sticks to your skin like mist and soaks you in minutes.
“Don’t you dare go without us!” shouted Enid. She seemed to be threatening the RMS Orion itself. But the deckhand was already stepping down with the chain to close the gangway; the foghorn sounded. Any moment now it would leave. “Stop that right now!” she yelled.
Margery plodded in Enid’s wake. A vertical seam of pain ran the length of both legs and, no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to gain full access to her lungs. Her Gladstone bag was considerably heavier than her suitcase, and she swapped them from one hand to the other until she was unable to tell whether it was better to continue with the throbbing in her right arm or change to instant pain in the left.
“Wait! You wait!” bawled Enid, at the deckhand. Spotting them, he dropped the chain and ran down to help. She sprinted past.
“Not me, darlin’,” she called over her shoulder. “Help the lady behind.”
* * *
—
Despite the awful weather, the decks were packed. As the ship slid free, the band on the jetty struck up with a round of “Rule Britannia,” and passengers hurled down hundreds of thousands of streamers that filled the dock in a giant web, while Enid whooped and blew kisses, though presumably not to anyone she knew. “Goodbye!” she shouted. “Goodbye, ol’ Blighty!” After that, Margery stayed on deck, watching as everything she knew pulled away and lost shape, the docks, the coastline, fishing boats, until even Britain was a small gray hat on the horizon. She was doing it—she was finally doing the thing she’d dreamed about as a child, the thing she’d given up on in her twenties, and deep inside she felt a leap of excitement because it was finally happening and she could hardly believe it. It was so easy to find yourself doing the things in life you weren’t passionate about, to stick with them even when you didn’t want them and they hurt. But now the time for dreaming and wishing was over, and she was going. She was traveling to the other side of the world. It wasn’t just the ship that had been unmoored. It was her entire sense of herself.
Enid fetched a handsome steward to help with their luggage. (“Oh, you are so kind!” she trilled. “Oh, you are so helpful! Thank you, sweetheart! I’ll keep the red one!”) He told them about the wonderful things they could do onboard. Not just the free dining and swimming, but all the extra clubs and activities. Getting there was half the fun. He pointed out the lines of yellow deck chairs, a whole arcade of shops, a hairdresser, a cinema, and even a ballroom, while Enid gasped and clucked, like a hen laying an egg. Yellow was the company color, he said. No other ship had a yellow funnel, like the RMS Orion’s.
“Matches my hair!” She laughed.
“So it does!” He laughed back.
She then told him everything she knew about the gold beetle, which was obviously not much, though that didn’t put her off in any significant way. Marge was an explorer, she said, from the Natural History Museum. “I’m her assistant! We’re going on the adventure of our lives!”
“I could show you some adventures!”
“Now now, sailor! Don’t you be so saucy!”
And slowly they continued to tourist class, conversing entirely with exclamation marks, and bumping the luggage down so many stairs, they might as well have been descending to the bottom of the ocean. At last the steward stopped outside a cabin.
“This is it?” said Margery.
“Ooo! Ain’t it lovely!” sang Enid.
So the space they were to share for five weeks was small. Really small. It would have been a squeeze for a single person, but for a big one and her excitable, nonstop-talking assistant it was less a cabin, more a cupboard. It looked nothing like the berth in the pamphlet. And after the cold outside it was also suffocatingly hot. Within seconds, Margery had to undo her coat, and she seriously regretted the wool vest.
A set of bunk beds took up one side, and on the other, a rack for clothes, as well as a tiny cupboard, a tiny washbasin, a yellow chair and a tiny desk, a mirror and wall light. Above, a ceiling fan moved slowly, not exactly cooling the air but rather dolloping it from one half of the cabin to the other. Lavatory and shower facilities were at the end of the corridor, as was the laundry room. A sudden jolt from the ship sent all three flying sideways, and Enid landed in the arms of the steward. “Ow!” she went, as if he had pinched her. “Hands off, sailor!”
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed the steward. “I bet you know how to have fun!”
Once he’d gone, there was an awkwardness in the cabin, as if Enid had taken off something she shouldn’t. Margery hung up her three frocks and made a pile of her books on the desk. She informed Enid she would take the bottom bunk, but Enid was so busy testing the lock on the door, she failed to reply and Margery had to say it all over again. “I have used the left-hand side of the cupboard,” she continued, nudging her way past Enid’s suitcases. They looked even bigger now that they were in the cabin, more like coffins for baby dinosaurs. “You can use the right. Clearly space is an issue in here.”
“I think it’s really nice,” said Enid, apparently happy with security arrangements, vis-à-vis the door.
“This is going to be difficult. I suggest we establish some rules.”
“Beg pardon?”
“This will be my half.” Margery pointed at the left side of the cabin, which she had designated as her own. “That will be yours.” Technically this meant they had joint ownership of the cupboard and lamp in the middle and that Margery took the desk, while Enid got the mirror. “Obviously I will need to pass through your half of the cabin to reach the door. Another thing. My name is not Marge.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.”
“I see. Is that an alias?”
“An alias? No, of course it isn’t an alias. My name is Margery. Marge is a cheap butter substitute.”
“Beg pardon?”
“People call me Miss Benson.”
“Miss Benson?” Enid made a scowl face.
“Yes.”
“Okay, Marge. Well, I’ll just unpack, shall I?”
There was no time to argue because at this point Enid produced an abundance of small bottles and jars, and tossed them into the cupboard, without any order, and also on Margery’s side. It hurt just to watch. Margery had no idea how one woman could need so much. She had packed only a jar of Pond’s Cold Cream, and that could last a whole year. Then Enid began to empty her luggage. Another shock. There was not one single brown camouflage item anywhere. Everything she owned came in bright colors—skimpy frocks, a tiger-print bikini, a fur coat that seemed to shed hair even as she lifted it, flowery high-heeled slippers, more tiny hats, and a prawn-pink dressing gown. Clearly she’d rammed her entire life into her suitcases, and most of it was pretty patched and threadbare. The only one she failed to open was the red valise. Checking the lock, she shoved it beneath the chair. Then they changed for dinner at opposite ends of the cabin—which in effect rendered them side by side. Margery put on her best purple frock. Enid got into something abundantly flowery.