And finally she was doing it. She was on her way to New Caledonia.
It started as a bit of fun. To put her in her place. Plus, he had a thing about teachers. He’d never forgotten the idiot who’d moved him to the class for retards. “I can read,” he’d said.
And this teacher, he’d said, “Then show us, Mundic. Show the class you can read.”
So he’d picked up the book, doing one word at a time, but the teacher was right, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get the words to stop jigging. The class laid into him after school. Retard, they called him, and they’d kept it up from that day on, ragging him and shouting “Reee-taaaaard.”
So, yes, he didn’t care for teachers.
After the interview, he’d waited for her outside Lyons. He’d wanted to spook her because it wasn’t right, the way she’d laughed when he’d said there’d be snakes. What did she know? She was a woman. She needed him to lead her expedition. Five years he’d been back from Burma, and he still couldn’t hold down a job. Either he’d get sick, or something would upset him, and he’d land in a fight. There were people queuing for food and people going on buses and people waiting to cross the road, and he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t remember anymore how to be ordinary like them because he had seen things in Burma none of those people had seen. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember who he was. He kept his passport in his pocket just to remind himself. And there were times he’d be okay, but then he’d open a newspaper and find another story about a POW who’d hanged himself and that was it, he was back in Burma all over again. There were days he even had the same thought. All he wanted was to get away.
So he followed her as she left the Corner House—it wasn’t difficult, with the fog and everything, and he liked hiding in doorways when she turned, having a laugh at her expense. After that he got curious. He wondered where a woman like her lived. He guessed a shabby terrace house. The last thing he expected was a fancy mansion block.
He went back the next day, even though it was so cold he’d had to stuff his hands into his pockets to keep warm. But it was a thing to do because there’d been days recently he couldn’t even summon the energy to play a game of cards, or he’d start, and it was like a switch inside him had got stuck, and he wouldn’t know how to stop. He was about to leave when she appeared at a window. He felt a bolt of adrenaline, like he hadn’t known since the day the army had marched past and he’d signed up on the spot. So he counted the windows and he did it out loud because sometimes his thoughts got scrambled, and now he knew she lived on the fourth floor.
After that, it became his job, following her. He left the hostel every day like he was going to work. He got a notebook and he called it the Book of Miss Benson. He wrote facts he knew, such as her address, and he kept the book safe in his pocket, alongside his passport and her map.
He went through her rubbish and found out she liked tinned soup and biscuits. He found out she lived alone. He followed her to a travel agency, and as soon as she left, he went and spoke to the chap, and he said, “I fancy a cruise to the other side of the world,” and the chap laughed and said what a coincidence, he’d just sold two last-minute tickets for the RMS Orion. Mundic said, “When’s she going? When’s she coming back?” That was his first mistake: he shouldn’t have said that—it gave him away—and he started rubbing his hands because he was scared. But the travel agent didn’t notice. He said, “Leaving Tilbury on October the nineteenth and returning home on the eighteenth.” So Mundic wrote those details in his Book of Miss Benson. And the chap said, “Take a leaflet, why don’t you, sir? If you’re interested?” Mundic put that into his notebook as well.
The more he found out, the more powerful he felt. Sometimes he said to himself, “In five minutes Miss Benson will walk onto the street.” And when she did, it was like he was so big nothing could hurt him ever again. Besides, she wasn’t the kind to give in. It wasn’t as easy to spook her as he’d thought, and he liked that. It kept him on his toes. When her collecting equipment arrived, he stopped the delivery chaps outside and said he would look after it. He broke a few things while they weren’t looking. Little ones. Just so she’d know he was watching.
Three weeks of following her, and it was more than teaching her a lesson; it was like being a man again. And now she was going to leave. She was going to New Caledonia.
He didn’t know what he would do without her.
Fenchurch Street station, October 19, 1950. Nine o’clock on the dot. No sign of Enid Pretty. No sign of anyone beneath the station clock, except Margery in her pith helmet and boots, holding her insect net like an oversized lollipop, glancing left and right to check the path was clear of policemen.
The evening before, she couldn’t eat. Despite the waste, she’d scraped her meal into the bin. The night had been even worse. She’d slept in fits and starts; the only dream she had played itself on a loop and was about her watch being broken. It would have been less exhausting if she’d sat up for hours, staring at the wall. Later, waiting outside for a cab in the morning, she had glanced up at her empty window and, just for a second, felt bereft. She was convinced she was seeing it for the last time. But she’d noticed someone on the other side of the road, and quickly moved on in case he thought she needed help.
The railway station was mayhem: crowds rushing, locomotives shunting and chugging, whistles sounding, doors slamming, pigeons flying to the rafters with a clatter of wings. And everywhere the soot, the smoke. Several people noticed Margery’s helmet and slowed for a second look—she might as well have stuck a bowl of fruit on her head. Five minutes passed. Ten. Across the concourse, a short, thin woman, with hair like bright yellow candy floss, stood smoking nervously. Quarter past nine. The train was going to leave at half past.
But finally here was Enid Pretty. A neat woman with one suitcase and sensible brown shoes, hurrying toward the station clock as if her life depended on it. Margery waved her sweep net: “Miss Pretty! Miss Pretty!”
The woman caught sight of Margery and paled. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are. My name’s not Miss Pretty. Please leave me alone.” She rushed past.
By now a small crowd had gathered, waiting for Margery to do something even more entertaining, like leap through a ring of fire, or produce a saw and cut herself in two. She had no idea where to look.
“Marge?” The woman with yellow hair noticed her for the first time. She pulled something from her pocket that turned out to be pink and stuffed it on top of her head. “Is that you?”
It seemed to Margery that everything paused. Even pigeons. Even the clock. The small crowd turned to look at the yellow-haired woman, now struggling to gather up not one, but three whacking great suitcases and a red valise, then turned for a good look at Margery in her pith helmet, as if there were a tight line running from one to the other that made no sense. Margery saw nothing but a wall of eyeballs, swinging left and right.