Page 26 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
She rolled her eyes. ‘In a minute, Mummy. I’ve got some books to put away.’ Instead of questions, there had been no interest at all in how her day had gone. She shut herself in her room, set her briefcase on the desk, then sank onto the bed with a sigh. She looked about her. Today was supposed to have been the first day of a new life. So how could everything look the same?
It had to change. She opened the briefcase, pulled out the textbooks and the dissection set, then swept her colourful collection of school story books off a wall shelf into a cupboard and placed the sombre-looking textbooks in their place. One each for Botany and Geology, both dog-eared,and a newer, formidable-looking two-volume introduction to Zoology.
Finally, she felt in her pocket for her purchase from Boots with the change from the books. A Max Factor lipstick in Rose Red and a powder compact. Helen wore make-up, but Nancy hadn’t wanted to before, fearing her mother’s beady eye. But thinking of the nice young men she’d met today, suddenly she’d changed her mind.
The new students quickly got into the swing of university life. There were lectures every morning – Zoology every day, with Botany and Geology on two days, each lecture followed by a practical session in a lab.
Zoology, Dr Hillman explained in his opening lecture, was one of the two subdivisions of Biology, the science of all living things. Zoology dealt with animals and covered creatures of one cell all the way up to mammals, humans being at the top of the tree, the most advanced animal of all. The other subdivision of Biology was Botany, the study of plants.
Nancy loved Zoology. They were studying the classification of the animal kingdom, the structure of different animals, their behaviour and habitats, which she mostly found fascinating, though there were too many Latin names to learn. Botany she found tedious, for it mostly involved going over information that she had already learned at school about the structures and life cycles of plants, and there was endless drawing, which she wasn’t good at. It was frustrating, but it had to be done. As Peggy said cheerfully, at least Nancy would do well in the exam.
Geology, which was new to her, was an unexpected joy. It gave Nancy a strange feeling to consider the great age of the soil and rocks that they handled and to explore the secrets that they concealed. They drew diagrams of the strata of rocks beneath the South Downs and the Pennines, examined fossils and microscopic evidence of more primitive life. Even the dreariest-looking samples revealed knowledge of long-lost landscapes she’d never dreamed existed. She learned that much of Derbyshire used to be a tropical sea. That the unusual rock formations of Western Scotland were shaped by the restless movements of the Earth. It was exciting, too, to examine charts created to support the latest evidence for Continental Drift, a once contentious theory that was gradually becoming accepted.
‘Geological time makes me feel small, that my problems are unimportant. Do you know, I find that soothing?’ she told Peggy one lunchtime. They were eating with the Annes in the refectory. Several of the boys were sitting together further down the long polished table, though James, Nancy noted, was not among them.
Peggy had been grumbling to the other girls about having to sketch layers of soil and sediment, which didn’t have the same appeal for her as living plants, which she loved and spent hours of her own time drawing. Nancy envied Peggy’s skill.
‘I can’t get my head round the idea of millions of years,’ Anne Durban sighed as she picked scraps of fish skin out of her lunch. ‘They’re just numbers to me. All I know is that the fish in this pie must be prehistoric.’
‘Mine, too,’ Anne Southgate agreed, wrinkling her nose.
Nancy stared at a bone she’d just picked out of her teeth. ‘Perhaps it’s left over from yesterday’s dissection!’
‘What a revolting idea.’ Peggy giggled.
‘Dogfish is actually very tasty,’ Anne Durban said seriously.
‘Not after being left out in the lab for hours,’ Nancy sighed.
She looked up to see James West approaching. He was carrying two books under his arm and a laden tray and was glancing about for somewhere to sit. Realizing that the group of boys he might have joined had left, Nancy caught his eye. ‘Come and join us, if you like,’ she called out, thinking it a friendly thing to do.
‘Thanks.’ He didn’t even smile.
Anne Southgate moved her things to make space on the bench beside her. James sprinkled salt on his food and began to eat heartily. The Annes and Peggy began to discuss a piece of homework on photosynthesis they’d been given. Nancy only half-listened. She was liking the way the light from the feeble bulb overhead shone off James’ dark hair in the gloom of the refectory and was trying to see the titles of the books on the table beside him.
‘You nearly missed lunch,’ she said tentatively. Three weeks into the term and, although they’d exchanged comments once or twice out of necessity, this was the first time they’d actually embarked on a conversation.
His dark eyes perused her as he swallowed a mouthful. ‘I was in the library and forgot the time.’
‘Oh, you must have been absorbed, then. I never met aman who forgot to eat. My sister and I used to have to race my brother to the table or he’d scoff everything.’
He gave a slow smile. ‘I’m an only child, so that didn’t happen. But don’t worry, I’m not in the habit of missing meals. I was reading this.’ He pushed one of the books towards her and she picked it up and examined the spine.Principles of Physical Geologyby Arthur Holmes. She remembered the lecturer referring to it that morning when talking about the ceaselessly moving continents. It was a key text, she’d gathered, only recently published.
‘That’s keen of you.’ She opened it and turned the pages, frowning, her chin resting in her hand. ‘The maths looks complicated. Have you grasped it?’
‘His take is that heat from radioactivity moves the earth’s crust and that’s why land masses move. My Biology master used to bang on about Continental Drift. It was he who suggested I come here.’
‘But you chose Zoology, not Geology?’
‘Geology never occurred to me. A local naturalist came and gave a talk to our sixth form about insects, so I decided on Zoology and that was that.’
‘Where did you go to school?’
‘Only one of the London day schools. Nowhere grand.’ There was a challenging edge to his voice.
‘Same here,’ she said humbly. ‘I chose Prince’s because it’s the best place in London for Zoology and a master at our school knows Professor Briggs slightly. Anyway, my parents wouldn’t have let me go further away.’
‘I must say, I was surprised to find so many girls here. Isuppose Edmund Buckland is right. Briggs is desperate for the money.’
