Page 52 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘Yes. And I spent a great deal of time getting to know locusts. Nasty, bristly, noisy insects, but extremely interesting and highly evolved for what they do. Which is eat things and reproduce.’
‘Lovely!’ Stef said with distaste.
‘Yes, quite. On the professor’s instructions, I was given some space in one of the upstairs labs at the college to set up some glass tanks. In these, I kept my locusts. They’re used to warm, arid environments and it was a terrible job in chilly, damp old London keeping the temperature of their tanks high enough and the humidity low. It meant using heat lamps. More than once, I arrived on a Monday morning to find that some unhelpful person had turned the lamps off and the insects were all listless, so I had to put up stern notices telling them not to.’
Nancy smiled gently, gazing into the distance, remembering.
‘What did you do with your locusts?’
‘Do? I fed them on grass and leaves, observing their habits. Sometimes I killed them humanely by leaving a few drops of ethyl acetate on a pad in a tightly closed jar – they wouldn’t have felt a thing. Then I dissected them and examined themunder the microscope, trying to get to know every aspect. I quickly observed that locusts have a very thick cuticle – exoskeleton – its outer layer, if you like, and this forms a significant barrier against absorbing toxins. Therefore, any dust used to carry the insecticide would have to cling to the creature’s side long enough for the poison to seep in and do its job.’
‘And you explored different kinds of dust to see which would do this best?’
‘That’s what I went on to do, yes. There were all sorts of things to consider, but I won’t go into those now. It’s enough to say that I had to take into account the context for the spraying, the ability of the different types of dust to carry the poison and so forth.’ Nancy sighed. ‘I shudder now, looking back, knowing that I played a part in promoting the use of these dreadful chemicals, but we simply didn’t know then everything that we do now. There wasn’t the widespread awareness of the need to take care of the natural environment.’
‘I think I understand. Rachel Carson hadn’t publishedThe Silent Springby then, had she, about the damage DDT was doing to wildlife in the States?’
‘No, that was 1962, ten years later. I was horrified when I read it. And she experienced quite a backlash. Nothing’s black and white, though. As well as saving crops, DDT was proving incredibly valuable in the fight against malaria. It killed the Anopheles mosquito that carried the disease and saved thousands of human lives.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Stef frowned.
‘Anyway, by Christmas I was ready to start my experiments, but then everything was briefly up in the air because the great move to the new field station was taking place. But I enjoyed that first term hugely. I was finding out things and being treated seriously. It was quite different from being an undergraduate. Even Miss Pick, the head technician, was moderately less icy. Mind you, she was never as nice to me and Anne as she was to the men. I’ve wondered since if it was because she was envious of other women. Maybe she had wished to be a proper scientist rather than a technician, but was never given the chance.’
Stef nodded and scribbled ‘Explore female technicians in the period’ in her notebook. The tape recorder was running, but it was useful to make such notes as she went along.
‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’ Nancy reached for a crutch and stood up, waving away Stef’s offer of help. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right.’
While she was out of the room, Stef paused the tape recorder and gazed dreamily out of the window. It was sunny this afternoon and her mother had spoken about taking Pippa and the twins to the coast. Stef wouldn’t stay long at Nancy’s once Aaron and Livy returned from shopping. She’d be glad of an opportunity to catch up with some work in an empty house.
Thirty
London
Autumn 1950
The large, high-ceilinged lab on the second floor of Prince’s Zoology building where Nancy kept her locusts was home to half a dozen different research projects. It was cluttered, gloomy and smelled of formaldehyde together with something feral. A large, chugging machine under a worktop near the door sustained an aquarium of whiskery black fish that stared at Nancy with bulging eyes whenever she passed. From time to time, a short, silent student with thick-lensed spectacles arrived to sprinkle flakes of food onto the surface of the water or to check its temperature. He’d make notes on a spiral-bound pad and leave again. None of the other research students knew who he was or what he was doing, and he rarely spoke to anyone.
Nancy’s work station occupied a far corner under a tatterednotice on the wall forbidding anyone to smoke. Nearby, Edmund kept a tankful of flies fed on raw meat, which contributed to the feral smell, though no one complained in case their own project attracted criticism.
By one of the narrow sash windows, Anne Durban presided over a green glass terrarium where shy black beetles hid among moss and twigs. Nancy and Edmund used to joke that there was in fact only one beetle, but seen many times. They named it Alexander after the insect in the Christopher Robin poem. Once Anne arrived to find a sign taped to the glass advising her in childish handwriting that ‘Nanny let my beetle out, and beetle ran away’. She momentarily panicked that all her beetles had been stolen.
Though Nancy took no part in practical jokes, thinking them infantile, they were common in the labs and woe betide anyone whose sense of humour failed. Since none of the pranks actually damaged anyone’s work, which would have been a grave offence, they were largely taken in good part. The only one that fell flat was the occasion when a person or persons unknown placed a large, busty, ceramic figurine in a scanty bathing suit on the sand at the bottom of the aquarium. The silent keeper of the fish did not react or even appear to notice it, and so the statuette remained. By Christmas, its voluptuous curves were modestly clothed in green algae.
Although only Nancy was supervised by Professor Briggs, she, Anne and Edmund had all chosen to work with insects as he’d advised. They understood that this was the best way to get on if they wished to stay at the college.
It was following a discussion with Edmund about thisnarrow range of study options that Nancy was granted the opportunity to learn more about him. She was feeling low one Tuesday afternoon in December because some of her locusts had died, and she told him she hated the insects and felt like throwing in the towel. Edmund took her out to a teashop and plied her with tea and cakes to cheer her up.
The place was busy with Christmas shoppers with bulging bags, and it was hard to be heard over the clink of crockery, the tinny music and bright laughter. On each table, a tiny bristly Christmas tree decoration frosted with white had been left next to the cruet, and the cakes, when they arrived, were iced in festive colours.
‘I needed a treat,’ Nancy declared, selecting a cake decorated with a pink star as Edmund poured the tea. ‘And it’s lovely and warm in here. I can’t believe how cold the lab gets. No wonder my poor locusts die.’
‘My blowflies move very slowly when the temperature drops. I can’t get them to do anything. We should have a word with the gorgeous Miss Pick, though it’s hardly worth making a fuss this side of Christmas. And we’ll be moving soon after.’
‘I wish they’d give us a date and be done with it.’
A group of them had visited Brandingfield Hall the previous week to inspect the new facilities, and had been impressed by the converted building with its spacious laboratories and state-of-the-art equipment. It was set in parkland, on the site of an old country house partly destroyed by enemy bombs, and was nearly ready for them to move into.
The research students were looking forward to the moveon the whole. The only problem was where they would live. It would take Nancy the best part of an hour to get there by tube and train from the hostel, and travelling there and back every day would become onerous. She supposed she would look for digs in the nearby town.
