Page 30 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘No.’ She didn’t like to add that she would do as she always did and preserve the recording, as she did with her notes, so that if anyone questioned anything she published she’d have the evidence to defend herself if necessary. That had happened with the previous book – only a small matter, but she’d been able to prove that the witness she’d interviewed had indeed provided the information in question.
‘Well, all right. Talking to you yesterday has awoken a lot of memories. It was all such a long time ago, though – are you sure that people would be interested?’
Stef’s answer was quick and passionate. ‘I am, at least, and I think a lot of people will be. It’s a sense of connection to the past. And how it affects the present.’
‘That’s what Aaron is worried about,’ Nancy said with a sigh. ‘It’s not simply a story from the past, you see.’
Sixteen
July 1948
‘It’s very long, longer than the one you had for Yorkshire.’ Mrs Foster was sitting at the kitchen table frowning at a typed kit list. ‘Why all these changes of clothes? Sixteen pairs of socks?’
‘It’s not my idea, it’s just what it says.’ Nancy was sitting on the back step in the open doorway pasting dubbin on her walking boots, generously paid for earlier in the year by Aunt Rhoda.
‘Can’t you take those you already have and wash them? Anyone would think there wasn’t still clothes rationing. You’ll have to borrow Helen’s brown slacks, and I imagine her winter pyjamas will be warmer for camping than your old things.’
‘I heard that,’ Helen said, coming in from the hall and sitting down at the table. ‘And the answer’s no.’
Nancy gave her an appealing look. ‘Be a sport.’
‘I can’t see any alternative, Helen,’ their mother moaned. ‘I simply don’t have the coupons.’
‘She’ll ruin them.’
‘I won’t. Anyway, you borrowed my windjammer to go sailing on the Broads, remember.’
‘I look after things. You don’t.’
‘I do.’
‘Girls, that’s enough.’
The first year of college was over and Nancy was packing for the zoologists’ field trip, three weeks under canvas in the New Forest. It was a more ambitious affair than the Geology trip to Ingatestone at Easter, which had only been one week and they’d stayed in a hostel.
The group were to meet two of their lecturers at the college on Monday morning and travel down to Hampshire in a small coach. Like the others, she felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Excitement because, despite the fact they’d be engaged in full-time nature study, the students couldn’t help thinking of it as a merry jaunt after years in which holidays had been curtailed by war.
For several summers running during Nancy’s teens the Fosters had gone to Devon to stay for a fortnight with Mrs Foster’s cousin Ruth. Ruth was married to a local farmer, who was short of hands at harvest time and welcomed the extra help. Nancy’s father usually stayed in London on these occasions and took his meals at his club. Roger, who came for the first two of these trips, was out in the fields all day with the workers, after which he slept like the dead. Helen and Nancy were given less onerous tasks such as collecting eggsand milking cows, which they quite enjoyed. Their mother, however, astonished them. She turned into a different person on these occasions, cheerful and sociable rather than nagging and unhappy. She rolled up her sleeves to help Ruth in the kitchen of the rambling farmhouse, preparing meals for the workers. She smoked and drank cider and laughed at doubtful jokes. It did her good to be away from the anxieties of wartime London, which possibly included her husband.
By the summer of 1947, though, this enthusiasm for farming had run out. The year before, there had been some unpleasantness. A new farm hand had developed a pash for twenty-year-old Helen and tried to corner her in a barn. Then an old carthorse Mrs Foster had been grooming stepped heavily on her foot, causing her agony and nasty bruising that had lasted for weeks.
Now Helen was working as a secretary and couldn’t get the time off. Mr Foster rented a cottage in the Cotswolds, but Nancy, who’d just left school, was the only sibling who went. Although she’d loved the beautiful countryside and the pretty villages of golden stone, she found a fortnight under the constant eye of her parents a strain and vowed that it would be the last family holiday.
A year later, the thought of going away with her fellow students filled her with joy.
The trepidation was to do with the newness of the experience. Would it be fun? she thought as she rubbed at her walking shoes. How would they all get on? Especially the girls and the boys. Friendships were gradually forming between the sexes, one or two even teetering on romance. Notfor Nancy, though. Something always held her back, something that might have been to do with what had happened all those years ago with their neighbour Mr Hunter. She got on well with most of the boys as friends. They were in awe of her intelligence, the fact that she always put her hand up and answered questions correctly, the hard work that she put into assignments.
‘You may have gained a higher mark on this occasion, Foster,’ James West said recently, after the results of a test about classification were released, ‘but I shan’t allow it to happen again.’
She had smiled, delighted with her victory, but also by the fact that he’d acknowledged it with a touch of humour. Some of the boys didn’t like to be beaten by a girl. She’d been delighted when he’d then invited her to join him and some of the others in the bar. Only the men were allowed to buy drinks in the men’s bar. The women didn’t even have a bar in the poky lounge that had been allocated for their use. She hesitated for only a moment, imagining her mother’s likely reaction, but her mother wasn’t there and Nancy would not tell her.
‘Yes, please. I’ll have a sherry,’ she said boldly, for that’s what she was given at home on special occasions, and she went off to sit with half a dozen of their set at a corner booth. Peggy wasn’t one of them at this point – her religious parents definitely wouldn’t have approved of her drinking – but several of the other girls were, including the darkly attractive Anne Durban and Diana Beauchamp, the pretty, sociable girl from a privileged background, who talked a great deal and was popular with the boys but not very studious.
James brought over the sherry and a beer for himself and sat down next to her. Nancy sipped her drink, feeling the warmth of it slide through her throat, and listened to the conversation about the forthcoming field trip.
‘Mummy’s insisting on me taking a camp bed. She’s worried I’ll be cold,’ Diana said. ‘I don’t know how it’ll fit into the tent, though, if there are four of us.’
‘That’s not playing the game. We’re supposed to make our own beds out of heather.’ John Philips was speaking. ‘It should be fun!’
