Page 43 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘Goodness, I don’t mind ladies. If they don’t go off in the middle of their course to start families – that’s always a danger.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Bit of a waste. You’re not like that, are you, Miss Foster?’
She stared at him in consternation. ‘I… I don’t think so. It’s not my plan at the moment, anyway.’
‘Good. Listen, we’ll talk about this matter again. I suppose I ought to circulate or Mrs Briggs will be annoyed. It’s her idea, this little supper, you know.’ And with that he wandered off to speak to Edmund and Michael, who were conversing with Dr Hillman and Dr Lansdale and wolfing down vols-au-vent from a table laden with party food.
Nancy, feeling disgruntled, joined a circle where James was holding forth. She stood quietly, sipping her wine and barely aware of what he was saying; some joke about anelderly scientist who’d muddled his specimen jars. There was, she mused, something wrong with Professor Briggs’ approach to recruiting graduate students. Surely it was his duty to engage only the best and brightest of the final year’s cohort. If initially she’d been flattered that he’d singled her out, had believed it was because he thought her special, now she thought that he was simply using her to boost finances. She remembered how, at the beginning of the first year, Edmund and Michael had explained that the reason Briggs admitted so many women was in order to build up his department. This approach, then, obviously didn’t just apply to undergraduates. Did he actually believe in her abilities as a scientist? Would he support her in her studies? She had no idea. It was very undermining.
The others broke into laughter, bringing her back to awareness, but she’d missed the punchline to James’ story.
‘You’re in a brown study, Foster,’ James commented. ‘Has something happened?’ He leaned and whispered, ‘You were very cosy with the prof there.’
‘I assure you it wasn’t cosy.’ She was watching Briggs with the group of men across the room, all laughing at some remark. ‘He is odd, isn’t he?’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. He was asking about my plans for next year, then he made me feel I’m just a number.’
‘Well, trust me, if you do stay on you should keep in with him.’
She stared at James, wondering what he knew, but he merely smiled and said nothing. James, too, could beinfuriating. He liked to give the impression that he was one step ahead of everyone else. And he often was. He had a way of finding out things. It was easier for him, being a man, she thought crossly. It meant he was able to start up conversations with the lecturers, hang out with doctoral students in the bar, which she, as a woman, couldn’t even enter by herself.
There were other things. If she was brave enough to join a group of older male students, she was incensed by the way they often shifted the conversation down a level. Instead of continuing to discuss something interesting like department politics or the best way to apply for research grants or the reproductive habits of honey bees, someone would make a flirtatious remark or ask something patronizing such as whether girls felt ‘squeamish’ about dissection. When that happened, Nancy always steered the conversation firmly back to serious matters and enjoyed seeing the astonished look on the men’s faces when she offered an informed opinion. The other women didn’t appear to mind these male ways, or were too polite or too nervous to make a stand, but she did mind and was not afraid to assert herself. She imagined that some men thought her blunt, but why shouldn’t she be herself?
Twenty-Four
It was after nine and the fire in Nancy’s sitting room had died to glowing embers. Dragonfly Lodge lay in shadow. Outside, the rain was coming down heavily. Stef was glad she didn’t have to go back to her mother’s house that evening.
At Nancy’s behest, she rose, drew the curtains across and turned on the lamps so that the room felt cosy. Lauren, she noticed, had folded down the duvet on Nancy’s bed and tidied the bedside table.
‘Would you mind checking on the menagerie?’ Nancy asked. ‘Then a tot of brandy would be very nice.’
The sky was thick with cloud, but there was still some light in the sky when Stef found an umbrella by the back door and crept out into the rain. The cat slipped out with her and limped off into some bushes on some business of its own.
Stef stepped over the puddles and unbolted the door of the outhouse. Inside, she went from cage to cage in the gloom.The hedgehogs in their runs on the ground were awake and rustling about, but all appeared well so she retreated. Outside, she hesitated a moment, noticing the twilit Broad shrouded in mist, listening to the sounds of the rain pattering in the trees and gurgling down the drainpipes. Apart from that, all was reassuringly quiet. Surely there would be nothing tonight to threaten or disturb.
She called, ‘Tabitha! Tabitha?’, but the cat did not reappear. Either she’d gone back inside already, Stef thought, or would find her own way through the cat flap later.
That night, in Livy’s bed, Stef woke in pitch darkness, prickling with nerves. She lay still with eyes open, listening to the steady fall of the rain and wondering what had disturbed her. The room was quiet apart from a clock ticking. And then came a sound, a distant moan.Nancy, she thought, and sat up, throwing back the duvet. She listened. There it came again, the moan rising to a cry.
She fumbled for the lamp switch, then, dazzled, reached blindly for her dressing gown. Out on the landing, the lamplight threw shadows on the wall, but all was silent. There came another cry, louder this time, and she padded down the stairs, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. The sitting room door was shut, with no telltale line of light showing. She knocked softly and pushed it ajar.
‘No, no, no!’
‘Nancy?’ Stef whispered. ‘Are you okay?’
A muttered answer. Stef could make out the lines of the bed, the pale face of the figure lying in it, restless, fingersplucking at the duvet. Nancy was asleep and dreaming. Then suddenly her eyes fluttered open. ‘Yes? Who’s that?’
‘Just me, Stef. I’m so sorry, I’ve woken you. I heard you talking and…’
‘Talking? What did I say?’ She struggled to sit up.
‘Let me…’ Stef stepped forward to assist. ‘I didn’t hear what you were saying, just worried that you needed something. You were obviously dreaming, I realize that now.’
‘I don’t remember… I’d like some water. Bit dizzy.’ Nancy seemed confused.
Stef passed her the tumbler from the table, then helped her get comfortable.
On her way back to bed, she thought to get herself a drink and opened the kitchen door carefully in case Tabitha got out. But there was no soft, purring body trying to escape and when she switched on the light, she saw that the kitchen was empty. Still out in the rain, she imagined as she ran water into a glass. She switched off the light and stood in her bare feet peering out of the window as she sipped it. A faint glow from her bedroom lamp threw light across the garden, but beyond the perimeter fence the reserve lay in thick darkness. It felt so remote out here, the night air chilly from the Broad. Stef thought of that stretch of water behind the cottage swelling with rain, lapping against the shore, perhaps creeping up towards the fence. And remembered a teacher telling them at school that the great network of man-made lakes and waterways that constituted the Broads connected up ultimately to the sea and were therefore subject to the tides. Nancy had said that flooding hadn’t been much of a problem here,but one never knew. Stef shivered, wriggling her toes to get warm, then checked the cat flap to see that it swung cleanly before going back up to bed.
