Page 64 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘Of course,’ he sighed. ‘We all want credit where credit is due, that’s human nature. But as we go on, I expect we’ll be working in teams, trusting one another and pooling our knowledge.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said thoughtfully, then seeing his face, broke off.
‘I shouldn’t be too generous with your findings, though.’ Edmund’s eyes twinkled. ‘The rivalry for research posts and grants is keen and your reputation will be crucial.’
‘We’ll just have to prove ourselves, then.’
I’ve been living in a cocoon, she acknowledged to herself later as she fed her locusts spinach in the safety of her lab. She thought of the groups of men in the common room and glimpsed a vision of how it would be for her as a woman. It had been bad enough as an undergraduate with girls making up half the cohort, but from now on it would be harder. She sighed as she carefully closed the tank. At least she had an ally in Edmund.
Thirty-Seven
Dorothy Winters was a fellow researcher a couple of years older than Nancy. They had met in the staff common room and Nancy was initially drawn to her because she reminded her of Peggy. Dorothy had that same Edinburgh accent and was small and fragile-looking. But her hair was more of a gorgeous auburn shade than Peggy’s flaring ginger and instead of freckles she had a clear, creamy complexion. Nancy missed Peggy, though they wrote to one another often. Peggy had become a schoolmistress and Nancy enjoyed her amusing descriptions of her charges in a girls’ school in South London. George had taken a training post as a government scientist, which appeared to involve wading through waterlogged fields advising farmers on drainage. They planned to marry at the end of the year.
Dorothy turned out to be a completely different kind of person from Peggy, more intense and serious compared to Peggy’s open lightness. She was also the first womanof her own age Nancy had met at Brandingfield who was as ambitious as herself. Her PhD was behind her and she was researching diseases of honey bees with a grant from the Agricultural Research Council. When Nancy asked her advice about analysing data on her own project, Dorothy made a useful suggestion that set her off on a new track. Nancy appreciated her support. In turn, she went out into the frosty air to view Dorothy’s beehives outside the portable hut where she operated. Dorothy, too, was supervised by Professor Briggs. ‘Notionally, anyway,’ she laughed without merriment. ‘He’s immensely knowledgeable, so it’s a shame I see him so rarely.’
It was Dorothy who brightened Nancy’s social life at Brandingfield, inviting her to supper at the house in town where she lodged with a senior lecturer and his wife who also both worked at the laboratory. ‘The Brauns love meeting new people,’ she insisted when Nancy asked if they’d mind another mouth to feed.
She’d enjoyed the evening hugely. Frank and Eleanor Braun, who were about forty, were keen musicians with a large collection of classical gramophone records. After supper, they listened to music and the Brauns talked about art and places they’d visited on their travels. Frank was of Swiss extraction and had relatives in Lucerne. He had worked in Paris for a couple of years after the war and spoke French and German. Nancy, who had never left British shores, was fascinated. It was the first of several such evenings, and then Nancy was thrilled when Eleanor took her aside in the kitchen one night.
‘Dorothy mentioned that your current living arrangements are a little spartan.’
‘Oh, I can’t really complain.’ Nancy was flustered at the thought of being talked about behind her back. ‘My landlady is a bit of a character, that’s all.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘I know all about landladies like that. What I wondered, Nancy, was whether you’d like to move in here. It would be a room at the back, not very big, but it gets the sun in the mornings and can be very cosy when the gas fire’s lit. Why don’t you come over in daylight and take a look?’
‘I’d love to,’ Nancy gasped. ‘Thank you!’
The bedroom was indeed small, but as attractive as Eleanor had described. The sum Eleanor named for board and lodging was slightly more expensive than her present arrangement, but she could use the fire as much as she liked without having to feed it coins and Eleanor’s cooking far surpassed anything that Mrs Harrison put on the table. She thought she might also save on train fares home, as here she’d be happier to stay put at weekends, though she was determined to make the effort to see her parents at least once a month.
After she moved in, her life at Brandingfield became instantly more comfortable and less lonely. She’d found good friends in Dorothy, Eleanor and Frank, and through them began to meet others. Once or twice, Edmund came to supper and Frank particularly appreciated his company because of shared cultural interests and wartime experiences. Frank also took an interest in Edmund’s research and it wasn’tlong before Nancy noticed how Edmund’s own network of acquaintances was growing. He became drawn into other men’s conversations in the scientists’ common room in a way that she wasn’t. She was pleased for him, but privately it galled her.
Sobering, too, was a conversation she had with Eleanor one afternoon. Nancy had come back early after a frustrating day at Brandingfield, when she’d accidently dropped and broken a collection of slides containing important samples. She let herself into the house thinking that no one would be home, only to find Eleanor sitting at the dining room table sorting a box of paperwork.
‘Oh, I couldn’t think who it was,’ Eleanor said, looking at Nancy in surprise through lopsided frames. Eleanor famously hated herself in spectacles and was always taking them off and hiding them in silly places where they got damaged.
‘Bad day, better tomorrow,’ Nancy said briefly. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh…’ Eleanor waved her hand impatiently over the mess on the table. ‘Trying to make order out of chaos as ever. I sometimes think Frank only married me for my organizational skills.’
Nancy squinted at the lists of figures in Frank’s familiar scrawl. ‘He’s writing a paper?’
‘I’m writing the paper,’ Eleanor said feelingly. ‘But both our names will go on it. The Board wouldn’t consider it if it were just mine. It’s the results of our joint research, I don’t dispute that, but I’ve no status, do you see? I’ve a doctorate, Nancy, but I was never able to advance any further than a lowly researchposition. Every paper I wrote got ignored or turned down, and without any publications to my name I couldn’t apply for better research posts.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? It’s because I’m female. No one actually said, “We don’t give grants to women”. No, it’s more subtle than that. I wasn’t part of any network. Some of the men I needed to impress wouldn’t speak to me, or mistook me for a technician and asked me to fetch the tea. In the end, I took a position as a technician at Prince’s before the war in order to pay the bills. It was only when Frank arrived that things changed.’
‘You mean—’
‘You know Frank, he’ll talk to anyone. We were both interested in water pollution and began to collaborate. Our love bloomed over watchglasses of algae. He proposed to me while we were knee-deep in a stew pond on Epsom Common. But it’s me who writes the papers. I was always good at English, you see, and he never enjoyed that aspect of the work. The important thing is that I’m published at all. I love Frank and I love my work, but you can’t say it’s fair. It simply isn’t.’
‘No,’ Nancy said, wonderingly. She’d never heard the gentle Eleanor speak with such bitterness before. The Brauns had seemed to her a perfect match, both intellectuals, he lively and gregarious, she soothing and supportive.
‘Fortunately, I never had strong feelings about becoming a mother,’ Eleanor continued sadly. ‘Nor did I have the choice. We didn’t marry until I was thirty-seven and somehow a baby never came along. Frank would have liked a child,I think, so it’s a shame.’ She squared a sheaf of papers by knocking them on the table, then smiled cheerfully. ‘Instead, I have lots of paper babies and they give me great pleasure.’
‘I didn’t know things like that happened,’ Nancy said humbly. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s getting better now – I hope so.’ She thought about the tight groups of men in the scientists’ common room, how naturally Edmund had started to move among them, and wondered.
‘Maybe it will change, but slowly, I think. My advice, dear Nancy, if you want it, is to be prepared for a struggle. We can count the names of noted women scientists on one hand. In Zoology, being a ‘softer’ science, it may easier than for our sisters in Chemistry or Physics, but the structures are the same – it’s a man’s world.’
