Page 72 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘Do you… What is the situation with him, Nancy?’
She looked up, surprised. James raked his hair, leaving clawmarks, and his lips drawn back in distress stilled her hand. ‘What situation?’ There was a rustle and a series of ticking sounds. ‘Blast!’ she cried as locusts bounded about her. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ She righted the tank lid, then stepped back in alarm, her mouth a shocked O. Four, five, six large insects had escaped and were leaping about the lab, enjoying their sudden freedom. She grabbed at one, but missed.
James, leaning against the worktop, burst out laughing and the tension in the room lifted.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ she cried, lunging at another. ‘Oh, there’s one by your elbow. Look, look!’
He covered it with swift cupped hands, then stepped over and returned it to its prison.
‘There’s another!’
He pounced, but missed, he was laughing so much.
‘It’s not funny!’ But now she was laughing, too. Soon,the pair of them were dodging each other round the lab as their prey bounced about, Nancy giving excited squeals, James laughing helplessly. One by one, using James’ coat as a net, they hunted them down. Nancy scooped up the last one from its refuge on the windowsill, but as she turned in triumph she collided with James, who was right behind her, and cried out in despair as the locust sprang through the cage of her fingers.
‘Oh!’ She gazed up into his face, her fists clenched. ‘I nearly—’
‘Never mind that.’ And suddenly his arms were round her, pulling her into a clumsy kiss.
She found herself kissing him back, withdrew briefly for breath, then their mouths met again in a long, searching kiss. She pressed herself into him, her senses filled with his salty scent. His mouth tasted of peppermint and coffee, and his body was lean and hard against hers. She was melting against him, could hardly stand without toppling, but he held her.
Finally, they fell apart, panting like swimmers bursting to the surface of a lake, and stared at one another with wild eyes. ‘Crikey,’ he said softly, pulling her to him gently. She nestled against his shoulder. His grip tightened and soon they were kissing again.
After a moment, he drew back slightly. ‘Don’t move,’ he whispered, ‘but the wretched thing’s in my hair. If you’re careful, perhaps…’
She tried, but it was too quick. They were laughing so much, they didn’t hear a knock on the door before it opened. The technician who found them together, Nancy sprawlingon the floor giggling, James standing over her, took no time to spread the story. After that, the common rooms of Brandingfield were buzzing with the information that the rumours about Nancy Foster were true.
Forty-One
Stef glanced at her watch, then quietly switched off the tape recorder. Nancy, prompted by Stef’s occasional question, had been talking for over an hour. Now she was silent and it was as though a spell lay across the room. When she spoke again, it was clear that she was still lost in the past.
‘That moment,’ she said. ‘What happened that day. After that, there was only one way to go forward and that was with James. Somehow I would have to pursue my ambitions with him beside me. He’d broken down all my resistance. I loved him, Stef. Passionately and completely.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘And I thought he felt like that about me.’ She paused, then said softly, ‘I believe he did then. Oh well.’ She plucked absentmindedly at the embroidery on a cushion beside her.
Stef wondered what this hesitation meant, but said nothing. Instead, she pushed the ‘record’ button on her machine and waited.
‘It was difficult to concentrate with James being in thesame room, but we sorted it out in the end. I had to be quite strict. The lab was for work, I told him, and he wasn’t to disturb that.’ She smiled. ‘Finally, he understood. He’d shoot me smouldering looks, then act hurt when I frowned at him, but in a funny way this fed our relationship. Outside Brandingfield, we could do as we liked, of course.’ She gave Stef a wicked grin. ‘As long as his landlady didn’t find out.’
Stef smiled back, then had a thought. ‘What about Edmund?’
‘Oh, I had to give up seeing Edmund. It was cruel, he was awfully hurt, but I’d surmised correctly. James was jealous. It was no good me arguing that there was nothing to be jealous of, that Edmund and I were just friends. There was the gossip. People had seen me with Edmund before, and Dorothy said they believed that because one part of the rumour had been proved, the other one must also be true. Honestly, you’d think people at Brandingfield, intelligent, educated folk, had better things to do than gossip. All it took was one or two, I suppose, and there was no one in charge stamping that sort of thing out. There wasn’t a personnel department I could go to.’
‘What about Professor Briggs?’
‘Oh, he would have taken no interest in that sort of thing. Office politics was beneath him. He was a brilliant academic and a wonderful fixer, canny and single-minded, but all he really cared about was research. Empire-building for the cause of knowledge.’
‘A lot of the women scientists I’ve come across complain about heads of department who are like that. And they’re usually men.’
‘There you are. But poor old Edmund. It transpired, I foundout later, that he was going through a difficult time. His ex-wife had married again, and she and her new husband had moved with Marianne to Edinburgh. Obviously he wasn’t going to be able to see his daughter often. I still met him occasionally in the scientists’ common room. James could hardly complain about us having coffee together there and the gossips could make of it what they liked.’
Stef smiled. ‘So you finished your doctorate?’
‘I did. My grant ran out in the summer of 1953, but it took until November to submit my thesis. Fortunately I was offered a proper research post before then. It was a twelve-month contract funded by ICP and meant I could stay at Brandingfield with James, who had another year to go on his PhD. They were extremely interested in my work on insecticides, you see, and wanted me to continue. It appeared to be a perfect match. At last, I was on my way. It was awfully exciting.’
Forty-Two
Nancy found the autumn of 1953 exhausting. She’d spent most of the summer working on her thesis, while trying to manage on very little money, not liking to keep asking her family for support. Her first payment from ICP came through at the end of September, which was a huge relief, but the sum involved was not much more than she’d received as a student on a grant. What was more, it was contingent on her submitting her thesis and obtaining her doctorate within a short time frame. So the pressure on her was tremendous for a couple of months. During the day, she was starting work on a fresh line of research, and her evenings were devoted to writing up her PhD. For the time being, owing to some necessary building work, she would remain in her current surroundings, but eventually she’d move to join her ICP colleagues in their lab.
‘You’re not bored by locusts?’ James joked after she broke the news of her new job. He tapped the tank, making the creatures jump about.
