Chapter Twelve
Alistair shook Professor Loughty’s hand—what there was of it. The man’s skin felt like the rest of him looked: paper-thin, his grip the lightest of presses. The faintest of breezes would indeed knock him over, although Alistair wouldn’t mind doing the honours himself.
‘Did you enjoy our presentations today, Mr Burke-Price?’ Professor Loughty inquired in a reedy voice that matched the rest of him.
Alistair smiled, deliberately letting his expression convey the opposite of his words.
It would entirely catch Loughty the Ferret-faced off guard.
‘Not particularly, no.’ As planned, Loughty was reduced to confusion.
The man had been expecting praise, primed for it with a smile that didn’t receive the expected message.
‘Why is that, sir?’ Loughty tugged at his lapels, trying to regain his conversational footing. ‘We have some of the best minds in Europe here.’
‘You do.’ Alistair nodded his agreement.
‘However, I can’t help but feel they were sitting in the audience.
The men who spoke today could hardly be the best and brightest. They could barely string a sentence together, let alone keep an audience engaged in their content.
And let’s be frank,’ Alistair leaned close as if to impart a confidence, ‘my primary takeaway was that the gentleman seated behind me today snores.’ The presentations had put that audience member straight to sleep within the first ten minutes.
‘Well, science isn’t for everyone,’ Professor Loughty sputtered at the insult.
‘But science is for a room full of scientists,’ Alistair countered.
He was fully engaged now. ‘Today’s speakers had an easy audience to please.
This audience wanted to be here and already possessed some expertise of their own through which to decipher the speakers’ information, and some of them were still put to sleep.
It’s hard to perceive someone as an expert in the field when they cannot put a coherent string of sentences together without erms and uhs. ’
Loughty cleared his throat. ‘I am sorry you were disappointed today in our speakers.’
Alistair fixed the man with a hard stare.
‘I am not disappointed in them. I am disappointed in you. You are the editorial chair for the publication, are you not? You chose these men, you put them in this position, while other more engaging speakers like Miss Rose went overlooked. Her work is timely given the situation with the mountain and original in its proposal. She is a competent speaker, yet her work remains unpublished.’ He’d never heard Ismay give a presentation, but it seemed highly probable she’d be more engaging than the men today. It would be hard not to be.
‘She is a woman, sir,’ Loughty explained as if Alistair hadn’t noticed that.
‘Is her gender a problem, sir?’ Alistair retorted.
‘One would think scientists of all people would be more liberal-minded than their aristocratic counterparts, who insist on living in the past and promulgating systems of government and patriarchy that have outlived their usefulness, if ever they had any.’ He had Loughty on the ropes now, and he was quite enjoying himself.
‘She is a woman,’ Loughty repeated as if by saying it twice Alistair would suddenly understand his point and capitulate. They were starting to draw an audience, people discreetly leaning towards them. Good. Alistair wanted to make his point to as many as possible.
‘She is a mind, just like you. Or are you defined only by your sex? A designation, I should remind you, that is determined randomly in a moment at conception, something neither you nor your parents had any control over. Tell me this, Professor. If you woke up tomorrow and the world was run by women who decided you could not present your findings simply on the grounds of being male, would you not still possess your mental faculties to the same degree you possess them now? You would not be less intelligent, merely censored. What do you say to that?’ Loughty was fully cornered now.
‘Are you accusing me of deliberately silencing someone’s ideas?’ Loughty stammered, no doubt hoping if he cast the argument in extremes and made it appear ridiculous, Alistair would back down.
Alistair nodded. ‘I am indeed. Perhaps Miss Rose should start her own journal. Science for the censored voice. It would certainly be more interesting than anything I heard today.’ He moved off then, leaving Professor Loughty gaping, a trail of stares behind him and murmurs in his wake.
Ismay had two glasses nearly finished when Alistair rejoined her. ‘I’m ready to leave now. Are you?’ He gave a sharp nod to the empty flutes. ‘Perhaps we’ll need a carriage after all.’
‘I’m fine,’ she protested indignantly, but Alistair noted she didn’t mind the extra support that came with taking his arm as they navigated the stairs.
They stepped out onto the street amid the press of other shoppers continuing their errands after riposo, Alistair offering firm guidance through the crowds, making sure Ismay didn’t trip.
They made their way to the Piazza del Plebiscito and took a moment to enjoy the views of the bay before Ismay engaged the conversation.
‘How was Professor Loughty? I’m almost afraid to ask.
The conversation looked rather intense from where I stood.
But I need to know since I will have to deal with the fallout.
’ Alistair heard the scold in that for him.
He’d started a war with Loughty, but he’d be leaving if all went well. She’d be left behind to clean up.
‘Oh, you are right about him. He’s a narrow-minded, pompous fool. I tried to persuade him, anyway.’ He recounted the conversation for her. ‘I suggested that such exclusion bordered on deliberate censorship. He had no answer except stammering outrage.’
‘It’s quite a coup that you brought him to blustering.
He won’t like you for it.’ Ismay raised a hand to steady her hat against an errant gust off the water.
He felt the wind move through his own hair.
‘Thank you for standing up for me.’ She smiled at him then, and the smile lit her whole face.
It lit him, too, to think that he was the cause of it.
She laughed. ‘You look very Saxon today with the wind pushing your hair back. My own Saxon warrior.’ She cocked her head. ‘Do you remember the time we tried to take down the broadsword from over the fireplace at Sessile Oaks?’
Alistair grinned. The Burke-Prices were proud of that heritage. ‘It was one of the few times a prank failed. That sword was heavy.’
‘I do appreciate the motive behind what you did, Alistair, although I don’t know if any good will come of it,’ she began gently as they left the piazza behind and began the walk home. ‘But it was not necessary. I can fight my own battles.’
He covered her hand where it rested on his arm. ‘Not to be disrespectful of your efforts, Ismay, but how is that going? Your work was not printed in the journal because Loughty thinks a woman can’t think or write about science. You are breaking yourself against a rock that cannot be moved.’
‘Rocks erode.’ She gave a weary sigh.
‘Over time. Over centuries. Do you have that kind of time? In England, Mary Moser was one of the original founders of the Royal Academy of Arts. She died last year. The academy has no intentions of replacing her with another woman, although there has been at least one female artist that I know of who is more than capable—Artemisia Stansfield. Last December, her application for admission was considered and summarily rejected, or at least it will be. They’ve given her a probationary period to prove herself, but it’s only because she raised a fuss and rightfully pointed out she more than met the qualifications.
Short of establishing an academy of her own to compete with the RA, she is stuck. There is no pathway there for her.’
‘I don’t think I like your story.’ Ismay stopped walking and faced him, her eyes blazing. ‘Are you saying it’s hopeless without a man to back me?’
He made a strategic retreat. That’s not where he meant this conversation to lead.
‘I am saying it’s all right to need help, to climb on the shoulders of others, especially when they are willing to lift you up.
I am also saying you are not alone. You are not the only woman in the fight.
Some women win. Your mother, for instance.
She’s a respected cellist and symphony composer. ’
‘Because she’s married. Lady Thomas Rose is successful,’ Ismay said, dismissing the argument.
‘I want to stand on my own merits. I don’t want to be accepted because Lady or Mistress is in front of my name, which won’t even be my name, since a woman takes her husband’s name.
It becomes her identity. Think about how letters arrive for your mother.
She is Mrs Hugh Burke-Price to Society. I want to be Ismay Rose.
Forever. Just like you get to be Alistair Burke-Price for your entire life. ’
‘I’d never thought of it that way.’ Ismay had a point. He wondered how he would feel if he had to change his name? What if he had to become Mr Ismay Rose? He’d not thought of it before.
‘Of course not. Men don’t. It never occurs to them that a woman isn’t grateful to give up her rights and her name to be their wife, to rise or fall on their efforts.’
They started up the gradini of the Petraio. Alistair waited while Ismay gathered her skirts to keep them from the mud. ‘That’s another reason I didn’t want you to speak to Loughty. If anything good comes from it, it will be your doing, not mine.’
‘Was my gallantry misplaced, then?’ He had acted on her behalf today, and she was scolding him for it. ‘Only fools rush in?’ he said, quoting from Pope. Perhaps he had been a fool today—her fool.
‘No, Alistair, don’t think that,’ she rushed to assure him. ‘The sentiment was well-meant. No one has ever done such a thing for me before.’
‘Not even Edward Ashford?’ His pride couldn’t help but ask. A man liked to know.