Chapter 1 #2
Joyce felt a pang of loneliness. She missed her friends in the Secret Society desperately. The bulletins were all well and good, but it wasn’t the same as their gin-fuelled weekends.
Arriving at 35 Harrington Square, Joyce knocked.
Mitsy Bouvoir answered, dressed in a lilac silk marabou-trimmed robe, clutching her white Bichon Frisé dog.
She was a little bird of a woman, and Joyce had never seen her without her red lipstick, which always bled a little into the lines around her mouth.
Her wispy white hair was whipped up high on her head like a trifle.
‘Do you have them, darling?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Fear not, Mrs Bouvoir. Right here.’
‘Oh wonderful.’ The elderly lady closed her eyes in relief. ‘You’ll come and have a sherry, won’t you?’
Joyce followed Mitsy up a dimly lit passage into what was once a grand dining room.
Despite making deliveries to her house for several years, now, she had never made it further than the doorstep, and she was intrigued to see what lay beyond.
She suspected Mitsy was a stage name she’d never quite been able to let go of.
Mitsy never tired of telling Joyce about her previous career as a silent-movie star.
Looking round the room, Joyce’s eyes lingered on a black-and-white photo of a young Mitsy in front of the pyramids in Egypt, her arms wrapped around a beautiful man.
‘My husband, Cedric Bouvoir,’ she said, catching Joyce’s gaze and pouring her a generous measure of sherry. ‘Wasn’t he divine?’
‘I should say,’ Joyce replied, tearing her eyes away from the photo. ‘How long were you married?’
‘Fifty good years. Then two bad,’ Mitsy sighed, lowering herself down into an armchair so big it seemed to swallow her. ‘Cancer is a savage brute.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. We lived and loved enough for five lifetimes.’
Joyce spied a bed in the corner behind a Chinese silk screen. ‘Why do you sleep in here, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘My legs, darling. I once climbed the Pyrenees. Now I can’t even climb my stairs.’
Joyce tilted her head.
‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,’ Mitsy scolded. ‘My life may be reduced to this room, but I have Missy Dog and my books – thanks to you, anyway.’
Joyce took a sip of her sherry and smiled. ‘You have a book, you have a friend.’
Mitsy pushed her library card across the coffee table, and Joyce realised this was her signal to go.
‘I’ll make sure this gets stamped,’ she promised, making a mental note to get in before Hildegard tomorrow.
‘Be a dear and fetch my reading glasses, would you? I think I’ll start with The Serpent in the Garden. Romance and mystery on the French Riviera. How’s a girl to say no?’
‘How indeed?’ Joyce smiled. She fetched her glasses and a soft rug, which she placed around Mitsy’s shoulders.
‘Dear girl, you’re an unofficial travelling library. Why don’t you set up an actual mobile library? I can’t tell you what a tonic your visit’s been. Apart from you, the milkman’s the only other person I see.’
‘Great minds, Mrs Bouvoir. I did suggest that very idea to my superior earlier. In fact, it’s something I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a year, now.’
‘Hildegard March?’
Joyce nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d hoped.’
‘Hildegard March is a toffee-nose twit with the imagination of a Brussel sprout.’
Joyce burst out laughing.
‘I’m serious. Don’t let her bury your dreams. Start your travelling library.’ Her eyes, the pale blue-green of sea glass, shone in the gloom. ‘See where it takes you.’
Arriving home to Unwin Terrace, Joyce mentally steeled herself for a cold meat supper for one. But as she walked up to the front door, she realised a figure sat hunched over on the doorstep.
‘Hallo . . .’ she said cautiously. ‘Can I help you?’ As she got closer, though, she recognised the figure and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Adela, it’s you. I didn’t know you had the weekend off. What a super surprise—’
‘I can’t go back,’ the young woman interrupted, bursting into tears.
Joyce was taken aback. ‘Hey, hey,’ she soothed, putting down the gas mask all civilians were forced to carry now, and immediately wrapping the seventeen-year-old in her arms. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’
‘T-the Barclay-Millers are evacuating to Oxfordshire,’ she stammered. ‘They expect me to go with them, but I can’t. What about when Dorotha and my parents manage to get out of Poland and come to find me? If I move, they won’t know how. You can’t make me go back. You can’t.’
Joyce felt a trapdoor open in her tummy.
In the extremely unlikely event Adela’s family did make it out of Poland, of course they’d be able to find her, Joyce would make sure of that, but this wasn’t the time or place to have that conversation.
The girl was plainly terrified. As Joyce’s eyes adjusted to the darkened doorstep, she was alarmed to see how much weight Adela had lost. When she’d met her at the station last year, she’d had soft round curves and cheeks like apples.
Now she looked gaunt, and far older than her seventeen years.
‘No,’ she soothed. ‘No one is sending you back. I’ll write to them and say you’re not feeling well and are staying with me to convalesce.
’ Joyce got the distinct feeling she wasn’t in possession of the full story here, but now was not the time to question her further.
Something was plainly troubling her, and Joyce had made a promise to Dorotha to look out for her younger sister, so look out for her she would.
‘What will happen when the Barclay-Millers report me missing?’ Adela wept. ‘Will I get sent back to Poland?’
‘No no, we’ll work it out,’ Joyce reassured again, without a real answer as to what the solution was.
More tears spilled like ink from Adela’s pale blue eyes. ‘I’m in big trouble.’
Joyce squeezed her shoulders, trying to ground the girl. ‘You’re perfectly safe. I assure you.’ Gently, she brushed back Adela’s dark hair. ‘Just breathe, deep into your diaphragm.’
Adela gulped in juddering breaths and slowly her body stilled.
‘That’s better,’ Joyce soothed.
‘Could I work for you and your mother as a housemaid?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry, my love, but we can’t afford to pay you a wage. But I’ll talk to my mother and see whether you can stay with us until you’ve found a new job.’
‘But the war will be over soon, won’t it? Nothing seems to be happening, and I can return home to ?ód? to Mama, Tatu?, my bubbe and Dorotha?’
Clearly, none of Churchill’s speeches or the daily newspapers had made their way below stairs at the Barclay-Millers’, but who was she to crush a young refugee’s hopes?
‘I very much hope so, my love. Now come on. Let’s get you off this doorstep.’
As Joyce fumbled with her key in the lock and a dim hall light faintly illuminated the porch, she was stunned at the change in the girl now she could see her more clearly.
When Adela had arrived the previous October, Joyce had travelled to Liverpool Street Station to meet her train, fully expecting a deluge of tears.
It had been a long journey from Poland involving multiple trains and a ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich.
But Adela had clearly bonded with the other girls on her transport, also fleeing their homes.
She had appeared calm and self-contained, hugging the girls as they were all dispatched to various families by an officious lady with a clipboard.
At the time it had reassured Joyce. Perhaps Adela needed less looking after than Dorotha had originally suggested?
Although Joyce had hoped to take Adela to a Lyons Corner House for cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and tea and scones, before she’d had the chance, the Barclay-Millers’ housekeeper had arrived and whisked her off into the waiting chauffeur-driven car.
And so – apart from a few brief meet-ups in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons – Adela had been a stranger to her.
Inside the hallway, Joyce was relieved to see her mother had already retired to bed, so Joyce was able to usher Adela into the ‘good room’.
Joyce could never fathom why the front parlour was saved for best, like Christmas Day or the arrival of special guests from the whist club.
Her mother only allowed her to set foot in it to plump the cushions and dust the aspidistra plant.
In a rare moment of bravery, she pulled the dust sheet off the sofa.
‘You can sleep here this evening, and we’ll figure something out tomorrow.’
In the kitchen, Joyce found a piece of Spam and some limp lettuce leaves sweating under a tea towel and found her appetite had deserted her. Instead, she fixed them both a cup of warm, frothy cocoa and a cheese sandwich for Adela and set it down in front of her.
‘Sorry, cheese is a bit stale, but hopefully it’ll fill a gap.’
Adela was clearly ravenous and tucked in with gusto. Joyce said nothing as she ate. When Adela had hoovered up every last crumb, she picked up her cocoa and studied Joyce.
‘You know, I often wonder how you and my sister are friends,’ she remarked. ‘You are very different. How do you say, chalks and cheeses?’
Joyce laughed and sipped from the milky drink. ‘We are. Very different,’ she admitted. ‘Dorotha’s as loquacious as I am introverted. Do you know, when I first met your sister, I was hiding in a broom cupboard?’
Adela laughed, choking a little on her cocoa. ‘Why?’
‘We met at the London School of Economics in 1936. We were attending a summer school for young trainees to prepare us for our library entrance exams. It struck me as a terribly brave thing to do to travel all the way from Poland.’
‘It was always her dream to study in England,’ Adela replied, unsurprised by her sister’s bravery: clearly it was something unquestionable in her character.
‘Anyway, it was a lunchtime, and I’d been ushered out of the university library by a caretaker, and so I took refuge in a broom cupboard. I wanted to read in peace, you see.’
Joyce laughed, remembering Dorotha’s bright grey eyes observing her shrewdly as she opened the cupboard door and found her perched on an upturned bucket.
‘She gave me her copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and told me I ought to find my own ideas and room.
’ She tapped her head. ‘If only up here.’ Joyce smiled and cradled her warm cup.
‘From that moment on, I fell in love with Virginia, and with your sister. She was the most dynamic, impressive woman I’d ever met.
Your sister saw something in me. She made me feel .
. .’ Joyce kicked off her shoes and curled her stockinged feet up under her.
‘Understood. It was her idea to form the Secret Society of Librarians, you know.’
‘A secret society?’ Adela gasped, leaning forward.
‘Ha. It makes us sound terribly cloak and dagger. Originally, we formed the group with other women in the summer school to lend support and feel connected to like-minded souls. It wasn’t strictly speaking “secret”; we just liked the camaraderie it gave us.
But now the war is upon us, we all feel we have so much more to offer, and it feels like it’s really starting to come into its own.
’ Joyce mused on that. ‘Words and friendships are powerful weapons, you know. Have you stayed in touch with the girls you travelled with?’
Adela shook her head. ‘I haven’t had the time. The Barclay-Millers’ housekeeper has kept me busy.’
‘What did your duties involve?’ Joyce asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
Adela blew out, sending little ripples across the surface of her cocoa.
‘Oy vey, that house had a lot of rooms. Then there was the stove to blacklead, all the grates to be cleaned out, making beds, vacuuming and emptying chamber pots, scrubbing the front steps and assisting cook with peeling vegetables . . .’ She broke off and yawned. ‘But scrubbing mainly.’
‘That’s a lot of work for one day.’
‘One day? That was just before ten a.m.’
Joyce swallowed down her anger. ‘How many days off have you had?’
‘We get one Sunday afternoon a month off.’
It had been easy for Joyce to find Adela the job with the Barclay-Millers, and now it was obvious to her why that was: clearly, they had seen taking in a refugee as an opportunity for cheap labour.
Joyce had heard of a similar thing happening to evacuees.
She despaired of humankind at times. What kind of a person would turn the war to their advantage?
It wasn’t just the spivs and black-market racketeers who’d come crawling out of the woodwork since the war began.
It was the Barclay-Millers of the world too, using their titles and privileges to take advantage of a young and vulnerable refugee. No wonder the poor girl was so thin.
‘Can I ask you something, Miss Kindred?’
‘Please, Adela, call me Joyce.’
‘What’s a ghetto?’
The unexpected question breezed into the warm, snug room like a sour smell, throwing Joyce.
She set down her cup carefully. ‘I think, and don’t quote me on this, the word originated from the Venetian dialect in the sixteenth century, when the senate restricted Jews to one area in the city.
My understanding is that it’s a walled-off area, forcing Jewish people to live in one place. ’
‘Like a prison you mean?’
Joyce shook her head. ‘I really don’t know enough to say. Why do you ask?’
‘I overheard Mr Barclay-Miller in his study last week whilst I was dusting outside. He was talking to someone and said he’d seen intelligence reports from Poland that the Nazis are forcing Jews into ghettos.
He was talking about my home city, ?ód?.
I know I shouldn’t have, but I stayed to listen to the whole conversation.
He said that the Germans had made it part of the Reich, called it Litzmannstadt, and that they had made a ghetto for the Jews in the northeastern part of the city.
’ Adela’s voice was high and shaky, her eyes burning with intensity.
Joyce shifted uneasily. Adela was clearly far better informed than she had given her credit.
‘When did you last hear from Dorotha?’ Joyce asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
‘About five months ago. A Red Cross message saying that she and the family were fine, but she missed me.’
‘April?’
Adela nodded. ‘That’s right. And you?’
‘The same,’ she admitted, a feeling of unease curling through her. ‘Just because we haven’t heard from her in five months doesn’t mean she’s in some sort of ghetto.’ The word dragged like barbed wire in her mouth.
‘So where is my sister, then, Miss Kindred?’ Adela pressed, her small chin jutting out. ‘And why have we not heard from her?’
Joyce stared at the empty plate and realised she didn’t have the faintest clue how to respond.