Chapter 3 #2
Joyce shook her head. ‘You always could read me like a book, Clara Button. I’d love to take Annie up on her offer of the library bus and start a round, like you and Peter do with the factories.’
‘Yes, that’s been terrifically popular. As Jo predicted, now that people are working all hours, they can’t get into the library so much, but by taking the books to them in the factory, it’s enabled them to keep reading.’
‘Exactly!’ Joyce said, frustration thrumming. ‘You’re delivering on the society’s promise to take books to people, when people can’t get to the books. And what am I doing? Dusting my mother’s aspidistra and twiddling my thumbs at the library!’
‘You’ll figure it out, Joyce,’ Clara said softly.
Peter and Adela returned with some steaming mugs of tea; they were followed by a small black cat who curled her way around Adela’s legs.
‘Peter has said I can borrow The Secret Garden,’ Adela said, looking animated. ‘I was reading it before the invasion.’
‘Is that all right?’ Joyce asked. ‘She’s not a member.’
‘She is now,’ he said. ‘We have ways and means.’ He patted Adela’s shoulder. ‘Everyone deserves the opportunity to finish their book. We can’t let a ruddy little ignoramus like Hitler get between you and such a wonderful story.’
Adela curled up on a chair immediately with the tea, her book and the cat, who hopped up on her lap and immediately began to purr like an engine.
‘Sorry, that’s Library Cat,’ Peter chuckled. ‘She’s taken a shine to you.’
Within minutes, the cat was curled in a perfect ball, asleep on Adela’s lap, while she lost herself in another world, her fingers softly raking through the cat’s fur.
Clara and Peter returned to their shelving duties, and Joyce sat, comforted just to be in a place of such acceptance and peace.
Scattered diamonds of light fell from the glass above and cast the library in an ethereal glow.
Joyce felt a bucolic sense of peace unravel inside her.
The stacks stretched up high to the glass roof like so many treetops reaching to the sky.
It was such a fine library, with so much thought and care going into every last detail.
Plaster medallions dedicated to cultural heroes such as Karl Marx and Charles Darwin stared down at her from on high.
The library walls were clad in ornate wooden panelling the colour of dark honey.
Sitting in a puddle of late afternoon light, Joyce closed her eyes and mentally catalogued the noises of a library.
The squeak of the library cartwheels. The soft thunk thunk of the stamp as a book was checked out.
The rustle of paper and the soft murmur of voices.
Then another noise, low and feral, sliced through the ambience.
More of a vibration than a noise, in fact.
Joyce opened her eyes. Library Cat was standing up on Adela’s lap, her usual liquid movements tense and coiled.
The air began to quiver, and she saw Peter and Clara lock eyes in alarm. The mournful wail of the air-raid siren rose up.
‘Yes, thank you, Moaning Minnie,’ Peter said, attempting to make light of it. ‘Probably a false alarm, but shall we head to the public shelter just to be on the safe side?’
The rhythmic throb of aircraft seemed to rise up through Joyce’s bone marrow, swelling to a deafening roar, and instinctively she made a grab for the library counter.
Suddenly, the glass ceiling exploded and their world was torn in two. Joyce had a sensation of falling. A thick curtain of pain and heat draped over her.
The air was suffused with black, toxic tendrils of smoke, curling round her ankles and whispering at her throat, and abruptly she came to, as if she had been smacked with icy water.
She was covered in glass and rubble, her yellow dress singed and torn.
She couldn’t focus, couldn’t see and, oh Lord, the ringing in her ears . . .
‘Adela,’ she managed, but her throat was sandpaper, her limbs made of cotton wool.
She coughed, and saliva and grit spooled from her mouth.
The air was frigid cold, but when she lifted her cheek, she felt burning.
The ringing subsided and, after what felt like hours, or maybe it was only seconds, Joyce managed to stagger to her feet, whirling around in the roiling black smoke, her movements jerky like a marionette puppet’s.
‘Adela,’ she rasped. ‘Clara. Peter.’
But when the smoke cleared, Joyce saw a vision of hell.
The library had caved in on itself. Books were strewn over heaps of twisted masonry and rubble. The powdery black remains of thousands of burnt books floated and swirled in the air like a grotesque snow globe. A great pall of greasy black smoke mushroomed over the whole apocalyptic scene.
And in the middle of the crater was Adela.
She was sitting with her knees drawn into her chest, whimpering, incongruously still clutching The Secret Garden.
Yards from her was a body. Crumpled waxy limbs were just visible through the powdery black remains.
Desolation flooded through Joyce as she looked at the lifeless figure of a man.
Clara sat sobbing over the body, her face white as bone. ‘Peter,’ she cried. ‘Peter, talk to me.’