Chapter 5 Joyce #2
‘You don’t know that, Miss Kindred. Especially not if they are in this ghetto place.’
Just then a tiny miaow sounded from Adela’s bag. A pink nose appeared.
‘Adela?’ Joyce gasped, as Library Cat wriggled out of her bag and hopped onto her lap.
‘I’m sorry. She burrowed into my bag when the first plane flew over. I noticed her at the WVS van.’
‘That’s all right. I suppose it’s you, me and Library Cat now.’
The rest of the night crawled by in a haze of disbelief, the air filled with the distant thud and crump of explosives as London was pulverised.
The bombing never seemed to abate, and the shelterers’ fear gave way to gallows humour.
‘Any expectant women?’ called out an ARP man from the door to the station.
‘Give us a minute, mate,’ called back a wag. ‘We’ve only been here a couple of hours.’
From across the ticket hall, someone else started up a defiant chorus of ‘There’ll Always Be an England’, and many shelterers, including Joyce, joined in, their voices rising to compete with the bombs.
The sounds of an accordion drifted up from the tunnels.
People were showing their defiance in the face of terror, and Joyce’s heart swelled with pride.
By the time the all-clear sounded just after dawn, her entire body felt bent out of shape, and the wooden tread of the escalator step had carved deep grooves into the flesh on her legs. She desperately needed a pee, a good wash and a strong cup of tea.
They began the walk back to Camden in exhausted silence. Adela clutched Library Cat in her arms like a comfort blanket. She showed little inclination to get away, perhaps sensing Adela was her best hope of survival.
The area around the station was blanketed in thick smoke, which even the rising sun failed to penetrate, and the streets were coated in powdered glass. Buildings lay in smouldering, twisted ruins, like a giant fist had come down from the sky and punched holes into the sides of houses.
Everywhere they looked were signs of unimaginable destruction.
Historic buildings that had stood since the Great Fire of London lay in ruins.
But despite this, Londoners were showing their mettle.
Groups of housewives were out sweeping up glass, trying to create order out of the chaos.
A young woman in an apron with cherry-red lips handed out mugs of cocoa to exhausted fireman still battling the fires.
Teenage messenger boys on yellow bikes zipped through them all.
In that moment, Joyce longed to share all that she was seeing with Dorotha, to let her know that her suffering in Poland was finally shared. And to tell her that she would keep Adela safe. Her absence and lack of letters was like a mournful hand pressing down on Joyce’s chest.
Where are you? Are the Nazis in your library? Are you looking at scenes like this?
‘Joyce, look.’ Adela’s voice snapped her back.
They paused to look in horrified fascination at a house that had been sliced perfectly down the middle like a piece of cake.
One side of the living room was covered in a rose-patterned wallpaper, with what looked like a half-consumed cup of tea on the dresser.
The other side was a pile of charred timber.
ARP, policemen and civilians worked side by side, frantically digging their way through the heavy concrete slabs; but, without heavy lifting equipment, they were making slow progress.
Joyce spotted a child’s arm protruding from the heap of rubble, but there was little that she could have added to the rescue efforts, so she swiftly pulled Adela away before the girl saw it too.
She knew she and Adela would only have been in the way.
By the time they turned into Unwin Terrace, Joyce breathed a sigh of relief to see relatively little damage beyond a few blown-out windows. She pushed her key in the lock.
‘Best keep Library Cat under your coat just for a bit. Mum’s allergic,’ she said as they walked in. How futile it sounded in the moment.
Her mother was already in the corridor by the time she’d opened the door.
‘Thank goodness,’ she exhaled, holding the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘Where have you been . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Who’s this?’
‘This is Adela. She’s a refugee from Poland. We’ll be looking after her.’
‘Out of the question. We have problems enough of our own.’
Joyce noticed the suitcases in the hallway.
‘I’ve called my sister in Wokingham. She’ll have us, but there’s no room for her,’ her mother muttered, flicking her gloves at Adela. ‘Give her a cup of tea, then send her on her way.’
Joyce closed her eyes, anger and exhaustion scorching through her. ‘I’m not leaving London, Mother.’
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous, dear. We’ll be bombed to smithereens if we stay.’
‘I said, I’m staying. I have my job at the library to consider.’ She thought of the bravery of the people in the shelter the previous night. ‘I’m not abandoning London.’
Her mother’s eyes glittered hard. ‘You can and you will, Joyce Kindred. You cannot risk your life for some bloody novels.’ Her eyes sized up the Star of David necklace at Adela’s neck. ‘And this . . . this . . . Polish woman. It’s her lot that brought the war to our doorstep in the first place.’
Joyce’s brain suddenly felt clear, a single chord resonating through her mind. Stay. If she evacuated with her mother, a lifetime of dusty church halls, jam-making and whist drives awaited. A lonely old maid in a Buckinghamshire market town.
Virginia Woolf’s voice whispered in her ear. It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m staying.’
Dorotha sounded in the other ear. You’re always apologising. Even when it’s not your fault.
‘Actually, Mother, no, I’m not sorry.’
Her mother looked at her in disbelief, the feather on top of her Sunday best hat quivering. ‘Fine,’ she spat eventually. ‘Then I wash my hands of you. Stay and you will likely perish, along with this . . . Jew girl.’
Joyce stepped back as her mother collected her cases and walked past her, leaving a faint odour of moth balls and ignorance in her wake.
In a way, Joyce was grateful for her mother’s spite. For too long, her grief had been her passport to rudeness.
‘Goodbye, Mother,’ she said softly, as the door slammed shut and the frame rattled accusingly.
She mustered a smile. ‘Right then. How’s about we have a wash, and then I’ll fix us a nice cup of tea.’ Library Cat wriggled out from under Adela’s coat and leapt lightly onto the floor, padding up the corridor to the kitchen, making herself perfectly at home.
One hour later, fortified with tea so strong you could stand the spoon up in it, the pair made their way to Camden Central Library.
It was now Sunday morning, when they were usually closed, but under the circumstances, she felt sure that Hildegard would want her in, if nothing else to check that the building was still standing.
She was surprised to find a small crowd of people outside the entrance.
‘Ooh terrific, you’re opening. I hoped you would,’ said a middle-aged woman clutching the hands of two children.
‘As Hitler’s been paying us such close attention, I feel sure he won’t forget us again tonight,’ she joked, ‘so I thought to myself, better get mine and the kids’ library books renewed so we’ll have something to read in the shelter. ’
‘Ooh,’ said another lady, whom Joyce recognised as Queenie, a local charlady, ‘my Ernie’s working nights at St Pancras Station, so I’ll be on my own in the Anderson, and I need a good read, take me out of myself. Can you recommend anything?’
The exhausted, febrile crowd all began chattering at once.
What I need’s a good Agatha Christie. Got any Georgette Heyer? You can’t hear the bombs when you’re lost in a good book. Give me a good murder to get lost in, and I won’t hear a thing.
Their excited voices washed over Joyce as she unlocked the door to the library.
She barely had time to hang up her coat before more people started arriving.
All morning, she worked flat out, stamping, shelving, recommending books to people, who came in grey-faced with exhaustion and left hugging a book, as if that alone could hold back the Nazi raiders.
It was the busiest they’d been since the outbreak of the war.
Adela was a great help, providing a steady stream of tea and even chatting to library patrons to recommend books she’d enjoyed.
There was an atmosphere Joyce had never felt in the library before.
Purpose. Urgency. She felt, not good exactly – she was far too exhausted for that – but fulfilled, as if the work she had done that morning would make a difference to people.
By midday, she had finally got to the end of a long queue of patrons, when a man briskly strode in through the double doors.
He was small and perfectly round, with a smile that seemed to fill the library.
He wore an immaculate pin-striped suit with a quarter of an inch of white cuff on show, bushy white hair that, despite liberal application of pomade, refused to lie flat, and brown eyes that twinkled knowingly.
‘Bravo, bravo. This is precisely the Dunkirk spirit I was hoping to see here today,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘Councillor Dore Silverman,’ he said, pumping her hand in his. ‘Delighted to meet you. Have you been busy?’
‘Rushed off my feet.’
He bounced up and down on the soles of his feet. ‘I predicted as much. Libraries will become an emergency service in these troubled times, and we must be ready to react. Stress brings out the best in some people, and you are, I sense, Miss . . .?’
‘Kindred.’
‘You are one of those people, Miss Kindred.’
‘Sorry, do I know you, sir?’
He hooted with laughter. ‘Apologies, my dear, I am head of the Library and Education board for St Pancras Borough Council. For too long now, I have been chained to my desk, but no more, I tell you.’ He slammed a palm down on the counter.
‘No more. It is deeds not meetings that count in these troubled times. I’m doing a whizz round of all the borough libraries to check how all are doing, and I can’t tell you how impressed I am that you took the initiative to come in today and open up. ’
‘I nearly didn’t,’ she confessed. ‘I slept on an escalator last night.’
‘Ha! I ended up down in Swiss Cottage Tube, sleeping on the platform. Extraordinary.’
‘Really?’ she gaped. ‘I thought it was just Liverpool Street Station that opened to shelterers.’
‘Oh no, my dear. Tubes all over London were occupied. That’s people power for you. I had no choice, of course. My home copped it during the first raid.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr Silverman.’
He sniffed. ‘Don’t be. It was a bit slummy. Walls so thin I could hear them thinking next door. Now to business.’
‘I’m afraid Mrs March isn’t in yet,’ Joyce said. ‘She must have been delayed.’
‘But that’s what I’m here to tell you,’ Mr Silverman replied. ‘She isn’t coming back.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Perfectly fine, but she doesn’t have the stomach for it, I’m afraid. She’s probably half the way to Chichester by now, off to stay with her auntie for the duration of the hostilities, which is why I’m here, Miss Kindred.’
He pulled out a badge from his case and slid it over the library counter.
‘Branch Manager,’ she read out loud.
‘That’s right. You’re in charge now. And I feel sure you’ll make a roaring success of it, my dear.’
He turned to leave.
‘Mr Silverman.’
He held a hand up, eyes sparkling.
‘In times such as these, we can dispense with the formalities.’
‘Sorry, Dore. I’m probably chancing my luck here, but my friend Adela Berkowicz,’ she said, pointing to where Adela was playing peek-a-boo with a toddler while her mother browsed the mysteries, ‘she’s a refugee from Poland and needs a job.
She’s not a librarian, but I wondered if we could offer her some employment? ’
‘You’re the boss,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s entirely up to you. But I will say this. Anyone who escaped Nazi Occupation is deserving of all our support.’
Relief bubbled through her and, emboldened, she went on. ‘I have lots of ideas. Chiefly, a mobile library. If people can’t get to the books, surely we must take books to the people?’
She waited for the disapproval or, worse, laughter.
He clapped his hands together. ‘Genius. Just what the library system needs to shake it up. Books are a raft on life’s stormy seas, are they not?
I bid you farewell and cheery-bye. Let’s have a good day and give Hitler one in the eye, but mind you don’t stay too late.
’ He tapped his watch and gave a final bounce on his heels.
‘Don’t want to get caught out if the sirens go. Toodle-pip.’
He left as abruptly as he had arrived, and Joyce stared after him, feeling giddy with her sudden change in position. For so long, she had imagined herself the kind of anonymous woman whom history bypassed, but it seemed that was changing. Now it was up to her to keep pace with that change.
The long-predicted bombings had finally begun, and they had unleashed a storm of emotions.
Now that she had seen death up close, an awful thought clenched her.
What else, Joyce wondered, were the Nazis capable of?
If they could bomb innocent civilians with the eyes of the world on them, what were they doing in secret?