Chapter 7 Joyce #3
‘Ain’t that a kiddies’ book?’ grumbled an anonymous man further up the bench.
‘Shut your cakehole, Fred,’ shot back the woman next to her. ‘It’s about nature and hope and human connection and all of that . . . You might learn summat.’
‘All right . . . anything to drown out Jerry.’
The hurricane lamp was hastily passed up the shelter.
‘Right then,’ Joyce said, angling the book into the light and flipping over the page.
For the next hour, she read. She read like their lives depended on it.
Ignoring the booms and crumps of the bombs, immersing herself in the tale.
Page after page, and still she kept going, even when her voice grew raspy from the smoke and dust. Joyce silently thanked the author for penning such a good narrative that it didn’t let up, plucking each person from their reality and transporting them far away from this hell.
Stories couldn’t stop bombs dropping. But they did offer up a place to escape to.
And suddenly, she was with Dorotha again, striding over the Yorkshire moors, debating why, despite the hard work and low wage, they wanted to be librarians.
Reading calms a troubled mind and whiles away the centuries.
That’s what they had both decided. Never had this statement felt truer than on this savage night.
Finally, the all-clear sounded. The woman next to Joyce started, clutching her chest.
‘We live to see another day!’ She rose creakily and reached for her bag before turning to Joyce and clutching both her hands. ‘Thank you, darlin’. I honestly don’t think I could have survived that night without you reading. I know what I’ll be taking into the shelter with me tonight.’
Nods and murmured agreements sounded up and down the bench.
‘You keep on telling your stories, ducks. You gotta gift, you have.’
Even book-sceptic Fred tapped her on the arm. ‘That was a cracking story, love.’
Together, Joyce and Adela ventured blinking into the gritty dawn light.
The air was thick with acidic yellow smoke and the acrid smell of sulphur.
Joyce looked about her, disbelief prickling up her spine.
A land mine had hit further up, swallowing half the street.
There was only a gaping dusty hole where houses had once stood.
‘They didn’t hit the van!’ Adela exclaimed, pointing to where their grand old lady was parked, a thick layer of grime covering her, but nevertheless still standing strong.
Joyce grinned. ‘I think she needs a name, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘What about Bibliobus?’ Adela suggested.
‘I like it, but I think she deserves a more personal name.’
The woman who had been next to Joyce in the shelter was standing close to them, vigorously brushing the dust off her coat.
‘What’s your name, my love?’ Joyce called.
‘They call me Big Nan,’ she called back, stomping into the smoky dawn. ‘Be lucky.’
‘That’s it,’ Joyce said, looking from the plucky book lover back to their van.
‘Nan the library van. Quite befitting of such a stately matriarch.’
Adela smiled. ‘I like it. We’ll always remember the power of reading when we think of her name.’
Behind the wheel, Adela started up the engine and patted the dashboard. ‘Welcome to London, Nan.’
‘Before we go,’ Joyce said, touching Adela on the arm, ‘thank you. For earlier.’
Adela shrugged. ‘You saved me. Now we are even.’
Joyce felt a rush of love for this young woman, a woman she had severely underestimated.
‘The library?’ Adela asked, buckling up.
‘Ought we to collect Library Cat from Mitsy’s first?’ Joyce suggested, feeling her body start to relax once again, knowing the worst was over. For now.
But when they rounded the corner to Harrington Square, Adela slammed her foot on the brake. Nan juddered to a halt.
‘Oh,’ Joyce heard herself say.
Her hand moved to her mouth in shock. A red double-decker bus had been blown up, and its front end was now half embedded in Mitsy Bouvoir’s first floor.
The house next door was missing completely.
An avalanche of rubble and scorched bricks had been vomited halfway up the road.
The entire road was sealed off and swarming with rescue, ARP, firemen and ambulance crew.
‘Mitsy!’ Joyce was out of the van almost before Adela had parked it. ‘Mitsy.’
She ran, dodging the arms of well-meaning personnel. ‘Oi, Miss, you can’t go there. It’s too dangerous. That house can come down at any minute.’
Tears blurred her eyes as she ran. The awful, bloody indignity for a woman as old as Mitsy. Surely, at the age of seventy-nine, she had earned the right to die peacefully in her own bed, not such a violent, destructive end as this.
Joyce took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the ominous creak and dripping of water as she ran.
Pushing open the door to the bedroom, she finally stopped, gasping for breath.
The front of the bus took up half the room.
Not a stick of furniture remained. A stench of burnt rubber hung in the air, and Joyce fell to her knees.
Where was the justice? Poor, sweet Mitsy, who just wanted to be left alone with her books and her memories.
Maybe it was the sleepless night, witnessing the violent decapitation, or the fear of that awful night in the shelter, but her tears poured from the depths of her soul.
She curled into a ball on the floor of Mitsy’s bedroom and sobbed.
‘Miss, Miss . . . I’ve got you.’
She felt arms scooping her up, and she looked up, bewildered.
The voice was deep and gravelly but oddly reassuring.
‘How about we go downstairs and get you a nice cup of tea?’
She didn’t register much about the man beyond a broken nose and square shoulders, but his words struck her as ridiculous.
‘A cup of tea? London’s on fire, and you want me to drink tea?’
‘Sometimes a nice cup of Rosie Lee’s the only answer,’ he replied, a hint of amusement in his voice.
‘Are you mocking me?’
‘I saw the way you took those stairs. I wouldn’t dare.’ He grinned. His silver eyes shone in the dim light of the bedroom. ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we?’
Somewhere at the back of the house, something collapsed. A shower of plaster dust shook loose over them.
‘I . . . I’m not sure I can.’
Suddenly, she was being lifted. The man held her close, picking his way through the rubble and out of the bedroom. She heard his heart hammering close to her ear but his voice was gentle.
‘Just ten steps, eight . . . seven . . . nearly there.’
Something crashed above them, and a chunk of the bedroom ceiling came down on top of the bus. Joyce screamed and closed her eyes.
‘We’re going to die, and it’s my fault,’ she whimpered.
‘No one’s dying on my watch,’ the man replied, unflappable as he kicked a piece of timber out the way and carried on walking down the stairs.
‘Do you like poetry?’
‘Poetry?’
‘Now the creeping nets of sleep,’ he started to recite, ‘Stretch about and gather nigh . . .’
The ceiling above her head bulged, and she cried out, burying her head in the man’s neck.
‘And the midnight dim and deep
Like a spirit passes by,
Trailing from her crystal dress
Dreams and silent frostiness.
‘Poetry’s a wonderful thing, ain’t it?’ the man said carefully, picking his way over the remains of a banister. ‘Condenses my thoughts somehow, know what I mean?’
They reached the bottom of the stairs and finally emerged, blinking, into the street, and still the man kept walking her to safety, past the makeshift barrier and over to a WVS van.
‘Archibald Lampman, “Before Sleep”,’ he said, gently setting her down.
Behind them, the bus creaked and then finally crashed down into the ground floor, bringing the rest of the house with it in a cloud of choking dust.
Joyce couldn’t speak.
‘I love that poem. It depicts a lover’s longing to visit his lady at night. They weren’t half a sentimental lot, them Victorians, but I’m a romantic too, deep down.’ He winked. ‘Whatever the rest of my pals on Heavy Rescue might tell you.’
Joyce realised she was still clinging onto him and, embarrassed, she stepped back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed at last. ‘My actions endangered us both.’
‘That’s all right . . . Miss . . .?’
‘Kindred. Joyce Kindred.’
‘Sounds like a character from my favourite book growing up, Peter Pan.’
He wiped his filthy hand on the front of his boiler suit and extended it. ‘And I’m Harry Harding. Heavy Rescue by day, poet by night.’
Behind them, she was aware of a small crowd. Turning around, Joyce cried out in pure joy. ‘Mitsy!’ she exclaimed, taking in the familiar woman standing right in front of her, very much still alive. ‘I thought you were . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Dead?’ Mitsy chuckled. ‘Takes more than a bus to finish me off, darling. I told you, I never make it up the stairs to bed. Just as well really, as I’d have been finished off by the 290. A very unglamorous end.’
Her words were pure bravado, but in that moment, she looked fragile and old, standing in the street in an oversized white nightie, her tiny ankles poking out underneath her, her hair wispy and white as spun sugar. Her trembling hands worked their way through Missy’s fur.
‘This delightful man came and rescued me, Missy and Library Cat. What a menagerie. We were in a bit of a pickle.’
Adela stood behind Mitsy, clutching Library Cat. Joyce could have wept.
Harry returned from fetching a cup of tea from the van and pressed the steaming tin mug into Joyce’s hand.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel very foolish. Thank you.’
‘No thanks needed,’ he said, lighting up a Woodbine. ‘I’m just doing my job. Now it’s been quite the night. Can I suggest you all go and get some sleep?’
‘Yes, yes. Good idea. Mitsy, you can come and stay with us in Unwin Terrace, just until the council rehomes you.’
‘Unwin Terrace?’ Harry frowned. ‘What number?’
‘Number thirty-five. Why?’