Chapter 8 Joyce
Joyce
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Well, friends, we did it. If people can’t get to the books, we take books to the people!
Myself and my library assistant Ruby have opened Britain’s first underground shelter library.
Libraries in converted shops, in village halls, are common enough.
But libraries in Tube shelters are something new under the sun.
When Londoners defied all laws and rules by taking possession of the Tube platforms, it was quickly evident that a new social situation was in being.
Our underground library is tiny, a mere sentry box, but we are inordinately proud.
I’m even thinking of starting an underground book club.
Stay safe, friends. I love you all. Clara xx PS a thousand thanks for your lovely letters received after the funeral.
‘An underground book club,’ Adela marvelled, reading Clara’s bulletin out loud. ‘We should do that in our shelter. Mitsy, Lilley and Rosie would love that. Should I suggest it to Dore?’
‘Pardon me?’ Joyce looked up from the books she was shelving, barely paying attention to Adela.
‘Are you all right?’ Adela questioned.
‘Yes, yes, sorry, nervous is all. Do you think anyone will come?’ Joyce asked, feeling her heart slug in her chest.
Two months on from being bombed out and moving underground to Swiss Cottage Tube, events were moving so rapidly, Joyce could hardly remember the person she was before the war.
True to his word, Dore had given her full autonomy within the library, and she had implemented many of her ideas with great success, including longer opening hours, stocking a wider array of romance novels, and granting one extra reader’s ticket per week just for fiction.
Wherever possible, she worked as hard as she could to obtain any book ticket-holders asked for, not just books that Mrs March had previously referred to as ‘civilising’.
If her patrons wanted to read nothing but murders or bodice-rippers, who was she to judge?
The icy veil of winter had done little to suppress the fires that raged nightly.
These were dark times for civilisation. Innocent people were being bombed in their homes.
Children sent to live with strangers. Beautiful human lives stolen away by the Blitzkrieg.
She and Adela had returned to Unwin Terrace to see what they could salvage, only to find themselves staring at an icy hole in the ground, filled with charred wood and masonry.
Strangely, when she’d looked at the mangled remains of the ‘good room’, she’d felt nothing.
Just numbness, as if the Blitz had blown away her old self and a new woman was emerging from the shell.
Joyce had written to her mother in Wokingham to break the news.
She had written back, furious about the loss of her ‘good china’.
Joyce now lived underground, sleeping in a triple bunk bed on the Bakerloo line, and that was a fact that still surprised her every morning when she woke just before six a.m. to find herself staring at a Tube tunnel.
It was always a rush to get changed before the morning commuters descended.
It was, admittedly, a strange existence.
Most people slept in their clothes and managed a quick wash and brush-up in the station toilets.
Breakfast was a buttered roll and a cup of tea purchased for a couple of pennies from the station café.
She, Mitsy and Adela stored their clothes for tuppence in a local bundle shop, to be collected again in the evening and washed at a local launderette.
Every few days, a Lifebuoy shower van came round, offering free soap and showers. A half-decent meal could be had from a local school that had been converted into a rest shelter, serving up to a thousand meals a day, each costing a shilling.
Everything took a little longer, as Mitsy was unsteady on her feet and needed careful guiding and support up and down the escalators, but Joyce didn’t mind.
She, like the rest of society, was adapting to the reality of their new existence, overcoming, developing a deep resilience.
Politicians were talking about the creation of a new welfare state, but underground, they were already quietly creating their own state of welfare.
And that included a duty of care to their new neighbours, the elderly and the vulnerable.
The only thing that really irked Joyce was the lack of privacy.
Trying to read in her bunk by torchlight, with half the station coughing and snoring, and the scorching smell from the chemical toilets wafting over her, was a bind.
But it was better than being bombed, Joyce supposed, and so she resolved to dig deep and keep going.
And now, today, she and Adela were about to launch their mobile library, and that felt as exposing as walking up the Bakerloo line in nothing but her undies.
‘What if no one wants a mobile library and I’ve wasted council money?’ she worried.
‘They’ll come,’ Adela insisted. ‘You’re tired and overworked.
It is natural to feel like this. Besides, you can’t back out now, otherwise my fingers are blue for no reason.
’ She held up her fingers, ink-stained from where the printers’ ink on their posters had rubbed off, and smiled, her impish face lighting up.
Adela went to leave, but Joyce caught her arm.
‘Thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you, Adela. I know how difficult things are for you, how much you miss your family. I . . . I just want you to know how fond I am of you.’
Adela smiled, her beautiful blue eyes lighting up the dim interior of the mobile library.
‘Nisht geferlekh,’ she shrugged.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Yiddish for no big deal.’
‘But it is,’ Joyce persisted, gesturing to the perfectly curated interior of their travelling library. ‘We’ve worked so hard on this, you and I.’
They had worked flat out for the past two months, painting and fitting out the mobile library, fixing the shrapnel-shattered wing mirror, badgering the council for more funds for electricity, lighting and heating, and arguing over book selections.
She wondered if they’d been working so hard in order to forget their troubles.
‘Do you think about Dorotha much?’ Joyce ventured, tracing her fingers up the bookshelves.
‘Every day,’ Adela replied, her gaze sliding to the floor.
‘Your sister would be so proud of you. I promise, when we’re all reunited, I’ll make sure to tell her what an exceptional young woman her little sister is.’
Adela’s head jerked up, her eyes filling with tears. ‘And when do you think that will be?’
Joyce shook her head.
‘I wish I could answer that, my love. But I have a feeling that wherever Dorotha is, she’ll be resisting in her own way.’
There was a silence into which they poured all their hopes and dreams, that wherever Dorotha and the rest of Adela’s family were, they were alive and had each other for comfort.
‘It’s time to show Nan off. Now, shall I drive?’ Adela asked, briskly changing the subject. Joyce nodded with a rueful grin.
‘You’d better.’
‘Cooey.’ The door to the mobile library opened and up stepped Mitsy. ‘I’m so glad I caught you both.’
Adela took her arm and helped her into the mobile library.
‘Gracious, would you look at this,’ the elderly lady exclaimed, her pale eyes lighting up in surprise. ‘I’ve seen some things in my time, but nothing quite as unexpectantly magical as this.’ She clapped her soft, liver-spotted hands in delight. ‘It’s a perfect little library in miniature.’
‘Thank you,’ Joyce glowed, feeling absurdly proud, until Mitsy looked her up and down.
‘Oh dear. Is that what you’re planning on wearing for the launch?’
Joyce looked down at the drab tweed skirt and grey blouse she’d snagged at the WVS jumble sale last week. The skirt was a little on the large size for her slender frame, so she’d wrapped a gentleman’s tie around the waistband to stop it sliding down.
‘Erm, yes.’
‘No, no, no, darling. That will never do. I purchased you this from a divine little store in Knightsbridge. You’ll wear this instead.’ From her bag she pulled out a box tied in green ribbons.
‘Go on then, open it.’
Bemused, Joyce untied the ribbon and eased open the nest of soft tissue, to find the most exquisite pistachio-coloured gown.
‘I thought it would go with your new blonde hair,’ Mitsy said. ‘Go on, slip it on.’
Speechless, Joyce allowed Mitsy and Adela to help her into the dress.
‘It’s silk, crêpe de Chine, pin-tucked with shoulder yokes and a pleated skirt and, oh my . . .’ Mitsy breathed as Adela finished doing up the tiny satin-covered buttons up the back. ‘Don’t you look a picture.’
There was no mirror in the library, so Joyce had no idea what she looked like, but it felt divine against her skin.
‘There’s silk stockings and a red lipstick in there, too. And you’ll need this to keep out the cold,’ Mitsy added, pulling out an expensive-looking coat with a fur collar.
‘I-I don’t know what to say, Mrs B,’ Joyce stumbled. ‘This is wildly extravagant spending your money on me. You must’ve spent a fortune.’
‘It’s my money and I shall do what I like with it,’ she insisted.
‘It my gift to you for saying thank you. For all the years of delivering my books, even though I know you weren’t supposed to, and for looking after me so diligently.
Now, I shall let you get to your launch.
I’m meeting Rosie and Lilley back at the station and we’re going together. ’
‘Don’t you think the outfit is a little over the top? I’m only a librarian,’ Joyce worried.
‘My dear, there is no such thing as only a librarian. Toodle-oo!’ With a wave of her walking stick, she was gone.
‘You look like a film star,’ Adela exclaimed. ‘If Dorotha were here, I do not think she would recognise you.’
‘I scarcely recognise myself,’ Joyce replied.