Chapter 11 - Joyce #2
Harry drove her in his battered old Morris to a pub somewhere in Stepney, down a crooked alley.
He parked and, as they walked, he slipped his hand into hers.
The skin on his palm was warm and slightly calloused.
It fitted into hers perfectly. She glanced up at him to find him smiling down at her, a hint of mischief dancing in his silver eyes.
Inside the Queen’s Head, it was warm and cosy, with golden light spilling from candles, and a lady called Queenie bashing out old music hall songs on a piano. After two large brandies, Joyce felt her equilibrium return.
‘Ready?’ Harry took her hand.
‘I’m quite snug here. The snow looks prettier from inside the pub.’
Harry chuckled. ‘Come on, Miss Kindred. I promise you’ll like it. I’m taking you to the best club in town.’
‘Club?’ she panicked.
She glanced down at her old fawn slacks and soiled shirt, filthy from cleaning up the library.
‘Don’t worry, you look beautiful,’ he grinned, tugging her outside.
It was three p.m. by the time they pulled up outside St Paul’s Cathedral. In the dancing flurries of snow, the cathedral dome looked like a giant white-frosted wedding cake. Joyce craned her neck to stare up at the Wren masterpiece.
Harry looked at her, his silver eyes glowing, flecks of snow sparkling in his hair.
For a moment, he looked like a sprite. Grabbing her hand, he led her through a flock of pigeons, their wings gunmetal grey as they took to the skies, before skirting round to the side of the building and in through an unassuming wooden door.
They descended via a narrow set of uneven stone stairs and into the gloom of the crypt. It was a mess room of sorts, filled with men and women cleaning and repairing stirrup pumps, drinking tea or reading.
‘Ought we to be here?’ Joyce worried, but Harry looked totally at ease.
‘Harry!’ A tall, assertive woman in a boiler suit clapped him on the shoulder. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not on the rota.’
‘Missed your ugly mugs, didn’t I?’
‘Welcome to the Watch, Joyce,’ Harry said, winking. ‘Best club in town. When I’m not lifting girders, I’m in this place, putting out incendiaries. Doing my bit to protect our grand old lady of London. This is our esteemed Watch leader, Elfreda Audsley.’
Joyce’s head spun. It stood to reason that a building as significant as St Paul’s would have extra protection, but its own special group of guardians?
‘How many are there of you?’ she asked.
‘About three hundred of us who work on a rota,’ Elfreda replied. ‘We’re a disparate group, from architects to members of the clergy . . .’
‘And writers,’ Harry interjected.
‘Of sorts,’ she grimaced.
‘A fantastic writer,’ Harry insisted. ‘Elfreda’s written a children’s book called Quiddlekin, about a sprite who lives at the end of her garden in Surrey.’
‘Ooh, you’ll have to come and do a reading to the children at my shelter,’ Joyce said.
‘I’d love that. If I ever get a night off from this place. Favourite writer?’ she challenged.
‘Easy, Virginia Woolf,’ Joyce replied. ‘I wrote to her last night, asked if she’d come and visit my travelling library.’
‘I’ll insist she comes when I see her next,’ Elfreda said.
‘Wait, you know her?’
‘We were students together at King’s.’
‘Oh, please tell her my friends and I, we’re all librarians, are her biggest fans. Her writing is a balm.’
‘I shall pass that on. In these fractured times, we need kind words like soldiers need bullets.’
‘Why do you do it?’ Joyce asked, curiosity overcoming her. ‘Why come to the epicentre of danger when you could just . . .’ she trailed off.
‘Hide like a sprite at the end of my garden?’
Elfreda’s eyes gleamed. ‘I think this is women’s chance to prove ourselves, don’t you?’
She tapped her stirrup pump. ‘This is my weapon. This cathedral my battle ground.’
She straightened herself. ‘I’d best be off on my rounds.’
‘Hope you have a quiet night.’
‘Fat chance of that, Harry,’ she grinned, clamping her helmet on.
‘Is Gerald in?’
‘Of course. Lovely to meet you, Joyce. Bye for now.’
She slipped away, through a tiny medieval wooden door, and Joyce felt like Alice in Wonderland, about to fall down into a rabbit warren.
Harry gripped her hand and she felt a charge of heat run through her. She followed as he led her through a maze of long, underground stone passageways, issuing orders: ‘Watch yourself, duck, breathe in.’
On they went, bending down through a narrow door criss-crossed with ancient graffiti.
It all felt like a surreal dream as they rose higher up the cathedral, not by way of its main routes, but like rats scurrying along draughty back passages that were so skinny they had to turn sideways.
At one point, Joyce saw the majestic whispering gallery from behind some wood panelling.
She turned right and her head spun at the views through a tiny stone window.
All of old London, swathed in mists merged into a dark labyrinth of shadows beyond.
A maze of tightly packed Victorian buildings clustered around the great cathedral, separated by alleys so narrow that, Harry joked, you could lean out the window and ask the typist opposite to marry you.
Finally, they emerged into a room of such magic, her breath caught in her throat.
Harry watched her expression carefully.
‘Oh, Harry . . .’ she breathed. ‘St Paul’s has a library. I had no idea . . . It’s . . . It’s . . .’
‘Magical?’
She nodded, her eyes drinking in the soaring ceiling, following the mezzanine that wrapped itself around the library like a hug, the exquisite carved wooden stacks.
Little golden lamps glowed like eyes from the corners of the library.
The war melted away as they stood in hushed awe, nestled in London’s secret library.
The air smelt of beeswax and tallow candles.
Her mind reached for her friend. Dorotha, you would love this.
The pang of longing to see her was so intense in that moment that she felt it like a visceral tug in her guts.
‘It’s hard to believe you’re in the heart of a great cathedral,’ she murmured.
‘Indeed it is, my dear,’ said a voice. ‘St Paul’s is the very soul of London.’
An elderly man stepped from behind the stacks.
‘This is Gerald Henderson, our chief librarian, also a member of the Watch.’
Gerald looked as old as time, but his movements were light and agile as he stepped forward to kiss Joyce’s hand.
‘You find us somewhat depleted, my dear,’ he said, gesturing to some empty stacks. ‘The majority of our most important books have been sent to the National University of Wales for safekeeping. Our dear Harry drove them himself, didn’t you, my boy?’
‘You never told me!’ Joyce exclaimed.
Harry shrugged. ‘Just helping out where I can.’
‘He’s being bashful,’ Gerald asserted.
‘And these . . .’ she gestured to the stacks.
‘Are books too fragile to be moved.’
‘So, you’re their guardian?’
‘I am, and it’s my privilege to be so. Guarding this library and the dome is an honourable night’s work for anyone.’
‘Gerald sleeps up here, like a wizard in his castle, with his bucket of sand.’
Gerald laughed. ‘I don’t know about that, dear boy, but it’s easier for me to put out incendiary bombs if I’m here. This dome is more than a building, you see. Imagine Paris without Notre-Dame, or New York without its Empire State Building.’
She shook her head.
‘Impossible, isn’t it? St Paul’s, in an almost mystical sense, is London.’
‘You sleep here?’ she asked, spying a camp bed.
‘More often than not,’ he confessed. ‘We’re on orders from the man at the top, you see. Defend the cathedral at all costs.’
‘Your library is far grander than my little mobile library.’
‘With respect, my dear, I disagree. You take books to the people, where they’re needed.
A library’s worth is measured by the people who use it.
It doesn’t become a place of value until a hand slips the book from the stacks and opens it.
Without readers,’ he swirled his hand through the air like a conjurer, ‘books are meaningless.’
Joyce cocked her head. ‘I like that. So, we librarians are the alchemists?’
‘Precisely. Introducing books to readers is a form of magic, is it not?’
In the distance, one of the Watch sounded a whistle, indicating the start of the evening shift, and Joyce swore she could feel the joists of the ancient cathedral stir and sigh, rustling her skirts and readying herself for the night ahead. It was their sign to go.
‘Goodnight, sir,’ Harry said, clasping both of Gerald’s hands in his. ‘Stay safe.’
Gerald smiled knowingly. ‘I am in God’s hands.’
Joyce was reluctant to leave a place of such beauty and peace, but Harry guided her down a winding staircase and out into the whispering gallery. Dust motes danced in the silvery light of the cavernous void.
‘I came here on a school trip once,’ she recalled.
‘And did you marvel at the acoustics?’
‘No, I mainly spent the day trying to hide from the school bully Rita, who tormented me by flicking wet balls of paper into my hair,’ she admitted.
She looked down, and quite suddenly her head began to reel, as if the whole dome was spinning out of control. Images of her bombed library, and of Dorotha and Peter, slid by, a kaleidoscope of regret.
‘Vertigo,’ she managed.
‘Sit down,’ Harry soothed, guiding her to a stone ledge that ran around the circumference of the gallery. ‘Lean your head back and close your eyes.’
The effect was soothing and the world slowed once more.
When she opened her eyes, Harry was facing her on the other side of the gallery. His voice gently reverberated in her ear.
‘Sod Rita.’
It was so unexpected that Joyce clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed. ‘Harry!’
‘Sorry,’ he called back. ‘You can take the boy out of Stepney.’
He grinned back at her from across the void, one side of his mouth slightly higher.
‘But just to prove I’m not a heathen . . .’
He pressed his lips to the curved wall and a whisper flew around the dome.