Chapter 14
Joyce
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
SSL. A situation of the utmost delicacy has arisen.
Can anyone give Dorotha’s sister Adela a home from May onwards?
I can’t explain on paper; suffice to say I would not ask if it were not something of an emergency.
Adela needs a nurturing home, love and discretion.
As always, I look to you, my librarian sisters, for your compassion.
Joyce
PS I wish you a Happy New Year.
It was seven p.m. on New Year’s Eve, but Joyce didn’t have the heart to celebrate. Since Adela’s confession when they’d got back from that hellish school in Canning Town the previous evening, her emotions had vacillated between practicality and panic.
A baby . . . how had Joyce not spotted it before now? But looking at Adela, nursing a cup of cocoa on her bunk, she realised how well concealed her bump was in the baggy siren suit that she wore constantly. It was little wonder she’d missed it, what with everything else going on too.
They sat with their backs to the track, talking in whispers. Fortunately, most of the underground community was watching a singer perform on the westbound track in a New Year’s Eve concert that Dore had arranged, so they had some relative peace and quiet.
Joyce pressed gently, asking only the most essential questions.
She got the distinct feeling that if she showed the slightest judgement, Adela would bolt.
She may have been an old head on young shoulders, but she was still only seventeen and about to face the worst situation a young unmarried woman could find herself in.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m guessing April or May.’
The same time the travelling library was due to close.
‘I’m so sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me before.’
‘For a long time, I wasn’t certain, and then I buried my head in the sand, as you say.’
Adela stared through the steam from her cocoa, her beautiful blue eyes huge and haunted. ‘What am I to do?’
Joyce breathed out slowly. ‘We’ll work it out, don’t worry.’
A sudden thought occurred to Adela.
‘The authorities,’ she panicked. ‘Will they deport me back to Poland if they find out?’
Joyce set down her cup and held her hands tight. ‘No, of course not. It’s not a criminal offence to have a baby out of wedlock.’
Adela squeezed her eyes shut.
‘But it is a stain I will never wash off.’ Her voice started to shake. ‘I can’t keep this baby, I can’t.’
Joyce wanted to argue with her, suggest perhaps that there was a way, but honestly, she just couldn’t imagine a world in which that would be tolerated.
‘I’ll write to the Secret Society, see if perhaps one of them can offer you sanctuary and a connection to a mother-and-baby home. You can have the baby, give it up for adoption, then recover with one of the girls before coming back here . . .’
‘As if nothing ever happened,’ she replied, her tears flowing faster.
‘Forgive me,’ Joyce said. ‘I was just trying to be practical.’ She touched Adela’s cheek. ‘I know your life will forever be changed by this. I promise to be here for you throughout, like you’ve been here for me.’
Adela shook her head. ‘You don’t have to, Joyce. You’ll be tainted by association if anyone finds out.’
Joyce smiled sadly. ‘Oh, Adela. I’m not going anywhere.’
Her smile was so sad, Joyce’s heart splintered. ‘Thank you. Can you please promise me one thing?’
‘Anything.’
‘You’ll never speak of this to Dorotha. If, please God, we’re reunited, you must never tell her about this.’
‘But Dorotha’s your sister and just about the most understanding woman on Earth,’ Joyce protested.
‘You have to promise me, Joyce,’ she said, with a sharp edge to her voice.
A silence washed up the tracks, broken only by the sound of the singer’s voice echoing through the tunnels.
Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed . . .
She nodded as Adela’s fingers tightened around hers. ‘Say it, Joyce. You must promise me. You will never tell Dorotha her little sister had a baby.’ Tears slid down her cheeks. ‘I’d rather die of shame than my family discover this.’
‘I promise,’ Joyce said, with a sinking feeling.
She heard the tapping of a stick and looked up to see Mitsy making her way slowly up the tunnel platform, holding the latest copy of The Swiss Cottager, her dog trotting after her.
‘Spam or jam,’ she announced.
‘Pardon?’ Joyce replied.
‘I got you the last two sandwiches at the station café. You can fight it out between you. I know you two don’t eat properly.’
Mitsy was right there. They bolted down a margarine-smeared roll and a cup of tea from a café in the morning.
Most evenings, there was some form of meat on offer from a British Restaurant, a government-funded communal kitchen, formed to ensure war workers ate an inexpensive, but nourishing diet.
But the bits in between were usually just a hurried sandwich and a cup of tea from a WVS van.
‘I’ll take Spam, Adela, you have jam,’ she remarked, knowing Adela couldn’t eat pork.
‘Why are you two hiding out here and not watching the concert?’ Mitsy asked, sitting down on the edge of the bunk bed.
‘Adela’s a bit peaky.’
‘I’ve got the curse,’ she said.
‘To be honest, darlings, you’re probably better off here. ENSA are putting on a concert and it’s shockingly bad,’ Mitsy said. ‘What is it folks are saying ENSA really stands for, Every Night Something Awful?’
Even Adela smiled at this. The Entertainments National Service Association was a government-backed organisation to raise the morale of the people, but the standard of entertainment was a bit hit-and-miss.
‘Mind if I join you two instead?’
‘Be my guest,’ Joyce smiled. ‘Read us out something, would you, and take our mind off things.’
‘Yes, please, the Lonely Hearts column,’ Adela said.
Of all the features that Dore worked hard each week to publish, the Lonely Hearts column was far and away the most popular, proving that even in war, or perhaps because of the war, people craved romance.
‘Very well. To the girl in bunk 18 on the eastbound platform. I adore your smile, your bubbly personality and your smashing pins. Meet me under the clock in the booking hall at midnight and grant me a kiss. I promise not to turn into a frog.’
Mitsy rolled her eyes.
‘If you’re in the mood, write to me at bunk six and I’ll be in the nu—’ Mitsy broke off. ‘Honestly, how did Dore let that one through? Mind you, this isn’t much better.
‘I’m on leave from my regiment for the next forty-eight hours, anyone underground at Swiss Cottage looking for a fun New Year’s Eve night out, come and find me in the café.
I’ll take you dancing at the Café de Paris.
I’m a terrific dancer and I’m sure you won’t find me lacking in the looks department either. ’
‘Bet he’s doing the double shuffle,’ Mitsy remarked. ‘Let’s find another . . . oh gracious . . .’
‘Why, Mitsy Bouvoir,’ Joyce gasped. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were blushing.’ She took the newspaper and read.
‘Mitsy Bouvoir, I am under your spell. A fan.’
‘How many’s that been now?’ Joyce exclaimed. ‘Two?’
‘Five actually.’
‘Whoever it is, is smitten,’ Adela said.
‘Somebody is having a jolly good laugh at my expense.’
‘I don’t think so, Mitsy,’ Joyce said. ‘Whoever it is seems terrifically keen.’
‘I suppose at my age one ought to be grateful, but the only man close to my age is old Ted Rogers in bunk 101, who snores like a freight train and has feet that smell of ripe cheese.’
They were all still laughing when a shadow fell over the platform.
‘Harry,’ Joyce exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ‘Thank goodness.’ She thought back to the previous evening, when she’d urged him to stay safe before he gunned off in the direction of West Ham Council offices to warn them yet again about the mothers and children sitting in the bombed-out school.
‘Did those mothers get off all right?’
He shook his head and stifled a yawn.
‘I don’t know. I’ve been on heavy lifting all day. I’m going to head down there now with Dore to check. If they are still there, this’ll be their third night, and there’s only so far nerves will stretch.’
‘Why don’t you stay a while and rest?’ Joyce suggested. She could see the muscles in his neck, bunched and knotted. His dark hair was smattered with plaster and he smelt faintly of cordite.
Harry led her to the far end of the tunnel, so that it was just her and him in the shadows.
He cradled her face softly in his hands, sending electricity racing up her spine.
She studied his face, taking in the lopsided smile, the broken nose and the faint scar on his chin.
He was about as far from a matinee idol as it was possible to be.
But to her, Harry Harding was perfect. Radiant, beautiful even.
She could hear her mother’s voice. ‘Stepney? Really, darling . . .?’ She would never see what Joyce could. A man who risked his life to protect cathedrals, books, strangers. A man who boxed and wrote poetry. A man she was fast falling in love with.
‘You sure I can’t tempt you to see in New Year’s with me and a soggy Spam sandwich?’
He laughed, his gravelly voice filling the space between them. ‘Tempting.’
Gently, he rested his forehead against hers. ‘Believe me, Joyce, there’s nothing I’d rather do than see in the new year with you, but I know I won’t be able to rest. Not when all hell is breaking loose up there.’ He gave her a weary smile.
‘So will you be content with a kiss and a promise that when this war’s over, I hope to be able to see in every single new year with you?’
Joyce looked into his silver eyes, hooded with exhaustion, and slid her arms around his neck. ‘Every single year, until the end of time,’ she murmured, surrendering to his kiss.
As the pair embraced in the shadows, Joyce realised that their relationship was progressing at a dizzying speed, but why wait? The spectre of loss was all around them. Life. Love. Libraries. The very things most at peril were surely the things most worth fighting for.