Chapter 17
Joyce
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Joyce, I can offer Adela my spare room. My evacuee has returned to London, her mother came to fetch her, told me that ‘if they were going to die, better they all die together.’ What can one say to such a thing?
I’d be delighted of the company, and Devon is a safe haven for now.
I am the very soul of discretion. Will you escort her?
SSL, if you can bear to leave your libraries, why not come and let’s have a long-overdue weekend together?
I am quite sure your libraries will survive without you for forty-eight hours.
Yours in the sticks, Annie x
Winter softened into spring and Adela ripened alongside mother nature. A blanket of green unfurled across London, hopeful buds blossoming in even the darkest corners of bomb sites.
Tick. Tick. Tick. The hours until the travelling library’s closure were also counting down.
Adela’s due date more or less coincided with their mobile library’s demise, and Joyce couldn’t help but wonder if birth and death were always inextricably linked in the scheme of things.
Maybe, beginnings and endings are always intertwined?
Tomorrow, Joyce and Adela were due to take the grand old lady of literature out for her final round in the borough and, the day after that, Joyce would escort Adela down to Devon, where she would see out the rest of her discreet confinement and then birth.
Adela had accepted Annie’s kind offer and, not for the first time, Joyce had wondered what she would ever do without the Secret Society of Librarians.
Joyce watched as Adela carefully finished off the last of the shelving before they locked up the library.
Just twenty-four hours and they’d be locking up for good.
How would she cope without this little moveable feast, and the woman who had helped her to make it a reality? Her last connection to Dorotha was leaving, and who knew what sort of woman would return. How can any woman ever come to terms with being forced to give away their baby?
‘Stop brooding,’ Adela said. ‘To prove to you how good I am getting at your English customs, I am going to change the subject in uncomfortable or sad moments.
‘I love this book,’ she continued, sliding The Country Child, by Alison Uttley, back onto the shelf.
‘It reminds me of the countryside around my home in Poland. There was a beautiful forest near Kalisz where our bubbe and zayde lived. Every summer, they’d rent a villa, and Dorotha and I would join them. ’
Adela smiled, lost in the memory, her hand subconsciously rubbing her bump under her siren suit.
‘I’d pick blackberries and beg my sister to join me, but Dorotha, being Dorotha, would always have her nose in a book. Right from a young age, she said she was going to be a librarian someday.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Joyce replied.
‘She always achieved whatever she set out to do. She’d be so ashamed of me,’ Adela said, quietly.
‘You can’t believe that, Adela,’ Joyce protested.
‘Remember you promised never to tell her what happened here in England, what I gave up.’
Adela’s beautiful blue eyes widened. ‘I mean it, Joyce. She must never know.
Joyce met the younger woman’s gaze. ‘I will keep my promise to you, Adela.’
Adela nodded, seemingly satisfied. But Joyce had strong feelings of her own. Could she? Did she dare?
In the silence of the little library van, Joyce heard Virginia Woolf whisper her persistent truths. It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.
‘To prove to you how good I am getting at being Polish and more direct, perhaps if the father knew, maybe he’d make an honest woman of you . . .’ She trailed off. How she hated that phrase, as if Adela were dishonest for having a baby out of wedlock.
‘Trust me, that would never happen,’ Adela said bitterly. ‘He has far too much to lose if this ever became public.’
‘He’s married?’ Joyce questioned, trying to keep the judgement from her voice.
‘Oh yes, he’s married all right. He has three children already. Not that he ever sees them, they’re all at boarding school. And then there’s his seat in the Lords . . .’
She let this information hang in the still air, as Joyce’s brain scrambled to retrieve his name.
‘Wait. Mr Barclay-Miller . . . Lord Barclay-Miller is the father?’
A strange look passed over Adela’s face, one of pure loathing and fear.
‘You . . . You slept with your employer?’ Joyce asked in astonishment.
Adela closed her eyes and made slow circles around her temples, as if to wipe away some horrible image.
‘It was not my choice. He told me that if I did not lay down with him, he’d have me deported.’
‘W-what . . .?’ Joyce spluttered. ‘I’m going to kill him. I’ll throttle him with my own bare hands. Wait. How long did this go on for?’
‘Whenever he was home. When they evacuated to the countryside, I took my chances and ran to you that night all those months ago.’
Joyce thought back to the evening she had found Adela huddled on her doorstep. If only she’d known what she had really been running from.
‘How . . . How could he?’ she stammered.
‘Men like him, with their power and wealth, they take what they want.’
‘We must report him to the authorities. H-He can’t get away with this.’ Joyce’s words were tumbling out, rage mushrooming inside her.
‘And what do you think will happen, Joyce? Don’t be so naive.
I’m a young Jewish refugee. He’s a member of Parliament.
Part of the establishment.’ She shook her head.
‘There are good men, men like Dore and your Harry, who see women as equals, then there are men like Mr Barclay-Miller, who see people like me as chattels to use as they wish.’
There was nothing Joyce could say to that, for she knew Adela was right.
‘And so, you see I have no choice but to give this child up for adoption. And why my family must never, ever know.’
In the tiny little mobile library, where people sought enlightenment and escape, both so sorely missing from a world at war, Joyce wrapped her arms around her friend and never wanted to let go.
The absolute injustice of it. Adela had come to England fleeing Nazi persecution in search of safety, and instead she had been betrayed and molested in the worst possible way.
‘Come on,’ Adela said, pulling away. ‘It’s Mitsy’s birthday party and we promised we wouldn’t be late.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Joyce sighed. Her emotions felt too big for her body, and were threatening to dangerously bubble over. She cast a last glance around her tiny library, and then locked up.
Underground, the pair were surprised to find a party already in full flow.
A second before they descended underground at Swiss Cottage Station, the sirens had gone off.
It was some measure of how battle-hardy Blitzed Londoners now were, and how loved Mitsy was, that a bombing raid was not about to stop them celebrating the eightieth birthday of their underground matriarch.
After seven months of nightly bombardment, they were living in a state of febrile exhaustion, their lights dimmed, but a long way from beaten.
‘My darlings,’ Mitsy exclaimed, when she spotted the girls. Mitsy was resplendent in a black tuxedo, top hat and red lipstick. Missy, her dog, had a matching top hat, and she’d wrapped a feather boa around her walking stick.
‘You can take the girl out of showbusiness . . .’ Joyce joked.
‘Precisely. Now go and help yourself to some punch.’ She gestured to a trestle table next to a makeshift stage built on the station platform. ‘But be warned, darlings.’ She tapped a hip flask in her jacket pocket. ‘It’s got a little extra poke in it.’
The girls filled up their glasses and Joyce spotted Harry weaving through the partygoers towards them.
‘Oh super. Do you have the night off?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry, Joyce, no.’ He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. He smelt brackish, of leather and smoke. He’d worked in so many bomb sites over the past eight months that the odour of them seemed to cling to him.
‘We’re probably in for another hammering this evening, so I’d said I’d put in a shift with the Watch. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll definitely be coming with you down to Devon. I’ve requested the day off.’
Harry had been the only person beside Joyce and the society to whom Adela had divulged her secret, which was some measure of the man.
‘Are you sure? You look like you need rest more.’
‘I’ll rest when I’m dead.’
He tried to smile, but it never quite reached his eyes.
Joyce’s heart ached. It wasn’t so much what he said, but she could tell what he’d witnessed that night in the school had rubbed him raw.
She wasn’t sure if he’d ever recover. It wasn’t just West Ham Council’s grievous dereliction of duty, bungling officials who had sent the coaches to Camden Town instead of Canning Town.
It was the senseless loss of so many innocent children that demolished him.
It didn’t matter how many times she told him there was nothing more he personally could have done, he held himself accountable.
He hadn’t uttered or written so much as a word of poetry since that night, as if a part of his soul had calcified.
After twelve days of digging, the authorities had finally ordered that the crater be sprinkled with quicklime and concreted over, entombing generations of families for ever. For many in the tight-knit community of Canning Town, the horrific memory would never be so neatly covered over.
He turned and left and she wanted to call out. ‘Come back. Please rest a while . . . I love you . . .’ Instead, she watched him stride towards the station exit, shoulders tensing as he braced for another night in the inferno.