Chapter 25 Joyce
Joyce
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
The launch was stupendous. Why did we wait so long? Virginia took heaps of photos. I’m taking a little trip with Harry for a few days, but will send photos on my return.
Love you all dearly,
Joyce
Three days after the launch, Harry carefully steered the travelling library along the winding road that skirted the shimmering waters of Lake Bassenthwaite in the north of the Lakes. The window was open and the fresh scent of gorse, wild garlic and mountain air flooded the interior of the van.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Harry questioned. ‘We don’t know the first thing about this fella, Oscar Weiss. He could be completely mad. Who turns up to a launch like that? Why didn’t he write or call first?’
‘The more pressing issue is: why does he have Dorotha’s diaries?
’ Joyce replied. ‘We have to meet with him,’ she insisted, looking down at the notebook on her lap.
She had barely let it out of her sight and had stayed up all night after the launch reading it, finishing at dawn, demolished by its contents.
Dorotha had run a secret library under the noses of the Nazis.
She had helped a mother and daughter who she had found hiding in a basement, then, when the mother had been snatched off the streets, she had hidden the child.
Dorotha had demonstrated exceptional bravery and clearly grown very attached to the little girl, called Gabriele.
And she had never forgotten the Secret Society.
‘I just worry about you, is all,’ Harry said, glancing sideways at her. ‘Churning up the past like this. Is it healthy? Ever since you finished reading it, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. How do we even know it’s authentic?’
‘Trust me, Harry, it’s hers all right. But what I want to know is, who is this Oscar and what’s his connection to Dorotha? Why did he take the trouble to come all the way down from the Lakes to London to deliver it?
‘Besides, it can’t hurt to meet with him, can it? Find out how he got this notebook. Maybe he bought it and, if so, where from? There’s quite a trade in wartime memorabilia these days.’
All plausible reasons, but there was something else nagging deep in her subconscious.
Something, which for some reason she couldn’t articulate, had stopped her telling the Secret Society, Adela or Virginia about this notebook and their journey.
She needed information and facts before she uncorked the past and let all those painful memories out.
Something indefinable was in motion now.
Staring out of the window, over the green waters of the lake, she spotted a magical sight: a rare osprey, his magnificent wings outstretched, soaring low over the water.
A strong wind blew in off the mountains, ruffling the pages of Dorotha’s notebook. Quickly, Joyce wound the window up.
Harry turned on the radio he’d installed in the mobile library.
A foreign correspondent was reporting from Washington about the end of the Vietnam war. Abruptly, Harry snapped it off. ‘Do we never learn?’ he muttered under his breath. They continued on in silence instead.
Half a mile later, Harry pulled the van off the main road and along a narrow bumpy track that climbed up the slopes of Dodd Wood.
The brooding, muscular flank of Mount Skiddaw loomed over them.
It was so unspoilt, it was like stepping back in time.
Joyce half expected to see Beatrix Potter striding past her in old clogs and a shawl, stick in hand.
She recalled that the reclusive writer had been drawn to this land to recover from the grief of losing her fiancé.
‘This place is in the middle of nowhere,’ Harry grumbled, changing gear and coaxing the old travelling library up the potholed lane. Finally, he pulled into a small clearing in the woods and Joyce inhaled. Sitting in a puddle of early evening light sat a fairy-tale cottage.
Rose Cottage was a small workers’ cottage with a slate roof and ivy-smothered walls. A crooked red gate led directly out of the garden and up a bluebell-lined path into the woods beyond. Pale pink roses cascaded over the cottage’s front door and tiny windows.
They got out of the library van and stretched, then listened to the soft calling of a cuckoo in the woods beyond.
‘Hear that?’ said Harry. ‘Either a message from the spirit world, or a sign of new life, depending on who you believe.’
Joyce clutched Dorotha’s notebook in one hand, and Harry’s hand in the other. She realised in that moment how incredibly nervous she was, but there was no turning back now.
The front door opened. Oscar appeared on the doorstep.
‘Welcome to Rose Cottage,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming all this way. Do come in.’