Back in the tunnels, Joyce sank down onto her old bunk, while Harry went off to the café to warm through a bottle of formula milk, and Dore went for a stiff drink before rearranging the library rota.
Mercifully, the baby had drifted back off to sleep. Lord alone knew how she would cope with the demands of raising a newborn baby underground while they waited for a new home, along with hundreds of thousands of other bombed-out Londoners. But they, like everyone else in this war, had nochoice but to just get on with things as best as they could. Hitler might have razed their homes and streets, but he had not succeeded in crushing their spirits.
At least they had new life, she thought, gently stroking the baby’s silky-soft cheek. Glorious life in all its messy complexity. Nothing would ever bring back those women and children whose faces still surfaced from below the school playground. Their needless deaths had been a travesty that she and Harry would always carry like an invisible weight, but love was what mattered most. Love in the face of evil. Love in the absence of dear friends. Love to outweigh hate.
Like the wheels on the mobile library, which, thanks to the kindness of book-loving strangers, would now miraculously keep on turning, they would prevail. Joyce had started the war alone and rootless. Now, she was a chief librarian, a motheranda wife, with people who depended on her for love, solace and escapism. Joyce smiled at the realisation. Books were the floor under her feet, the roof over her head and the freedom in her heart.
At the thought of the mobile library, she suddenly remembered the letter Dore had given her. Feeling in her pocket, she fished it out and, laying the sleeping baby down gently in her lap, she turned it over.
The return address on the back of the envelope, written in a looping script, wasMonk’s House, Sussex.
Being careful not to tear the thin wartime paper too much, she eased the letter out of the envelope. The smell of typewriter ink and roses scented the air.
‘Oh my...’ Joyce’s hand flew to her mouth as she took in the signature at the end.
Yours faithfully,Virginia Woolf!
TheVirginia Woolf had replied to her letter. She must have written it shortly before her tragic death.
Every cell in Joyce’s body longed to read and reread every single line, but before she could be tempted to, she carefully put it back in the envelope and tucked it behind the cable tie on the tunnel wall by her bunk.
I will wait for you, Dorotha.
It was Dorotha who had first introduced her to the author who had shaped their understanding of the world, and given them the moral courage to form the Secret Society of Librarians in the first place. Therefore, it was only right that she should wait and they should read it together.
‘I will wait for you, Dorotha Berkowicz,’ Joyce murmured, gently imprinting the solemn vow onto her heart. ‘However long it takes, I will wait.’
23
Joyce
Four years later London, summer 1945
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 72
VICTORY
Secret Society. I hope you’ll permit me some bragging rights, but our little travelling library has hit the press again. I enclose an article cut from theLondon Times, but Dore tells me it’s also been syndicated to Australia, the United States and Canada...
London’s wartime innovation! City’s first mobile library to be disbanded after five years of service.
At its launch, branch manager of Camden Central Library, Joyce Kindred, memorably told the assembled crowds: ‘People without books are like houses without windows. Books will strengthen us to beat Hitler!’
And did she ever deliver on that promise. Accompanied by her loyal library assistant, Polish refugee Adela Berkowicz, the pair nightly braved the Blitz bombardment to deliver books to plucky Londoners. The service was threatened with closure, but was graced with a last-minute reprieve, thanks to donations from individuals and libraries from around the world, following considerable publicity. The BBC andMovietone Newsfilm footage of the launch was transmitted all over the Empire.
The novel scheme helped to deliver over 10,000 volumes throughout the war.
‘The travelling library was the brainchild of Mrs Harding (née Kindred), and her hard work meant we were able to supply anessential wartime service in our country’s darkest hour,’ remarked Councillor Dore Silverman, head of the Library and Education board for St Pancras Borough Council. ‘She deserves a medal!’
‘No awards are necessary,’ Mrs Harding, now 26, modestly responded.
Don’t I sound like an absolute fop? Anyway, I know how busy you are, but I wonder if you could make it down to London for a weekend?
I have news . . .
Joyce
