Joyce
There were seven chairs on the raised-up stage, each with a microphone and a copy ofThe Secret Society of Librariansplaced on it. The sight made Joyce’s stomach squirm with nerves and excitement.
‘I can’t quite believe we’re finally launching our book into the world.’
‘And it’s only taken us thirty years to do it,’ Clara laughed.
Joyce looked around the somewhat more lined and weathered faces of the Secret Society, all now in their fifties, and felt an emotion she was hard-pressed to put into words.
They’d made a vow to honour Dorotha’s life and keep saying her name, and they’d kept that promise.
Every year, on 27 January, they set aside life’s obligations to make the pilgrimage to the top of Primrose Hill. They’d open abottle, light a candle, and remember the extraordinary fire that was Dorotha Berkowicz, extinguished far, far too soon.
Beth was nervously smoothing down the front of her long floaty Laura Ashley dress. ‘Do I look a wally in this? I was hoping to pull off the Bloomsbury look, but fear I may look more what I actually am. A frumpy librarian.’
‘Stop with that!’ ordered Evelyn, who, in a crisp white shirt, tortoiseshell glasses and red lips, cut a striking figure. ‘We’ve a hard enough time with the librarian trope, without you adding to it.’ And then, in a softer voice: ‘You look wonderful, darling – very Virginia Woolf. And Joyce, you cow, I can’t believe you can still fit into that dress.’
Joyce glanced down at the green silk gown that dear Mitsy had given her on the launch of the travelling library back in 1940.
‘I had to take the seams out, but it’s got plenty of life left in it.’ She thought fondly of the travelling library, long out of service, but still parked on her drive at home, lovingly preserved by Harry. Dear Harry – who still looked at her as if she was twenty-one, not a fifty-six-year-old woman whose blonde hair was salted grey and was forever losing her glasses.
‘Old things are better than new things, because they contain stories,’ she said.
‘Why’ve we waited so long to share ours?’ Grace asked.
None of them spoke it, but they all knew the truth. It had simply been too hard to confront the reality of the war in all its messy complexity. The bombs dropped over thirty years ago had reverberated, sending cracks and fissures down the decades. In 1945, they had done what so many of their generation had: packed up their memories of war in a box marked ‘Do Not Open’ and gently closed the lid on it.
It was only because Virginia, now thirty-four and working as an editor for a publishing house, had badgered them into it and said she’d help edit it, that it had happened at all.
‘Ladies, people are starting to arrive,’ said Ange, the lovely library manager. ‘Are you ready to take your seats?’
‘Let’s do this,’ said Evelyn, striding towards the stage.
Half an hour later, the library was buzzing, with all the seats taken and standing room only at the back. Joyce gazed out at the sea of faces, overwhelmed. She knew Virginia had publicised the launch, but she was surprised at the turnout, with many faces she didn’t recognise.
Then, she spotted one she did.
‘Thank you!’ she mouthed from the stage, holding her hand over her heart.
Adela blew her a kiss and then gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Good luck,’ she mouthed back.
Joyce was impressed that Adela had flown all the way over from Canada, leaving Henry in charge of their four teenage boys. His architecture practice was thriving, and Adela worked such long hours at Thunder Bay library, so her efforts meant a lot.
They had last seen each other the previous year, when Joyce, Harry and Virginia had made the long journey to stay with Adela in her dreamy home, nestled between the mountains and the water. Adela had carved out a life of meaning and purpose, guided by her faith. It was a masterclass of triumph over tragedy, and Joyce was proud of her part in that.
Sitting next to Adela was Virginia, and they smiled, a little shyly, at one another. She and Harry had never hidden the truth from Virginia that she was adopted and that Adela was her biological mother. Over the years, Joyce and Harry had gently revealed more and more about Adela, her Polish family and their deaths in the Holocaust, at times that were appropriate to her age and maturity.
The fact that Adela had been just seventeen when she’d had her, an unmarried Jewish refugee, unable to raise her in the glare of society’s judgemental gaze, was something Virginiagradually understood. The Shoah, as the Holocaust was known in Hebrew, that was fathomless. A catastrophe Joyce was determined to keep on remembering with Virginia.
They would never forget Dorotha.
She and Harry had never been able to have their own children. A sadness, but not a tragedy, and so they had poured all their energy and love into Virginia. Joyce was proud that Virginia had blossomed into such a level-headed, creative and curious woman – junior editor at one of the big publishing houses, no less.
Joyce liked to think that had come from her, but in truth, the best of Virginia, the central core of her, hailed from her strong Jewish family roots. And the fact that they still knew so little of what had happened after those roots were wrenched from Polish soil was a source of sadness and intrigue to Virginia. As some form of compensation, they had prioritised Virginia’s Jewishness growing up, and together, the three of them, Joyce, Harry and Virginia, had learnt about Judaism. Dear Dore had started Virginia’s journey, regularly taking her to synagogue when she was little. Lighting the menorah at Hanukkah was a special moment in all their lives.
Joyce blinked. Evelyn was nudging her.
‘Joyce, stop daydreaming. We’ve started. You need to read your bulletins out.’
