Joyce cleared her throat, picked up the book. ‘The Secret Society of Librarians. “Libertatem per Lectio”, Bulletin No. 1, 4 September 1939.
‘Yesterday, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that we are at war with Germany...’
The launch flew by, and all too soon Joyce and the society found themselves sucked into a whirlwind of gratitude, memories and photographs. Joyce lost count of the number of books she had signed and how many wartime anecdotes hadbeen recounted. It seemed that the need to share had finally overcome the desire to forget, and members of the Secret Society weren’t alone in wanting to relive their wartime memories. The room was filled with men and women their age and older, all chattering about their experiences of the Blitz, rockets and rationing. The library was so noisy, in fact, that Joyce struggled to hear the last person in the signing queue.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ she apologised to the elderly gentleman. ‘Who shall I sign it to?’
He leaned forward and two things struck Joyce. Firstly, that despite his stooped back and grey hair, he actually wasn’t that much older than Joyce herself after all. His bright green eyes shone with a keen intelligence. Then, she spotted the tattooed numbers on his forearm.
‘To Oscar please,’ he said softly, in an accent she couldn’t quite place. ‘Oscar Weiss.’
And then, carefully, he reached into his bag, and pulled out another book, which he placed next to hers on the signing desk, their spines aligned. Slowly, Joyce covered her mouth with her hands. It was a notebook. Its pages were wrinkled and it smelt powerfully of mildew. And etched on the front, so faded that Joyce could barely make out the words:
‘Libertatem per Lectio’in the Lódz ghetto.Underneath:By librarian Dorotha Berkowicz.
The voices in the busy room seemed to fade.
‘Here’s my address,’ Oscar said, handing her his card. ‘Would you please read it and then consider coming to see me at my home in the Lake District? I know it’s a long way, but I have information.’
25
Joyce
Lake Bassenthwaite, spring 1975
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 433
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 beensnatched off the streets, she had hidden the child. Dorotha had demonstrated exceptional braveryand 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.
