‘Will you read to us?’ Ruth ventured, as the darkness closed in around them.
‘Of course,’ Dorotha replied, and reached for a book by her father’s favourite Yiddish author, Isaac Peretz. She spread her fingers over the mildewed page and prayed that the words would hold back tomorrow.
‘Libertatem per Lectio,’ she murmured.
‘What does that mean?’ Ruth asked.
‘Freedom though reading.’
The hands crept around the clock. Darkness fell over the ghetto.
5
Joyce
London, Saturday 7 September 1940
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 13
Heavens above. We are hearing such awful things about London. The papers are calling it the Blitzkrieg. Thousands dead, so they say. Joyce, Clara, we are all praying for you. Please let us know you are safe as soon as you are able.
Yours in anguish, Beth
Bethnal Green was on fire. Just like that, afternoon had turned to night as the Nazi raiders had hit East London with a terrifying force. The air was filled with choking smoke, people were running for whatever shelter they could find, weighed down with their belongings, while ambulances and fire engines streamed past in the direction of the docks. Searchlights cut ribbons through the dusty sky, and the rattle of anti-aircraft guns in the park felt like it was shaking Joyce’s brain loose.
‘Where can we go to be safe? The Nazis will be here soon.’ Adela was growing hysterical, the ruins of the Carnegie library still smouldering behind her. Joyce led her to the nearest WVS stand, grabbing two mugs of tea while she gathered her thoughts.
The past hour had been the stuff of nightmares, and Joyce felt her heart cleave in two as her mind processed the images. Peter’s body like a rag doll as it was loaded onto a stretcher. Ambulance men in tin helmets picking their way carefully through therubble. Clara imploring the medics to allow her to go with Peter to the morgue so that he could be properly identified, and her blonde head disappearing into the ambulance before Joyce even had a chance to say goodbye and hug her friend.
It was chaos.
‘They’ve hit the docks with incendiaries,’ a man next to her at the tea stand choked out. ‘So many fires, they’ve lit up the Thames like a runway.’
‘They’ll have done that on purpose, it’ll be a beacon for when they come back,’ a woman remarked.
When they come back?
Joyce snapped out of her torpor. She handed one of the cups of tea to Adela and, using a spoon attached to the counter, heaped as much sugar in as the WVS lady would let her get away with.
‘Now listen, my love. This is important. We are fine. You heard the medic who checked us over. We are all right and, please God, we will stay that way, but we must drink this then find our way out of here back to Camden.’
‘This is what happened in Poland,’ Adela gibbered. ‘They bombed us, and bombed us, and then they came. Great waves of them in tanks and columns. Swastikas and guns and...’
A bright flash lit up the skyline over the docks, followed by a booming echo.
Adela jumped in fright, dropping her mug of tea. ‘They’re coming!’ she cried.
‘Shut that girl up, won’t you?’ the man next to them said. ‘We can’t be doing with that kind of talk. It only takes one to lose their nerve, and we’re all done for.’
‘Not everyone can be stoic,’ Joyce snapped, bending down and putting the enamel cup back on the counter.
She took Adela’s hands in hers and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘The Germans won’t be able to breach our coastal defences, and the RAF are protecting the skies,’ she explained,as gently as she could. Gradually, Adela’s breathing calmed. But behind her back, a pigeon fell from the sky, its wings on fire, and landed with a thump behind the railings.
‘Now, shall we go?’ Joyce said, with a sense of control she didn’t feel. She looked down and realised all the pearl buttons on her cardigan had blown off. She thought back to Hildegard’s scathing rebuke. Appearances! As if such things mattered now.
Joyce and Adela walked west, along with columns of other civilians, all desperate to get away from the inferno that was East London. Joyce’s thoughts went round her mind on a loop as her legs, leaden with exhaustion, seemed to walk on autopilot.
