How could it possibly be? How could a person be sitting sipping tea in the library one moment and then find themselves in Dante’sInfernothe next? Poor Clara. Peter had bled to death in her arms without saying a single word. How could it be that that lovely, gentle, kind librarian no longer existed? She felt the pain of his loss deep inside her soul, and her heart ached for Clara, who she knew saw Peter as a father figure.
When they drew level with Liverpool Street Station, the crowds swelled, and the streets were jammed solid with people, bundles on their back, juggling terrified children crying in their arms. Fear hung like a putrid cloud in the air. One woman had an entire Silver Cross pram loaded with clothes and furniture, a yellow budgerigar in a cage swinging from the front.
‘Let me through!’ she screamed. ‘I’ve got to get to Epping Forest.’
‘Keep your hair on, woman. We’re all trying to get to safety, ain’t we?’ remarked a man, pressing into Joyce’s back as the woman behind him shoved him forward.
Panic stabbed Joyce’s chest. They were trapped. Sitting ducks. The siren started up again.
A ripple of fear, like a cresting wave, ran through the crowd, and as one, they pushed forward.
‘Open the gates to the Tube!’ yelled a voice ahead. To her dismay, Joyce could see the entrance was being guarded by police and train staff.
‘This is wicked!’ screamed a woman with a baby in her arms. ‘Let us in.’
Another woman lifted her hands to the sky. ‘Help us, Lord.’
‘This is not a designated shelter,’ a member of staff protested into a megaphone. ‘I repeat, the trains are for passenger use only. They are essential for the war effort. Make your way calmly to the nearest official shelter.’
Pandemonium. Whistles sounded, people screamed and, over it all, the siren rose and fell. The crowd, now one furious single entity, surged forward, and Joyce felt herself being carried along in the throng. She gripped Adela’s fingers. ‘Don’t let go!’ she yelled over the roar.
Seconds later, the gates to the station burst open, and the crowds streamed in, taking the two women with them. Joyce never saw the man with the megaphone again.
By the time she and Adela made it into the station, the bombs were already falling, harmless-looking pellets of black sailing from the undercarriages of the Luftwaffe planes until they hit the ground with a juddering explosion. A fierce crimson glow from the docks bathed the skies blood-red. Her stomach twisted. The planes. Joyce had never seen so many; you couldn’t have put a pin between them.
‘Adela, quick, let’s get down to the tunnels.’ But by the time they reached the escalators, the tunnels were already crammed. The escalators had been stopped and were now a solid mass of people. To her dismay, shelterers were already settling down on the escalator steps and were pulling out flasks of tea and making makeshift pillows of coats. There was nothing else for it.
‘We’ll have to wait it out here,’ she said, bagging the last two top steps for her and Adela. ‘It’ll only be for a couple of hours.’
But it wasn’t. That night the bombers never stopped coming. Squadrons of Heinkel and Dornier came in waves to drop high-explosive bombs on an already devastated East End. Fires still smouldering from the previous raid were quickly reignited. It was an unprecedented, catastrophic inferno of noise and flame. The Luftwaffe targeted the Royal Victoria Docks and the Surrey Docks, situated on the U-shaped bend of the Thames round the Isle of Dogs, unmistakable from the air.
Ships and warehouses, sugar refineries, soap works, tar distilleries, chemical works, timber stacks, and paint and varnish works burnt alongside the humble little homes of workers, the fires joining up to form one mighty conflagration.
The sights in the station were astonishing. Babies tucked up in suitcases. Men, women and children crammed into every nook and crevice from the ticket hall to the tunnels. The woman on the step below them fed her infant child at the breast while her other baby, a twin, slept on her lap.
The fetid crush of so many bodies was appalling. The smell was so thick that Joyce felt she could reach out her hand and scoop it up in her fingers. For once, she was grateful for the smelling salts and lavender-scented handkerchiefs her mother insisted she carry in her handbag. She took off her cardigan and, wrapping it into a bundle, passed it to Adela.
‘Here, use this as a pillow. See if you can sleep.’
‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that,’ she whispered, as the baby on the step below started grizzling.
‘Sorry,’ apologised the baby’s mother, rocking the baby with a slightly manic look in her eye. ‘I need to change him, but goodness knows where.’
‘Please don’t apologise,’ Joyce replied, touching the woman’s arm.
‘My husband’s with the army, up in Scotland. I think he’s got the better deal,’ she joked feebly.
‘Joyce, I am sorry,’ Adela said at last.
‘Whatever for?’
‘For losing my nerve earlier, only . . .’
‘You don’t need to explain.’
‘I do.’ She picked at the bottom of her hem, a curtain of her dark hair sweeping over her lovely face. ‘After the bombings, the Nazis came.’ She broke off, her gaze haunted in the dim light. ‘First, they took our home.’
‘Your home?’
