Everything felt foggy and slow. Distantly, she watched Adela’s skinny white legs pumping up the smoky street, her dark hair flowing wildly behind her.
Glass exploded all around Joyce. Shrapnel whizzed over her head, shattering the van’s side mirrors.
But then her hand was in Adela’s, and the young woman was dragging her to the shelter.
They ran, stumbling, the engine’s drone behind them growing closer.
Adela wrenched open the door to the shelter, and they flung themselves in, panting.
‘Ja pierdole. That was close,’ Adela muttered.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Joyce cried, crashing back against the shelter door, her heart going like the clappers. ‘What’s wrong with me? I could have got us both killed.’
‘It’s shock,’ Adela replied. ‘But you’re safe now.’
Tumbling out of her thoughts was the realisation that the tables had well and truly been turned. One month on from Adela’s panic at the start of the Blitz, now it was she keeping her calm. There was, it seemed, a secret untapped well of strength inside that young woman. Mind you, wasn’t there in most women?
Their eyes adjusted to their surroundings. Dusty, frightened faces stared out of the gloom. Every resident within a square-mile radius seemed to be crammed in here, seated on the narrow wooden benches that lined the damp brick walls. The street shelter was dark. Hurricane lamps threw out dim lighting, and Joyce could just make out an Elsan chemical closet, screened off by a canvas door in the corner. It stank of urine and fear.
‘Come on, shift up,’ chided a voice next to them. ‘There’s room for them to sit down if we all budge up.’
Joyce doubted that, but somehow, with much wriggling, the shelterers cleared a small space for them on the bench.
‘Thank you,’ Joyce whispered into the darkness.
‘Think nothing of it, ducks. Welcome to Hotel Bedlam.’
Joyce appreciated the woman’s attempt at levity and tried to join in with the shelterers’ laughter. ‘What’s that noise?’ she gasped.
The laughter stopped abruptly, and the shelter fell eerily silent. At first, all Joyce could hear was the sound of the shelterers breathing, but then there was an unearthly roaring and the benches began to shake.
The faces of her fellow shelterers seemed frozen, a ghostly white tableau of fear against the dirty brick wall.
The noise rose and fell. Wave after wave of enemy aircraft droned relentlessly overhead. Explosion followed explosion. A high-pitched whistling, followed by an ominous silence, and then an almighty juddering whoosh that made Joyce feel as if her eyeballs might just be sucked clean out of their sockets.
‘How can they think this is a suitable place to shelter?’ raged a deep male voice. ‘This place ain’t fit for a dog, much less human habitation.’
Another male voice, loaded with vitriol, speared the darkness.
‘It’s all right for them, the establishment, holed up in their steel-lined dugouts or their country retreats. I’m a labourer by trade, and rumour has it these street surface shelters are dodgy. Penny-pinching authorities have substituted sand for concrete. If we cop it, the roof’s gonna come down in one solid piece. They’re all as bent as a dog’s hind leg!’
‘Oi. Oi. Enough of this talk,’ chided the woman next to Joyce. ‘It’s not helping anyone. Let’s try a singsong, shall we? How about “Roll out the Barrel”?’
Her words were drowned out by a high-pitched whistling. The shelterers collectively held their breath, and Joyce buried herself close into Adela’s side. The bomb did not have their name on it... but the colossal boom seemed to lift the brick walls from their very foundations.
The febrile atmosphere was almost more than Joyce could bear. As much as she hated to sound unpatriotic, the man did have a point. Joyce was hard-pressed to see what protection the shelter actually offered, other than illusionary.
‘What about a story?’ she ventured. ‘Oh no, wait. The mobile library’s still empty.’
Adela’s mouth curled into a smile and she picked up her satchel from the floor.
‘I have a book.’ She pulled outThe Secret Garden.
Joyce glanced at her, stunned. ‘Have you had that book—’
‘In my bag since the first night of the Blitz?’ she interrupted. ‘Yes, I never go anywhere without it.’ She smoothed her fingers lovingly over the cover before handing it to Joyce. ‘I told you, I never got to finish it before the Nazis invaded Poland. I won’t be parted from it now. It’s my talisman.’
‘Sounds like a pretty special book,’ the woman on the bench next to them remarked. ‘Would you read it?’
