Pepys’s writing was unleashing a storm of emotions in the Blitz shelterers that had remained buried until now. But perhaps that was the power of a good book? The author had spoken to their experiences, his prose chiming so perfectly with their own feelings, it was as if he had found a time machine from 1666 to 1940, and it occurred to Joyce then, that books weren’t simply paper, ink and glue. They were portals to other worlds. Hunkered underground with all the fury of fascism raining down on London, they had escaped to the past. Magical golden threadsknotted around them, weaving them closer, so close that in that moment, they were no longer an angry, disparate crowd, but book-lovers bonded by a powerful shared story.
She closed the book as the guttering candle next to her began to flicker and fade.
‘Perhaps that’s enough for one night,’ she said. A heavy silence fell over Swiss Cottage Tube.
‘This might sound odd,’ Dore said, breaking the silence, ‘seeing as how many of us have lost our homes and witnessed such terrible suffering. But I draw comfort from Mr Pepys’s words. What we can deduce from his marvellous diary is that cities can rebuild. London was reborn from the ashes once before, and it will be again.’
A rumble sounded up the tunnels and the metal tracks began to vibrate. The refreshments Tube train pulled into the station, accompanied by a roar of approval from the shelterers.
‘First a bedtime story, now a hot cup of cocoa,’ Lilley remarked, sitting up creakily. ‘I tell you what, when this war’s over, I won’t want to go home!’
Later that night, as the clock struck midnight and the shelter slept soundly, bellies full of Bovril and cocoa, Joyce fumbled for her torch and pen. Pulling out her notebook, she wrote the date. Sunday 29 December 1940. Two hundred and eighty years ago, Samuel Pepys had started writing; today, so would she.
She wrote her first line. ‘My dearest Dorotha... I did it. I finally did it. I started my mobile library. How I wish I knew where you were. I hope and pray that you are safe in your library.’
9
Dorotha
Occupied Poland, September 1942
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 88
Friends. My parents were taken in the Great Sperre. I’m not alone in my grief. The entire ghetto is in mourning. Yesterday, a woman jumped to her death from a third-floor window. She landed in front of me. Her name was Sara Weinberger. She used to attend my story time in the library with her daughter, before the ghetto, before her daughter was stolen. I confess, in my darkest moments, I’ve considered the same. It’s only the thought of being reunited with Adela and you, my beloved friends, that keeps me alive. I have two aims now. To start a library and to survive.
Your Dorotha x
Dorotha began work on her library that very evening, soon after the shift in which Mr Weiss had handed her the key to the stationery cupboard, along with the list of vacant properties. It had to be now. Time was not on her side. She slipped out under cover of the blackest night in the ghetto. The air was eggshell thin, the sky studded with brilliant stars. It was so cold that the sticky mud coating the streets had iced over and glittered under a sickle moon. She kept to the catacomb of back alleys where she knew there would be the fewest nightly patrols, but it didn’t stop her heart thumping. If she was spotted, she would beexecuted on the spot for being outside after the evening curfew, no questions asked.
Within minutes, her ghetto sixth sense told her she was being followed. She doubled back and pressed against the side of St Mary’s Assumption’s Church. The two distinctive red towers soared over her.
People had taken to calling the church the White Factory, as day and night white feathers drifted out through the door and floated up the grimy streets. No one knew why feathers might float from under the locked door of churches, but in the polluted Nazi brain, anything was possible.
The footsteps grew closer. Dorotha pushed herself back into the church door and felt the latch loosen. It was open! She slipped inside the cavernous space.
It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the church and when she did, her stomach lurched. At first, she thought it was bodies, then she realised it was sacks. Hundreds, if not thousands, of hessian sacks filled every available space, from the aisles to the pews, reaching up to the high church windows. Mounds of sacks even spilled over the pulpit.
She felt a breath on her neck and panic kicked hard.
‘What are you up to?’ hissed the voice.
‘Ruth!’ She whirled around, furious. ‘You followed me. Again!’
‘Too right I did. I knew you were pretending to be asleep. You cry in your sleep, so when you were silent, I knew you were up to something.’
Dorotha sighed, enraged at herself more than Ruth.
‘Very well. I have a list of properties empty after the deportations. I am going to salvage books that’ve been left behind and I plan to loan them out.’
‘Then it’s settled, I’ll help.’
‘No, Ruth. If we’re caught, we’ll be shot on the spot. You have your mother to think about.’
‘I’m your library assistant,’ Ruth replied, the whites of her eyes glowing in the darkness. ‘If anyone should help, it’s me.’
Dorotha shook her head, defeated by the logic.
