‘I can’t go back,’ the young woman interrupted, bursting into tears.
Joyce was taken aback. ‘Hey, hey,’ she soothed, putting down the gas mask all civilians were forced to carry now, and immediately wrapping the seventeen-year-old in her arms. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’
‘T-the Barclay-Millers are evacuating to Oxfordshire,’ she stammered. ‘They expect me to go with them, but I can’t. What about when Dorotha and my parents manage to get out of Poland and come to find me? If I move, they won’t know how. You can’t make me go back. You can’t.’
Joyce felt a trapdoor open in her tummy. In the extremely unlikely event Adela’s family did make it out of Poland, of course they’d be able to find her, Joyce would make sure of that, but this wasn’t the time or place to have that conversation. The girl was plainly terrified. As Joyce’s eyes adjusted to the darkened doorstep, she was alarmed to see how much weight Adela had lost. When she’d met her at the station last year, she’d had soft round curves and cheeks like apples. Now she looked gaunt, and far older than her seventeen years.
‘No,’ she soothed. ‘No one is sending you back. I’ll write to them and say you’re not feeling well and are staying with me to convalesce.’ Joyce got the distinct feeling she wasn’t in possession of the full story here, but now was not the time to question her further. Something was plainly troubling her, and Joyce had made a promise to Dorotha to look out for her younger sister, so look out for her she would.
‘What will happen when the Barclay-Millers report me missing?’ Adela wept. ‘Will I get sent back to Poland?’
‘No no, we’ll work it out,’ Joyce reassured again, without a real answer as to what the solution was.
More tears spilled like ink from Adela’s pale blue eyes. ‘I’m in big trouble.’
Joyce squeezed her shoulders, trying to ground the girl. ‘You’re perfectly safe. I assure you.’ Gently, she brushed back Adela’s dark hair. ‘Just breathe, deep into your diaphragm.’
Adela gulped in juddering breaths and slowly her body stilled.
‘That’s better,’ Joyce soothed.
‘Could I work for you and your mother as a housemaid?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry, my love, but we can’t afford to pay you a wage. But I’ll talk to my mother and see whether you can stay with us until you’ve found a new job.’
‘But the war will be over soon, won’t it? Nothing seems to be happening, and I can return home to Lództo Mama, Tatus, mybubbeand Dorotha?’
Clearly, none of Churchill’s speeches or the daily newspapers had made their way below stairs at the Barclay-Millers’, but who was she to crush a young refugee’s hopes?
‘I very much hope so, my love. Now come on. Let’s get you off this doorstep.’
As Joyce fumbled with her key in the lock and a dim hall light faintly illuminated the porch, she was stunned at the change in the girl now she could see her more clearly. When Adela had arrived the previous October, Joyce had travelled to Liverpool Street Station to meet her train, fully expecting a deluge of tears. It had been a long journey from Poland involving multiple trains and a ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich. But Adela had clearly bonded with the other girls on her transport, also fleeing their homes. She had appeared calm and self-contained, hugging the girls as they were all dispatched to various families by an officious lady with a clipboard. At the time it had reassured Joyce. Perhaps Adela needed less looking after than Dorotha had originally suggested?
Although Joyce had hoped to take Adela to a Lyons Corner House for cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and teaand scones, before she’d had the chance, the Barclay-Millers’ housekeeper had arrived and whisked her off into the waiting chauffeur-driven car. And so – apart from a few brief meet-ups in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons – Adela had been a stranger to her.
Inside the hallway, Joyce was relieved to see her mother had already retired to bed, so Joyce was able to usher Adela into the ‘good room’. Joyce could never fathom why the front parlour was saved for best, like Christmas Day or the arrival of special guests from the whist club. Her mother only allowed her to set foot in it to plump the cushions and dust the aspidistra plant.
In a rare moment of bravery, she pulled the dust sheet off the sofa.
‘You can sleep here this evening, and we’ll figure something out tomorrow.’
In the kitchen, Joyce found a piece of Spam and some limp lettuce leaves sweating under a tea towel and found her appetite had deserted her. Instead, she fixed them both a cup of warm, frothy cocoa and a cheese sandwich for Adela and set it down in front of her.
‘Sorry, cheese is a bit stale, but hopefully it’ll fill a gap.’
Adela was clearly ravenous and tucked in with gusto. Joyce said nothing as she ate. When Adela had hoovered up every last crumb, she picked up her cocoa and studied Joyce.
‘You know, I often wonder how you and my sister are friends,’ she remarked. ‘You are very different. How do you say, chalks and cheeses?’
Joyce laughed and sipped from the milky drink. ‘We are. Very different,’ she admitted. ‘Dorotha’s as loquacious as I am introverted. Do you know, when I first met your sister, I was hiding in a broom cupboard?’
Adela laughed, choking a little on her cocoa. ‘Why?’
‘We met at the London School of Economics in 1936. We were attending a summer school for young trainees to prepare us for our library entrance exams. It struck me as a terribly brave thing to do to travel all the way from Poland.’
‘It was always her dream to study in England,’ Adela replied, unsurprised by her sister’s bravery: clearly it was something unquestionable in her character.
‘Anyway, it was a lunchtime, and I’d been ushered out of the university library by a caretaker, and so I took refuge in a broom cupboard. I wanted to read in peace, you see.’
