Joyce, I can offer Adela my spare room. My evacuee has returned to London, her mother came to fetch her, told me that ‘if they were going to die, better they all die together.’ What can one say to such a thing?
I’d be delighted of the company, and Devon is a safe haven for now. I am the very soul of discretion. Will you escort her? SSL, if you can bear to leave your libraries, why not come and let’s have a long-overdue weekend together? I am quite sure your libraries will survive without you for forty-eight hours.
Yours in the sticks, Annie x
Winter softened into spring and Adela ripened alongside mother nature. A blanket of green unfurled across London, hopeful buds blossoming in even the darkest corners of bomb sites.
Tick. Tick. Tick. The hours until the travelling library’s closure were also counting down. Adela’s due date more or less coincided with their mobile library’s demise, and Joyce couldn’t help but wonder if birth and death were always inextricably linked in the scheme of things. Maybe, beginnings and endings are always intertwined?
Tomorrow, Joyce and Adela were due to take the grand old lady of literature out for her final round in the borough and, the day after that, Joyce would escort Adela down to Devon, whereshe would see out the rest of her discreet confinement and then birth. Adela had accepted Annie’s kind offer and, not for the first time, Joyce had wondered what she would ever do without the Secret Society of Librarians.
Joyce watched as Adela carefully finished off the last of the shelving before they locked up the library.
Just twenty-four hours and they’d be locking up for good.
How would she cope without this little moveable feast, and the woman who had helped her to make it a reality? Her last connection to Dorotha was leaving, and who knew what sort of woman would return. How can any woman ever come to terms with being forced to give away their baby?
‘Stop brooding,’ Adela said. ‘To prove to you how good I am getting at your English customs, I am going to change the subject in uncomfortable or sad moments.
‘I love this book,’ she continued, slidingThe Country Child, by Alison Uttley, back onto the shelf. ‘It reminds me of the countryside around my home in Poland. There was a beautiful forest near Kalisz where ourbubbeandzaydelived. Every summer, they’d rent a villa, and Dorotha and I would join them.’
Adela smiled, lost in the memory, her hand subconsciously rubbing her bump under her siren suit.
‘I’d pick blackberries and beg my sister to join me, but Dorotha, being Dorotha, would always have her nose in a book. Right from a young age, she said she was going to be a librarian someday.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Joyce replied.
‘She always achieved whatever she set out to do. She’d be so ashamed of me,’ Adela said, quietly.
‘You can’t believe that, Adela,’ Joyce protested.
‘Remember you promised never to tell her what happened here in England, what I gave up.’
Adela’s beautiful blue eyes widened. ‘I mean it, Joyce. She must never know.
Joyce met the younger woman’s gaze. ‘I will keep my promise to you, Adela.’
Adela nodded, seemingly satisfied. But Joyce had strong feelings of her own.Could she? Did she dare?
In the silence of the little library van, Joyce heard Virginia Woolf whisper her persistent truths.It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.
‘To prove to you how goodIam getting at being Polish and more direct, perhaps if the father knew, maybe he’d make an honest woman of you...’ She trailed off. How she hated that phrase, as if Adela were dishonest for having a baby out of wedlock.
‘Trust me, that would never happen,’ Adela said bitterly. ‘He has far too much to lose if this ever became public.’
‘He’s married?’ Joyce questioned, trying to keep the judgement from her voice.
‘Oh yes, he’s married all right. He has three children already. Not that he ever sees them, they’re all at boarding school. And then there’s his seat in the Lords...’
She let this information hang in the still air, as Joyce’s brain scrambled to retrieve his name.
‘Wait. Mr Barclay-Miller... Lord Barclay-Miller is the father?’
A strange look passed over Adela’s face, one of pure loathing and fear.
‘You... You slept with your employer?’ Joyce asked in astonishment.
Adela closed her eyes and made slow circles around her temples, as if to wipe away some horrible image.
