The London Restoration

by Rachel McMillan

  The soprano soloist’s rich voice drew her focus.

  “A lot about mercy,” Langer continued. “Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.” His gaze swept the church’s circumference. Perhaps he was trying to hear in lyrics what she was trying to hear in musical phrases: a clue to the identity of the man they were pursuing.

  “In the Middle Ages,” Diana explained in his language, “men believed if they built the great cathedrals, they would be given mercy. To build a church was to atone for a sin. They were given plenary indulgences and a fast route to heaven. The generations after them were indentured but promised a living. So the men built church after church, knowing they might never see the end. The fruit of their labor as their steeples grew higher and higher to heaven.”

  “You speak excellent German.” Gabriel’s gaze took to the fresco in the cupola depicting the Coronation of Our Lady, all while his dexterous fingers retrieved a notebook and pen from the inside of his coat. Casually, she opened her compact and smoothed a stray smudge of lip stain with a handkerchief she kept pristine in her handbag.

  “My father taught me.”

  “And who is the architect of this church?” Between them he covertly scribbled something. Mozart swelled and the soloist was joined by the unison of the choir. He passed the note to her.

  “Initially the plans were attributed to Montani.” Diana didn’t miss a beat. “Hildebrandt too. Then Dientzenhofer for the façade.” She sought what his note said—fourth pew on the right—then crumpled the paper.

  A man sat with his hat brim pulled low not two rows over and she shivered. While Simon assured her she was perfectly safe, she never crossed through the city without premonition. Perhaps it was leftover intensity from Bletchley where the Official Secrets Act and the constant warning about an accidental slip of integral information hovered around her daily. Or maybe it was the tug of the Blitz at her heels.

  Most likely, it was because of the rumors of what befell spies—both those trained and civilians—and the general sense of morbidity that hung over the city like a shadow. Simon assured her that she had allies. Diana, however, felt completely alone.

  The music regained her attention and she recalled all Fisher had told her about the piece.

  The gilt high pulpit was a gold and silver representation of the martyrdom of St. John of Nepomuk, the spandrels or triangles around the domed roof portraying the four evangelists.

  “And you are returning to London now?”

  Diana nodded.

  “As you can see, Peterskirche was fortunate to remain intact while so many of our churches were not.” His lips slid into a rueful smile. “Perhaps if you tire of the churches in England . . . Who is the fellow, the one named for a bird . . . ?”

  “Wren. Christopher Wren.”

  Glazed with sadness, his brown eyes held hers. “Perhaps someday you will come back and visit our churches.”

  “Perhaps.” Diana reached for her red hat. The Viennese—occupied or not—took great pride in their ability to charm and hold their guests—even amidst bombed churches, even as jagged cracks snaked over the gilt interiors of ivory Baroque buildings.

  The conductor held his palm out to the soloist, and the concertmaster bowed. Diana joined the applause. The man with the hat they had been watching rose.

  Langer held Diana back a moment with a light hand on her sleeve. “Let me go first.” He departed the church while Diana inched toward his pew, peering over the famed cherub carving on its back to see if anything had been left behind.

  Finding nothing, she pushed through the heavy door and pressed her back against the curved ivory stone of the church’s exterior. She watched the audience trickle back into wrecked streets that stood in stark contrast to the preserved beauty of the church. The man with the hat was lost to her, though she was already running through a dozen possible reasons to stop and engage him should he appear. Anything to bring back to Simon since the music and the architecture left her without a message.

  Several moments later as the throng thinned out and the sun disappeared behind the roof’s green dome, Langer appeared.

  “Well?”

  He held a silver cigarette case out to her and she declined. He lifted one to his lips, struck a match against the side of the church, and lit the end. “Simon Barre loves using civilians. I’ve known the man several years now.”

  “As have I.”

  “You’re as much a field agent as I am. Which is to say not at all. Whatever you did to catch Simon’s eye during the war must have made a great impression.”

  “I cannot talk about what I did during the war.”

  Langer nodded. “And he will want favor after favor and you will know just enough to think you are helping with a greater cause. But mostly you will be . . . what is the English word?”

  “Endangered?”

  “Baffled. He never works in a cohesive line. He follows his instinct. And sometimes it leads to something like a beautiful concert and sometimes . . .” Langer dropped the cigarette and turned his heel over it. “It leads to nothing at all. So when you go back to your London, remember that whatever you promised him can make you feel heroic. Part of a worthy cause. And other times . . . well . . .”

  Langer didn’t need to finish the sentence. They shook hands and she walked away. Some things, including Simon Barre’s methods, would never need translation.

  * * *

  Diana wove her way back to her temporary flat. Was she being too careful, looking over her shoulder every few steps? Truth was, she had no idea what she should sense as dangerous. And Simon had so little to give her.

  An elusive Soviet agent with a penchant for making contacts around churches. Never far from a church. Diana was to tell Simon if she saw anyone at a church. If they set their cases down. If they left anything behind, from a newspaper to a telegram or a note. And to listen. Just as she had when she was at Bletchley in Hut 3, when the airwaves were filled with air raids and intercepted Luftwaffe signals. When anything from a German radio station to the BBC might be worth passing to the code breakers.

  Diana had just set down her keys and gloves in the rented flat when the telephone rang. She smiled at Simon’s voice on the other end. It called to mind chess and cocoa and late nights when he took her into his confidence. She told him of her current frustration that she hadn’t been of much help at all.

  “I am going home tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve been here for five weeks and you have called in your favor. And now you’re back in London before I am.” She clucked her tongue. “So the next time we talk will be on British soil.”

  “Gabriel Langer is a good man.”

  “He seems so.”

  “I appreciate him much as I do you, Diana. Well, maybe not as much.”

  “I’m touched.” She wound the telephone cord around her finger. “Not sure if it’s helpful, but Fisher always talked about how Mozart’s compositions were catalogued. The Köchel Catalogue.” She listed the piece they had heard that afternoon. “And there was certainly someone who seemed suspicious to Langer there. But we got nothing out of him. If someone was trying to collect a message, could it be in the catalogue choice?”

  “See why I need you?”

  “Because we get along? Because I know everything about church architecture and because I am indebted to you and you know I have no choice?”

  “There’s that. But you also think outside the lines and—”

  “Because you’re following a trail outside of MI6’s jurisdiction?” Diana continued. “It’s not like you to go rogue, Simon.”

  “I’m not going rogue. My team officially has men surveilling the known sympathizers and Soviet supporters in London. But if I can just prove that there’s someone else, that this file exists . . .”

  “You keep mentioning this file.”

  “Langer saw it, Diana. As did a former Special Operations Executive I work with now and then. I just need to prove it. And I need to find the man who is behind the collected information in
it.”

  “Off the record,” Diana translated. “With my help.”

  Simon was silent for a moment. “Diana, this file is a link to an ideology that could ruin us. It’s why I am so determined to do my bit to stop it from spreading.”

  “We fought with the Soviets.”

  “I know that. But just because you’re allied in one line of thought doesn’t mean you are aligned in all. Even Hitler hated Communism.”

  “If you truly think I can help . . .”

  “Yes, I do. So let’s have a proper tea, shall we?”

  “When?”

  “The Savoy. Threeish. Day after next.”

  “A proper tea . . . And then will you let me get back to my life? The war is over, as you well know.” But she could still imagine the look of exasperation he would give her. For Simon, there was always another war.

  “Let’s see, shall we?”

  “Simon, you’re infuriating.” But she couldn’t help but smile. Simon was trying to be evasive and professional, but she could hear the grin in his words.

  “Am I?”

  “You know you are,” she said in lieu of good-bye and rang off.

  Diana waited before she dialed her husband’s number at the flat in Clerkenwell. She supposed it was her flat, too, though she had spent but a handful of time there before he shipped out to Belgium and she chugged to Buckinghamshire on a crowded train. She had been twenty-three then and he had just courted the right side of thirty. So young. Today she felt several centuries old.

  While she dialed, she imagined the chiming tower of St. James’s next door while Brent set his satchel and fedora on the stand near the corner. Perhaps he would be mentally running through his earlier lecture at King’s College after wrapping his wonderful tenor around the courses on New Testament theology. While she had been in Vienna, he had slipped back into their life before the war.

  Was he as lonely without her as she was without him? Would he fix himself a cup of tea then take out a sketchbook and work deft lines into dimension, shading churches so they breathed from the page? The prospect of seeing him excited her, which was why she was surprised when her hands wrung in anticipation of their meeting. Of their speaking.

  She straightened her shoulders, inhaled, and dialed.

  “Hello.”

  Diana’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. “Brent.”

  Several heartbeats, then a rigid intake of breath. “Diana.”

  His voice reverberated through her, even though miles and years stretched between them. Such was their love story that it had to pick up long after other uniformed men and women found each other in long embraces.

  While she had initially imagined announcing her return with a joy that made her trip over her words, she merely swallowed and said, “I’m coming home.”

  Chapter 2

  London

  One would think after surviving the resounding boom of artillery fire, the screams of dying men across the trenches, blaring air-raid sirens, and constant shouted commands, silence would be a reprieve. But to Brent Somerville, it was as deafening as the cacophony of war.

  Through the vantage of his window seat on the double-decker bus, on his way to meet his wife at Charing Cross, he made out what was left of the once-majestic churches she loved in streets as familiar to both of them as breathing.

  When Brent first fell for Diana Foyle, it was in a city of bell tolls and steeple chimes. Christopher Wren’s poetry of plastered columns and distinctive lines defined every street around the old gates of London and beyond. Wren’s influence served as a backdrop to their romance. The art entailing the highest point of the city skyline with the dome of St. Paul’s on Ludgate Hill, the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Bride’s tolling in friendly rivalry. It spoke to his nerves that he wondered at her reaction when she finally saw them again. Saw him again.

  During the war she had been in Buckinghamshire doing translation work from numerous languages, including German, for the Foreign Office while he was hoisting stretchers and wading around murky trenches in Belgium and then Italy. She had spent her leave in the early days with him at arranged locations, saying little about her daily life, which suited him just fine. He didn’t want to expose her to what met him daily through the dirt, blood, and artillery fire.

  Once the war had ended and everyone else was returning home, she was still needed to continue her work and disappeared for a month. Five weeks, to be exact. No letters from her. No word from her superiors about her situation . . .

  Photos didn’t capture her smell or the way the wind tickled her hair; telephone calls were just rippled static and took the chimelike wonder from the voice of a girl who, in the earliest years of their acquaintance, never stopped talking.

  During those long nights of waiting for the next battle, he would drift into nightmares, imagining the worst, or take out his sketch pad and capture a wounded church or a slice of the horror he experienced as he trudged after his unit. Then, there were the weeks of convalescence when his pain and flashbacks were secondary to his worry for her.

  Two fingers on his left hand now melded into one, while a deep gash on his forehead faded into a scar he could just hide with his hair if he combed it right. Once the morphine wore off, he was merely miffed that she was so far away when hadn’t they wasted too many years already?

  The double-decker swerved around the remains of these churches and the jigsaw puzzle of wrecked Cripplegate. Wounded, scarred, and gutted, with moats of brick and uneven mortar. Signs spoke to the rebuilding efforts, and local politicians bandied about flyers fashioned with a hope as hard to come by as sugar, butter, bread, and tea leaves, which would be strained three times in a morning.

  The newspaper headlines dominated by Churchill’s certainty of stoic victory when Brent left now announced the triumphs and travails of the Labour Party elected by a landslide while Brent was still in a foreign hospital. He didn’t know why the state of their wrecked city shook him as if he were solely responsible for the chaotic peace that stretched before him. Solely responsible for the London Diana would meet after so many years away.

  He smiled, remembering how he had dusted and cleaned his flat the night before they were married. But he couldn’t scrub away the men with scuffed shoes and wilted homburgs limping from the neighborhood daily in search of jobs that would never be found. He couldn’t polish or finesse the women waiting expectantly outside the bakery and butcher shops for hours only to leave defeated, their meager findings slung over their sunken shoulders.

  Brent shifted in the bus seat and turned from his reflection in the window. He knew he shouldn’t be self-conscious. That she would take London’s scars as she took his own—a branding of war. He knew she would love him no matter what. After all, she had vowed as much until death parted them. But the longer he stayed alone in their flat, the more he formulated doubts.

  Part of him wanted time to peel back and everything to be the same. Before a miscalculated step and an unexpected blast ignited his hand and marred his forehead. It did more than that, of course. It cost a life. But Brent wouldn’t think of that now.

  He trained his thoughts on Diana. She had been as certain to him as breathing. If she returned as changed as he was, would he love her in the same way? He felt like a traitor for even allowing those bleak thoughts to fill the space of his overcrowded mind.

  Truth was, he wasn’t used to being so close to another human, physically or otherwise. Four years of the ravages of war had built up barriers. He could retreat into himself far more deeply than he had before, even when crouched with men in a trench, or while freezing in a tent, or after a long stretch of convalescence. London had seemed a stranger to him the moment he stepped off the train weeks ago before tiredly adjusted the canvas bag on his good shoulder. If he had to readjust to his beloved city, how did that bode for Diana?

  He reminded himself, as he had the night before, of how smitten Diana was when he taught her about all seven of the Greek forms of love. He
might have to find a way to define each word again, having spent so long alone, but he had seven forms at his disposal. Yes, he returned without having her here to welcome him. But she was here now. He would make sure that was enough.

  The long, winding Strand pierced the heart of Westminster’s artery. Exiting the bus, Brent took the road to Charing Cross at a quick diagonal. He tried to meet the gaps in the well-known neighborhood’s unfamiliar new façade as she might. At least until he saw her.

  Diana stood facing away from him, framed by the large statue of an Eleanor Cross. Diana’s long fingers tugged the brim of her broad-rimmed red hat. He placed his uninjured hand on her shoulder.

  She spun on her heel and his heart twisted at her eyes glistening in a beautiful face. “Brent.”

  Turned out he loved her more than his pride, because for all he had practiced being calm and collected and imagined holding her at arm’s length in punishment for her radio silence the last five weeks, the joy on her face obliterated every last instinct for reservation. “Hello.” He smiled and adjusted the tie tucked into his vest, thinking of how to kiss her senseless without startling her.

  He hadn’t kissed her in so long. Memories had taunted him across the Front, particularly on morphine-addled nights in the hospital wing. He could feel her breath on his collarbone and the tips of her fingers at the back of his neck.

  Brent leaned in quickly and she leaned back, studying him. He took a step forward and landed on her shoe. She gave a forced laugh, then rose a little on her toes to kiss him just as he turned his head so her nose collided with his cheekbone. When she tried again and met his lips, he barely kept himself in check before melting. But this was not the time. He wouldn’t start a physical conversation when he hadn’t heard but a word from her lips.