The London Restoration

by Rachel McMillan

  Diana twisted the ring on her finger, tucked her legs under her, and read.

  Diana,

  Now that we’re apart, I feel I should begin addressing you in the terms of endearment that so easily slip from the mouths of my barrack mates—darling, sweetheart, honey. Truth is, I always thought your name was a term of endearment in itself. She was a goddess after all. Forgive me, Diana Foyle like the bookshop on Charing Cross Road, if I thought teaching was horrible. Turns out training is a lot worse, a lot of waiting. Here we all are primed to charge for King and Country and yet the most we have to show for our zeal and patriotism is bad food and half of our pay lost to cards.

  A few others in my unit have taken to calling me Padre on account of my profession. They’re good lads who will buy you a pint when it’s their turn. Sure, they tease me mercilessly on account of being the “vicar’s nephew” (their emphasis, not mine), but I can handle it. I fear I’ve given them more to quip at by my sudden inspiration at sketching the nearby churchyard. The tombstones all tumble into one another, and when the sun steals behind the squat steeple, I can see your face as clearly as I did that first day in St. Bart’s.

  Then I showed Holt a picture of you—the one snatched at that faculty party. Remember? You’d had enough of Rick Mariner cutting in for the twelfth time and we stole onto the street and you told me all about the steeple at St. Mary le Strand. That shut him up for a while.

  She yawned, put the vial down, and laid her head on her folded arms to snatch any sleep the waning night might still yield. It had been years since she had seen Brent, mere weeks since she had seen Simon, and somehow the latter was a bit more of a comfort to her than the former. Because at least with Simon, she would learn her next step.

  * * *

  Diana sat bolt upright at Brent’s hand on her shoulder as dawn yawned through the window.

  “I’m sorry to startle you.” A gentle furrow creased his brow.

  “Not used to being here, I suppose.” Diana stretched her arms over her head and yawned, sitting in the kitchen chair.

  “I have nightmares . . .” He shook his head. “Did I say anything last night?”

  “You talked. Muttered. A little. But I couldn’t make anything out.” Diana rose and kissed the rusty stubble of his jawline. “I’m just happy to see you.” She might have been overtired and groggy, but Brent was here. She was home. At last.

  So she burnt the toast and made weak tea. The eggs were cold and lumpy but also powdered, so she let herself off the hook for them as she turned over the wooden spoon. She passed Brent outside the bathroom as if they were new roommates at an Edwardian charm school. He turned from her while changing, and Diana flicked a glance at the exposed scar above his undershirt. He was nervous.

  Everything I love about you is tucked in your mind, not displayed on your battered body.

  She tried to imagine the horrors he had experienced. He had never fired a gun, at least that’s what he’d said. She had amassed her own pile of lies. Mightn’t he have some to match?

  Diana’s mind drifted to Eternity: an outline of a man, a supposed traitor who bent both the Communist ideology and British resistance to his will. He had a secret men would kill for and for which Simon Barre would send her away time and again for the purpose of uncovering it.

  But enough. She’d meet Simon, give him his lead, and defect, then concentrate on the life before her: Brent scraping butter across toast with his bad hand.

  She sensed his eyes on her and lightened into a smile. “Well, if we take the relic to Rick and it’s worth a fortune, we can pack up, move to Mayfair, and hire a cook.”

  She studied Brent as he swallowed the scrambled eggs.

  “I think there was a bit of cardboard in there.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Gives it character.” He winked and she exhaled. “I’ve tasted far worse.”

  “You would have. At the Front . . .” Diana took a sip of tea, then smoothed the front of her blouse.

  Brent scooped another bite of horrible eggs and met her gaze. “I needed you, Diana.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I needed you, too, Brent.”

  “Funny how five weeks was nothing when we were first together but an absolute eternity when it stretched out our four years apart.”

  “Each of those weeks felt like a year.”

  Brent nodded, swallowed, and coughed. “Cardboard.”

  “I want . . .”

  “What do you want, Di?” The question might have been harsh if his voice wasn’t so soft. He truly wanted to know.

  “I want it all to be over. I want our lives to actually begin: the way most people do after a wedding. I want routine and early bedtimes and to feel safe.”

  “I want you to feel safe too.”

  Diana smiled. “I missed your voice. Just hearing it.” She set down her fork and placed her hand over her heart. “There were a thousand things I missed about you, but . . .”

  “I want to protect you and you have a gun!” he blurted.

  Tears pricked her eyes. He had never raised his voice at her before. When she blinked she saw his eyes were damp.

  She sat in silence, her sleeplessness and the scars she had discovered under his collar catching up with her in a knot of panic. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  His lips slid into a sardonic smile. “And miss your exceptional cooking?”

  * * *

  “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” Rick Mariner greeted Diana and Brent from his open door, a Piccadilly cigarette between his raised index and middle fingers.

  “It’s a little early for Latin,” Brent said.

  While he was handsome with silver at his temples, dimples, and bright gray eyes, Rick’s numerous attempts to woo Diana had always failed. At first because she was a student in his seminar and a decade younger than he was, then because her life’s path had been intercepted by a red-haired professor of theology who shared her passion for churches and whose deep voice and resounding laugh rumbled through her.

  “If you seek his monument, look around.” Diana translated Rick’s Latin as the inscription from Wren’s tomb in the cold crypt of St. Paul’s.

  “Walking around London you would think his monument is limestone rubble,” Rick said.

  “And walking around this office you would think Rick was interesting,” Brent whispered to Diana as they were motioned into an office resplendent with artifacts and preserved history. Relics and objects and pieces safely tucked away from the bombs.

  Richard was only just getting them back from their safe shipment to a colleague in New York. Unlike most, he had the foresight to make arrangements while Chamberlain was still talking about “peace for our time”: the peace easily forgotten with Hitler’s rising power. Richard said he knew enough about the pattern of war through millennia to anticipate when it would knock on Britain’s doorstep.

  “So, Somerville, I’ve seen you in the halls. You’re back teaching.” Brent and Diana took the offered chairs on the opposite side of Rick’s desk. “And you, Diana. Are you going to finish your graduate studies?”

  She sensed Brent’s intense stare at her profile. They hadn’t even had the opportunity to speak about her future plans yet. “I’m making notes on the churches slated for reconstruction. Just like after the fire when Charles the Second welcomed plans for the city. All Hallows, for one. And I suppose I’ll be learning to keep house. Didn’t get much chance before the war.” She flashed Brent a smile. “I’ll have a Hoover in my hands in no time.”

  “Old Barking?”

  “She has been known to grace a few churches other than Wren’s. Diana just loves churches.”

  Diana picked at a thread on her collar. “Well, I was married at All Hallows. So I thought it was a lovely place to start. Wren or no Wren.”

  She reached into her handbag where she had triple-wrapped the vial. She had first placed it in several soft patches of down and cotton and then carefully enclosed it in a dr
awstring bag that had once housed mismatched buttons. Finally, it was hidden by her monogrammed handkerchief given to her by her friend Sophie Villiers on a night when the lack of Brent and hope had overwhelmed.

  “I know there are probably far better ways to do this,” Diana said. “But I thought you would get a lot of joy out of seeing it. Brent found it last night.” She passed him the bag.

  He gently took it, delicately working his long fingers to remove the piece from its crude protection. He made a small gasp before he stood, turned to the window, and held it to the light. When he spoke again, it was as if through a tunnel. “Oh.”

  “So what is it?” Brent asked.

  “You found this?” He stabbed Brent with a look.

  “At All Hallows last night.” Brent shrugged.

  “And it was just the two of you?”

  “It’s rather odd, isn’t it, that someone would have just now discovered it?” Brent added. “But I figure with all the blockades and roadworks . . .”

  Rick gave a slow nod, then assumed a stance Diana knew well. For the only thing Richard Mariner loved more than discovering ancient rarities was having a willing audience to listen to his endless knowledge of said ancient rarities.

  Rick sat down and deftly made a nest for the vial on his desk so they all had a clear vantage. “Throughout mythologies as old as Londinium, we read of a vial believed to hold a holy substance.” He motioned toward the amber-colored center of the dusty cylinder. “This is now dried-up liquid, of course. Crystallized, as you can see.” He pointed to it with a pencil. “The substance would have healing properties. You said you were poking around Old Barking?”

  Diana always smiled when someone used the somewhat antiquated name. “Yes.”

  “A lot of the literature about this specific relic comes from that area, Diana. You know people have excavated there long before old Jerry did it for us.”

  “What relic, though? What holy substance?” Diana squinted at the vial.

  “Saint Somerville, you believe in all this myth and mysticism?”

  “More than you, it would seem,” Brent said.

  “You say potato, I say potahto.”

  “Rick, Brent has a class in a half hour.”

  “This vial would contain the vinegar provided at the crucifixion of the Christ.”

  Diana gripped her chair. “You mean . . . ?”

  “In the Gospels, Jesus mentions to a guard that He thirsts . . . I cannot remember which Gospel. They all overlap a tad, don’t they?” He looked pointedly at Brent. “Nonetheless, this vial . . . its properties . . . suggest it is indeed a relic long believed to have followed the Roman influence here in our grand cesspool of a city.”

  “But how can you tell?” Brent leaned in.

  Rick stood and retrieved a book from his impressive library. He licked his finger and riffled through transparent pages until he turned the opened chapter to Diana, complete with illustration. “Oleum medicina, ‘holy medicine.’” He set the book between them and returned his attention to the vial, using his pencil to circumnavigate the small bottle. “Ovoid here.” He gestured to the middle, comparing it to the book, and then around the bobbled bottom of the glass. “A concave bottom. Irregular shape here. And truly this could be any glass or perfume bottle. Bit of iridescence. I am sure we would find several where the old wall was. Come look at it in the light.”

  He motioned Brent and Diana from their chairs and they followed him, and Rick held it to the window. “Some say that Prior Rahere brought it back from his pilgrimage to Rome.”

  “The fellow from St. Bart’s?” Brent lowered his gaze to meet Diana’s.

  “You’re keeping this?” He handed it to Brent.

  Brent nodded. And tucked it in his pocket. “For the time being.”

  Rick narrowed his eyes at Brent. “Need some of those healing properties?”

  Brent shifted. “I held up quite well, thank you.”

  “Then shouldn’t you see it to its rightful place?”

  “And where might that be?” Brent glanced at Diana, and she gave a small shake of her head. She wanted to keep it. “I promise not to sell it on the black market,” Brent said easily.

  “Lovely to see that your office is returning to its same treasure trove.” Diana noted Rick’s face darken.

  She drew his attention with her careful consideration of lined tomes and knickknacks. She stalled at a painting she recalled from an art history class during her undergraduate studies. A portrait of St. Boniface. The infinity symbol was wrapped on the cross, denoting not the mathematical principle and equation known to man, but rather the idea of the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. A biblical concept familiar to Brent’s lectures but not to Mariner’s atheism.

  Perhaps it was the prospective meeting with Simon later that day, but Diana couldn’t help but think of the Soviet agent Eternity. “This is new.”

  “Ah! Yes. A gift from a friend as I began recovering my collection.” He joined her. “Just because I don’t believe in the religious nonsense and the relics, the saints we find in the rubble of churches, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate their history.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks for the help, Mariner.” Brent turned and waited for Diana, standing to the side so she could pass.

  She followed him through the corridor.

  “I got the sense you want to keep our ancient relic, Di.” His whisper was soft to compensate for the echoing halls around them.

  “I respect Rick.”

  “But . . .”

  “I want to finish a story we’ve started.” She made to loop her arm in his, but he shifted in an infinitesimal movement. She didn’t take it personally when she saw the corridor fill with students. He always liked to keep a professional distance at the college, at least during lecture hours. “Is your office the same?”

  “Want to see for yourself?”

  “Please.”

  When they finally arrived, her heart was full: a sunny London, a small lecture from Rick on an ancient relic, and now Brent’s office. Years peeled back and Diana almost believed bombs hadn’t fallen and she hadn’t been taken from him for so long.

  She knew the smell of his books and the way he lined his pens beside the blotter. She knew he liked to keep short notes for his lesson plans in a line on his windowsill that overlooked a courtyard through puckered, filmy glass.

  The hat stand was still in the same corner and the maps of Paul’s missions still on the far wall. Antioch. Syria. Jerusalem. Corinth. Even the tip of Spain. Frozen in time like the Clerkenwell flat.

  “Do you remember the night we were locked in here?”

  Brent raised an eyebrow. “Were we truly locked in here, or did I just come up with a fascinating tale about the night porter’s routines?”

  Diana flushed. “Brent!”

  “Oh, it was hardly clandestine. Before I could even have my way with you, you were asleep near the hat stand.”

  “I was studying a lot those days.”

  “Studying? That’s one euphemism I haven’t heard before.”

  Yes, the office was the same. Except for two items on Brent’s desk. A letter and a silver frame.

  Diana reached for the letter, and while Brent almost moved to stop her, he fell back and folded his arms. Then there was the frame on the corner of his desk. She took a step to slowly pick it up. She supposed it was the same picture she kept by her bedside from the moment they separated: from their wedding amidst rubble snapped by the parson. And yet . . .

  “I don’t recognize this.” It was a picture of her. Profile turned upward, peering reverently at a church. “That’s Mary-le-Bow.” She turned and found his eyes glistening. “When was this?”

  “Maybe May or June of ’40. You said that Rick had been sending things to America just in case the Germans tried to take it—”

  “The day I dragged you around to sketch churches? You were so patient. I wanted to see them all . . . just in case.”

&
nbsp; “Suppose you were right all along. I had a student’s camera. Never got to return it to him when he was called up. I’ve since sent it to his mother.”

  Diana returned the picture to his desk.

  “What will you do with your day, then?” he asked. “I have a student coming any moment.”

  “I might check on Great St. Bart’s. See if I can’t find a dashing young professor eating lunch in the courtyard. Or pawn oleum medicina.” She said the last bit dramatically. She hadn’t anticipated that her ruse for a church consultation would yield a rarity.

  Brent removed his notes from his satchel. “Will you be home by tea then?”

  “Yes. I’ll make it! Didn’t get any chance to take care of you before, did I? No longer will you return tired at the end of a long day and have to see to your own tea.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you even make tea, Di?”

  “That sounds more like can than will, Brent Somerville.”

  At his responding smile Diana almost crossed to his side of the desk to kiss him good-bye, but something in the way his shoulders rose and his arms reached out stalled her. He carefully straightened the picture she had moved.

  Diana turned to the door and stopped, hand on the knob. “Brent.”

  “Yes, Diana?”

  “I’m truly sorry. And I think . . . the fact that you are willing to try . . .”

  Brent said something she couldn’t hear.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  A knock sounded. Brent brushed past her to open the door, then ushered in a student with a smile. “This is my wife, Diana.”

  Diana exchanged pleasantries and shook the young man’s hand, only to look back at Brent before she left to find him already engaged in conversation. She didn’t close the door completely as she stepped out into the hallway, opting to listen to him. The immediate change in him was apparent. He was engaged, natural. There was no sardonic tone to his voice or false note in his laugh.

  Diana was starting to recognize the Brent she knew in small measures. A student he couldn’t have known for more than several weeks was getting him in full.