The London Restoration

by Rachel McMillan

  “What are you doing?”

  “You need to be warm enough.”

  “Brent, get that light out of my face.” She laughed as the torch roamed over her, grabbing her coat and scarf, sliding into her boots.

  Brent made a beeline for his closet and pulled out extra clothes: cardigans and a few scarves of his own. An extra pair of mittens. A rather odd-looking deerstalker with flaps like a basset hound’s ears. He shoved them at her before he dashed to the kitchen and pulled things randomly out of the cupboard, shoving them in his bag. He filled a canteen with water and blindly grabbed a few books, including one set beside her unpacked case. He tucked in a few pencils and a newspaper with an incomplete crossword.

  They made it out of the Clerkenwell flat and into a night deeply cold considering the time of year. Perhaps on account of Brent’s having to disentangle himself from his new bride and their fleeting few moments. More laden with provisions than usual too. And finally they descended the steps to the Tube station.

  Brent jangled the copper coins in his pocket, fed the toll into the machine, and ushered Diana ahead, the night sky a distant memory. The city didn’t want them down there, hovered over the track lines, but Londoners hovered anyway. Transient moles for whom civic rules paled in the moment of life or death.

  Brent usually kept these crammed nighttime vigils alone: reading or sketching people, dozing with his chin on his chest. Now she was here. Try as he might—despite the smell and crowd, the whimpers and the terror overhead—he couldn’t keep the smile from his face. He took her hand, the gold band he’d slid on her finger winking in the muddled light. She was truly his.

  Brent led her to a slice of open space on the platform, the escalator and tracks packed with people. Unfolded bedrolls, radios emitting staticky music, flasks of tea and sandwiches spread in morbid picnics, a woman feeding her baby, children playing jacks on a small square of tile.

  Diana retrieved a book on the cathedrals of England from the satchel. He followed her finger over the outlines of sketches. “Ditchfield.” Brent noted the author’s name.

  “It’s one of my favorites. Silas gave it to me a few days before you came back. It’s my father’s copy.” She turned to the chapter on Westminster. Brent peered at the ornate sketch of the age-old abbey. “Wren had designs for the steeples here,” she whispered.

  “Wren never slept, did he?”

  Diana yawned. She let her head fall to his shoulder and he smiled at the feel of her. At the few stray strands of hair that tickled his nose and mouth.

  “Poet’s Corner,” she murmured.

  “Everyone buried there has the most wonderful names.” He looked over them, grabbing Diana’s hand and holding her plain wedding band up to the light.

  Diana nodded and he felt the movement through his windpipe and neck. “We’ll name our children from Poet’s Corner.” Her voice was dreamy, and though he couldn’t see her eyes, he wondered if her lids were flickering, if she was close to sleep.

  “How many will we have?” He lowered his lips to the top of her head.

  “Lots.” Her voice was sleepy. “And they’ll all be names from Poet’s Corner. Mary and Fanny and Eva.”

  “And boys?”

  “Isaac. John. We’ll have lots of time to choose.” She yawned.

  “Storge. The natural love a mother has for a child. Selfless love. You have it in spades.” Brent smiled, waiting for her response. “You’ll be a wonderful mother, Di.”

  Diana must have drifted. He gently closed the book and moved it away. She shivered a little and he wrapped her closer, maneuvering an arm that was likely to fall asleep under her lovely weight and grabbing a sweater from the hastily packed satchel. He laid it atop of her coat and scarf and tucked it up to her chin. She didn’t stir, his shoulder her pillow.

  Brent finagled his sketch pad from beneath the Ditchfield book and retrieved a slice of charcoal from his pocket. With his free hand he swiped black in the slopes of an arch, segmenting the tiles of the subterranean world, smudging faces in intentional blemish and shadow, crisscrossing the rail lines, capturing everything in his periphery. Then her. Diana: blonde hair disheveled and unpinned, lipstick she had refreshed only to have it smudged by his own lips just before they crossed into the station.

  * * *

  December 1940

  Clerkenwell, London

  In the Clerkenwell flat on their last morning together, Brent intertwined his fingers with hers, holding so tightly his wedding band pressed into her palm. She loved the sensation. He spoke of all the plans he had for when he was on leave.

  She watched him fold clothes and place them in a rucksack. He wasn’t packing for more training or to head to a base only a few hours away. He was going to war. Diana swallowed hard. She tried to memorize the slope of his shoulder, the curve of his neck, the way his long fingers turned fabric into itself. “What are you thinking, Brent?”

  “That these collars will be wrinkled the moment I step off the train and I hope someone has an iron.”

  “Oh.”

  Brent looked over his shoulder. “Perhaps also that you’re my favorite part of myself.”

  Diana smiled. “You’re my favorite part of who I am too.”

  They didn’t have much time, but they had used up all of their words. So Brent traced his finger over her hair and down her collarbone and slowly perused her.

  Wren’s first blueprints for the reconstruction of St. Paul’s were created at a relatively accelerated pace. Later drafts were undertaken with slower intention. Diana almost laughed that the fleeting thoughts her emotions allowed drifted to Wren even as Brent was carefully and intentionally memorizing her.

  For a woman who usually took the whole of London in stride to greet as many bells and steeples as possible, she set a gallows pace to the train station. He allowed her to see him as far as Farringdon. He wanted to have time to settle into himself before the transfer at King’s Cross.

  “You’re not allowed to cry.” Diana’s voice trembled as the gated entrance appeared.

  “And you are?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Her mouth hovered over his. “Yes.”

  “I know how hard it is for you to lose people. You’ve lost so much. I never want you to be alone.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I want you to roam through a city and not feel that you have to find a steeple to feel safe. I want you to want to find me instead. But . . . I can’t promise that right now and it hurts me deeply.”

  “Brent . . .”

  He touched his finger to her lips. “I know you, Diana Foyle like the bookshop on Charing Cross Road. I know that you ramble about Christopher Wren as a defense mechanism when you feel like the world is big and you are small. I know you are worried that you don’t fit so you straighten your shoulders and look gorgeous and paint your nails and line those perfect lips so you can play pretend at not being afraid.”

  “Y-you’ve . . . you’ve never said that, and—”

  “Hush! I believe in you more than you ever will yourself. So when I’m gone and you’re wrinkling your nose in that adorable way and not fitting in, know that you suit me, Di. Even if no one else in your world ever understands the brilliant and special and strong and extraordinary woman you are, know that I do.” He kissed her gently. “It’s what I’m coming back for. You’re what I’m coming back for.”

  His mouth was on hers in an instant and she fell into the rhythm of a different variation. A different page of a new chapter. Frantic and urgent at once, Brent dipped her slightly, grasping her closely as inconvenient elements like air and gravity turned against her in the conductor’s shrill whistle and the too-fast ticking of the overhead station clock.

  A conductor whistled again. Brent closed his eyes and met her mouth again. “I should go.”

  “Don’t.” Her lip trembled.

  “Here.” He reached past the smart, polished buttons of his uniform and into the breast pocket. “Take this.”

  Diana turned the paper over
in her hand, unfolded the creased sheet, and gasped. “It’s all of them.” She beamed at him. “All of them.”

  He blinked a tear as she ran her finger over every dome and steeple captured by his sketches to every crevice, brick, and curve. The great bell of Mary-le-Bow, the turrets at Sepulchre-without-Newgate, St. Bride’s in Fleet Street—still whole. St. Clement Danes. The dome and Baroque grandeur of St. Paul’s: finessed to every column. St. James Garlickhythe and Magnus the Martyr and Christ Church Greyfriars. The whole of Wren’s canvas.

  The train whistled and Brent shifted. “I really must go.”

  Diana nodded and pressed the sketch to her heart. “Thank you.” Her churches. In perfect precision all in a row like a line of chess pieces, as intricately beautiful as the skyline from Southwark over the Thames catching the whole of London like a masterpiece.

  She’d miss his lips and his touch, the surety of the world she had discovered with him at the helm. But the alternative was the Diana who hadn’t stolen across Cowcross Road to Smithfield Market to say hello to Great St. Bart’s one fateful autumn afternoon.

  The alternative was a woman who hadn’t known she could step beyond herself and trust someone to see who she truly was. The alternative was unimaginable.

  Chapter 12

  October 1945

  London

  When they finally returned home, Diana was still shivering and Brent was still on edge. Despite the threat to their safety and the force the stranger had used, she smiled thinking of how immediately protective Brent became the moment he sensed she was in danger.

  She reached into her pocket and felt at the cigarette package she had seen in the corner of the church. It could mean nothing, but hadn’t Simon told her to look for anything? And before the man appeared at the back of the church, she hadn’t seen anything else out of the ordinary. Most likely it was leftover litter.

  Brent turned the key in the lock, then bent over a moment to retrieve something tucked under the door. “For you.” He rose to hand her a plain white envelope.

  Her name was written on the front in Simon Barre’s hand. Diana took it. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll make tea, shall I?” He helped her out of her coat, eyes more than once moving to the envelope dangling in one hand, then the other as she wriggled out of her sleeves.

  “Please.”

  Brent walked to the kitchen, flicking the wireless on along the way.

  “For London to rebuild,” a voice was saying through the speaker, “it will require every man, woman, and child to be amenable to change. Our new zoning laws will find more of us outside of the city proper on properties built for families and . . .”

  Diana crossed to the radio and turned the dial until Edith Piaf’s earthy voice filled the flat, then she sat on the sofa. Brent was purposely taking his time in the kitchen so she could read her note.

  She slowly opened it to find a warning from Simon. She should only see to the churches during the daylight hours or the activities he mentioned during their tea at The Savoy. A colleague of Simon’s had been killed in London. MI6 thought it was an accident. A wrong target. But Simon was certain it was Eternity.

  Diana folded the note quickly with a shaking hand and tucked it in her pocket, looking furtively at the coat pocket bearing the cigarette packet as Brent handed her a cup of tea.

  “You’re still trembling.” He frowned and sat beside her.

  She sloshed a little tea over the side as she set it down. “It’s cold.”

  He looked at the wireless. “You turned the dial before I could hear more about that fellow and his zoning.”

  She ran her hand over her arm the man had touched. Then she focused on forgetting Simon for a moment. His letter. The cigarette packet.

  She glanced around the small living room. “For one night I would love to pretend that it is years ago. And I am here far later than I should be, considering I am a proper young lady and you a bachelor professor. And I beg you to let me sleep on the sofa . . .”

  “Ironic.” Brent looked good-naturedly at his temporary bed.

  “You never let me.”

  “I couldn’t trust myself. You were safer away from me.”

  Piaf’s yearning French melted into the opening chords of a song Diana knew as well as breathing.

  “Not the Vera Lynn version we first danced to,” he said wistfully as Bing Crosby crooned the first bars of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

  She wanted Brent. More than the kiss they had shared in the domeless sanctuary at Walbrook. But he was slowly letting down his guard. The longer the song played, the more her mind blotted out everything about the evening but his lips on hers in a broken church.

  Every night she moved to cash in on the thousand and one daydreams that had seen her through bleak days, weak tea, and fingerless gloves in a bleak Bletchley hut. But Brent was rigid and silent tonight. The tea sat untouched, and he didn’t bring up the subject of her gun or the assailant. She didn’t want him to retreat into his lesson plans or a book. Didn’t want to lose him when he was so close.

  She yawned and he looked at her tenderly and his wordless communication inspired her to think he might obliterate the last barriers between them. She moved to touch his face, to close in. She fingered his collar and unfastened the top button.

  “Good night, Di,” he said kindly, then kissed her softly and retreated.

  “No.” She gripped his arm. “You can’t honestly make me sleep alone tonight. Not after what happened.” She hugged her arms over her chest. “You said it yourself, I’m still frightened.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “A man grabbed me, Brent. It hurt. And I keep thinking about what might have happened if you hadn’t been there.” She could see he was this close to giving in. He swallowed and his eyes softened. “Please.”

  His assent was several moments in coming. “Alright.” He nodded. “I hope I don’t regret it.”

  “I’m your wife.”

  “I know. That’s what frightens me.”

  She heard him perform his nightly routine and followed him thereafter. His even breathing denoted sleep. So Diana stared at the ceiling, inhaling the smell of Brent’s tooth cream and soap. She watched him settle into slumber, his repose smoothing out the lines on his face

  She smiled at his sleeping profile before she closed her eyes.

  As had happened the night before, in the early hours of morning Brent shifted and thrashed. Diana woke with the movement. She lowered his arms to his sides and held them firmly until he twitched and settled somewhat. Would this be a nightly occurrence?

  She hated that he had woken without her for months. Hated that a stranger—a nurse—was the face he had seen while he was in hospital. She wished the face that met him in the midst of his agony and uncertainty had been hers. Of course she had no idea what reeled behind his fluttering eyelids. Just that there was an entire world of his life she would never inhabit.

  Diana smoothed strands of damp, dark-red hair from his forehead and watched him for a moment. He went still and she leaned back a little bit. Waited. Counted. He seemed calm enough, if a little agitated. She leaned over to kiss him on the forehead and his eyes snapped open.

  Brent shot up and took her wrists in an iron grip and shoved her back against the headboard. Diana gulped what breath she could with the shock of the sudden movement. She flinched and struggled as his grip tightened. “Brent . . .”

  But it wasn’t Brent she was looking at: those intense, hard eyes—seeing her but not quite seeing her—and splotched cheeks.

  His hands were iron clamps on her wrists.

  Diana spluttered a sob. “Brent . . . Brent! Please let go—you’re hurting me!” she yelped.

  His eyes lost their glassy faraway look and focused on her: first with shock, then with sheer anguish. He gasped and fell back a little, looked down at his white-knuckled grip on her wrists, eyes widening as he loosened his hold. She gaped at him.

  “Di . . .” He pa
nted, scanning her face frantically.

  “Y-you’re frightening me.” She stayed perfectly still against the headboard, catching her breath, tucking her now free arms against her sides.

  “Di . . .” His voice was strangled. “No. Did I . . . ? Diana, did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “You didn’t mean to.”

  Brent looked her over tiredly, eyes never focusing. She registered the stark agony on his face, winced at his voice attempting to form words.

  “Go away,” he said starkly.

  Diana froze, then shivered and rubbed at her arms. Should she reach out to him? Should she think of something to patch their silence and sew it into something comforting? “You don’t mean that.”

  “Go. Away . . . ,” he repeated with a hint of desperation. “I need . . . I need to just . . . Go away.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “Please go away.” His words fought through harshly.

  Diana swung her legs over the bed and retreated, then clicked the door behind her. Her breath was on a fast track the moment she sat on the sofa and was quickening by the moment. She took a few deep breaths, rubbed her forearms, and pulled the sleeves of her nightgown over her still-stinging wrists.

  Just before closing the bedroom door she’d swiftly swiped the cigarette pack she had retrieved at Walbrook. Now she tucked her legs underneath her and held the pack to the light. She hadn’t realized she was crying so intensely until the letters on the carton blurred.

  If Brent talked about what was plaguing him, maybe it wouldn’t build into his dreams until he lashed out at her. If only she could have held her tongue. She knew her words telling him he frightened her would winnow their way into his mind and be stored there like coal in winter. She would worry about him and he for her, and together they would tie their secrets and insecurities into a ball of knotted yarn and never make it through.