The London Restoration

by Rachel McMillan

  As the clock ticked onward, he began running his hand over his knee. She knew this man. This dangerous man. He wouldn’t have held back from strangling her if she went to one of her churches alone. If she decided to play hero or consult on another church.

  Brent furiously leafed through the Ditchfield book and rifled around the kitchen for any indication of where she might have gone. Three times he took his coat and hat from the hook and considered barging out into the night, dashing to every blasted church to find her, but what if she called?

  His ears were so intensely peeled to the telephone, he almost imagined its ring. He poured a long finger of the scotch he kept on the side table and almost never touched. Then another. He uttered many frantic prayers and a few words internalized from his time with Holt and Tibbs.

  He called Simon with the number Diana had affixed to the bureau in the front room.

  “I’m sorry, Somerville. She’s not with me.”

  “She could be anywhere. It’s pitch dark out there. You have to find her. You have men there who can more easily get to the churches. Every last blasted church in this city. You have a car. I don’t even own a car!” Brent had sold his car before the war. Petrol was hard to come by, and it wasn’t as if he would be around to use it.

  “Did she say when she would be home?”

  Brent hated the man’s distracted tone. “So help me God, Simon, if she is harmed in any way for all of this rubbish you drew her into, I will—” Brent stopped. Cursed.

  “I get the general idea. I’m sorry. Truly.”

  “You don’t think she would have gone to meet this Fisher Carne, do you?”

  “I do. But I also know Fisher is fond of her. I trust that will keep her safe. Please do ring when she turns up.”

  It was well past ten when he heard the key in the door and his frantic anger was replaced with a relief that exhaled through the whole of him. He closed his eyes a moment and unclenched his injured hand.

  He didn’t allow her two steps into the hallway before smothering her in his arms. His lips found the tender curve of her temple and stayed there.

  “I take it you were worried,” she murmured into his shoulder.

  He didn’t let go for a long, long time. He wanted to press her against him for every moment he imagined the worst. For every infernal tick of the clock hand. For every scenario that found her ripped from him forever.

  “Brent, I can’t breathe.” Her voice was muffled against him.

  “I don’t care. Neither could I for the past two hours.”

  She wriggled out of his arms and looked up at him, pushing her disheveled blonde hair from her face. “I have to call Simon. Then we can talk.”

  Brent beat her to the phone and placed a staying hand on the receiver. “You didn’t call me, Diana. You didn’t telephone to tell me you would be late. That I didn’t need to imagine you lying in a church somewhere strangled by piano wire or that some man with a gun had shot you in the middle of Fleet Street.”

  He studied her face, unpinned hair, and stretched collar. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice shook a little. “I just need to call Simon. It’s important.”

  “So I am a part of this as long as you need me to be before you cut me out to tell Simon something?”

  “Brent.” She gripped his hand and moved it from the telephone. “Please. I will explain later. It’s an emergency.”

  “If you pick up that phone . . . so help me!”

  Diana rubbed her hand over her arm, then wrung her hands together, then circled her fingers over her sore right wrist.

  Anger spread over the back of his neck and down through his arms. “You scared me to death! What was it you said at Walbrook? That you didn’t want to be alone at those churches?” He waved a hand at her.

  “If I had told you, you just would have come with me,” she said softly. “I needed to see Fisher. Just me.”

  “I would have demanded to come with you, yes. So you saw him, then? The same man who strangled me last night?”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me. I had the gun.”

  Brent shook his head. “The gun you tote as if it’s the latest fashion like a handbag or a scarf? The one you couldn’t actually point at someone because you wouldn’t be able to harm anyone? Not even in your own defense?”

  “I’m not a coward.”

  “No. No, you’re not. But you’re daft! And if you think for one moment I will allow you to pick up that receiver before you sit down and tell me exactly where you were and who you met with and what happened—”

  “Oh, be quiet, Brent. You scream at me enough in the middle of the night without my having to hear it when you’re awake.”

  Brent stiffened as if slapped. When he recovered his power of speech a moment later, his voice was low. “Sit down and I’ll make tea.”

  Diana shook her head. Her eyes had filled with tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it.” She grabbed at his vest but he turned toward the cupboard.

  “Sit down, Diana. Please.”

  When he handed her a warm mug, she pressed it to her wrist. The tears that had started earlier still trickled. “My hand hurts.” She sniffed.

  “You know I’d cut off my own hands rather than hurt you again. Please don’t use that against me. I was angry, but—”

  “No. No. It’s because I slapped him.”

  “Pardon me?”

  She gave a low blurt of air that almost sounded like a laugh. “I slapped Fisher. For strangling you. I slapped him very hard.” She studied her hand as if surprised at the weapon it yielded. “And that’s why it hurts.”

  Brent took her right hand in his, then lifted it to his lips. “You need to talk to Simon?”

  Diana nodded. “I do. I need him to come round for tea.”

  “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “He’ll want to hear this.” She kept her hand in his and held it in her lap. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “It was like a physical illness. It was as if . . .”

  “As if there’s a stone crammed in your chest and all of your nerves are sparked at once and your mind isn’t screwed on straight? It’s like you feel guilty for breathing, if you remember to breathe at all? And anytime there is the slightest movement you imagine things? Like a mirage in the desert? And you hear the telephone ring even when no one is calling?”

  Brent blinked. “Yes.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Chapter 23

  May 1945

  Bletchley Park

  Victory in Europe celebrations erupted with beer and tossed hats, confetti and loud horns that almost drowned out the sound of the shrieks and hurrahs from every hut and cottage surrounding the main house. Diana and Villiers headed to the overcrowded pub to toast their victory with sherry. Simon dropped by for a nip, but Fisher had already left.

  “Odd Fisher didn’t say good-bye,” Villiers said in her distinctively smooth voice. But underneath, Diana suspected the loss. It was the end of an era. Their era. Their leaning on one another and forming a strong quartet to see them through raised glasses at lonely Christmases and nights bemoaning how everything seemed like an impossible failure. Like the myth Fisher Carne often mentioned. Sisyphus pushed the rock up and up the hill with enduring strength only to have it nearly topple him on its way down.

  Would she ever have its equal in her life? Yawning through mornings after late nights and stealing to Hut 2 for watered beer and tea? Would she ever again sit in front of a machine that would bathe her in neon rays to compensate for the lack of sunlight or see bedsheets used in such inventive ways from togas to curtains in makeshift performances by an amateur theatrical league?

  Bonfires had consumed countless papers, the glowing embers floating like orange bouquets into the waning dusk. Churchill ordered everything destroyed, and her work flickered like transient stars in large barrels across the estate.

  The horns and the noise on the street be
yond the manor lot continued well into the night. The clock struck one and Diana, Simon, and Villiers were still at the overcrowded pub. She had drained the last of her sherry.

  “Come. I want to show you something,” Villiers said. They rambled from the village and back to the Park, across the slick dew of the manicured grass with the focal point the manor house. The pond was eerily still, glassy and dark as the moon hid behind a cloud. Diana shut out the ghosts of afternoon picnics and badminton games, the late nights when her brain still fizzed with analysis reports and snatches of music.

  Villiers, with uncustomary loosened shoulders and spine, led them across the grounds. An exhaust pipe sputtered, a horn shrilled, and a few inebriated men let out wolf whistles in their direction, but Diana and Villiers ignored them. Simon glared at them.

  The always-locked door to Hut 11 was open and swinging slightly. Villiers went ahead of them to push it open and Simon fell in step with Diana.

  The first thought Diana registered as she stepped through the hut door was that they had cloistered a part of Villiers she never knew. Machines stood tall: disengaged with wires spiraling downward in a circle like dead snakes on the cement. Villiers called them Bombes and explained how they sparked and how the circular rotors clicked into life, and Diana for all of her listening and reports couldn’t fathom how such odd-looking machines could be wielded by human machination. Villiers met these strange contraptions with her height and indomitable stature.

  Colored cylinders with metal adornments patterned tall, broad boards that filled the warehouse-like structure.

  “They needed tall women,” Villiers said with flair, “to work these machines.”

  But all Diana saw were wires. Her brain was fuzzy from wine and lack of sleep and the adrenaline that coursed through all of them with the disbelief that it was all coming to an end.

  “And now we all get to return to our normal lives shrouded in secrets,” Diana offered as they made their way back outside.

  “Normal lives? Nothing will be normal after this, Canary. Not one thing.”

  Simon lit a cigarette and held the pack to Villiers, who swiftly claimed one and pressed it to her lips. A moment later he flicked the match and two orange embers were eyes against the darkness. Diana waited and the night ticked on and Simon and Sophie smoked silently.

  “Why does she call you that?” Simon asked Diana. “Villiers, why do you call her that?”

  “Her hair,” Sophie said.

  Diana smiled. “Not just my hair. When Villiers first met me, I was stumbling here from the train station. I couldn’t see where I was going and I was scared. And when I am scared I sing.”

  “Just like you,” Simon said to Villiers.

  “What’s like me?”

  “You like to label people and make them your own.”

  “I never labeled you.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you? I clearly recall a time when—”

  “Oh heavens, Simon, no use dragging all that out at this exact moment when we are . . .” Villiers’s voice drifted.

  “We are what, Villiers?”

  “Amidst company.”

  “Stop circling each other!” Diana blurted so uncharacteristically. Simon’s and Villiers’s lit cigarettes stalled before reaching their lips. “Say something, anything!” She fell back a little. “Life is short. Too short. What if you never see each other again?”

  “Not see Simon Barre again? Would I be so fortunate?” But she didn’t disguise her wistful tone.

  “You’ll miss me,” Simon said casually.

  “Well, I’ll miss both of you.” Diana raised her chin. “Because you’re my friends and I am happy that I got to know you. Both of you.”

  Simon flicked a few ashes from his cigarette before he dropped the butt on the ground and crushed it under his heel. “Never let anyone underestimate you. Even Fisher Carne knew that most of the time you were the smartest of the three of us.” He turned to Sophie. “Villiers?”

  Sophie stood still a moment, a faraway look shadowing her features. Did she wonder if the valuable purpose in their lives would be tucked away forever? Diana saw the slightest flicker of vulnerability in her friend’s face.

  “What are you going to do now, Villiers?” Diana asked. “We can stay in touch. In London. Or are you going home?”

  Sophie looked between them and took a drag of her cigarette. “I thought I’d go abroad for a while.” She was looking at Simon, and something cryptic Diana couldn’t decipher passed between them.

  Diana stared ruefully at her shoes. Did people often feel the same way watching Diana and Brent interact? She’d still have another long bout before finding out.

  “Well, well, well. What’s this?” Simon’s triumphant voice drew Diana’s attention upward. “Are those tears in your eyes, Villiers?”

  “The night is damp. An ember from one of those bonfires is still stuck in my eye,” she said resolutely.

  Diana smiled. “It’s okay, you know. You can have a moment, Villiers.”

  Villiers let her shoulders drop slightly. “I don’t think anything will ever be quite like this again.” She sniffed.

  “I suppose not.” But while his voice was solemn, Diana could see he was pleased his friend was showing such a rare display of emotion.

  “Maybe that’s for the best.” Diana sighed.

  “Maybe,” Simon added.

  Diana looked around the emptying grounds: some faces familiar and some not passed in shadow. She was a step closer to Brent and that should have inspired jubilation. Instead she thought about Fisher Carne. About why he left early.

  Back home later, buzzed with champagne and the exhilaration of the night, she fell backward on her bed and closed her eyes to the spinning colors.

  “Good-bye, Fisher Carne,” she whispered in the dark that shrouded her packed cases. “I’ll never forget you and I wish we had said a proper good-bye.”

  * * *

  November 1945

  London

  “Hello, Somervilles.” Simon appeared in the front hallway of their flat, dark-purple shadows under his eyes and a little pale, but still cutting a dashing figure in a bespoke Savile Row suit.

  “Tea?” Diana offered.

  He shook his head and addressed Brent. “It’s the middle of the night. Please tell me you have something stronger than tea.”

  Brent procured a decanter from the side table and brought two tumblers.

  “Where’s yours? Oh come, Di. You need it.” Brent reached for a third tumbler despite her head shake. “You’re shivering.”

  When they were settled, Diana, with a finger of the liquid in her own glass, looked at Brent first and then at Simon. “I saw Fisher tonight.”

  “Alone, I take it. Judging by your husband’s frantic phone call.”

  “Fisher is smart, Simon, but I guarantee he didn’t care a hang about churches before he met me. That has to be a weakness. He’s working on hearsay. Maybe there’s no Soviet agent named Eternity.”

  “I’ve been tracking Eternity for a few years now.”

  “I know. But you haven’t just been doing that. You’ve been organizing missions in London and Vienna you can’t even tell me about. I sometimes forget that I only see one slice of your world. The one that involves me. It must have crossed your mind. You’re always looking for patterns.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Eternity has the file with all of that important information: the leads, the Soviet sympathizers, those in America who would donate. But how can he be in two places at once? Vienna and London, for example?”

  “It is commendable that you’re thinking outside the box, but don’t you think I have tried to uncover the pattern?” Simon said.

  “Don’t patronize her,” Brent said, interceding. “If you’ve come to these conclusions, then why didn’t you tell her?”

  “This is not the only city where I have traced him—”

  “There’s a lot about what you’re making her do that s
hows that you might be making it up as you go along.”

  “Brent, it’s alright.”

  “No. He’s right,” Simon said. “I apologize for my tone, Diana.”

  She nodded. “For one, the Innere Stadt in Vienna is full of churches within proximity to one another. Here in London we have several bordered by the London gates. For people returning from the war, from the field, from illegal access into the country, they would need a perimeter. Most of these men do not know London. Brent, remember the fellow we followed from Fleet Street?”

  She looked between them. “Then they would need ways to signal one another so they could swap messages and learn where to meet a contact or where to find a safe space for the night. They could be on a scavenger hunt for a new meeting place or even to recognize a friend. If this is a ring, an establishment, then there would be different levels of power and not everyone would be granted the same level of clearance for some of the more top-secret messages. The exchanges of information beyond just establishing an infiltration.”

  “I’m listening,” Simon said.

  “We always look for patterns. What if music is a pattern? The list for the Sunday order of hymns. Fisher taught me about the numerology in music. If eternity is a ring of spies—or at least enthusiasts—they would need to have a common understanding. This goes in line with what Fisher is doing. Finding common places with easy access. People can move in and out.”

  Simon stubbed his cigarette into the coffee cup. “Well . . .”

  “Well,” Brent emphasized, “maybe this is the dead end. Maybe you have Diana roaming around churches and meeting this Fisher in the middle of the night and it means nothing.”

  Something flashed in Diana’s eyes. The wheels in her head were turning. A theory not unlike her propensity for mixing churches and music, Mozart and numerology, lodged itself just as Simon flicked a match and lit another cigarette.

  “You have no idea how much I need Diana,” Simon finally said.

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Brent replied. “You’re a smart man, Simon. A brilliant man by Diana’s accounts. You work for the Secret Intelligence Service and no doubt did your bit for the war effort. But by all means, you lured an architectural historian from the Foreign Office.”