Beatrix scans the hundreds of pieces of smashed stone, some plain and smooth and worn, others carved with decoration. She should know what they are.Knowswhat they are, just can’t quite grasp it.
Oliver reads the handwritten labels on one of the shelves. “?‘Gothic.’ ‘Norman.’ These are styles of architecture…” He trails off as he studies the stones. “They look like pieces of buildings. Maybe ones that were destroyed in the Blitz? Theo would probably know.”
“All of London is filled with bits of buildings destroyed by the Blitz,” Beatrix points out. “What’s special about these?” She takes a stone from the shelf in front of her, no bigger than her fist. One side is rough-hewn, the other fluted with smooth grooves. Her breath catches.
“That could be a piece of a column,” Oliver muses. He points to another stone, carved in the shape of a leaf. “Maybe that’s the top.”
Beatrix nods. It was a column. She wonders which one, if she ever leaned against it searching for her next mark. “It’s all from one building. The debris.” One very old building that took more than two hundred years to build, beginning in one style and ending in another. “It’s St. Paul’s.” Her St. Paul’s, still here. She replaces the stone and picks up another, a tile bearing a decorative carving of a quatrefoil. She runs her finger over the curves of the shape.
“You should take a piece with you,” Oliver says. “A souvenir. I doubt anyone will notice.”
Beatrix balks at the suggestion. “You want me to steal from a church?”
“What?” Oliver looks surprised. “I thought you stole from old St. Paul’s all the time.”
“I stoleinold St. Paul’s all the time. That is not the same thing.”
Oliver raises his hands in mock surrender. “My mistake.”
Beatrix replaces the stone on the shelf. “I don’t need the memento.” She remembers her days in old St. Paul’s like she lived them yesterday. “This way, maybe others can know its story, too.” Even if she is the only one who can remember it.
She turns away from the stones, content in the knowledge of their existence. She loops her arm through Oliver’s. “Come on. We have the end of a war to celebrate.”
They spend the morning dancing and laughing and lying in the grass at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Red double-decker buses honk as they inch past the square, navigating the throngs of people spilling into the streets.
Beatrix teaches Oliver the words to “God Save the King” so he can join in with the rest of them, belting out the anthem at the top of their lungs. A woman spies her uniform and offers her a sandwich from her picnic lunch. Beatrix gratefully accepts and passes half of it to Oliver. He takes a bite before she can suitably warn him that these particular sandwiches are an acquired taste.
He grimaces. “I think there’s something wrong with these bananas.”
“It’s not banana,” Beatrix says.
“There’s no banana in your banana sandwich?”
“Mock banana sandwich,” Beatrix corrects. “More specifically, boiled parsnips and banana essence. We haven’t had bananas in England in years.”
“That explains everything.” He hands her his half of the sandwich to finish.
Beatrix shrugs. “I think it’s rather nice.” Or maybe she has just forgotten how real bananas taste.
After lunch, they head to Trafalgar Square to hear the prime minister’s radio broadcast, but the crowds have swelled and their progress is slow. They snake their way through the masses on the end of a conga line headed in the right direction.
When they arrive, the square is full to bursting with civilians and soldiers. The fountains are edged with men and women wading in the water, trying to keep cool. A man whoops and hollers from the top of alamppost strung with red, white, and blue bunting, waving the Union flag. An accordionist plays a jolly tune, and people find the room to dance to it.
“Will you do me the honor?” Beatrix asks. She steps into the clearing in the crowd where a few others spin their partners in time to the music.
Oliver joins her. “Always.”
Always. In Oliver’s arms, with proof of everything they have endured and all they can overcome surrounding her, she almost believes it’s possible.
The dancing stops. The singing and cheering lull as the minutes tick closer to three o’clock, replaced by a buzzing anticipation. Sweat trickles down Beatrix’s neck into the collar of her jacket. Bodies jostle each other, and an oppressive silence hangs over them. Big Ben shatters it like glass, striking the hour over the heads of thousands of silent spectators. Oliver twines his fingers through hers. The loudspeakers crackle to life and Winston Churchill speaks. His low, raspy voice stills the crowd, his conviction a comfort.
Beatrix drinks in every word, like everyone around her. Even Oliver is riveted. When the prime minister declares, “Long live the cause of freedom!” the crowd erupts in deafening applause. Only then does it hit her, like a ton of falling bricks.
Oliver must see it in her face. He kisses her on the temple. “It’s over, Bea,” he says gently. “You made it.”
But that is the problem, isn’t it? She always makes it. But so many—so, so many—haven’t.
It will be decades before she knows the victims number in the millions, decades before the world has a word for the tragedy—becausetragedyis not enough,genocidetoo small to encompass the horror of it. Decades before she understands this clenching in her chest is more than the guilt of surviving again. Still. It is the ache of having too many tears to cry, of knowing the world has lost too much to ever mourn properly, even when you have an eternity.
