I’m not sure, but he couldn’t have been much older than I—in his late twenties or early thirties. His clothes were dated and a bit threadbare—patched elbows on his tweed jacket and pleats in his trousers—as if he’d purchased them from a secondhand shop or inherited them from an elderly relation. I assumed he was a gardener.
“Badger would work as a nickname for a gardener,” I said. “Gardeners do even more digging than church sextons.”
He certainly looked as though he worked outdoors. He was fit and trim and very brown, and he had a gardener’s strong, rough hands. I doubted that he was an ordinary jobbing gardener, though. He had the accent and the vocabulary of a well-educated young man.
I gave a small snort of exasperation.
“Guesswork,” I said. “Speculation. It’s not your style, Dimity. Forgive me, but I’m not the only Finch-trained snoop here. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t have Badger’s life story down pat within five minutes of introducing yourself to him.”
But I didn’t introduce myself to him. Not properly. I would have, but Badger stopped me.
“Why?” I asked.
He said that, once we started down the road of conventional conversation, there would be no turning back. We’d inevitably end up rehashing the war years, and he, for one, had no desire to go through them again. We could, he proposed, discuss the war with everyone else, everywhere else, but while we were together, in the café, we would put it out of our minds, along with our jobs, our families, our backgrounds, and every other predictable topic of conversation. He would be Badger, and I would be . . . well, I had no nickname, so I had to be Dimity, but we would check our surnames at the door, dismiss formality, and chat freely about whatever took our fancy.
“And you went along with it?” I asked.
I did. I found his suggestion delightfully liberating. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how completely the war had dominated every conversation I’d had for the past five years. It was a relief to put it aside and make room for other things.
“Such as?” I prompted.
Art, music, literature, architecture—the first hour I spent with Badger was one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever spent with anyone, and I’m happy to report that it wasn’t the last. We shared a table at the café two or three times a week for the next three months.
“You spent three months talking to a stranger about art, music, literature, and architecture?” I said doubtfully.
Among many other things. My conversations with Badger inspired me to visit art galleries and museums, to attend plays and concerts, to broaden my cultural horizons. The war had shown me man’s capacity for destruction. Badger reminded me of man’s capacity to create. When I studied a painting or listened to a symphony or stood beneath St. Paul’s magnificent dome, I felt a renewed sense of hope for the future. Though much had been destroyed, much remained, and much would be restored. Civilization would endure.
“Wow,” I said ruefully. “Your conversations with Badger make my small talk seem pretty trivial. A cure for diaper rash doesn’t really compare to the survival of civilization.”
There’s nothing trivial about nappy rash, Lori. If I’d had children, my small talk would have mimicked yours. Since I didn’t, I could turn my thoughts in other directions.
“Did you tell Badger about your inheritance?” I asked.
Yes, but I didn’t tell him about Bobby. Had I mentioned Bobby’s death, I would have broken the bargain I’d made with Badger, so I said only that I’d come into an unexpected inheritance and that the dearest wish of my heart was to use it in a meaningful way. Badger suggested that I invest it. If I invested it wisely, he said, I would be able to fund a charity that would, with luck, continue well into the future. I told him that I knew nothing about investments. He challenged me to educate myself.
“And you took up the challenge,” I said.
I couldn’t resist it. I threw myself into learning everything I could about finance and I discovered, much to my surprise, that I had a knack for investments. Eventually, I created the Westwood Trust. I’d hoped to call it the Robert MacLaren Memorial Trust, but Bobby’s family wished to reserve the name for a scholarship they had created.
“Badger must have been proud of you,” I said.
I don’t know whether he was proud of me or not. Badger was no longer part of my life by then.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
Toward the end of those three magical months, during one of my long walks through London, I saw a cuddly toy in a street market. It was a badger, and although it was somewhat bedraggled, I bought it and brought it to the café. I presented it to Badger as a silly gift, a small token of my gratitude for the many wonderful hours we’d spent together. The next day he presented me with the garnet bracelet and a passionate declaration of love.
“Oh, dear,” I murmured.
I gave him a trifle, and he gave me his heart. I was stunned.
“You didn’t see it coming?” I asked.
I didn’t suspect for one moment that Badger felt anything for me but a playful sort of brotherly love. If I’d seen it coming, I would have done everything in my power to avert it. Unfortunately, I was having too much fun to be on the alert for signs of serious affection.
“You’d spent the entire war being alert,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself for letting your guard down with Badger. You’d earned the right to kick back and enjoy yourself.”
I hadn’t earned the right to hurt Badger. He’d changed my life for the better in more ways than I can count, but when he declared his love for me, I could do nothing but gape at him like an addled goldfish. He must have read rejection in my eyes, however, because he thrust the bracelet into my hands and left the café without another word. I’ll never forget the look on his face as he left.
“Was he angry with you?” I asked.
Worse. He was angry with himself. He was ashamed of himself for daring to hope that he could ever be as dear to me as I was to him. It was as if he believed that he was unworthy of me. I would have told him how wrong he was, but I didn’t have the chance. I never saw him again.
“Never?” I said.
I haunted the café for several weeks, but he never, to my knowledge, returned to it. I asked the other customers, the regulars, if they knew where he lived, but they had no idea. Mr. Hanover—the café’s owner—didn’t know, either. Before we’d met, Badger had rarely spoken to anyone, preferring instead to bury his head in a book while he drank his tea.
“Why did you want to know where he lived?” I asked. “You didn’t intend to chase after him, did you? Wouldn’t it have been kinder to let him go?”
Would it have been kinder to let him go, believing that he’d offended me? That his tenderest feelings had repulsed me? That he wasn’t good enough for me? I think not. I wanted to tell Badger that he had no reason to reproach himself. I wanted to explain to him that I was and always would be incapable of loving anyone but Bobby. Our friendship might not have survived the revelation, but it wouldn’t have ended so brutally.
“Badger might have absorbed the blow better if he’d known how devoted you were to Bobby,” I conceded.
I should have tried harder to find him. I would have, but my life had become so busy by then, so filled with purpose, and so peripatetic—I moved seven times before finding a place of my own—that I let Badger fall by the wayside. I let him go without even learning his proper name. It was a poor way to repay a man who’d given me so much.
“Do you really think he expected repayment?” I asked.
I’m sure he didn’t, but he deserved it all the same. He certainly didn’t deserve to be tucked away in a distant corner of my memory like a plaything I’d outgrown.
“I suppose not,” I said. “But there’s no point in beating yourself up about it now. What’s done cannot be undone.”
I’
ve never been overly fond of that particular quotation. It’s hardly ever true, you know. What’s done can very often be undone.
“Maybe, but I don’t see how you can undo what you did to Badger,” I said, eyeing the journal uncertainly. “It’s a bit late in the day to go looking for him. Even if you could conduct a door-to-door search, I doubt that you’d find him at home. I hate to say it, Dimity, but your old friend is probably dead by now.”
He’s not. I don’t know where he is, but he’s definitely alive. If you put your mind to it, you could find him.
“I could what?” I said, startled.
You could find Badger. You could use the garnet bracelet as a calling card, to prove that you’d once known me. You could tell him how deeply I regretted the manner of our parting. You could explain why I couldn’t return his love or anyone else’s. It would put his mind at ease, I know it would.
My jaw dropped. It was, without exception, the most harebrained scheme Aunt Dimity had ever proposed. I didn’t have to think hard to come up with several excellent reasons not to go through with it.
“If I were Badger,” I said, “I’d be a little reluctant to discuss my private affairs with a total stranger.”
He won’t be reluctant, if he knows that I asked you to do this for me.
“What if he doesn’t remember you?” I asked. “If he was thirty when you met him, he’d be pushing ninety now. He might not remember his own name, much less yours.”
You won’t know unless you meet him.
“What if he’s happily married?” I demanded. “What if he never told Mrs. Badger about you? I don’t think she’d be too pleased to hear that he was once madly in love with another woman.”
You may have to make a few judgment calls, my dear. But I’m certain you’ll make the right ones.
“Thanks,” I said weakly, “but . . . it’s a pretty tall order, Dimity. I don’t know Badger’s real name. I don’t know where he lived. I don’t know where he worked. He could have joined the Foreign Legion or emigrated to Brazil or become a melon farmer in Transylvania. How on earth am I supposed to follow his tracks when there are no tracks to follow?”
You’ll think of something.
I wasn’t accustomed to being the voice of reason in my exchanges with Aunt Dimity, but someone had to make her see sense.
“I wish I could help,” I said. “I wish I could find Badger for you, Dimity, but it’s too late. The trail went cold long before I was born. We all have regrets.” I eyed the journal sympathetically. “Sometimes we just have to live with them.”
No . . . I suppose you’re right. It was selfish of me to ask you to do something I should have done. I’m sorry. I won’t ask it of you again.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I felt like a complete heel. Aunt Dimity was the least selfish person I’d ever known. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked me for a favor. She was always too busy calming me down or cheering me up or giving me the benefit of her vast stores of wisdom to think about herself. Though the task she’d set for me was patently impossible, didn’t the blue journal prove that the impossible was sometimes possible? I glanced at Reginald and saw a reproachful glint in his black button eyes. With a heavy sigh, I resigned myself to my fate.
“Okay, Dimity,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Aunt Dimity’s graceful script danced across the page.
I knew I could count on you!
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high,” I cautioned. “I’ll give it a shot, but it’s a long shot.”
A long shot, my dear, is better than no shot at all.
Eight
I returned to the living room, resumed my seat on the couch, and stared wordlessly at Bill, who was tapping away at his laptop while comfortably ensconced in his favorite armchair.
“I put Bess to bed,” he said, without lifting his gaze, “and I looked in on the boys. All’s quiet upstairs. How’d it go with Aunt Dimity?”
“She’s not angry with me,” I replied.
“I knew she wouldn’t be,” Bill murmured, with the distracted air of someone whose mind was somewhere else.
“She asked me to do something for her,” I said.
“What’s that?” Bill asked, still absorbed in his work.
“Nothing much,” I said. “She wants me to look up a guy who fell in love with her in London about a thousand years ago and explain to him why she couldn’t fall in love with him.”
“She . . .” Bill stopped typing and peered at me uncomprehendingly. “I’m sorry, Lori. What did you say?”
Slowly and methodically and with a growing sense of how stupid I’d been to give Aunt Dimity any hope whatsoever, I recounted everything she’d related to me in the study. I described her experiences in wartime and postwar London, her search for a meaningful way to use Bobby MacLaren’s bequest, and her fortuitous meeting with the bearded young man she’d known only as Badger.
I explained to Bill how important Badger had been to Aunt Dimity, how he’d opened her eyes to a world of beauty the war hadn’t destroyed, restored her faith in the future, and enabled her to have enough confidence in herself to create the Westwood Trust. Finally, I described Badger’s stunning declaration, Aunt Dimity’s dumbfounded response, and Badger’s swift and sorrowful exit from her life.
“He ran out of the café before she could explain herself,” I concluded. “He didn’t give her a chance to tell him that she could never love anyone but Bobby. She’s convinced that she made him feel like a particularly repulsive form of pond scum, and she wants me to put him straight. So all I have to do is run down to London, knock on Badger’s door, wave the garnet bracelet under his nose, and tell him that Dimity couldn’t love him, not because he was a jerk, but because she’d pledged herself to Bobby for all eternity. Easy peasy.”
I rested my chin in my hand and groaned.
“Did you agree to do it?” Bill asked, closing his laptop.
“Of course I did,” I said. “I couldn’t say no to Aunt Dimity. Not after everything she’s done for me.”
“You don’t intend to drive to London, do you?” Bill asked, regarding me warily.
I usually bristled when Bill questioned my driving skills, but in this case, I shared his concerns. Tootling along Finch’s leafy lanes was poor preparation for coping with motorway madness.
“I’m not suicidal,” I replied. “I’ll drive to Oxford and take the train into London.”
“And once you get there . . . ?” Bill asked. “How are you going to find Badger? What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” I said hopelessly. “I don’t have a plan. I don’t even know where to start.”
“You could try to locate the Rose Café,” Bill suggested. “Dimity said that it was patronized by locals, didn’t she? Maybe Badger was a local. Maybe he lived in the surrounding neighborhood—maybe he still lives there.”
“I think it’s more than likely that the Rose Café went out of business decades ago,” I said.
“You could find its original location,” said Bill, “and work outward from there.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “I have a tourist’s knowledge of London, Bill. I’m familiar with the big shiny sights, but I hardly ever go off the beaten track. I have no idea where the Great Ormond Street Hospital is, let alone a tiny byway called St. Megwen’s Lane.”
“They’re both in Bloomsbury,” Bill pointed out.
“Well, okay, then,” I said peevishly. “Problem solved.”
“Hold on.” Bill opened his laptop, tapped a few keys, and nodded. “St. Megwen’s Lane is just off Lamb’s Conduit Street, which runs between Guilford Street and Theobalds Road,” he informed me. “Generally speaking, it’s behind the British Museum. You shouldn’t have much trouble getting to the British Museum. We’ve taken Will and Rob there often enough.”
“I can find the British Museum,” I said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “But you know me, Bill. I’m not the world’s greatest explorer. I’ll probably get lost the minute I lose sight of the museum.”
“I’ll arrange for a driver to meet you at Paddington Station,” Bill offered. “You can leave the navigating to him.”
“Thanks,” I said. “A native guide might be useful.” I nodded at the laptop. “Is there, by any chance, a Rose Café on St. Megwen’s Lane?”
After executing a few more keystrokes, Bill shook his head.
“No Rose Café,” he said, “but there is a coffeehouse—Carrie’s Coffees.” He cocked his head to one side and said thoughtfully, “A coffeehouse would be a logical successor to a café that served a decent cup of tea.”
“I hate coffee,” I said petulantly.
“You don’t have to drink it,” said Bill.
“I’d have to smell it,” I grumbled.
“A small price to pay for Aunt Dimity’s peace of mind,” Bill observed with admirable patience.
“What do I do when I get there?” I expostulated. “Ask the twenty-somethings manning the espresso machine if they serve low-fat lattes to an extremely senior citizen who calls himself Badger?”
“It’s worth a try,” said Bill. “If the locals are as loyal to Carrie’s Coffees as they were to the Rose Café, you might run into someone who knows Badger or knows what became of him.”
“I might run into the queen, too, but I doubt that I will,” I said irritably. “The whole thing is ridiculous, Bill. How can I go to London when I have so much to do at home? There’s no way I’m taking Bess with me. It would completely disrupt her routine.”
“I hope you’re not implying that I’m incapable of looking after our children,” Bill said stiffly.
I could tell by his tone of voice that I’d stomped on a sore spot. My husband was a reformed workaholic. Though he’d missed great swaths of his sons’ infancy, he hadn’t missed much of his daughter’s. For the past eight months, he’d done everything for Bess but nurse her, and he’d spent quite a lot of everyday time with Will and Rob as well. No one could accuse him of being an absentee dad and get away with it.
Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure Page 7