The Gathering Storm

THE

Gathering Storm

Zion Diaries Book One

_{Bodie & Brock}

_THOENE

"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," words by Eric Maschwitz, music by Manning Sherwin and Jack Strachey, first performed in 1939, on page 345.

"I Shall Not Live in Vain," by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) on page 301.

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With love for Natan Shalom-"He gives Peace"

JEREMIAH 1:7

_PROLOGUE

DECEMBER 22, 2008 HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE, LONDON, ENGLAND

The sun set as I rode the Northern Line from central London north to Hampstead Village for the scheduled interview with the woman I had come to know as "Loralei B.G."

Lora had escaped from the Nazi Blitzkrieg as a young woman.
Over fifty years had passed when the old woman read my early non-
fiction account about the Kindertransport of Jewish children and the
evacuees during the Blitz. She contacted me through the publisher. Her letter read:

/
am a Christian Zionist, not Jewish by birth, but by heart and through marriage. I was born in Texas to a missionary family, though I grew up in Europe. My mother was American. My father was an Austrian and among the
leaders of the Christian resistance opposing Hitler. He was
killed by the Nazis in France during the war. I was very involved with the refugees. Perhaps I could add details to your research.

Over ten years' time I received Lora's story in bits and pieces by
post. The true identity of Lora remained a closely guarded secret because her son was a member of the Israeli government. I was faithful to answer her letters at a box in northwest London. Before the era of e-mail we became old-fashioned pen pals.

Though uncertain of Lora's true age, I guessed she was in her late seventies or early eighties. Though I knew many details of the elderly
woman's past, I knew surprisingly little about her present life. When the letters began to come less frequently, I wondered if her health
was failing. Perhaps the old woman's sense of dignity was one reason
she did not want to meet me.

Now, as Lora approached the end of her life, she reached out to me. I received a telephone call from her granddaughter, also named Loralei. It had come one month earlier, summoning me to a home on Church Row in Hampstead Village.

"Will you come for dinner on December twenty-second? Your old friend would like to meet you before Christmas."

I knew the Hampstead street well. My husband and I frequently
met friends for supper at the Holly Bush pub around the corner. How
strange it seemed to me that I had probably passed Lora's house a hundred times over the years and had never known she lived there.

The aroma of roasting chestnuts greeted me as I emerged from the tube station onto Hampstead's High Street. It was the stuff Christmas carols were made of. Irresistible.

Shifting a big bouquet of roses, I buttoned my jacket against the sudden chill and fished for the heavy one-pound coins in my jeans' pocket. "One, please."

"American? Done in a minute." The chestnut seller stirred a fresh batch over the coals of his brazier. "The south?"

"Close, Henry Higgins. Arkansas, originally. Then central California."

His eyes brightened. "Arkansas. Y'all?"

"Arkansas may have seceded from the Union since I left. I've lived in London for ten years."

"Then you're almost home."

"Almost."

He scooped the warm chestnuts into a fist-sized, brown paper bag. "Very hot. Take care. Cheers, thanks, and happy Christmas."

Pocketing the paper sack, I used it as a hand warmer. Striding

quickly past shops, restaurants, and my favorite creperie, I made my way toward the Georgian townhomes lining Church Row.

Christmas garlands and twinkle lights gave the village a feel like something out of a Dickens' novel. I shelled a hot chestnut and popped it into my mouth. Nothing like it on a cold winter's night.

The directions to the house simply said,
House on the end of the
row—right. Corner of Holly Walk and Church Row.

Eighteenth-century construction had not included street numbers on houses. Instead, fan-shaped windows
calledfanlights,
above the front doors, contained a unique pattern used to identify the residence. Like a logo, letterhead on household stationery reproduced the pattern of the residence's fanlight. The image was then copied on all answered correspondence. This assured even an illiterate messenger could look at an envelope, compare the patterns, and deliver mail to the correct residence.

I walked briskly to the imposing brick townhouse. Christmas lights beamed from every window. I could plainly see in the leaded glass of the fanlight the images of a nightingale and a rose.

Beautiful,
I thought. It was so much like the Lora I had come to know through correspondence: the rose and the nightingale; a story by Oscar Wilde; or a poem by Keats. Like much of London, coded in the very building was the memory of a distant, more noble, age.

I suddenly wished I had not worn jeans and my usual black
ostrich cowboy boots. I had meant to honor Texas, the state of Lora's
birth, but I was acutely aware I was underdressed. And, worse yet, I looked like an American tourist. The dignified elegance of the Church Row townhome made me self-conscious.

I rapped the brass lion's-head knocker on the black door and announced my arrival. Holding the roses beneath my chin, I smiled, hoping the flowers would be noticed, rather than my casual attire.

Hinges groaned as the door opened. A beautiful young woman in her midtwenties beamed at me. Her hair was thick blond, shoulder length, and framed her oval face. With blue eyes and straight white teeth, I noticed the clear family resemblance to a photo Lora

had sent of herself and her husband from those desperate years before the war.

"You must be Missus Thoene?" The young woman pronounced my name correctly in the accent of an American who had long lived
in England. "Tay-nee? Is it? Welcome. I am Loralei Golah." She was
wearing jeans and a red wool cardigan like mine.

I resisted the urge to mention our identical red sweaters. So she shopped at the street merchants' stalls in Covent Garden? I laughed. "You pronounced Thoene right. So few do. But call me Bodie. Thoene is for author bios."

Loralei said cheerfully, "Yes. Sunny eyes. Green. Like a forest in
this light. Red curls. And the boots! Lora would love them. Her heart
is half-Texan, you know. Yes, Bodie suits you."

Relief!

"So good to meet you. Loralei? Lora's granddaughter? You rang me. I recognize the smile in your voice. Happy Christmas."

Loralei inhaled the roses. "Oh, lovely! So beautiful! Who would
think? Roses in the dead of winter. Must be grown in greenhouses, don't you suppose?"

Feeling instantly welcome, I stepped into the warm mahogany-
paneled foyer. A row of coats was draped on a rack above an umbrella
stand. When Loralei hung up my coat, hot chestnuts dribbled out.

I retrieved them, feeling like an idiot. "Kent. You can get every
thing out of season. Tomatoes, even."

Loralei headed off down a corridor and grinned back over her shoulder as a signal I should come along.

Happy to see me,
I thought.

The aroma of basil and oregano in simmering sauce filled the house. Loralei said, "But winter tomatoes don't hold a candle to the ones from the garden in summer."

I followed Loralei into a living room decorated with fine antiques and wreathed in reds and golds for the holidays like an Oxford shop window. An eight-foot Steinway filled one end of the room, overlooking French doors and a garden. The instrument was

open and sheet music of J. S. Bach was unfurled above the keyboard. The grand piano was more than mere decoration.

A small, drab bird fluttered in an ornate cage beside the piano.

"A nightingale," Loralei said. "I found her in the garden a month
ago with a broken wing, the same day I rang you."

"She seems to be doing well," I marveled. "Nursing wild birds never worked out for me as a kid. I always ended up burying them in the flowerbed in shoeboxes."

"That's why she lives beside the piano. My husband sings to her."

"You're married." I noticed her ring for the first time.

"Enough about me. Look! We're both wearing jeans and red
sweaters. I'm so glad. I wondered if I should dress up a bit. I've made
pasta for dinner. There's Chianti. Garlic bread. Tri-color salad with balsamic. Hope the tomatoes are all right."

We both laughed, and I decided I liked her immensely and instantly. I followed her into the kitchen where marinara sauce steamed in a saucepan.

The table, antique pine, was set for two.

"Will Lora...?"

"Not tonight. I'm sorry. But she has a Christmas gift for you— and a request for you. Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

I obeyed, trying to conceal my disappointment. "Will she know I'm here?"

"She knows. I'll be right back." Loralei bounded up the stairs to the bedrooms. Doors opened and closed. I heard voices. A man's deep voice. The elderly voice of a woman. Was that Lora? The young Loralei laughed like a bright bell. Moments passed, and she returned with a thick black binder. I knew what it was. For several years I had been encouraging Lora to comb through her diaries and set down her own story.

"I've been typing it all out so you could read it. It's all here.
Everything. She's written a book, you see. Her story, like you wanted
her to. The full story. Changed the names, but the story...all the same. Before the war. And then the Blitz. She said you wrote her

once and said you would stay up all night to review a manuscript if only she would write it down." She paused, hesitant for a moment as she searched my face. "Did you mean it? I mean, that you would like to read it?"

"Would I? I've begged her to write it down!"

"Well, then, she asked me if you would...would you read it? Tonight?"

I was ecstatic. Of all the interviews I had conducted and all the personal accounts I had gathered, not one person had ever taken me up on the suggestion that the stories should be set down.

Loralei blushed and, suddenly shy, said quietly, "She combed through her diary. Dictated into a recorder. Changed the names, of course. Pseudonyms. She wouldn't write it any other way. Details she wouldn't trust to anyone but you. I've read your books...and she...well, it would mean so much to her to have you review the manuscript. Offer suggestions. And, maybe someday...if you know a publisher perhaps?"

I felt cheered by the prospect of hours spent reviewing a manuscript no one had ever read before. What a gift!

We ate spaghetti while Loralei gleaned the details of my life and work. I answered her questions between bites of pasta. "I'm forty-four. Three kids in college. Family originally from around Fort Smith. University of Hawaii alum. Long story there. Working
on my Ph.D. at London University. Married to Brock Thoene, Ph.D.
in history, among other things. Researcher, writer, and director of an American study-abroad program in England."

When we finished dinner Loralei led me to an overstuffed chair before the fire. The black-covered journal was open on my lap:
The Book of Hours—L.B.G. Part One. War Years.