Restarting recovery mode with pg_standby after failure

We are using pg_standby to consume WAL files from another postgres
server. Both servers are running 8.4 on ubuntu lucid. One of the WAL
files had incorrect permissions:

running restore         :cp: cannot open `/some/path/
00000001000000E700000081' for reading: Permission denied

It looks like pg_standby hit this error, stopped recovery, and brought
up the database. I can fix the permissions on this one file.

My question is if there is a way to restart recovery mode and have the
database pick up on the WAL file where it left off. When I put the
recovery.conf back, it starts looking for WAL files in timeline 2. If
I manually specify recovery_target_timeline to '00000001', I get an
error about child timelines.

Do I have to re-sync the data files, or can I start recovery again
with the existing WAL files?

Thanks,
Paul Gross