Author's Note: I humbly present to you my first Foyle's War fic, which I hope you will enjoy. First things first - I have to thank GiuliettaC for her help with this. She helped me put some polish on this, and Brit-picked for me. And AnneBronteRocks deserves a nod as well, for helping me sort out a few details - and also for hooking me up with GiuliettaC ;)
Fair warning: This will be a slightly AU version of events... I hope that doesn't put many people off. I just adore Milner and Sam together.
Enjoy!
When Paul Milner married Jane Parker on Christmas Day 1935, he couldn't remember being happier. He had no family – his parents and elder brother had died long ago, and his father's mother had finally passed away in her sleep about six months before his wedding. By that time she didn't recognize Paul any longer; he'd known that she hadn't cared much for him when she did. But just after the Christmas service, with a handful of friends and Jane's parents and sister, Paul set up a family of his own, starting with his lovely wife.
Jane was an absolutely glowing bride. Her mother was ecstatic. Paul, a constable with the Hastings Police, was a good man, and Mrs. Parker couldn't wait to put her younger daughter in his steady hands. Jane's father could not have cared less, and would gleefully have given her away to anyone who'd asked without a second thought.
Paul and Jane had bonded over detached relatives – her father, his grandmother. They had long discussions holding hands, walking along the water, about how much they would love their children, how much attention they would shower upon them, about how they knew better, could do better, would be the best parents any child could ask for.
When she looked back, Jane knew that her desire to have children had been tenuous at best. It was buoyed by the strength of Paul's dreams, by his enthusiasm and his hope.
But six months into her marriage, Jane suffered a miscarriage. She hadn't known she was expecting at all, and hadn't felt the slightest twinge of pain. There had only been an inordinate amount of blood in the morning, and a diagnosis by mid-afternoon. Assured by the doctor that these things happened, she said nothing to her husband; when he asked about her melancholy, she told him it was nothing. Paul didn't quite believe her, but having no other evidence that anything was amiss, he trusted his wife.
She'd known she was expecting for a handful of days when it happened again four months later. The doctor saw no reason for concern. Jane, however, knew – in the same way she'd always known that her mother was miserable, that her father would happily choose a bottle of whisky over his daughters – that they'd never have children. She knew as soon as she realized it that she was perfectly at peace with a childless life. And she also knew that she wouldn't be able to look her ridiculously optimistic husband in the eye and tell him that.
She'd been Mrs. Milner for eighteen months on the day she visited a doctor of questionable credentials – the only one who didn't insist she bring her husband with her – and was fitted with a cervical cap.
Either way, there would be no children, so she felt no guilt whatsoever. This way, she wouldn't have to suffer another messy loss. But if Jane were honest with herself – which she was, on occasion, when the night was dark and Paul slept peacefully beside her – this was really what she'd wanted all along. Her husband adored her, and her life was simple and tidy and quiet, a far cry from how she'd grown up, with a nervous wreck for a mother and an alcoholic for a father. Paul would be disappointed when he realized there wouldn't be any children, but would come to terms with it if he thought that there was nothing either of them could do to change it.
Paul had no idea about either miscarriage. He'd known that Jane had gone through some periods of sadness since they married, but she'd always said it was nothing. So he'd just hold her closer at night, and didn't take it personally when she refused intimacy, and she'd be back to normal within a few days.
He asked whether she'd seen signs that she was expecting fairly frequently; the longer they were married, the more hesitant he became to bring it up. She knew it was because he didn't want to upset her, or make her think he blamed her for his dreams of a houseful of children not coming true. She had less difficulty lying about there being nothing wrong than she had pretending that she was upset about it.
On their second anniversary, she let him make love to her; in the quiet afterward, he held her with her back to his chest, and let his hand caress the soft, flat space between her navel and the wiry tuft of hair that covered her most intimate place. "Two years," he whispered.
She smiled sleepily. "Best two years of my life." And with the exception of the miscarriages, it was true.
"Mine, too. But . . . I'm worried."
"About what?"
He paused a long moment, as he always did when bringing up their lack of children. "I'd hoped we'd be parents by now."
"It's nothing to worry about," she replied easily, and yawned. "Doctor says so."
Another long pause. "Jane . . . if there were something wrong . . . you would tell me, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would, darling," she replied, and covered his hand with hers. She fell asleep.
But Paul did not, not for a long while. If there was nothing wrong with her, he reasoned, then he must be the cause of why they hadn't – perhaps wouldn't ever – conceive.
Paul's belief that he couldn't father a child – a failure, as he saw it, although not one he had any control over – drove him to focus more intensely on other aspects of his life. For the most part, that meant his job, which wound up working in his favor, since his superiors on the police force came to see him as not just intelligent, but driven as well. He'd always known he wanted to be a detective, and if being a little too interested in his job was going to get him there, then so be it. At least one of his plans wouldn't come to nothing.
The belief also sat in the back of his head on the day in the late summer of 1939 when he enlisted in the army. Jane didn't want him to do it, but how could he not? He was going to do his duty by his country, and if he happened to pay the ultimate price for British freedom, then at least Jane could remarry and have children.
He hadn't, of course, anticipated the injury he received, or Jane's reaction to it. He understood her anger at him, and even to a certain extent her revulsion. He didn't understand why it lasted as long as it did, or why she seemed so utterly unable to accept him any longer. He didn't understand why she was suddenly not just cold in private, but unkind in public, in a quietly resentful, uncooperative kind of way – it reminded him sharply of his grandmother.
Her leaving for Kate's was almost a relief. He could continue to heal and come to terms with his prosthetic without her impatient comments looming, without having to face her thinly-veiled irritation. It was lonely, but maybe he needed the loneliness to remind him of how much he needed her, how much he loved her. Maybe he deserved it for enlisting when she'd asked him not to.
But then, she came back, and not only continued to be unreasonable and unkind to him, she was abominable to Sam, who he considered a friend. It had been all he could do to calm her down enough to agree not to turn Sam out of the house completely in the dark of night with nowhere to go.
And then there had been the bicarbonate of soda she'd been taking since her return, and all the questions that it raised. When Mr. Foyle used the words "morning sickness" he felt as though he'd been punched in the gut – not only had Jane been gone for the last three months, before she left she hadn't allowed him to touch her. If she was expecting, she wasn't expecting his child.
The morning following Mr. Foyle's comment, he watched her take the bicarbonate down from the cupboard in the kitchen after she'd put his breakfast in front of him. She measured some into a glass of water, stirred it, and then drank it in one swallow. She was a little pale, he noticed, when she sat down next to him.
"Are you all right?" he asked, and tried to put his hand on her arm.
She moved it, rubbing her hands together. "I'm fine."
"What do you take that for, Jane?"
She sighed. "Nothing. Just indigestion – it'll pass."
"First thing in the morning?"
She wouldn't look at him and didn't respond, just offered a thin smile and a cup of tea, and Paul knew he'd been lied to.
And as soon as she came back, she was gone again. With barely enough time between her arrivals and departures for them to become comfortable with one another, there had been little room for any attempted reconciliation. Which was not to say that Paul hadn't tried; he desperately wanted a second chance at the life he'd dreamed of with Jane, even if that wouldn't mean having children of their own. But he couldn't possibly have a marriage when he was in Hastings and his wife was in Wales, which was evidently where she preferred to be.
For the first six months Jane had been with Kate, he believed she would return. He was sure that she just needed time to adjust – they both did, he thought, in all fairness. He had done everything he could to make sure he wouldn't be a burden when, not if, she returned. She'd been gone a year before that belief faded to a fragile hope, and a few months later, he realized the hope had gone, as well.
He adjusted his routines and the way he did things so that they suited himself, rather than trying to guess how they would best suit Jane. He removed their wedding photo from the mantelpiece. He found himself parceling up her things, which he'd send to her about every six weeks or so – always with a note, asking how she was and what she was doing in Wales, but he never received a response, even when he sent an uncharacteristically aloof letter suggesting that they divorce. Eventually, not only were all of Jane Milner's things absent from what had once been their home, Jane Milner herself was absent from her husband's daily thoughts.
And that was where Sam came into it. First and foremost, she'd been a colleague and a friend. When Jane had first gone, she'd been there, and that was more than enough. Her understanding, her patience, her no-questions-asked support. It was no more than she offered anyone else, but Paul knew that even if it were, she didn't pity him. She wasn't built for pity.
He'd discovered this, of all places, in an air raid shelter. Sam had driven himself and Mr. Foyle to a boarding house so that the two detectives could make some inquiries after a missing nurse. They spoke briefly with the landlady, and then Mr. Foyle set Paul to searching her room while the DCS took a walk to a nearby shop which the landlady had indicated that the missing nurse liked to frequent. Foyle had told Sam to wait for Paul, and then meet him by the shop.
The air-raid sirens sounded about twenty minutes later. Paul lumbered down the stairs, following the landlady outside. He found Sam hovering anxiously by the front door to the house, waiting for him. He scowled and took her hand, running with her as fast as he could with the other occupants of the house to the public shelter behind the school just down the street.
Once inside, the landlady nervously insisted that everyone sit down, although there wasn't much choice for Paul, as the shelter wasn't tall enough for him to stand. Sam was offered a chair, which she immediately tried to surrender to him, but he simply shook his head and sank awkwardly to the floor.
"Are you all right, Sam?" he asked quietly, once the door was closed.
"Yes, I'm fine," she replied, although her knee was bouncing. "Are you sure you won't–"
"I'll be fine," he assured her. "Promise."
Sam nodded distractedly and stilled her knee. "Do you mind my asking . . . does it bother you much? Your leg."
Paul smiled. "No, not much. Down's easy enough; it's up that's a problem – well, not a problem, really. Ungraceful."
"It doesn't hurt?"
"Not any longer, not much. Too many hills and stairs hurt, and some days the prosthetic hurts – like spending too long in a pair of ill-fitting shoes."
"I'm sorry," she said suddenly. "I didn't mean to pry – never liked being in small spaces, even before the war. Makes me just a bit jumpy, I suppose."
He smiled warmly at her. "It's all right, Sam. I don't mind."
"And you get around all right at home? It's not too difficult?"
"It was just an adjustment," he replied, and tilted his head to the side. "Lots of those, really."
"I suppose it was easier, when you had Jane," said Sam, and then her hand shot up to cover her mouth in horror. "I'm so sorry, Paul–"
"Sam," he said, his steady, gentle tone unchanged, and he reached out for her other hand. "It's all right." He smiled then, to prove it, and squeezed her hand. Which, he realized belatedly, was a bit of a mistake, since it made him realize how much he liked holding Sam's hand. So he squeezed gently once more and let go, and his voice took on a breezier tone. "Actually, it's nice. Having someone talk about it openly."
She nodded and folded her hands together. "I suppose it's not easy keeping it all in."
"No," he conceded. "She's not coming back, though. It's clear enough." Paul looked around the shelter, not wanting to meet Sam's eyes.
"Haven't you got any family?" came her soft voice.
He shook his head. "No – my parents are both gone. I had an elder brother, but he died of consumption."
"Isn't that how Mrs. Foyle died?"
Privately, Paul wondered how she could go on talking about death and loss whilst it was probably happening above them, but then that was Sam – open, curious, unembarrassed, wanting to understand all that she could. "I think Mrs. Foyle died of typhoid."
"Oh, right," she replied, with her eyebrows raised, as though she'd just recalled that the grass was green. "How old was your brother?"
"Only six," said Paul, and finally looked up at Sam. "I had just turned four when he died." Paul paused, thinking about him. There was one photo of the two of them, taken about a month before his brother fell ill, and it was one of his most cherished possessions. It stood in the place that had been vacated by his wedding photo. "His name was James – really, I don't remember much about him, but I do remember following him around everywhere and wanting to do everything just like him. When he was finally taken to hospital no one would tell me where he was or what was happening. I think that's why I wanted to become a detective so much – I hated the injustice of it; I hated not knowing."
They heard rumbling then, and the ground shook, and crashing and explosions were heard, but they were distant. Paul watched Sam tense up and instinctively reached up for her hand again; Sam squeezed it appreciatively, and her eyes closed.
Then the noise settled and there was quiet in the shelter, waiting for the all-clear, but it didn't come. Nervous chattering around them resumed.
"Do you think Mr. Foyle is all right?"
"Yes, I'm sure he's fine," he replied, and did not want to let go of her hand for all the world.
She nodded woodenly a moment. "Yes," she said, "of course, he's all right. He's fine." She shook her head, and it seemed to have cleared her heavy thoughts. "It's just that I can't help but think of Mr. Foyle sometimes as I think of my own father. They do all the looking after – my father looks after his parish, Mr. Foyle looks after all of Hastings – but who looks after them?"
Paul smiled up at her. "I'd say they're both in safe hands with you, Sam."
Sam wobbled her head contemplatively. "I think they each might disagree, for different reasons," she replied, and then looked back at Paul. "But who looks after you, is what I want to know."
"I manage well enough," said Paul. "Unless you've noticed something lacking – uneven shave? Wrinkled shirts?" he teased. She smiled, and a little color came to her cheeks. "It was easier when Jane was still at home, but being at home with Jane felt . . . oppressive. She didn't want to be there."
"You know I would never have paired you with Jane," said Sam brightly. "Not that I really knew her, but she seemed so . . . I don't know. Pinched. Every time I met her." She turned to look down at Paul, whose steady gaze was on her. Neither seemed to notice that they were still holding hands. "And you're so easy. And you've always been very kind to me."
Paul's thoughts went back to when she'd been out of a place to stay thanks to a German bomb. She'd been a gracious house-guest, and Jane had been away at the time, much to his confusion. Sam's friendship was like a tonic. Just having someone else in the house to talk to had been such an bolster; when Jane had returned home unexpectedly and insisted that Sam leave, he didn't know if he felt worse for Sam or for himself.
"She must've changed awfully," continued Sam. "I know war changes people and she must've been just terrified when you left, and then angry, I'd imagine, when you came back. I would be if the army took my husband and sent him back missing something."
Paul grinned; he couldn't help it. Sam's matter-of-fact analysis of what had happened to his leg made the whole thing seem just a little less heavy, and he answered her a little more honestly than he might otherwise have done.
"The thing is, Sam . . . I don't think she did." He looked up at her, and watched her features contract into a scowl. "I don't think she changed. Right before she left some things came to light that . . . I'd missed, frankly. And I felt such a fool. I'm a detective; ought to have detected the goings-on in my own house. Didn't." He cringed a little when he realized he sounded distinctly like Mr. Foyle. "In any case, I think that she was angry when I came back from Norway, just not on my behalf. I think she'd rather I'd have died than come back and be a burden to her."
Sam scowled. "I say, how did you ever end up with someone so awful?"
Her remark was so unexpected, and so unexpectedly blunt, that he guffawed. "Sam!"
"Well, I'm sorry, Paul, but honestly." She shook her head unapologetically.
"I loved her," he said in defense of himself, almost absently. "I really did. I think she went out with me because I asked her to; she married me for the same reason, and because she wanted to get away from her parents. She was always rather – what did you call her? Pinched? – but never toward me. Until I lost my leg."
"Did you have a good marriage until then?" asked Sam.
"I thought I did," he replied honestly. "I'm not sure she did."
"It's rather a blessing, then, that God saw fit not to present any little Milners to the world. They might not have a mother now."
Paul cleared his throat. "Jane was expecting once," he said.
"Oh – I'm sorry. Mr. Foyle's right, I really ought to think better before I speak."
"It wasn't mine."
"Oh." She turned toward him and squeezed the hand she held. "Paul. I'm so sorry."
"I think Mr. Foyle knew." He drew in a sudden breath. "Sam – no – I'm sorry – I really shouldn't be–" He let out the breath he'd sucked in and looked away, but did not, did not, let go of the precious hand he held. "You'd be an awfully effective interrogator." Then he looked back at her, fully expecting the pity, but it wasn't there. All of the things he felt himself – the confusion, the anger, the injustice – were. But not pity. And that made his chest tighten in a way it hadn't in a long time. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. She's removed herself from my life – maybe she'll find what she's looking for in Wales."
"And what about you?" pressed Sam. "Will you divorce her?"
He nodded slowly, having come to the realization that he'd need to do just that only recently. "One way or another . . . yes."
"Good," said Sam, with a firm nod of the head.
"Good?" he smiled. "From a vicar's daughter?"
She sat up straight. "You know better than most people that I'm not a typical vicar's daughter." She squeezed his hand again. "I know what my father and uncles would say about it – that divorce is a shameful business, that marriage is a sacred arrangement not to be trifled with, that the law of man ought not to invite itself where God's law alone stands – I've heard it hundreds of times – literally hundreds, the number of weddings my father's officiated at. But I can't see any reason for two perfectly miserable people to stay together if it means they'll just remain perfectly miserable." She looked down at him, her face all seriousness. "And I do sincerely hope you're not ashamed, Paul."
His cheeks burned, and he looked away a moment. "I'm not blameless," he said. "Jane didn't want me to enlist; I did it anyway. She never forgave me for that. Relationships are always a two-way street, Sam."
She conceded that was true, but pressed him. "I hardly think anybody can be blamed for wanting to do their bit. And once all was said and done, honestly . . . what were you to do?" she asked. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
Paul was quiet a long moment before he quietly replied, "You're very kind."
"Not just being kind," she said, and when she looked at him, he felt as though she was gazing straight into his soul. "You're a good man, Sergeant Milner. Jane's daft."
He smiled up at her and didn't bother to hide his admiration. "Thank you, Miss Stewart."
And then the all-clear had sounded, and Sam helped Paul to his feet. When they emerged from the shelter, they were still holding hands.
Thanks for reading!
Jacqui