Bells in Wartime
Summary:
Good Friday, 1941. Another case solved, Foyle and Sam are looking to the future. A sequel to Where the Heart Is. Set directly after They Fought In The Fields (S3E3).
Disclaimer:
The creative rights to the characters and plotlines in "Foyle's War" belong to Anthony Horowitz. This story is a not-for-profit homage to the television series, to the talented actors who bring its characters to life, and to a fascinating era.
Author's Notes:
The ringing of church bells was forbidden in Britain after the Dunkirk evacuation of June, 1940. Legislation reserved the sound of bells to warn the population in the event of a German invasion.
As time wore on, however, and the threat of invasion diminished, the government occasionally suspended, then rescinded the embargo. Church bells were allowed to sound for the Allied victory at El Alamein in October 1942, and the ban was finally lifted in time for Easter Sunday, April 25th, 1943.
...
Easter Day in 1941 was April 13th—a week earlier than it falls in 2014. However, all our bulbs are early this year, and varieties that normally don't appear together seem to have done so.
...
It took a new friend of the Old Religious Persuasion to acquaint me with my own religious culture's attitude to weddings during Lent.
...
Another little something for my ladies all around the world in different time zones; and especially for AnneBronteRocks, who knows Religious Stuff.
...
dancesabove provided inspiration and moral support. Not to mention editing!
Bells in Wartime
Good Friday afternoon, 11th April 1941
"... been moved on... sorry, can't say where... didn't think my view of men could change, but you've changed it."
Foyle raised an eyebrow before re-folding Miss Hicks' note and letting it fall into his lap. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Sam shifting irritably in the driver's seat as the Wolseley continued towards Hastings.
They had covered perhaps another two hundred yards when the question he had been expecting came. The voice that asked it could, uncharitably, have been described as petulant.
"So, are you going to tell me what she says?"
Christopher pursed his lips and did his best rendition of laconic—which, for a naturally laconic man, was pithy in excelsis.
"Um. Says 'goodbye'. Moved on. And 'pparently I've... changed her view of men?"
Sam gripped the wheel. The flood gates opened.
"Honestly! She has the most infernal cheek. I know I'm not allowed to flash my ring at people when we're on the job,"—Foyle's brows shot up in a display of comical appreciation entirely wasted on the windscreen—"but frankly there were moments when I came SO jollyclose to fishing my solitaire out of my cleavage and stuffing it RIGHT up her abrasive nose."
The image of Hicks' startled face, a fine gold necklace dangling from one nostril, flashed before his eyes. He brought his twitching lips to order.
"Abrasive nose? Can't say I ever felt it chafing, Sam." Christopher sucked in his cheeks and waited for the fun to start in earnest.
"It jolly well got close enough to chafe, out in the woods when you were letting her sob on your shoulder!"
"Distraught as she was," he countered evenly, "it was the only human thing to do."
"Human, maybe; but it gave her quite the wrong idea. The way she batted her eyelashes at you on that bench outside the hostel! Really! You couldn't tell her we were engaged?"
Ah. So Sam had observed that exchange, as well.
"Dddidn't come up. Subject being discussed was loss. You... belong in the opposing category."
It was an unembellished statement; no attempt employed to varnish it with charm. Yet Sam's annoyance melted instantly; the simple words beguiled her more than any sonnet spoken below a balcony in moonlight. Hmm. Did he stretch to that, at all? she wondered. There was still so much about him she had to learn.
So much.
Though not the serious, quiet intensity he brought to passion. Nor the studied tenderness he showed her in the afterglow. Nor yet his gentle, almost shy, apologetic supplications on those rare occasions when she didn't weaken first and slide herself into his path...
No, Christopher Foyle was not yet quite an open book to her. Sam found she still could turn a page and read fresh fascinations there. She hoped it was a story that would never end...
But in the meantime, practical considerations muscled to the fore. Their plans were laid for one week and a day from now. And not, she grumbled mentally, a day too soon, as conversations following their Lyminster trip still echoed in her mind:
"My sweet, your father's been extremely tolerant under the circumstances. If he doesn't want to marry us till after Easter, nnnot my place to argue with him. His church. His decision."
"Oh I'm so fed up with these petty sensibilities. Even Mummy looked about to hit him, she's been so eager to usher us up the aisle."
Not just the wait. The deprivations of austerity oppressed Sam's plans, as well.
"Miserable war," she moaned out loud. "No proper wedding dress. No wedding cake. No bells, in case somebody thinks that Jerry's landed." Her finger tapped the wheel in irritation. "As if he'd land in Lyminster, of all places. I ask you!"
Foyle stuffed the letter in his pocket. "Wull. Can't do anything about the dress and cake, but..."—he regarded her thoughtfully—"you know the woodland to the west of Battle Road?"
Sam glanced across at him. "I know of it. Never been, though. Why?"
"Pull up there on the way back. Want to show you something."
...
Sam pulled the car in at the roadside underneath a budding sycamore, and they picked their way downhill on foot along a winding path that led into a densely wooded valley, seemingly alive with singing birds. Sam identified a robin and a chaffinch.
"Not too good at birds," Christopher offered her a steadying hand with an air of apology, "but I know a woodpecker when I hear one." And sure enough, before too long, they did.
Along the valley bottom, in the way of these things, ran a stream that leapt and babbled over sandstone in the dappled light, and on the craggy outcrops of the steeper valley sides grew velvet pads and fronds of moisture-loving vegetation that both inhabited and shaped the gully walls. There were gentler banks as well, though slightly slippery for their smooth-soled footwear, and so Foyle led Sam to a vantage point on higher, drier ground.
"It's magical!" Sam's face lit up, enchanted. Plucking off her hat, she busied herself unpinning her hair, impatient suddenly to be off-duty. "How do you know this place?" She tossed her head to free the tresses she'd unpinned, and shook them loose.
"Used to be a favourite of ours when Andrew was still small. We'd bring him here to net for baby trout. Let him collect them in a bucket, then release them later. And Rosalind," he nodded down towards the chatter of the sunken stream, his face enlivened by the memory, "would sketch the gully... all the mosses, liverworts and ferns. She found them fascinating."
Sam gazed at him a little sadly, standing at the gully's edge, feeding his hat brim through his fingers.
"You must miss her so..."
Christopher frowned a smile into the small ravine, then turned to face her, warmth in his soft blue gaze.
"I have missed her, Sam."
But now the ache was different, he conceded... blurred. By contrast, Sam, before him, was in sharp focus; sharp as the shafts of sunlight filtering down between the canopy like glittering shards onto her warm blonde curls.
"Let me help," he said, and, stepping closer, turned her gently by the shoulders, chin raised, intent on liberating those last few tresses.
"There." He handed her the pins. "Your hair looks, um." He nicked his head in quiet appreciation, then stepped away, a little diffidently, hands retreating to the refuge of his pockets, eyes trained across the woodland floor.
Sam's heart leapt in her chest. It was the same sad, pensive stance that she'd witnessed at the graveside on the February anniversary of Rosalind's death. And now, as then, she closed the distance between them and slipped her fingers into his.
"I wouldn't expect to replace her, Christopher... knowing how you felt about her."
At that, he tilted up his chin, and fixed her with a quizzical squint.
"Wull, you should expect. And if you don't, I'm falling down somewhere. Come on."
He swivelled on his toes and pulled her with him, striding now with sudden firmity of purpose, so that Sam had to break into a trot to keep apace.
"Where are you taking me?" she giggled, her stomach fluttering excitedly at his sudden assertiveness.
"You'll see," he called over his shoulder. "At any rate, I hope you will... it's where they were last year..."
The footpath led them on through trees whose early-forming canopies allowed light through to bathe the woodland floor in mottled pools of sunshine.
Eventually Christopher halted at a point where they had an unimpeded view between the scattered tree trunks. Sam stopped to catch her breath, and raised a hand to shield her eyes against the low-slung, penetrating rays.
There, stretched before them in between the trees, lay an unbroken azure carpet of delicate woodland bells.
"Oh. Ohhh," she cried, eyes stretched in genuine amazement. "A bluebell wood!"
He grinned at her. "You wanted bells, you've got them. No government restrictions here."
"Never seen so many in my life!" She hugged his arm and bounced like a delighted child. "Thank you so much for showing me this."
He smiled his downturned smile and shrugged. "Wedding bells. If you like."
"Not very noisy, Christopher." She nudged against him, laughing.
"Mwell, I've heard tell if you bring your ear down to their level, you can hear 'em ringing... Want to try it?"
Their eyes met. Sam read mischief and returned it.
"I'm game, if you are."
There was a slow blink from Christopher, followed by a half-purse of his lips, which parted.
"Rrright, well. Better do my Walter Raleigh then, milady."
He shrugged out of his voluminous overcoat and laid it lining-down on a more sparsely-flowered section of the woodland floor.
"They'll stain the material," warned Sam, hesitating before she sat.
"Only on the innnside. Who's going to know?" His eyebrow arched. "Apart from us..."
He lowered himself onto the outspread coat and offered her his hand. "Down you come, Miss Stewart. See what you can hear."
Sam lay face-down, chin on her hands, and squinted at the fragile, nodding sea of flower-heads now level with her gaze. She turned her chin and caught him looking down at her, an elbow resting on his one bent knee next to an outstretched leg.
"Comfortable?" he smiled. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes seemed to render his irises an even deeper blue.
"Colour of bluebells," mooned Sam, gazing back at him. "Your eyes. D'you know that?"
"Can't say I've ever thought about it," he dismissed the compliment. "When I shave, I'm looking at my chin. Otherwise there'd be carnage. Daily."
"In that case, it's my job to look, then." Sam propped herself up on one elbow and drew his face to hers. Their lips met in a gentle, probing kiss. And then a second. Sam's hand crept behind his head and tangled with his curls.
"The bells aren't ringing for me yet," she informed him archly between the second and third kiss. "Think we both need to be at ground level for the spell to work."
"You reckon?"
"Mmmm."
"You're sure?"
"Mmmm-hmmmh."
"I haven't got..."
She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"But we've never... without..."
"We'll be married in a week."
Sam licked her lips, suddenly aware that each of them was focussed on the other's mouth.
"I want to put my ring on now," she breathed, and reached around her neck to disengage it from the necklace.
"Let me." She watched his face intently as he opened her blouse and withdrew the chain, removed the ring, and slipped it onto her finger—for the second time.
"You know," he said, and bit his lip, "I married you in February."
"Oh, I realise," she nodded. "Still, a girl likes an occasion... fripperies... bows..."
"Quite understand," he said.
"And lipstick. What I wouldn't give..."
His eyes were on her mouth again. "You don't need lipstick. You don't have to advertise."
"You like me when I dress up, though. I've seen you giving me appreciative looks."
"Mwell," he conceded, caught out, "you don't have to advertise... now."
Sam's eyes narrowed.
"Only saying..." his hands flew up in a gesture of capitulation, "that you're lovely as you are. Or with lipstick," he added, just to be on the safe side.
"Now I understand," Sam observed, "why you let the criminals do the talking. The guilty always dig themselves a hole."
"As charged," he said, but his eyes glinted. "Where were we, though?"
"Right here." She pointed to her lips, then reached to trace a finger over his. "Let's see how red they get without the lipstick."
The rest came very easily, as it always did, the one small difference being that when her head turned to accept the kisses feathering her neck, an audience of delicate, azure heads was there to nod approval, wafting heady bluebell pollen like a dim narcotic haze across their lovemaking. They always had been careful of consequences until now. Now caution left them as he pressed her down into the soft pile of scilla nutans, ruining forever the pristine lining of his capacious overcoat—the uniform of serious men.
"Oh, God, Sam..." he breathed, "Can really feel you. Every nerve upon every nerve." His mind formed visions of the rain-soaked velvet moss that clung in soft pads to the dark banks of the gully, his body felt the ripples and the eddies of the stream.
And where better, in the sight of God (mused Sam), to feel such things, than on the cushioned mattress of a forest floor in springtime; where delicate cones of witch's thimble, swinging in the light breeze, cast a spell… and set the woodlands ringing in a joyful, unimagined peal of ecstasy.
"You see?" he whispered afterwards into her hair. "The legend doesn't lie."
Easter Sunday, 13th April, 1941
Difficult though it was to muster hopes of salvation with the threat of German invasion still a looming menace, the pleasant, sunny weather seemed none the less to have imbued the population of HastingsOldTown with Easter purpose. A stream of people filed downhill towards St Clement's Church, and Sam's hand slipped into the crook of Christopher's proffered elbow as they joined the loose procession.
When they reached the side-gate leading to the grey stone path that curved across the churchyard towards the South Porch, Christopher raised his hat to the verger's wife, standing there to welcome members of the congregation.
"Good morning, Mr Foyle! Miss Stewart... well, how nice."
Sam felt the tingle of smothered inquisitiveness behind the woman's simpered greeting. Oh, there'd been gossip, certainly, and much "neighbourly" interest in Sam's comings and goings at 31 Steep Lane. Even after Christopher had placed the announcement of their engagement in the Hastings Chronicle, the "looks" hadn't entirely stopped.
Not, that was, until the second weekend in March, when Sam's uncle, the Reverend Aubrey Stewart, had arrived unannounced on Christopher's doorstep, lugging an overnight bag.
"Hello, you two. I'm over on a mission. For your benefit, I hope."
As it turned out, there had been a clandestine family conference between the Lyminster and the Leavenham contingents of the Stewart family, and Aubrey had been elected to smooth the way.
Accordingly, that Sunday (prominently kitted out in clergy-collar), Aubrey had accompanied Sam and Foyle to church in an open show of support, both familial and ecclesiastical. Some deliberately engineered, but—as it turned out for both ministers—edifying hob-nobbery between Aubrey and Reverend Jameson had ensued. Both men shared, it appeared, a weakness for insects of the order Lepidoptera, and soon found themselves, in earshot of the amused couple, exchanging tips on how best to pin a Painted Lady to a piece of parchment.
Now, some weeks later, and with Reverend Jameson poised in the pulpit for his Easter sermon, Sam whispered in Christopher's ear, "Darling, you might like to nip across with some advice after the service... the pinning of unpainted ladies to the forest floor."
"Behave yourself," he growled.
Undoubtedly, Aubrey's visit had smoothed their way. Thereafter, the remarks behind gloved hands had ceased, and were replaced by nods of polite acknowledgement—a situation aided, naturally enough, by Sam's easy friendliness with people, and Christopher's established reputation in the local community.
Sam lingered at the church gates as they left St Clement's via the steep stone steps that led down to the High Street, and recalled their first time in the church together, one short year before. It was the day the King had called upon the nation to offer up its prayers to keep their country safe.
Sam wasn't one for miracles, but in the ensuing days, it had seemed as if three miracles had happened: Hitler's advance in Europe had faltered; the Luftwaffe had been grounded by a furious storm; and the English Channel, normally so turbulent, had settled to a glassy calm that lasted several days. And all the little boats had brought the boys home—over three hundred thousand men, lifted, shipped or sailed across to safety. Stripped of their weaponry, yes, but gifted with their precious lives.
With a squeeze of her fiancé's arm, Sam pressed him earnestly, "We've come a long way, haven't we?"
Christopher scratched under his hatband, conscious of the eyes upon them. "'Bout three hundred yards this morning."
"I meant us, Christopher."
"Yes, how could I forget?" he ribbed her. "You stood right here a year ago and said you wanted to become a nun."
"Tease all you like. You know precisely what I mean."
"I do." He shuffled, cast a low, self-conscious glance at others passing, then brought a hand across to enclose hers. "Before you, I was stranded," he admitted quietly.
They strolled down to the seafront. There he made to steer her west, but Sam resisted, hankering for the eastward route, towards the place where she had given Keegan a face-full of bin lid.
"Can't we walk up past the fishing huts?" she urged excitedly. "I like it along Rock-a-Nore. Reminds me of our first day!"
Christopher wrinkled his nose and tugged her firmly in the opposite direction.
"Scene of your former glory, you mean? Hm. Nasty smell up there in warmer weather. Some funny types, as well. Best stick with me."
"Always, Darling." Sam wrapped herself around his arm, immediately content.
Friday afternoon, 18th April, 1941
"Oh, no! Oh, Christopher!" Sam peered out of the window as they drew into Lyminster, and telegraphed her disappointment with a wail. "Miss Clements' daffodils have failed this year! She always has the most breathtaking display. And, oh," she tugged his sleeve, "look! Mr Pearson's garden's empty, too. Last year it was just crammed with flowers."
Christopher, who had no idea what manner of absent display he was meant to be mourning, tried for humour.
"Not blaming Hitler for the lack of spring flowers, I hope?"
"Whyever not?" Sam grumbled. "No dress, no cake... who else is there to blame?"
"But not the bells," he interjected. "Didn't get those."
Sam grinned. "No, certainly didn't get the bells."
Saturday morning, 19th April, 1941
Next day, as the bride processed into St Stephen's church on her Uncle Aubrey's arm, the reason for the empty gardens became clear: every single Lyminster daffodil and tulip had been harvested to decorate the nave especially for her wedding.
"You see, my dear," her father bent to whisper in her ear as she and Christopher stood before him at the altar rail, "if you had married during Lent, we couldn't have brought any flowers into the church to celebrate. But this way, everybody in the village has the chance to show you how they value you."
The Reverend Iain Stewart straightened then, and raised his hands in welcome to address the congregation with a beaming smile that drove all the customary solemnity from his ministerial tones.
"Dearly beloved," he began, his voice exuberant, "we are gathered here together in the gloriously floral sight of God, to join together this man and this woman..." he turned to where his wife sat, dabbing at her eyes in the foremost pew, "... our lovely daughter Samantha... in Holy Matrimony, which is an honourable..." he sniffed back a recalcitrant tear, and clasped his hands under his chin, "... which is an honourable estate..."
"Christopher," Sam whispered hopefully beneath her father's wedding welcome, "d'you suppose they've valued me enough to bake a cake?"
*** FIN ***
.
.
Additional Notes:
Bluebells are a favoured flower in European folklore and in fairy tales. I personally grew up with the Flower Fairy poems by Cicely Mary Barker, of which The Song of the Bluebell Fairy was a favourite. Amongst the fanciful names by which the bluebell is known is witch's thimble. It has a variety of scientific names, too. One is scilla nutans, which refers to the nodding character of the bell flower; another is the decidedly grand Endymion non-scriptus. In Greek Mythology, Endymion was a youth beloved of the moon goddess, Selene, who contrived to keep him young by sending him to sleep forever. Interesting angle, that! In the past, the perfume of bluebells was believed to have a sleep-inducing effect, which accounts for the use of Endymion in the Latin name of the flower.
...
Credit goes to PrairieMary for her clever phrase "the uniform of serious men".
...
Happy Easter from our two woodland bunnies. Sam and Foyle's virtual trip was to Marline Valley, Hastings.
GiuC