Title: FW 1942: Anticipating Easter

Content: Christopher Foyle & Barbara Hicks

Disclaimer: The characters in Foyle's War were created by Anthony Horowitz. No infringement is intended. The episode, They Fought In the Fields, which features the character Barbara Hicks, was written by Rob Heyland.

Summary: Following my story Boxing Day, Barbara Hicks is on leave from her work as a Land Army pole selector and returns to Hastings to reconnect with Christopher Foyle. Foyle shares with her some details of his career and the early years of his marriage to Rosalind.

A/N:
I have combined two of my early stories into one. Anticipating Easter was posted on the (first) Quietly Enigmatic Forum at Easter 2007, and Appreciating Easter was posted April through May, 2007.

Historical note: In 1942 Good Friday was on April 3rd

Part 1

Christopher Foyle paced steadily along the length of the train station platform, hands deep in his overcoat pockets, gazing from under his hat brim into the distance delineated by the steel rails until they arced horizontally around the low hill and were lost from sight. He halted at the edge, narrowed his eyes, and listened, with a slight tilt of his head, for any indication of a low rumble. Nothing yet.

Heaving a sigh, involuntarily he recalled, as he often did at train stations, that strange, brief, lucid dream, when he had finally fallen into an exhausted, grief-laden sleep two days after Rosalind's death – they were together, standing on the end car of a moving train, slowing at a station platform in a dark, undefined place, and unexpectedly, suddenly, she had stepped off, leaving him alone on the now accelerating train, looking back in shock and confusion as her figure diminished, fading from view… He had been stunned at the aptness of the image, and it still haunted him.

He turned slowly to retrace his steps, and another picture formed in his mind, of tracks running in converging lines to the vanishing point on a distant horizon – a symbol of his future as it had seemed to him for so many years: predetermined, unalterable, empty.
Then, only three months ago, his vision of the future had changed.
Barbara Hicks had re-appeared in his life.

When he had first met her through one of his cases in the spring of last year - exactly one year ago - he'd been intrigued to the extent that he had actually intended to ask her out, but she'd suddenly had to leave Sussex, been moved on by the Land Army, before he ventured to broach the idea with her. He'd had no way of contacting her and she had not written to him. Then at Christmas she had travelled to Hastings on leave, greatly surprising him by appearing on his doorstep - well, at the foot of his front stairs - and they'd spent a remarkable week in each other's company.

She had met Andrew, who had very much approved of her – Foyle smiled over the recollection of breaking the news to him when he'd arrived home at six in the evening on Boxing Day; it was a rare day when he could manage to render his son speechless – and then she had been moved on in her work as a Land Army pole selector.

They had corresponded copiously over the intervening time. It had taken him some effort of contemplation to begin to put his personal thoughts on paper, and to change his style from that of a factual and dry police report to something warmer and, he hoped, wittier. With practice and her encouraging responses he soon found it a welcome and enjoyable occupation. Her letters were full of enthusiastic and knowledgeable descriptions of the flora and fauna of her surroundings, and tinged with delicately-phrased expressions of longing for him… He found her writing, as a further revelation of the character of this woman he at once hardly knew and knew deeply, charming and surprising – and he had missed her terribly.

She could not get leave to visit him, and he understood that it would be difficult for them to spend time together if he were to visit her. He was not even certain where she was – his letters were forwarded to her by the Land Army office of the War Department – and all letters were opened and censored by the government; heavy black lines obliterated explicit and even indirect references to locations.

But she had got leave for the Easter holiday; she was coming down by train today, and he could not deny that he was nervous.
Not because he had any doubts; on the contrary, he felt wholly committed to building a life with her. It was just that their present circumstances were… complicated, and he had some trepidation of saying... or suggesting... or assuming the wrong thing.

After the rapid developments of their first forty-eight hours together at Christmas – they had, in fact, by the late afternoon of Boxing Day, agreed to marry – Andrew's presence had prevented further intimacies. Foyle knew that his son would not be making an appearance over the Easter holiday; and he had mentioned this in his last letter to Barbara, but had not dared to elaborate on paper the implications of this for the two of them. He did not have a telephone number for her, and she had not telephoned him after writing of her impending leave.

He had decided to cover all eventualities by reserving a hotel suite for her. But how to know if she expected or even…wanted it?

In any case, he affirmed to himself with a resolute lift of his head, whatever she wished was agreeable to him; he just wanted to be with her – to see her, to talk with her, to be close to her…

Abruptly he turned about and walked rather more quickly this time up the platform. The station, on this pale, overcast day, was occupied by a few dozen souls waiting to greet arrivals or start their own journeys, each absorbed in private thoughts and concerns, but some now beginning to take more than peripheral notice of the greying, middle-aged man who had measured the wooden boards in front of the station windows twenty times.

He could not sit and be still; the fingers of his right hand drummed an irregular tattoo against his leg through the lining of his coat.

Finally a distant but distinct noise asserted itself above the sounds of bustle and nearby conversations, a low chuff and rumble, growing louder and accompanied by a vibration of the ether – well, perhaps he only imagined the vibration.

As the locomotive rolled in, Foyle bit his bottom lip and took several paces backwards to better scan the windows of the cars, passing like frames of a celluloid film, each revealing a different but thematically connected vignette. Before the train came to a halt he spotted Barbara – she had found him first and was smiling out through the glass.

Instinctively reverting to the customs of his youth when he had done his courting, he raised his hat to her in a gallant salute, then, carried forward by the surge of anxious joy in his heart he strode alongside the door of her moving coach. When it stopped and she alighted, against all his usual propriety, he took her into his arms in a fervent embrace.

The sense of emotional completion suddenly overtook him; Barbara was moved by the tears glimmering in his eyes, but made no remark.

After a murmured exchange and self-conscious glances at the surrounding crowd, they realized that nearly every other couple was locked in a kiss of greeting or of parting; it seemed they were the only pair not kissing.

Their eyes met, acknowledging the heightened feelings swirling round the platform, and with a preliminary questioning lift of an eyebrow, to which she smiled her full assent, for the first time ever in his life, Foyle kissed a woman in public, reverently and longingly.

The war had its compensations, he thought…

Eventually they became aware of the dispersing of the crowd and the imperturbable porter standing a discreet distance to one side with his baggage cart.
Barbara indicated her case and he carried it to the taxi he had reserved.

As the cabbie stowed the case in the boot, Foyle held the rear door open for her, asking lightly,
"And, er, where shall I direct the driver- …?"

Barbara paused and faced him, and he felt her intelligent eyes searching his, moving past his feigned neutrality, which he instantly dropped, through his solicitous unease and beyond to his true wishes; he saw her brows raise slightly before she answered, and with one simple word, allayed his doubts and filled him with a calm certainty,

"…Home."

He smiled warmly, kissed her again across the top of the car door, despite the queue waiting impatiently at the cab rank, and repeated,

"Yes. Home."

Part 2

There was one thing that only a very few people knew about Christopher Foyle, and that was that he had been very good at marriage. That is, he certainly had been very good at marriage to Rosalind Howard, as his late wife's closest, occasionally envious friends and their disgruntled husbands had been well aware.

As a husband he had been even-tempered, an attentive listener, had shown interest in and appreciation for all her efforts around the house, in the kitchen, the nursery, the garden, and in her other pursuits, both artistic and charitable, and he had never forgotten that she was a person in her own right and not simply his wife.

In public with her he had never been anything less than a perfect gentleman. He had quietly admired her and was proud of her, and showed his admiration by continuing to behave, even after years of marriage, as if he were courting her, as if he still lived in hope of winning her consent to spend her life with him.
This was not out of any sense of unworthiness or inadequacy or self-doubt on his part, despite the difference in their upbringing, but was the sincere expression of his strong love for her; she inspired him to be the best man he could be, and he had felt this was her due.

But Christopher Foyle was no longer the same man who had flourished in the married state; he had lived ten long, quiet years bereft of his bride, and it had changed him. Those old friends who had known him before, now saw, on the rare occasions that he would accept an invitation to drinks or a dinner party, a kind of dusty shadow of the warm, witty and expansive fellow he once had been.

When it came to romance he knew he was sorely out of practice – he had not even considered asking a woman out until Andrew had gone up to Oxford, and the results of those efforts had been, not disappointing, but… uninspiring.

Then, in the spring of last year, he had met Barbara Hicks. His first encounter with her – and he knew it was a cliché, but nonetheless it was true – had lit a spark, and kindled a glow deep within him that burst into full flame when she had returned at Christmastime.

Although he and Barbara had spent Christmas week more or less together, and though he had, at 12:01 on New Year's morning presented her with a ring, he could not count that week as a test of his chivalric abilities because it had begun with his complete surprise at her appearing on his doorstep; he had not been prepared, and he did not at first know that he loved her.

It had taken him less than forty-eight hours to decide that he could and that he did, for in that time he had recognised in her something very familiar and heartening, a variation on the intelligence, humour and similarity of views that he had shared with Rosalind and that he had been so completely content with.

Now he would have an opportunity to discover if his aptitude for marriage was still there. On this Easter holiday he and Barbara were to have three days in which to continue to get to know each other – hardly time enough to establish any domestic patterns or precedents – but time, at least, to exercise his long unused gallantry.

Things had begun very well, he felt, at the train station; in the taxi they had exchanged summaries and updates of their respective work news, which had lasted the entire drive to his house – their home, as he was now learning to think of it – and when they had shut the door on the outside world… well, he had been as gentlemanly as he could be in the face of Barbara's almost unladylike, and excitingly unrestrained eagerness to get upstairs and into the bedroom with him.

He, naturally, rose to the occasion and had done all he could to oblige her… several times.
Thus it was well after dark when they started to think about supper.
He told her he had got in the shopping for a simple meal together this first evening, and mentioned that he had reserved a table at one of the finer establishments in Hastings for the second.

"That sounds perfect." Barbara sighed as they lay comfortably in each other's arms. Then she teased playfully,
"So, you had anticipated staying in tonight…?"

"Well, thought you might be tired from your journey…"

"…Or from my arrival…?" Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

"As I recall, darling, downstairs, it was you–."

But she stopped his protest with a laughing kiss.

Wishing to be completely honest with her, he said,
"Sssuppose I should cancel the hotel reservation, hmm?"

"What? Christopher, you didn't really think I wouldn't stay–?"

"Well… I didn't want to presume…"

She looked into his eyes with a tender wonder,
"You are a rare breed, Mr. Foyle."

Then, reaching for him under the covers, added,
"You may… presume… whenever you like…"

And so, to her surprise and delighted pleasure, he did.

Even later that evening, after they had at last ventured out of the bedroom to dine – a meal he prepared that wasn't nearly as simple as she had been led to expect – they tidied the kitchen together.

Taking up the tea towel, Foyle smiled to himself – 'One precedent established: when one cooks, the other does the washing up.'

She tilted her head and asked him quietly,
"What are you smiling at?"

"This… is nice; this feels very… right."

"Familiar…?"

"Y-yes. But different, too."

Barbara smiled, finished wiping down the table and rinsed the dishcloth in the sink; as she hung it on the rail she asked lightly,
"Have you always been so good-tempered?"

Foyle made a sound suspiciously like a snort,
"There are several people at the station who'd take issue with that description."
He reached for another plate and began drying it.

"But that's work; I meant… at home."

Turning, he smiled at her,
"Home… is a sanctuary."

"Yes, it should be, shouldn't it?"

He leaned in to kiss her cheek,
"Absolutely."

She continued to gaze at him watchfully, and so he volunteered,
"…Of course, takes time to properly appreciate that. In my hot-headed youth I occasionally brought my work problems home with me. I suppose that was because, in those days, I had no authority, no control over things. Always found it… difficult, working as a subordinate to others; still do."

"So, you took out your frustrations on Rosalind…?"

Taken aback, but understanding the origin of her assumption in her own unhappy experience, he answered gently,
"No. No, certainly not. I meant… I'd come home full of my troubles – my frustrations, as you say – and… burden her with them. I was just letting off steam, but Rosalind began to believe I was really unhappy with the job. When I realized that I… learned to phrase things differently, to discuss things differently, so as not to worry her. Truth was that - I was impatient. But I knew I'd be promoted fairly quickly."

Barbara accepted the glassware from his hands as he dried it, and placed it in the cupboard. She was deeply thoughtful for some moments, then looked up, smiling,
"'Hot-headed?' I can't imagine that description in association with you…"

Foyle grinned, eyeing her sideways,
"Yep; nearly got myself sacked a number of times."

"I'm intrigued…! Tell me."

"Well, tell you of one; over tea in the sitting room."

When they were settled, Foyle in his chair and Barbara on the near end of the sofa, she watched him with full attention, and he stroked the side of his head contemplatively for a few moments.

"All right; but you mustn't form the impression that I was often insubordinate; this was an exception."

"Duly noted." She responded gravely, suppressing a smile.

He related the incident.

"A man had been arrested on suspicion of breaking into a private residence after a neighbour had telephoned the station; he had been placed in the cells, but no one had been able to communicate with him as he spoke no English.

That evening I was on the lowly constabulary duty of bringing meals to the prisoners, and when I responded to his unhappy 'merci' with 'de ne rien', he nearly threw himself at my feet. With the little French I had picked up in the War, I determined that the house belonged to his niece and her husband, and that he was a locksmith by trade; he had merely been repairing a sticky lock for them while visiting for a few weeks.

"Well, I had the frantic niece down at the station in minutes, and he was released immédiatement. The sergeant released him, in point of fact. However, when I arrived for my shift the next day, the Inspector called me into his office and interrogated me as to what grounds I'd suggested for releasing the foreign prisoner. I explained the circumstances, but when he berated me for my unauthorized and precipitous action – I… er, answered back …in French."

"Oh dear; nothing derogatory, I hope?"

"No, but to his ears… it might as well have been. Only thing that saved me from summary dismissal was the timely arrival of the niece's husband's father, who, as it happened, turned out to be a rather prominent magistrate. He insisted on thanking me personally – and in front of the Inspector, who was put in the position of having to concur with a number of complimentary remarks as to my conduct in the matter."

Barbara smiled warmly at him, then asked,
"What was Rosalind's reaction to all this?"

"Well, I knew perfectly well I shouldn't have responded." He rubbed the side of his nose,
"…I, er, mmmay not have confessed that particular reprimand to her…"

"You kept things from her, to spare her feelings…?"

"Not at all; never had secrets from her, and ...never felt I had to protect her from the details of my work – other than one or two really unsavoury cases – but... I learned that it did neither of us much good for me to indulge in complaints. No, instead I'd often lay out some problem I was struggling with and… hearing her views on it would help me to decide how to approach the thing."

"You respected her judgement?"

"Very much so. In fact, I–." Foyle stopped suddenly, frowned and stared. Barbara watched his face, curious at first, and then concerned.

"Christopher?"

The distant, lost recollection had loomed up like a ship in the fog, and his words came out in hesitant disbelief,

"In... fact, I… once came home in the middle of a shift to seek her advice…" Still frowning at the unexpected memory, he turned slowly and looked at her, biting the inside of his lip,
"I'd… forgotten."

"When did this happen?"

He took in a long, slow breath,
"I was still a constable on the beat… It was not quite two years after I'd returned from the war…"

Now the scene began to flash into his mind like a series of disconnected moving pictures:

Racing down the street to answer the shrill summons of the police whistle; seeing the half-dozen frightened civilians and Bank staff rush out onto the pavement; hearing only then a shot, and pushing cautiously through the great brass doors to find PC Dunlop writhing on the marble floor, bleeding from the thigh. Finally, confronting the distraught man in the khaki uniform, who held the Bank manager struggling in the grasp of his arm.

"Would you tell me about it?" Barbara asked quietly.

Foyle nodded thoughtfully, and then recounted the events to her:

A young veteran, down on his luck and much the worse for drink, had pushed his way into the office of his former employer to demand his old job back. At the arrival of the second policeman, he had stared fearfully, despondently, and pleaded,

"This is between me and him – I just want to talk to him; he won't listen!"

PC Foyle had begun talking to the man – just a boy he looked; a couple of years younger than himself in age but years younger in ability to cope with the wreck of his life – soothingly, reasonably, and had succeeded in persuading him to let the Bank manager, an old man looking older every minute, sit down on a chair.

He had continued to talk quietly as he bent to see to the wound on the constable's leg. Dunlop said in a strained whisper,
"Thank god it's you, Foyle. Sort this out, will you?"

Tying a makeshift tourniquet over the oozing bullet hole, Foyle remarked to the soldier how they had probably both done this a dozen times for their mates in the trenches, and the boy, his arm hanging limp, the gun forgotten, had answered faintly,

"Yes…"

Dunlop groaned in pain and the boy had looked stricken with remorse. He had been exhausted with anger, grief and confusion, and Foyle believed he was about to sink down to sit on the floor, and might have handed over his revolver in a few minutes.

"What's your name, corporal?" He had asked gently.

"McNeil, sir."

"You let those people leave, Corporal McNeil…?"

"Yes, sir."

The manager, now somewhat recovered from his initial shock, broke into their calm exchange,
"Let them!? See here, constable–!"

"Be quiet, sir!"

Foyle's sharp tone and sharper glare silenced the fuming official.
He continued in a friendly, reasonable manner.

"That was good of you, Corporal McNeil."

"This… is nothing to do with them. Just wanted to talk to Mr.- to try to put my life into some order…"

But a car had been sent from the station; it arrived noisily, siren blaring, and the young man had tensed and gone on the alert. Someone was shouting through a megaphone, demanding the suspect's immediate surrender and the release of the Bank official.

Foyle swore under his breath, and had put up his hand as he tried to reassure the veteran that this could all be sorted out. But the older man had leapt up in triumph, as if the danger had already passed, and, barking an invective about being a disgrace to the uniform, struck the boy weakly and maliciously across the face.

And then things had gone terribly wrong.

The soldier's arm swung the revolver up to fire and suddenly the old man lay surprised and dead on the floor. As Foyle rose from his knees into a crouch to drag Dunlop behind the cover of a marble pillar, the doors burst open and he saw rather than heard (for this memory had no sounds attached to it) police officers shouting and shots blazing and the boy falling backwards and shivering to the floor like a life-size rag doll – just as Foyle had seen so many other boys on the battlefield fall; and then he became aware of a hot, searing pain in his left arm and looked down, puzzled, at the ripped up cloth of his tunic. He'd ignored the pain and jumped to his feet, disgusted, cursing,

"You bastards! You bloody, stupid bastards! He was about to give himself up! This is all your doing!"

The sergeant, a twelve-year veteran of the force, had stared in stunned confusion and disbelief for a moment and then turned on him in a fury,
"Get out of here Foyle! Get the hell out!"

He had taken one last look at Dunlop, the two had exchanged a glare of understanding, and he had stormed out, angry and sickened at the waste of two lives.

He'd talked to no one – he'd simply kept walking fast until he found himself at his own door. And he had crashed in with such a racket, hurling his helmet to the floor, that his wife had picked up a heavy iron skillet before peering around the kitchen door frame. She stared at him with concerned surprise, both for his noisy entry and for the fact of his coming home in the middle of the day at all.

"Christopher, what on earth –?" Then she saw his face; she left her would-be defensive weapon behind and rushed to his side.

"What is it; what's happened?"

He stood glaring down, breathing heavily, his chest heaving and his fists on his hips. Still too upset to speak, he shook his head slowly in carefully controlled anger.

Rosalind waited, but saw the blood dripping off the edge of his left hand onto the floor.
"Good god, you're hurt! Christopher… you're bleeding."

Foyle lifted his hand slightly,
"Oh. Yes. I'm sorry…"

"Please… Come into the kitchen."

She did not touch him, but turned away in hope that he would follow her. She positioned a chair for him, took down the white tin box that held first aid supplies and set it on the table. He walked through the doorway and began to unbutton his tunic, but found he could hardly raise the arm.

Rosalind noted the gleam of sweat on his upper lip, the pallor of his skin as she went to help him.

Removing the dark tunic revealed a startling red stain on the torn white sleeve; she undid his tie, glancing at his grim countenance, and removed his shirt. The wound was a long but shallow one, an oblique slash across his upper arm.

He sat, tense and quiet, while she bathed and disinfected it and applied a bandage. Only when she had finished did he seem to come out of the grip of the strong emotion that had seized him; he passed a hand over his eyes and leaned his right arm on the table, his fingers across his mouth.

Rosalind said carefully,
"I don't understand why they've sent you home…"

"Haven't sent me home. I just… I couldn't go to the station – I might have said something I shouldn't."

She sat down in a chair facing him.
"Where did this happen?"

"Alliance and Leicester Bank."

"A robbery?"

"No."

After a deep breath he told her what had transpired.

"This was from a police revolver, then."

"Yes."

"And you really felt the wretched young man would have given himself up?"

"I'm convinced of it."

"Constable Dunlop will back you up."

He glanced up at her worriedly.
"Hope so. I don't know."

"You'll have to be very careful how you give your report. Will you be able to speak to Dunlop first?"

"I'll try to." He dragged a hand over his deeply furrowed forehead. "…I'd best get back."

But he made no move to rise, knowing he hadn't a clear plan to go forward with.

"Go to the hospital."

She had spoken so definitely that he stared up at his pretty, young wife as she fetched his shirt and began pulling the bloody sleeve over the bandage. She answered the question in his eyes.

"They'll have taken Dunlop there."

"Yes."

"Then go there." They looked steadily into each other's eyes.
"Christopher, find him and talk with him. No one will fault you for showing concern over a fellow constable wounded in the line of duty."

With a burden of doubt and worry suddenly lifted, he stood so that she could fasten the shirt buttons and help him with the tunic and necktie.

"Yes. You're right."

Foyle focused his gaze on Barbara, and smiled slightly,
"And she was right; it was the best thing I could have done under the circumstances. I was able to see Dunlop alone and we agreed on how to present the facts in such a way that neither of us openly criticized the sergeant, but our reports made it glaringly clear that his bad judgement had resulted in the deaths of two civilians."

Barbara nodded,
"That was a very difficult situation. …But, mightn't you have come to that solution yourself?"

"Well… not in the heat of it." he admitted.
"No, if I hadn't gone home… I'd probably have stormed straight into the Chief's office."

"'Hot-headed.'" She nodded slowly.

"…Unconsciously... I'd already recognised the value of my wife's calm influence."

"Yes." Barbara smiled. "And… what became of the sergeant?"

"He was moved to a desk job. Shortly afterwards I did a stint as Detective Constable, transferred back to Uniform for a year as sergeant, and I've been in Detective branch ever since."

"A very rapid ascent through the ranks." She said appreciatively.

"Well… my immediate superiors generally found it as uncomfortable to have me under them as I found it being in a subordinate role."

"Still do…?" She ventured a small smile.

He only twitched his lips in reply.

"And yet, Christopher, you don't strike me as an ambitious man…"

"N-no; simply wanted to be in a position to carry out my work with the fewest obstacles, really."

"In other words – the boss…?"

"Well, I'm only the local boss. But it suits me, ...er, that is, it suited me… until this war..."

He rubbed at his temple in a gesture of frustration, but stopped as Barbara rose and came to sit on the carpet at his feet. Resting an arm across his knees she gazed up at him.

"Chances are, if you'd transferred to a branch of the War Office, we would never have met…"

Foyle smiled warmly and held her hand,
"Well, that would be unthinkable. They'll just have to get on without me, I suppose."

The End.