Chapter 7

Andrew was beginning to worry. He hadn't been able to reach his father at all, either at his work or at the Naval Club, by the late afternoon. That earlier remark - that he expected to see Wainwright again at the end of the day - now took on an ominous quality, though from the few times he had met the man, Andrew couldn't imagine him as any sort of threat. Just before leaving his own work and setting out to find his father, his telephone rang.

It was the Matron at King's College Hospital, Camberwell.

He reached his father's ward without encountering any helpful or informed medical staff, and found him seated on the edge of a bed, leaning forward on his elbows, hands clasped together. His suit was torn and dusty, his open shirt-collar blood-soaked, and the back of his head bandaged. On coming around the side of the bed, Andrew noted further cuts and bruises, a splint supporting his wrist, and his left shoe off, the ankle encased in a bandage.

"Dad?"

Foyle straightened and looked up with an almost stricken expression.

"My god, Dad, what's happened? A car accident?" He dragged forward a chair and sat facing him.

"No, n-not a car accident. A bomb, Andrew. A bloody... German... unexploded bomb - nnearly under Sam's house."

He tried to run his fingers across his forehead, but they shook too severely. He cursed under his breath and dropped his hand onto the bed, pushing down hard onto the mattress to still it.

Andrew recognized the tremor as a resurfacing of battle stress - he'd seen it in enough of his fellow airmen and other veterans - but had never before seen his Dad affected by it.

"He's dead. Wainwright's dead."

Andrew tried to process this information,

"You - were at Sam's house, with Adam? And a bomb went off?"

"Yes. No - I was outside. I s-sent him into the house. I sent him in - and he was killed." His father's voice was low, suppressing a kind of anguish.

"Dad, you couldn't have known there was a bomb under it. No one knew."

"We argued. -If I'd hit him, knocked him down in the street, he'd still be alive."

Foyle couldn't look into his son's face, shaking his head slowly as he said,

"...He's dead. Ddidn't deserve that."

"No, of course not. But- how could you have known?" His voice trailed off softly.

He'd supported a number of his friends through a bad bout of post-combat trauma, the nightmares, shakes and remembered sheer horror, but he was finding it difficult to step into that role for his always-in-control father.

"Dad, what do you need? How can I help?"

His father only shook his head again, frowning deeply, distraught.

A voice with a kind, Welsh lilt answered Andrew's question, as a tall, white-coated figure stepped forward,

"A stiff drink wouldn't go amiss. Haven't any on hand, but if you could persuade him to accept a sedative, he'd be through the worst of it in a few days. He's badly banged up - We did five stitches under that gauze on the back of his head. Wrenched ankle, very sore knee, I'll wager - the patella was dislocated; bruised soft tissue and ribs. Sprained left wrist. And blasted lungs - we'll need to watch that, don't want pneumonia taking hold."

The doctor stood before them both, gazing down at Foyle with a practical compassion.

"...Not to mention the trauma to the soul." He rested a hand on the back of Andrew's chair.

"Haven't had a case like this since the air raids stopped. Let's hope you're our last victim of the Blitz."

Foyle looked up, guilt-ridden,

"There w-were two of us."

The doctor nodded, and said to him seriously,

"One lived, the other died. That's the War - there's no logic, no judgement, no fairness. Your places could easily have been reversed. The question is, Mr. Foyle, what will you do with the rest of the life - you - have?"


It had been nearly an hour later when Andrew Foyle, relieved and hopeful, watched his father sleeping soundly in the hospital bed at King's College, having at last agreed to the Doctor's recommended sedative. Sitting in the darkened ward alone at the bedside, he gave in to a filial impulse and reached out to touch his father's face, to smooth the lines from his brow and temple, something he had not done since he was small enough to be carried about on his arm, or draped sleepily over his shoulder.

He remembered how often that younger father's expression had been bright, amused, smiling, playful - a disposition that had influenced his own nature - and he mourned the loss of that contented man, gone as suddenly and as irrevocably as his beautiful, gentle mother. The lines now etched on his face - and Andrew regretted being the cause of some of them - spoke of his long resignation to solitude. As he contemplated this man whom he loved dearly, despite their occasional conflicts, he wondered how his father might have aged differently, had he passed the years happily alongside his beloved wife. And he wondered if some of those lines might yet be erased by the soft caress of a new loving hand. He bent over the sleeping figure and kissed his forehead before rising to leave.

Then he had had to perform the very difficult task of breaking the news to Sam of the death of her estranged husband. Informed of this mission, the doctor had given him sedative tablets to take to the new widow.

He had stayed in the flat that night, slept on the sofa. He couldn't have left her alone. She'd been dreadfully conflicted at the news, summoning up real grief for Adam, hardly daring to fully express her greater concern for his father's injuries, nor able to easily contend with the realization that she'd lived many months over top of a buried, undiscovered UXB. In the end Sam, too, had accepted the sedatives, and fell asleep from the combined effects of medication and emotional exhaustion.

The next morning, he had visited the office at Curzon Street, where Andrew had convinced Arthur Valentine that his father had been pursuing an inquiry related to a case for the Security Service, and, resorting to a bit of ham acting, and some moral pressure related to how they had first recruited his father, had got the man to agree, at the Service's expense, to arrange a private train carriage, hire a nurse, and to grant a medical leave of absence, fully paid, for an indefinite term. He had also left a note at the Reception desk advising them of Mrs. Wainwright's bereavement.

Later he and Sam had completed the dreadful necessary formalities with the police and Coroner's Office. Then they had visited Adam's parents, he as a family friend accompanying the grieving widow, leaving out, of course, any mention of the recent betrayal and brief estrangement. Sam had accepted their heartfelt offer to stay with them for a period of mourning. She confessed to Andrew, as he helped her move her few possessions, that although she hardly knew them, she felt she owed them some sense of closure over the life of their only son.

tbc...