Ch. 13

Sam had been drawn to detective novels, long before she was assigned to be Foyle's driver, because she liked the neat way that those books divided the world into good and evil. Of course, part of the fun of the detective novel was trying to figure out who was good, and who was not; the truly great writers were the ones who kept the reader guessing until the very end. In the real world, Sam had always felt a giddy sense of relief once Foyle and Milner had established which suspects were innocent and which were guilty; it relieved her of the tension of having to keep too many options open in her head at the same time. It did not occur to her that Foyle might feel the same sense of relief at ending a case, nor did she suspect the enormous amount of responsibility that went with making a final arrest. If he were wrong, the risk of committing an injustice was tremendous. And Foyle also knew, though Sam did not, that the risk to his career was even greater if Andrew had had even the most miniscule relationship to the murder, and if it were found out that DCS Foyle had refrained from investigating him because Andrew was his own son.

Sam also could not have known that Foyle and Andrew had long disagreed about how to treat women. Andrew thought that his father was old-fashioned and stodgy; he imagined that Christopher Foyle had had only one woman in his life, and she had been his mother. In Andrew's eyes, his father was a heartbroken widower who failed to see how much more to life—and love—there might be for him, if he only took the chance.

Andrew, in contrast, took too many chances, or at least Foyle thought so. It wasn't so much that he begrudged Andrew the opportunity to sow his wild oats—God knows I had that kind of fun in my day, Foyle thought—but Foyle was distressed by just how profligate Andrew was in his attentions towards women. Ever since Andrew had turned 16, Foyle couldn't keep the girls' names straight. Eliza, Peggy, Myrtle, Elinor—every week, it seemed, Andrew had a new best girl. Even when he had gone away to Oxford, his letters were full of mentions of outings and goings-on and co-ed parties. And then there had been the unfortunate incident in which an Oxford don had caught Andrew necking with the don's half-dressed daughter in her bedroom.

The daughter had claimed that Andrew had forced himself on her, but Foyle doubted this: he knew that Andrew was the kind of man who would never need to steal his kisses. Women were all too eager to give themselves to him. But the don believed his daughter's cry of "rape," of course, finding it impossible to reconcile himself with the idea that Myra might have willingly invited Andrew into her bed. The don threatened to bring the incident up with the university council, and it was only the hasty intervention of Foyle and Commander Howard—and the daughter's hasty retraction of her accusation—that prevented Andrew's expulsion from the university. Since then, Foyle had watched Andrew's goings-on with women with an air of exasperation and resentment, knowing that if anything went wrong, Andrew would expect his father to help him work things out.

Sam was right, Foyle thought, when she told me that I shouldn't worry so much about getting him out of the RAF cell. He is a grown man; he should be able to solve his own problems. But Foyle still felt a responsibility to his son, and to Rosalind, as well. She would never forgive me if anything happened to Andrew, if I could avoid it. In this way Foyle rationalized his continued involvement in Andrew's affairs.

Besides fearing that Andrew would come to him one day with the news that he had got some girl pregnant, Foyle worried about Andrew forming a permanent attachment too early. Andrew had had chances that Foyle had never had—a top-rate university education, for one, and service in a prestigious military unit—and Foyle hated to think of his son's freedoms being curtailed by an unexpected pregnancy or an early marriage. Foyle had loved Rosalind Howard dearly, but he had often thought that they had married too young—too young for him and, especially, too young for her. She was only sixteen years old when she had agreed to wed him, a "temporary officer and gentleman," recently returned from the Great War.

His child bride had brought Foyle much happiness and lightheartedness in the difficult years when he was readjusting to civilian life and struggling to find a place for himself in the rapidly changing world around him. She was his bedrock, the voice of reason and simplicity from another age. Indeed, although Rosalind was so much younger than he was, Foyle often thought that it was she who acted as if she were living in the last century, she who had failed to grow into the strange new world that had resulted after the war. Rosalind was old-fashioned and quaint, dedicating herself to genteel pursuits such as painting and flower-pressing. Motherhood had suited her perfectly: she seemed to come into her own as Andrew's mother, delighting as much in his small accomplishments as if they had been her own. Rosalind would be so proud of Andrew, Foyle thought. Oxford, the RAF. But she would have spoiled him, too.

Foyle and Rosalind had disagreed about how to raise Andrew. When Rosalind's poor health made a second pregnancy impossible, they'd had to resign themselves to having a small family. Privately, Foyle thought that Rosalind was too indulgent with Andrew, and wondered if she would have lavished so much attention on him if they had had more children. For one, Rosalind had resisted sending him to school until he was seven years old, preferring to keep Andrew by her side as long as possible. When Andrew finally started at the local grammar school, he got into fights with the other boys and, on more than one occasion in Andrew's first year at school, Foyle had been called in by his teachers to discipline his son. The complaints were that Andrew wanted the other children to follow and obey him, and when they would not, he would become sulky and throw a tantrum, or hit another boy. As he grew older and learned to control himself, he made friends easily and soon came to dominate the classroom and sports pitch with his innate intelligence and his smooth athleticism. These qualities made Foyle proud of him, but he also noticed his son's arrogance, self-centeredness, and sometime disdain for others.

Andrew had always confided in his mother, and it was Rosalind who could bring out the best in him, even if she was sometimes too lenient. Foyle, on the other hand, was a peripheral parent, called in only occasionally when Andrew had exasperated his mother sufficiently so as to warrant the involvement of his father. Then, Foyle would appear, to "do his duty," as his own father used to say before whipping young Christopher. Though Rosalind herself had begged Foyle to intervene, and although she had not heeded his warnings to be stricter with Andrew, Andrew's spankings were miserable experiences for the entire family. Rosalind would shut herself in her room and cry as father and son confronted each other in the other room. The guilt that followed the spanking was almost more than Foyle could bear. He clearly remembered his own father's beatings, which bordered on excessive at times, and Andrew's whimpers (if somewhat exaggerated) reminded Foyle of his own failings as a parent. If Rosalind—if I—if we had only been firmer, he would think, we would never have had to arrive at this point. His anger at his son blended with his anger towards his wife, who resented Foyle's efforts to establish a more consistent discipline in the house and only permitted him to intervene when Andrew's behavior had reached such a point that a spanking seemed the only course of action to her.

When Rosalind died, Foyle swore that he would implement the discipline that had been so lacking in the house when she was alive. Rather than beat Andrew, however—a tactic he considered only as an ultimate resort—he devised punishments that would deprive his son of the things that were most important to him. If Andrew came home late from cricket practice, for example, Foyle would forbid him to play for another week. If Andrew were caught kissing a girl after church school, Foyle would deny him his weekly trip to the cinema with his friends, instead forcing Andrew along with him as he went fly-fishing. No amount of pleading or whining on Andrew's part could make Foyle back down, not even when Andrew professed to not caring about cricket or the pictures. But the worst punishment of all, in Andrew's opinion, was seeing the disapproving, disappointed look on his father's face when he had done something wrong.

Father and son fought bitterly throughout Andrew's adolescence, sometimes spending days on end without exchanging more than surface civilities with each other. But slowly but surely, Andrew came in line. As he went through secondary school, the complaints from teachers were fewer; indeed, it became apparent that Andrew was the cleverest pupil in school, and the headmaster recommended that he apply for a scholarship to attend university. He had done, and was accepted to read Latin at Oxford. Yet, even as Andrew made Foyle proud as he excelled in the classroom, there was a distance between the two of them that never seemed to close.

No matter how much Andrew accomplished, he felt as if his father's approval was always just beyond his reach. I'd have to bloody well become an MP for my dad to so much as acknowledge me!, Andrew thought at times. The harder he worked for recognition from his father, the more he missed his mother's sweet adoration, her easy confidence in him. While he had to admit that his mother had been a bit of a pushover, a bit too easy to win to his side, there was no one else in his life who'd shown him such affection and regard. Perhaps for this reason, Andrew was always trailing after one girl or another, looking for the one woman who could tell him that he was perfect, that he was clever, that he was loved. Certainly, his father could not do this for him.

The only thing that Foyle disliked more than interviewing his son's latest girl was having to interview Andrew himself. But after Violet told him that Andrew was the last person to see Connie alive—a fact she knew because Violet had spent the rest of the night with Andrew in a cheap hotel—Foyle had no choice but to treat his son as a suspect in Connie Dewar's murder. As he and Milner left Violet and the Bexhill depot behind, Foyle sighed deeply to himself and ran one hand wearily over his face. He tried to remind himself to calm down, to take things one step at a time, to not let himself get ahead of things.

"I'm sure Andrew is above suspicion," Milner said, trying to comfort him.

Foyle smiled bitterly. "He's not above mine," he replied.

He was not nearly as disillusioned with his son as his words implied. The meeting with Violet had been yet another occasion on which Foyle had had to learn, from a stranger, of something untoward that Andrew had done—in this case, he had told some pretty flirt of a girl that he'd marry her someday, in order to find his way up her stockings. The fact that Andrew had taken her not to a fine hotel but to some out-of-the-way place only made Foyle angrier. Even if he will seduce a girl in a hotel, he thought, I thought at least he'd be gentleman enough to take her somewhere respectable.

To himself, Foyle contrasted his son's easy-go-lucky behavior with his own handling of the situation with Sam. A part of him deeply resented Andrew's wandering ways, not least because his son permitted himself the kind of freedom with women that Foyle could not imagine at his age. He had seen too much of the world to ignore the kind of damage that men could do to women. Here I am, doing my best to keep Sam out of trouble—he grimaced to think that he was the one who might have got her in trouble. Trying to keep Andrew out of trouble, too, come to think of it! He smiled a bit, wondering how he had ever thought that his son would grow up. And neither Sam nor Andrew has the slightest idea of what can go wrong when two people fall in love!

Foyle remembered what it had been like to kiss Sam's sweet lips. How willingly she had gone along with his embraces! He berated himself, not for the first time, for having started something with his driver only to end it in such a sudden fashion. He liked to think that he had ended it for Sam's own good, but Sam's refusal to see things that way made it difficult for Foyle to believe that he'd really had her best interests at heart. What reason could I possibly have to turn down a lovely, intelligent woman like Sam? he asked himself.

With these thoughts on his mind, Foyle looked over at his substitute driver, one of the night constables—not as pleasant company as Sam, he thought to himself—who was ferrying him towards the RAF base.

"Where should I pull in, Sir?" the man asked him.

Foyle directed him to the commander's lodge and mentally prepared himself for what he suspected would be a very uncomfortable interview with Andrew.

Of all of the things that Andrew had to say to his father about the murder of Connie Dewar, what hurt Foyle the most was Andrew's insistence that his father knew nothing about his inner life. As he left the base, Foyle recalled that part of their conversation.

"…you make it your business to drive her home, you're one of the last people to see her alive, your photograph's found in her diary—" Foyle was enumerating before Andrew interrupted him, livid.

"And you've been investigating me!' Andrew nearly shouted in anger. "You sent Sam in to spy on me and my friends, and what's more, you've been digging up the dirt on Violet and me!"

"Well, why couldn't you tell me?" Foyle asked, in a reasonable tone. "How do you think I feel, to find out you've been sneaking off to some godforsaken place with some girl and I'm the last person to know about it?"

"Wh—what? Would you rather I'd taken her home?" Andrew scoffed, his eyes blazing. Foyle shrugged as if to say "I know, that was a silly thing to say."

"Well, do you love this girl?" he asked, instead, as if that made all of the difference, as if Andrew would even tell him that much.

"She's not 'this girl'! Her name is Violet! And it's none of your business!" He turned, as if to leave. "You know, Dad…I don't think you know me at all." Foyle glanced away from Andrew, pained. "I don't think you have any idea what goes on in my head." Andrew was just making things worse, and he knew it, but he couldn't stop himself. He scrutinized his father's face, as if to threaten him. "You come here, of all places, and you ask these questions, as if anybody really gives a damn! Connie's dead!" He was shouting now. "I had nothing to do with it! Rex had nothing to do with it! So just chuck it!" He turned and walked out of the hangar, then spun around, to give the coup de grace.

"And you can tell your little fancy woman to stop spying on us, while you're at it!" Foyle cocked his head and looked at Andrew. He kept his spine perfectly still and spoke without hesitation.

"Don't say that about Sam," he said, very steadily and very softly. "You know better than to call her that."

"Oh, really?" Andrew nearly spat out. "You think I don't know about you and her? You think I don't notice if someone spends the night in our house?" Foyle looked at the ground and put his hands in his pockets. "She did, didn't she?" Andrew asked. But Foyle could not deny it. Sam had spent the night—one night, he reminded himself—at Steep Lane. How in the world does Andrew know about that? Foyle wondered. If Sam so much as mentioned it to him, Foyle would be deeply disappointed in her. "You don't know what happened, Andrew," Foyle began. "Sam was bombed out of her flat and needed a place to stay for a while. She stayed with me for a night and then the Reids offered her a room."

"And that's it?" Andrew asked, incredulously. "Dad, I can't believe you're telling me this rubbish! Do you think I'm an idiot?" Foyle cringed at hearing the exact words he had earlier directed at Sam. Andrew continued. "I was going to come home that night, Dad. I was coming up the front steps when I heard voices—yours and Sam's. I decided it would be a lark to surprise you both, so I walked round to the courtyard and was about to come through the back door, when I saw you at the table."

Foyle drew his hand over his face, with the same expression of discomfort that he had made after leaving the interview with Violet earlier that day.

"What did you see?" Foyle asked, not wanting to betray anything, but anxious to know just how much Andrew had witnessed. He tried to recall what had happened at dinner. It was unlikely that Andrew would have heard their conversation all the way from the courtyard. Had he kissed her in the dining room? Foyle couldn't recall.

"You set the table, and then you went back into the kitchen, where Sam was still cooking," Andrew reminded him.

Inwardly, Foyle groaned. Suddenly, he knew what Andrew had seen. He remembered how he had come upon Sam reaching into the cupboard, her arms straining above her head, the nape of her neck damp and glistening from her bath. He had not been able to resist wrapping his arms around her and kissing her as he pressed into her back, and then he had turned her and… oh, God, how much had Andrew seen?

It was one of Foyle's most precious memories of Sam. He could easily remember how she had leaned back into him, welcoming him with her body; how fervently she had responded to his kiss. Now, learning that they had not been alone—that, in fact, what had seemed like their moment of greatest intimacy had been anything but that—Foyle felt as if that memory had been robbed from him.

"So you know," he said matter-of-factly.

"Yep," Andrew said, in unconscious imitation of his father.

"Well, there are a few things you don't know," Foyle said with irritation.

"Yeah, well, I don't suppose you'd care to tell me?" Andrew asked with sarcasm. "I mean, why didn't you just let me know that you wanted to bring her home with you? That's what a gentleman does, right? Doesn't take his driver to some out-of-the-way place to make love to her—instead, he does it in the peace and comfort of his own home, when his son's away. That's the advantage of being the Detective Chief Superintendent, isn't it?" His voice went falsetto. "Yes, sir, anything you say, sir, anywhere you want to go, sir."

Foyle visibly winced. "That's not how it is," he said.

"God!" Andrew continued, turning to face his father again. "You act like you're so superior, telling me how I should treat women, and all this time you've been consorting with Sam under all of our noses!"

"That's enough, Andrew," Foyle warned.

"It's always 'enough' when you're the one who's being investigated, isn't it, Dad?" Andrew replied, drawing out the last word in a bitter huff. "And here you are, acting all high and mighty with me, getting one from your driver on the side—she's not much older than I am, you know—and you have the gall to tell me where I should take Violet on my night off!"

For once, Foyle was speechless. He stared at Andrew, mouth agape. Perhaps his son was right. He really had no idea what went on in Andrew's head.

Some days later, Foyle sat down to compose a letter. It had taken him nearly all of a sleepless night to make up his mind to write it, but once he was certain of it, the words came easily.

Dear Andrew:

I am writing because I need your help. A young woman is dead, and I still need to know a few things about Connie and Rex before I can finally put the case to rest. I think you can tell me what I need to know. But I am also writing because I owe you an apology, and I hope you will accept it.

Andrew, you were right. It was none of my business what you were doing with Violet that night. In fact, if it was anyone's business, it was police business, and I should have sent Milner or someone else to interview you in my stead. It was wrong of me to stay involved, once I found out that you were the last one to see Connie alive. No wonder you got angry with me.

I also don't wonder that you think I'm an old hypocrite, expecting you to tell me about your love affairs, when you've caught me in what looks like a compromising position with my own driver. There's more to that story, and I can explain it better in person, but I'll try to put down a few words here.

I am not quite as bad as you think I am, and not quite as honorable as I'd like to be, either. Sam and I, we stepped out—if that is what you can even call it—for a short while. There is no excuse for it; you know how very attractive my driver is, but that hardly justifies the fact that she is a subordinate under my command and under my protection. I thought that there was a way to get around all of that, to just allow ourselves to be ourselves, but it can't ever be like that with Sam and me and I should have known better.

Sam was back to being my driver again—and only my driver—several months ago. I can't allow her to be anything more than that. I don't expect you to understand how I feel about Sam, because (as you so rightly pointed out) I have never talked to you about women before. But I do care about her, deeply, and though it may sound strange to you, the best way I can show that is by not pursuing her. I offered Sam the chance to transfer to another position, but she said she'd rather work here in Hastings. And it was her idea to work at the Bexhill fuel depot, not mine. So now Sam and I are in a rather uncomfortable situation, working together, and I'd prefer it if you didn't mention it to anyone else.

I'm sorry I didn't tell you all of this sooner, and sorrier still that you had to find out about it on your own and surmise that your father is more of a rake than he is.

Above all, I am sorriest that neither of us understands each other as well as we might.

—Your father

CF

Author's note: Please remember that it was very common at this time for parents to discipline their children using physical punishment. I don't mean to imply that Foyle was a cruel parent; I hope I have conveyed the conflict that he felt at having to discipline Andrew in that way.

Author's poll: Please let me know if you want me to continue with as much detail relating to the episode as I have been doing so far, or if you'd like me to move on and resolve things with Foyle and Sam sooner rather than later. To tell the truth, my momentum has faded a bit and I feel as if I need a bit of (romantic) action to get my writer's pen moving again, so I'm inclined to go with the latter.