Disclaimer: I should really have just created a boiler-plate disclaimer the way that my fantastic Beta, GiulliettaC, did. I'm starting to run out of new ways to say that I don't own "Foyle's War."
Author's Notes: When I started this novella, back in November, this was actually the third chapter that I wrote. It's been tinkered with since then, of course, but the bulk of that first draft has actually survived more or less intact. I meant this chapter to be a sort of homage to the absolutely amazing movie, "The Best Years of Our Lives." It came out in 1946 and followed three American GIs and their struggles to re-adapt to civilian life after returning home from WWII. It won a slew of (very deserving) Oscars, including Best Picture. An absolute must see.
And now, on with our chapter...
December, 1942
After charging Jane's murderer and making a start on the associated paperwork, Paul left the station with Sam, and went to get a bite to eat. Sam thought that Paul still seemed a little abstracted and rather quieter than usual, but it had been such a tiring day – for him especially – that she didn't think much of it. When they had gained the pavement after settling up, Sam assumed that Paul was going to see her home, but instead he stopped and took her hand.
"Sam, do you mind if we went round to my place first? There's a lot that we need to talk about, and I wanted to…show you something."
"Alright, Paul," Sam agreed after a pause. She thought that she had a good idea of what he was hinting at. There hadn't been any real opportunity before now, to talk about what Jane's death meant for their own relationship. And even without suspicion coming to rest on Paul at the start of the investigation as it had, it would have been too much like dancing on the woman's grave to begin making plans that very first day; it wouldn't have been decent. Sam supposed that waiting two days would still seem indecent to most people, but after the rather harrowing events of the past few days, she was past caring.
They walked along quietly, Sam's hand nestled in the crook of Paul's arm. Paul seemed wrapped in a brown study, his face that of a man facing down some terrible specter. His expression rather worried Sam – hadn't Paul's name been cleared without a shadow of doubt? – but she decided to wait for the privacy of his sitting room before taking him to task.
Paul let them in and hung up their coats, then led the way to the sitting room. Instead of steering her to the sofa, which she had expected, he sat himself down in an armchair, and indicated that Sam should take the identical one that stood at an angle to it. Despite the more intimate setting, Paul's discomfort seemed to have increased rather than abated; he was leaning his elbows on his knees, his hands running through his hair. He looked as though he were in agony.
"Paul," Sam leaned forward and touched his arm tentatively, "Darling, what on earth is wrong?" He straightened up and looked at her with eyes wider than usual, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he could compel himself to speak.
"I want to ask you to marry me, Sam," he finally managed, with difficulty.
"Oh, Paul…" Sam began, her face lighting up with pleasure.
"Wait, Sam," Paul begged, reaching for one of her hands and squeezing it convulsively, "Don't say anything yet. First I have to know…" He trailed off helplessly, swallowed, and began again, "You have to know everything. You have to know what it's really like."
"What?"
"My leg. Will you let me show you my leg?" Taken aback, there was a pause before Sam could reply.
"I love you, Paul," she said firmly once she had recovered from her surprise, "Your leg doesn't bother me in the least. It never has."
"Please," he persisted, "I can't ask you to make this kind of a decision without seeing things as they really are. You say it doesn't bother you, but you can't know." He paused again and Sam mentally cursed Jane for having left these festering wounds in Paul's soul. She hoped the other woman was burning in hell – not necessarily for all eternity, but at least for a fortnight. "If…after… you don't think you could face it, I won't blame you," Paul continued, "I'll manage. But will you let me…?"
Sam's first instinct was to protest again, with an indignation almost bordering on anger. She wasn't Jane. She had never shared any of that woman's views of Paul and his legs. But, of course, she knew that Paul must realize that. If he felt that he needed to ask this of her for his own peace of mind, then Sam was willing to acquiesce. "Alright, Paul," Sam agreed, releasing his hand.
Blushing brick red, Paul bent down and began methodically folding up the left leg of his trousers. Sam watched with an odd sort of detachment as he fumbled slightly with the fabric. She recalled the first time she had met Paul, when she and Mr. Foyle had collected him from the hospital and driven him home. He had been on crutches, the empty trouser leg of his army uniform pinned up. Sam admitted to herself that she had sometimes, in the early days of their friendship, entertained some curiosity about what the prosthesis looked like and how it worked. But it was such a private thing, and she hadn't known if Paul would mind her asking. Then later, it had become such a natural part of him that she had forgotten there was anything about which to ask.
Paul kept working at the fabric of his trouser leg until it was past his knee, then detached the prosthetic from what remained of his left leg. He propped the prosthesis against his chair, and leaned back. He tried to meet Sam's eyes but found he could not. He felt naked and on display, as though he'd just removed every stitch of clothing he wore. He tried to marshal his thoughts into some order and coherence.
He'd stopped being angry at Jane a long time ago, had stopped thinking about her and their life together. He'd let Sam and his growing feelings towards her push out those other things, started in these past months to let himself imagine sharing a life with Sam. It would be something like that week she had spent with him after being bombed out. Only much, much better, because it would be permanent, and they could share slow dances, share kisses, share a bed…
But then Jane had turned up again, reviving a host of painful memories from their time together after his return from Norway. And then Jane had turned up dead. And Paul had found, amidst the horror and bewilderment of coming under suspicion for her murder, that all of the feelings of helplessness, of inadequacy, of frustration that Jane had inspired in him had resurrected themselves. They got between him and Sam. They made him afraid that if Sam married him without this chance for full disclosure, then she would find, in the end, that she couldn't stomach his leg and his prosthesis either. And then everything would be as dust and ashes.
He had told himself umpteen times that this new fear was completely irrational; that it had no basis whatsoever in his history with Sam. She had known about his leg from the first and that had never kept her from seeing him as a whole person. She had asked him to dance, that night long ago, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. It appeared to have never crossed her mind that he might not be physically capable of doing anything.
But then, some dark part of his brain would whisper treacherously, usually with Jane's voice, Sam has only ever seen the outer image that you project to the world. The prosthetic hid under his trouser leg, invisible to all outsiders, only manifesting itself in the slight unevenness of his gait. If Sam saw his leg at it really was, stripped of all protective coverings, maybe her reaction would be different.
He finally dared to glance at Sam, trying to gauge her expression. She had picked up the prosthetic, turning it over curiously.
"It's made of aluminium," Paul found himself saying automatically.
"Yes, I remember. You told me that once," Sam replied, somewhat absently. She set the prosthetic down beside the chair and leaned forward to look at his leg proper – or rather, the stump below his knee where the doctors had amputated his leg. Her eyes followed the network of old scars that covered it. She reached her hand towards his leg, then hesitated. She had never touched any part of Paul below his waist, clothed or otherwise.
"May I?" she asked, looking up at Paul's face and meeting his eyes. He nodded mutely, biting the inside of his bottom lip, and his whole body tensed, as though bracing itself for surgery without anesthesia. He felt the tips of Sam's fingers brush his skin, gently tracing some of the scars, felt her hand withdraw.
"Does it hurt?" Sam asked. She supposed there must be other questions she could ask or ought to consider asking, but that was the only one that came to mind.
"No, not really." Paul could still feel the painful blush that suffused his face and neck, but he had recovered his ability to speak. "And when it does," he continued, "it's usually the part that's not there that I feel hurting, not what's been left behind. When I was first back from Norway…I would feel this itching in my foot. Except, of course, the foot was no longer there. So I couldn't scratch it. They call it 'phantom pain'."
"Oh. How terribly unfair." There was a long moment of silence between them.
"What do you think?" Paul managed at last. Sam looked up again.
"I think…" she began tentatively, willing the words to come out just right, "That the doctors and the other men who made your prosthesis are frightfully clever. Because it works so well and seems so natural when you're wearing it and moving about. And I think," she continued with emphasis, capturing his hand once again, "That you are one of the most tremendously brave men that I know. I remember watching you learn how to walk again. First you were on crutches, then you used a cane, and then you didn't need anything. And you haven't needed any help, for ages and ages. Years now, Paul. I've seen you walk, and run, and dance. I'm so proud of you, of everything you've accomplished. I love you. I love every last bit of you, right down to the sole of your prosthetic foot. You can't scare me away with it; I'm staying firmly where I am."
Sam hadn't expected Paul to start crying when he realized, properly, just what she was saying. All of the stresses and emotions of the past week seemed to come together, seeking catharsis, and her acceptance released them all, quite overwhelming him. Paul sat in his chair, shoulders heaving, one hand covering his streaming eyes. Sam knelt by the side of his chair, patting his back and murmuring his name, murmuring endearments, sprinkling kisses on his hair and his ear, while Paul worked to get himself under control.
"And now," Sam added briskly, resuming her seat once Paul had managed to calm himself and was blowing his nose in his handkerchief, "I think you should put your leg back on, adjust your trousers, and propose to me properly." She folded her hands in her lap and crossed her ankles in a pose of exaggerated maidenly primness. Paul started to laugh, somewhat shakily, and Sam watched him reverse the earlier process, putting the prosthesis back on and then unrolling his trouser leg.
When everything had been returned to its usual place, Paul fetched a small box from the drawer in one of the end tables. Then he braced one hand on either side of Sam's chair and knelt down on one knee.
"Samantha Stewart," he said deliberately, opening the box and displaying a ring, "Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"
"Absolutely, Paul," she replied immediately, her eyes never leaving Paul's, and a smile lighting up her face. He slipped the ring on her finger and only then did she look down curiously at his choice. It was an opal, the size of a grape, milky white but full of veins and flecks of red fire so that the stone seemed to glow rose, the whole surrounded by brilliants. "Heavens," Sam gasped, "It's lovely, Paul."
"As soon as I saw it in the shop, I knew it was meant for you," he replied. He'd purchased it months ago, while Sam was still in hospital, recuperating from her exposure to anthrax. He'd wanted something tangible on which to hang his dreams and plans for their future together, and in these past months it had almost become a talisman, something that he would look at and finger when the difficulties of their situation left him frustrated or gloomy. Privately, Paul thought the stone somehow looked like a morsel of Sam's soul made concrete, but it sounded like too ridiculously fanciful a thing to say out loud, particularly when he felt uncomfortably aware of what a spectacle he had already made of himself this evening.
Paul had a little difficulty extricating himself from his kneeling position, but Sam helped him up, then stood herself. And suddenly she found herself wrapped in his arms, his lips pressed to hers, in a crushing embrace. With some small effort, Sam freed her own arms and wrapped them around Paul's neck. There was a fierce possessiveness in Paul's kiss that Sam had never experienced before, but she gloried in it, unreservedly matching his ardour with her own. When they finally broke apart, both panting, Sam smiled radiantly.
Paul returned Sam's smile, feeling almost drunk on his own happiness and the unbridled joy of the moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to stay the night, but he stopped himself. A real future was unfolding in front of them. They were done with the limbo in which they had been stuck for months. There was time now for a proper wedding. They could wait for that. There wouldn't be anything hole-and-corner about their engagement.
"I think you'd better walk me home now," Sam said, as though she had read his train of thought and agreed with the conclusion he had reached. Paul grinned back, a bit shamefacedly. He bent and kissed her one more time, gently, leisurely, spinning out this magical moment stolen out of time. Then he collected their coats and they set off towards Sam's place.
"You do realize that now you have absolutely no excuse not to come to Lyminster for Christmas, right?" Sam asked as they made their way through the streets, breathing in the frosty air. She had hated the idea of Paul being all alone over Christmas, but as early as a week ago, it would have been completely impossible to suggest bringing him home to her parents.
"Apart from the fact that your parents haven't invited me, you mean?" Paul teased.
"Oh, I'll take care of that tomorrow. There's still nearly a whole fortnight left until Christmas to make arrangements, and I have a letter all ready for the first post."
"You couldn't have known I would ask you to marry me tonight, Sam," Paul protested.
"No, of course not, but I wrote a letter ages ago, telling them all about you and all about us. I just couldn't send it until now." In fact, Sam had spent much of her recuperation time at St. Mary's crafting the letter, trying to find the best way to describe Paul and their relationship to her parents. She had read it over to herself every few weeks, sometimes making small changes; she knew whole passages by heart. The events of the past week meant that she would have to overhaul the letter substantially tonight. But that didn't matter in the least. A week ago, she and Paul had been facing the prospect of waiting for at least a year before they could get married. Now, miraculously, that interval had shrunk to mere weeks or at most just a few more months.
And now, not only had their waiting time been shortened, but everything else had been simplified as well. Instead of having to talk her parents round to the idea of a son-in-law who was a divorcé and a marriage at the registrar's, all she had to do was say that Paul was a widower. Done and dusted. There would be no need to expand on any of the details of his first marriage.
Sam was almost sorry when they reached her door and they had to part for the evening. She and Paul spent several delicious minutes on her doorstep. This evening, his kisses were everything that Sam could wish for: long, ardent and lingering, leaving her lightheaded and trembling. When Paul finally tore himself away and Sam let herself in, Mrs. Lovell knew at once by her rapturous expression that Paul had proposed and been accepted. The landlady spent several minutes admiring the engagement ring before Sam excused herself and climbed up the stairs to finish writing a letter that would throw the Lyminster rectory into a positive ferment when it arrived, less than twenty four hours later.
More Author's Notes: I was really hoping to avoid an announcement of this kind, but I have now officially run out of banked chapters, so this story is going to have to go on a short hiatus while I deal with the vagaries of Real Life (in this case, hosting Passover for the very first time). I hope that I'll be back within a few weeks, so either keep checking back or just click "Follow" for this story. And in the meantime, I think I have left you all (not to mention Paul and Sam) in a comfy resting place.