L'Aimant – Chapter 35
Summary:
A group outing to the flickers proves to be a revelation—in more than one sense.
Set after "Broken Souls". November 1944 onwards.
Chapter 35: A rude awakening, and the prospect of a house guest.
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:
Chapter is a reasonably warm T rating.
...
Gratitude to dancesabove as ever for her beta-work and inspired, improving suggestions. x
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
He yawned, and his warm hand glid across her waist. "I think," he managed, with a sleepy smile, "you're flogging a dead horse, there. Maybe in the morning."
Panic struck Samantha! This had never happened. Never once. A desperate sort of bloody-mindedness suffused her. 'No' was not an answer she was used to hearing. Not in any form. She eased his hand away and disappeared under the sheets on an exploratory mission.
A drowsy voice above her head opined, "Wasting your time, Love. Unless you're on a mushroom hunt down there."
It was a full five active minutes later that Sam's startled eyes re-emerged above the bedclothes.
An eye cracked open opposite her. "Told you," he said. "Got a mind of its own. Come here." He drew her close and kissed her.
Sam relaxed and sighed.
"See?" he teased her sleepily. "That's what happens when you feed me up on cottage pie, and bracket me in Parkins' age-group."
Chapter 35
Saturday, 20th January 1945
The room was pitch-dark from the blackout when Christopher awoke, but noises in the street outside confirmed that it was morning—and no longer all that early. As his senses slowly sharpened, a sweetish, rich, unpleasant odour entered his nostrils, and after a suspicious sniff or two, he reached out for the curled-up figure next to him and gave a judicious nudge to coax it from its comfortable slumber.
"Sam. Sweetheart. There's an awful... can you smell...?"
"Meuh... wha...?" Sam rolled onto her back, smacking her tongue against her palate and turning sleepy eyes upon her husband.
She stretched her limbs and yawned. By the light of the bedside lamp, Christopher's noble nose, she saw, was wrinkled over a curled upper lip. She filled her lungs again—but this time through her nose. The unmistakeable smell of something cooked beyond redemption moved in and assailed her.
Sam sat bolt upright, dawning horror colouring her features.
"Oh, for crying out loud!"
She threw the bedcovers back and swung her legs to the floor. Scrabbling for her dressing gown, she pulled it hurriedly round her before charging headlong from the room.
"The wretched pudding!" she called back over her shoulder. "I left it in the oven on 'low' last night. It's got to be cremated to a cinder. Oh Lord, Christopher!"
He heard her fading grumbles as she scooted down the stairs: "...infernal nuisance... whole house going to reek of smoke... what you must think of me..."
Foyle rubbed his eyes and gave a lazy yawn. Whatever he thought of Sam was not about to be remotely influenced by improvised austerity puddings, burnt or otherwise. Samantha's toothsome charms far outweighed any kitchen offering she might concoct. Lifting the sheet this fine January morning, he was satisfied to note his own rude health was in physical attunement with his aspirations for the day ahead.
A broad grin spread across his face as he cocooned beneath the covers. Though this had been a complicated and inordinately stressful week, Foyle's plans for the weekend were devilishly simple. And they didn't involve him shifting very far from bed, or Sam.
Even as he lazed and dozed, ominous noises rose from the kitchen in a cacophony of clanks, bangs and oh-bothers that should have pricked his conscience into getting up to help. But somehow he fell prey to languor, turning once again onto his side and sliding one hand underneath Sam's pillow. He pressed his face into the soft depression where her head had lain, drinking in the lingering fragrance of L'Aimant, and took his refuge from the harsh fumes of incinerated cooking.
Eventually the sound of footfalls on the stairs announced his wife's return and roused him from his doze. Sam crossed the room, the picture of dejection, and collapsed onto the mattress next to him, poofing a lock of hair shy of her eyes.
"I had to throw the dish away, as well," she moaned, "and open all the windows and the kitchen door to let the smell out. It's like the Arctic downstairs. Honestly," she huffed, "I'm so miserably embarrassed with myself."
Christopher propped himself on one elbow and put on his best grave face. "Don't see the problem. We can shut ourselves in here against the cold," he told her reasonably. "Cheer up, why don't you?"
Sam levelled him a sceptical, impatient look. Irked by the downstairs smoking evidence of her failure as a housewife, she found that cheer was nowhere on her menu. "I'm sorry, but I just can't see how that's about to help, Christopher," she grumbled.
"Oh, I don't know..." Her husband's tone was nonchalant beneath a quirking eyebrow. With a flourish, he flung the bedclothes back.
"Carrot surprise?"
...
It took a good four hours to oust the smell, and as predicted, well before the odour left the house, the downstairs temperature inside 31 Steep Lane plunged to the level of a vault. Standing muffled in his heavy woollen dressing gown before a singing kettle on the hob, Foyle moved to finally close the kitchen door, then turned to scald the tea-leaves he had spooned inside a brown crock teapot on the kitchen table.
Feet apart, his hands sunk deep into the cavernous side-pockets of his woollen robe. A smile of modest satisfaction played around his lips, and though his gaze was fixed upon the brewing tea beneath its cosy, his inner thoughts were fully occupied with his lovely wife. He had no doubt she still lay as he'd left her, upstairs in the bedroom: face-down, half-covered, and naked on the mattress, and sleeping that enchanted kind of sleep that came as a side-blessing of exuberant and fulfilling intimacy.
Foyle's mouth twisted in a rare moment of personal pride that plunged him into a delicious recap of the last few hours. The images now swirling in his consciousness drew down his eyelids in a half-mast trance of vivid sensual recall...
"Carrot surprise?"
Sam raised a pale hand to her lips and tittered. He watched his schoolboy joke take root and send her into tiny bursts, then fits, of luscious giggles. And they delighted him, as might a light cascade of river-water over rocks. This woman—how he loved the ease with which she filled his soul with gentle music; infused his muscles with a searing fire.
As he let the sheet drop on his prank and reached across to draw her to him, soft lips on soft lips, the sickly-sweet aroma of incinerated carrots floated from her hair. But he was not the least perturbed to breathe more deeply of it. This was Sam, and he would take her as she came, in any state, in any mood, in any circumstance, and bless his great good fortune as he did so. There was sunshine in her smile and honey in her kiss and nothing could be more important than to show her everything she meant to him.
"Forget the kitchen," he whispered, stroking lightly up her arm. "There's a fire here, and a bed. We can camp up here indefinitely. I'll even bring your food up on a tray," he smirked, "not that you eat much, as a rule..."
Sam pouted in enjoyment of his gentle barb. "I might just starve for entertainment, though. The wireless is downstairs. And so's the gramophone." She pressed her lips against his elfin ear and licked the shell until she felt him shiver.
"We'll make our own." He dipped his head and nuzzled at her neck. A hand reached down to hook her thigh across his hip and he arched forwards into the soft nest he'd created with that movement. For the first time he became aware of the gentle swell of her abdomen pressing into him. It was not obtrusive, but still the slight, but solid, prominence felt more than the accustomed size of her. It humbled him enough to ask, "Is this all right? All right do this?" though he knew the query to be absurd.
And Samantha knew the nonsense of it, too, but it still pleased her that he'd asked, and she felt warm and cared for by his gentle asking for permission, enough to make a small confession of her own. "I'd simply hate it if we couldn't. It's a fear I have."
His voice was soft and reassuring. "There are ways. We'll always do this if you want to. Spooning will be better as you grow. We could even try that now..."
Sam shook her head minutely. "No. Want to see your face. For as long as ever possible. I've missed it! In five years, I've never had so little of it as I've had these past few weeks." She gave him a small, shamefaced smile. "And I know I'm being such a baby, because you've hardly been away... and I've been spoiled to have so much of you till now... "
What could he say to such a frank and vulnerable admission? To hear her say it, every fibre of him pulsed with love and pride, and as he sank inside her with an effortless fusion of their bodies, words would have been redundant on the lips of any man, much less a naturally reticent Christopher Foyle. Sam's gentle gasp, as they were joined, spurred his arousal— although he needed no such impetus. His right hand splayed against the hollow of her lower back and braced her to receive his worshipful invasion. He caught and held her doe-like gaze, and saw an ache of sweet reciprocation in her eyes—an ache that he both thirsted after and felt driven to assuage; and when he moved inside her, he could see her labouring to keep her eyelids wide so that her own eyes could stay locked with his. He slowed his pace, Sam's irises rolled back inside their orbits; he quickened, and the fluttering of her eyelids quickened, too. Her hand slid up his shoulder, round his neck, and delved into his soft, cropped curls. Their lips were melded now, and she was feasting on his tongue's invasion, mirroring the lower joining of their bodies, gripping his narrow hips against hers with the taut, insistent muscles of her leg.
"Sam." It was a half-sobbed, simple confirmation of his love. He crushed her upper body to him, undulating with a rhythmic energy that solidly belied his torpor of the night before.
Sam's breath caught. "To think I worried when—you know—you couldn't..."
His response was to continue with a wordless, healthy vigour that conveyed an abject, absolute dependence on her deigning to accept him in this way.
Sam sensed his need, absorbed it and reflected it with every, hungry, smitten answering push against him; every moan of not-quite-satisfaction that enticed him into giving more; and every sweet, demanding "Christopher" gasped out between her ardent moans. Her hand moved down to ease aside the satin of her nightdress, tugging next at the soft flannel of his striped pyjama jacket.
The buttons yielded and the flaps of cloth fell open to receive her body's touch, flesh on flesh. She clasped him by the nape once more and drew him to her, loving the sensation of his chest hair as it rubbed against her turgid nipples; drank in the scent of his arousal; felt the light scratch of his morning beard, and swooned with ecstasy, devouring every inch of craggy cheek and chin her lips could claim.
His blood raced as Samantha writhed against him, bare-breasted now against his chest. The angle of his penetration stroked him deep and long with each thrust and withdrawal. It became a little too intense, and so he eased her down onto her back, and moved across, still joined to her, to take her from above.
Sam wrapped a second leg around his waist and rocked him while he settled into place, sliding his arms under hers, and cradling her head with its strawberry-gold curls splayed across the pillow. "Darling," she breathed, before his lips locked with her own, resuming their intense and thorough exploration of her mouth and tongue. She felt the muscles of his abdomen slide over hers—a new sensation up against her slightly swollen belly; the powerful awareness of the future it portended caused her to arch up and clench her inner walls.
Christopher felt her intimate embrace, and pulled back to fill his lungs and fuel his muscles. His mouth fell slightly open in the concentration of maintaining rhythm, and Sam could only glimpse the merest flash of blue beneath his lust-laden lids. It struck her as the most affecting vision of a man imaginable—trance-like absorption written on his face, his philtrum flexing slightly over the merest glimpse of upper teeth—and it so thrilled her, Sam imagined she could send her own excitement flowing into him.
The warmth from the gas fire had been building in the cloistered bedroom since they'd sealed the door against the outside chill. Now their strenuous activity sent them well beyond the glowing stage, and into outright perspiration, pulling beads of sweat from Christopher's brow and gluing curls of Sam's hair to her forehead and her temples. The blended scent of mutual arousal formed a heady mix that usurped any lingering trace of kitchen accidents. Their world had shifted from the practical, and nothing on the far side of their door was of the slightest import any longer. Mutual ecstasy was their only purpose.
Sam's earlier wish to have Christopher's sweet face before her was granted; for his features now entirely filled her field of vision, and when she closed her eyes, their image lingered, seared upon the insides of her lids. As he rolled and crested like a wave above her, she felt his warm breath softly stroke her cheeks and chin. His thumbs caressed her temples, pushing back the darkened sweat-soaked strands that clung there.
It was a gentle, now mesmeric pulse of love that thrummed between them. Christopher might pause to nip her mouth, or place a soft kiss on her eyelid, but he kept his rhythm with single-mindedness of purpose. And Sam responded, effortlessly and eagerly pushing herself up to meet his thrusts. His hand slipped to her breast. Her hand slipped to his cheek. Together they pursued a quest to mutual fulfilment that required no guide but instinct, and no map but love.
Christopher slid a hand between them, anchoring his fingers flat below her navel, reaching with his thumb to snag the tender knot of nerves that enhanced her arousal. "Darling... let me... have to feel you..."
Sam grasped his shoulder, and her soft cries sharpened as he worked to bring her to a state of helpless frenzy with his thumb, above his thrusts. And when a low growl from her husband signalled he was on the verge of culmination, Sam was catapulted with a shuddering cry into her own release. Her body stiffened for an instant, then relaxed to throb around him, transmitting a chain of powerful spasms along the path of their connection. The sound and the sensation were enough to tear his climax from him in a pulsing rush of molten passion.
...
They slept, their limbs entwined, and when an hour had passed, they wakened, pushed the covers to the floor, and made love a second, unhurried time.
Afterwards Sam's drowsy gaze lingered on her husband, reclining with his eyes closed, framed with tiny creases of contentment. "You astonish me," she told him, stroking at his forearm in a tone of quiet admiration. "Where did all that vigour come from?"
He cocked an eyebrow over still-closed lids. "An old chap needs his rest, that's all," he murmured nonchalantly. "No great mystery of nature."
Sam wasn't satisfied with such a trite accounting for the tour de force she'd just experienced. "Christopher," she coaxed, "an 'old chap' doesn't go to sleep an old chap and wake up with the body of a twenty-year-old!"
Foyle tucked one elbow underneath his head and levelled an ironical look at his young wife. "Now, we both know you've no basis for making that comparison."
Sam blushed. "Well, you know what I mean."
"I know this much," he grimaced, haunted by his own unreasonable tiredness the night before, "I don't feel twenty any more. Far from it." Anselm, after all, had been the one who'd covered all the mileage; done the dirty work. He'd driven down to Sedlescombe and broken in; then motored back to London; then off to Sedlescombe again, and finally back to London—all in less than 24 hours. In Foyle's book, his own disproportionate exhaustion only pointed to the slowing down that inevitably accompanied the aging process. His gratitude for what he had been able to give his wife that morning was tempered by a nagging doubt that, though he'd lived to fight another day, the time would come when a similar performance would turn out to be his swan-song.
Samantha, however, was on hand to put things in proportion.
"Well!" she patted his chest proudly, and shook her head. "I don't know what you were like thirty years ago, but from what I've seen today, I doubt I could've kept up with your twenty-year-old self. So rest assured that forty-nine will do for me."
"Fifty, in March." His eyes crept sideways over a tiny half-smile that betrayed a modest pleasure at the compliment.
"Oh tosh!" she chided. "You're an old ham. Angling for sympathy."
"Mmmaybe. But look what's on the hook." Foyle heaved Sam effortlessly across his chest so she lay cradled in his arms and grinning up at him. "All right then, Mrs Foyle," his lip curled at the corner. "Time for total honesty. At twenty, I was still at war, and most days, I was living in fear for my life. But truth is, even at twenty I never felt quite this driven to please. Must be the feminine inspiration."
Sam gave him an arch look. "You're saying I inspire you?"
"You damn well know you do," he rumbled, bending to capture her lips.
And so the morning melted into early afternoon.
...
The house came gradually to life. Once Foyle had lit the kitchen range and seen to it that all the windows were secured, he built a modest fire in the living room hearth. It took an hour or so for things to reach a comfortable temperature, but he and Samantha were in no tearing hurry to emerge from their upstairs fug of warmth. Sustained by tea, and odds and ends he rescued from the pantry, it was well past three o'clock, with dusk already threatening, before they dressed and ventured downstairs proper.
"Not getting up till this hour," Sam remarked as she started down the stairs, "makes Rodneys of us."
One step behind her, Foyle blinked. "Care to explain? Not a term I've ever heard."
Sam checked herself. "Oh? Well, in that case it must just be something we say at home. A Rodney is... let's see... a good-for-nothing, upper-class sort of person, with too much leisure time, and a fondness for lazing in bed."
Christopher considered for a moment. The moniker seemed somehow inappropriate.
"Haven't been lazing," he protested affably. "Been pretty energetic. And you didn't exactly lie ba—" He got no further, because Samantha spun round on the stair below him and clamped a hand over his mouth.
"New rules from hereon in," she told him in schoolmistress tones. "After this week, Georgie will be here, so no more loose lips around the house."
Foyle blinked. Georgie would indeed be moving into Andrew's room. But how come he was being cast as the Achilles heel for indiscretions? To him, it seemed that Sam and Georgie under the same roof made for a far worse risk.
His eyelids narrowed. Taking Sam's wrist between thumb and forefinger in a light pincer-hold, he peeled the muzzling hand back from his mouth and bent so they were nose-to-nose. "Really? Sam? You think I'm going to be the biggest liability?" He cocked his head, eyes widened, challenging his wife to contradiction.
Sam bridled, pulling in her chin in readiness to take offence. But then, before her hackles dared to rise, the sands of good sense shifted, toppling her indignation. She clamped her lips into a firm, straight line, and swallowed the objection. Finally she managed, "So, you think that I?"
"I... do," he told her bluntly, and stretched his eyes to reinforce the point. "The minute that our guest arrives, you move into the role of elder sister, confidante and guide."
The mere idea of it, especially in the light of Georgie serving as his driver, made his toes curl. Any little gem of womanly experience Sam shared, and Georgina Rose would know that it related directly to him.
"So," he pleaded, "while you're doling out 'loose lip' reminders, I hope you'll tack one to your own fair forehead with a drawing pin. Because the obvious source of your experience... is me."
Stark reality hit Sam, and her lips froze in an open 'O'.
He nodded slowly in encouragement. "Yes. Oh."
Sam grimaced. "Right. I see. I do. I quite see what you mean. Diplomacy's the word when giving sisterly advice," she offered earnestly.
Foyle's gratitude came dressed in a sardonic incline of the head. "Thhhhhankyou," he uttered, imagining the point was won.
But he imagined wrong.
Sam launched into negotiations. "But if Georgie pleads for information and advice, I can hardly refuse, can I?"
There was a tense interval before his pained expression moved her to add, "But I'll—ah—keep it as, um, general as I can...?"
Christopher pinched between his brows. The price of love: complete and utter loss of dignity, in plain and public view.
...
Talk of the devil, thought Foyle, uncharitably, that evening when the phone rang and it was Georgie, full of beans.
"I've heard from Andrew, Mr Foyle!"
Foyle's pulse quickened. "How... how the devil is he?" His head bowed, and his eyes closed tightly in a frown of palpable relief.
"Wonderful! He's safe. Well... I say 'wonderful'... he actually sounds as if he's got an awful cold... but that's actually a blessing in disguise, because apparently they won't allow him in the air until he's better. Something about an ear-infection... and altitude will make it worse."
"Sinuses," Foyle helped her. "Sinus ear infection?"
"Yes, that was it! No flying at the moment. So I'm going to ask Commander Howard if he'll let me have a day to go and visit Andrew near his base. I'm so excited!"
"Visit? He told you where he was?" A rare full-beam smile bisected Foyle's features.
"Mmm-hmm. North Weald. But he did say it would be better if we met in Epping. Only if I get the time off, obviously."
"Obviously."
Foyle paused. "Um. Tell him when you see him, would you, that a letter wouldn't go amiss? Or,"—Foyle's knees bobbed to underline the coming witticism—"since he seems to have no trouble getting access to a phone, remind him that we have one here as well?"
Sam was hovering in the hallway, gleaning what she could from Christopher's half of the conversation. Everything about his gestures and his stance spoke of a welcome easement to the tension she'd observed the moment it became clear who was on the line; and who the subject of discussion. Quietly she moved behind her husband and wrapped her arms around his middle, resting a cheek upon his shoulder. The fingers of his free hand moved to lace with hers across his waistcoat. Sam felt the steady thrupping of his heartbeat underneath her hand.
Suddenly Foyle felt a little awkward, sensing that Georgina would probably prefer to talk to Sam. "I think, um, Sam would like a word about next weekend?" he offered. "Also, depending how things turn out this week, mmmight be able to offer you a lift down to Hastings with your luggage on Friday," he added kindly.
"Oh? Well that would be lovely... But in luggage terms, there won't be much. I live like a churchmouse here in a tiny room. It's so very kind of you to have me," Georgie went on cheerily. "I can hardly wait to spread my wings a bit in Hastings when I come."
Foyle's brows rose as he wondered privately what impact that spreading-of-the-wings might have upon the equilibrium of 31 Steep Lane; but really there was nothing to be done except to take whatever changes Georgie brought with her. If truth be told, his home life, till just lately, had been singularly dull and introverted, what with Andrew off at college, then in the RAF. The glorious sunshine that was Sam had put a warm heart back into his home again. But quite what effect that two young women in the house would have was, frankly, difficult to know.
He ran a hand over his hair, grasping for the positive: a spry young woman like Georgina—fun-loving, and possessed of bucketloads of bounce—might serve as an ideal warm-up to the imminent demands of fatherhood.
"Pleasure to be having you," he reassured her chivalrously, through a pained grin that she couldn't see. "Have a word with Sam, why don't you?" Then he drew his wife round from behind him, settled a lovingly considered kiss on Sam's lips, and planted the receiver in her hand, withdrawing to the safety of the sitting room.
...
"You know," Sam murmured against his ear afterwards, when they had shared their joy at Andrew's safety, and she stood behind his chair, her arms wrapped round his neck, "Georgie already thinks the sun shines out of you. And nothing that she'll see from living in your house, and nothing she might glean from what I tell her, will ever knock you off the pedestal she's put you on."
He rolled his eyes. "Hero-worship. Last thing I need on the job. Not to mention fervid speculation about what goes on behind the bedroom door." The bedroom door across the corridor, he reflected awkwardly.
"Come on, Christopher. You wouldn't want her billeted elsewhere, would you, Darling? It's becoming really hard to find nice places. So many refugees. Alice was saying, just the other day. With all the bombed-out families, plus people coming from abroad, everywhere's full."
"Yes, yes, I know." His own reservations gnawed at him. "Wouldn't have it any other way. It's just... all right, unreasonable self-consciousness about us. You're so much closer to her age... And having her here, and knowing how well you get on, it'll be as if she's peeling even more years off you." And I'll be out on a limb, the crusty old-fogey husband, he agonised silently.
Sam plonked herself provocatively into his lap and wrapped her arms about his neck, which did little to alleviate his reservations, but plenty to soften his crust.
"You'll have to knock that off, as well," he told her. "Not good for my professional image."
"I know," she purred, "our quiet time like this is running out. And even if Georgie weren't coming here to live next week, I'll soon be too heavy to sit on you!"
"Rubbish," he grinned. "You're as light as a feather. Bones like a chicken..." and then proceeded to demonstrate the fact by rising from the chair with Sam still in his arms. "See?"
"Still no idea how you do that," she puzzled with a pretty furrow to her brow, as he whirled her round to prove the point.
"Digging trenches and hefting wounded men off the battlefield tends to build strength in the upper body," he explained mildly, giving her a playful toss.
"Yes, but that was nearly thirty years ago."
Foyle shrugged. "Andrew and I used to arm-wrestle on the kitchen table when he was a youth. He usually lost. Plus," he nodded backwards in the direction of the garden, "holes for Anderson shelters don't dig themselves. And three old ladies in the street with no help..."
Sam looked down at him adoringly. "My hero. All the time that I was driving you that first year, you were coming home and digging shelters in old ladies' gardens."
He grinned. "No other outlets for my energies back then. Kept me out of mischief."
"More's the pity, since it meant I had to wait all this time to catch your eye."
"Oh, you caught my eye, all right." The merriment in his expression turned a little sombre as he added, "Just took my courage four-and-a-half years to catch up."
****** TBC ******
More Author's Notes:
"Carrot surprise?"
Leaving aside my impish misuse of the above phrase in this chapter, visit the 'History in WW2' page at carrotmuseum dot co dot uk for a comprehensive account of the importance of this root vegetable to Britain in World War II. You will even find there a photograph bearing the label 'Why not a Carrot Pudding?'. Why not indeed? Partial to a bit of carrot cake myself.
Slight preference for Foyle's recipe, however.
...
"Forget the kitchen," he whispered...
How could we ever? Again, that overweening and unreasonable desire to capitalise that K...
…
More soon.
GiuC