L'Aimant – Chapter 43
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 43: Andrew arrives home on leave.
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:
dancesabove edited this twice. She is very patient.
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
"Oh, dear God, Sam," he breathed into her neck, when they had calmed a little. "I think I'd swing for any man who touched you."
"That's flattering," Sam mused contentedly into his thinning curls. "What weapon would you use, DCS Foyle? A left hook, or sardonic disapproval?"
"I didn't mean it in the sense of 'punch him'," Foyle muttered darkly.
Georgie, who had crept down her flight of stairs to use the lavatory, froze on the landing. She hoped she'd memorised the creaky bits of floorboard by the patterns on the carpet, but the noises from Christopher's and Samantha's bedroom had her suddenly flummoxed. If she moved now, she was certain to forget a squeaky spot and embarrass everybody. So she stood there, teeth gritted, on tiptoe and didn't move a muscle, hoping against hope not to be heard.
Ten minutes later, and her legs were aching splendidly. So was her jaw; but no sign of the sounds of amorous activity abating. The couple were in good voice, she would give them that. Oh well, she reasoned to herself, if after this you still can't work out when it's time to stop, there's little hope for you. Gingerly, she held her breath and lowered herself from tiptoe, so that her feet were fully planted on the carpet. Relieved to have achieved that noiselessly at least, she expelled the breath she'd held, and waited.
Georgie had taken to chewing at a ragged fingernail to pass the time, and though she'd managed to achieve a fairly neat curve twice, still the edge had stayed slightly rough, so, trapped in situ as she was, she'd had another go. The nail was getting shorter each time round. There was a nail-file in the bathroom cupboard, she was sure, but at this rate, before she got to it—and she recalled Sam's admonition on the subject of nail-biting—she wouldn't have a fingernail to file.
Therefore it was with some relief that she finally heard the growl of gentle snoring emanating from the bedroom, and this made her feel safe enough to pick her way across the landing to the loo. It was a fortunate attribute of youth that lack of trauma to her undercarriage propelled through the episode without an embarrassing accident. In years to come, she would look back upon the incident with a hint of fond nostalgia for the days when a strong bladder was a given, rather than a distant memory.
Chapter 43
Tuesday, 13th February 1945
This. This was the day when Georgie's mind, mercurial at the best of times, was truly everywhere. More accurately, it flitted back and forth to settle repeatedly on one particular person due home on leave some time that afternoon. By lunchtime, she was nibbling at her fingers so studiously, that Foyle made a kind decision for her, and sent her home.
The timing of her walk back to the house turned out to be impeccable, for as she turned the corner of Steep Lane, a well-built figure in an airman's greatcoat was just leaning in to pay his taxi driver. Georgie let out a delighted "Andrew!", that made the figure straighten up a bit too quickly, knocking his cap askew.
The familiar cheeky beam that lit Andrew's mobile features as he turned her way, was all the invitation Georgie needed: she broke into a run towards him, one hand slamming down her own hat to stop it from becoming dislodged.
In an instant, her young man had her in his arms, swinging her round him like a suspended basket on a fairground ride.
"Look what the wind blew in," he teased affectionately, while Georgie clung to his neck, giggling.
The taxi pulled away with a cheery parting honk, and Andrew amused himself by letting her feet dangle, helping himself to a few kisses in between the happy noises she was making in his ear.
He set her down, and Georgie switched to sharing urgently the stream of thoughts queued up inside her mind:
"I can't believe you're home wait till you see my attic salon there's a new painting in the dining room your father has a statue that he won't unwrap how are your ears?"
She stopped to drink in his dark eyes, which sparkled down on her despite the weary shadows underneath. Andrew's face was constantly in motion, like his father's, but his smile, though equally warm, was far more open and uninhibited. Christopher Foyle, she mused, kept things inside, whereas his son, though not incapable of brooding, leaned towards projecting his emotions.
"Come in and have a rest," she squeezed his hand between her own, then reached up for his face. "You must be tired from the journey."
"Been sitting down for hours," he grinned. "I'd sooner have a walk. What say I fling my bag inside the hall, and we can take a stroll up past the fishing huts on Rock-a-Nore. There'll be no barbed wire there, at least—clear access to the beach. Then afterwards, I'll show you just the place for tea."
His bags stowed, Andrew pulled Georgie's arm through his, and with a mutual glance of excitement they walked across the road, savouring the fresh experience of being together in the place where Andrew was brought up.
Georgie found herself consciously practising walking next to him. It wasn't something that she'd had much chance to do in their limited time together, but she was happy to note that the disparity in their heights and length of leg seemed to present no obstacle to walking easily in step. Andrew curbed his longer stride to match hers, and glanced down at her with a mistily contented look, which she returned.
They strolled across St Clements' churchyard, taking a short detour round the back of the old stone church to visit Andrew's mother's grave. Andrew gazed up at the hastily re-glazed arched windows, where, in his childhood, beautiful stained glass had been.
"You won't recall The Swan Inn," he told her, "blown up by a Jerry bomb about two years ago. And 16 people died. The windows of the church were blown out in that raid. It makes me glad that I've flown fighters, Georgie. 'Least I know I haven't been responsible for that sort of thing."
Mind you, he reflected sombrely, I've flown enough photo recces for raids across the Channel.
They reached the grave, and Georgie stood nestled under his arm, squinting at the dates chiselled into the gravestone.
Rosalind Foyle June 1902 – February 1932
Hands clasped before her in a show of respect, she closed one eye and counted surreptitiously on her folded fingers.
"Andrew...," she ventured carefully, "your mum was very young when you were born...?"
She cast an inquiring look up at her fiancé, who rubbed a finger up the side of his nose.
"Trust you to notice that," he sighed, and gathered her against his grey wool overcoat. "I'll tell you my suspicions on the way down to the beach. It might even appeal to your romantic instincts."
"Oh?"
"...that you're engaged to an almost-love-child."
As recently as three days ago, Georgie's mouth might have fallen open at the revelation, but as things stood, her brows just rose in unison as her impression of her boss shifted on its axis for the second time that week.
...
Arriving home laden with bulging string bags, Sam bent to pick an envelope off the mat on her way in. It was addressed to Christopher, and the postmark wasn't too distinct, but looked as if it started 'H', so Sam inferred it must be Hastings local post. She turned it over in her fingers. Nothing leapt out to help her guess its origin, and so she slotted it into the frame of the mirror above the umbrella stand, resolving to hand it to her husband later.
Further down the hall she spied a duffel bag and knapsack—unmistakeably RAF issue—propped up underneath the telephone table. Noting that the house downstairs was silent, she called upstairs in anticipation of finding Andrew in his room.
When there was no reply, she trotted up to the first landing and checked his room, to see if he had gone up there and dropped asleep. But the bedroom was empty, and so she cocked an ear and listened with acute concentration before climbing the second flight of stairs leading to the attic floor. The top of the house was similarly deserted, and Sam came to the conclusion Andrew had probably gone out in search of food. The pantry stocks were, after all, at an all-time low—a situation which she had been in process of remedying with her trip to George Street.
...
Andrew and Georgie returned to Steep Lane two hours later, glowing from a bracing seafront stroll followed by tea at Neil's Café on East Parade. It seemed to Georgie all her Christmases had come at once, replete as she was with lardy cake, and walking with Andrew's arm wrapped around her. It had made her quite forget the biting cold. Her normally rosy complexion was even ruddier for the exercise, and as Andrew busied himself with helping her shrug off her overcoat in the narrow hallway, neither of them noticed when the letter Sam had tucked into the mirror frame dislodged and dropped into the umbrella stand.
"Two birds with one stone! What a stroke of luck!" Sam appeared from the kitchen, all smiles and smelling of food preparations.
"So good to see you home and safe, Andrew." She raised her lips to his cheek in an affectionate peck, grasping the free hand that wasn't parked on Georgie's shoulder.
"Pretty marvellous to be home." He gave her hand a squeeze in return, and with a cheery up-and-down appraising look remarked, "You're blooming, Sam."
Sam nodded brightly. She did feel well. The lethargy of the early months had left her, and although she'd come to like a quick nap in the afternoon on days when she was fire-watching, generally her energy was back to normal.
"Three and a bit months," she told him. "Between these four walls, doctor says end of July." Sam reasoned there were no secrets to be kept now among family. "It will be a busy month," she went on. "My mother's due then too."
There was no way Andrew could have understood what she actually meant. "Coming here to help with the baby, is she?"
Georgie rose up on tiptoe and whispered in his ear.
"Oh?" he looked down at her, startled, then recovered himself. "Oh, well, fancy," he offered lamely. "Excuse me, I had no idea."
"Mmm. Should've let you know before, perhaps. But so much has been happening since Christmas."
"Hasn't it," he answered flatly, realigning yet another set of ingrained ideas.
"Anyway," Sam half turned away, her mind on practicalities, "'fraid this won't be a proper welcome home from me. I'm on firewatching duty tonight from dinner time till first thing in the morning. So Georgie is in charge of cooking, unless you fancy having a bash yourself. Christopher should be home by six."
Andrew winked down at Georgie. "Time to find out whether you're as bad as Sam."
Sam swung a low kick at his ankle with her tartan pom-pom slipper. "Don't imagine there'll be special treatment, just because you're the returning hero."
"Ow," he protested. "You'll give Georgie ideas."
"I already know how to deal with rudeness," interjected his fiancée, meeting Sam's eyes with a sweet smile that brought out her dimples.
"Quite right too."
The trio swapped grins.
"So. How much can you tell us about what you're up to these days?" Sam asked with breathy politeness, fully expecting a rebuttal.
"Not allowed to say a great deal. But then again, there isn't much to tell about this last month. I was ill, then grounded as a side-effect of being ill," he grimaced. "Missions were out of the question."
They installed themselves in the sitting room, and Andrew did his best to explain the factors preventing him from getting back into the air.
"Otic barotrauma's what the medics call it. And the RAF are entirely strict about grounding pilots when there's sinus trouble. If the pressure in the middle ear cavity isn't equalised with the outside, it can disable you rapidly and completely when you're in the air. I'm not talking about mild vertigo, either. If there's an unresolved blockage, the changes in air pressure during manoeuvres can burst your eardrum. And that bout of sinusitis from a month ago pretty much shot my sinuses. Four days in hospital. Bloody painful. Turned me into a liability on missions."
He shrugged. "And so, at risk of becoming a bore on the subject, I'm grounded. No better than a ruddy penguin. I've been allowed this week off, after which I have to report to HQ for instructions. Then… anybody's guess." He gave Georgie a fed-up look. "Better make the most of me while you can."
"Oh, I intend doing just that," she beamed.
Happily superfluous, Sam slapped her hands down on her knees. "Right. Well, you lovebirds, I'm going upstairs for an hour's nap. See you both again when Christopher gets home."
Thus were they left to their own devices in the sitting room, and Georgie burrowed into Andrew's side, drawing her feet up beside her on the settee.
"I thoroughly approve of this otis barometer," she announced. "If you can't fly, you can't be killed. And what have you got against being a penguin, pray? Penguins are dapper little creatures. The ones in London Zoo are charming."
Andrew turned her so she lay across his lap, head resting on the padded arm of the settee. "The ones I deal with by and large are dapper enough, but too many of them haven't flown a single hour in this war. I want to tell you something, Love, and it isn't to upset you, but it might just help you understand the way I feel."
He shifted his knees so Georgie was settled comfortably, then ran a thumb down her cheek. "I went for training up in Scotland back when all this started, and at our passing out parade, Air Vice Marshal Park said to us: 'Now, men, you might think you know everything, having just graduated. Look at the man on your left. Look at the man on your right. Go on, look!'...which we dutifully did. And then he said, 'This time next year, you or he will be dead.'"
Georgie's eyes grew large. "Is that what passed for a pep talk?"
"It was meant in the best way. Park knew the way things would be; he wanted to knock the arrogance out of us early. And he was right: I lost Rex Talbot. And later, I lost Charlie Page. Best of the best. Of the three of us who trained, then served together, there's just me left. Not to mention all the friends I made on ops who died, as well. And when I say 'friends', I mean men I knew for a few weeks only. Not the sort of friends you make on Civvy Street."
Georgie slid a hand under his blue-grey serge blouse and could feel the slow beat of his heart even through his side. She blinked miserably.
"I hate to think of it," she said, and rolled her lips between her teeth in sadness for the lost young men.
Andrew closed his eyes and conjured up an image. "We'd fly through oily globs of spent ack-ack explosive; and looking out the cockpit, you could've sworn those balls of bloody smoke were solid enough to walk on, drifting by like clouds of thick, black wool." He let out a harsh laugh. "They held a sort of morbid fascination for us. Easy to forget they were the evidence that we were being shot at. Up there... it was a different world.
"So when I see these earthbound officers," he went on, "I feel no kinship with them." He rubbed an exasperated hand over his face.
Georgie studied him. "If you ask me," she offered thoughtfully, "the sooner they put you behind a desk the better. Since you've got more idea of what it's like up in the air."
Andrew's face lightened. "Yeah," he said. "There is that." He sat a while, allowing the good sense of the idea to crystallise.
"Hmm. I like the way you think. Come here." And he bent to kiss her, nipping softly at her lips, one hand reminding him how those dark curls of hers were so indomitable. Always they bounced back. And then the dimples. If you anchored your thumb inside one, you could trace the muscle of her cheek around the sweet depression and coax a chuckle without any effort. This was what he'd missed in Essex. This, apart from one brief day they'd had together in the January cold, with no private place to go, this sweet comfort of a living, breathing, warm and cheery girl with eyes of ebony and hair like ruched obsidian silk... He felt the poet in him taking flight, and gliding softly, soundlessly—a flight without an engine, no ack-acks, no bullets, just the silence of the air, the open sky, his spirit soaring...
"Hey, your thumbnail's poking in my cheek," a small annoyed voice brought him down to earth.
Andrew started. "Sorry. Didn't mean to poke you." He withdrew his thumb and stroked her cheek in apology. "I was miles away."
"All right. I know." She patted him. "The rest was very nice, though." Georgie offered up her lips again. "Don't stop with the kisses."
She reached up to cup his ears. "I'm glad these didn't freeze and drop off when I shut you out of Commander Howard's party. I rather like having them to hang onto."
"Be my guest." Andrew's face broke into a duck-like beam, and he bent again to take up where he'd left off.
"Mmm," she answered. "Don't mind if I do."
...
Georgie had torn herself away to start the dinner preparations by the time Foyle walked through his own front door at shortly after six that evening. Davis had been left to 'mind the shop' while Brooke brought him home.
"I think there might be hope for 'im, Sir," Brookie chatted as they drove along Marine Parade. "I've put 'im on the beat with Hardcastle, and they get on like an 'ouse on fire. Bring out the best in one another. Caught Davis feeding Hector out the back last week. You could say that the dog and 'im have called a truce. If Mr Reid agrees, I'm goin' to get 'im trained up as his handler. It'll be good for the lad to be on a team where he's the brains."
The dearth of intellect apparent in Brooke's constable was still on Foyle's mind as he hooked his hat onto the peg in the hallway; but it fled the moment that his clever and beloved son emerged from the sitting room, safe from war and sound in wind and limb.
"Andrew. Home then?" Foyle's eyes crinkled, the corners of his mouth declined in that distinctive brand of pleasure he had made his own. "Not your longest tour of duty, by any means."
Andrew tapped a nostril in explanation. "Dicky nose. I'm finished in the air."
"Mwell, so I hear." Foyle clasped his son's hand and regarded him a little shyly. "Pleased to have you back."
Almost as if he feared the mild show of affection too intense, he added, "Only fair to warn you that the house is heaving these days. Trust you don't mind queuing for a shave first thing?"
"Small price to pay," grinned Andrew, guessing that his father wouldn't want to dwell on the emotion of the greeting.
"I sometimes fill a bowl and shave sitting at the kitchen table." Foyle felt himself on safe ground now. "No clue what takes 'em so long up there every morning."
"Might join you downstairs for a shaving party, then." It was as intimate a gesture to his father as Andrew dared to make, given that they were still padding round each other in the aftermath of Sam; and yet, the smile that passed between the two men reconnected them as surely as a strong, affectionate embrace.
"A snifter?" offered Foyle.
"Been hoping you'd come home and ask precisely that, Dad."
...
Sam was already out of the door when the others sat down to dinner. As it was Andrew's first night home, Georgie laid the table in the dining room and the three of them prepared to gather round the meagre feast that rations would allow.
It tickled Andrew to see the level of tactility Georgie seemed to get away with round his dad. Having had precious little chance to observe his father in the company of women since they lost his mother—and his parents' interactions he had always just accepted, rather than observed—he noticed Georgie's light pats on his father's arm as she set dishes on the table, and how she leaned around the front of him to smile as she was pouring him a glass of beer.
These simple, daughterly gestures didn't fail to elicit a facial muscle twitch or two from Foyle; and Andrew took these as quiet evidence of acquiescence. Though the young man focussed on his meal, a smile spread slowly across his face, and when he raised his head he found his father's gaze upon him. Foyle's eyes darted sideways with the slightest rise of brows. It was a signal of capitulation. This was the new order: being spoiled by women.
Andrew swallowed. In the short weeks since his fiancée had moved into 31 Steep Lane, a comfortable domesticity had apparently taken hold. The arrival of first one young woman, then a second in the last two months had turned a hermitage into a household, and a house into a home. And there, behind his father on the wall, stood Sam—in vibrant watercolour, and in battle-mode—completing numbers round the table.
"The old place is looking smart," joked Andrew. "How many people can boast a Dame Laura Knight original overlooking their dinner?"
"I hung the picture," Georgie told him proudly, "didn't I, Christopher?"
Foyle gave a brief nick of the head. "You did, indeed. Nnnearly brought the wall down in the process, but the nail you knocked in held all right."
"What's this about a statue wrapped up in the bedroom? Starting a museum?"
Foyle turned a pair of narrowed eyes on Georgie, who immediately found a fascination in her mashed potatoes.
"I haven't made my mind up where to put it yet," his father hedged.
...
After dinner, in concession to the morning strain on the facilities, Georgie went upstairs to bathe, and Foyle and Andrew stood together at the sink to wash the dishes. Andrew was on drying duty.
"Like old times, Dad."
"Myeah. Your mother always said she'd never had a proper crack at women's rights, and so she trained us well—her way of smoothing things for younger women down the line.
"I think if she had lived..." Foyle's dish-brush dug into some baked-on carrot. If Rosalind had lived, he thought, she would've been an asset in this war. Rosalind had had a gentle way with people that made them want to please her. "...she'd've been running the local WVS for sure." Foyle ran the dish under the tap. "If your mother had lived."
"Dad..." Andrew fixed his gaze on the blacked-out kitchen window, "you were a rock when Mum died. I've never thanked you properly for holding us together the way you did. I was... I was useless to you, wasn't I?"
"You were a child." Foyle stared into the dishwater. "A child who'd lost his mother. 'Useful' wasn't a requirement."
His son shot him a shy glance of relieved thanks. "You still are... a rock, you know."
"Wull, it gets less easy, with the years. But seems as if now's not the time to let things slide. Just hope I make a better fist of things this time around."
Andrew drew his brows together. "You've nothing to reproach yourself for, Dad."
"No? Dunno. I've often thought I might've shown you more... been more... Your mother might've wished me to..."
"Dad." Andrew placed a hand on his father's shoulder and squeezed lightly. "Nothing to reproach yourself for. We both had to learn to cope without her."
His father closed his eyes and nodded gratefully.
Foyle pulled the plug out of the sink and leant against the deep ceramic basin while the water drained. His son continued drying, passing him the plates and dishes to be stacked.
"Over New Year, Dad, Sam said something to me. Admittedly, I provoked her, but she had a point..."
Foyle's head tilted non-committally. His son could tell him this or not, as he pleased.
"She said I was about as likely to settle down and have a family as a stray tom-cat."
His father's lips pursed, but Andrew suspected this was more suppression of a smile than disapproval.
"I'll admit my track record with women hasn't been good," Andrew continued. "Violet you know about, and of course, Sam—though," he hastened to correct any misapprehension, "I was more of a coward than a cad in Sam's case."
Foyle raised an ironical eyebrow. He was well-acquainted with Sam's side of things regarding Andrew.
"Anyway," Andrew let out a long breath, "you've probably guessed there were others, too. But this with Georgie, it's completely new for me. I find I'm... wary about taking liberties."
"That's... not a bad thing in itself, is it?" asked his father, hands plunged into his pockets to stop his fingers twitching.
"Yes, but beyond—er—lip contact," Andrew lowered his voice, "I'm almost scared to touch her. More scared than on a mission dodging Messerschmitts. Dad, I can't explain it. I've been no saint, but this is different. If I blow this, I'm really grounded. More than that, I'm buried. Drat it. Cards on the table: I'm nervous."
Foyle's hand rose to his chin. This was so rare a situation, to be asked advice by Andrew about matters of the heart, that he was at sea himself. And in that moment, he felt his son's need for both his parents.
He closed his eyes, considering. "Two things," he offered, when he opened them again. "Do nothing that your mother would be ashamed of you for doing; and do nothing that you're not prepared to take the consequences of."
"Dad, you're going to have to help me understand the first of those. I was too young to know Mum's attitude to this sort of thing."
His father tilted his chin pensively. "She would've wanted you to act with love, and honourably."
"Listen," Andrew folded his arms, and his eyes slid sideways, "I won't ask about Sam. Too recent and too... personal, I know. But how... what happened with Mum?" He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but the gravestone story doesn't fool me any more, Dad. It hasn't really done for years. I'm not so gullible as to believe the stonemason made an error when he carved her birth year. She was barely 16 when I was born. What on earth were you both thinking?"
The pain in Foyle's face showed as he slowly blinked. He might have known this would arise eventually.
"Not both, Andrew. Don't ever think it was your mother. It's more a case of me and what I didn't think. I didn't see it coming, and when it came, it was too late to do a thing to stop it. I should tell you that your mother and I slept together for the first time after you were born."
Andrew looked at him in puzzlement. "What?! Excuse me, Dad, but that's beginning to sound worse than I imagined."
"Nunno!" Foyle reached out for his son's arm. "It isn't. That I promise you, but all things considered, it was an unholy cock-up."
Andrew gave him a wry look.
"Oh, spare us," countered Foyle.
His son sighed. "What other skeletons have you got in the closet, Dad? If I were a golfing man, I'd say you had quite a record for holes-in-one."
Foyle would've liked to contradict him, but the facts spoke for themselves. Not even to mention the more awkward truth of Caroline Devereaux, whose secret was not his to tell. Although perhaps, he reflected, with a pang of shame, he should have shared the facts with Sam before they'd married.
"You were an accident of innocence and imprudence," he continued, "but none the less beloved for all that. You were born in Pembury, Andrew, at your great-grandparents' home. And your mother and I returned to Hastings when you were a tiny baby. I'd been away some time. When I came back, I brought a wife and child. It wasn't questioned. There was much upheaval in the war. Our families supported us. I rejoined the police force, and the rest, you know."
Upstairs, they heard the sound of bathwater emptying down the drain, and both men lifted their eyes to the ceiling.
"You've a lovely girl there," Foyle told him quietly, "so I can't better what I've said already. Love and honour, Andrew. Nothing else counts, in the end."
...
Afterwards, Andrew leant against the wall inside the hallway, ruminating on the factors which conspired against his own existence. Firstly, he was a near-miss accident, and secondly, he had defied the odds to come this far with every bit of him intact.
He frowned, massaging at the sides of his nose—the very organ keeping him from combat. Across the corridor, the triptych of his mother's watercolours beckoned from the wall. He stepped forward for a closer look, and squinted at the detail: all three pictures bore a date of 1929, which made his mother barely older than himself when she had painted them.
What a waste. So much in life was arbitrary, he reflected. Life and death, it seemed, were simple whims.
He took the stairs in threes, and lingered on the landing till the bathroom door came open. Out stepped Georgie, scrubbed and shiny, hair wrapped in a towel, and nearly buried in a woolly dressing gown that looked ridiculously large for her. She looked adorable, and Andrew felt the impetus to live not only his life, but a life for all the friends he'd lost. A life his mother would be proud for him to live.
"You pest!" moaned Georgie, hands flying to her face. "Loitering like that. Not a lick of makeup on me. You're rotten, Andrew. Go away until I'm decent."
Andrew crossed the landing in two strides and swept her up into his arms.
"Remember in the churchyard out at Pembury?" he nuzzled at her cheek. "You weren't afraid of vampires, but perhaps you should be now." He bared his canines, just to make her giggle.
"We're getting married, you and I," he told the squirming woollen bundle.
"I know," she mumbled through her fingers. "Got the ring to prove it."
"So you have," he pushed his nose between her hands. "Most people come out of a war much poorer than they came into it. But not me, Georgie. Not us. And I've had enough of pussyfooting. Going to fix our wedding for before the month is out."
****** TBC ******
More Authors' Notes:
The words attributed by Andrew to Air Vice Marshal Park were actually spoken by the Canadian VC, Air Vice Marshal William Avery "Billy" Bishop to his recruits.
...
Anybody wanting to read the full account of Andrew's conception should nip across to Chapter 7 of Where To, Sir by nocturnefaure, because it's all contained in that chapter, and there's no point writing it twice. No worries if you don't want to read the whole of Where To, Sir, because that particular chapter is pretty much self-contained. Of course, I hope you WILL read the whole of Where To, Sir. The fic is M-rated, so you will need to change your filter to allow M-rated before you see it, or else go to nocturnefaure's profile.
…
More soon.
GiuC