L'Aimant – Chapter 44
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 44: A celebratory meal uncovers memories for Foyle. The Lyminster concert threatens.
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:
It's conceivable that you come to this chapter not having seen The Hide (S7E3). If that's the case, you need to understand that the episode hints strongly at a brief Great War affair between Caroline, mother of James Devereaux, and Foyle. Others may disagree, but to me, it's clear as day, not only from the circumstances as related, but also from the build, the character, and the mannerisms of James (so cleverly interpreted by Andrew Scott), that he is meant to be taken as Christopher Foyle's natural son.
These are the things fanfiction writers feed upon: the subtle hints, the nuances, the flavours unexplored. Screenwriting is so bound by time constraints. Even the frequency of ad breaks can castrate an author's ability to develop a character. So many other demands exist on the allotted screen time, no wonder many dramas come up short. And no surprise, either, that consummate screen actors, able to convey a page of dialogue with just a flick of an eyebrow and economy of gesture, are in such demand.
Foyle's War is so much richer for the talents of its clever cast, and chief amongst them, Mr Kitchen.
…
The hat is for AnneBronteRocks.
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
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."
Chapter 44
Wednesday morning, 14th February 1945
"What d'you think about that?" Sam bustled through the front door, far more flushed than usual for the weather, and started to unpin her hat before the mirror. "Ellen brought her racer and challenged me to beat her home along Marine Parade. She rides like fury! I could hardly catch her—then she waved and disappeared up High Street like the wind." Sam's eyes narrowed. "On Friday morning, she won't win. I'll get her back."
Foyle, who had been awake since four, and in the sitting room by half past five, watching through the window, moved nonchalantly up the hall to welcome her. "Don't ride too fast," he pleaded. "Sounds as if she's got superior equipment. You could simply let her set the pace, and copy her technique." He hesitated, smiling with a brightness that he hoped looked less forced than it felt. "But a nice straight ride can't hurt you. Hope you... both... keep it up."
In the kitchen, Georgie inveigled a finger through a curl that flopped across Andrew's forehead. "Don't they make you get a haircut? Ever?"
He fidgeted and caught her hand. "It's not against the regulations. You should see some of them. How would you like a handlebar moustache? I'll grow one for you." He drew her down into his lap and pushed his nose into her dimple.
"No, thanks!" she shuddered. "Only fit for nesting rodents. And as for this..." she plucked the pipe from the breast pocket of his blouse, "the cigarettes are bad enough. Your sinuses deserve a break."
She darted off and Andrew rose, genuinely annoyed, grasping after her. "That's rubbish, Georgie; smoke's good for the lungs. It clears your chest..."
"The devil it does. My father showed me a report that says it causes..." she lowered her voice to a hush, "cancer."
"Rot."
"Please yourself," she lifted her chin, "I've seen the report."
"What report?"
Georgie looked uncomfortable. "A... a foreign scientist. My father showed me a translation of the paper when he caught me smoking."
"What sort of foreign?" Andrew's head tilted suspiciously.
"Eminent."
"Eminent isn't a nationality. What sort of foreign?"
Georgie shoved the pipe into the pocket of her apron. "Oh, well, you might as well know. German. From Dresden, actually. Where the posh china comes from."
"Hah! We've got a flowered ashtray that comes from there," Andrew scoffed. "You really think I'm going to stop smoking because some Nazi says it's bad for me? Hand back the pipe."
"You don't know that he's a Nazi, and I shan't."
"You jolly well..."
"Hello, you two." Sam entered, a bemused husband bringing up the rear. "Not interrupting, am I? Dying for a cup of tea."
"I've told him that he shouldn't smoke," protested Georgie, "and he thinks it's Nazi propaganda."
Sam shot Andrew a sympathetic look. "Oh, dear. Well… excuse me if I don't come down on either side of that. But if you do decide to pack it in," she patted Andrew's arm, "please leave me all your spares. I might need something to settle my nerves, a few months down the line."
"Sam!" Georgie stamped her foot. "You're no help."
Andrew stood defiantly and addressed his father, though half an eye was still on his annoyed girlfriend. "Whatever happened to that china wotsit with the butterflies and roses?"
Foyle shrugged.
"I keep my best earrings in it," supplied Sam.
"Na-hah!" Georgie stretched her eyes at Andrew in triumph, buttoning the pocket of her apron.
"Think I'll take my tea upstairs." Sam gave Christopher a look, and he followed her.
...
"I heard him tell her that they're getting married in a few weeks," Sam informed her husband.
Foyle lowered himself beside her on the bed, hands folded in his lap as Sam savoured her tea.
"I imagine that's the reason she's decided to lick him into shape," she grinned. "She won't have it as easy with Andrew as I've had it with you."
Foyle tucked his chin in and regarded her sideways-on with a frown of mock annoyance. "You're saying I was a pushover, Miss Stewart?"
A loud crash, followed by a whoop, a squeal, and helpless giggles rose up from the kitchen.
"I'm saying," Sam deposited her cup and saucer and turned a sly look on him, "that I think I'm lucky."
Christopher's lips parted slightly, then re-closed before twitching into the briefest moue. "I have to go to work in half an hour," he said. "Brooke's coming for me."
"They're busy in the kitchen, making noise," Sam offered nonchalantly.
Foyle got up and slotted a hard-backed chair under the bedroom doorknob.
"Key went missing years ago," he shrugged in answer to her glance, "...and then, no cause to lock it."
"Until now," she said.
Wednesday evening, 14th February, 1945
Benito received two generations of Foyles and their ladies with gusto, on the evening of St Valentine's. Their table ostentatiously displayed a Riservata card, rendered in flamboyant script, although in truth it was unnecessary. Business for Benito was extremely slow—in times of austerity, such rituals of celebration were but a painful reminder of absent loved ones.
"Belle signore! Commissario Foyle! Benvenuti! Andrew!" Benito clasped his own hands to his chest,"ci rivediamo!" He called behind him, "Alessandro! Pronto! Vieni qua! I call Alex for you, Andrew. He love-a to see you!"
A young man of about seventeen poked his head through from the back room, and grinning shyly at the teasing look he got from Andrew, made his way across the restaurant.
"Andy!"
Andrew surveyed him with a look of playful scepticism. "Alex? Been standing you in a bucket of horse manure and watering you, have they? You've sprouted—what? Five inches since last year?"
"Oh, knock it off. Not you, as well." The young man kicked the carpet. "The Home Guard took me in November, just before they stood it down, so at least I've got a uniform that fits. I do run messages and stuff along the coast and back, when I'm not helping Dad. Shot any Jerries down just recently?"
Georgie watched them closely. This was hero-worship if ever she'd seen it.
"Nah, well... some. But they've retired me. Had a bout of snotty nose." Andrew tapped his nose, then made a grab for Alex's with two crooked fingers. "Notice yours has cleared up, though. A five-inch spurt of growth'll do that for you."
Alex's face near split in two with pleasure as he batted Andrew's hand away. "Mama and Silvia are cursing me. All my clothes are throw-outs."
"He's getting really vain!" The voice of a young woman sailed across the restaurant from the back room. "Because he's got a girlfriend."
"Malandrina!" Alex hissed back at his sister.
Benito clipped his son around the ear. "Basta! Fermi!"
"Well, there's a thing, Silvia—'cos so have I." called Andrew, his arm sliding proudly around Georgie's shoulders. "Alex, meet my fiancée, Miss Georgina Rose."
Hands thrown up in delight, Benito reeled into the back room in a flurry of Italian. "Stiamo celebrando di nuovo! Una bottiglia speciale!"
In imitation of his father, Alex bowed ceremonially at the waist and kissed Georgie's hand, before adding, in familiar fruity tones: "Tanti auguri, signorina!"
He straightened and sent Andrew a cheeky grin. "The old man would be proud of me, d'you reckon?"
"I think you have the touch, young Alex," inserted Georgie, not about to be cast as the dummy in the piece. "So. Would you like to tell me how you two know each other?"
Alex stood more at ease, eyes twinkling. "Andy caught me scrumping at the vicarage as a kid, and instead of shopping me, he gave me a leg-up. Later he taught me to toboggan down Steep Lane. It's quite a neat run, when it's snowy."
"Alex has no brothers," explained Andrew, "and as I don't, either, it did us both a world of good."
Until now Foyle had stood with Sam on his arm, observing the exchange with quiet affection. He was well aware how Andrew had 'adopted' Alex when the boy was seven, but he'd never heard his son express the bond in terms of brotherhood before. And now the import of his son's words settled on him for the first time. He watched the two young men together, and a sudden pang of regret shot through him. Enough to make him want to turn away.
"Let's have a seat," he steered his wife towards their table and pulled out a chair for her.
Sam, who had observed the shadow that crossed his features, felt for his hand beneath the tablecloth. "I know that look, Christopher. You going to tell me what's put it there, or shall I have to guess?"
"There's nothing—"
"Don't—" she raised a hand to stem his obfuscation. "All right. The guessing starts when we get home."
Thursday, 15th February, 1945 – early hours
"You mean you didn't even try to find out what became of her?"
Sam reclined, her back propped up against the headboard, wrapped in the shawl that Christopher had draped around her shoulders. The room was cold; the house completely quiet. They'd lain like that for some time.
"I should put the fire back on, don't you think?" Foyle got out of bed and stooped to light the gas, then climbed back between the sheets beside her. They lay side-by-side in silence for a few moments, before his fingers crept across the eiderdown to squeeze her hand.
"Sam, please understand. I was so young—even younger then than you are now. I came home injured, but their only thought in mending me was so that they could send me back to France. Before I left, she made me promise not to seek her out. What could I do? Wasn't free to stay and care for her. I had nothing to offer her."
"But if you loved her, surely money didn't...?"
"Sam." He rubbed a moist eye with the heel of his hand. "I don't mean money. Or position. She was... Caroline was..." After all the filth and suffering and gore of attrition, he thought, she was a bit of heaven on this earth.
"Neither one of us was a free agent. She was married... miserably so. And she knew enough of Devereaux to know he'd do his utmost to disgrace and damage her—to say nothing of the child—if the truth came out. And Caroline realised that I was in no position to protect her. Had no way of knowing, even, whether I'd survive the war. The choice she made... she made it for the child. And I... well, as I've said, I was being sent back to the Front."
He drew Sam's hand across him and caressed her fingers in his lap. "I'd seen so much death, Sam. I had no faith that I'd come through it. And that sapped my strength to fight her on it. There seemed nothing I could offer Caroline. Because I had nothing." His voice dropped to a harsh whisper."Not even my life was mine to promise her."
Sam rested her other hand on his. Her voice was hushed. "My poor love. My poor darling."
The hiss of the gas fire was the only challenge to the silence in those next few minutes. Sam sensed the tension in him, and kept her eyes fixed firmly on their hands.
"So Andrew has a brother or sister he has no idea about."
"Yyyes."
"And you're not curious...? Christopher?"
She looked up now to see the grim cast of his features.
"Well," he said, "what do you imagine?"
"Rosalind?"
"I couldn't burden her with it."
"You didn't tell her?"
"Told her about Caroline, of course. But about the child? No."
"Christopher!"
"In all conscience, after what I'd promised Caroline... I couldn't. Roz would've made me try to find out more."
"Which is precisely what I'm going to make you do," Sam pressed herself against him. "I don't want to bring a child into this world who won't know half its siblings. Your child by Caroline is fully grown now. Old enough to choose. Not Caroline, or Devereaux. It isn't up to them."
Sam scrutinised his features in the dim light of the bedside lamp. His lashes cast a shadow on his cheeks. She sensed that he was struggling with a revelation that would push him farther yet.
"For years, it hasn't been up to Caroline." He spoke with halting sadness. "A tragic accident put paid to that. She died... in 1925. Gored by a deer on Devereaux's estate."
Sam let go a long breath through pursed lips. "Oh, God. How terrible! How did you come to find this out?"
"The paper. A report. The case came under Brighton. Well outside the Hastings jurisdiction." He added at a mumble, "Not that I had seniority to press about such things in those days, anyway."
"What happened to the child?"
Christopher moistened his lips.
"You know what happened, don't you."
Foyle's eyes dropped to his lap. "A boy. James. Sent away to prep school, then to Eton. Pretty much removed him from my orbit for all time."
"And you've never seen him."
"Nup."
"You should tell Andrew."
Foyle shook his head. "Had a hard enough time telling you. Nnno merit in upsetting him. Might tell him when he's older. Got a child of his own. Can't face him with this news just now. It's not the time."
"And will it ever be?"
"Dunno, Sam. Really. I don't know. It might have been my secret once, but these days, it's James Devereaux's. You don't go thrusting things like this on people who are settled in their lives."
"How d'you know he's settled, Christopher? You've said yourself that Caroline was frightened of her husband. Eton's no substitute for a loving home. He might be a terribly unhappy young man."
Foyle squirmed. "You don't let me off, do you? Dunno why I didn't just retire in '41 and set you on the criminals."
"What's the answer?" Sam persisted.
"Subject's closed for now. Review things when the war is over."
"Going to hold you to that, Christopher."
Sam's tone was soft, not stern. His body, rigid with the tension of the moment, gradually relaxed as she slid her arms around him, laying her head upon his chest. "I understand," she breathed. "I honestly do, how frightened and desperate you must have felt. I wish you'd told me sooner. Trusted me with this. I might have helped more."
"Darling Sam," he stroked her hip and held her to him, "every single day that you're beside me, I am helped in more ways than you know."
Saturday, 17th February, 1945
Iain Stewart lingered in the hallway of his vicarage, nervously sliding the brim of his hat through his fingers.
"My dear," he called upstairs, with exaggerated cheer that hid trepidation, "what time shall you be coming to the dress rehearsal?"
"I can't be there till half past four, my love." Geraldine's airy voice was muffled, and some vague bumping noises, like boxes being shifted, reached his ears.
After a few seconds his wife's flushed face appeared on the landing. "There's all the after-concert spread to organise, Iain. Joyce can't be left to do it on her own."
"Aaah," he answered, gazing at his shoes despondently.
"Courage, darling. I'm sure you'll manage to keep Miss Thackeray off Mrs Durward's throat till then. Besides which, now that Sara's here, we need to see that she's..."
"Please go to no trouble, Mrs Stewart. I shall make myself so small you will not notice," the barely accented English came in soft deep tones that belied the waiflike stature of their speaker. So similar to Gigi's intonation, thought Reverend Stewart, as he smiled up at the dark-haired, bright-eyed girl who hovered now behind his wife.
The afternoon before, their guest, Miss Sara Immerglück, had been delivered to their doorstep in a Morris Ten by the familiar, benevolent figure of Dr Rose. Miss Sara came with one small suitcase and an old string bag bulging with a miscellany of chattels, not least of which were a well-worn sharp-nosed teddy bear (whose paws protruded through the holes) and a rolled-up dog-eared copy of a fashion magazine. Atop the girl's head perched the most unusually structured hat that Geraldine had ever seen in Lyminster, and quite possibly in Arundel besides. A large flat "plate" of sage green felt was bisected to its centre, and the two freed quarters tied in a loose slip knot so the ends stuck up, much in the manner of a pair of wings preparing to take flight. To say the hat was jaunty was an understatement; to call it chic an incongruity, perched as it was atop a face so young.
Sara had settled in on Friday evening, talking animatedly through dinner of her time in London with her foster family, though she declined to join the Stewarts in the sitting room to listen to the wireless afterwards. And later on, when Geraldine had popped upstairs to check on their guest, she found the girl in darkness in the bathroom, washing with the door ajar.
"Sara, my dear, whatever are you... can you see? Here, let me put the light on for you..." Geraldine fumbled through the crack of the door for the light switch. "There, that's better. Now you can see what you're doing. The window is obscured, you know. You won't be breaking blackout rules."
The girl had thanked her quietly, but when Geraldine and Iain came up to bed, they found the bathroom empty with the light still on.
"Is she nervous of electricity, Gigi, do you think?" whispered Iain, casting a curious glance across the landing to Sam's old room, where Sara was now installed.
"Oh, surely not. She seems so sensible." Geraldine had reached in and extinguished the light before bringing her lips up to her husband's ear. "No more nervous than you are, of the Durward-Thackeray misalliance."
Now, on the morning of his concert, Iain Stewart began to question whether the duet his feuding ladies were supposed to sing would actually come off. The rivalry between the women had precluded him from putting either of them on the programme first, since appearing later in the lineup was perceived as carrying the greater honour. Therefore, a duet had been agreed upon, whereby both ladies would sing simultaneously and together—albeit physically several feet apart. A felicitous solution on the face of it, but one which came with challenges of its own.
"...so," Geraldine resumed, a little breathless, blowing sharply up her cheek to move aside a wayward lock that had fallen across her eyes. "I'll be along at half past four with Sara. Simply see to it that Constance and Amanda keep their claws retracted until then."
"Easily said." Iain fidgeted with his collar. He peered upstairs at his wife. Geraldine was looking quite flustered this morning. "What are you doing up there, Gigi?"
"I'm... we're moving the last of Sam's stuff into the back bedroom. She and Christopher can be comfortable in there for one night."
"Don't lift heavy things. Let Sara help you."
Sara whispered, "I will do it, Mrs Stewart. Carry things. It's not important."
Geraldine applied a quieting hand to Sara's shoulder. "Yes it is. We'll work around it."
"What's that, darling?" Iain cocked an ear.
"Off you toddle, Iain. Everything is under control. We'll see you later. Have you got your sandwich...?"
Satisfied with Iain's nod, she ushered Sara back into the bedroom and sank down beside her on the bed.
"Now then, dear. You make a lovely list of all the things you mustn't do on Saturdays, and we shall see to it that you don't have to do them."
...
The trestle tables in the church hall looked resplendent—several households had donated candles—though the 'spread' was more of a desperate assembly of whatever could be gathered, in the spirit of community, from the concert ticketholders' pantries.
Joyce Ventham was busily folding napkins when Sara and Geraldine left for their short walk to the church. It was a quarter past four and already growing dark.
"Another hour or so, and you'll be... off the hook, dear," Geraldine observed tentatively, trying to gauge from Sara's expression whether consolation was appropriate. Her young companion looked back at her uncertainly.
"Then it's our turn, tomorrow," the older woman continued, to soften any mild offence she might have caused. "And if you really like hats, you can watch a full procession of odd confections on their way to church tomorrow. Quite the parade, I promise you. A tribute to our local ladies' inventiveness in straitened times."
Sara smiled at Mrs Stewart's considerateness. This lady was kindhearted, but she must surely realise that Sara no longer remembered the full flavour of Sabbath rituals. It had been nearly six years since she'd seen or heard from family, let alone celebrated Shabbat with them. In the intervening years, the opportunities to observe Shabbat had been sporadic, and when they did arise, she'd found the memories at best unsettling. In 1939, her fifteen-year-old brother had taken her to Dortmund for collection by the Kindertransport lady. Ezra had kissed her, pressed Johannes the bear, with a blue ribbon round his neck, into her hands, then turned up his collar and vanished into the station crowds. Their mother and father had been taken but a week before, while grim-faced, frightened neighbours sheltered her and Ezra in their own apartment. Sara had been almost nine then, but she'd clung stubbornly to Johannes in the tumult of the railway station, crying Momme! like a small child for her mother.
Sei doch ruhig, Sara...Hush, breathed the soft voice now inside her head, und bleib bei Ezra, bis wir zurückkommen... until we return, stay with your brother.
Except her parents hadn't returned. And then Ezra was gone, too. And she had clung to her Johannes Bear, named for his silly blackcurrant eyes, Johannisbeer. Clung to him because her mother had thrust the toy into her hands the same day that she was sent upstairs to hide with Frau Schöler, and had bidden her, Keep him safe, Sara, and he will keep you safe. Promise me this? Keep Johannes safe. Nun, geh schon! And as she and her brother clambered pale-faced up the winding staircase out of view, she'd heard the soft sounds of her mother weeping in her father's arms.
Almost six years ago. The families she'd lived with since had sometimes been kind, sometimes not. The last three years she'd been quite happy with a music master and his wife and daughter. But a month ago, a gas main had exploded in the street and peeled away an outside wall, destroying half the house and, to her host's extreme distress, his baby grand piano. The whole family had been obliged to leave their home and stay with family, which left Sara in accommodation difficulties. And sadly without music, which she missed...
"I cannot stand her arrogance another moment, Mrs Stewart." A woman's angry voice broke through Sara's thoughts. "My poor nerves simply won't allow it. Deep regrets to Reverend Stewart for the Barcarolle, but that woman is insufferable. I bid you a good evening."
The portly figure stomping past them, on the path that led both to and from St Stephen's Church, had pressed a bundle of sheet music into a startled Geraldine's hands before exiting through the lych gate, chin held high. Without a backward glance the woman stalked off down the lane.
"Ah," offered Geraldine apologetically to Sara. "That was Mrs Durward. Well, the back of her, at any rate. And this," she stopped to straighten the haphazard pages, balanced now against her chest, "has got to be the Barcarolle. Come on. We'd better go and see what's up."
She and Sara pressed on up the path in single file, and Geraldine became aware of a melodious humming coming from behind her, sounding very much like Offenbach.
"You sing, dear?" Geraldine turned on her heel, only to have Sara Immerglück walk into her. "Whoops! Sara. Were you lost in song?"
Sara clapped a hand to her mouth, wide-eyed. "I... forgot, Mrs Stewart!"
"What, no singing allowed, either?"
Sara shook her head and looked down. Geraldine squinted at her. "But in an hour... you could?"
A small, conspiratorial smile from her companion. "In an hour, yes."
"My dear girl," Geraldine fed an arm through Sara's. "Walk with me. I think you may be the saviour of Iain's concert. And when we come back later with Samantha, don't forget to wear your 'happy hat'."
Sara's chuckle was a deep, rich sound that spoke well for the mezzo line that she would be accomplishing that evening.
Geraldine leant across to whisper in her ear. "Now, never fear: Miss Thackeray is bound to be perfectly polite to you, because she's thrilled to see the last of Mrs Durward. But if she isn't, you have my full permission to hit her..." she raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sunset, "with a hammer. In an hour."
...
Aubrey Stewart handed Sam a glass of clear green liquid from a bottle labelled "Greengage '44".
"Uncle Aubrey, do you have a bottomless supply of this?"
Her uncle's features crumpled in good-natured acceptance of the jibe. "My dear niece, in these dark times, every little bit helps. For you, Christopher?"
Foyle raised a defensive hand. "Um, beg to be excused, Aubrey."
"Quite so," Aubrey helped himself to a glass. "As well to keep your wits about you, in the vicinity of my spirited niece. For myself, however, and provided I have legs enough to carry me as far as The Six Bells tonight, I am content."
Foyle sent his wife a tranquilly appraising look, and caught the flush of pleasure on her cheek.
"You've heard the news, of course? The Dresden bombing." Aubrey lowered his chin and fixed his watery eyes on Christopher.
"I have." It was a non-committal answer.
"Unconscionable." Aubrey's jowls shook. "What in God's name has this war become?"
The tilt of Foyle's head emphasised the suddenly stubborn cast of his features."Shouldn't think that God's name lends itself to much that's gone on so far. Nnnot about to change at this late stage then, is it?"
"Erm..." Sam shifted in her seat, eyes moving between the men. There was a dissonance in this discussion she was unaccustomed to detect between her uncle and her husband.
However, Aubrey was a man whose approach to disagreement was one that tended toward absorption of opposing views, even as he put forth his own case.
"Oh, indeed. A truer word, dear boy. Which leaves the Church in a dilemma, wouldn't you agree?"
"Wull, wouldn't disagree. But couldn't offer any educated viewpoint on the subject. I tend to think that people want an end to this. By yesterday, if possible."
"Ends justifying means?"
Sam read her uncle's face as genuine intellectual enquiry as he posed the question, but sitting closely as she was to Christopher, she felt the frisson of his hackles on the rise.
"I'm sure it's not as cut and d..." she interjected.
"Nnnaïve to expect high-minded attitudes when people's backs are up against the wall," supplied her husband, bluntly.
"No role for reconciliation, Christopher?"
"W'let's see..." Foyle's chin jutted. "Hitler's handing medals and commissions out to children while we prevaricate. You reckon he gives half a toss for preservation of the species?"
"Christopher..." Sam's hand descended on her husband's forearm. She had rarely witnessed him so bullish, though in fairness she suspected that Milner had—and frequently, in cases of intransigence when interviewing criminals.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Aubrey's voice was kindly as he sensed his niece's consternation. "Fear not! No battles between family in your father's sitting room. I realise the Church, if she should speak against such things, will find herself at odds with members of her congregation. To speak the fundamental Christian values of reconciliation and forgiveness from the pulpit in the midst of war is tantamount to treason in the eyes of some."
He sipped his wine and sighed regretfully. "Sadly, on reflection, I must conclude that, in my advocacy of humanitarianism, I have lost humility. Lost touch, perhaps? The destructive force of this war tests our faith in ways not even dreamt of in the history of human conflict."
Aubrey leant forwards, hands clasped, his forearms on his knees.
"Christopher, I offer you my thanks for your forbearance with the conflicts of my conscience... and with me."
Foyle winced under Sam's glare. "No, eh... really no need, Aubrey."
Silence fell between them, and when Geraldine appeared in the doorway, she absorbed what she erroneously assumed to be a quiet familial concord.
"So! She clapped her hands together briskly. Are we all ready for a taste of Lyminster harmony?"
****** TBC ******
More Author's Notes:
In 1929, a Dresden social democrat physician, Fritz Lickint, published a paper presenting strong statistical evidence for a link between smoking and cancer of the lungs, respiratory and upper digestive tract. When the Nazis came to power, his political affiliations led to his dismissal from his hospital post, and his military service during World War II was as an army medic. After the war, he returned to work as a doctor, and eventually became a hospital director. Lickint coined the phrase "passive smoking" (passivrauchen).
Though Lickint was persona non grata to the Nazi regime, his ideas were nonetheless usurped by the anti-tobacco movement that flourished in Nazi Germany. Hitler himself was against smoking, and especially disapproving of it in women—he believed it damaged their reproductive health.
It's so annoying when nutters almost get it right, isn't it?
I should mention that an American doctor, Isaac Adler, was the first to make the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer; he did so in 1912. But you can bet that with a name like Isaac Adler, nothing he published was likely to be given credit in Nazi Germany.
...
Jewish religious observance comes with a plethora of don't's for Sabbath (which runs from sunset on a Friday till the appearance of three stars after nightfall on a Saturday evening). Carrying and hitting stuff with hammers are two. Another is lighting fires, and in modern times the prohibition extends to switching electric lights on and off. With admirable pragmatism, observant Jews have spawned all sorts of practical inventions to obviate such rules, and one website (of many, I'm sure), kosherimages dot com,offers a catalogue of Kosher Innovations, the fruits of many inventive brains, comprising gadgetry designed to deal with the practical challenges of religious observance.
After all her years in Britain, I don't think Sara Immerglück would have retained all of her family's practices, but she might have remembered and chosen to apply some.
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The German city of Dresden was flattened by prolonged Allied bombing between 13th and 15th February, 1945. Justification for the operation has been widely questioned since the war. Around 25,000 people were killed.
Reverend Aubrey Stewart's views on the bombing of civilians are canon, as is Foyle's careful avoidance of agreeing with him— Plan of Attack (S6E1). I have borrowed a few ideas on this from my own fic Wine and Roses, in which Aubrey makes clear his deprecation of the bombing of another German city. The character of Aubrey Stewart is painted sympathetically in his two appearances in Foyle's War. In Plan of Attack, however, subtle hints are given that he is a little out of touch: for one thing, he asks Foyle for sugar in his tea, only to be met with the Foylian ironical eyebrow.
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More soon.
GiuC