L'Aimant – Chapter 48
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 48: The family rallies to aid Sam in her recovery.
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:
The usual shout of thanks to my beta, dancesabove.
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
"I'd better let you rest." He dug under the pillow for his pyjamas, but her hand closed round his wrist.
"Don't go to Andrew's room. I want you here, with me. Or I shan't sleep."
"You'll sleep. The codeine..."
"No. Stay," she insisted.
Foyle changed and climbed in gingerly beside her, doing his best to touch no injuries. Samantha turned on her left side, her bandaged hand supported on the pillow next to her head. He drew her close against his lap, his right hand creeping round her waist to come to rest upon the gentle rise of her abdomen.
"Sleep, then," he said, and planted a soft kiss behind her ear. Sam recalled it was the same place where she'd dabbed the perfume that fateful morning—long since washed away when Edie had bathed and applied arnica cream to her neck that afternoon.
He reached up and turned off the bedside lamp.
"Christopher... Do I... ever remind you of Rosalind?"
The imprint of the now extinguished lightbulb lingered on his retina. He sensed a neediness behind the question.
"Rosalind? Wull, she was... much loved and respected... you'd have liked her, I don't doubt. Kind like you, and spirited, and brave.
"She was different in many ways, too... but never do I find myself wishing you were like her in those ways. For then you wouldn't be my Sam."
He waited, hoping he had chosen his words well, and to his relief, he felt Sam snuggle closer into him and interlace her fingers with his own.
After a moment she said, "Christopher, you're trembling."
"Your imagination, my love. Go to sleep."
Chapter 48
Early hours, Thursday, 22nd February 1945
"Steady! Sweetheart! Steady!"
Foyle's arm tightened to restrain the suddenly writhing form, up to now nestled quietly in his lap, and raised a gentle hand up to calm Samantha with a thumb-stroke to the top of her unbruised left cheek.
The bundle in his arms jerked away from him sharply and let out a full-throated yell that pasted his nerves to the ceiling. In the next instant he was yanked back to earth by the sensation of Sam's teeth closing round the soft flesh of his hand.
Christopher let out a sharp cry of his own.
"Ow! Christ! Sam!"
With a hoarse, gut-wrenching "NO!" that signalled disbelief and terror, Sam thrashed to liberate herself from his grasp. Managing to free his hand, he clamped her to him tightly, fearing lest escape cause her worse injury.
The struggle and the 'no' slowly dissolved into a chain of desultory jerks, giving way to a string of desperate, hitching sobs.
Burying his forehead into the nape of Sam's neck, Foyle stifled a sob of his own. The attack, at last, had surfaced. The horror was now truly with them, and, perhaps between them, also.
"Steady, Sweetheart," he repeated, doing his best to remain calm—though his insides quailed. "It's just a memory. It's all over now. You're safe in bed with me. Hush, Darling!"
Upstairs, jolted awake by the loud commotion rising through the floorboards, Georgie sat bolt upright, in a cold sweat.
"Ohhh Criiiiipes, what nowww" she moaned balefully to herself, batting at the blankets in a blind search for her dressing gown. Pulling it around her in panicked haste, she tore barefoot downstairs, catching brief sight of her reflection in the brass-framed mirror over the stairwell. The very caricature of an Uncle Tom's Cabin plantation child in photographic negative stared back at her, wide-eyed alarm, cheeks white with cold cream, hair curled in a haphazard arrangement of rag bows that framed her features. She horrified herself—but there was no time to worry over her appearance now.
Outside the door of the main bedroom, she almost raised a hand to knock, until the ultimate ridiculousness of such an action struck home. Instead, she flicked the light-switch to illuminate the landing, grasped the doorknob firmly, turned it, and walked straight in.
The hall light swept across the carpet, projecting her shadow ahead of her.
Soulful sobs rose from the dark mound of bodies she could just make out on the mattress.
"Georgie." Christopher's grave, but level tones reached her across the disarranged covers. "Sam has remembered. Fetch a cool, wet flannel from the bathroom, would you? Thanks."
Without a word, Georgie rushed off on her errand. When she returned, Christopher was sitting up in bed, haggard, bleary-eyed and dishevelled, one arm supporting Sam's back against his chest. Sam's right hand was enclosed in his, his fingers interlaced with hers. And, flicking on the wall light, Georgie was alarmed to see blood on their entwined hands.
Though Sam's poor out-of-features face was still streaked with tears, her sobs had subsided into whimpers. But as for Christopher, Oh Lord! Georgie was shocked to notice that this was one occasion when he actually looked his age.
Georgie screwed her courage. "Just look at the pair of you!" she lamented, planting herself firmly on the side of the bed with the enamel bowl she'd taken from the bathroom cupboard. She set about bathing Sam's forehead with the flannel, pausing intermittently to re-wet, then wring it into the bowl.
Another series of sobs escaped Sam. "He... t-trying to kill me. An—and worse. He didn— he didn't, did he?" Her voice was rising with dismay. "Christopher? I pa— I passed out be—before..." Her pleading eyes met Georgie's heartbroken gaze, which in turn rose questioningly to meet Christopher's.
"No," he pronounced firmly. "No. Listen. Sam. You listen now. The man's dead. Died before he could finish what he started. D'you understand? Sam?"
The sobbing lessened into sniffles; then he felt her head incline in a slow, painful nod of dawning relief. A beat or two, and then she promptly switched to panic.
"I bit him—and he died? M-my God! I bit you—" Sam scrabbled to bring Christopher's hand into view. "Are you all right? I'm so sorry..."
Powerless to contain a twitch of amusement, Georgie's hand crept to her mouth. A shy glance at Christopher revealed that he shared the joke.
"Nunno, relax, my love," he kissed her hair. "Your bite's not venomous. Not to me, at any rate."
A pause ensued while Sam struggled with the plot. "Did you kill him then?"
"Anselm did." Georgie raised her chin judiciously, and applied the cool flannel to Sam's swollen neck. "You remember John Anselm, Darling?"
"An—?" croaked Sam.
Georgie flashed a look at Christopher. "Think we need some more ice. I'll nip and fetch some."
"John Anselm. In Hastings on leave," explained Christopher softly, urging Sam's hand back to her lap. "Running past the huts for exercise, he spotted the attacker. And, um, you."
Georgie pressed the flannel into Christopher's hand. "Off to get the ice," she announced. A glance at the alarm clock told her it was shortly after four. "Oh, and a plaster for your hand," she added as she left the room.
"So, he's dead, then?" Sam asked, only half rhetorically, in a small voice.
"Extremely." Christopher's lip curled in a quirk of gallows humour. "But before he died, you hurt him, rest assured."
"My jaw aches," moaned Samantha.
"You have quite a bite, my love." He stroked her hair with his fingers, taking care not to leave trails of blood.
...
Georgie heaved a sigh as she trotted down the stairs. This was going to be a long morning. How would things develop? Her hand flew to her cheek. First step would be to wipe this muck off her face, thank you very much.
Returning with the ice, she tackled Christopher, who now showed signs of nodding off on top of Sam's head.
"Someone needs to fetch Sam's mother," she announced, jolting him awake. "Nobody's told her parents. If it were my mother, she would want to know. You need your people round you. Or even if you don't, they need to be here. For a visit, at least."
"Sam?" Christopher prompted. "Your decision."
"I should like to see Mummy," Sam conceded sleepily. "Wouldn't want her to have to struggle here on the train, though."
"Right. So I take the car from the station and fetch her, then? Soon as it's light?"
Christopher slow-blinked his thanks. "If you wouldn't mind, Georgie."
"Right-oh." She pressed the ice bag gently to Sam's cheek, until Sam reached up with her right hand and took over herself.
"Thanks, Darling. Complete treasure." Sam sent her a sweet look with the good side of her face that made Georgie swell with emotion. Impulsively she reached to grasp Sam's wrist.
"You're so brave!"
"Mm… I wish." Sam mumbled through the ice bag.
"Christopher. Hand." Georgie bathed his palm and thumb, then secured a dressing on the wound. "You'll be good as new," she reassured him, though his smile said that this small collateral damage was neither here nor there to him.
The younger woman surveyed her patients. Calm, but sleepy now, it seemed. The clock still read a silly hour, and so she grasped the opportunity and rose to leave.
"I'll snatch another couple of hours, if you don't mind. If you want anything..."
Georgie was about to add 'yell', but thought better of it.
...
Edith Milner was just closing the front door of the house behind her early that afternoon when the Wolseley pulled up alongside 31 Steep Lane. One careful hand on the railings, the other on her back, she descended to the pavement, then bent to peer inside.
Edie recognised Sam's mother easily from the wedding, and she put up a hand to wave. The sun in Edie's eyes was preventing her from getting a full look at the other occupants of the car, but she didn't have long to wait, for a rear door of the Wolseley opened and out stepped Reverend Stewart.
"Mrs Milner?" he removed his hat and hurried around the car to join her on the pavement, his face an anguish of concern. "How is my daughter, please?"
Edie's brows furrowed momentarily in acknowledgement of his worry, but her expression soon warmed to a smile. She reached out to rest a hand on the older man's, as he clutched his hat in front of him.
"This must be so worrying for you, Reverend Stewart, but Sam has tremendous fortitude. I should warn you, things look worse than they are, but she has made great progress in just one day, so please try not to fret too much."
As the front car door opened to reveal Geraldine, Georgie called out brightly across the cabin, "Can I give you a lift home, Edith?"
Edie bent to answer. "Oh, no thank you, Dear, I'm off to the shops! Patient's comfortable."
She straightened, taking in Geraldine's pinched and pallid face, and reverted to a brisk professional demeanour.
"Hello, Mrs Stewart. So sorry for your concern. I was just saying to your husband, Sam is doing very well, and please don't be alarmed by her appearance. Things will look so much better in a week." She paused to clasp the older woman's hand in hers. Then, with a brief nod and smile of reassurance, she turned on her toe and made her way downhill.
Without peeling her eyes from Edith's back, Geraldine reached out absently, and grasped her husband's arm.
"How bad do you suppose she looks?" she asked weakly.
"Awful shiner!" piped up Georgie, rounding the bonnet. "Come on. You must be anxious to see her."
...
Despite all warnings, Sam's parents still hadn't quite reckoned with the sight of their daughter's spoiled beauty. As they stood just inside the bedroom doorway, Iain's arm crept round his wife's shoulders as if to hold her together, but Geraldine batted it away, striding to the bedside. There she sank to her knees and pressed Sam's good hand to her lips.
"My Darling! WHAT have they done to you?"
Christopher had withdrawn to the foot of the bed on hearing the drum of footfalls on the stairs. He sought Iain's eyes, then closed his own in pain.
"Good to see you, Iain," he breathed. "Could've wished for better circumstances."
In that moment, Georgie congratulated herself on doing precisely the right thing in bringing Reverend Stewart. Not that Sam's father had needed any persuading; indeed, he'd had his hat and coat on before Geraldine. But the young woman had deliberately stressed her worry for Christopher, so as to ensure that he would come.
Sara Immerglück had waved them off at the door of the vicarage, amidst instructions to take herself to Miss Thackeray's for meals. The two had become close since singing the Barcarolle together at Iain's winter concert, to the point where the older woman had even made overtures to Geraldine about adopting Sara. It seemed unlikely, though—with information about the fate of Sara's family in abeyance—that matters would progress until the day when certain news could be obtained.
Now Georgie looked with satisfaction on the company assembled round Sam's bed, and discreetly withdrew from the room to enjoy a little quiet time after the long drive of that morning. Downstairs in the relative peace of the living room, she sank into Christopher's armchair, kicked off her shoes, and threw her hat into the corner, exhaling through pursed lips. Then her eye fell on the whisky bottle.
…...
"Don't fret, Mummy." Already Sam's self-pity faded at the sight of her mother's obvious and deep anxiety. "The swelling will soon go, and I have to bite down hard on this, to try and get my loosened teeth to 'take',"—she held up a small, folded pad of cloth.
"Your... loosened... ?" Geraldine glared uncomprehendingly at Christopher.
"She was punched and knocked unconscious," he supplied dutifully, feeding a hand round the back of his neck and under his collar, which already felt too tight.
Iain turned his head, and recognised the anguish of a man in need, but first had to attend to his daughter, planting a soft kiss on her uninjured cheek.
"My beautiful girl," he said, "may God punish the beast who did this to you."
"Oh, he doesn't need to, Daddy. Anselm did that for him."
Reverend Stewart exchanged a glance with his wife. Anselm was a name hitherto unknown to them, but now it sounded the note of an avenging angel's trumpet. Two pairs of eyes turned to Christopher in unspoken question.
"My, um... he was assigned as my driver during my secondment."
Christopher fidgeted. There was a sense in which each fact of the attack on Sam was his personal responsibility, and every question that arose from it stung him like an accusation. How could he allow Sam to be punched? Why was he not on hand? Why was it left to his younger, stronger driver to save Samantha?
Geraldine squeezed her daughter's hand. "Then we must be extremely grateful to Anselm, Darling... whoever he may be. Tell me what you remember."
Iain saw his son-in-law's hand close around the strut of the bedstead and grip it till his knuckles turned white. He rose.
"Might we have a word downstairs, Christopher?" Iain brought a hand down lightly on Geraldine's shoulder. "Back in a while, my dear."
Sam's eyes swept between the two men. As Reverend Stewart bent to bestow a parting kiss, she whispered in his ear. "Please help him, Daddy... I felt him trembling."
...
Footfalls on the stairs alerted Georgie to the danger of discovery. Springing up, she darted to the plant-stand and balanced the glass of whisky precariously round the back of an obliging aspidistra. But she need not have worried, for the men's steps bent towards the study, rather than the sitting room. Confident once more of remaining undisturbed, she retrieved the glass and sank back into her comfy chair, slinging her legs over the arm. Within five minutes, she was fast asleep, the empty glass abandoned in her lap.
"Can't apologise enough for this, Iain." Foyle's stance—head bowed, hands plunged in pockets—signalled utter contrition.
Reverend Stewart ignored the apology. "My dear chap. Have you lost the baby?"
"Nnno." A curt shake of the head, and Foyle's eyes remained focussed on the carpet.
"Concussion?"
"Yyyes. Initial loss of memory of the incident. But now restored."
"This man...?"
"Responsible for several women's murders—well, we're confident that he committed them."
"Sam's hand?"
"Two broken fingers. And the trauma to the neck was an attempt at strangulation... sufficient to subdue, before..."
The unspoken hung between them. Iain steeled himself, while Christopher found his voice.
"... his intention was to rape. I'm immensely glad to tell you that he didn't get the chance."
"This Anselm stopped him," Iain nodded gravely.
"Yep." Foyle's brows contracted as his eyes closed. His tongue crept over his upper lip, then disappeared again. Iain saw the signs of pain and sensed the private struggle.
"And how are you, Christopher?"
A long silence preceded his slump-shouldered, "I'm... unable."
Iain frowned. "Not sure I...?"
Foyle moved to stand before his desk and stared down at the scattered papers, then up at Iain.
"Yep. Unable. Unable to protect my wife. Unable to undo this mess. Unable to get past the bloody impotence of knowing she was plucked from right under my nose." He paused and turned his head away. "Unable to forgive myself when I look at her. Barely able to face you, Iain, if I'm honest. Though I'm glad, for Sam's sake, that you're here. Oh, and unable"—looking down, he touched a pyramid of fingers to the desktop and added quietly—"to function professionally. Which puts me in a bad position, with a child on the way. I mean, I've thought about resigning in the past, but this time..." he bit the inside of his lip and froze into a trance-like stare, "... I'm not jumping of my own volition. Feels as though I'm being dragged."
Iain registered the tremor in the younger man's fingers. He joined Christopher at the desk and spoke firmly, but not unkindly.
"You need to pull yourself together, then. Dig in your heels. Sam tells me that you're good at that."
Christopher's unfocussed gaze tilted towards Reverend Stewart's profile. Wise counsel he was at pains to know how to implement.
"Nnno idea how I'm going to watch her leave this house again. And she'll fight me, naturally. Fear I'll make her seriously unhappy."
"We've all done it." Iain felt genuine empathy. His fears for his womenfolk had always been a cross to bear. "I felt the same with Geraldine, when Sam was on the way. And now, in honesty, the worry's worse. She puts me straight, though, with her practical good sense. Christopher, it's necessary to accept that some things are beyond our control."
"But this is..."
"Different? I sympathise. Events like this defy our comprehension. But by its sheer unlikelihood, do you not see that, having happened once, the same could not occur again? The lightning rule?"
"Rationally, yes, but..." Foyle closed his eyes. "I lost Rosalind and..." he trailed off. Caroline's fate still haunted him. "Now this. This." He shook his head, denying himself absolution. "I should have been more vigilant. I should have read the signs when I was out at Hythe..."
His words recalled to Iain the subject of the worries Georgie had expressed as she had driven them to Hastings: how, on her way upstairs to sit with Sam, she'd overheard Christopher telling Sergeant Milner that he wouldn't be going back to work. "I wish you'd have a word with him, Reverend Stewart," the young woman had pleaded.
Mild shock tactics were called for. Iain swallowed.
"I sense hurt pride, Christopher," he declared in a tone usually reserved for the pulpit.
"Iain..." Foyle shook his head, "I assure you, this is not about m—"
"Isn't it, though? From what I've learned of you, you've borne personal grief and loss with fortitude, but you are unused to failure in your line of work. Does this go beyond a personal crisis for you, Christopher? Is this a professional failure, too?"
Foyle bridled. "Iain, I don't give a fig for how this looks professionally. I care that Sam is hurt and nearly died because I didn't do my job as a husband."
Reverend Stewart felt a pang of shame. It had been a calculated barb to sting his son-in-law out of self-absorption; now it just felt cruel. But he could not afford to stop yet.
"... or as a policeman?" he pressed quietly, leaning lightly against the desk.
"Go to hell." Foyle spat the words, then pressed his knuckles to his lips, tears stinging at his eyes.
"I may yet," offered Iain gently, "but my hope would be to see as few of my family there as possible."
There was an awkward silence, during which both men withdrew.
Iain was the first to re-engage.
"Look, Christopher. I regret my harshness. I quite understand that your concern for Sam outweighs concerns professional, but this awful thing must not be allowed to take you over. Sam seems worried for you when she needs her energies for healing. And Georgina's most concerned."
Foyle was taking slow breaths through his nose to calm himself.
"You realise Sam woke up screaming. Did Georgie tell you that?"
Iain felt a tightening in his throat. "No," he answered hoarsely. "No, she didn't."
Foyle's hand balled to a fist and ground into the desk. "I can't get past what might have happened to her, Iain. I should have been with her."
A hand reached for his arm. "Stop your imaginings, Christopher. It didn't happen. We must thank the Lord for being on our side and sending Anselm as His agent. Sam survived, but now God's work is over, and she needs your strength. Her husband's strength. And that means carrying on as normal."
Christopher unballed his fist. "My daughter-in-law admonished me, as well. And rightly so. Letting people down all round, it seems."
"You have survived this fear before," Iain reminded him gently, "... the day you saw your son go off to war. May I ask how you dealt with that?"
Foyle frowned. "I, ah, threw myself into my work."
"And when Rosalind died?"
"Um. Andrew needed me. And then there was my..."
"Work?"
"Myeah." Foyle turned and perched beside his father-in-law.
Iain nodded slowly. "I understand the negative power of fear, Christopher. It paralyses. Though your nature is to look fear in the eye, and not be cowed, your feelings for Samantha make you vulnerable. But if you let your fear persist, the evil smoulders on." He paused. "I beg you, do not let it win."
Christopher pinched between his eyes. "Getting old. More I see of life, less I understand how people manage to withstand the knocks it sends them."
"That won't do, Christopher. Lose heart and those who love you see your fear. Then it invades them, too. There are no holidays for heroes."
Those words provoked a shy smile. "I'm no hero, Iain."
The older man corrected him. "Oh, but I'm afraid it isn't your prerogative to say. Every person who admires you in this life, bestows the title; thereafter it becomes a burden you must not lay down—on pain of damaging those who draw their courage from your good example."
Foyle grinned down at his shoes. "No holidays, you say?"
"None." Iain sent his a sly glance. "But heroes do have one advantage: they see and use their opportunities. Therefore, as a man who deals in faith, my advice is: trust in God, in Sam, and in yourself; and grasp this second chance with gratitude, and joy."
"I expect you're right..." Foyle said.
"Sam worries for you, as do you for her. So nurse each other through a mutual recovery. And that, Christopher," Iain looked at him sternly, "also means discharging the patient once she is recovered."
"Mmmthat bit won't be easy..."
"God will give you strength. Or failing that, my daughter will re-educate you. As did her mother me." The older man's normally mournful features stood transformed by a pensive smile.
Foyle studied Iain for a moment. An idea began to crystallise in his mind.
"Seem to remember you're fond of life-sculpture, Iain?"
...
For the second time that afternoon, Christopher took in the vision of an armchair full of shoeless snoozing cherub nursing an empty whisky glass, and frowned down at her with pursed lips. Bending at the waist, he brought his lips next to her ear and uttered, not at all quietly, "GEORGIE!"
The young woman started from her doze to find herself under the hooded-lidded scrutiny of her father-in-law.
"Oh," she said, and blinked at him sleepily. "Whoops. How long was I asleep?"
Foyle gave her an ironical look and ignored the question.
"Don't get up," he said, drily.
Red-faced, Georgie made to swing her calves off the arm of his chair, but Foyle dipped his knees and deftly caught her underneath the ankles, returning her legs to where they'd been when he walked in.
"Rang Milner," he informed her levelly. "He doesn't want the Wolseley today. Iain and Geraldine are staying the night, so you're excused boots. But this one..." pivoting, he snagged the bottle from the bookshelf and poured a generous refill as she scrabbled to stabilise the tilted glass still in her lap, "is your absolute last."
Wednesday, 7th March, 1945
Two weeks later, the ache along Sam's hand had subsided considerably. In point of fact, she was functioning quite well, having worked out how to manage a number of mundane tasks around her injury. The main fingers of her left hand remained strapped together with adhesive bandage, the whole affair covered by a broad, protective sheath, custom-fashioned from pliant calf's leather by an attentive and regretful Ellen, who had visited regularly. And with normal flexibility retained in her thumb and little finger, Sam found that she had quite a useful implement in her three-pronged claw of a left hand. For instance, one could clamp a reasonably large potato in one's left, whilst peeling with one's right.
At least in theory one could. Georgina had discovered her experimenting and removed both the potato and the knife. Sam rolled her eyes in recollection.
Bathing was, of course, a little tricky, but with both Georgie and Christopher available to help, these things were coped with—gravely at first, then later, as her soreness lessened, in a gale of giggles when Georgina was in charge. The loving care shown by her husband and her friend, not to mention Edie's steady practicality and cheer, had helped Sam through the first few dark days of her recovery. And to have her mother in attendance, too, had smoothed the way for Sam immensely while she clawed her way up from her dazed, bedraggled state back to normality.
As she regarded herself now in the bathroom mirror, the face before her had reverted from a swollen and amorphous Quasimodo visage to her ordinary, recognisable self. Sam traced her cheekbone with a finger, raising her chin for a better view. There was still some mottled yellowing around the temple and flesh of her upper cheek, and the shadow of a bruise at the inner corner of her right eye, but in general she felt confident she wouldn't frighten the horses.
As if horses were the issue. The issue was her husband.
Sam blinked sadly. She picked her lipstick from the shelf and made herself a Cupid's bow. In the obligatory Jungle Red, the result looked rather desperately lady-of-the-night. She pressed her lips together for a softening effect, then blotted on a piece of Izal, which she tossed into the toilet. With another lift of her chin, she assessed the effect. There. The welts beneath her jawline were fading, and she ran the fingers of her good right hand across them. Almost restored. There remained a roughness, a constriction in her throat. Sam made a hefty, experimental swallow. She still couldn't seem to get her food down without feeling as though her ears were involved, but that didn't worry her as such.
What did worry her was Christopher, who wouldn't be drawn into the level of intimacy she'd been craving for a week now. Even as he'd helped her bathe, it had been 'business only'. But not the kind of business she'd have wished for. Every kiss that she initiated was tenderly but firmly ended by him first.
It didn't once cross Sam's mind that her husband was put off by her temporary disfigurement, because Christopher always met her gaze with a look of warmth and candid pleasure. But a look was roughly where things stopped. Their touching was affectionate, but never crossed the threshold between tenderness and passion.
One source of relief for Sam was Christopher's return to work in the last few days. After more than a week of daily calls from Paul, ostensibly to 'keep the DCS informed', the policeman in him had eventually been tempted back to work. Sam didn't know precisely what had clinched it, but she did recall that he'd come in from a phone call the Saturday after the attack looking moderately annoyed, and Sam had the impression (later confirmed by Christopher himself) that he'd begun to feel a little sidelined, which was probably the spur. She noticed, though, that once he did resume his duties, his days were short, and he was bringing work home with him, spreading it across the dining table where he could sit and watch her as she read her novel in the living room.
"Why don't you take your work into the study, Darling?" she'd finally enquired.
"Nup. Awful mess in there. Keep meaning to sort out my fishing stuff. Less clutter here."
The other habit he'd developed in the last week was to follow her around the house. Not obviously, of course. But once she'd found her balance again and resumed her pottering, she would tend to find him hovering behind her in the kitchen on some pretext of retrieval of an object. Or in the basement if she went to run some washing through the mangle, he was suddenly beside her on a mission to repair his waders, or arrange his rods. Sam's casual remark about the lack of urgency for either (considering he hadn't been near a river in all the months of their involvement) was met with a mumbled, "Well, um. Trout season starts middle of March, so..."
Yes, everything about his manner around her was concern and warmth, but the projected desire she was accustomed to sensing remained absent, and this saddened her. A gentle word from Reverend Stewart before he left for Lyminster had alerted her to Christopher's nagging guilt regarding the attack, and she had done her utmost, by demonstrating her growing strength and confidence, to reassure her husband.
Knowing Christopher, however, schooled as he was in the art of self-reproach, Sam realised there would be much more work to do.
When Reverend Stewart did decamp for his home parish on the second day of Sam's recovery (furnished, Sam noticed, with the infamous Rosalind sculpture Christopher had kept under wraps in their bedroom—Sam had actually thought it quite tasteful), his departure had left her husband in a household usually mostly full of expectant women. If the excess of female hormones had bothered Christopher, he showed no palpable sign. He was apt to grant them the privacy of the sitting room without him, once he was reassured that Sam was settled on the settee, and her nausea or headache, or the drowsiness caused by her disturbed sleep-patterns, catered for by those around her.
Both due in late July, Sam and her mother had amused themselves by comparing bumps and all the niggles of expectancy. And Edie, more advanced in her impending motherhood, had listened intently to Sam's mama's account of how things had gone for her while she was carrying Sam.
"I love my daughter, Edith," Geraldine assured the younger woman, "but she stood right on my nerves while I was waiting for her. Her little foot was jabbing up against my spine and sending aches along my hip and pins and needles down my leg for weeks. And she was such a little fidget in the night, exploring her environment." She cast her daughter an affectionate glance. "Still exploring, aren't you, Darling? Curious and into everything?"
"Nearly killed the cat, this time, Mummy," smiled Sam, as cheerfully as she could muster. The brave smile cost her little, and paid dividends in terms of the effect upon the other women. For it showed them she was coping with events in quite the healthiest way she could. And when, that second night, she woke yet again in a cold sweat, and with a cry less potent than the one of the night before (insofar as it startled Christopher, but didn't reach across the corridor or to the floor above) she knew that she was climbing slowly from the pit of fear. After her first nightmare her husband had learned not to touch her face, and hence escaped with flesh intact, but he restrained her still with firm arms, soothed her with the gentlest words, as dry and delicate as preserved roses.
Sam sighed, remembering now the tenderness of his restraining arms, but it was bittersweet; she ached to turn to him in the night, to assuage the spring-like tension coiled inside her, but it seemed that Christopher had placed her in the category of delicate china, and meant to keep her there.
...
The fingers of the electric clock on Foyle's office wall nudged towards three. Enough for the day. Standing from his desk, he smoothed down his waistcoat, donned his jacket, and hastily pulled on his coat. Hat in one hand and manila folder in the other, he strode down to the foyer, shrugging the shoulders of his overcoat into place.
"Georgie? When you're ready."
Brooke looked up. "Give Mrs F. our best, Sir. Hope she's feelin' more herself with every day, eh?"
Foyle gave a closed-eyed nod. His sergeant's cheery solicitude endeared the man to him, and whatever missteps his ebullience might have led him into making in the past were now forgotten in the sincerity of the younger man's concern for Sam.
"Appreciate it, Sergeant. Yes, she is. And thank you."
Foyle's words expressed a genuine hope. That second night, on waking from her nightmare, Sam had sobbed the awful memory from her system, and it had been a cleansing moment for them both. That, plus the quiet good sense of Iain's counsel, and the fond words Geraldine had granted him out on the landing—"Dear boy, my shock alarmed you earlier. I'm sorry. Believe me when I say there's no one I would sooner trust to help my daughter heal than you"—had helped to shift his focus to the task ahead, and take a step away from dwelling on self-blame. And in the saner days that followed, he had opened up to Geraldine about the letter that had borne the final clue about Sam's would-be killer.
"Can't get over the disastrous bad luck of that," he confided across the kitchen table, rubbing irritably at his brow, "or the wretched mischance that brought him within reach of Hastings that day, as opposed to any other." His hand formed a loose fist and came down to rest in slow motion on the tabletop. "Another fifteen minutes, and I would've had him, Geraldine."
Geraldine's large eyes scanned his face in sympathy. "Dwell rather on the rapturous good luck, Dear, that sent John Anselm to the scene." She smiled and squeezed his arm. "Iain would call it Divine intervention, of course."
Iain would indeed have billed it thus. Such things were never luck in his book. Luck was the excellent sculpture of a nameless nude accompanying him back to Lyminster on the train. And as Christopher had waved his father-in-law on his way, he mused that, after all, the statue did deserve to be enjoyed, and this way, he would not to have to explain it to visitors. Another thing he preferred not to have to explain was the posy of silk forget-me-nots he found sitting in the urn on Rosalind's grave the week after Sam was attacked. They had all the appearance of intended adornments of a ladies' hat.
Now, as he entered the house, leaving Georgie to return the Wolseley to the station, Foyle turned over in his mind how he might formulate his thanks to the young man who had saved his wife's life. Anselm was due back in Hastings for the Friday inquest into Alick Fielding's death, and this would be Foyle's first opportunity to speak to him. That Anselm had left Hastings at all without Foyle being informed of his departure had irked Foyle, and been one of the deciding factors in tempting him back to work.
"Well, you can't have it both ways, Darling," Sam had told him frankly, when he'd complained that Milner hadn't warned him.
Today Sam met him in the hall as he was hanging up his hat.
"Early home again, my darling?"
He turned to her and smiled. "A short report to write, and then I'll make you tea." He noted the bright lipstick. Sam was looking more herself... and looking fetching. He planted a kiss on her forehead. "Any dizzy spells today?"
"Not until you kissed me." She lifted her face for a little lip contact, but felt instead his cheek against her own as he folded her in a soft embrace.
"Glad to hear it." He closed his eyes, allowing himself to breathe her scent for an instant, but then detached himself, patted her arm, and picked up the manila folder from the hall table. "Brooke sends best wishes from himself and from the men."
Sam trailed after him into the sitting room. "How was your day?" she began, then added quietly, "It's a little lonely here."
Christopher tossed the folder on the dining table. "Would you like to go out for a stroll? Weather's not bad today. Wrap up, hold my arm? We needn't be out long..."
"I don't want walkies, Christopher. Nor do I want to be kissed on the forehead, or patted. Like a pet." She wrapped her arms around herself and stood before him, looking down. "I want to be made love to." Her eyes rose to meet his. "Rather badly, actually."
Foyle bit his lip. "I, um, wouldn't want to... hurt..." He turned away. "Its... too soon, Sweetheart."
Sam placed herself directly in his orbit. "I don't suppose you'd let me be the judge of that, Sir?"
"Sam, I..." Foyle took her hand, a little humbly. He should have known from earlier experience that Sam would challenge his behaviour, but somehow he hadn't quite expected it today.
He brought her fingers to his lips. "Well, if it's what you want, my love," he said. "You know Guy warned you: nothing very strenuous for a week or two."
"Two weeks. It's been two weeks," Sam moaned in desperation. "And now, I don't mean to be... clinical..." she gave him a pleading look, "... and kill the mood, but I feel... I feel a little agitated for the lack of you. And it's so pointless now. I'm almost mended. After all, you're only being noble, aren't you?"
"Rrright." Foyle raised his brows and closed his eyes. The humour of the situation struck him, and a small smile curled his lips.
"Did I say something funny?" Sam inquired, a little put out by his private musings.
"Nunno! Oh no." He squeezed her hand and drew her against him contentedly. "Sam, you see, it's just... what with your father telling me I needed to be a hero, and you scolding me for acting like one, I hardly know which way to jump."
"Daddy said that?"
"Yep. He said 'no holidays for heroes'."
"Sometimes..." Sam purred, "dear Daddy's wisdom lingers after it has served its purpose. So do you think we might just dump the heroism for now, and indulge the weakness of the flesh?"
His blue eyes locked on hers in abject adoration. "Mmmwhatever you say, my love."
****** TBC ******
More Author's Notes:
Good news for lovers of amorous detail. Chapter 49, which will be an M-rated continuation of this scene, will be along in a few days. As usual, there will also be a T-rated version for the main story.
If you feel cheated by this chapter having ended too soon for your taste ;o) nip across to Where To, Sir by nocturnefauré. Chapter 14 has just been published.
...
"as dry and delicate as preserved roses" came from dancesabove
...
More soon.
GiuC