(I'm aware I still owe you an extract from "Operation Sealion", but have this instead, one of my few Snippets from Rosalind Lives AU -as yet unfinished)
"I'm in the Observer Corps as well as the WVS you know, sometimes we see the Dogfights over the channel we watch the planes go down, or fail to limp home. every time I'm asking for it not to be my Andrew, for it to be anyone else, just not Andrew." She glances up at him, No doubt you think it terribly wicked, selfish, of me, Reverend Stewart, to wish such pain on another Mother, another Father."
Across the table he blinks at her from behind his glasses,and at least momentarily silent
Walter, what seemed like a dozen lifetimes ago, at Courcelette if his last letter to Rilla was to be believed; Diana had often wondered whether he had already considered himself a dead man walking before the day of the last battle, the boy he’d been destroyed beyond repair or rebirth.
Aunt Leslie, whom she’d found it easier to talk to than her own mother, perhaps because she’d also had a brother she adored. Perhaps because she’d left Glen St. Mary and never missed it.
Perhaps because Leslie liked whiskey better than tea, newspapers better than poetry.
Una, who’d been too pale since she barely survived nursing her father and stepmother through the Spanish flu, who’d been someone everyone underestimated or decided to treat as a martyr, who would not have judged Di the way her own sisters would.
Rosalind Foyle, whom she’d had to ask about as discreetly as she could, counting on her general reception as a cheerful and polite Canadian, not much like a bossy Yank, to yield her the few details she’d squirreled away. An artist, a mother. A beauty. Better-bred than her husband, well-liked, she’d had elegant hands and never forgot to wear gloves.
Diana only wore gloves to operate and if an actual gale was blowing in a blizzard.
Who had thought all she wanted was to go to France, to make something of her life that would last her the rest of it. That might make the rest of it of a duration she could bear, an end her family could cope with or justify why she’d never return to PEI.
Dear Una,
You’re the best one to write to, I think. The one who’d mind the least, like it the most. The least awkward for me to imagine reading this, the least likely to tell me something I don’t want to know. I leave for France in a few weeks and now I don’t want to go. Or rather, I do and then I don’t. There’s something holding me in England now, something to do with Walter, a mystery. Men, who’ve died. A man who’s alive, very much so.
A man I want to know. His name is Foyle. Christopher. He knew Walter, said Walter knew him as Kit. Everyone calls him Foyle or sir or Superintendent.
Christopher.
Oh Una, I thought this was behind me. That it was something I’d never have to deal with, some sort of consolation of being a woman in a world missing a generation of men. I thought I wouldn’t know this and that was a relief, watching you and Rilla and Nan. Faith. Mary. I thought it was fair, that I’d never know heartbreak like this.
And now there’s Christopher. A half-dozen dead men. Walter’s poem. And France, waiting for me. I have to go, I know that, but how do I go wanting to stay here, a place I can’t call home. Wanting to come back.
Christopher. I like writing his name because I oughtn’t say it often. That’s what a young girl does, lovesick, dull, embarrassing herself, making everyone around her smile behind their hands unless it’s Miss Cornelia, scolding you for making a fool of yourself and for what, a man? What’s a man worth, I ask you—can’t you hear her say it, tart, ready to wash her hands of us—
I don’t care what a man’s worth, Una.
Just Christopher.
And I can’t answer the question, not to satisfy Miss Cornelia or you or myself.
You’d write me back something comforting, if you could. If you hadn’t died before your time, twice over, after the telegram, after the epidemic. I should have insisted you leave before me or with me. I should have told your father you were worth more than all the rest of them put together or made Dad send you away to convalesce, somewhere warm, where you might have lolled about, turning brown in the sun.
I’ve said I’ll go to France and sew up the men who need sewing up. Cut off the parts that need cutting off. I’ve said that’s my life, my vocation, as important as Mother’s poetry, as Walter’s, as the babies Jem delivers and the columns Ken Ford writes, and it must be but now there’s murder and Christopher to contend with, a dozen mysteries at the heart of me.
For it seems I’ve a heart after all, Una. It beats and beats and leaps when it oughtn’t. It will break, I know it shall.
Christopher.
I’ll take a dream in lieu of a letter. A flower, out of place, in lieu of a word.
Answer me if you can, Una. You can’t and I know that, but I’ll still hope, silly Di Blythe.
She put the letter in an envelope but left it unsealed and unaddressed.
Left the envelope in an otherwise empty drawer of the desk in her flat. If she didn’t return from France, well, that didn’t bear thinking about too closely. If her papers were sent back to Canada, her father would likely burn the letter rather than let her mother see it unless if gave it to Nan, thinking her twin would derive some comfort and, happily married to Jerry, the bonny wife and mother Di had not made of herself, could weather any pang it gave her.
If somehow it ended up with Christopher, he’d know how she’d once felt.
She could make that happen, writing his name across the white field of the envelope, but that was too much like a dare, and for all she was her father’s daughter, she still had her mother’s wise fear of the fey.
She’d written his name enough. She’d hope she’d come back to say it.
*rubs hands together* Foyle fluff, Foyle fluff, Foyle fluff… ahem. Shamelessly tagging in @kivrin as Fandom Librarian.
Christopher Foyle sits in the gathering dark, watching the fire. The fading light softens the world. The furniture’s edges become less unforgiving, the bright carpet less of a shock to the senses. He should, he tells himself, do something. If he cannot bring himself to read — from Waugh to Walton to Wodehouse, nothing seems quite right — he should at least write a letter. Or perhaps tying flies for Saturday’s fishing would steady his hands. He shivers, and starts slightly at a footstep behind him.
Rosalind drops a kiss onto his cheek: slightly too rapid to be soft, brushed against his evening stubble quickly enough to chafe. He covers the place with his hand, as if to protect it.
“What was that for?”
“Oh,” says Rosalind, “nothing.” And she smiles, and turns on the lamp, and takes out her mending.
Christopher Foyle takes a deep breath. “Shall I read to you?”
@britishdetectives requested, and @anotherkitchenette seconded, shirtless Foyle eating waffles. I do my best. Apologies for my schoolgirl French.
Petit-déjeuner anglais ou belge? the landlady had said, and Christopher, impatient for her to leave them, had answered de rien, merci. Rosalind had laughed and said je voudrai le petit déjeuner belge, mais anglais pour mon mari, s’il vous plait.
When he woke, the first thing he noted was that the sun came from a different angle than in his own bedroom, and next that he could feel smooth sheets against all his skin from shoulder to heel, and finally that the bed was warm beside him. He opened his eyes as the door creaked.
Rosalind slipped in barefoot, wrapped in his dressing gown belted with the scarf she’d worn on the train yesterday. She had a laden tray in her hands, and her dark hair hanging loose down her back, and her eyes sparkled as she said “Good morning, Mr. Foyle.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Fo-oh!” He grabbed at the sheet as he sat up.
“Don’t worry on my account.” The chuckle in her voice was somehow more delightful than an open laugh. “Madame assured me she won’t want to do the room until afternoon. We won’t be disturbed.” She put the tray down on the bed, went back to latch the door, then shed the dressing gown as quickly as a fish slipping out of a net. She, too, was naked beneath, all rosy skin and dark curls. She climbed into bed beside him and pulled the tray closer, half over his lap and half over her own, before she kissed him.
The china rattled on the tray with their movements and regretfully Christopher turned his attention to adjusting the pillows. His stomach growled, and he reflected that Rosalind had been right to countermand his dismissal of breakfast.
On his plate there was a hearty slice of black pudding, a fried egg, beans, and a grilled tomato; on Rosalind’s there stood a thing like an outsized honeycomb made of bread. When she saw him looking at it she broke off a piece with her fingers and held it out for him.
“It’s called a gaufre,” she said. “It’s a bit like a crumpet, with more air in it.”
He nipped her fingers in fun as he took it in his mouth. She trailed her hand along his arm as he chewed. It was light and crisp, and not as sweet as he’d imagined. “Delicious,” he said, and kissed her again.
“I don’t bite, you can stop lurking in the doorway,” Dr. Blythe said, not glancing up from the chart she was writing in. Foyle suspected she would have sounded much the same if he’d come upon her while she finished closing an incision after a long surgery, the same wry tone that had a hint of impatience in it. There were few enough female surgeons in England, even fewer egalitarian ex-pat Canadians, so it didn’t take much to infer she must be brilliant and driven, used to those around her finding her an anomaly. An Original, they would have said once in London society and been more accurate perhaps, but not a remark he’d offer if he wanted to get anything helpful from her. That’s why he was here, he reminded himself. It had been a long while since he’d needed reminding about his work.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said. “I’m—”
“You did mean to interrupt and you’re Detective Superintendent Christopher Foyle of Hastings,” she said as she laid the pen down. He’d heard her described as “attractive enough” and had wondered enough for whom before he met her. Now, he found himself pinned by her grass green eyes, startled into silence like a green lad, feeling a fool as he hadn’t for years.
Decades really. Sam would burble in wonder to see him struck dumb while Milner would only give a brief and comradely nod of recognition.
“You’re well-informed, Dr. Blythe,” he said.
“You expected that,” she said. “That’s why you’ve come, to pick my brain, to winkle out some piece of information, some cipher that will break the code you can’t. To solve your case. It is a Godawful mess, I’ll give you that. The pathologist’s report was quite detailed. Almost literary.”
“I’ve come to ask for your help,” he said simply. Because he thought she’d prefer it and because it couldn’t think of what else he might have said.
“You might as well sit down. You’ll have to forgive me—I can’t offer you a cup of tea or even a biscuit,” she said. “I haven’t an assistant who sees me fed and watered.”
Something about the way she’d said it was an alert.
“The other surgeons do. Any of the nurses are glad to fix them a cuppa,” Foyle offered.
“I don’t know about glad, exactly, but it’s in that general way. I’m meant to fend for myself. It’s my own fault I’m not much good at fending. I was spoiled, growing up, with our housekeeper Susan. There was never an evening without a little snack prepared and her solution to any problem was the teakettle on the stove and a slice of fresh pie,” she said. She had a square jaw and her auburn hair was sprinkled with grey and tucked back in a practical snood, but there was a certain whimsical nostalgia in her expression. “She was a splendid bustler, our Susan, and that you may tie to, Mr. Foyle. And now I’ve run on and run and you want my help or whatever help you think I can give you, so you may as well begin winkling.”
“You have a way with words,” he said.
“Flattery will get you nowhere with me. I’m by far the least eloquent person in my family. It’s no accident I’m a trauma surgeon,” she said.
“It was an observation,” he replied. “And it’s because of your family I’ve come to speak with you.”
“It’s Walter,” she said, any dry humor entirely gone from her voice, from those arresting green eyes. Saying the name of her brother dead these twenty odd years aged her; Foyle saw the lines her face fell into when she despaired, the nights of grief that never entirely abated.
“Yes. Because of what he wrote, Dr. Blythe,” he said, wondering if the clarification would bring her any relief. Wondering at himself for thinking of that first. Rosalind, who’d ever been generous, would not begrudge him an interest, a possibility, but he worried what it meant for his duty to the dead men, whose murders he was charged to solve, no matter that other men were dying across the Channel, that he risked making Diana Blythe’s hand unsteady when she held a scalpel or a needle trailing suture.
“A poem,” she guessed. Hoped? The alternative was most likely one of his letters, perhaps one he’d written to her, one she wouldn’t want to surrender or corrupt by handing it over to be part of a criminal investigation.
“Yes. The poem, the famous one,” Foyle said.
“The Piper,” she said, her color back. “He’d have hated it, positively loathed what happened with that. All the breathless sentiment, the rallying and the women who memorized it, that sickly sweet melody Tremaine wrote for it—I swear it would be tattooed over half of Canada and all of PEI if people thought it was within the bounds of polite society. It’s not even close to his best work, I want you to know—”
“I know. I met him. In the trenches,” Foyle said.
“Fuck,” she said softly. And then, “I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t speak so—”
“Plainly? You can’t imagine I’d take any offense,” Foyle said. “I met your brother only a few days before he died.”
“Before Courcelette.”
“Yes. I was very young and he wasn’t much older, but he’d been fighting for several months longer than I had, maybe a year. I didn’t think anyone could live that long in that hell and still find something worth living for. Could still remember anything beautiful,” Foyle said.
“It was that bad?”
“It was worse,” Foyle said. Something in her face told him she would not challenge this, nor would she make him explain. Rosalind hadn’t done either, which was why he hadn’t cracked up entirely before Andrew was born. “Whatever he wrote to you, it was worse.”
“He didn’t tell us anything. Not even me,” she said.
“You were close,” he said.
“I thought so. The night before he died, he wrote a letter. To our younger sister Rilla and a friend, Una. She was in love with him, Una, we all knew that, but he didn’t love her that way. I thought we were close, closest to each other over everyone, but he didn’t write to me,” Diana said.
“Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he knew you would be able to tell if he held something back. If he lied to try and protect you,” he said.
“Perhaps. Is that what you did, Detective Superintendent Foyle? Did you lie and keep secrets?” she asked. No one had ever dared before, not Rosalind, who’d admitted once she did not want to know everything about him.
“Christopher. My name is Christopher,” he said. “A long time ago, I was Kit. That was when I knew your brother.”
“I’m Diana. How does Walter’s poem have something to do with a triple murder?”
“There have been five murders thus far,” Foyle said. “It’s complicated, will take some time to explain. There’s a Lyons round the corner, quiet enough this time of night. We might have that cuppa—”
“If there have been five murders and somehow my brother’s poem is crucial to finding the killer, I’ll need something stronger. Bitter will do. I’d offer to stand you a pint, but I imagine that’s not considered ethical,” she said.
“No, nor gentlemanly,” he said, surprising himself.
“We’ll go Dutch,” she said, getting up from her desk and walking around to take down her coat and cram her barely fashionable hat upon her head. The coat flapped around her legs, obscured in a pair of drab tweed trousers, an unremarkable pair of brogues on her feet. She was beautiful.
“We haven’t much time,” she said, passing him at the door.
“I know it’s late. You must have an early surgery tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I ship out in a few weeks,” she said.
“France?”
“France,” she said. “I never wanted to go before. And now I can hardly wait.”
@kivrin For you, as you asked about Rosalind in the circumstances that Sam can see and, up to a point, communicate with ghosts
1947
It was a collision of unfortunate circumstances that led to her being invited further than the hallway of Mr Foyle's house. Chosen for undercover work - by means of being the only WPC on Hastings books, she'd gone up to Steep Lane for final approval of her appearance. And enroute the rain had come, attacking her brolly-less self. She didn't have an umbrella smart enough to go with these clothes, just an everyday one
Mr Foyle opened the door, took what could only be a half-look at her and stepped back
"Inside, now. "
Sam was not about to disobey him, and fairly lept into the hall, the safe dryness of the hall. Mr Foyle strode through another doorway, and the slight sweep of his arm indicated she was to follow. She trotted after him, through a smart lounge that blended into a smaller room with a table in the centre and then hurrah hurrah through another doorway a door into a smaller and wonderfully warm kitchen.
"You- m should dry off alright if you stay next to the oven there." Mr Foyle volunteered, and she tucked herself near the white square, and felt the waves of warmth soak into her.
She was being watched. It wasn't Mr Foyle, he'd busied himself back at the sideboard, a bit further along this wall,cutting something.
At the other end of the table diagonally across from her, not one but two figures stand, looking at her. One, shirtsleeves and unbuttoned jacket, the easy smile she'd just seen a flsh of last time they'd met - Andrew Foyle, DCS Foyle's son, killed in the war. The other, a woman of nearly the same height, wearing some sort of smock thing with odd splotches on it. Oh someone could have made terrible ideas out of that, but there’s a similarity in the shape of the face, the eyes which clues her im. Andrew raises his hand, starts to visually beat out the Morse on a raised arm. M-O-T-H-E-R. R-O-S-E
“Why didn’t they give you an umbrella, Stewart?” Mr Foyle asks. She quickly looks along to where he moves something from board to bowl. “Or take one yourself?”
“Mine’s not good enough for this Sir, it would show me up like a sore thumb. And I don’t think they thought it would rain until later.”
“Mmm” Mr Foyle responds in his usual taciturn way. The colour of the little painting, hung, of all incongruous places above the cooker.
“That’s very pretty Sir, the painting, is it yours?” She asks, even though she’s pretty sure she knows the answer.
He stops and looks up at it, and his face seems both more pained and more alive as he does so. “No, my wife painted them.”
A painter’s smock, with paint on it, then. She glances over, and the woman nods once. But almost all the ghost’s, Rose’s, attention is on her Husband, watching him with both great love and sadness on her face.
@flashfictionfridayofficial a late entry. An au of a Foyle's AU where Rosalind Foyle is alive and active during the war.
Summer 1940
It's slight, subtle, she almost misses it, but she doesn't. I would have been easy to pass the RAF Group Captain and the young WAAF as a father-daughter pair, family Force loyalties were more than common enough, and the ages were right.
But the man's hand rests at the girl's back ever so lightly, and the girl's eyes are utterly frozen wrapped in Fog.
That isn't Shell-shock, or whatever they call it now, that is fear of the immediate, present kind.
"I'll take those two their teapot, Heather." She says, and the other WVS volunteer nods.
She picks up the stainless steel teapot and tray, beginning the walk.
The girl's back is stiff as a ramrod, the man is too close. Not by much and not to notice unless you're looking for it.
Damn you, how dare you! If the girl makes a fuss or even pulls away from his attention, he'll turn it on her, accuse her of taking up over nothing, or being a silly girl. Any scene and I'm sure this one has all the power to do so
The girl isn't silly: only young, inexperienced in the world, and probably only wanting to do her best for the war-effort. And this grown man is taking advantage of it all.
She can't see his hand nearest to the WAAF anymore, although the other is on the tabletop. The girl is even stiffer, utterly frozen - and the tilt of his shoulder. Towards the girl and down, slightly towards her lap. On her leg.
She stumbles, trips, just behind them. And the teapot pours it's contents from both spout and top - right over the Group Captain's left arm.
He springs up with a yell, jerking his arm back towards himself and frantically scrabbling at it with a napkin with his other hand.
"Oh goodness" Rose straightens up, rushes forwards, "I'm so sorry Sir, so sorry. I slipped She pulls out her handkerchief and joins the blotting effort as the Group Captain yanks off his jacket. The heat, and indeed the tea has made it through the thick cloth to the sleeve. He swats her away, and instead she mops at the tea thst made it to the table, watching him at the same time.
"Is there any damage Sir? Would you want medical attention?" She pitches for concern, slightly frantic worry.
He glances up at her, and there's an effort to appear amiable, a slight smile meant to be charming that just seems slippery. But his eyes are angry underneath.
"No, no Ma'am. it was just an accident, I quite understand. I'll see the MO at base if I'm still in pain."
Of course." Casually Rose checks over her shoulder. The young WAAF has vanished amidst the flurry of activity. Good. Run girl. And I hope someone can watch your back from this one.
He holds her hand to the end - beyond the end - in the freckled light of the strangely sunny February day. Why wasn't it grey and raining, why was it such a beautiful day for such a terrible thing Sitting beside her bed in the ward, thinking into the empty air.
I love you, my darling. I never told you that enough.
She knew, she knew. He knows that, there are more ways to show love than words, and words don't always come easy for him, not feelings especially.
But to hear “I love you,” when spoken with sincerity, those words are more than words. Your love kept me going Rose, and your declaration of it in every letter. And I wish I had told you “I love you” in happiness just one or two, a few precious more times. I of all people should know we don't always have more time. But I had thought we did.
I will love Andrew enough for both of us, and I will try and tell him. At least, when Andrew finds somone I will make sure he tells her, every chance he has. Let the words be spoken often, save him from my regrets.
