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The meal is good -- nothing fancy, not on wartime rations, but Foyle makes a good omelette and tells him about the tiny garden he’s worked up in the back, enough to grow a few heads of lettuce, some cabbages, and the odd Brussels sprout. There’s bread, too, home-made -- a gift from someone although Foyle doesn’t say who.
Paul’s faintly surprised that Foyle doesn’t have a housekeeper but after a minute’s consideration, he dismisses the idea. Foyle would hate having someone like that in his house -- someone who wasn’t family but who had almost the liberty of family.
Foyle firmly dismisses Paul’s offer of help with the cleaning up and dismisses him from the kitchen likewise. Paul leans back in the arm chair, rubbing his thumb along the lip of his glass, staring absently at the fire starting to burn down. It isn’t late -- the mantelpiece clock has just struck ten -- but he’s been stifling yawns for half an hour and sitting here, warm and comfortable, listening to the muffled sounds of dishwashing, his eyes drift shut without his meaning them to.
‘Paul.’
‘Sir!’ He jolts upright, leg shrieking, heart pounding, and feels a hand on his shoulder.
‘It’s all right -- you fell asleep.’ Foyle is bending over him, between him and the fire and for a minute Paul’s torn between an immediate impulse to push him away and -- then something else he can’t quite identify. Foyle’s hand is a warm weight on his shoulder, urging him to stay still without holding him in place.
Paul takes a deep breath and makes himself let it out slowly, counting to ten as his lungs empty. It’s a trick one of the lads in his first hospital ward had taught him -- about some far Eastern breathing technique; he didn’t remember the details, but it worked a treat for those times when he woke up in a blank panic. As he counts, he feels Foyle slide the glass out of his hand.
‘Sorry -- sorry, sir, I --’ He rubs his forehead and gestures at the fireplace. ‘A little too warm, I suppose.’
‘Christopher.’
‘Sir?’ He blinks up at Foyle who takes a step back, setting the empty glass on the mantel.
‘“Sir” seems a little formal when you’ve just fallen asleep in my second-best armchair.’ Foyle has the fire at his back and Paul can’t see his face.
‘Christopher.’ He’s never called Foyle by his first name that he can remember. They must have been introduced at some point -- Christopher Foyle, this is Paul Milner or was it the other way around? -- but he can’t remember it. ‘I -- I should probably be going, si--er--Christopher.’
He can hear Foyle smiling. ‘I’ll get you a torch.’
It’s only when Sam asks him, ‘Are you going to Mr. Foyle’s tonight? Shall I just drop you there?’ and he nods automatically that Paul realises it’s become a habit: this is Thursday night so, of course, he will be going to Foyle’s. He’s been going to Foyle’s on Thursdays for almost two months now -- and occasionally on Mondays or Saturdays, too. But Thursdays are regular. And as soon as she asks the question, he realises that the small packet of aged cheddar he has been saving since the weekend is still sitting on his kitchen table where Foyle will have a very difficult time enjoying it.
What occurs to him now is that he and Foyle have never discussed these Thursday evenings. Foyle had invited him specifically the first time, the second time -- and then what had happened? He can’t remember; there had just been the next week and, as smoothly as if Foyle had said something to him, they walked out of the office together but nothing had been said, at least nothing that he can remember.
Sam takes his silence as agreement and chatters away about her plans for the next morning until she slows down outside Foyle’s door. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks -- thanks, Sam.’ He hears his own voice as a little sluggish and shakes his head hard as he gets out, trying to knock some sense back into himself.
‘Oh --’ She leans across the passenger seat to him. ‘--and tell Mr. Foyle Mrs. Briggs is sorry and she’ll try to have bread for him again next week.’
‘Mrs. Briggs,’ he repeats and Sam slams the door and drives off. ‘Mrs. Briggs.’ Well, now he knows where the delicious bread has been coming from; somehow, he hadn’t thought of Foyle as a baker -- although there had been apple tart last week -- or was that the week before? No -- no, the week before had been a gooseberry pudding and he didn’t ask where Foyle had gotten the eggs. Mrs. Briggs, too, perhaps.
‘Paul?’
He turns towards the voice without thinking and Foyle is standing at the top of his step, a towel over one shoulder. He’s changed since Paul saw him at the office before tea -- the suit’s gone and in its place are worn flannel trousers and a darned cardigan, the sleeves pushed back to mid-forearm. The most recent darn, just above the left elbow in bright dark grey wool, is from Foyle’s last fishing trip: a cast had gone wrong, backwards when it should have gone forwards. Foyle had told him the story, chuckling at himself, and showed the half-healed mark on his elbow where the tip of the hook had caught skin.
Standing on the pavement now, the light shifting steadily to grey-gold around him, Paul remembers Foyle shaking his head while he told the story, lips a little pursed in embarrassment but almost smiling at his own failure. He can see the nearly-healed mark now and the flex of muscle in Foyle’s arm as he shifts and pushes the door open wider, propping it with his hand instead of his elbow. Paul can see the shift down his arm, the tension in his forearm that pulls a hollow space just below Foyle’s wrist and--
His mouth is suddenly dry.
‘Paul? Are you all right?’
He jerks back when he realises that Foyle has come down off the step and is directly in front of him.
‘Christopher! I -- Sam dropped me off -- but I -- I have to go. I--’ He opens his mouth and cannot, for the life of him, think of anything to say. He just knows he has to get home as quickly as possible, get behind closed doors, closed windows, closed eyes. ‘She asked me to tell you that Mrs. Briggs will have bread for you next week. She hopes! Mrs. Briggs hopes.’ God, he sounds drunk.
‘That’s very thoughtful of her.’ Foyle -- Christopher -- is watching him, pale blue eyes intent, that faint wrinkle between his eyebrows and Paul is going crazy -- he must be, he has to be. 'But -- you're not staying?'
‘No, I...I -- I’m not feeling well.’ He slaps at his bad leg and tries for a rueful grin that he thinks comes out manic. ‘My knee’s been bothering me and -- and I’m a bit tired. I think I’ll just -- go home and get an early night.’
‘Wait a minute and I can put up dinner for you--’ Foyle moves to step back into the hall.
‘No! No, it’s fine,’ he repeats more calmly when Foyle turns back with a questioning tilt of the head. ‘I’m not very hungry. Thank you -- thank you for -- for the other nights, too. I -- don’t know if I said that. But thank you.’ And now he’s burbling. It’s terrible -- like the first time he and Jane went out and he couldn’t shut up about some lecture he’d been in that day. ‘So thank you and -- I’ll see you in the morning.’
He shuts his front door behind him and leans against it as if someone might burst through after him. His hat tilts forward over his eyes and then flips onto the floor as he rocks his head back against the door panel and squeezes his eyes shut.
This is ridiculous.
This is completely and utterly ridiculous.
He’s a grown man -- a married grown man -- even if his wife is currently a few hundred miles away and shows no sign of coming home any time soon.
He’s a married, grown policeman -- and Foyle is a widowed police inspector with a son and things like this are illegal.
Not to mention ungrateful and, he thinks with a sharp spasm of self-directed outrage, damn near insulting! What is he thinking! Foyle has been nothing but kind and generous to him and this is his return? A whopping great backwards slide to the worst year of his youth; wonderful. Wonderful! Just what he wanted.
He’s been working too hard, not sleeping enough, not resting enough, not -- not something enough. His wife has been gone too long. That’s it: Jane’s been gone too long and what he needs is for her to come back and everything will be fine. He’s off his stride, that’s all.
He pushes himself away from the door and hangs up hat and coat with sharp, brisk movements.
Tea -- a cup of tea and an early night with a book. Yes. And in the morning he will find out when his wife is planning to come home.