Chapter Text
On the day Susan and the children return from Coventry, Sam wakes up well before the tinny rattle of her alarm clock. It is one of those rare mornings when she moves from sleep to wakefulness in the space of a breath; she hauls air into her lungs as if she’s a swimmer surfacing from too long beneath the waves. The house is quiet, the winter darkness still blanketing the world outside, and Sam couldn’t have said what makes her aware upon waking that it is morning -- just that it is.
She lies beneath her quilts for the space of a few breaths, feeling her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, as the clock on her bedside table ticks softly onward toward dawn. She licks her lips, tasting the sourness of sleep, and thinks about the kiss Susan had pressed to her cheek on New Year’s Day; that moment at the door while the cab to the station had waited, idling, at the curb. A kiss at once wholly innocent -- a kiss on the cheek, from a friend saying goodbye upon departure -- and, between Susan and Sam, wholly dangerous. An invitation to something more.
Sam has been thinking about how to respond to the invitation of that kiss since Susan’s lips had grazed the corner of her mouth: A question. Since Susan had pulled back, stepped toward the door, and Sam had swayed in the effort not to follow: An answer. She’d had just enough wits about her not to step forward into the all-too-public frame of the open front door, not to expose the intimacy that Susan so carefully protected. Instead, the conversation had been left unfinished. In the stillness of this predawn hour, Sam lets her eyes trace the cracks in the ceiling plaster as she breathes and thinks about all of the answers she wants to give. She can still feel the press of Susan’s lips at the corner of her mouth, the waxy taste of the lipstick Susan had applied for the journey to her parents’ house. Sam pushes her tongue against her bottom lip, imagining how it might feel to have Susan’s tongue there instead of her own. How it might feel to open her lips and invite Susan closer. With every breath Sam takes she grows more certain that closer is exactly where she wants Susan to be.
Sam has kissed more than a few people -- more than a few men, at least -- in her life. Adam being the most recent example. Though she hasn’t kissed Adam -- or even thought about kissing him -- since their separation. And for months before that their kisses had become perfunctory pecks on the cheek. The brush of his lips to her temple as she lay in the hospital ward. Nothing more. Kind is the word that comes to mind when she thinks of Adam’s kisses. He had been so very kind to her. In an absent-minded, often puzzled sort of way. As if she were a person he felt responsible for -- yet was baffled as to how he’d come to acquire her.
Now that Sam has room in her heart to be charitable, she feels she can concede Adam’s bafflement is … if not fair, at least understandable. She can no longer recall, really, how it was that either of them acquired the other. It had been in those heady days at the end of the war, when it seemed that everyone left alive was rushing to the altar. Three of the women she was billetting with at the time had become engaged within a fortnight; two others whose sweethearts were on their way home had started talking about dates and saving ration points for a reception. All around them expectation was in the air: The course of life that war had interrupted should now be resumed. And for girls like Sam, that course had most certainly not included a continuation of the camaraderie and purpose of days spent living and working with other women. Instead -- in the newspapers and newsreels, in letters from parents and sweethearts, in shop windows and Sunday sermons, in the excited chatter of girlfriends and in the assessing eye of mothers -- the expectation was that Sam would, should, want nothing more than to turn away from that life and get on with the work of wife- and motherhood.
Sam had felt alone in her fear that those were tasks for which she was dreadfully unsuitable and utterly unqualified.
Now that Sam is no longer trying to fit herself into Adam’s life she wonders now why she ever thought she could. Her only answer is that she had thought at the time, having liked him reasonably well and slept with him once, then twice, then a third time -- after which he’d proposed -- she had no other course of action. It had felt less like a decision than an inevitable destination. She had given up, and given in.
Susan’s kiss had tasted of none of those things: the bafflement, the resignation, the inevitability. There are no unspoken assumptions, no rules, no social pressures pushing them toward one another. There is nothing expected of them in response to the delicate web of feeling that they’ve spun between them since September. Susan’s kiss had tasted of something new and wonderful, something Sam has somehow always known but long forgotten. Something secret, and safe, and right deep inside of herself. Something that she doesn't think she has words for. Something that she’d like to discover the words for.
Shortly before she left Adam, Sam had stopped going to church altogether. She’d been known in their parish as Mrs Wainwright and dutifully attended all of the WI meetings so she could feel she was doing her part. The women there, many of them her own age with babies in arms and a second, or third, on the way were warm and welcoming. They made Sam feel almost like she was a little girl again, playing under the tables while her mother and her mother’s friends gossiped over tea, or being taught to tie ribbons on the Christmas gifts for parish children.
She had tried, after losing the pregnancy, to return. She’d thought perhaps their kindness would help her feel less ... wrong, in her own skin. Instead, they had only made her feel monstrous for the relief that eclipsed her sadness. For the relief that her body was hers alone once more. The pitying looks and soft words of condolence from every side had only served to remind her that this wasn’t how she was supposed to feel. With every exchange of niceties, however kindly meant, they reminded her how badly she was performing as Adam’s wife -- as a wife at all.
Sundays became a weekly reminder of how much she didn’t belong. Until she couldn’t bear it any longer and stopped going altogether.
But she was a vicar’s daughter born and bred, and every Sunday morning when the church bells rang she would feel guilty for not pinning on her hat and walking out with Adam for the service. So when she had finally made the decision to leave, and moved into her little room at the Grays’, it had been a relief to see that the small C of E parish church stood along her walk from the tube station, across from a patch of grass that had once been the village green. No one would know her, here. Here she could be Miss Stewart, the vicar’s daughter; Miss Stewart, the secretary. She no longe felt vershadowed by her own incompetence every Sunday morning, and the services slowly became a welcome ritual once more.
So when the winter dawn finally breaks, Sam braces herself for the chilly run from bedroom to the bathroom down the hall, where she splashes her face with tepid water and brushes her teeth before returning to her room to dress for church. The upstairs hall feels long and empty with all of the other bedrooms closed; Sam shivers as she passes the door to Susan’s bedroom, brushing her fingers across the panels and doorknob, letting herself imagine -- daringly, breathlessly -- what it would be like to turn the knob and go inside, knowing she would be welcomed in. Her heart speeds up, just a little, at the thought and she feels her nipples tighten beneath her robe in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
The morning service is sparsely attended, though it is the Sunday of Epiphany. Sam sits toward the back at the left, next to elderly Mrs Simms whose arthritic hands make holding the hymnal difficult. Sam holds the book for them both, although she suspects that Mrs Simms has all the verses of every hymn memorised anyway. She’s always a bit flat, but sings with an enthusiasm that makes Sam feel less self-conscious of her own wobbly mezzo soprano.
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs Simms leans over to whisper as they settle back into the pews for the sermon. The minister, of Sam’s father’s generation, has chosen Isaiah 60:5 for his Epiphany message: Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged. Sam doubts the kindly Reverend Stephens would see the verse as applicable to choices Sam has before her, but the words are comforting nonetheless. She is afraid, yes, but also exhilarated as she has not felt since ... well, since the war. When she felt she was doing something, being something of her own person -- not just existing in the shadow of other people’s expectations.
It’s a cold, clear day; the snow that had fallen on the final days of the old year remains on the ground, and forms dirty puddles at the edge of the pavement. Sam thanks the vicar for the service and steps out into the sunlight, pulling the collars of her coat and tucking in the ends of her muffler. There are a group of children playing a game of snowballs in the churchyard and Sam narrowly misses being hit in the shoulder by an errant fistfull of snow. She remembers how she longed to participate in such games as a child and how, as the minister's daughter, she was never allowed. She wonders if Claire and Sam have ever built a snowman, and if the winter will provide them with enough snow that she might show them how.
Most of the shops on the high street are closed, but Sam’s attention is caught two doors down from the chemist where the florist has a display overflowing with hot-house lilies and irises and daffodils in the front window. She pauses. The bright yellow of the daffodils look like the warmth of the winter sun gathered together for a bouquet. She's never purchased flowers for a sweetheart, before, although Adam once bought her a half-dozen roses on their anniversary. She wonders if Susan likes flowers; if she does, she is not in the habit of buying them herself -- the tables have been bare of flower arrangements since Sam moved in.
Sam steps into the shop with the tinkle of a bell. The shop is empty save the proprietor -- a man perhaps a bit older than Sam herself, the visible scars on the side of his face silent testimony to his wartime service. He looks up from the counter where he’s preparing small bundles of cut flowers wrapped up in paper and twine.
“May I help you, miss?”
“It’s just -- the daffodils in the window,” Sam points. “Are they for sale?”
They are, and he wraps two dozen in brown paper as Sam pulls out her pocketbook.
“Dinner party?” The man asks, snipping the twine and reaching for his pad and pencil to calculate the price.
“I’m sorry?” Sam asks, and then “Oh, no, I just -- I was walking by after church, you see, and I’ve a -- I’ve a friend coming home from Coventry today. I think flowers are such a nice welcome, after one has been away on a trip, don’t you?”
Sam realizes, upon arriving back at the house, that she has no notion of where Susan might keep the vases -- or even if she has any. After hanging up her coat and hat she lays the flowers on the drainboard and begins opening cupboards. Her mother, as best Sam could recall, had kept her vases under the kitchen sink when not in use. But none are to be found under Susan’s kitchen sink, nor in the cupboard over the range, or in the pantry. She finally finds three dusty vases behind the broom and mop in the boot cupboard under the stairs. She washes them at the sink and fills them with enough water to sink the cut stems of the bright yellow daffodils.
One vase for the kitchen table, where they ate most nights with the children, one on the half-moon table in the front parlor window. Then, feeling daring, Sam climbs the stairs and turns right, down the hall to the master bedroom.
She hesitates with her free hand on the knob of the door, then turns her wrist and lets herself in. She’s seen the room in glimpses before, passing to and from the toilet, but never had occasion to enter. It’s a larger room than her own or the children’s, westward facing with the afternoon sun filtering through the drapes. The blackout curtains that had, presumably, hung across the windows during the war had been replaced by drapes of a deep wine red. The quilt on the neatly-made bed looks like a family heirloom: the pattern of interlocking rings faded, worn nearly through in places. The room shows faint signs of a masculine presence, but not a recent one. Timothy has been out of the country since June and his bedside table is empty but for a neat stack of three books, a lamp, and a sleek, modern looking alarm clock. A spare shaving kit on one of the two dressing tables, a pair of brown loafers tucked beneath.
Susan’s side of the room -- and there is very much a Susan’s side -- feels warmer at the edges. There is a small carpet with a faded oriental pattern in reds and blues. A pair of slippers, and Susan’s green dressing gown tossed across the quilt as if she had taken it off in order to dress for the day. Sam has shared intimate space with many women, and never before can she recall the sight of a dressing gown leaving her mouth dry with desire. She licks her lips and looks around for a suitable place to leave the vase.
The small vanity to the left of the bedroom doo wins, in the end, and Sam makes a space by moving a hair brush and bowl of hairpins to one side. She fusses with the vase to ensure the flowers reflect in the mirror, filling the room with vibrant color.
“There,” she says to herself in satisfaction, standing back to admire her work.
There’s a curling photograph of Timothy and the children propped against the mirror. A year or two old judging by the size of the children; Claire looks closer to three than five and little Sam is practically a babe in arms. Sam picks up the snapshot, holding it gingerly by the white deckled edge, and studies Timothy’s face. He looks kindly enough, though slightly awkward with the baby on his knee. As if unused to holding something so small. His knees are knobby, Sam thinks uncharitably. Then feels ashamed for being even silently critical of a man whose wife she wants to ...well, would it be considered adultery? Sam is fairly sure it would. She shivers and puts the photo back.
Susan rarely speaks of Timothy and, when she does it is usually in reference to “the children's father,” rather than Timothy as a man or as her husband. She seems to consider the marriage over. There has been no discussion of his return from Beirut and Sam wonders if it was an agreement between them, whether he already had someone else he looked at the way Susan looks at her.
Beside the photograph is a folded piece of paper that looks vaguely familiar and Sam picks it up without thinking and opens it. It’s a note, in Sam’s own handwriting, from back in the autumn: “Gone to Hastings, back Tuesday.” An errand for Mr Foyle, she remembers, and wonders why Susan had kept the note at all. Perhaps it had become a bookmark. She refolds the paper and sets it back on the vanity. She feels a little thrill of pleasure at the knowledge that Susan had kept something Sam had written on, here, in this intimate space.
On her way back down to the kitchen, Sam glaces at the clock in the front hall; at any moment it will be striking half-two. The train from Coventry will be arriving at Euston Station a few minutes after three (she has only checked the printed schedule on the hall table once daily since Susan and the children departed). She sets on the kettle for tea with the intention of settling to read the book that Paul had given her for Christmas -- a new mystery called A Dinner for None -- but when she carries her cup and saucer into the sitting room, and sits down with book and tea before the radiator, she finds she cannot concentrate.
The house is too ... uninhabited. While sometimes the constant commotion of small children during the past few months has made her retreat to her bedroom, without them the house feels empty. Susan doesn't even have a cat. Not quite the same as human company, Paul had said on Friday morning when she'd gone round to Mr Foyle's London flat with the packet of reports from Mr Valentine. Still, a cat would be nice. Or perhaps a dog. Sam's uncle Martin had had a pair of Irish Setters when Sam was small; she remembers them as towering above her. Fleet and Swift, he'd named them. There's a snapshot in a family photo album, somewhere in her parents' attic no doubt, with herself as a plump, befrocked infant seated atop Fleet, tiny fingers buried in the russet fur and a gummy smile for whomever was behind the camera.
Claire and small Sam are energetic children, and Sam can easily see them enjoying a four-legged playmate. Perhaps she and Susan could see about acquiring a dog ... she sighs, closing the book on a page she's read at least three times without retaining a single word. The game she and Paul have, of seeing which of them can work out the culprit the fewest pages into a mystery, will be Paul’s win hands down this round if she can't even keep the characters straight. Setting the book aside, she gets up to turn on the wireless, then turn it off again when the murmur of voices -- so strongly associated with the dreadful news of wartime -- makes her palms sweat.
“I’ll bake something,” she says to herself. “Right, then.” And takes herself off into the kitchen once more.
Sam has always thought herself hopeless when it comes to the domestic duties that fall to a wife: she's hasty in cleaning, unreliable with a needle, too disorganized to host a dinner party, and never lived up to her mother's standards in the kitchen. But since joining the Gray household, the kitchen has become a place she looks forward to spending time. It began with offers to set the table or peel the potatoes, and had turned -- accidentally at first, then with mutual intent -- into a pleasurable activity shared with Susan that Sam missed when her irregular hours with Mr Foyle kept her through suppertime.
Susan kept her small collection of recipe books in a corner cupboard next to the pantry -- several from a grandmother, whose recipes were not always adaptable to wartime kitchens, and others of more recent vintage. Sam flips through two before she finds the recipe for Anzac biscuits she had half-remembered and begins assembling ingredients.
As Sam measures and stirs, then pauses to chop some dried apples she found in the pantry -- a bit of festive holiday flavor -- she thinks about Gracie. Gracie, the girl who lived two doors down from the vicarage in Lyminster. Gracie had been a year older than Sam, and -- as Sam’s mother remarked, frequently and coldly, was allowed to “run wild,” with her blonde curls cropped short, her knees always scraped and her shins often bruised. Gracie had two older brothers and her parents seemed unconcerned with differentiating their offspring by gender; Gracie had been allowed -- thrillingly, to the young clergyman's daughter -- to climb trees and play Robin Hood. Gracie was an adventure.
Susan also feels like an adventure. As if just being near her makes life more exciting, as if life with Susan could never be boring. When Sam was married to Adam she had thought, in her bleakest moments, as if the world were being slowly leached of possibility. It had seemed, at the time, an ungrateful -- even sinful -- thing to dream of the war years. But she couldn’t help it. She would catch herself longing, guiltily, for a time when she woke in the morning alive with the potential of the day ahead. When the work she did with Paul and Mr Foyle had been exhilarating and meaningful. When she caught, out of the corner of her eye, the barest flicker of Paul’s fingers against Mr Foyle’s wrist or watched Mr Foyle, very gently, not help Paul up the steps to their front door.
Those moments had made the world expand, somehow, to encompass many possibilities for joy. For living a worthwhile sort of life.
Being Mrs Wainwright had, in turn, foreclosed them.
Sam pulls the final tray of biscuits out of the oven as the clock in the front parlor chimes three. The train will arrive at Euston at any moment, and then it will only be a matter of Susan securing a cab before she and the children are on the final leg of the journey home.
Doubt creeps as Sam slides the biscuits off to cool on a sheet of brown paper. Perhaps she’s let herself get carried away, treating this kitchen like her own. Perhaps Susan would prefer to arrive home to an empty house rather than a lodger who’s made free with the rationed baking supplies in the pantry. Perhaps she should have found an excuse to be out for the afternoon, so that --
-- the sound of a motor comes down the quiet Sunday street, and there's the sound of a car door shut firmly, then another. Sam wipes her hands on a towel and goes out into the hall; she's at the door in time to hear Susan's and the children's voices coming up the front walk, and has the door open to greet them before her nerves fails her.
“I’ve warm milk and biscuits!” she says, with a smile, to Claire and Sam as they tumble in with the cold. "For children who wash their hands!" She calls after them, in vain, as Claire lets out a whoop and drags Sam down the hall toward the kitchen without even stopping to take off her coat and shoes. As they disappear around the corner, following the smell of the biscuits, Sam turns back to find Susan just stepping over the threshold.
If someone -- Mrs Simms at the church, or the florist from whom she had bought the daffodils -- had asked Sam that morning whether Susan’s brief journey to Coventry had left Sam with the ache of absence in her chest, she would have denied it. She had been conscious of missing Susan, yes, and of the way the house seemed empty without the constant chatter and activity Claire and Sam generated as a by-product of being children. But until Susan steps back into the house on a draft of January air -- her cheeks pink from the cold, hat slightly askew, knot of hair beneath it disarranged from the train journey, lips turned up in a reserved-yet-unmistakable smile -- Sam had not been conscious of the way Susan’s absence left her chest constricted. Now she can breathe again, and she nearly gasps with relief.
She feels herself sway toward Susan, a need for touch she had not known was so close beneath the surface. She covers the movement by reaching for the open door behind Susan’s right shoulder, pushing it shut against the winter chill.
“Oh. How I’ve missed you,” Susan says, softly, as the motion of reaching for the door brings Sam near to brushing up against the lapels of her winter coat. Sam thinks she has never been so conscious of not brushing up against another woman’s bosom. Susan drops the cases on the hall floor with a soft thump, turning toward Sam as she speaks and, oh, Sam should take a step back to put some space between them. She knows she should. She can hear the children arguing in the kitchen, and if she doesn't appear soon to assist there will likely be broken dishes and spilled milk -- both of which they can ill afford.
But she doesn’t step back. Instead, she leans forward until Susan steps back -- but not without putting her hands up to Sam’s waist and pulling Sam with her.
“Welcome home,” Sam whispers, her lips just grazing Susan’s as she lets herself crowd Susan up against the wall beside the door. Susan falls back, willingly, lifting a still-gloved hand to cup the back of Sam’s neck and pull Sam in for a proper kiss. There’s no mistaking this kiss for a friendly peck on the cheek. Susan's lips are slightly dry from the cold and taste of the lipstick she applied that morning in Coventry. Sam lets the last syllable of home open her lips against Susan’s and runs a bold tongue along the curve of Susans bottom lip. She feels Susan smile into that kiss. “Mmm, how I’ve missed you,” Susan murmurs into her mouth, hands smoothing down Sam’s back so that their bodies come together: breasts, belly, thighs. And then they’re kissing, deep and fierce, in a way Sam hasn’t kissed in years. In a way she’s dreamt of kissing Susan for days. In a way that feels right in a way few kisses ever have.
I’ve missed you say Susan’s fingers digging into Sam’s hips. Welcome home says Sam’s palms somehow pressed between them against Susan’s breasts. This is madness. At any moment one of the children could come running back into the hall. This is not how friends say hello. Sam drags her mouth, with a reluctant groan, from Susan’s mouth and drops her forehead to Susan’s shoulder. They’re both panting.
They don’t move. Sam doesn’t ever want to move again. A simple embrace can, surely, be explained away if either of the children happens to see.
Susan’s still-gloved hands slide beneath Sam's cardigan and settle at the small of her back, keeping Sam close, belly to belly, palms warm even through layers of cloth. Sam feels Susan's pulse fluttering where her forehead is pressed against the skin of Susan’s neck, is conscious of the way her own blood rushes in her ears. She squeezes her eyes shut against the prick of unanticipated tears. It’s such a relief to be held. Susan smells the winter wind and the stale smoke of the cab, the grit of the train station, and the echo of scent dabbed on that morning. Susan turns her face and presses soft, discrete kisses at the base of Sam’s earlobe.
I’ve missed you.
Welcome home.
After what had feels like long minutes of inexpressible contentment -- likely only a handful of seconds -- Susan exhales against her cheek. “I should see to Sam and Claire before…”
“Yes. Of course, I --” Sam pulls herself back with effort, hands going up to tuck her ever-unruly curls behind her ears. The places where Susan kissed her feel hot to the touch, and her cheeks burn. Susan pulls off her gloves, considering Sam with a thoughtful expression. Sam can't help but notice that Susan's cheeks are also flushed, her eyes warm as she takes in Sam's flushed face and smiles.
“This evening...?” Susan says, a slightly tentative note in her voice. “After the children are...?”
“Yes,” Sam had agrees, with a flood of relief that leaves her knees feeling weak. They had later. “Of course. I--”
Susan smoothes a warm, bare hand down the line of Sam’s jaw, running her thumb over Sam’s bottom lip before pushing herself away from the wall to fumble with the buttons on her coat. “Good.”
Sam steps back, then turns toward the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea as Susan hangs up her coat and steps out of her shoes. With the promise of later she finds she is looking forward without impatience -- without too much impatience, at least -- to the hours between now and the children’s bedtime. She wants to sit at the kitchen table, wants little Sam to clamber into her lap, wants to hear Claire’s wandering stories about the people and places of Coventry, wants to pour tea and pass a cup to Susan with a lingering caress. She wants to sit and marvel at the way Susan and the children act as if she’s been sharing this kitchen, this family, for years already.
She wants to sit and grow accustomed to the possibility of a new, and brilliant, future.