Chapter Text
Audrey was jolted by the feeling of a furry body laying down across her feet. She looked down and saw Jess blink up at her from the rug. A moment later she felt the sofa dip as Dash jumped up to lie down beside her. She frowned, then glanced at the fireplace. No wonder the dogs wanted to cuddle up to her: the fire was almost completely burnt down to ambers. She forgot to put another log on it. How long was she sitting here, lost in her own head?
A glance at the clock told her it was a quarter past one in the morning. Everything around her felt one step removed from reality, as if she was looking at familiar surroundings through frosted glass. Dash nudged at her hand with his nose, and she automatically started to stroke the soft fur on his flank. The fire really needed to be stoked, but she felt so oddly tired…
Somewhere in the house, a door closed. Keys jingled, then footsteps sounded as someone walked through the long hallway.
“Mrs. Hall? Are you alright? Why is it so cold here?”
Audrey looked up into the somewhat weary face of Mr. Farnon, and for the life of her, she could not think of a single thing to say.
“Mrs. Hall? Audrey?‘ the man repeated, his voice alarmed. ‘Did something happen? Are you ill?”
The familiar sight of Siegfried Farnon rapidly approaching the state of profound agitation, zero to sixty in under ten seconds, did wonders for Audrey’s state of mind.
“Mr. Farnon! Sorry, I was just… I mean I was… just about to stoke the fire,” she said, and stood up. Dash, protesting the loss of the warm hand in his fur, made a disgruntled little noise.
“Never mind the fire, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
More like a goat, Audrey thought unbidden, and suddenly the whole ridiculous thing rushed back to her all at once.
The answer is always you.
Really, now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Audrey fell back onto the sofa with a soft thud.
“I’m starting to worry, Mrs Hall,” said Mr. Farnon, rushing to her side and crouching down in front of her, practiced fingers seeking her wrist to feel for the pulse there.
“It’s okay. I’m okay – stood up too quickly.”
“Let me get you a cuppa, then I’ll stoke that fire.”
“No.” Audrey grabbed at the hand that was holding her wrist. “Wait. I have to ask you something. Sit here, your knees won’t thank you if you remain crouching for long.”
“Sadly, that is true. Budge over, Dash.”‘ He rose, and sat down next to her. Dash got up and moved over in a huff. “I am all ears, Mrs. Hall.”
This was actually a lot harder than she thought. Audrey took a deep breath.
“The other day… I mean, at Christmas… before Christmas, really…” Where was the Audrey who was always calm and knew what to say?
“Yes?” Judging by the way his eyebrows rose towards his hairline, Mr. Farnon was wondering the same thing.
“You and I, we talked about… your lady friends…”
“I assure you, Mrs. Hall, you had every right to be upset about that incident with the shoe, and I–”
“It’s not that,” cut in Audrey. “It’s what you said after, when I was nagging you to ask Dorothy out.”
“Ah.“ And now the man suddenly looked flustered, a tinge of red appearing at the tip of his ears. Audrey was horrified to discover she found it charming. “The thing about Plato.“
“Aristophanes,“ she corrected reflexively.
“Right, right. What about it?”
“It has come to my attention… I mean, not that I talked about it with anyone, I just gained some… insight, you could say… and you said, at the victory feast… and later… that once you found your other half… could it be that you were talking about… that you were not talking about…”
“Good God, woman! I was talking about YOU!” Siegfried’s patience snapped like a cheap elastic band stretched too far. In the wake of his outburst, two people were left staring mutely at each other with wide eyes.
Several years passed – or at least that was what it felt like.
“I know that now,”‘ Audrey said finally, softly.
“How could you not, before?” Siegfried asked, his face a picture of honest confusion. “I basically spelled it out for you, and then you, you… foisted me off on Dorothy!”
“Goodness, Dorothy!” startled Audrey, who just remembered the pair leaving earlier to what she assumed was a date on New Year’s Eve. “Where is she? Why are you not out with her?”
“What are you talking about? I did not go out, I went to answer a call at the Parson’s. Apparently one of their sows was acting “reet narky”. Bloody beast chased me right out of the pen when I tried to examine it. Not a whit of New Year’s Eve spirit, that one.”
“But where was Dorothy?”
“I took her to the station, as we had previously agreed I would,” said Siegfried with a decided emphasis.
“When was this?” asked Audrey, rather confused. “I thought she was leaving, well, today.”
“I don’t know, somewhere between the scones and those little tarts, with the crunchy bits?” The man waved his hand around distractedly. “You were in the kitchen, I think?”
“But why did she leave early?”
“Because, my dear Mrs. Hall, she and I have had it out,” said Siegfried with a sigh and a downturn of the mouth that said volumes about how easy that conversation was for him. Audrey felt her heart do a silly little jump at the sight. “I told her that I do not intend to pursue her. She told me it was okay, because she was still not keen on men thinking themselves married.”
Well, I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole, thought Audrey, ducking her head in embarrassment.
“Audrey,” she heard, and felt a hand touch hers. Audrey! “Talk to me. Tell me what are you thinking right now.”
She raised her head to study the well-known features carefully while she contemplated how to phrase her answer. How long has he been looking at her like this without her noticing, all soft eyes and shy affection? How could they go back to employer and employee after this?
“I think that this is a very bad idea,” she finally said simply.
She watched a storm of expressions sweep across his face and marvelled at the way he reined in his immediately rising temper at the perceived rejection; how he wrestled down the words that wanted to cut and upset, the impulse to hurt before he can be hurt first. She saw him take a deep breath before he spoke.
“I understand why you might think that. Would you mind terribly if I asked you a question?” he requested, and when he saw her nod, he continued. “When you were so insistent that I should take up with Dorothy… What was it that made her so good for me in your head?”
This was easy.
“She is a witty, generous woman who is not afraid of your bluster, and who would be able to draw you out of your head when you need it,” she stated flatly.
“One could argue the same can be said about you,” the ridiculous man next to her replied, his eyes crinkling in amusement.
“She is also your equal socially, and she is not your employee,” she said in a small voice. This was harder. This was so, so much harder.
“Audrey…”
“No. You can’t make light of this. I know that you do not care about such things, but the world you live in does. I am respected in this town because of you, able to make a living because of you, and I won’t see your character being questioned because of me. I won’t watch you brought low because you chose to take up with a divorcee who used to keep house for you! No matter how I…” Audrey was horrified to hear her voice break. “And why are you still smiling?” she snapped.
“Because not even one of your arguments included hating the thought of you and me together.”
Because I am not. I am not hating it at all. In fact, I am positively taken by it, and that terrifies me. And you know it, because when I was not paying attention, you accidentally became the one who knows me best. Curse you, Siegfried Farnon, for making me question everything I thought I still wanted from life.
“Mr. Farnon,” she started, desperately trying to shove some distance back between them. “Can you honestly say that you would be okay losing clients because of this? You know how people are. You know how your peers, how the townsfolk would take it. I know you would stand by me no matter what. But how long until it gets under your skin? The insinuations, the way chatter immediately stops as you enter a room, all of it? How long until you snap and in your defense of me, you lose everything you worked for? Your very neighbours–”
“Oh, bugger the neighbours!” spat Siegfried suddenly with his characteristic blend of annoyance and earnestness. His hands shot out and grabbed both of hers at once. “Mrs. Hall… Audrey… If this past year has taught me anything, it was that I can learn to live without you … it’s just that I really, really don’t want to. And not because of your cooking, or your housekeeping… I mean, I have lived very well on sardines…”
“You and your bloody sardines,” sniffed Audrey, her hands twitching in his, as if wanting to grasp back.
“The sardines are really irrelevant right now,” said Siegfried impatiently, but he was smiling again. “What is relevant is that when I look across a room and see you, every bad thought, every irritation… all those things that are weighing me down – every fear I have disappears for a moment, and I know that whatever comes, it will be all right… I will be alright because there is you. And I want to be the same to you. It is that simple.”
“You really are an impossible man, Siegfried Farnon,” said Audrey, all her weapons lying abandoned at her feet.
“Yes, but consider this: I am your impossible man.””’
It was a lovely declaration. It also weighed about as much as the Alderson’s prize bull, Monty. It was suddenly quite hard to breathe.
“Audrey, what’s wrong?” asked Siegfried as soon as he saw her face change.
“That. I don’t know how to be Audrey to you.” To anyone, really. It was always so easy to put Audrey away, and let Mrs. Hall take her space: dependable, self-reliant Mrs. Hall, the mother, the housekeeper, the friend. The one who did not necessarily need to trust others, to be vulnerable.
“Well, do you think that maybe we can find out together?” came the question.
“You mean you want to, what, court me?” Audrey could not help it, she laughed at the thought.
“I believe the young people are calling it ‘going steady’ nowadays,” said Siegfried, with a completely serious face. “What do you say?”
“I would not even know where to start,” she admitted.
“How about we just make ourselves comfortable on this sofa… like this?” Siegfried let go of her hands – she hadn’t even noticed he was still holding them – and turned to sit back properly, encouraging her to do the same. “There, that’s easy. We’ve done this before, haven’t we? Then I just put my arm around you… like this… and you put your head right here,” he said as he gently guided her head to rest on his shoulder. “There, you see? It’s just us, like before. Only, erm, a bit closer.”
“Siegfried Farnon,” Audrey asked suspiciously. “Are you talking to me like you would to one of your anxious horses?”
“I will have you know, I have been told I have an extremely relaxing voice,” the man said serenely.
“When you are not bellowing across the house, that is,” she replied, and allowed herself to relax into the embrace.
“How else could I make myself heard in that unholy pandemonium my brother and James are calling surgery hours? I swear those two are worse than a flock of starving sparrows.”
“You delight in that unholy pandemonium and you know it,” she teased.
“Mhmm,” hummed Siegfried, and when Audrey glanced up, she saw that he had his eyes closed. The expression on his face was something a less charitable – less smitten, her mind submitted – person might have described as smug.
Well then.
“You know,” she said after a minute. “Someone really should put some wood on the fire.”
“Five minutes,” Siegfried promised glibly.
Audrey reached over, took his right hand and threaded their fingers together.
“I will hold you to that.”
“Please do.”
THE END