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As ever, she was in the kitchen when he began bellowing.
“Mrs Hall! Mrs Hall?”
“In here,” She tried her best to keep an amused smile from her lips as she watched him stride into the room, brow furrowed and hands splayed agitatedly. Whatever he’d lost had clearly taken his temper with it.
“Have you seen my list? It was-”
“Breast pocket.” She didn’t even look up from the freshly ironed pillow case she was folding.
“Surely I would know if it were on my person. I’m not so inept as that Mrs-” He began to raise his voice and his shoulders set in such a way as to suggest that he was not up for any kind of teasing, but deflated quickly upon his fingers coming into contact with the jagged edge of the paper immediately upon putting his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Well, I suppose…”
He trailed off and despite his previous bad humour, managed to give a rueful smile in answer to Audrey’s knowing one. He thanked her and was about to make his way back into the main part of the house when he was halted by her calling his name in a far more timid manner than he would have expected given their previous exchange.
“Mrs Hall? Is there something wrong?” His eyes earnestly sought hers for any confirmation of some impending doom which might be about to befall her, or already had done. He had been particularly sensitive to any perceivable change in her mood since Christmas and the weeks preceding it with her fear and despair at the thought of having lost her son.
It was unlikely to make the conversation easier but she felt she must have it anyway, even if they were back to normal now. Or what was normal for them at any rate.
“I just- I just wanted to apologise again for what happened with the fox and between us. What I said that day in the exam room, I mean. I know you saved its life for me, even though you didn’t agree, and I’m grateful. I know it’s silly but I needed it at the time. Something to hope for and hold on to, and you gave me that. I won’t forget it.” Audrey tried to keep up her work folding the ironed linens so that she could avoid the necessity of making eye contact with Siegfried while she spoke, but eventually she couldn’t fight the urge to look up at him any longer and slowly raised her face to be level with his across the table.
He sighed, when she did, at seeing a ghost of that lost, leaden, hollow look that had overtaken the usually bright warmth of her eyes at Christmas time. Sensing that the conversation would not likely be a short one, and certainly an emotional one, Siegfried pulled out a chair and motioned for Audrey to take the seat opposite. She was very grateful she had because in the next moment he had taken hold of one of the hands she had clasped in front of her on the table and had she been standing, she thought her legs might have turned to jelly. Audrey swallowed and tried to ground herself in the moment and, although she could do nothing about the flush she was sure had just flooded her cheeks (she didn’t dare hope that the sudden rush of warmth she felt at his touch might be confined to an inward sensation), tried not to let the shock of the moment appear in her eyes.
It was in vain: Siegfried noted both and the smile he gave then was the most tender she’d ever seen him wear, beaten only by his response.
“I just like to see you happy.”
Audrey was momentarily flawed and she swallowed nervously and decided that she would dissect *that* after she’d said the rest of what she needed to.
“Well, I can’t be happy if there’s a possibility you might be upset with me, and I know I overstepped when I said it weren’t up to you to decide who lives or dies. I know you were just trying to do what was best for him. What is it you always say? ‘The animal comes first’ Aye, it should, and I’m sorry that I got in the way of it.” She gave her own sigh now, one of relief, but her eyes had become fixed on some point over his left shoulder and he couldn’t - wouldn’t - have any awkwardness between them (they’d always been able to look one another in the eye, in disagreements or times of strife, as well as their usual playful griping), that was not going to change now. So he gave the hand he still held in his a squeeze and tilted his head in an effort to catch her eye. It worked.
“Well, I think you were right actually. It would have been simpler to have put the fox down, to be sure, and certainly the quickest way to have relieved his pain and suffering. But it’s possible that in trying to do the right thing for him, I nearly forgot to do what was actually right for him - to try. To fight for him. Without you I would have put him to sleep and that would have been an end to it but you made me do the hard thing, to hope, and that’s something that is sorely lacking and sorely needed these days. Once again Mrs Hall you have saved me from the worst of myself, so don’t thank me for saving the fox, I owe you far more than that.”
Siegfried hoped he had not only said enough to allay her baseless ideas that he was upset with her over their argument of several weeks ago, (he had been taken aback, but that was by the suddenness of the moment; the second the door had closed behind her, he had heartily forgiven her for it and had wanted to go after her but there was the ill fox and then an unimpressed Helen to contend with) but also, he hoped she would hear in his words all that he did not yet quite feel ready to say plainly. That she had given him hope, not just recently with the war and all the upheaval and fear which that had brought to their quiet little lives, but from the moment she stepped into his world and began to right it with her cleaning, her cooking and then her friendship. Audrey Hall had saved Siegfried Farnon long ago and he was acutely aware of it. He would save a hundred foxes for her - a thousand if he had the time - if that was what it would take to repay his debt. Funnily enough, he did not think it would be enough, nor that he ever could do such a thing. What action on his part could ever equal those of the remarkable Mrs Hall?
For a while they sat in quiet, understanding, companionship reflecting on their gratitude for one another and separately yearning to be able to admit the full truth of their love for the person across the table.
But then there was a knock at the door and, as Audrey went off to answer it, Siegfried remembered that he had four more appointments this afternoon and their quiet little lives had not stopped at the kitchen table as they had done. Eventually, he promised himself, he would find the right time to tell her that she was everything to him, that any good he did these days and for the rest of his life was all for the love of one woman: his Audrey Hall.