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“Mrs Hall!! I can’t get the cufflinks to agree with this shirt! Can you help please?” Siegfried hollered as he strode into the kitchen, narrowly missing Jimmy’s game of fetch with dash, which for reasons beyond him, was occurring in the middle of the kitchen.
“Right, come here then,” she slung the tea towel over the nearest chair, and held out her hand for the offending items. He watched as she set to work, effortlessly fixing the cufflinks into place, and rotating them so they sat just so.
Audrey revelled in the opportunity to be close to Siegfried, to hold him, even if it was just to manhandle him into the light of the kitchen and slip the set of cufflinks into his shirt. It was over all too briefly, and she invented a reason to rearrange them, to straighten them out, give her moments longer to stay near to him. It was wrong really: he was stepping out with Dorothy, his housekeeper shouldn’t be sorting his shirt cuffs, holding his arm so tenderly, when he was about to go out for dinner with said woman, but Audrey couldn’t help it.
Both were so engrossed in the proximity of the other that they failed to notice the back door click open, then shut. They were both oblivious to the fact that Dorothy was standing expectantly behind them, watching the ease at which Audrey held Siegfried, his reluctance to step away from her, the wordless thanks that was conveyed with his eyes. She couldn’t take it any longer, and placed her purse deliberately on the table, the unexpected noise causing the pair by the sink to jolt apart, Audrey dropped Siegfried’s arm like a hot cake, and turned back to the sink, not before Dorothy could recognise the blush that spread like wildfire across her friend’s cheek.
Siegfried opened his mouth to speak, “I um… I needed some help with my cufflinks,” he started, an edge of guilt seeping into his words, justifying something that had seemed so right in the moment, to someone he had begun to realise could never help him prepare for an outing with such care, attention, and charged looks, even if the woman he was meeting was her friend.
“I could see that,” Dorothy was blunt, and pushed her purse to the corner of the table, settling herself into the chair that she had taken as ‘hers’. No one had told her, however, that the seat she had adopted was Mrs Hall’s, had been Audrey’s since the moment she arrived in the house. She nodded to the chair opposite, hoping Siegfried might take the hint and sit. Audrey lingered, washing up cups that didn’t need washing, scalding her hands in the too hot water, distracting her from the conversation she could tell was about to take place. She shouldn’t really stay, not to hear this, but she had caused the mess, her indulgence had led to the tense atmosphere between the couple, it was only just that she endured the battle that was coming.
“Listen, Siegfried, I’ve enjoyed this, I really have, you have been nothing but caring and lovely, but it is clear that you love someone else, someone I couldn’t begin to replace,” She looked to her side, eyes motioning towards the still figure at the sink. Dorothy spoke with a resigned softness, as though she had always known this moment would arrive, and that she would have to be the one to make Audrey and Siegfried see sense.
“But…” Siegfried started, but Dorothy was quicker, and reading the fear in his eyes sought to prevent the imminent spiral. “I believe she does, don’t you, Audrey?” it was the first time Dorothy had spoken to her since she entered the house, mere minutes ago, but the agony of the conversation had made it feel like hours. She stared blankly, unable to engage with either of them, for she couldn’t be certain that any words she spoke would make sense, let alone leave her with friends, a job, or a home by the end of it. Dorothy approached Audrey slowly and prised the plate from her hands before it resembled their shattered hearts at the bottom of the sink. Audery nodded slowly, and muttered a scarcely audible “Yes, I do,” and let herself be guided to her chair by Dorothy. The next thing she knew was a cup of tea being placed in front of her, a task she knew she should’ve done herself, but Audrey could muster neither the strength nor composure to point this out to either Dorothy or Siegfried. Footsteps echoed through the house, towards the front door, and hushed words reverberated back to the kitchen, but the voices were undistinguishable against the melee of thoughts whirling round her head and the pounding headache from the silent tears that had fallen since Dorothy had entered the house.
The silence was deafening as Siegfried tip-toed back into the kitchen. Dorothy’s revelation had ricocheted through the whole house: Helen had taken Jimmy’s game with Dash to the Green, Tris had taken the Rover somewhere, probably to see Charlotte, and Audrey had barely moved from the seat that she had almost collapsed in as Dorothy had spelled out the reasoning that her relationship with Siegfried was doomed to fail.
“Audrey,” he began, not wanting to startle her. “Audrey, talk to me,” His voice was laced with unshed tears, rough and exhausted.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, not looking up from the long-cold cup of tea in front of her. If she was honest, she had longed to hear that Siegfried loved her as she loved him, since seeing him and Dorothy huddled together in the pub, maybe longer, she mused. But hearing it from her friend, stoically stated across her kitchen, with zero malice in her words, only disappointment in the pair, it wasn’t right. She had desperately wanted Siegfried to tell her under his own steam, and she had hoped each time he left the house to meet Dorothy that he would come home and announce they were no longer (though the sensible, Christian part of her brain berated herself each time she felt that particular wish). It wasn’t easy: knowing she was in love with her employer of all people but only realising hours after pushing him towards her best friend, that was the hardest part of it. They looked so happy in the Drovers, and when Dorothy had appeared at Skeldale more and more regularly, Audrey had resigned herself to the fact she wouldn’t be the one that Siegfried grew old with. It had hurt: it rendered all his affectionate comments over the summer meaningless, the hugs that she had dreamed about for so long were no longer unique to her, and the notion that her departure from Skeldale had upset him more than the loss of his wife, well then, that was just preposterous nonsense on Tristan’s part.
Siegfried sat beside her, keeping his movements deliberate, not unlike when approaching a startled animal, careful, the same approach she had admired when seeing him in surgery. He placed his hand close to hers, but not quite touching: he wasn’t sure if he had earned that yet.
“Honestly?” he began, with a softness in his voice she hadn’t heard for weeks, not since the day he spoke his heart to her, metres from where they were sat, and she had dismissed it as fantasy, and pushed him towards Dorothy. “The same reason you didn’t tell me. I didn’t want to lose you.” He reached his pinky finger towards hers, the fingertips brushing. “I was a coward when you were in Sunderland, I was so desperate to see you but couldn’t bear the idea of having to leave you again. Then when you returned, I was so happy to have you back, I couldn’t risk telling you outright, I didn’t want to lose what we had just got back. I was trying to tell you at Christmas, but then…” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “I didn’t think you felt the same way, that is, I thought you telling me to speak to Dorothy was your way of kindly saying no to my notions of soulmates. Then I saw you, in the Drovers, when you’d won, I saw your face when I wasn’t there to congratulate you, and I knew, I knew deep down you felt the same.” Siegfried took a deep breath and changed tack. “It was Dorothy who made me see sense, in more ways than one. She made me realise that ‘true love’ has hurt you, that the hopes I had were the same ones you had once shared with Robert, and that you couldn’t bring yourself to hope again, in case it all came crashing down. I’d been hoping to speak to you about it, but I never found the right time, and Dorothy seemed keen, but I sense it was a distraction for us both,” it was the most honest Siegfried had been to either woman since Christmas, and he reflected ashamedly on the number of times Dorothy had pointedly mentioned Audrey in conversation and his own blindness to the point she had been trying to make.
Dorothy had graciously been patient at Siegfried's reliance on Audrey, but she knew the pair too well and could see the look of love in Siegfried’s eyes when he was talking about Audrey, or Skeldale, because she knew from the beginning that the two were inseparable in his mind. Selfishly, she had continued their courtship, grateful for distraction and affection, but she knew by Valentine’s day that it had run its course, dragging it out was only unfair on Siegfried, Audrey, and herself. She had attempted to address Siegfried’s pretty obvious attraction to his housekeeper, but, ever the gentleman, he had refused to speak about such things to another woman. That was when Dorothy knew she was going to have to be the one to end things, to give them both the push towards each other. Truthfully, when the moment presented itself, it hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would, in fact, seeing Audrey so upset had been harder than breaking up with Siegfried, her friend's tears reminding her of the day in Scarborough when Audrey appeared on her doorstep, clutching Edward, desperate for shelter and safety. She knew that the aftermath of this afternoon would be a lifetime of happiness for her oldest friend, and that was all she had wanted for Audrey. Dorothy had known she could leave Skeldale and Audrey would be in the safest, happiest of hands with Siegfried.
“The truth is, Audrey, I love you, I have done for a long time, in fact so long, I do not know when it first began, only that the idea of us being apart again is not something I wish to entertain,” he spoke openly, with all the confidence he could find. “I had rather planned to tell you all this in happier circumstances, there is a spot in the dales I have frequently stopped by to eat a sandwich on my rounds, a place I associate with you, somewhere I have never shared with another soul, but maybe tomorrow, after we’ve been to church?” he suggested, his voice a lot meeker, the most uncertain she had heard him in a long time. She looked into his eyes, for the first time since he had sat beside her, and covered his hand with hers, squeezing it gently, as though she could source her courage directly from his touch.
“I love you, Siegfried, you ridiculous man, but I’m just the housekeeper, what will people think?” Audrey asked, her voice stumbling as tears began to well. Her position here had always been a huge consideration in her feelings, she couldn’t possibly be seen stepping out with her employer, could she? (Even if there was at least one person every month who referred to her as ‘Mrs Farnon’).
“I say, ‘so bloody what’, half the village thinks we’ve been married for the last lord-knows-how-many years! But seriously, my dear, this has to be something you want,” his callback to her divorce made her laugh briefly, and he saw her eyes glisten, a brightness returning to her face, as she nodded, moving closer and closer to him. “I want this more than anything,” she placed a soft kiss to his lips, making a mental note to speak to Dorothy later that day, and invite her out for tea, she deserved that at the very least. "And I agree, 'so. bloody. what'," she leaned in once again, punctuating each of her words with a kiss: any unsavoury opinions, they would weather together, as they had done for so long.