White Christmas

A story in two chapters

Chapter 1 The sun shone white in a grey sky, and on the black road winding through the cold countryside, a forest green Bentley crept at only slightly more than a snail-like pace. The driver of the open car, John Steed, wore a camel-hair coat and a top hat, and wrapped up snugly in furs in the passenger's seat was Emma Peel. John Steed ached in every bone of his body, from both physical and mental exhaustion. It had been an unforgettable Christmas Eve. He'd accompanied Emma Peel to a weekend party held at the home of newspaper publisher Brandon Storey, and while there had come under intense mental attack by three powerful psychics trying to force him to reveal secrets, gleaned through his position as one of England's top agents. With the aid of Emma Peel he had defeated his enemies. The aid...Steed smiled. Emma had saved his life. At the very end, he'd been knocked unconscious and was at the mercy of the villains. Emma had taken out two of them, giving him the time he needed to regain consciousness and assist her in defeating the third. And now it was Christmas, and they were leaving that nightmare house behind and driving into the cold, clean air of an English winter. Steed reached behind him, his face not betraying the effort it cost him to make that movement, and his hand came into view again carrying a long, sturdy twig, to the end of which was affixed a sprig of mistletoe. He held it above Emma's head. She glanced up at the twig, her lovely face framed within the white fur of her winter hood, and then she did something that shocked him. She lifted smiling lips to his. He hadn't expected it. They'd worked together for four months, on six assignments. He'd flirted with her to start with, of course. Despite the fact that she'd have none of it, he'd persevered, for no other reason than that flirting with women was as natural to him as breathing But the more they'd worked together, perfecting their teamwork during the deadly adventures they had survived, the more he had felt drawn to her. He had found himself no longer wanting to flirt - he wanted to have a deeper relationship. But he had not dared to reveal his new feelings. She was but six months widowed...she had already made her feelings clear and she was not the sort of woman who pretended no interest simply in order to egg a chap on. Mrs. Peel broke the kiss first. ''Car!'' she yelled. Steed turned and corrected the Bentley's drift simultaneously, and a silver Vauxhall honked its way past them, while its driver made an extremely rude gesture. Steed couldn't blame him. ''Marvelous peripheral vision, Mrs. Peel,'' he commented. ''A good thing, too,'' she replied calmly. Emma Peel lifted the mistletoe twig from her lap and deposited it in the back seat of the Bentley. Then she drew her furs closer around her and gazed straight ahead. She had been as surprised as Steed by her action. Steed drove on, his face a study in concentration. He increased the speed of the Bentley, but not by much. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the sheen of persperation on his forehead, under the brim of his tophat. She knew the stress Steed had been under these last few days...she knew how he must be feeling now. ''Steed,'' she said, ''You are in no shape for the long drive back to London. We're about to pass through a village. Why don't we see if they have an inn or a hotel of some kind?'' Steed blinked. ''What a good idea,'' he said, eyes on the road, nodding. Emma glanced at him. He'd said the kind of words she expected, but he hadn't glanced at her while he'd said them, with that flirtatious grin on his face. He seemed very uncomfortable. She was very uncomfortable. Emma rested her oval chin in her hand. She'd always been attracted to Steed. From day one. He was intelligent, with a good sense of humor. He respected her abilities. He was in lovely shape, he was handsome, and he was charming. Too charming, she had decided, with his never ending flirting. That meant shallowness. Love 'em and leave 'em, as the Americans said. That was not what she wanted in a relationship, no matter how attracted she was to the man in question. But this latest case had revealed a new side. His vulnerability, and his courage in handling what must have been a terrifying experience for him, at least at the beginning. Could her feelings have changed due to the maternal instinct, her desire to comfort him now that he had revealed this vulnerability? Not at all, she thought with an inner smile. She had no maternal instincts. She had a nurturing instinct, but that wasn't the same thing. Steed didn't need nurturing. The case was over, and they'd been victorious. Despite the fact that he was obviously tired he was clearly not changed in any way. He was still Steed. She'd seen another facet of him, that was all. A facet that, combined with all of his other qualities, had now changed her mind. Emma Peel massaged her forehead. She was being very analytical here. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Emma laughed out loud. ''What's so funny,'' Steed asked. Emma grinned at him. Steed stared at her, and their eyes locked. After several seconds Steed brought his attention back to the road. Ahead he saw the sign that would lead them off the main road into the village of Upper Heyford. Steed took the exit. Steed had no illusions at his ability to charm a woman into a mutually rewarding brief encounter. He was very good at it. He treated them all like ladies and they never had any cause to complain. But Mrs. Peel expected more from a chap. If it hadn't been for that kiss, he would have dismissed her offer that they stop for the day as a simple kindness, and not thought anymore of it. But that kiss changed things. She'd changed... He'd have to be careful now, not make any false steps. He'd have to wait for her to make the first move. He drove very slowly down the Main Street of the village, and as they passed the local pub it indeed did have a sign out front declaiming, Rooms for hire. Steed turned into the parking lot. He set the Bentley's parking break with a flourish, which caused a muscle in his back to scream irritably, and then he turned and looked at Mrs. Peel. ''Well, Mrs. Peel?'' he asked, calmly. ''A single room, I think, Steed.'' Emma said, equally as calm. Steed's eyes lit up. ''Jolly good.'' He put a hand on the windscreen prepatory to levering himself out of the seat, when Mrs. Peel said, ''Wait - we need to visit a chemist's.'' Steed grinned at her with his old insouciance. ''Not to worry, Mrs. Peel. I had myself fixed years ago. No desire to have the patter of little hooves about the place, don't you know?'' Emma smiled. She remained by the Bentley while Steed went in and resgistered. He returned with the key and came to a stop, smiling. She bent and picked up her suitcase, he picked up his - a muscle in his cheek twitched - and t hey walked down the pavement to their room. Steed twisted the key in the lock and flung it open. ''After you, Mrs. Peel.'' The room was large, but cozy, with overstuffed furniture and a big bed. Sunlight pressed up against the curtains - it was only noon, after all. They placed their suitcases on the tables provided and Steed opened his and removed his shaving kit. ''Bags I go first,'' he said, and went into the bathroom. Steed ran some water into the sink and splashed it on his face. Cold and bracing. But it wasn't bracing him enough. He was soo exhausted. Even the iminent prospect of making love to Emma Peel wasn't doing anything for him. Damn, damn, damn! Steed sighed, and brushed his teeth, and came back into the room. Mrs. Peel was unpacking clothes into a huge wardrobe. ''Mrs. Peel.'' She turned, concerned at the tone of his voice. ''My dear, I'm terribly sorry. But I have to sleep.'' ''Of course, Steed!'' Emma caressed his arm with quick concern. She'd known he was exhausted. Well, so was she, come to that, physically if not mentally. ''Tumble yourself into bed and get comfortable. I...'' and she threw a sensible nightgown over her shoulder, ''will change in private.'' Moving more like an old man than he cared to acknowledge, Steed undressed and slipped into his pajamas. He climbed into the big, soft bed that embraced him like a lover, and sighed with pleasure. Emma came out of the bathroom, smoothing the folds of white linen around her. ''How charming you look, my dear,'' said Steed. ''Thank you, Steed.'' Emma pulled back her side of the covers and slipped in. She scooched over with remarkable grace to Steed's side, looked down into his eyes for a second, and then very quickly bestowed a kiss. Then she scooched down and put an arm around his chest and laid her head on his shoulder. ''Is this comfortable?'' ''Extremely.'' Steed raised his arm and draped it around her shoulders as well. Her body felt so warm beneath his...and she was here, in bed with him. And...there was always tonight. Content, Steed fell asleep, and very quickly, so did Emma Peel.   Chapter 2 The drone in his ears was loud, so loud that it filled his ears and pounded into his brain. He clenched his hands over his ears and fought to open his eyes. Through slitted lids he saw the curved sides of the plane, with webbing and strapping hanging everywhere. That was it. That was right. He was on a plane. The noise was the drone of the engines. They were flying over the Channel to France, that was it. He couldn’t move - the parachute on his back was too heavy. Was it strapped too tightly, cutting off the circulation in his arms and legs? He couldn’t feel them at all. Well, he could feel them - they felt like hell...like they were on fire. He couldn’t jump like this, they’d have to abort the mission. Too late. The huge door in the side of the plane swung open, and great grasping fingertips of wind clawed at him, caught him up, lifted him up bodily and carried him out of the plane. He twisted to see his two mates, Varney and Ketch, and they were far back behind him, their chutes already popped, reaching for him, yelling his name. Desperately he reached up and pulled the ripcord. The resulting jerk against his arms made him scream in pain. It felt as if the chute were trying to rip his arms right off. He looked up and the silk was streaming out...but it wasn’t opening, wasn’t billowing into that beautiful crescent that represented the difference between life and death. He was going to fall to the ground like an arrow...a human missile, and the impact was not going to be pleasant. He twisted around and arced his body so that his entire body was perpendicular to the ground, spreading out his arms and legs to create the maximum wind resistance. All was not lost yet, as one of his Aunties used to say at appropriate moments. Never give up the ship. While there’s life there’s hope. He narrowed his gaze at the ground - it was still too far away for him to see anything properly....but he’d have to find a clump of trees, a stack of hay, a big pile of mud....something he could land in to break the shock of his fall. He tilted up an arm which sent him rushing eastwards. The wind’s fingers continued to claw at him, ripping at his clothing, the clothing of a French peasant, leaching tears from his eyes. You can’t beat me, wind. You’ll hold me up till I see somewhere I want to go... There - that clump of trees there...next to that farmhouse. That was the place. He drew his arms and legs slightly closer to his body, and arrowed down toward his target. It was going to be rough, but if he crashed into the tops of the branches they’d brake his fall...so that the ground wouldn’t break him. What an ugly color green was. And how ugly were those trees. No...no...trees were his friend. They were going to save his life. Here they came.... It was like riding through a roller coaster that had broken loose from its track, or through the tunnel of a wave, or a green hell. Branches scratched at him, caught at his clothing, and the roar in his ears...was that the sound of his forward motion or was that the sound of his screaming? Silence. No movement. Only pain. Pain and...swaying. He couldn’t open his eyes...sticky...they were sticky...blood? Open them...just open them, dammit.... He opened slitted lids and looked up. There was a canopy of trees up there...and the crumpled remains of his ‘chute, and the guylines of his chute. He looked down...far, far away, was the ground. He was swinging like a pendulum underneath a bloody great tree. Stamp, stamp, stamp. What the hell was that? Jackboots...jackboots. Germans...the Germans were coming and they were going to see him unless he did something bloody quickly. He glanced up desperately, grabbed at the guylines with his useless arms...his shoulders screamed in agony...he couldn’t haul himself up in time. ‘’Achtung!’’ came a voice from down below. He looked down, at a squad of six Germans, all staring up at him, all carrying rifles. All lifting their rifles to their shoulders. He clutched at his chest, scrabbled at the quick-release, and as the bullets whined over his head he dropped straight down. Time it right, he told himself, time it right, hit, drop and roll...didn’t have quite the same ring to it when you were falling straight down from a tree instead of angling in with a parachute above you. The earth rose up to met him and crunched him in the face. Roll over, he told himself. Can’t. Can’t move. Every bone in my body is bloody well broken. Doesn’t matter, he told himself. Roll over. Face it. Face them when they shoot you. There was a knife in his boot...get it. He drew up, very slowly, his knees under him, and slipped his hands back...as if he were scrabbling to lever himself to his feet...he pulled out the knife with his right hand...he rose to his knees...his back screaming every inch of the way...he looked up into the faces of hundreds of Germans staring down at him, over the sights of their rifles. He took a deep breath and lifted his chin...and the knife. It wasn’t the noise of their rifles that greeted him, but the sound of a submachine gun. A curtain of red swirled in front of him...and the chatter of the submachine gun became the clapping of hundreds of hands and the curtain of red was a curtain, falling down on the stage of the Paris theatre. ‘’Magnifique!’’ yelled French voices. ‘’Wunderbar!’’ cried German ones. He was sitting in a French theatre and he was surrounded by Germans. Surreptitiously he looked down...his peasant attire had been replaced by the baggy trousers and much mended shirt of a townee. His knee was quite close to the knee of a woman - he turned and looked at her - she was young, her auburn hair swirled around his face, her chocolate brown eyes stared into his, lights dancing in them, and her wide, mobile mouth was stretched into a smile. She was beautiful...she was Mrs. Peel. John Steed opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. What was that droning noise....oh, the heating had kicked in. He felt a wonderful warmth on his chest...Mrs. Peel had one arm around him and her head nestled on his shoulder. All he could see was her auburn hair but bits of it shone like gold. He moved his neck ever so slightly and placed a kiss on that hair. Why had he woken up? Everything had been going so nicely. It hadn’t been Mrs. Peel, of course, that time. His first mission over enemy lines, botched from the get-go. He’d been scared from the very beginning, and everything had started going wrong, and his adrenalin had kicked in and the fear had gone leaving him with a desperate rage and a mind that had worked like a coiled spring. But he wouldn’t have been able to escape those Germans...it hadn’t been hundreds of Germans...it had just been five...but he couldn’t have escaped them without....Lucille. Lucille Brouget. Yes, that had been her name. The woman from the French Undergound who’d saved his life. The first woman who’d shown him what a woman was capable of when placed in dangerous situations. Bravery. Determination. Strength. Skill. Humor. She’d possessed them all in spades. He’d tried to fnd her, after the war. He hadn’t fallen in love with her, didn’t have any sentimental attachment to her, but he’d wanted to know that she’d survived. She hadn’t...but it hadn’t been the Germans who’d killed her. She’d been playing the Game...pretending to be a Collaborator, savings dozens of English and hundreds of French lives while she did so....and just days after Liberation the denizens of her town had condemned her and sentenced her to death. There’d been no trial, really, he’d been told, it had just been mob rage. They hadn’t had the guts to resist the Germans openly while they’d been occupied, but once the Germans were gone they had no fear in ganging up on a single woman, dragging her through the streets, not listening to her explanations. Finally she’d spat at their feet before they shot her against the wall of the town church. This is what he’d been told by one of the grief-stricken murderers....only a few hours later the truth had come out when horror stricken Resistance leaders from Paris had told them what they’d done. Steed brought his free hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to think of that. He had the urge to get up...move about...but he couldn’t, not with Mrs. Peel lying there. Why had he started dreaming about that, anyway? Oh, yes...the drone of that damned heater...like the drone of the engines on that plane. Funny, how things brought back memories. A smell, a taste, a sound. He remembered, just a few years ago, driving underneath a train track. There’d been a long line of traffic in front of him so he’d been stuck right underneath the tracks as the train had gone by. And as he’d sat there in his Bentley with the train rattling above him he’d begun to feel more and more nervous....his palms had gone damp and there was a chill in his chest. If the line of traffic hadn’t started moving at just that second he’d been about to jump up and run out from that underpass. And for weeks after that he’d always avoided driving underneath train underpasses so that that wouldn’t happen again. He’d mentioned it to Dr. Teazel, the service psychiatrist - who’d also been in the War. And Teazel had asked him if he’d ever been under fire from a mortar barrage, or something similar, and Steed had nodded and said yes and the memory had clicked - the sound of that train roaring overhead had sounded exactly like a mortar barrage, and that sound had affected him subconsciously. The next day he’d driven to a train underpass and sat underneath it, waiting for a train to come by, and the sound of it hadn’t affected him at all. Knowledge was such power. Absently he began stroking Emma’s hair. The war had started it all, of course. When you are sure you’re going to your death every day, you didn’t want to miss a single thing that life had to offer. Eating a fine meal, drinking a fine wine, making love to a fine woman. But you might be dead the next day so you could never commit to that woman, never make her feel like there was a future between the two of you. And after the War there’d been secret service work, and the same considerations had applied. But with Mrs. Peel.... it was different. Not just the fact that she was so talented, so skilled, so capable of saving her own life as well as his - Cathy Gale had been the same way. But he wanted a future with Mrs. Peel. He felt that there could be one with her. And what did Mrs. Peel feel? Well, she was here, in bed, with him. And that was something. ‘’This could be the start of a beautiful friendship,’’ as Humphrey Bogart had said. Of course he was saying it to Claude Rains but that didn’t invalidate the saying - it was something one of his Aunties would say as well. “Mmmmm, Steed.’’ Emma Peel stirred and lifted her head and looked into his eyes. He smiled at her, and bent his head, and they kissed. Warm, soft, gentle lips. They parted and looked at each other. ‘’Feeling better?’’ she asked. ‘’Mmm.’’ Steed bent forward and kissed her again. Gently, softly. Emma raised her hand from his chest to his cheek and caressed it. Then she ran her hand back around his neck and pulled him towards her. Steed slid down and pressed his body over hers. They made love quietly, gently. And afterwards they lay together in each other’s arms. A few minutes later: ‘’You realize we have the entire night left,’’ Emma Peel said. Steed grinned. ‘’The entire night. I wonder what we could do to fill the time.’’ Emma Peel rolled over on top of him. ‘’I can think of a few things.’’ ‘’Be gentle with me, Mrs. Peel.’’ She smiled at him. That lovely, poised, delicious smile. And then she bent down and kissed him. Steed smiled up at her. Yes, this was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.

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