Merry Christmas, War is Over

[silver_sun]

Title: Merry Christmas, War is Over.
Fandom. Rivers of London.
Rating G
Characters: Nightingale, Molly
Warnings: none.
Word count: 2600

Summary.
Christmas 1945 Nightingale's first at the Folly.

The war was over. That much could be said at least, Nightingale thought as he looked out of his study window to the leafless trees in Russell Square. London, grey and misty in the December morning light, was still, the roads near empty now that so few could legally get petrol. It could have been dreary, but there was something calming in the silence. The bombs were no longer falling and families were spending their first festive season together for the first time in six years.

Of course the police still had to work. Even at Christmas some needed to remain on duty or at least on call and ready to act should the need arise. Without any family of his own, apart from some distant cousins in Hampshire he'd last see more than ten years before the outbreak of the war, it was only fair that he let the family men have those precious hours off duty with their wives and children.

Spending Christmas alone didn't bother him. It was just another day, he told himself. It was a time for children really. All bright eyed and eager, their belief in Father Christmas and all things good in the world untarnished by the realities of the world that came with age.

Except that he wasn't alone. There was Molly. Molly confused him. The outgoing master of the Folly, Inspector Hardison, had told him little enough about her. Just pointing him in the direction of the scant case notes from a raid on a gang who kidnapped young women and sold them to men of questionably tastes. On discovering that Molly wasn't entirely human, but realising that she was as much a victim as the five other young women, a mixture of mill workers and shop assistants, he'd been unable to dispose of her as his superior had suggested. He'd set her to work in the kitchen with the Folly's ageing cook, who'd taken pity on her and trained her up as a successor.

Nightingale had found Hardison's 'As long as she gets some raw meat each day she'd as biddable as they come. Just don't ask her were she gets it. She cooks, cleans and deals with all those things around the place that need doing. She really is indispensable. The fact that she has no interest in being paid for it means you'll never get a better worker. She doesn't need much of her rations either, can't eat it you see. You'll do well to hang on to her.'

It took less than two days for Nightingale to realise that it wasn't a case of hanging on to her. Molly had nowhere else to go. She couldn't speak, could only just about read enough to follow a recipe book or arrange the butcher order. She had no friends or family. The world she had grown up in was long gone. It was hard to imagine that the silent young woman was in fact somewhat older than his mother would have been.

Hardison had been a veteran of the Boer War, who'd gone into the military because that was what all the men in his family had done. He'd been outspoken about everything, expressing his distaste for conscientious objects, women's sufferage and anybody who he saw as foreign. Which baffled Nightingale why he'd been the one who'd brought Molly to the Folly and gave her a job. In the end Nightingale had decided that it was probably because Molly looked liked a servant from before the Great War and never answered anyone back. She was probably Hardison's idea of the ideal woman. And even that had been the more favourable thought about his reasoning. The other, that he viewed all servants as somehow less than human in the first place so he didn't find Molly any different, Nightingale found too distasteful to contemplate.

The two week handover period had been a little strained by the end. Nightingale, who had never thought of himself as being a great advocate of all things modern had found himself wishing that Hardison would get out of the nineteenth century. Even the Folly itself had progressed more than he had. Plumbing, electric lighting and a telephone connection installed in the last ten years suggested that Hardison hadn't been quite so against change when it benefited himself.

It seemed almost incomprehensible that Hardison had once had an apprentice. Although it made some kind of sense to Nightingale that the young man whoever he'd been had left as soon as his ten years was up. The only further information that had been supplied when he'd asked was 'The damn fool got himself killed, didn't he? Didn't do what I said.' It had been accompanied by a shake of Hardison head and the pronouncement that the youth of today were sadly lacking in sense.

It was an unfair and unfounded statement in Nightingale's opinion, especially given the sacrifices those same youths had made over the past six years of conflict. They had paid with their lives to keep Britain free and bring that same freedom back to the people of the world. No greater debt was owed than to that of their memories and to the ideals that they had fought and died for.

There had been so many young men under his command. His position in the Foreign Office prior to the war had meant he'd been marked out as possibly officer material for the newly formed Special Service Units, as the magical contingent of Britain's Military had been named.

At forty he'd been too old to be officially conscripted, but those with magical ability were given little choice. Unless you were under seventeen or over sixty you had to enlist or be considered as a potential traitor, which at the very least meant sitting out the war in a military prison. Even the few women with magical training hadn't been exempt, the production and storage of magical energy for later use was considered a safe and worthy task for them. The War Office hadn't wanted to waste their talents by letting them be land girls or munition factory workers. It hadn't been safe work. Often poorly trained in the difficult job they'd been given, over worked and expected to charge staffs faster than it was possible to, there were casualties as the overuse of magic destroyed their minds or the staffs failed and released a massive burst of energy, capable of destroy a building.

Yet despite the horrors they had endured there had been a camaraderie in the war that was missing now he'd reentered civilian life. None of his Christmases had been spent as alone as he was now. Even when it had been only him a few of the other men of the Special Service Unit Three, as his section had been called. It had been hard sometimes as Captain, the men didn't really want to socialise too freely with their CO, but the Lieutenants had always joined him for a drink or two, songs had been sung and they had all talked about what they were going to do when the war was over.

Now the war was over. Nightingale closed his eyes, remembering the last time they had all been together. Little more than eight months ago it felt like a lifetime at moments like this. Dreams of a past as distant as his own childhood before the phrase 'World War' had entered into the nations vocabulary. So many of them had never got to realise those simple wishes they had made last year. They had wanted to go home to their wives and children. To marry their sweetheart or find one. They'd wanted to go home to their parents house, to see their bothers and sisters, to tell them sanitised tales of what they did in the war. People had been talking about victory. It had been so close, after long years when defeat had been their deepest, darkest fear, there had finally been optimism again.

So many of them were dead now. Thorpe, Richards, the O'Neil brothers, Cooper, Morton, old Billy Wilson and young Billy Wilson. He supposed it was a comfort to know that Mrs Wilson had passed before the war and wasn't left to mourn both husband and son and that as Captain it hadn't been his sad duty to write to her expressing his condolences. And David. It didn't seen right to think of him as Mellenby. That loss hurt the most of all. He'd known David since they were boys at school, wide-eyed with wonder at the magic they were learning.

David hadn't been under his command. He'd barely seen him during the course of the war, not until they'd all been massed in what had been a school in Berlstedt prior to the final assault on Ettersberg. All that time apart, and then to have him taken from him so close to the end of the war seemed immensely unfair. Yet that was the nature of war, death came to many without rhyme or reason, many of those who were deserving of death escaped it, while too many of those who had done nothing to deserve their fate now lay buried in the cold mud of country they had never called home.

Nightingale pressed his hands to his eyes briefly and then opened them again. He could hardly stand at the window all day, regretting the past. It did the living no good at all. Saving lives and bringing to justice those who would destroy the lives of others. He frowned, knowing that his train of thought had brought him full circle again to why he was working over the festive season.

No more thinking on what cannot be changed, he told himself and he went down to breakfast. He would find something useful to occupy his time, even if he wasn't called in. There were past cases the Folly had dealt with to review. It was always a good idea to have prior knowledge of the kind of adversaries you were facing. You wouldn't have gone into battle without sufficient intel during the war, why treat policing any differently? Forewarned is forearmed - that could have almost served as a job description for his post at the Foreign Office too.

Breakfast was already laid out in the dining room. Not that with rationing now more severe than at the height of the war is was more than very simple fare these days. But Molly always seemed to be able to turn the less than appetising 'national loaf' in to reasonable toast and there was some jam. The margarine was always saved for the sandwiches she made for him. There would be tea as well and some milk. He'd found that unsweetened was preferable to the odd, bitter taste that the saccharine left. It was almost as poor a replacement for the real thing as the powdered eggs were.

This morning, propped against the tea pot was a note. Molly's carefully printed hand was instantly recognisable. Simple and to the point the point it said, I need to make the weekly order. Will you be present?

Where else would I be? had been his first thought which had been closely followed by whether Hardison had usually left Molly alone over the festive season. It seemed cruel when she had nobody and didn't seem will or able to leave the Folly to attend any form of social gathering. Whatever had happened in the past things would be different this year and from now on. Turning over the note, Nightingale wrote on the back of it. I shall be working over Christmas and the New Year. Please make arrangements as normal.

Normal. He smiled faintly. That was what the whole world was attempting to regain now. It would be a new kind of normal, just as it had been after the Great War. Not better, not worse, just new and everybody would just have to get one and live it like last time.

He was lucky to have Molly there, Nightingale thought as he sat down to eat. He really should show her that he appreciated what she did. His father had always given his employees a small gift at Christmas and his sister had always got something from her employer when she had been in service. With nobody else to buy for, he'd already given generously to the funds which supported those who had been injured in the war or for those families who had lost their husbands and fathers. Buying a present for Molly was part of everything getting back to how it should be and it was the least he could do for all her hard work in keeping him fed and the Folly neat and tidy.

He had already rectified the issue of a Molly's wage. As soon as Hardison had left he'd arranged for her to be paid. Part of him wanted to see to it that she got all the back pay she was rightfully due from the time she had been hired, but neither the police nor himself could afford four decades of wages in one go. Molly had seemed a mixture of baffled and pleased when he'd told her. How she'd spend it he had no idea, but she managed the other household affairs so well that he had little doubt that if there was something that she wanted she'd know how to get it.

A Christmas gift however was a different matter. Some things, such as clothing or perfume wouldn't be appropriate to give to an employee and Nightingale was struck by the fact that he had never actually had to buy a Christmas present for a woman before. At least not one that wasn't his mother or sister. As Molly never left the house, a gift of gloves or a hat and scarf wouldn't be of any use to her. While writing set presented the same problems. Molly was at least sixty years old even if she looked barely into her twenties and had lived almost entirely cut of from the world inside the Folly for forty years, there wasn't anybody that she would write to apart from the tradesmen that supplied them with meat, milk and vegetables.

Cooking seemed to interest her, so perhaps a cook book with ideas of how to make the most of out their rations. He'd heard one of the young constables at the station grumbling that his wife never cook anything that wasn't in such a book.

With breakfast finished, Nightingale got ready to go down to the station and check whether there were any cases that looked like they might fall within his remit. He could visit a bookshop or a market later on the way home.

It was strange to think how fast the Folly had become home. Although after years of military accommodation or even sleeping in barns or ruined houses while behind enemy lines perhaps any warm, dry place to return to every night would have. It would also be his home for the foreseeable future, so perhaps making a small effort to decorate, even if it was just a little bit of greenery and placing the Christmas cards he'd received where they could be seen rather than leaving them in their envelopes.

Christmas dinner would a rather strange affair, between the inability to get much of the usual fair and as Molly never ate with him. He was aware that the kind of food that she did eat, and knew it would likely put him off his own meal. But now that Nightingale had made up is mind he wasn't letting Christmas pass unmarked he found himself looking forward to it.