The Paradox of Pursuing a Modern Woman

A Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries fanfic by a placecalled

Chapter 1

Author's note: This fic came from two places. First, wanting to know what advice Jack and Phryne would give to the other's charge about their engagement. And second, wanting to know some more about Jack's war service and marriage to Rosie.

It is just past 11 o'clock on Sunday morning when Jack Robinson is disturbed from his reading by a knock at his door. The sound is so unusual – he barely ever receives visitors at home – that he starts in his armchair. Only two possibilities present themselves to him regarding the identity of his caller: Miss Fisher, who has lately taken it upon herself to be in yet more of his personal spaces (not necessarily unwelcomely), or else some deranged criminal seeking revenge on a Detective Inspector. That these are the two possibilities he entertains says a great deal about why he is sitting in a library just recently refurbished to contain two armchairs rather than the one of the past decade or so.

Mostly hopefully, partly warily, Jack smooths his hair and – for good measure – plucks his revolver from the pocket of his overcoat hanging on the hall stand before opening the door.

He is astonished to see Miss Dorothy Williams, still dressed from church and carrying a picnic basket. She is equally astonished at his appearance, though whether this is because of the revolver or the sight of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson in slacks and a button-down shirt, no three-piece suit or tie, is unclear. She has gotten rather used to guns in the last year or so, after all.

"Miss Williams!" Jack exclaims. "Er – is everything alright?" His gut gives a little clench as he begins to ask, "Is Miss Fisher –"

"Miss Fisher is fine, Inspector," Dot answers. Then she laughs a little nervously. "Well, she was when she went to bed last night, anyway" (one never truly knew with Miss Fisher, after all). The laughter subsides into plain nervousness. "I was wondering whether we might have a word, Inspector?" she asks. "I've brought lunch."

"Well... Certainly, Miss Williams. Come on in." Jack stands aside to allow her entry into his home, wondering what on earth she could want a word about. If not Miss Fisher, then... Ah. Of course. Constable Collins.

Dot leads the way down the hall to the kitchen that is visible at the other end. The Inspector's is a small, neat home. One bedroom, bed neatly made, sparsely furnished. One saucepan, one dirty frying pan (Sunday morning bacon and eggs?) and a kettle on the cold stove in the kitchen. And a comparatively luxurious library room, carpeted in a magnificent dark blue, walls lined with packed bookcases, several lamps, two armchairs (one suspiciously new), whisky decanter and glass. It is obvious that the Inspector spends most of his time in this room.

"Can I get you a cup of tea, Miss Williams?" Jack asks, as Dot begins unpacking sandwiches and cake onto the small kitchen table.

"Yes, Inspector. Thank you," Dot replies.

Each is happy to busy themselves with the food or drink while Dot thinks about how to phrase what she has come here to ask, and Jack thinks about how best to answer.

They make small talk over their first sandwich – roast beef and homemade green tomato chutney on fresh-baked bread – and cup of tea, and then Dot knows she must come to it.

"You must be wondering why I'm here, Inspector," she begins.

"Yes indeed, Miss Williams," Jack encourages her, as he would with an innocent, startled witness.

Dot takes a deep breath. "Well, as you know, Constable Collins and I are now engaged, and have agreed to a long engagement while we work out what he's calling the 'paradox' of our relationship." Jack smiles a little at this, recognising his own description of pursuing modern women such as Miss Fisher and, lately, Miss Williams. "And, since you're a person I greatly admire... I was wondering if you would tell me... if you would be willing to tell me – of course you don't have to... But if you would tell me: Why didn't your marriage to Miss Sanderson work out?"

Slowly, deliberately, Jack adds a spoonful of sugar to his cup, refills it from the tea pot, and adds his dash of milk. Only then does he meet Dot's eyes. "You may ask, Miss Williams, although to be honest I'm not sure what the story of my marriage could possibly tell you about yours and Constable Collins'."

Dot's gaze falls from Jack's to her hands, then she also uses the delaying tactic of pouring another cup of tea. Studying its wisps of steam, she explains, "Well, Inspector, I imagine that on your wedding day you felt for your wife what I feel for Hugh now. That you wanted to be together forever. And then, around fifteen years later..." Dot gestures around her, as if to take in all the markers of the loneliness he has felt for most of the last ten years.

"You're forgetting the war, Dot," Jack says, the personal nature of their conversation tempering his usual formality. "God willing – and I don't invoke God much anymore – you and Hugh will never see the like of it."

"Did you return very damaged from the war, Inspector?" Dot asks, the personal nature of their conversation maintaining her usual formality.

"Not very damaged, Dot," Jack responds. "Not like the old diggers you see out the front of the Repat hospital, half their faces blown off, or in the gutter drinking sly grog out of brown bottles to keep the sound of artillery fire away. But damaged enough."

There is a release in talking about it, and he continues, saying much more than he'd intended, much more than he's ever said. "Did you know that I studied law before the war? I was almost finished my degree in August 1914. That's how Rosie and I met, actually." Despite everything, he still grins as he thinks of it. "Her father was a Detective Inspector then, and I used to hang around his station, trying to find unsuspecting constables or criminals that would give me 'insight' into the criminal justice system. Rosie took pity on me, and brought me tea, and sandwiches... Not unlike you and Collins, actually."

Dot smiles as Jack continues. "And then the war came. We married quickly, I left university, I enlisted... And spent the next four years away. Gallipoli, France, Belgium. We wrote to each other every week, and tried to share our experiences, but there was a distance we just couldn't bridge in letters."

"Your experience of the trenches?" Dot enquires softly.

"Yes, of the trenches, of the rear areas, of leave. And she told me about all the goings on of home. The officers' and men's wives she supported, and their support of her. The socks. Her family's losses."

Jack stirs his cooling tea idly, uninterested in it now except as a crutch to help tell this story. "Rosie had three brothers who enlisted. The family was lucky, or so it seemed until 1918. They were all killed on the same day, the 21st of March, and a month later her mother was dead too. I was in leave in Blighty at the time, frolicking around the Scottish highlands. She would never say so, but I don't think she ever forgave me for that. For not, at least, being on the front when they died."

Tears are forming in Dot's eyes as she puts in, "That's not very reasonable."

Jack raises his eyebrows in wry kind of way. "Perhaps not. But little in the war was reasonable, Dot. I came home to a wife devastated by the loss of three soldiers, four people. She got back a husband partly devastated by the loss of a thousand men in his battalion – a thousand, Dot, compared to three. And partly exhilarated, joyful, ecstatic at just being alive. We could never resolve the difference, and then we stopped trying."

There is more to the story than this, of course. Nights spent drinking with his fellow returned men, telling the stories he wouldn't, couldn't tell his wife. His decision not to go back to law but join the police force instead – a profession, he thought, of less moral ambiguity than law, or soldiering. The dreams.

Yes, he had been "damaged enough" by the war.

Dot feels privileged to have been told this story. But she wonders... "It was the events, then, Inspector, rather than you and Rosie? The reason your marriage didn't work out, I mean."

Jack shrugs. For a while he'd been consumed by this question. Then he made peace with – for all intents and purposes – being a bachelor. Lately, as he has considered giving his heart to someone else again, the question has returned.

And he finally thinks he knows the answer.

"The events were extreme, Dot. But it was the way we responded to them that meant our marriage ended. The romantic in me still thinks that true love can overcome anything, outlast anything. If you give it a chance."

Dot nods and gets up to refill the kettle. When it squeals its boiling point, she and Jack don't hear it for some time, both too lost in thoughts of the past, the future, and what true love might be.

tbc

Stay tuned for Phryne's advice to Hugh. And remember, reviews stoke the fires of imagination ;)