FEAR AND LOATHING*
Chapter 1 The Incident
Thomas Barrow had a sixth sense for danger. He had to have, didn't he? It was a dangerous world for a man like him and only a finely-tuned awareness of potential hazards made it possible for him to live in that world while remaining true to the person he was. But he wasn't infallible. Sometimes he made mistakes.
He really shouldn't have been in the village at all. Mr. Carson was attending a meeting about war graves in the local cemetery and was not expected to be back at the Abbey until just before dinner. It was therefore left to the underbutler to manage the ritual of ringing the gong and to ensure that everything in the dining room met the exacting standards Mr. Carson demanded at every meal. Before the leaving the house the butler had thrust into Barrow's hands the measuring device he used every night and at every place to make sure that the silverware was properly spaced. The younger man was supposed to be there right now doing just that.
But Barrow believed that there was no point in having authority if you didn't exercise it and that meant making decisions for yourself. He could be down to the village in a matter of minutes at a quick walk, get his business at the post office done, and be back in plenty of time to ring the gong, and no one would be the wiser. It was a bit of a risk, but the only repercussion - if repercussions there were - would be a few harsh words from Mr. Carson. And Barrow was immune to that, having caught them so often.
It was a cloudy day. Rain was threatening. As Barrow slipped into the High Street it occurred to him that the early dimness made it seem later than it was and he checked his watch. It was always correct. Barrow was a clockmaker's son. He knew how to keep timepieces running perfectly. He was in good time. There were few people about. Late afternoon, when the pub had yet to open for the dinner traffic, always made for quiet streets in this quiet village, but the weather today contributed as well. Barrow was a little surprised to find the post office almost crowded.
Crowded by Downton Village standards, anyway. There were four men ahead of him. He took note, as he always did, of strangers, especially of men. All four wore canvas overalls, rough work shirts, workingmen's caps, and heavy boots. Road workers, he thought. Not farm labourers. He didn't recognize them. And while he was not on a name basis with everyone in the village or even the estate, over many years of living in the same place, he knew the faces. These men were not from this corner of Yorkshire. They might, perhaps, be employees of that concern that was widening the main road between Harrogate and York. Barrow knew the work was moving this way.
Although what they were doing in the post office, he could not say. Then he remembered that it was Friday, pay day on the road works. Perhaps they had come in to post some of their wages home to their families. His eyes ran over them. He was a keen observer, a facility demanded by his job but also one that came naturally to him. And then shook his head. No, they were a younger set, much younger than he was at any rate, and looked more likely to spend their hard-earned wages down at the pub than putting food into children's mouths. Not yet anyway.
They all looked over at him as he came in, the postmistress, too. He nodded politely, but they only stared, and after a few seconds went back to their business. Barrow listened to Mrs. Wigan's animated chatter. She wasn't exactly flirting with them - she was too old for that - but he could hear in her voice the silly tone of a woman flattered by the jocular attentions of young men. Barrow looked away, nauseated.
The postmistress's voice grated on his nerves, which were suddenly more sensitive. He did not like Mrs. Wigan. She had been the postmistress at Downton Village even before his arrival and he had never warmed to her. Hers was a position of power in the village. Everything came through the post office, which meant that she was uniquely situated to know things about everyone for miles around. That made Barrow uneasy. He knew how important information was. Knowledge was power. He appreciated this both as someone who had wielded information about others to his own advantage and as a person with secrets. Employees of His Majesty's Postal Services no doubt had to swear some kind of oath of confidence - he certainly hoped they did - but that did not wholly assuage his concerns. He was vulnerable to someone with the kind of knowledge available to her. She knew what he read and with whom he corresponded, and he thought she looked at him critically. And he did not like anyone who thought too much about him.
He also knew her to be a hypocrite. She sneered, as some did in the village, about the family and the Abbey staff, too, scoffing at their pretensions. Behind their backs, of course. She was all sweetness to His Lordship to his face and she was obsequiously polite to the senior staff members when they visited the post office. But Barrow had seen her in other circumstances, too. Mrs. Wigan had been part of the delegation appointed to establish a war memorial at Downton and as such had come to the Abbey to discuss it. As spokesman of the committee, she had taken particular pleasure, first, in passing over His Lordship for the chairmanship in favour of Mr. Carson, and then, when Mr. Carson went to serve the tea, treating him like a servant and ordering him about. This had not gone down well with the butler, who had spoken of the incident - both aspects of her behaviour troubling him - at length in the servants' hall later. Barrow suspected that this was the reason she was no longer associated with the committee, one of Mr. Carson's first acts as chairman being her removal. And thus she was at her station in the post office this afternoon, rather than at the war graves meeting.
Laughter caught Barrow's ear and he turned abruptly to see two of the men smiling in his direction and Mrs. Wigan concealing her mirth behind her hand. He didn't like that. He was about to give the whole thing up as a bad business and come back in the morning, when all four men moved as one away from the postmistress's counter. Two of them brushed by Barrow and left without a backward glance. A third man gestured Barrow forward.
"I'm still thinking," he said by way of explanation.
The other man said nothing, but put his hands in his pockets - a loutish habit that Mr. Carson abhorred and that Barrow had come to regard as ill-bred - and wandered over to look at the cards posted in the window, advertising jobs and lost objects.
Barrow was wary of a favour extended for no reason, but Mrs. Wigan was looking at his expectantly. He nodded his appreciation to the man who had spoken and presented his letter. It was a brief exchange - he saw her taking note of the recipient before she proceeded - and within two minutes he was out in the street again and glad to be so. He did not like the atmosphere in there.
He'd only been in the post office for a few minutes and yet it had gotten darker. And colder. The wind was up a little and it was sure to rain soon. Barrow wondered if Mr. Carson had taken an umbrella with him and then wondered why the thought had even crossed his mind. The butler was far more familiar with local weather patterns than he was. And he had himself to think about. Pulling his collar more tightly together, he bent his head against the brisk wind. A sense of unease had come over him. Suddenly his responsibilities at the Abbey were weighing down on him. He ought to be there. He picked up his pace and almost collided with someone who stepped without warning from the corner of a shut-up shop.
"'Scuse me," he said automatically and made to move around the person.
"Hullo."
The man - it was a man - moved with him and was in his way again, and crowding him closely. Barrow realized it was one of the two fellows who had left the shop before him, he recognized the boots. And then he looked up into the face that was just a little below his and saw there a smug smile. He shifted to the side again, and the other man shadowed him, and then he heard heavy steps behind him. Two more men.
"You in a hurry or something?"
They crowded up against him, nudging him, pushing him away from the street and back toward the building, to the quiet side lane that ran there. Downton Village didn't have alleyways per se, not like a town or a city would. But there were unnoticed byways. The shack where he had once stored the rotten black market goods with which he'd hoped to make his fortune in the closing days of the war had been down one of these. Now he was being roughly shouldered down another. And they were muttering things, too. He couldn't quite catch the words, but he didn't have to. He knew what they were saying. He'd heard it all before.
"...fancy clothes..."
"...toffy ways..."
"Think you're better'n us 'n all..."
"...high and mighty..."
And that wasn't all. There were other words that he knew, too, not the kind that were flung at uppity servants, but those reserved for men like him, men who were different.
He knew every strategy was futile, but he tried them anyway, because it was all he could do. He pushed against them lightly, looking for weakness, but they tightened the circle around him, joined now by the fourth man who had been waiting in the shadows. They had strong, muscular bodies, hard from the physical labour they did all day. It wasn't going to be that easy to get away from them.
"If you will excuse me, fellows. I must get on." Was his voice casual enough? Smooth? Or did it reflect the tremors of fear that shook his heart?
"Oh, the busy man from the grand house."
"We've all got our work to do," Barrow blustered, managing a smile. "I'm sure you have business to attend to yourselves."
"Right now, you're our business, mister fancy."
"Mr. nancy," another corrected, and they all laughed.
They were getting rougher, still only pushing him, but with more force now.
"Look," he tried, reaching for a comradely tone and dropping his posh Downton accent for his old Manchester manners, "I'm an ordinary bloke like you lot. Just doing a job. Nothing special."
"But you are a special one, mate. Aren't you?"
He had to make a break for it, but they were ready. The first punch hit him just below the ribs and knocked the breath from him. It wasn't unexpected, but he cried out - more from shock, although it hurt, too - and they laughed loudly and hit him again. And then words and blows were raining down on him - hurtful, hateful words, he knew them all, and hard blows that threatened to break his bones. They were all strong men.
This hadn't happened to him in a long time. He'd been badly beaten a few years back, protecting Jimmy Kent from those men who had stolen his money at the Thirsk fair. But this was different, because of the other thing. But it didn't matter how long ago it had been. It wasn't something you ever forgot once you'd experienced it. There was pain, from their fists and their stiff boots, but there was emotional trauma, too. It was the kind of humiliation that stayed with a man long after broken bones and bruises had mended. It was one of the penalties of being different.
And it didn't matter to his self esteem that it was always an unfair fight. Barrow was in good shape. His work was physical and if it wasn't quite the same as building roads or transporting goods, it still required strength. And he kept himself in fighting form, so to speak, if only out of vanity. He was a handsome man and he cultivated that with the care he took of his body. But he hardly ever landed a blow in these kinds of altercations. It was hard to do when you were outnumbered.
It all hurt, but fear compounded the pain. He was afraid for his eyes, for his perfect teeth, and for his hands. He needed them for his work and for his own sense of self worth. But they didn't care. The usual escape, the only escape really, was the waning of their enthusiasm. Sometimes it helped to go limp and feign a faint. It was a tricky maneuvre, though, and did not always work. And it required him to give up trying to protect his face and thereby risk significant damage.
Before he could make up his mind to try it, though, the dynamic suddenly shifted. Above the noise of their words, the thuds of their fists on his flesh, and his own cries of pain, he heard another sound. A voice. It was a stentorian voice raised in indignation and it was all too familiar to Barrow.
"What is going on here!"
How often had he heard those very words and in that very tone! And watched the staff scatter in alarm in the wake of them. It was not a question that really sought an answer. It was rather merely an expression of Mr. Carson's profound disapproval.
Barrow's blood ran cold at the sound of it.
No, no, not him. Not HIM! He must not see Barrow's humiliation, must not hear the filth spewing from their mouths and aimed at the underbutler. Even as he cringed at his own debasement, Barrow's mind entertained another equally distressing possibility. They will hurt him, too. Oh, was he not carrying enough here without having to take responsibility for that, too? The thought galvanized him, and he struggled anew against his attackers.
"Go away!" he screamed, though he did not know if his words were coherent, or if they could be heard above the violence that engulfed him.
But, oh, no. The old man had waded into the fray. Barrow could hear him now, closer to hand and still attempting to impose through that voice of command some control over this out-of-control situation. Why doesn't he call the constable! Did Mr. Carson really think that the authority he wielded unchallenged at Downton Abbey extended to this?
It didn't. Barrow's assailants, riding a wave of adrenalin and the enthusiasm of mob action, appeared to welcome a new target, one or two of them jeering at the newcomer. Barrow heard more blows than he felt, heard grunts of pain that were not his own. And he was frightened even more than he had been when he'd faced them on his own. He couldn't see what was happening. Would this ever end?
And then, amidst the scuffling and thudding, a new sound. It was a metallic click. Barrow knew that sound, too. It was a knife. It wasn't a common thing in village altercations, but he remembered it from rare occasions in the city. Now the panic rose in him. He was yelling, screaming. And his was not the only voice of alarm. One of his assailants was protesting and another growled back at him with contempt.
And then there was a cry, not his own, and the panic coursing through him became a general one. There was a stampede of heavy boots. And he was alone. They were alone.
Panting so hard that he could hardly hear anything else, Barrow groped in the semi-blindness of the sweat and tears in his eyes and found Mr. Carson, leaning heavily against the stone wall behind them and panting hard himself. They fell into each other, neither of them steady on their feet, leaning against one another to regain their equilibrium. The flat of Barrow's hand came up against the butler's chest and he felt the man's great heart hammering at a speed that alarmed him.
"Oh, God!" he cried, and reached for an arm, a hand, that he might offer the butler some support. The cottage hospital was not far away, perhaps only two short blocks. They could get there together. They must get there.
As he took some of Carson's weight, Barrow felt a sharp pain in his own side and he faltered. Now the butler reached out to steady him. Barrow put his hand over Mr. Carson's, drew a deep breath, and took a step forward. He had to reach out to the wall for support and he became aware that his hand was now sticky with a thick, warm substance.
Blood.
And it was not his own.
*A/N1. Fear and Loathing is a bit over the top as the title for this story, but insofar as it reflects the feelings of the characters, it has some relevance.