The grandfather clock near the far wall tells Mary it's six o'clock and almost on cue, Cat bounds into the library, dressed to the nines, and drops down onto the sofa next to her grandmother. She's as blonde as her grandmother is dark (the chestnut brown overpowers the grey strands and has yet to fade entirely. For that Mary is grateful) and her cheerful demeanour likens her far more to her great aunt Sybil than Mary. Her sharp mind and sharper tongue, though, could only have come from one person.
"Does your father know you're wearing that," Mary asks quietly, but she's not as stern as her words might imply. In truth, the flared trousers and silk blouse are overwhelmingly reminiscent of a moment so many lifetimes ago, in a room just across the hallway when darling, precocious Sybil had kept them waiting for dinner so she could show them her new trousers.
Lady Catherine Crawley grins conspiratorially and adjusts her necktie. "No, and you mustn't tell him, but everyone's wearing this and it's essentially the same outfit that Margaux Hemingway wore in Vogue, only I couldn't get the same Hermès scarf. Anyway, I've no time to change- James is picking me up and we're off to Annabel's, or maybe Billy's. Actually, we might just skip those because it's no fun when someone important drops into Annabel's and you've got to be on your best behaviour, and people only like Billy's because everyone else says they do.
Cat's voice, husky from the cold that she's yet to recover from, flickers between enthusiasm and disdain. She babbles away happily, a slight flush coming into her milky cheeks when she mentions James, and Mary smiles softly, wondering if an announcement may need to be made in the Times tomorrow. It's reassuring that, despite everything, there's still a Napier interested in a Crawley; reassuring that the world, after total wars and bombs and riots, still turns on the same axis it did in 1912. Continuity, though, makes Mary feel a little ancient, a little out of sync as her memories become dinnertime tales, her world a page in a fairy-tale. Transcendence, as far as a mortal can attain it, is a blessing and a damnation.
Mary's thoughts, as they so often do these days, consume her. This is a new-fangled world in which girls wear plastic boots and boys jam pins through their ears, where football is no longer a childhood game for the working class and, of all things, undertakers are striking, and Mary has no part to play in it. The turn of the century seems a lifetime ago.
A sudden movement startles her; in a bound, Cat's across the room, fiddling with the arm of the record player and finding the right record. Discordant scratches fill the silence until the loud notes issue forth and the song begins.
Cat whirls around with bright eyes and her long blonde hair follows. "I love this song," she says with a grin, but there's a sharp rap on the front door and after a kiss on her grandmother's cheek and a plea not to be exposed, she's at the door before the butler can get there and off down the drive.
The record plays on.
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray.
They built you a temple and locked you away.
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay,
For things that you might have done.
Mary wouldn't usually listen to the music played in the house, but Cat's tastes are, thankfully, a little more conservative than those of her brothers and this is almost tuneful. Eyes closed, her foot bobs along to the beat, but 1977 fades briefly into 1912 and the dead Turk resurrects himself, as he is wont to do when strength momentarily abandons her.
In the darkness perfumed with that bitter Eastern scent, she's vaguely aware that the door opens, that the butler (who isn't Carson, the man who, more than anyone else, left his imprint indelibly on this house) asks her if she would like a drink, that he waits properly for a response before backing out. But in the darkness, this strange new world doesn't really exist and instead Mary's world returns to torment her. She stands in this very room, all in red (a scarlet woman) with a red feather in her hair, enchanting two men and trying to forget about the other one watching her keenly. He forces her back into a dark corner and it's just the two of them; it's not her first kiss, but it's the first one that stirs something inside (and balls her hands into fists). She's upstairs, her hair flowing over her shoulder like running water and her nightdress merely tissue paper around the present, and he's not listening. The rest, she knows, time and choice have all but erased from memory.
Footsteps interrupt the reverie and force her eyes open, and Mary is fully aware of the door opening this time because her son's angry tread, like his father's before him (though the temper, admittedly, comes from her), has become almost too assertive for the floorboards. Like boots stomping through water-logged trenches; like boots running from the mangled metallic wreckage and the man dead beneath it.
"Mother, are you alright," George's voice drips with irritation but gives way to tenderness, as it has learned to do. Mary hates 'mother' but doesn't press it; it's too deeply ingrained in George's psyche, but it prompts memories of dark times, of arguments and frosty silences and words both wish had never been said or heard. "Where's Cat? Did she leave that awful thing playing?"
Mary weighs her options quickly. "I believe she's gone with Genevieve. And no, I don't mind the song, actually." The lie, as it always has been, is silky and virtually undetectably (it was only Matthew who could tell). It's not that George dislikes James, per se. He has, after all, known him for long enough for any serious doubts to be assuaged, but Cat to him is what Sybil was to her father: the youngest and the one who shines the brightest, the one you cannot say 'no' to and yet the one you want to protect the most. That she is George's only daughter doesn't help matters, though Harry and Alastair are admittedly more overbearing. No one, not even Alastair's childhood friend, is good enough for Cat, though Mary rather suspects that her granddaughter's 'damn them all' attitude will prevail.
The dilemma is evident in George's eyes, but eventually he sighs and it's a relief that there won't be a blazing row when Cat returns. He looks tired, though Mary supposes that he has been that way for so long now; there's a world-weariness about him that comes not just from forcing himself to excel in war, but also from years of loss and heartache. Perhaps it started with Sybbie, was compounded by Tom…
Only the good die young.
That's what I said,
Only the good die young,
Only the good die young
"It's Sybbie's birthday today," Mary says suddenly and then wishes she hadn't said anything at all. Such bright eyes, such a laugh and a smile; the whole world her oyster, though it's a tasteless cliché because one never quite knows until it's too late if it's the oyster's a bad one. And what a bad one it was. Any residual softness in George's face is gone when he snaps his head to look at her.
"I know," he says harshly, glaring daggers and looking like the killer he was trained to be, and an oppressive silence settles between them.
Sybbie Sybbie Sybbie and though Mary knows it's unfair (time, like wine, loosens inhibitions), she can't help but remember that she told the darling girl her tongue would get her into trouble one day. Straight from the horse's mouth, Tom had said, but Mary, in her wisdom, had tried to make Sybbie just listen. But she, like her aunt hadn't, wouldn't and it had always been French that she was best at, would always have been French that betrayed her eventually.
The tombstone in the village graveyard is an honorary one; the War Office promised she would be sent home, but the wooden box six feet under contains only photographs and her medals.
And Tom; well, Dr. Mosse wasn't surprised that his heart gave out, not after all that. Mary wasn't either, because a broken heart might as well be a broken neck for all the good it does.
"If you'll excuse me," George snaps and as he marches out of the room, his posture is so stiff, it's a wonder he can walk. Silly of her to mention it, but the rock is sliding and Sisyphus can only watch the spiral of chaos unfurl.
So that was Sybbie and Tom, but Teddy had been the first of that war. Her darling Teddy, who had been as dark as George was fair and the golden boy's constant shadow. All he'd ever wanted was to follow George: to the village, to school, to war, but instead he'd followed Gort to Dunkirk and paid the price for his obedience. Mary suffered, still suffers, but Anthony was worse: his son, his heir, his boy, and she always knew drink would take him one day. Drowning in whisky and drowning in sorrow and drowning in bitter dislike of the boy who survived and came home a hero.
They say there's a heaven for those who will wait,
Some say it's better, but I say it ain't.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints,
The sinners are much more fun.
And so that left the impure and the unkind. No rest for the wicked, but it's 1977 and Mary wonders just how wicked she must have been to still be here, because she's all that's left. Not that Isobel or Granny or Mama were ever bad people, but burying children is unlike anything else. It saps life and vitality and understanding from you, feeds it to those who are quiet beneath the earth, and you wither as they are nourished. Technicolour becomes greyscale before you expire, and Mary supposes that they had it worse; she, at least, brought her bad luck upon herself.
So she and Papa and Edith would sit together, holding a silent vigil for their dearly departed, until Death's shadowy figure picked them off one at a time. Edith the Jealous; well, the evacuees had lessened that somewhat, but those God-awful cigarettes she'd picked up in the Riviera did their damage and then it was just a matter of time. Robert the… what had he been? Loving and anachronistic and so rigidly set in his ways; a liar and a cheat and foolishly proud. Whatever he'd been, he'd limped on as the eyesight deteriorated, still breathing when so many children were dead and Mary thinks her bitterness is justified after all that he did to destroy all that Matthew had done-
"Henry Matthew Crawley, down here! Now!" George doesn't need to bellow to be obeyed, but the extra volume is useful when jostling for position with Johnny Rotten and 'God Save the Queen'. Harry- like George, like Matthew- stomps downstairs and the row ensues.
And now Mary begins to see why she's still here, because she quite simply doesn't compare to him. She'd always known it, always known that she had fallen while he remained on high; he was, she muses, too good for her and utterly undeserving of her, and so she does her penance in this God-forsaken haunted house. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, she remembers describing herself as; well, if she was Tess, then Matthew had been- no, to call him Angel was an injustice. He hadn't turned away when she revealed the truth about Pamuk; he had loved her and held her and promised the world.
And the world had betrayed him.
The roars of the argument have lessened to the whispers of bitter retorts.
Dimly, Mary makes out a blond head through teary eyes and she smiles as broadly as her wrinkled skin will allow.
"How are you," she hears, though the voice is tinny and echoes in her head.
"I'm fine, darling. I'm just coming."
I'm telling you baby,
You know that only the good die young.
Only the good die young.
Only the good,
Only the good die young.
The accompanying song is Billy Joel's 'Only the Good Die Young', which is fab, so listen to it if you haven't before. In this instance, 'Teddy' is used as a nickname for 'Edward', not 'Theodore', as is the norm in English.