Simplify me when I'm dead
This is mostly a Downton Abbey FanFic, taking some inspiration from RC Cobleigh, and trying to write a DA that is a little more satisfying. I want to focus on the lives of the Crawley sisters, so this is a little bit of a feminist narrative, highlighting the challenges of their kind of womanhood, and how they journey through this. The romance at the heart of it is Matthew and Mary, but this story is not all about romance. Hope you like it, please read and review.
Cliches give us certain truths. Such as, there are no atheists in foxholes. And, as Matthew Crawley, heir to the Earl of Grantham, lay down in the filth of his foxhole, he thought of God and godlessness and of the things that made him believe in the sacred. Music, nature, love. A pair of chocolate brown eyes swam into his vision. Yes, the love that he knew. Smiling, he slipped into unconsciousness.
Miles away, as the constant drizzle of the afternoon became the thunderstorm of the early evening, Lady Mary Crawley felt a swift and sudden chill. Startling her grandmother, she dropped her cup of tea onto the plush carpet.
That is Matthew and Mary now, in that time and in that place, separated but connected ( as they always would be). It will never matter what the circumstances but Matthew cannot rid himself from Mary and Mary cannot rid herself of Matthew. They have the kind of love that elicits great lines of poetry, they are entwined trees, twinn'd compasses. You get my general drift. The Other Storyteller gave us this love, this love for the ages, and we need it to play out. So let us defy him slightly and rework his story. Turn back the page a little and let us go to Downton Abbey as it was before the war, to a dinner party where the Earl and Countess of Grantham are hosting the son of the Viscount of Branksome, and a Certain Turkish Diplomat. See Lady Mary Crawley, resplendent in red and deeply infatuated by her good looking guest. She deftly dodges the bland attentions of the earnest Evelyn Napier and the shy but determined Matthew Crawley, sparkling in the smiles and glances of the handsome foreigner.
See Lady Mary unable to stop herself from following the Diplomat out to the hallway. See the Diplomat kiss her swiftly and forcefully, rousing in her equal responses of lust and revulsion. She admonishes him and returns to the drawing room, sitting by her mother and willing her burning cheeks to cool.
As Matthew Crawley goes home that night, he makes a resolution. However beguiling he may find Mary Crawley's icy disdain, he will not allow himself to follow her like a puppy. What, truly, has overcome him in these past months? He, Matthew Crawley, man of the moral high ground, feeling such infatuation for a woman who could appear so very cold? She was so damnably attractive, that was the thing. And yet, Matthew had also seen her softness. He truly felt guilt? Pity?, for usurping her wealth and estate. "And I am to mean nothing in all of this?" Her words often struck him when he and Robert walked the estate making plans and starting developments. Mary knew the estate and the land. She deserved to be the one to build it in the future. Thoughts of the strictures and limitations placed on women through property law and inheritance carried Matthew through the rest of the night. Had Matthew been a different sort of man, he would have actively taken up this cause, through political writing or supporting the women's movement. Matthew is not that sort of man, but let us be glad that he feels deep empathy with the stagnant lives that women are often forced to lead in Edwardian times.
We have to pull ourselves away from Matthew's recumbent form- loath as we are to stop gazing at his gorgeous eyes- and turn our eyes to the Abbey because The Incident is ab out to begin. We swoop in on Lady Mary's bedroom where she lies in her bed, still slightly flustered from the events of the day. The attentions of the Diplomat is thrilling and disturbing. Let us remind ourselves that this Mary Crawley is still very young, and not yet the sophisticate she will eventually become. For all her aloofness, she is still a little naïve. Having been really kissed only once, in a perfunctory sort of way by Patrick Crawley, the determination and unbridled lust of this evening's kiss gives her much to ponder over. Did she like it? What did it mean for her body to react that way? She oddly wonders what it would be like to be kissed in that way by Matthew Crawley.
"Goodness me," thinks Mary, "has Granny managed to get inside my head?"
She reflects to herself that if her Grandmother could, she most certainly would.
But Mary is not to be left to her thoughts for very long. The stage is set. We have a bright, beautiful bedroom, lit by a candle and a fire. We have a young virgin in a flowing cotton nightdress. Enter the dastardly and handsome villain, dripping with animal sensuality and draped in a fine dressing grown.
The maiden gasps and orders him out, telling him that he is mad. He confesses to be in the grip of madness. She says she will scream. With the cool confidence of the practiced seducer, he tells her that if she does scream, she will still be ruined to have a man in her room. In the Other Story, Lady Mary Crawley, frightened, naiive and a little thrilled, does not scream.
In this story, Lady Mary screams.