Summary: Encounters with the Crawley children prompt Bates to reflect on his childhood and his resulting doubts as to whether he can be a good father.
Disclaimer: I don't own Downton Abbey. Edited to add that this is an Eady-only reviewed story prior to posting. I've now changed some typos someone pointed out post-submission. Any other errors or typos are entirely my fault, so take heed: Here be dragons!
A/N: I wrote this story based on an anonymous prompt I received on tumblr. It doesn't completely conform to the request, but hopefully it will satisfy. It takes place a little while in the future and assumes Branson and Sybbie return to Downton and that it isn't publicly known that Edith is Marigold's mother. Reviews are appreciated.
For those curious, here was the prompt: I would love reading a hurt / comfort story from you about Mr Bates becoming a favourite of Sybbie and Marigold. Him reading stories or telling fairy tales to them. Some unintended hurting about his limping (how kids sometimes say blunt things, or Thomas behind that?). Him brooding about him being a father as a consequence. Someone comforting him in the end (Sybbie or Anna ...?). I was always wondering why nobody writes stories involving downstairs mixing with the upstairs kids. Interested? :-)
"He walks funny," one of them said. The oldest girl.
Miss Sybbie, he thought to himself, Lady Sybil's daughter.
The older she grew, the more she favored her mother. In some ways, she also had a bit of Lady Mary's countenance, although at this moment, her bluntness reminded Bates greatly of Mr. Branson.
"With a stick like Granny."
The second voice, nearly as high and giggly as the first, was young Master George. Behind them, quiet and contemplative stood Marigold. She said nothing in turn but regarded Bates with her big eyes before hiding herself from him behind the taller figure of Miss Sybbie.
The children were coming back from an outing on the grounds with Nanny, and Bates stood in front of the house, waiting for his Lordship to arrive from the train station. The children had seen him before, in passing, and they'd whispered to themselves at his cane and the slight limp in his gait. But never before had they been so bold as to directly approach him.
"What's wrong with you?" the oldest child asked him, finding the courage to come quite close.
Bates looked down at her in amusement even as he heard Nanny give a half-hearted scolding, "Don't be impertinent, Miss Sybbie."
The girl looked at her caretaker in confusion. "But I'm not im-per-tent. I just want to know."
Her eyes returned to the valet, obviously expecting an answer to her question. Nanny fell silent and waited, perhaps in deference to the five-year-old and perhaps in exasperation.
With a sigh, Bates realized that he could not escape the conversation. "I was hurt, a long time ago," he told the girl.
"How were you hurt, mister?"
This inquiry came from Master George, who stepped closer beside his cousin to join in the interrogation.
"At war," Bates told them softly.
Both children nodded solemnly, and behind them, Marigold also inched closer. She looked at the ground rather than at him, but she was listening to the entire exchange.
"Did you know my papa?" George asked, obviously associating his father with the concept of "war" given so many pictures of Mr. Crawley in uniform. Perhaps someone had even told him that his father had been injured while fighting as well.
Nodding, Bates answered, "I did know him, yes. But I was in a different war."
Miss Sybbie keyed into his statement and asked with a furrowed brow, "How many wars are there?"
Nanny took that moment to decide it was time for the children to go inside and have their tea, and she whisked them on their way before more on the subject could be said. But little Marigold trailed after the others, looking over her shoulder at Mr. Bates. On impulse, he gave her a slight smile and a deliberate wink.
He half expected the shy thing to run away crying, but she broke into a wide grin before rushing to catch up with the other children. Before Bates could think more on the subject, he spied a car coming up the drive and he straightened into a more formal stance to wait for his Lordship.
Bates saw the children rarely, not being about the house in the same areas and times as them. But on one afternoon when Nanny had absented herself from the nursery for a moment, Bates happened down a corridor not long after Miss Sybbie had orchestrated a grand escape from their room and was leading the other two through the family corridors of the house. She and George saw the tall valet, paused with expressions of obvious panic that they would be found out, and ran in the opposite direction.
But behind them little Marigold stood frozen, her mouth slightly open. Bates walked towards her slowly and by the time he reached her, she had to tilt her head back to look up at him as he towered above her.
"Are you lost, Miss Marigold?" he asked her.
She looked around to discover that her compatriots had abandoned her before turning back to the man. The child nodded her head slowly.
Bates also looked around, hopeful that perhaps Nanny or one of the family would appear and help him to ensure the little girl made her way back to the nursery. But no one was about in the early afternoon and he knew he would have to make sure the child got back safely.
"I know the way, if I may show you?" he suggested to her.
Miss Marigold considered his offer for a moment before silently nodding. And to his surprise, she reached up to put her tiny hand in his. And together they strolled through the house until they found the nursery. Looking through the half open door, Bates noticed that Nanny had captured the other escapees and was about to go out again in search of her last charge when she spied the two of them together.
"Ah, Mister Bates," the woman said, obviously embarrassed to have been caught with one of the children out of her sight.
"Miss Marigold became lost," he explained. Looking down at the girl, he noticed that she still had not let go of his hand. "You should play with the others," he suggested to her.
The youngest child was hesitant for a second before nodding solemnly. So softly that he could barely hear her, she murmured a "thank you" and ran inside the room to join Miss Sybbie and Master George.
"She is a quiet one," Bates remarked to Nanny.
She inclined her head in agreement. "I do wonder if there is something wrong with her, although she seems quite as bright as the others. But apparently she was a foundling. Goodness knows what all she's been through in her little life."
Bates knew all too well about such things from his own childhood.
His father had been a good man, a hard worker who did all he could to provide for his Irish wife and young family. But industrial accidents were common and he died when Bates was still very young. In the wake of her husband's death, Mrs. Bates never remarried and never had other children.
Not a soft woman herself, his mother had always been the soul of sweetness to him. But he could not say the same for her father, an angry and resentful drunk who came to live with them when Bates was still a small boy. His grandfather believed boys could only grow up strong if they were given the belt - often and hard. If Bates' mother ever knew about the beatings, she did not say, but later in life he wondered how she could not have seen the bruises. It was a time in his life he tried not to dwell on too much.
Not until he returned so badly injured from the Boers did Bates begin to understand the pull of the bottle which had so enticed his grandfather. He fell into it just as deeply, although his memories of that belt against his flesh stayed his hand when anger with Vera might have driven him to strike her.
But he'd come close. Frighteningly close.
The night he discovered the regimental silver in their home, obviously stolen from the barracks, had been the worst. With the whiskey burning through his veins, he'd grabbed Vera's arms and shaken her, so forcefully it frightened them both. And in that moment, he saw in her eyes the scared little boy he'd been so many years earlier.
In prison, there was no alcohol, and his need for the liquor crashed him on the rocks of his own destruction. He once he made his way through the worst of it, Bates realized that he could begin again, despite all he lost by admitting to Vera's theft. Of course, it was not until he came to Downton that he began to dream of a better future, of a family.
Children.
It still gave him pause, that he might turn out like his mother's father. He had taken to the bottle like the man. What would stop him from likewise picking up a belt, in anger and frustration, against his own child? Anna would stop him, he knew, but then he would lose her love and respect. The fear stayed firmly rooted in the back of his mind, never voiced or inspected, but he suspected that his wife somehow knew and understood his unspoken reservations.
After years of trying, years of monthly disappointments and tears hastily wiped away and questions from neighbors, they finally received the news. Anna was with child.
Doctor Clarkson confirmed the diagnosis, and for a while at least, neither could quite believe him. But soon joy overtook them and Bates felt his heart and soul soaring to the ends of the earth and back. He had not failed her. Anna would be a mother, and they would finally have a child together.
He treated her like the finest and most fragile of china after their news, and Anna swiftly tired of it.
"I won't break, Mister Bates," she informed him tartly, her smirk tempering the admonishment.
"Please indulge me," he responded, knowing she would be unable to deny the request.
He was correct in this, and Anna soon ceded to him the duties around the cottage which he felt too onerous for her. She endured his fussing with her usual mixture of amusement and patience, for which he was grateful.
"But you will stop working soon anyway, won't you?" he asked her one evening as he helped her fold laundry. She bit her lip as she watched him attempt to piece together the corners of a sheet without much success. While Bates considered giving up and handing it to the former head housemaid to finish, he stuck it out.
She smiled at his quiet stubbornness with the task and responded vaguely, "I don't see why it has to be soon."
Anna kept her voice light, but he could hear the tension there, as though she anticipated he would argue with her and wanted to avoid a conflict before it began. Taking a breath, he tried to consider her point of view before saying more.
His wife enjoyed her work as a lady's maid to Lady Mary. Not only was it a highly enviable position, but she liked her employer and the bustle of the big house. Giving up her position would mean staying at home at the cottage all day. Alone.
Anna hated being alone.
He had recognized that about her early on in their acquaintance. Anna did best when she was with others, which did not surprise him given that she had shared a room with someone nearly the entirety of her life. During his time in prison, she'd mentioned in her letters how odd and lonely it felt to have a room all to herself even though that was a perk of her promotion.
So the longer Anna might delay giving up her position, the longer she could be happy doing the work she loved in a big house surrounded by people. But it did worry him, her working while pregnant, and he admitted as much to her.
"Why should it be any different than before?" Anna asked. "If I were here all day, I would still walk into the village and take the stairs up to our bedroom. What is the difference between that and doing the same at Downton?"
Well, for starters there were a good many more stairs, Bates considered pointing out. He knew exactly how many there were as stairs were not his friends, nor did he favor them for his pregnant wife. But Anna had always been graceful and he knew she would take care of herself, especially now. Suggesting otherwise would only undermine her confidence and perhaps even offend her.
But he still worried. It seemed strange to suddenly worry so much about something he had never worried about before. Not that Anna's safety and well being were not always at the front of his mind, but he had never before simply considered how easily it would be for her to trip and fall.
He still had not answered her question, he realized as she leaned forward into his field of vision. "You're brooding again, Mister Bates," she scolded him lightly.
"I try not to," he stated.
"But you cannot help yourself?"
Her eyes twinkled with humor, and he relaxed into the warmth of her gaze. He admitted, "You know me too well."
Anna knew him so well that she could read from him the underlying concerns about her pregnancy. What kind of father would he be? He was already so old compared to her, and she was not as young as most women with a first child. Would he be like his father, a good and kind man, or like his grandfather, an angry and abusive one?
What if the child grew up ashamed of him? Having a cripple as a father might embarrass any young child in the village, let alone one who spent time in prison for theft and murder. But when he mentioned the concern to Anna, she simply responded, "Many young lads in the village would be happy to have a father at all, after the war."
Indeed, too many of the children would grow up fatherless. But sometimes Bates wondered if it would be better for his son to be like young Master George with pictures of his father in his military uniform than to have Bates as a living, breathing parent. He could not suggest such a thing to Anna, of course, but he did wonder it in the privacy of his own tortured thoughts.
Miss Sybbie and Master George grew more adventurous as time passed. Escapes from the nursery became an almost weekly occurrence, much to Nanny's displeasure. Sometimes they managed to get in and out without Nanny ever becoming the wiser, but more often she caught them in the act. The children quickly learned that if they saw their grandfather's valet in the hall, that not only would he not turn them in, but if asked by Nanny their whereabouts, he would deny knowledge or possibly point her in the wrong direction.
"I think I saw them going into the servants' stairwell," he told the woman. She frowned at him, perhaps sensing his lie, but she set off in that direction nevertheless.
Of the three children, the only one who ever stopped regularly to acknowledge him was little Marigold. The youngest of the three, she had the least to say about where they went on their unscheduled outings, but she always took a moment to flash a smile at Mr. Bates.
Some weeks later, when Anna had begun to show and talk began to get serious about when she would stop working for Lady Mary, Bates had another encounter with the Crawley children.
One morning as he and Anna walked up from the cottage, they saw the the girls and boy out on the lawn in front of the house, running and chasing each other in the grass. Anna had asked for the morning off so she could see the doctor in the village for a check-up, and Bates had accompanied her. So they were coming late to the house, at just the right time to see the children on their daily outing out of doors.
Anna paused at the sight of Sybbie, George, and Marigold playing and laughing with such abandon.
"We'll have our own in just a few months," she noted, resting her hand on her belly, which swelled almost imperceptibly.
"But it will be a while yet before he can run," Bates teased her.
"How are you so certain it will be a boy?"
Shrugging one shoulder, he responded, "I'm not certain. But I prefer to say 'he' than 'it'."
"And if he is a she?" Anna said.
"Then I will beg her forgiveness for the error when first we meet."
With a shared smile of anticipatory happiness, they continued on towards the house. However, only a moment later little Marigold had spotted the familiar figure of the tall man who was always so kind to her. Deliberately, she halted her play and gathered up several of the wildflowers at the edge of the lawn. Her small hands holding the stems tightly together, she ran towards the Bateses.
Nanny only watched after her, the other children obviously her primary concern. But Marigold slowed as she reached Mr. Bates. She did not speak, but simply held out the flowers as a gift to him.
"Thank you, Miss Marigold," he said, accepting the brightly colored flowers which most adults would consider unwanted weeds.
"Welcome," she whispered.
Beside him, Anna praised the girl, "That's very kind of you."
But the attention from a stranger obviously spooked the child as she quickly turned around and ran back towards Nanny and the other children. Anna grinned after her before looking at her husband.
"You have quite the admirer, Mister Bates," she observed with a nod towards his small wildflower bouquet.
"She is a thoughtful child," he answered, carefully tucking the precious weeds into his coat pocket.
They walked a few more steps before Anna said very seriously, "I think this display only proves what I've known all along."
"And what is that?"
"That you'll be a kind, gentle, and much loved father."
Her observation did not completely vanquish his anxiety, but it did help to quell it for a time. And each time little Marigold or the other children greeted him like a friend after that day, it chipped away a little more at his self doubt as he awaited the birth of his first child.
fin