The Christmas Trailer made me do it! And the caffein! And...who cares!
This is what might happen when Beryl and Elsie have a cuppa in the housekeeper's sitting room. When the cat is away...
"Have you seen him?" Beryl Patmore pointed behind her, could not hold back a grin. "How he ran out of that door?" She stood outside on the corridor in front of her sitting room, shaking her head continuously, refusing to believe what they had both just witnessed. Charles Carson running from the servant's hall, along the corridor towards the backdoor, trying to stop Jimmy and Alfred who had left for the Country fair. Without his explicit consent, mind you. This morning at breakfast he had merely said he would consider giving them some time off, though not tonight. When the cat is away, the mice will play, Elsie thought amused, not minding in the least that the boys had for once undermined Charles Carson's authority completely. But she wondered nevertheless when he would return to discuss this with her. Well not discuss, to be honest, they would most certainly have a heated argument again over propriety, respect and the good old times, that monologue, for certain, one she had listened to too many times already.
"I saw it, never knew he could run that fast." She looked at the still open backdoor, expected him to return any minute, out of breath but foaming with rage. "Well, life is full of surprises."
"Indeed. So, do we have our tea in your sitting room?" Beryl looked down at the tray in her hands, filled with cups and a fresh pot of steaming hot tea.
"Oh, of course. Come in, before he returns and thinks we were in the privy to the boys plan." She let the cook in the room and then closed the door behind them. Beryl put the tray down on the small table and took a seat.
"I still can't believe he really followed them!" Elsie shook her head in disbelief. Sometimes all he ever thought about was the house, the reputation of Downton Abbey, all of his rigid rules, none of them ever adjustable. She corrected her thoughts, not sometimes, always! Bloody fool. She sat down with a sigh, across from Beryl.
"What is it?" The cook looked at her, inquiringly. "You did not think about him again, did you?" She began to pour the tea for both of them.
"Of course I did." It was impossible to keep secrets from Beryl Patmore. She always knew what was happening in and around the house. She was worse than Sarah O'Brien sometimes. "Why can't he for once make an exception?"
"Oh, not that again. Not tonight. Mrs. Hughes, you cannot change him and you know that for, how long? Twenty years?" The cook produced a small bottle from the pocket of her skirt, opened it and poured a generous amount of a golden liquid into both cups.
Elsie looked at her, one eyebrow raised. It smelled like rum and she could definitely need a healthy amount of it tonight to get him out of her head again.
"Don't look at me like this. You need this now. Enjoy it." Beryl handed her the cup.
They both took a sip and Elsie felt how she reacted to the warm rum immediately. Her cheeks flushed and the slightly irritated mood she had been in a minute ago seemed to vanish. "Why is he so stubborn?" She said this more to herself than to Beryl but loud enough for the cook to pick it up.
"Stop it. Please." The cook set down the tea cup with such force that a bit of the tea spilled onto the saucer. "He has always been like this. It's the way he is."
"I know that!" She took another sip to warm her cold hands. "But after twenty odd years, don't you think I had at least managed to influence and change him a bit?"
Beryl took up her cup again and added some more rum to it. "You are also very stubborn, if I may say so."
"I am not!" This time it was her who spilled the tea.
"Oh, yes you are. Who would not tell him about the lump? Who refused to accept help? Mh?"
Of course the cook was right. But she would never admit that. Beryl had not worked with Charles Carson day in day out, side by side, sometimes until late into the night. She knew him of course, but she did not know him the way Elsie did. He was more stubborn than her! "That was different. It was my private business, nothing to concern him with."
"I see." Beryl winked at her.
"What was that about?" She could never read the cook's face. There was always something going on in that ginger head she did not understand immediately.
"Don't tell me you never discussed private things with him." She refilled her cup, added rum again.
Elsie's face felt very hot all of a sudden, not only from the tea and rum for sure. "Well, we do." She hesitated. "Sometimes." She thought about the time when she had first told him about her sister and a bit about her life as a young girl, up in the Highlands. She also knew about his life as a Cheerful Charlie long before he revealed it in front of his Lordship. But this was different! She could not tell him that she had found a lump in her breast. The word alone was too intimate for both of them to say it out loud.
"See!" To emphasize her point, Beryl's fist hit the table top.
She had to grin at that point. Beryl was so different from her. Always saying what was on her mind, never even thinking about hiding how she felt. Elsie finished her tea and started to pour a second cup, when Beryl took over.
"You need a bit more of this tonight." The bottle was opened again.
"I know, you said so already." Elsie's grin turned into a small laugh.
"One cannot repeat it often enough." Accidentally she poured a bit too much into the cup and it overflowed. "Heavens!" Beryl exclaimed and snorted with laughter. "Now drink up!"
A lady would never have drunk the tea directly from the saucer but then she wasn't a lady. Elsie somehow managed to empty the saucer without ruining the white blouse she was wearing tonight instead of the same old black dress. But she must have looked very ridiculous while doing it because Beryl broke out into laughter as soon as Elsie had put the saucer down.
"Stop it!" She tried to hold back her laughter but failed miserably. Here she was, sitting in her parlour together with the cook, drinking tea with rum and discussing the butler. Why couldn't the family go to Scotland more often and leave the servants behind in an almost empty house? She could wear whatever she liked, there was no need to worry about the state of the bedrooms upstairs, and no dinner preparations interrupted her evenings. Elsie held her stomach, it hurt already and she gasped for air. She hadn't laughed like this for ages.
Beryl recovered first and drank some more tea to cure her sudden hiccup. "We should not let this go to waste!" She raised her cup to Elsie who took a generous sip too.
Elsie felt a bit tipsy already but so much more relaxed. What did it matter that Charles would probably return soon and "have a word" with her. She would tell him exactly how she thought about his stupid rules!
"So, what do you discuss with him then? I mean the private things?" The suggestive look on the cook's face should have made her suspicious but tonight it did not.
"Oh, not what I would like to discuss with him", she grinned and then covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops." This had been a mistake although Elsie was sure that Beryl knew what she was implying. But she had never spoken about it to anyone else before. How could she when she had not been able to tell him for twenty stupid years?
"Don't even try to hide it from me. I am not blind you know." The cook sighed, her mood all of a sudden changed from being giggly to being pensive. "Why have you never told him?"
She could not help it and bit her lip, a bad habit she simply could not eliminate. "What would be the point of it?"
"It would make both of you happy?" Elsie knew that Beryl would answer this rhetorical question.
"And it would cost us our jobs." She made a point by hitting the table top with her flat hand.
Beryl only snorted. "Who's stubborn now? His Lordship would never fire you! Or Carson!"
The moment she had spoken his name out loud, the backdoor slammed shut and they heard his heavy footfall outside on the corridor followed by a knock on her door.
"You tell him tonight!" Beryl hissed before Elsie answered the door. "It's your chance. Take it."
She waved her hands, tried to make the cook stop talking, gave her that glare that usually intimidated everyone, including him. "Come in."
He looked a bit exhausted, and angry, and irritated. All at the same time. His face told her that it was not a good thing that he had found her here together with Beryl Patmore. "I'll come back later then." His voice was as deep as always but she could clearly hear how angry he really was.
"No, don't mind me. Elsie wanted to talk to you anyway, about your relationship. There's tea left." Beryl stood up, grinned and left the room. Whereas Elsie stared into the direction the cook had left, with her mouth agape. That woman!
"Relationship? What is she talking about?" Charles stared at her, then at the cups on the table.
Elsie's looked up to him, how he stood there in the doorway, with that angry and now also confused expression on his face. Twenty years of trying to keep everything hidden, of ignoring her feelings. Twenty years in which she had tried several times to tell him the truth but never found the right words. Whenever she had made an attempt he did not understand what she really meant. Twenty years of trying to accept that all they would ever be were friends. She took a deep breath. Maybe it was indeed time.
"Do want some tea?" He looked at her, still confused but at least he sat down.
"No, thank you."
"Some rum perhaps?" Why had she asked such a silly question?
"Have you been drinking?" He took Beryl's cup and sniffed at it. "While I was out trying to talk some sense into Jimmy and Alfred you enjoyed yourself."
Oh please, not another argument. Not tonight. But when his stern face was suddenly smiling Elsie relaxed a bit.
Charles continued. "I did not catch them, they are young and fast. But they will learn their lesson when they come back later! And you know what? I envied them a bit." He turned the cup in his hand.
Had he been drinking too? "Why in particular?" His honesty surprised her.
"They do not take everything so seriously."
"Like we do?" She asked tentatively.
"Maybe I would like to have some tea." He held out the empty cup, not bothering with the fact that it was already used. And Elsie poured him some tea and added a bit of rum. "So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"
Now or never? "About not taking things so seriously all the time. I mean work." She looked down into her cup. She had started this sentence wrong. "What I mean is that we never allow us to be a bit like them, Alfred and Jimmy, or Ivy. Flirting, going out to the Country Fair."
Charles drank some tea. "That is because we are the heads of this household."
"Of course we are. But that does not mean that I don't have feelings as well, and needs, and…" she stopped mid-sentence. This was silly. What was she talking about? She wanted to add desires.
He had wanted to take another sip but choked on the tea instead. "What are you trying to tell me?"
Instead of keeping her eyes down, focused on the table, she looked right into his eyes. "That I was being silly, and stupid and a coward for twenty years." Maybe the rum had some effect after all. "We are alone in this house at the moment, we should have joined Jimmy and Alfred and the others at the Country Fair instead of trying to keep up standards, like you always put it." She drank the last bit of her tea.
"We can go now, if you like?"
What was wrong with him? Here she was, trying to tell him that she loved him and he did not at all act the way he usually did. He was confusing her but she would not let him win this. After all she had started this game. Instead, she got up from her chair to stand in front of him, urged him to stand up too. "I would like to." The room was spinning a bit and she held on to his arm when he finally rose from the chair. "But I need to finish this first." With now both hands on his arms, she supported her slightly swaying body, stood on tiptoes and kissed him squarely on the mouth.
She had expected him to push her away but the opposite was the case. His arms encircled her waist and he pulled her close, not breaking the kiss for one second. On the contrary, she felt how he opened his mouth and then there was his tongue on her lips, and she could not resist it. It was the longest, sweetest and most intense kiss she had ever shared.
"So this is what you really wanted to talk to me about?" The anger was gone and replaced with a happy and smiling face.
Elsie smiled back. "Yes, this was what I wanted to talk about. For twenty years to be honest. But now that I think of it, talking is overrated." She closed the distance between them and kissed him again, even longer than the first time. Tea, Country fair, the open door behind them completely forgotten. They did not even notice the sniggering cook that stood on the corridor by the kitchen, watching them, how they did for once not take everything seriously. Except for this one little thing.
NOT TO BE CONTINUED *lol* END