Even after more than thirty-five years of living in England, Lady Grantham is still known as "that American" in certain circles. She can't shake the label, nor does she particularly wish to, but neither is she in the habit of making regular visits to her native country. She took her daughters there as young girls, both for the experience of travelling by ship and to show them where she was born, but since then she's left it up to them to decide whether they want to return or not. She herself can't be bothered. It's exhausting to get there and even more exhausting to be there, and if her mother and brother want to see her that badly, well, ocean liners sail in both directions, don't they?
Phyllis Baxter knows perfectly well what her employer's feelings on this subject are—as she knows Cora's feelings on almost every subject, to a degree of intimacy that would probably disturb Lord Grantham if he knew—and so she is surprised as well as dismayed when Cora announces, in early July, that the two of them are set to travel to New York in just over a week for a long visit to the Levinson family.
"I've already arranged your ticket," her Ladyship says airily, "and I'll keep you in first class with me, of course. It would be an awful nuisance for you to have to traipse back and forth from the lower decks." She touches a drop of perfume to each wrist and rubs them together. "We'll stay until late September or early October, I think. It's such a long way, I've got to make it a real visit or the trip isn't worth it. And we won't be in the city the whole time; it's much too hot, especially in August. My family has a house in Newport too, and I haven't been to the boat regatta there in fifteen years."
Phyllis has been struggling to maintain a calm demeanour while this news sinks in on her, but she must not be making a very good job of it, because Cora sees her in the mirror and turns round with a slightly perplexed expression.
"Are you all right, Baxter? You look as if I've said we're going to the moon. It isn't as if you haven't travelled with me before."
"Yes, of course, milady. I just...I've never gone anywhere by ship, and it's a long way, as you said."
"I do know there are people here whom you'll miss," Cora says. Despite this delicate phrasing, or perhaps because of it, Phyllis knows she's referring to Mr Molesley, whom she often asks after in a significant sort of way. Lady Mary and Lady Edith are both married off at last, but the maternal matchmaking impulse dies hard. "And I sympathise, but I can't get along without you for three months, so I hope you'll try to make the best of things. I think you'll enjoy America, once you get used to it."
"I'm sure I will, milady."
"Oh, good," Cora says, and gives Phyllis the sweet smile that she uses to get her way with crusty old aristocrats and people who are being difficult about donating to the hospital. "That's settled, then. I'll go down to dinner now and see you at bedtime, Baxter."
Cora sweeps off in an expensive-smelling cloud of Shalimar, and Phyllis hangs up her discarded afternoon frock and tidies the room for their next round of dressing and undressing. Finished with work at least temporarily, she puts on her outdoor clothes and goes out through the back gate to walk down to the village. They've just passed the solstice and it's still very light even at almost nine o'clock, so she has an easy time of it and can let her mind wander while her feet automatically navigate the path. It's true she's enjoyed the trips north with her Ladyship in the past, but she isn't certain she wants to go all the way to America, and she knows she doesn't want to be away for the whole summer.
By the time she gets to Molesley's cottage, she's feeing miserable about it, and she sees the soft pink blooms of his climbing roses through a blurred film of tears as she knocks and waits. There's a long delay before Molesley opens the door, with his shirtsleeves turned up and a damp tea towel in his hands, wearing a grin of pleasure that fades as soon as he catches sight of her face.
"Good Lord, what's the matter? Come in." He stands back to let her through the door, which leads directly into his tiny, sparsely furnished sitting room, and then closes it behind her. "Is someone ill up at the house?"
"No, no, everyone's fine."
"You haven't found another ghost in the attic?"
"Don't tease." Phyllis does her best to give him a severe look.
"I'm not. Have you?"
"No."
"Well, come sit down and tell me what's happened." Molesley folds his tea towel, obeying the force of long habit, and drapes it over the back of a chair to dry. "Here, there's space on the settee."
"Space" is a bit of an exaggeration, as the battered old velvet settee is covered with heaps of papers that are threatening to topple over, but Phyllis wedges herself in between them and explains briefly what Lady Grantham told her.
"Really? Three months?"
Phyllis nods, and Molesley frowns. "That's an awfully long time. Isn't there a way someone else could go for you, the way Barrow travelled for Bates once?"
"Who, though? Anna can't leave her little boy, and her Ladyship won't want a stranger. Anyway, she's already said it's got to be me."
"Unless you give in your notice," Molesley suggests. "Then no one could make you."
"Don't be silly, of course I can't do that." Phyllis screws up her face in irritated confusion, wondering what he's on about. "I've done so much to keep this position. Why would I give it up now?"
"Well, if we…never mind, you're right." He's been sitting in the chair with the tea towel, but now he gets up and pushes the papers to the floor—sending them spilling and slithering in all directions—and takes the place beside her instead.
"I won't pretend I'm not going to miss you. I am, awfully. But you've got to go, so you may as well make the best of it."
"Her Ladyship said the same thing," Phyllis says with a sigh, and Molesley puts his arm round her shoulders and gives her a comforting squeeze.
"Well, her Ladyship is right. It's not everyone who gets to make the crossing and see New York, after all. I'd like to, myself."
"D'you want to go in my place?" Phyllis asks, only half joking, and Molesley laughs and says he's fairly certain he'd make a hash of doing her Ladyship's hair. The idea of him working on Cora with a pair of curling tongs makes Phyllis laugh too, despite her unhappiness about leaving, and she leans into the embrace and promises to write twice a week while she's away.
Once Cora's made her announcement, things proceed at a pace that makes Phyllis's head spin. They're sailing on the RMS Olympic, which Mrs Patmore, an avid reader of film magazines, informs her is the preferred transatlantic conveyance of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. She goes on to suggest that if Phyllis happens to bump into one of them, or any other film star, she should try to get an autograph made out in the name of Beryl Patmore. "That's spelt B-E-R-Y-L," she adds helpfully, and Phyllis says she'll see what she can do, privately thinking that the odds of her approaching Douglas Fairbanks to ask for an autograph, for Mrs Patmore or anyone else, are nil.
She extracts herself from the conversation as gracefully as possible and goes up to her room to stare into the half-packed steamer trunk she's been provided with and wonder if there's not still some way she can get out of this. She can't say why she's so uneasy about the trip—she's not frightened of the ship sinking, or of falling overboard, or any of the other deadly possibilities Daisy has suggested to her, but the worry of it is keeping her awake at night and making it hard to concentrate on her work.
They're set to leave by train for the first part of the journey on Monday, then sail on Wednesday, and waiting for the day to come is like waiting for her own execution. Maybe she'll fall downstairs and break her leg before then, she thinks, folding up nightdresses and underclothes and fitting them into empty spaces. But Monday morning arrives without so much as a stubbed toe, and Phyllis is forced to let Andy strap her trunk onto the car along with Cora's heaps of baggage while she says goodbye to Molesley, who has walked up early to see her off. She'd like to embrace him, or at least take his hand, but with the staff and family present, they're sadly limited in their options for farewells.
"Don't forget you promised to write."
"I won't." She tries a smile. "You'll have to take quantity over quality, though. I'm no Jane Austen."
"I'd rather have one postcard from you than a whole book from old Jane," Molesley says, and at that Phyllis really does smile. "There, that's better. Keep safe, and I'll see you when you come home."
On this note, she sets off feeling more positive about the trip, and enjoys the train journey to Southampton, where she has never been, and then the experience of boarding the ship. She's viewed dozens of splendid homes and elegant hotels in the course of her work, but the Olympic's first-class accommodations are truly opulent, and her own smaller cabin, which adjoins Cora's and is meant specifically for a lady's maid, gleams with polished wood panelling and gold-rimmed portholes. She's especially impressed by the bathroom taps, which offer not only ordinary hot and cold running water, but also hot salt and cold salt, and vows to try a hot saltwater bath as soon as she possibly can.
It's a plan that fails as soon as they steam out into the open sea and the engines reach full capacity, at which point Phyllis discovers that she is one of the unfortunate people who get seasick. Cora, experienced in ocean travel, tells her she'll feel better if she goes above and gets some fresh air, but she can barely drag herself out of bed to perform her duties, and the idea of climbing up to the promenade deck feels as impossible as reaching the summit of Everest. The torment lasts for the first two days of the voyage, until just when she's seriously thinking of throwing herself over a railing to put an end to her suffering, it disappears during the night and she wakes up with an appetite for breakfast.
After that, the remainder of the journey is much more tolerable, and she finds the energy to tour the entire ship and write the first of her promised letters to Molesley, trying her best to describe everything to him in detail (save the fact that she's spent forty-eight hours of the voyage getting sick in every available receptacle, which is something she would prefer to forget). On the back of the last page, she makes a careful, accurate sketch of the horizon as seen from the bow, and then folds the whole thing up and addresses the envelope in her best handwriting, to be posted as soon as they disembark. As she goes to bed that night, their last on board, the thought of how Molesley will enjoy receiving a letter with a New York postmark sends her off to sleep feeling really happy for the first time in a week.