Timeline: Mary and Richard got married as planned in July, 1919; the Christmas special never happened. This is August 1919, on their honeymoon road trip across America in an apple green Isotta Fraschini automobile that Richard promptly breaks a mere three hours outside of New York.
AN: This is an outtake from the Roadhouse chapter of my story 'Dispatches from America.' Thanks to MrsTater for the suggestion! Also thanks to the "Flapper-to-English Dictionary" (google that phrase and it should come up), an endless source of inspiration and amusement.
1. 'Appleknocker'
Appleknocker, noun: 1. A hick or hayseed, 2. A rural destination.
Mary perched on the creaky wooden stair of the cheaply-constructed Victorian inn, contemplating her shoes with displeasure. She had been delighted with her New York purchase: the patent leather sparkled so in the gleam of the streetlamps, the straps perfectly crossed her ankles. Richard had commented that the heel, higher than was available in English shops, made her legs curve in a most fetching manner. Now, not only did she regret the higher rise of the shoe as her feet throbbed in protest from the long walk, she regretted not bringing along a ladies' maid to clean them from the highway dust that had formed an impenetrable layer over the leather so they looked more of a dirty gray color. And most of all she regretted not bringing a chauffeur, perhaps one who would not attempt to push their automobile to its uppermost capabilities simply to "see how she handled."
Jazz music blared from the open windows of the bar on the next level, carried to her ears on a warm summer breeze as the squawk of an especially obnoxious rooster might jar her from sleep at far too early an hour, which was why she was sitting at this safe distance outside. On the horizon, a motorist approached on the road beyond the parking lot, headlights sweeping along and over her before continuing around the bend – how she envied their mobility.
The music and the road noise all but cancelled out the voices of Richard and the mechanic, standing over to the side of the stairs between the roadhouse and the gas station, deep in discussion as they had been for the last five minutes. Occasionally, between notes, a phrase would reach her ear and she could not help but smile at the difficulty that was entirely his own fault.
"Eee-zow-tah Frah-skee-nee" Richard phoneticized, his back to her, as the mechanic's uncomprehending mouth attempted to silently mirror the words. "It's Italian."
Mary rested her chin on her hand, her eyes drifting up to the stars above as she strained to hear more of this comic exchange. "…ought to get yourself a Model T. Yessir, now that I can fix..." That did not bode well, she thought warily as a particularly loud trumpet shriek punctuated her sense of foreboding. "…Smoke, but we didn't think much of it…" as Richard gestured to indicate the eruption they had witnessed. "…A gasket in the heat…" the mechanic's heavy New England accent wafted to her ears. "…Of course not, I was driving at a perfectly reasonable speed." At this Mary laughed aloud. Richard looked over his shoulder to glare in her direction.
She met his miserable look with a highly-amused 'who me?' raise of her eyebrows, her face the absolute picture of innocence. His eyes rolled heavenward and remained there for a moment as she watched him draw in a steadying breath, reluctantly returning to the apparently useless mechanic and their apparently fruitless conversation. She returned to searching for the big dipper in the sky and tapping her foot unwilling to the beat emanating from the inn behind her.
"Mary Crawley?" she heard her name called from across the parking lot in the other direction. "Is that you?" She turned her head as the excitable voice took shape in the form of a slender brunette with a fashionable bob haircut and an organza pink day dress who emerged from the shadows and into the light that surrounded the front steps like a halo.
"Louise Clark?" Mary asked in answer.
"What are you doing here in the God-forsaken appleknocker?" The young woman asked, her hands held out in question.
"Appleknocker?" Mary echoed, confused.
"Joint in the middle of nowhere!" Louise replied with exasperation.
"I would ask the same of you!" Mary replied, standing up to embrace her friend.
The two girls touched cheeks in the gesture of a kiss, then Louise drew back. "You're not here by yourself, are you?" she asked in puzzlement.
"Rather. I've lost my husband to the mechanic and our automobile to the highway, four miles that way," she said, indicating the direction from which they had come.
"You're married?" the girl exclaimed, her sharp green narrowing in reproach. "And where was I?"
"It was… a quiet affair." Mary said, thinking back to their simple wedding. After Lavinia's death, no one was in an especially lavish mood, so she had consented to a modest ceremony in the parish church and a breakfast at Downton with family only. And though she had begun to warm to Richard after the funeral, after he had taken her home that day not to Downton but to Haxby and proved how truly on her side he really was, she nevertheless felt her initial reluctance precluded an extravagant wedding celebration.
"The family didn't approve," Louise surmised. At Mary's look of acknowledgement, she added, "Your people are incredibly hard to please. I always thought you could show up with the Prince of Wales on your arm and they would find something to object to!"
"As if Granny would accept someone from such a new dynasty." They shared a laugh about the Dowager Countess, whose razor-sharp wit Louise had become accustomed to during her brief stay at Downton before the war.
"Prince of Wales or not, I'm sure your new husband is young and handsome and terribly, terribly highborn," Louise said, her American accent slipping into an imitation of Granny's particularly clipped diction on the last words.
"Well," Mary began, "he is handsome." At that moment she turned slightly to notice that Richard had wrapped up his chat with the garage-owner and was standing next to her. She blushed slightly at her ignominious introduction.
"I don't know whether to be flattered by what you said, or offended by what you left out," he commented, his hand coming to rest on the narrowest part of her waist.
"Meet Richard Carlisle," she told Louise wryly, "and you can judge for yourself."
"Very handsome indeed," Louise nodded to Mary as she extended her hand in greeting. "The frog's eyebrows!"
"So pleased to have your endorsement," Richard replied as he shook her hand. "I assume," he added, not entirely sure of the new expression's positivity.
"You should be," Mary said to him, "Louise and I are technically cousins, in some distant sort of way. So that's at least one member of my family that likes you," she teased.
"Two, I should hope. Unless your esteem is too much to ask for," he replied with a smirk.
"I was counting myself as a Carlisle in that instance," she said breezily, knowing it would please him. "Mostly, I married him because I wouldn't have to change the monogram on my luggage," she modified to Louise – after all, she wouldn't want Richard's ego to get too outsized.
"As good a reason as any!" the girl said.
"If you'll pardon me," Richard interjected, "my new friend Bif the Mechanic is going to attempt to drag the Isotta back to his garage. Given his knowledge of European automobiles, I think it may be better off left on the roadside."
"How on earth will he do that?" Louise asked.
"He has a truck specifically for that purpose, with cables and a platform that lets one car pull another. It should be fascinating – would you two like to come and observe?"
"No thank you," Mary said with certainty, "I refuse to go one step further on that dusty highway."
"Then you can order me a dirty martini at the bar instead," he said with a wink.
"What an idea!" exclaimed Louise as she grabbed Mary's arm and dragged her up the stairs. "Let's get plastered."
They secured a large wooden table in the far corner of the bar, and much to Mary's relief, the room was pleasantly raucous but their spot was quiet enough to not have to shout. Too much. It was fairly crowded, and as the waiter accepted their orders, he glared at them for taking up such a sizable table with only two of them. "Don't worry," Louise explained to her once he walked away, "we'll have a real gang soon."
Mary sipped her sidecar and attempted to suppress a wince at the proportion of liquor to lemon juice. She was forced to enlighten to the waiter about how to make one, as it seemed no one in America had yet heard of the cognac concoction dreamt up by a US army captain in Paris during the war. Though if this was the result, she was ready to give up trying to spread the word. Noticing her look, Louise told her to order a gimlet next time, as "even these simps couldn't mess up gin and lime!" Deciding to co-opt Richard's martini instead, Mary tried that only to realize there was far too much vermouth. Gimlets next time indeed.
Over their drinks, she and Louise reminisced about Downton and caught up on all the gossip, as Louise was familiar with the main players. She had come over to England for a season right before the start of the war, much in the fashion Cora Crawley had years before, her family hoping to see her married off to some English aristocrat with an appropriate title. But Mary had known from their first meeting that this was not a girl who would go that route without a fight. The pretty girl with the wide green eyes was not much older than Sybil, and the similarities did not end there – they both shared a rebellious streak, though Louise had none of the starry-eyed optimism of Mary's youngest sister. No, Louise was a cold-hearted American cynic. Which Mary had appreciated very much when they first encountered each other at one of Aunt Rosamond's parties, and even more when she had invited the other girl to visit Downton for a break from the debutant circuit.
And Louise caught her up with the American side of her family. They shared a far-removed family connection on Mary's mother's side, and Grandmother had taken an interest in Louise since the girl's mother had died prematurely in Paris – rumor had it the woman was in the process of running away with her French artist lover, though Mary had never worked up the courage to confirm this bit of intelligence.
"So Sybil married the chauffeur and is living with him and his mother in a cottage in Ireland," Mary said, concluding her story for her audience of one.
"Di mi!" Louise cackled, which Mary took to be a slang version of 'dear me.' "And what do you call him when he comes to visit? The chauffer title or the first name?"
"Neither – they aren't allowed back."
"What a barney for the lovely old Crawley family," Louise said absently, her gaze travelling to the front entrance.
"Barney?"
"A scandal!"
"In that case, yes," Mary replied as she noticed two newcomers approaching the table. One was an impeccably-dressed young man in his mid-twenties, dark and averagely handsome. His three-piece pinstriped suit immediately made Mary suspicious in such heat, as most of the men in the stifling bar had shed their jackets and waistcoats in deference to the summer humidity. His companion was a tall, chic woman, about Mary's age, in all black, whose shock of pale white skin seemed translucent where it was revealed between her black hair and her black necklace, between her long black sleeves and her black nail polish. The effect was almost vampish, or perhaps the look of a silent movie queen – her powdered face and dark lipstick certainly enhanced the fact.
"I must tell Dad the tale of 'Sybil and the Servant' some time, perhaps in comparison he won't think I'm such a loose cannon," Louise said as she rose to greet the strangers. "Why hello, you rascals!"
The vamp's face widened into an unusually bright smile given her attire, and Mary realized the whole outfit was more of a costume than a lifestyle. Then her gaze returned to Louise and she was quite surprised to see the dapper young man tilt the girl back and kiss her directly on the lips, a deep, passionate, and rather messy kiss for a public place, all things considered.
She blushed when she realized the kiss was going to continue for a while, and turned her attention back to the girl in the dark dress, holding out her hand to introduce herself. "Mary Carlisle," she said, dropping the title as she had learned to do over the course of their American journey – any mention of 'Lady' or 'Sir' in this country resulted in a solid half-hour of gushing about the romanticism of the English aristocracy by the title-less American rich, most of whom were informed of such matters only by the caricatures of the English upper-class portrayed in plays and novels. "I am Louise's very distant cousin," she explained.
"Yes of course," the girl replied politely, in a sweet voice so incongruous with her appearance. "I'm Ella Saunders. And that," she indicated the man still attached to Louise's mouth, "would be Reggie Lawson. Or maybe it will be 'dear departed Reggie' if he doesn't come up for air soon."
"He'll either expire from lack of air or that heavy suit in this heat," Mary commented.
"If you girls are trying to get my goat," he replied, finally standing upright, "it isn't going to work." Reggie spoke in a low drone, an affected imitation of the New England elite, and Mary wondered if his natural speaking voice was not really as bright and friendly as Ella's all-American smile. He removed his hand from Louise's waist to shake Mary's hand vigorously, and then quickly returned to sweep Louise around in a circle at the edge of the table. They knocked the chair of a man sitting behind them, giggling at their error. "And I'm not even pie-eyed yet," he commented. "Waiter!"
He sat down in the opposite bench seat wedged against one wall, pulling Louise with him to rest on his lap. Mary had to control her shock at the gesture – no moralist herself, she was still surprised at the boldness of American youth. Ella perched delicately on a chair next to her. They gave their drink orders – gimlets all around, though Mary was only halfway through her first drink, and she chatted with Ella as the couple across were otherwise occupied.
"Oh they do this all the time," Ella was saying, indicating the frantic caresses, "every blow, every dimbox. Just try to separate them, I dare you."
Feeling like she was trying to comprehend a foreign language, Mary gave up on asking for definitions. "Are they to be married?"
"Hardly!" Louise piped up, turning her head around to face them.
"Well that's one way to do it," Ella commented. "The only thing that will pull you two apart from your petting party: the 'm' word!"
As they laughed, Mary glanced over her shoulder to see Richard walk into the room at the far entrance, his eyes scanning the crowd for her. "Excuse me," she said as she stood up, grabbing his martini glass and her gimlet and walking in his direction. She narrowly avoided spilling some as she wound her way around the many couples packed in the middle of the room, their legs kicking and arms shaking in one of the peculiar new dances.
"Apparently we've stumbled into some kind of 'petting party,'" she said as she handed him his drink, "whatever that is."
"Oh I've read about that in my flapper-to-English dictionary," Richard commented, slinging back his martini in two gulps and placing the glass on the bar. "I believe it's some sort of illicit practice popular with the flaming youth," he said sarcastically as his hands circled her waist and drew her firmly against him. He leaned down, his lips brushing her ear and whispered: "As if your generation invented sex."
She pressed into him, her thoughts flashing to the sloppy kisses and inexpert caresses of her tablemates. Mary breathed in the scent of the dusty road and his cologne and relished the sure, steady grip on her waist, not at all envious of her cousin's clumsy attempts to flout convention. "We're just the first to trot it out in public," she murmured.
"That, I don't mind," he replied as he pulled back slightly, taking the glass from her hand and putting it on the bar next to his empty one. "Speaking of trotting…" he said, his eyes turning to the dancers engaged in a rather boisterous version of the fox trot as the band started a new song from their perch against the far wall. His arm snaked further around her waist as she raised her hand to meet his, and he guided her backwards in a twirl to makeshift dance floor, which was apparently everywhere.
They threaded through the crowd, their steps in perfect alignment so Mary felt for a minute as though she were floating, albeit on a current of stifling and smoky air. The place was hot, and the music ever so slightly off-key, and as her shoes moved over the imperfect, rutted wooden floors, she thought how this was nothing like the world of dinner jackets and polished parquet they had left behind in England, and how everyone seemed to be having a marvelous time.
It was a dizzying cacophony, but also a kind of escape, and the swinging beat spurred her to bounce just a little higher than she normally would with each step. Miraculously Mary did not mind very much their delay, now that they were here, if they could only dance so easily together all night. But the tempo was fast and the room was packed, and even Richard's skilled direction could not prevent them from crashing into other dancers or pieces of furniture in the din. One particularly vicious bump threw her entirely off-balance, and she looked up to the offending couple to find Reggie and Louise laughing, their intervention obviously intentional.
"Sorry old pal," Reggie said to the older man, "but my girl demanded to cut in on this one." He handed Louise's hand to Richard, who smiled graciously and spun her around, though Mary could tell he was less than keen to switch partners at that particular moment. As was she, though she accepted Reggie's advance and permitted him to sweep her away in the other direction in strides syncopated with the rhythm of the band.
The young man's fingertips curled at an unpleasant angle into her waist, and his flimsy hold of her hand was disagreeably wilting, though she had to concede his feet were nimble with the movements, as if he had been born doing a two-step to a jazz tune. "I thought I'd better rescue you from Father Time," he said with a grin wide as the spacing of his pinstripes as he danced her around the room.
"From what?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Any man over thirty," Reggie explained. "Past it."
"And a woman over thirty would be 'Mother Time'?" she inquired, realizing she was near the threshold herself.
Reggie turned her around and then indulged in a dip, before replying, "No, that sad state of affairs is called a 'Rock of Ages.'"
The dip and the colloquialism made her laugh, though it turned slightly rueful at the idea that such a term might refer to her in a couple of years.
"And a young woman?" she asked, returning upright.
"A sip, a weed, a barlow, a biscuit," his words came in time to the music, and Mary could almost imagine him snapping his fingers like the overly-enthusiastic jazz fans she had witnessed at nightclubs in New York.
"And a young man?"
"A bell polisher, a brooksy, a hopper."
Mary looked at him skeptically. "I can't understand a word you people say!" she admitted frankly.
"You gotta get with the lingo, kid," he said, the grin still plastered on his face as he spun her with great flourish, then came to a halt along with the music.
And which term applied to Reggie, she wondered, unsure of the nuances separating each expression. She made a note to ask someone later, resolving that whatever word meant 'harmless poseur' would likely be appropriate. As a trumpet blast signaled the start of the next dance, Mary slipped her hand from her partner's easily, only to find it surrounded by Richard's iron grasp. "This one's mine, old pal," he called to Reggie over her shoulder as he drew her away.
"The dance or me?" she asked, amused.
The music slowed considerably, and Richard led her in a dance they had learned only recently called the Camel Walk, one that varied a waltzing walk with decelerated fox trot steps – but the most scandalous part was that the woman rested her head on the man's shoulder. It sounded romantic; in reality, they were less than successful at it. They had attempted to teach each other this particular dance after observing several couples on the Mauretania engaging in it, though their efforts were somewhat scuppered by the rocking of the boat from side to side and Mary's impaired vision with her face buried in the hollow of his neck. During a particularly high swell she had managed to kick him in the shin while he simultaneously ran her into the corner of the desk in their stateroom, and they had vowed to only ever attempt the step on solid land.
But all appeared smooth sailing now, Mary enjoying the return of her rightful partner in place of the jive-talking Reggie, especially for this. The raw music was delectably improper, slow as the rotation of the earth and thick as molasses, and it seemed to colonize the air around them, so they weren't just dancing, but swimming in it, utterly surrounded by the humidity of the summer and the boom of the incessant drum beat. She felt Richard press his face to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, and she wanted to tell him to watch where they were going, before his arm tightened around her and she decided it didn't really matter.
"Any luck with the motor?" she asked as he spun her at the corner.
"Well…" he began sullenly. "Bif managed to get it to the garage, but said it would take anywhere from three hours to three days to repair. My hopes for American efficiency are dashed."
"Perhaps they are only efficient with their own machinery, not ours."
"If it was a Model T, we would be on our way to Newport right now."
"Then maybe," she began, placing a subtle kiss to his collarbone over his shirt and thankful she was not wearing lipstick like the other girls, "I'm glad we don't have a Model T." She stroked her hand down his shoulder in a knowing caress, enjoying the more secretive touches over Louise's overt public display. "Where will we sleep?" she asked suddenly. "The corner booth is occupied…"
He laughed gently in response. "Fortunately they have rooms upstairs and I managed to secure the last one. A popular stopping off point," he mused. "I already took some bags up."
"I suppose it will have to do," Mary said, not entirely disappointed at spending one more night alone before visiting Grandmother in Newport.
"Unless you prefer the backseat of the Isotta," Richard replied. "I'm told it's good for 'necking', but it would be less comfortable for sleep."
"I know what that means!" she said with no small degree of satisfaction, pleased to not be utterly out of touch with the modern slang.
He turned slightly so she could see the couple currently exploring the concept at their table. "So does cousin Louise."