"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything."
- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
i
He often thought of summer winds, August heat. Perhaps it was a romantic notion, some refractory memory between dreaming and reality, but he allowed his mind to wander to the grounds, to a nature unspoilt, healthy and flaxen with sun. There were wild-flowers, but they were never poppies; there were people, but they were never uniformed. They were never men. They were always one woman, how he imagined and remembered her, palms spread over the wading-grass.
He was caught in the smell, too, of droning and scorched land; the hum of crickets and a sky too blue to truly be real. There was cow parsley and foxglove held in her hands, her hair hot under the sun. She had laugh lines, and freckles; youth a diaphanous veil surrounding only them –
He had seen men with Thanatos, the daemon of death, on their left shoulder.
– but he dreamt of August: when the veil slipped back from his eyes and meadows turned to mud, summer's luminescence fading to the auge first light of day.
August was when the dream broke, and she held poppies in her hands.
I
1914
It was at New Year's, when he was four months in but the war was six, that he re-entered the walls of Downton. Matthew had thought about languishing in Manchester for the few weeks before his training, but it had all seemed like too much effort, too large an upheaval before the true tumult began. He'd convinced himself he had stayed for his mother's sake, because he was certain it was not for his own, nor for anyone at the abbey.
Mary refused to look at him most of the night, her eyes fixed on her plate whenever he spoke. He would rather have not talked at all, but forced himself into inane chitchat as a mere distraction from the buzz inside his head, the nauseous discontent that precluded his every move. When the women departed and he was released from Robert's awkward appraisal of his time away, he finally took the opportunity to speak to Mary in the library, walls flickering with firelight but little else. The dark, warm atmosphere laid out his nerves, the tight knot in his stomach loosening when he saw her sat serenely on the sofa, holding an empty tumbler.
"I don't know what Carson would have to say about you stealing your father's brandy."
She looked up from the flames with a vague and settled smile. "Even a butler has his favourites."
Matthew gave a hum of amusement, hovering by the mantelpiece. Watching him, she realized how he had changed, how his movements were more graceful and economic than before; with his head turned to the fire she could see the arc of his cheekbone, the firelight caught in his eyelashes. His uniform, such a vibrant, heady red, glowed in the dusky palate of the room.
"You didn't leave Downton," she said, suddenly, realising her study of him, unsure of whether he noticed or not, had left a drawn out silence between them.
"No, there hardly seemed reason to, what with... enlisting." He turned and his face was set, eyes direct on hers. He had felt her gaze on him, and beneath the physical awareness it built in him, the hum in his chest, he found space to be frustrated by her speculation; frustrated that she could look upon him with baleful eyes, but never meet his gaze directly – it caused a gap of understanding in which they could not talk of this frisson between them, could not sift through it in the infuriatingly little time they had.
She silently stared down at the glass in her hands, rolling it between her palms. He watched the crystalline cuts in it flash odd patterns on the fabric of her dress, catching the inside of her wrist. "Has the war made you very certain of where we stand?" she asked, voice flat.
He wanted to laugh. So she did want to speak of it, after all. He supposed he should not be surprised; their timing had always been impeccably wrong, and he wanted to tell her not now. Much as I want the peace of mind for both of us, not now, I do not want to rush this.
"Mary," he said quietly. She stopped. Her languid movement ceased, and she stood, moved with her back to him to stand against the writing desk. He continued cautiously. "I'm more sure than I was," he said, and then gave a bitter laugh. "If anything, inadvertently, it means I'm sparing you the prospect of becoming a war widow."
She turned on him, sudden and sharp and terrifyingly precise. "Oh, Matthew," she said, in hushed tones and narrowed eyes.
He took her unfaltering gaze. "I wouldn't want that for you."
"Then what? Do you not realise that we truly – we must care for your well-being?" Conviction, what wavered in her voice, felt prized, precious. She paused, stared at him for a long time. "Don't you realise why I'm so afraid?"
She had made eye contact, but she was retreating again, hands bunched, her reflection smudged and narrow behind her. He recognised the vulnerability in her admittance, the small foray into past territory that caused her to make her physical presence small. He stepped forward, hesitated, and then crossed the floor to stand beside her. She held herself tightly, and kept her gaze averted; she blinked, breathed in as though about to speak, then let it out again slowly. She could see in periphery that his mouth was slightly open, eyes bright and surprised, so suddenly like the Matthew she recognised; so like the him of before and not the soldier of now, and when he leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers it felt like all his youthful diffidence had been pushed away.
Oh, Matthew.
He did not quite know why he leaned to her, apart from the excuse of comfort. It was an astonishing fact of arrival, that feeling could be legitimised by such a small touch. This sense of heightened awareness seemed shared between them, as though everything had clarified, become mutual and less constrained. Perhaps we do not have to speak to solve this. Yet he knew they would have to speak, that this could be nothing more than a goodbye, that he could not lean in further and kiss her, however much he might want to.
He did not dare to move. Their collective breath coursed through the room, no other sound but that sweep of air passing their lips, her fingers playing at the edge of his epaulet; he could feel the slide of her hand on his shoulder, held there like they had been dancing. He could find no use for words; he reeled in sensation, reluctance.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve, cheers floating through from the drawing room. He was the first to pull away, to search her face, the blush there; she gave a cracked smile, wedged between the desk and him.
"1915," she whispered, fingers slowly sliding away from him. He committed the feeling to memory, her palm smoothing over his jacket lapel, holding still there, measuring the beat of his heart.
"Happy New Year, Mary."
May, 1915; Festubert
The storm broke wide, far off at first, in a thick bank of cloud and thunder. It moved quickly, advanced and cracked and spit down warm rain; the earth hummed with its electricity, ran thick under his boots, and he turned his face up, wiped mud away with a sodden sleeve, gloves slipping in the runoff. He breathed in cordite and mud and water, the tang of thirsty earth, let the rain bounce on his lips and teeth and eyelids until he was blind and he choked, spitting acrid fluid onto the ground. His pistol was heavily dangling from a limp wrist; his coat heavy on his shoulders, breath heavy in his lungs. The rain bounced tirelessly against his helmet, and he had to shout above the staccato, feeling the round, smooth body of his pocket watch shudder as the seconds shifted mechanically by.
How many captured towns had he marched through? Troops glided smoothly past him, on stilted feet, his eyes scanning their faces, the regiment tags on their backs and arms; his own a bright flash of red and gold concealed by a greatcoat or caught under the strap of a kit bag, the hang of a gas mask, wavering on the measured sway of many shoulders. It shifted into those of Yorkshire, and he felt a swift kick of homesickness, actively scanning again for a familiar face; thought he saw Barrow's sharp profile or Mason, height above the rest. Napier, against the shelled-out remnants of a church, face pale in the fallen arches.
Perhaps the constant drive of rain was dulling his senses; perhaps he needed sleep. "Crawley! Move on!" came a far shout. His legs were lead as he marched forward, slipping too quickly in thickening mud. Move on, move on. On to the next.
Then the cry and click of weapons; the whistle, attached to his lips, slipping on water and saliva, the shrill sound slightly gargled. He listened to feet clamouring over ground, to sound breaking in the distance then closer, closer; he planted his own feet squarely, and like a man confident, he ran with a slit of torrential sky in his vision, that small slice of the world expanding into something frenetic.
January, 1916
Socializing, after a long and dragging stint in France, felt decidedly unappealing. In a crushing crowd, chatter in discord with the high tinkle of a piano, he felt discomfort; the question of fitting in again, of projecting a sheen of contentment, even jollity, seemed far too consuming a task.
He needed a gap of adjustment (though he knew he would not get it), at least two days to settle himself before he had to engage anyone else. It was similar to when he wrote letters – he found he could only write in the early mornings, when dawn's calm pervaded and a true, eerie quiet allowed him to forget the trenches and truly think again. Much as he wanted to be truthful, he knew he could not subject his mother to it – some small part of him, the previous boy he was, wanted to protect her from what he saw, and writing in stark ink made it all the more indelible.
So he said I carry on as best I can, and diverted to questions of home.
Speaking to Lavinia, this bronze-haired doll of a girl, he felt a part of himself returning to a more familiar banter, a corner of his personality he did not have to force. It was a relief, that such conversation could be comfortable. She was comfortable; she had no sharp edges, no jibes, no pointed looks. She was without challenge; he didn't know whether that attracted or annoyed him.
He was tall. He was elegant. He was kind-hearted. Lavinia imagined that Matthew Crawley was everything her mother wished for her; handsome and earnest and intelligent. A solicitor. Heir to an estate, though he hesitated on the point endearingly, eyes flitting to the floor. They had just met, amongst the awkward swirl of people and parties, still in that stage of discomfort and new acquaintance where every word and gesture seemed to matter such an inordinate amount. She had not expected him to come out with such a statement; instead, she eyed his uniform quietly, wondered at the somewhat distant look in his eyes as he surveyed the room – though many men, in a conversation's lull, seemed to have that long-range stare.
"A title – how frightfully grand," she said bashfully, nervous of breaking his contemplation. She watched his shoulders settle back into something less tense, his grip on his glass loosening.
"My only title is Captain, for now," he said, and though his eyes glittered with sudden levity, she thought she heard a tinge of bitterness in his voice, a burnish of discontent in his low vowels.
He was glad of the cool air on the street, music fading into the faint rustle of vehicles. For a moment he stood on the edge of the pavement, watching a lone man walk purposefully up the street toward him, head down, shoes clipping out the tempo of his stride. A car crawled past with dim headlamps reflecting on the water-slicked road. The man dragged on a cigarette as he walked, a tiny glow in the dark, and as he passed Matthew caught his profile in periphery. A faint jolt went to his stomach, a small surge of doubt, but below it, recognition.
His back was turned when the man spoke. "My God!" he inevitably said, and Matthew pivoted swiftly on his heel, taking in a figure half-turned toward him in an identical greatcoat, eyes squinting in the dark. "It really is Matthew Crawley, isn't it?"
Matthew blinked several times, taking a step forward. "Yes," he said tersely, searching the angles of the other man's face; it was only when he smiled that his features seemed to clarify. "Evelyn Napier," Matthew breathed.
Napier stuck out his hand. "How wonderful to see you again!" he said, with a deft shake. "You know, it's odd, I swear I saw you in France. But, no time for talking there – how is everyone at Downton?"
Matthew suddenly thought of that pale profile against church arches, coat collar drawn up black along his jaw, cap low on his head, and the bright glint of broken glass behind him in the rubble. "They're – they're all well."
Napier settled back on his heels, looking at Matthew for a long moment. His eyes lingered on his epaulettes. "Well, look at us, both officers," he said finally, holding the cigarette up but not touching it to his lips. "'Captain Crawley' does have a certain ring to it." He paused. "What regiment?"
Matthew gave a small smile. "Duke of Manchester's Own."
"How has the war been treating you?"
There, Matthew could see a deftness in his gaze that no-one else had given him, a boldly worded challenge: Tell me how it is for you. Really, the truth. He felt a sort of liberation in it, a freedom in knowing that this other person would realise what he was speaking of as fully as himself. He did not have to hide behind euphemisms or strained, select words; he could say it's been hell, and mean it. Yet perhaps he was too practised at tiptoeing around the subject, for what came from his mouth was another veiled banality.
"Not good enough for me to wish it weren't over," he joked weakly.
Napier laughed, an awkward, hearty sound. "And... Lady Mary? How is she? I suppose she's Mrs. Crawley now, wasn't that the plan?"
He said it so innocently that Matthew knew it was a query phrased out of simple ignorance. It was strange, standing before someone who understood his history in one place, and yet could know nothing else of his life before it apart from a few choice scenes. Napier's gap of knowledge between Pamuk's death and next four years were a yawning space, a stretch of time so full of events that he scarcely had words to explain it all; but he realised, with a small and dizzying rush, that he had no obligation to tell Evelyn Napier anything of what had transpired. So he gave a non-committal smile in response, dipping his head slightly.
"Goodnight, Lieutenant Napier," he said.
Napier looked on in confusion. "Captain Crawley," he said, in a quiet address. Matthew watched him walk away and felt a weight settle in his chest. He was sure he would never see Napier again, the chances of their orbits colliding made lesser by the war's cruelty; he took a deep breath, and tilted his head up to the sky. He closed his eyes. Were another man's assumptions really so damaging, in the end? Let him think what he liked.
June
He made up his mind on the train into London from Dover, resolved the words somewhere along the slow crawl into St. Pancras. He had realised, on a nightly patrol of the trenches two days before his leave, that Lavinia was exactly the sort of girl he would have married if he had never known Yorkshire, or the spires of Downton, or the coy timbre of Mary's laugh. In the night-glow of lanterns and far-off flares, he had stared into the middle-distance of no-man's land and known a more ancient, honest part of himself, stripped down by the day's grime and the month's toil; he wondered if fighting had reverted him to that Manchester boy, or if it had, by its fierce nature, caused him to grown into a sombre and serious creature. He knew the divide, the self which made him love Lavinia honestly, resolute in moving on – perhaps he had always been this creature, only with Downton and France solidifying, justifying an already ingrained duty in his heart and pumping it through him. Mary was not a duty; she was a longing, a pent-up frustration, a woman under a diaphanous veil in the August sun.
The seeds of his decision began there, in the maze of trenches, with a scatter of stars in the sky, above the smoke and aching notes of an accordion floating toward him; there, with his eyes tracking along the palette walls of his troop's dugouts, Lavinia before his eyes and Mary's in his mind, elusive but life-altering speech wavering on his tongue.
There was a warm, summer rain when he proposed.
He was kneeling in his uniform, riding boots pinching his feet where they were awkwardly bent, his greatcoat wrapped around her shoulders. She blushed, and held his trembling hands, water slicking on their palms. "Get up off the ground, Matthew, you'll get mud on your trousers."
"I'm used to it," he joked inanely. He could feel water slipping down his neck, pooling against his collar. "I'll get up when you answer," he said, so low that she had to read it from his lips below the drive of rain.
She nodded. He cocked his head, eyes silvered in the inclement light. "I'd rather you vocalize your assent," he said playfully.
"Yes." She half-pulled him up from the ground, her arms hugging him before he hugged her, hands wavering on her back before pressing solid to her spine for just a moment.
"Go inside," he said fondly, pressing a small kiss to her mouth.
She turned away and ran to the house, the coat sitting large on her frame, shoulders too wide as she clutched it around herself; he took in her bright hair against the drab colour of it, the wool waterlogged.
He imagined what life would be like with her, and saw the sort of domesticity that seemed far from reach, but was what he longed for, now more fiercely than he ever had before. Something simple and honest in which he imagined himself riding his bicycle to work every day, returning in the low evening to gentle conversation; her small voice and her fawn hair and her wide, childlike eyes.
Yet there was always a must cloying at the back of his mind; whom it must be and whom it must not. His own years-old statement, I will choose my own wife, seemed savagely bitter and acrid in his throat; he still thought of August dreams, still carried that imagined talisman because she was always at the edge of his imagined future, despite having taught himself to think in small chunks of time, in days and fortnights and months at most.
Dangerously, he allowed himself to think far ahead now, and he was afraid Lavinia would be unable to call Downton home. He was afraid of a hollow house with too many rooms and not enough vigour. Robert's sort of grand and rosy world was perhaps to fall to the wayside, but how could he know, how could he decipher the tangle of things?
He stared after Lavinia, and his mind settled back to simple immediacy. He knew the smell that would cling to the coat's fabric, upon its return. Knew it would smell of London and lavender, under the deep, earthy damp. The smell of sweet smoke; a city and a girl.
October
"I'm very glad to see you looking so well."
Matthew was suddenly all bright and bold colours, struck out from the grandness of the room. He tilted his head gracefully, held his shoulders proudly, under gleaming red and black and gold; but it was his gaze she could not look away from, after so long, and she felt the familiar, if two years buried, plunge of breathlessness at their pale examination.
"You win," she said. "We are at peace again."
She did not feel at all at peace. She reeled, and for a moment held his wrist to steady herself. She felt the notching of his bones beneath the soft fabric of his mess jacket, and pulled away quickly. Her words were a neat place to end their conversation; the concert began, and she turned away from his eyes.
But he was hale, and he was whole, and at dinner, sat next to him, she could almost pretend that there had been no rift between them – until she made the gentle mistake of asking him of France. How she'd hated the sudden lack of perspective his eyes gained, the nervous flitting of his head toward her, and the ashamed angle at which he looked away.
"I'm so pleased that we're friends again," he'd said as he was leaving. Staring at his retreating back, the strong lines his greatcoat made of his shoulders, she felt a tight fist form in her stomach; not quite lust or longing, but a sort of coiled nausea, one she did not know how to abate. She could tell that beneath Matthew's veil of good-natured happiness, there was a faint edge in his eyes, small halting lilts in his speech and quick fluidity in his gestures, as though trying to cover some unstoppable tremor from cracking his veneer.
She gave him the toy as much to assuage her own fears as put luck over his; she begged he would be safe, staring at the photograph Isobel had given her, able to put colour in the lines of his face now, the burnish of his hair, the azure eyes. Some small part of her still wished she had kissed him, at the station, the part which loved with sensual longing. So as to know his smell again, to have him ingrained in her mind in finely attuned points – the catch of his coat buttons under her fingers, the tilt of his mouth and his eyelashes flitting against the fine skin of her temple, or his voice thrumming through her like the last deep reverberation of a cello's plucked string.
Whom it must be and whom it must not.
Over time, he had forced himself to see her as 'cousin Mary' again. She could be nothing more, not after their parting. There were degrees to which he could be honest with himself, and Mary, cousin or not, was at his very deepest level, not easily extracted, and not easily explained.
Until his Thursday morning departure, he was settled in the fact that they were friends again. His nerves had built with each step closer to the station, and yet when he had seen Mary there through the clearing smoke, something in him had levelled out; some easier stride had come to him, and he had known to trust her with those left behind him.
If I don't come back had been a phrase he made himself believe; he had seen too many of the promises of other men harshly retracted by a single bullet, enough to know he could not ignore the hard truth. Cruel as it was, saying such a phrase to Mary's face and seeing it settle there, in the line of her mouth and her eyes, caused him to once again become fiercely acquainted with his feelings for her. Two years had separated them, but war had accelerated something that they had left too long; they were weary, in one sense, mature in another, and yet as he left, Lavinia was not who he saw, much as propriety and circumstance dictated she should be – no, who he saw in the smoke of the departing train was Mary, small and receding on the platform, hand over her mouth. His stomach plunged, and he knew then that he still wanted her, knew with even more conviction that he had never stopped.
He remembered her eyes glinting the night before, the playful smile at her lips. He remembered her asking about the front, the sad incline of her head, regretful and quick, when he could not speak of it. They had fallen back into their old banter easily, flanking each other at dinner, and in the walk through the great hall toward his departure. That evening, Lavinia seemed to be always at the periphery of his sight, but Mary directly in his vision.
He remembered her words, her fingers playing nervously at the stem of her wineglass, so like when he first proposed; he remembered the curve of her neck as she'd looked down, the sharp, clean contrasts of her clothes and her skin. He remembered her voice, its easy slide into playfulness.
I think I'm about to be happy. Does that count?
He felt in his pocket for the token she had handed him, holding it in his palm.
The little toy dog was her by extension. Yet when she had given it to him at the station, he had wished to reach out to her – not simply with the brush of gloved fingers, but to break through the barrier they had constructed. He had only wanted to feel the thrum of another human (her) heart, another's (her) breathing, so that he could be reassured, could affirm life before the train carried him elsewhere. He had wanted to use the contact as goodbye, in a way he was sure his eyes had failed to communicate; a way to correct words lost by inadequate eloquence.
"Such good luck," she'd said. She had toppled the physical wall between them, and he'd known in that moment it could never be righted.
II
August 1918
It was the first time they'd sat apart at dinner. It felt like a new rift between them, and he kept his gaze isolated to the table, both grateful and unsettled that such grandiosity continued in his absence, an absence in which he knew acute and cruel reality. Robert had once spoken to him of purpose, but now Matthew wanted to laugh bitterly at his words, at this house, at the absurd notion that they simply continued. Yet he would inherit this life, and he loathed it, in that moment of transition, loathed everyone's caution around him and the accosting colours of their clothes, the smell of the house, and every reminder of the front caused by the clusters of uniformed men in the great hall and library; he had become used to cramped quarters and muted tones and sharp, acrid smells, and whilst there he could escape in dreams of bright, golden stone, but here the dream surrounded him and became suffocating.
He felt out of place and far too aware of what was going on beyond these walls; he felt a stifled sense of urgency humming through him and he had to hold himself with rigid formality to keep from drumming his fingers in impatience, or leaving the room altogether.
Laughter flickered around the table; he looked up to see Mary's eyes on him, her smile a gentle prompt, and he knew if she were next to him she'd quietly ask after his well-being. He felt a new sort of stillness, more natural than what he had self-imposed; he looked back at her steadily, and thought of how her neck had tensed as he'd shook hands with Carlisle. Something fell into place, then. He could not bring himself to smile, mouth unable to form the right arrangement of muscles, but he studied her, holding her gaze as softly as if her gloved hand were held in his.
Seeing him shake hands with Richard settled something cold in her stomach. Perhaps it was guilt, for she knew the two would be at odds, but Matthew's graciousness toward the other man made her feel weak with gratitude. The dull resignation in her chest was sparked through and pushed away when Matthew's eyes slid to hers, and she felt disappointment when she was not seated next to him at dinner. The mischief with which he'd held her gaze earlier was gone, his eyes fixed dully on the table, and her open, amiable Matthew was suddenly somewhat unreadable.
In truth, she had never thought of Matthew in battle – she had, in that secret gaze, seen the haunting in his eyes and wondered, known he could not talk of it, but she had never truly thought of him there, in mud and artillery fire, between the scarred limbs of blasted trees and barbed wire; she had never imagined the physicality of Matthew in the war, the things he had done. She had never imagined him holding a pistol. She could only see the stains it put on him, the change and abrasion of him physically, the mental retreat into himself. When he left, or she heard of other men lost, or the abbey echoed with the voices of recuperating soldiers, she did not allow herself to think how or where or why. It was only a question of when; when he would return, when he would be scathed, when a soldier would appear in the great hall with his back to her, his golden hair so similar...
And then Matthew looked up. He stared at her directly – his face leaner, shadowed by the candlelight, the lines of his suit sharp – and his eyes cleared. She smiled for him, for his return to the present; she smiled for the fact that his blue, blue-eyed clarity briefly clouded again with something more grateful, something like adoration. The rest of him was so still, and she knew that this was his physicality here , careful and poised , sat with a straight-backed elegance that the military had taught him.
This is what will haunt me, she thought. This look, his heart bared so quietly.
Not long after, she watched him slip from the drawing room, his eyes again distant. No-one noticed when she followed him.
He was sat in burgeoning purple light on the bench beneath the cedar, staring up at its branches. She walked toward him with caution, watched his hazy outline clarify as she neared; his eyes were closed, head tilted to rest against the bench, and she took an embarrassed half-step backward before she saw his eyes open again, slowly, his hands curl smoothly against the lip of the wood as he straightened his back. He saw her. He gave the small tick of a smile.
"Hello," he said smoothly, standing when she stopped a few paces from him. He'd undone his bow tie, the white silk hanging gracelessly around his neck.
"What on earth are you doing out at this time of night?" she asked, taking his place on the bench. She watched him blink and step backward, sit cautiously beside her.
"Seemed a shame to waste such a pleasant evening," he said, after too long a pause.
"Were you quite all right, at dinner?" She knew, as she asked it, that he would evade the question with a quiet affirmative answer; his shoulders bent forward, his eyes slid away from hers, his hands knotted themselves in his lap.
"Of course," he told her.
She nodded politely, looking at the small darted gather of fabric at the back of his collar, over his spine, where the line of the suit strained with his discomfort.
"Mary – " he started, then looked up at the house and gave an unhappy sigh. He stood in the assumption she would follow and strode to the edge of the woodland; she watched him, saw him under the thickening evening light, his pace quick. As he got further away, he dipped in and out of the smudged landscape; his suit became absorbed by the thick black of forest, his body against it only distinguishable by the pale glow of his hair and his shirt, in thin, swaying white slashes at his neck and wrists. She marvelled at the familiarity of his walk – the slope of his shoulders with each step, his hands loose at his sides – that upright gait so easy and fluid even whilst he was in turmoil. She knew she would recognize it anywhere for how many times she had studied it, imagined it, felt its steps beat measured at her side.
"Do you think Lavinia notices it?" he asked, when she had reached him, on the periphery of the oak and alder trees, the still-humid air so much cooler in this little dip of land. "Do you think she sees my – my worry, as you do, or does she ignore it?"
She faltered. "I don't know why you're asking me – "
"I'm asking, Mary, because I trust you." His head was tilted, and he stepped closer to her, eyes earnest and immovable. "Because you see it. You see it." She watched his breath shudder and his eyes close into the deep-set shadows of his face, hands lifting to touch her, but not quite hovering above her arms. "Do you understand what that means? What – why you've noticed and she hasn't?"
"Matthew, the boundaries – "
His eyes snapped open, dark cornflower blue. "We are well beyond boundaries," he hissed. "Or has Richard caged you so fully that you cannot speak to me anymore?"
There it was. The fact of whom she was bound to. Lavinia may have had Matthew's ring, but he did not hold her secrets. Matthew challenged her, yet Mary knew she could not tell him, not here, with his tie undone and shadow sitting in the notch where his collarbones met – a space she had never seen before; his eyes wild with something like anger, fingers running restlessly over his palms.
"Does he think I will do something untoward because I might not return?" Matthew asked.
She could not tell him, not here, out of view of the house, under the swish of alder leaves with their delicate, glowing bark knotted and slashed with black.
Not now, when she reached to hold his wrist like she had at the concert, and felt his skin properly against hers, his pulse fluttering with the taut jump of his tendons as he clenched and unclenched his fist.
Not here, where her breath was locked in her lungs at his proximity, her poise rigid. She could not catch him with a lie. She could not be the one to cause his mistrust, nor could she bear to hear it strain the strings of his voice into a higher pitch when they were once held in low notes of longing.
I might not return.
She tipped forward onto her toes and pressed her hands against his back in a half-embrace. Their shoulders arced against one another and she wanted to hum at the feeling of his palms spread flat to her waist; she kept their torsos centimetres distant because that way lay something sharp and dangerous, but wanted, with a thick guilt in her stomach. His head against her shoulder was enough, his hands and his speaking low in her ear.
"We cannot leave this alone, can we?" he said, anguished, small, his fingers grazing her spine much more confident than his words indicated.
"No. We cannot."
She knew there were many ways to say I love you. She knew that she had already said many of them to this man, but she had only known one lust; no, this, this now, was love, this shuddering, hesitant embrace in which their abdomens shook from the effort of not touching, their hands straying in the same pattern on each other's backs, feeling different fabrics and different muscles but the same layout of bone. Enough. Here, she could know him holding her closely but away, away from the dangerous planes of hip to hip; she could feel his heartbeat and her own in synchrony, could touch his hair, here, in this dip of shadowed land, and know the soft coolness of it.
"I do not want to let it go," she murmured against his shoulder. She could deign to that sort of honesty. He pulled back, and the air trembled, split with cricket song, shook as he breathed out a single word.
"What?"
"I'm tired, Matthew," she said. "Richard makes me tired."
He frowned, voice snapping like the dry grass beneath their feet. "So why are you – " She lay her fingertips over his mouth to silence him, felt his lips slide closed in consternation.
"This isn't black and white, darling," she said, taking her fingers away, and in a breath of air he was close and shaking, closer than he'd been in an age; close enough that she could see where his eyelashes started dark and grew out to white-blonde, and the blue smudge of sleeplessness that lined the corners of his eyes. They were hip to hip, his mouth a gentle brush on hers, and it was difficult to tell who had instigated this, the dangerous contact. He tasted of the evening's wine, and there was that tilt, that press of his nose to her cheek, that skip of her fingers up over his shirt buttons, pressing lightly in the hollow arc at the top of his sternum; there was that hum, low in their throats, the desperate resignation of it making her pull away sooner than she wished.
"I'm tired too," he whispered, holding his forehead against hers, hands mapping the beads on her dress beneath her shawl. "I'm..." His head tilted as she skimmed her palm across his hair. "...exhausted..." His nose brushed against hers, eyes cast down to their shoes in the inky grass.
"Oh, Matthew, no."
She heard him swallow. "I know."
He walked away first. She stared at the purpled glow of his shirt in the shadows, the bend of his head toward the ground causing an infuriating lock of his hair to flop forward. He seemed to still himself, his body realigning into that proud way of moving again; yet there was something angelic in him, something she had not seen in months, years, a diffidence in his angling away from her. He slowly turned back to her with his hands in his pockets, that hair still loose over his forehead, shifting as he blinked, a small flush on his cheeks. He looked like a boy, she thought; he looked so very handsome.
"Set a date, Mary," he said, with a reticent, beautiful smile.
He was slipping away, again, and she felt panic; but how could she keep him, constrained as she was by duty? She hesitated on the edge of some insanity, teetering there until her voice sliced clean through it, pushing dangerous into the air. "Paris."
Matthew's face etched in confusion. "Sorry?"
She straightened her shoulders into conviction, holding her head high. "When is your next leave?" she asked quietly, slowly, seductively enough that he would pick up the hint in her words. "I was wrong to say it's black and white, Matthew, because it is something much, much bolder than that."
He was silent, stunned by her breathless implication; he tipped forward, stumbling back down the small slope toward her. "God, that's – that's not what I meant," he told her, a low, close whisper.
She shut her eyes. I might not return. Perhaps she could tell him, there, with the distance of the Channel. I might not. His head angled in toward hers as she took his wrist again, slipping her fingers beneath his cuff to feel the delicate notching of bone. "Please," she whispered. "Paris."
He twisted their hands and pressed his thumb into the centre of her palm; he repeated that sad, hesitant smile, and his thumb stroked across her palm over and over, bending to the scrape of his fingernail, and she felt it as a low, strong ache in her stomach.
November, 1918
It was not Paris. It was not anywhere. It was him in a small and obscure corner of France (perhaps Belgium), where the borders constantly shifted wider and thinner like contracting lungs. But Matthew could breathe here, in this thick and bold countryside, swathed and dried by autumn. Thiérache, in a decrepit stone cottage with low-beam ceilings, a white film of dust over the windows and walls and table.
The noise came low to his ears, weaving through the streets from a distance, reaching them when at a fever pitch and echoing off the narrow walls; a French soldier, blue tunic flashing brightly as he waved his arms: ‹‹La guerre est terminée! Alliés! Alliés! La guerre est terminée!››
Men shouted outside; Mason vomited into the sink's basin, tap squeaking with rust but no water; Matthew's helmet dropped from his hands onto the ground, tin clanging against flagstones, and he slid from the table, kicking it away as he headed for the door, the clean air outside, the orchard sweeping downland in front of him.
"One hundred days," he heard one man mutter, dragging a cigarette against grubby lips. "One hundred fucking days."
"Last one died two sodding minutes before ceasefire." Matthew felt his heart lurch, body staggering between the trees until he reached the orchard's edge, dew still lodged in the grass, soaking the caked dirt from his boots back to mud.
I've forgotten what English soil smells like, he thought, touching his hand to the tree bark. He thought of white spindly alders, of Mary's thin, lithe limbs swaying like those branches, reaching to him, hands on his back and the fractious, dangerous promise of Paris that would not come to fruition. The war was over. He would go home. His correlation to duty would become more nebulous. I've forgotten.
In the end, he stayed away far longer than he should have. Three months.
December 1918
London was his exodus. Lavinia welcomed him with open arms and gentle eyes; he should have expected her meekness, but he longed for some sort of ferocity from her, a hardened kiss of some feeling, an affirmation that he could live, could feel adrenaline outside of terror.
They'd crossed each other carefully, circled and spoken in vapid waves. Was this what their life was to be? He thought of it angrily, with bitter disdain, trying to push the feeling off as a layover from France, but he looked at Lavinia now and felt only again that dull, pervading ache, a tiredness he could not shake.
"I won't be coming up with you for the shoot," she said.
"No?" His eyes challenged her, purposely; this part of him, where the visceral need for combat reigned, he knew had not yet broke off from the war. "I'll need someone to partner me."
She smoothed her skirt, and he stared at the neatness of her brown boots, the polish of them against the carpet. "I'm not sure I'll like all that banging about," she said, and his mind heard it as provocation.
You wish me to do battle with you?
His voice snapped. "I'm not sure I'll like it much either."
No.
Perhaps.
Please.
There, in those electric moments when the conversation turned entirely, they finally found a semblance of passion; perhaps out of frustration, but it was late and she kissed him, pressed against him a little too evenly, and then their roles were reversed and his name siphoned from her lips in the dark, lungs caged by her corset and the sharp dig of the doorway against her back, his body skimming hers with shirtsleeves rolled, forearms bare. She ran her fingers over the fine gold hair there, knowing he would kiss her again, a hard and frantic thing that shuddered through her.
"Matthew," Lavinia hissed, in that sweet, rasping voice, and that was all he remembered, her breath shaking over the syllables of his name, hands feather-light on his shoulders, and the soft clatter of hairpins falling to the floor one by one.
"Matthew." Her hands pushing him back, hair half-fallen, head angled against the door frame to look up at him. "This isn't right," she whispered. "I met and was prepared to marry Captain Crawley, but that's all over now."
How strange, the selves we show and lock away; how quickly they can change. He stared at her, frowning sweetly, lips parted. Did he truly have to explain his circumstance and duty, those prescribed things he had decided upon in a trench nearly three years ago, and how much they angered him?
"So it would have been different if we'd married during the war?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. He moved to step back, but her fingers pressed against his mouth, and he thought of Mary, of that shadowed land, and he understood.
"Go home," she said, not unkindly.
January, 1919
Downton.
He wondered what they would think of him, how strangely weary his inaction felt, his cowardice, how wrong it was for him to be out of uniform; how unkempt he could look in the mornings, in fallen braces and bare feet, after a nightmare-interrupted sleep and too much tobacco on his fingers.
Would they know a strained and sombre, smoking man? Would they understand that he had finally run, and did not quite know how to return?
"Hello," Mary said, formal and poised as ever; in the grey day, she was monochromatic: her clothes, her eyes, her skin. The only flash came from her jewellery, a simple pendant at her neck, her earrings, her fingers bare as they clutched his. Her left hand stayed at her side, but he noticed its starkness, too, turned in against the dark drape of her dress.
This isn't black and white, darling. And yet here she was, in tones.
"Hello," he said. A small tug at the corner of her mouth as her eyes met his, like she was biting the inside of her lip. This is much more vibrant than we could ever know.
They always seemed to confer at twilight; were most honest at the transitory times of day, when light hit their faces in ways which hid expression.
Throughout the shoot, throughout the day, Mary had watched him from a distance, this impossibly lean and severe version of Matthew, and could not reconcile him with the man of seven years ago; he was all angles, flashing hooded eyes, his voice thicker and with a deeper timbre than she remembered, more resonant and rich. Their meetings had become a matter of force, colliding spheres of influence and expectation.
Now she watched him stand on the gravel drive, staying long after they had waved off the Dowager and the others had gone inside. She watched his head bend, hands cup to his face with the bright flare of a match; the edge of his cheek that she could see rounded as he breathed in, hand shaking out the flame, body straightening elegantly against the house. He did not start when she walked up beside him, did not even look at her, and she stared at his fiercely squared shoulders, the taper to his waist more definite in this shorter cut of tuxedo, the small red ember of his cigarette dancing against the blue night.
"I didn't know you smoked," she said.
He made a non-committal sound. "Nasty habit from the trenches." She was fascinated by the delicate way he held the cigarette between his fingers, the ember's light only reaching to illuminate the half-moon crescent of his thumb when he inhaled. "Can't seem to give it up," he said. "Sorry, you probably don't want to breathe this muck." He gestured to the thick white haze around them.
She watched it dissipate as his palm disturbed its slow trajectory skyward. "No. It's all right," she said quietly.
He smiled. "You know, I saw Evelyn Napier in London once. I was fresh off the Somme. He was smoking. I thought it so odd, then."
"Hmm," she said, holding her arms lightly around herself.
"He spoke to me. Thought we were married."
She raised her eyebrows. "Oh. You... did correct him, didn't you?"
He gave a playful smile and a sidelong glance. "I didn't say a thing." He smirked at her stare, eyes glittering, cigarette hanging loosely from his clasped lips. It was delicately balanced there, tilting as his mouth moved, falling away to be caught lightly in his fingertips.
"It was years ago, Mary," he said. "Besides, would it really have been so bad, being married to a sea-monster?" That rich, dark, bold voice again.
Sea-monster. "I broke off with Richard."
He took another long, contemplative drag, and she watched shadow shift into his cheeks upon inhaling. "Why?" he asked; her focus shifted to his speech, the low soothing current of it.
"If I told you the reason you would despise me and that I really couldn't bear."
He turned fully toward her. "Tell me," he whispered. She stayed silent, shyly staring at her hands, but he dipped his head to meet her, voice soft and gentle enough to make her think it might not be dangerous to say this, to put some small fragment of it out in the open.
Yet when she met his eyes, looking at her with an earnestness not unlike his first proposal, she could not say it. "Not yet. Not even Papa knows, and I couldn't – you see, Matthew, you're only – "
"I'm only what?" He straightened and looked to the sky, voice clearer. "Mary, whatever it is cannot be enough to marry a man who appeared to view his vows as a business contract."
She threw her arms up. "But that's what it was, between us!" she cried. "What it had to be."
"But why?"
She said nothing, hearing his exasperated sigh.
He turned again and stepped close, near enough to feel the heat of him against her bare arms. "Tell me, please." In that suspended moment of presumption he was entirely alluring, and she thought Yes, I could say this and we would be all right. She shut her eyes, frustrated by her attraction, still, now, when things were so very difficult.
"Mary," he whispered, and then his hand was on her arm, the warmth a shock on her skin. Then they were walking, and her feet found grass without looking, allowing him to guide her blindly for all but a few seconds; they were under the cedar tree, hesitating next to the bench. He sat down expectantly but she could not move, could only stand in front of him unsteadily with her eyes fixed on the dark and knotted bark behind his head. "Please."
Her eyes flickered to his, wide in the dark, at a reverent angle, hands clasped gently in front of him.
"I – Kemal Pamuk. Do you remember him?"
As she spoke, tripping over the words, she watched his hands come to his mouth, eyes move down, a frown etching there; she nearly stopped altogether when his fingers dragged across his lips, head angling down so far that she could only see the neat parting of his hair, the sleek comb lines in it. She faltered, and his head snapped up. "It's all right," he whispered, reaching out to her in placation and then dropping away. He tried to smile, but it faltered just as much as her voice, as his shaking hands.
"Was it love?" he asked, when she'd finished, her shoulders hunched inward, staring at his shoulders equally concave, gentlemanly stance forgotten, elbows on knees, eyes to the ground between his feet. "Because if it was love, then – "
"It was lust, Matthew! Or something in him that I – oh what does it matter?"
"I'm only trying to understand, Mary," he snapped, then sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face."You were wrong about one thing, you know," he said, from behind his fingertips. "I never would – I – " He stood, kept a few feet between them, but his eyes straight on hers. "I never could despise you."
She stayed quiet, staring at him. The deft angles of his shoulders had returned, his stance proud, but he looked at her so gently that she felt a fresh surge of love for him well up beneath her dissipating nervousness. "I'm going to America," she said quietly, smoothing out her gloves. He made a soft noise of surprise, eyes flitting away.
I don't care.
I forgive you.
"You're – you're sure you can't brave the storm here? Because, God, Mary, I've never met a better storm-braver than you."
I love you.
She smiled softly at him. "Maybe."
"Would Carlisle make your life such a nightmare if you stayed?"
"I couldn't say." She could feel tiredness seeping into her limbs, into her voice. "It will be a few months at most, Matthew."
His fingers came up and lightly touched the edge of her jaw, three fingers spanning the length of its left side. Then his touch slipped from her, and then he retreated to the house, leaving her with that triptych, those points of warmth.
November, 1919
The scandal broke in March. Mary returned in June.
She smiled easily and wore sparkling gowns and her hair slightly differently, her slim hands gripping his shoulders as she kissed his cheek. She was bright and languid through the summer, subdued and beautiful. She would smile at him across a room, with something like relief, and he knew they were all right, on an even plane.
Yet today was strained and cautious, his morning fraught, slipping into starched cotton and thick wool and heading toward Downton. His boots clicked loudly, snapped and creaked on the ground. The tight confines of his jacket made him feel stifled; he rolled his shoulders slightly.
I do wish you'd fight for her, you know, his mother had told him before he'd left, with quiet demarcation. He felt so suddenly tired, bone-deep; had been fighting too long, too wearily, fighting for King and country and her, of course. His duty, his honour, his heart. "Yes," he had whispered, leaving, hasty to cover the shame which flushed his face and made his hands shake more than holding any weapon ever had.
Once he was around the garden wall, out of view of the house, he turned his face to the sky, its pale blue growing in pigment as the sun rose. He breathed deep, closed his eyes. For a moment he kept utterly still, rocking back on his heels until he nearly tipped. Perhaps they were not on an even plane at all; perhaps America had changed her. But the war had changed him, with irrevocable certainty, so why should they not be honest with each other?
He breathed.
And then he walked.
And then he saw Mary.
She was wearing the same coat and hat as when she'd given him her good luck charm, the red standing out against the village walls, and he felt the tiny toy dog in his pocket, a burning talisman. She nodded to him, with a small smile, as the crowd gathered; he watched her through the service, separated from him by black coats and army fatigues. At the end, he stood still and waited as people departed; he waited for her to turn to him, her face cautious, hands clasped carefully in front of her. He tried not to flinch at her trepidation, easing his shoulders down from their plane at attention.
"Would you like company, walking back?"
He made sure not to look startled, or too relieved to be shaken from the dark reflection the two minutes silence had afforded him. "Of course."
He offered her his arm. Her palm fit smoothly into the crook of his elbow, her gloved fingers pressing lightly, reassuringly, into his forearm. He wanted to smile at how much his strides were shortened by her; it felt entirely normal, this, between them, her hand at his arm and their shoulders bumping and his walking pace stunted to match hers.
For a long while, they did not speak, a surprisingly amiable silence spreading between them through the sifting crowd; he could feel Mary glance at him occasionally, as though she expected some sort of fear or sadness to be plain on his face, and then she asked a question she had asked three years ago, one he had not expected again.
"What was it like, Matthew?"
"It was – senseless." This was not as veiled as he thought, fleetingly, perhaps it should be. No, he was to be honest with her, in degrees. What he could not tell her was that the man in the trenches had somehow shut off all he was outside them; there, he was training and weaponry and the clothes on his back – he was not hers, nor Lavinia's, nor even his own; he was France's entirely, a creature constructed of that flat and fractured earth. He was not Matthew, he was not even Crawley, at times – he was the red and gold regiment tag on the back of his tunic, and only when the frenetic energy of battle slowed did he allow pieces to filter back – the man who knew fractions of German, who led a company, who had a name and a home and a good luck charm. The man who had been to Oxford, the man who rode a bicycle. The man who could write letters to England using somewhat normal phrases.
"... but sometimes, when we rose at dawn, the sun was so spectacular looking. It's – it was because of the... smoke, you see, it took the light and made its colours so strong. We never quite noticed the sunsets because there was so much else to concentrate on then, but the mornings... There was a quiet lull, a few moments where you could truly appreciate it."
Mary made a small humming sound at the back of her throat.
He gave a rueful smile. "That is, until you saw everything the night flares failed to illuminate."
They were at the gates to the grounds; Mary had to let go of his arm to keep him from seeing how she was suddenly shaking. His words made her want so desperately to hold his face and his hands and hug him, but they had been distant for too long, and such physical intimacy was not hers to have.
She stood across from him, silent.
"It felt like – in the morning," he said, his voice far-off, "none of the men could lie anymore. Not to themselves, and not to anyone else, not about our situation." She watched his eyes flit to the ground and back up; he spoke again, after an uneven breath. "Dawn has a funny way with revelation, don't you think? Like the light is too pure to play tricks."
"Yes," she said, hand tightening on his arm. "I suppose it does."
He only nodded, a single, sad incline of his head, and looked at her with soft, resigned eyes. There was that open-mouthed, bright-eyed Matthew again, who looked at her a little too long; he straightened and averted his gaze uncomfortably. She stared at him, at his greatcoat and his riding boots and how tightly he was clutching his hands; she imagined she clung to the edges of that greatcoat, her foot bumping the toe of those riding boots, her fingers brushing the knuckles of that tightly bound hand. Physical intimacy was not hers to give, but how horribly it was wanted, in those strained moments before the others reached them.
January, 1920
She wore bold, jewel-tone blue. "America?" he asked, as they danced, the fabric catching silver at every turn.
"It reminded me of someone," she said, her eyes near black, glittering.
"Oh?" he asked innocently, but his hand on her waist sat a little tighter, her own gloved fingers smoothing across his shoulder.
"Honestly, Matthew," she whispered, her voice bubbling with amusement, "When on earth are you going to let me marry you?"
He was not aware they had stopped dancing. She took his arm and slipped between the arches, heading for the library. "I'm used to seeing you in red," he said, to defer the shocking boldness of her words, the bright glint of her hairpin at his eye level, the feel of her hand on his arm again, halfway between wrist and elbow, her black satin gloves blending into his sleeve.
She moved her hand down and her thumb caught against his cufflink. "That's hardly a proposal," she said, with a haughtiness that was also good-humoured, gliding away from him, and he tried not to notice the way fabric pooled and straightened against her as she walked.
He followed her through the corridor and out the library doors. The music and laughter inside were muffled, the air shockingly cold, and it was snowing.
III
June, 1920
She walked between the pews with hyacinth in her hands.
Her hair curled, her dress silk, her footsteps slow against the floor. Her breathing was not regular; she could see in the line of his shoulders (suited so finely, so handsomely) that he wished to turn around.
They would be called graceful, elegant, refined; poised at the altar, elegant on the dance floor, mature in a way they hadn't been eight years ago.
And then they were alone, in front of Crawley House, the motor having left ages ago. Alone, their heads leaned back against the front wall, heads fuzzy with too much champagne, staring at the starred sky.
"Well," Matthew said.
"Well." Mary turned to him, pivoted off the wall toward his shadowed form. In the dark, her dress and the white of his shirt glowed, like they had at their denouement, in the shadowed dip of land; he smiled, and his teeth too flashed bright. When she kissed him, properly kissed him, she ran her tongue over their edges, felt their uneven stagger, the point of his canines giving way to the flat plain of his front teeth. He bit down, softly. She hummed against his mouth and moved away.
She stopped at the gate and looked back at him, eyebrow raised, her hair coming undone against her neck. "You're supposed to carry me inside, Captain Crawley," she said.
He stepped toward her. "Oh, I don't know. We've never been ones to do things by the book." His voice was deliberate, hands behind his back at he walked slowly toward her; she could hardly see his eyes, but she knew from the incline of his head the look they held, the smirk they echoed, eyelashes low over his pupils. As he leaned down to her, a piece of hair fell over his forehead, brushing her temple as she leaned to meet him. "Have we?" he whispered.
He was so very close, his hands skimming over her waist, and somehow they had reached the front door; she stood against it, his hand on the doorknob, awkward across her. "We really should go inside, Matthew," she breathed. "I'm sure it's past midnight."
"Then we've been married fourteen hours."
She raised an eyebrow. "Though, as you say, not quite in any way society would call proper." Her fingers skimmed the back of his neck, the edge of his hair, his hands either side of her against the door. "And surely you want to follow some rules," she whispered, feeling warmth curl in her torso at his gaze, tilted from under his eyebrows. She could hear him breathing, and she lay her palm flat on his chest to see what rhythm it set with his heart.
"Of course," he finally said. A benediction. "I'm a dull boy from Manchester, remember?"
"Ah, but you've learned to shine, Matthew." Her eyes gleamed as they widened, teasing. Her fingers curled against the flower in his boutonnière. "You're Perseus."
He woke feeling drugged, sluggish, heavy exhaustion set in every limb. He would not open his eyes, not yet, even though he could feel light on his eyelids, its yellow glowing through them. For a moment he could think he was back in France, could think it was some hideous nightmare when he felt the undulation of breathing under him; was he lain above an injured man, was that glow the blast of a near explosion, the sharpness at his cheek the buttons of this man's tunic? He forced his eyes open but did not see green wool matted and congealed with mud.
He shifted and it was Mary's collarbone sharp under his cheek, her hip against his stomach, arm hooked over the back of his neck and fingers brushing the top of his spine. Her fingertips began to stir small circles on his back, and he gave a small hum, turning his face and body in toward the sheets until he was tucked at a somewhat uncomfortable angle against her, arm stretched across her middle to find the palm of her right hand dangling over the edge of the bed.
She ran her fingers up to his hair, a thick disarray of blond that tickled against her jaw, his stubbled cheek scraping her shoulder as he looked up. His eyes were slits of bright blue. She smiled, twisting his hair again. He breathed deeply through his nose, and muttered something like 'hello', where she felt it through her sternum, the buzz of his voice and the curve of his smile and his breath as he laughed against her skin.
Was this what it was to live? This cherished thing, watching the muscles in his forearm twitch as he tapped a pattern along her wrist; was this what it was, to wait for the other to wake quietly, to see every stage of alertness, to not quite be able to voice a greeting out of immediate slumber?
She wondered, if he'd been in New York with her, if it would have been like this, bold and sumptuous; if it would have been as romantic, without the smell of the sea clinging to his skin or the bold clang of St. Mark's marking their mornings. If she would have been daring enough to cut her hair to the latest fashions just to see the look on his face, the surprise and annoyed desire caught in his features, in his eyes, his fingers running her hair's length all too soon and rendering him speechless. If he would have kissed her like this, easy and languid and ferocious all at once, tracing her through the loose hang of her dresses, mapping again and again what he already knew by heart.
They had not had Paris. He had not wanted to see France again so soon.
Instead, Venice. Here, they could have everything of one another, a notion more thrilling than any city's folly; she could know exactly how his shoulders were set beneath fabric, the span between each of his ribs, the trail of hair down his stomach. She could know each shade of blue his eyes could turn, and which kind of kiss or smile would accompany it. She could know the spread of his hands, flat and gentle when they danced, tense through a crowd, slipping and curling in passion but always at the same place, the same curving end of her spine. She could know exactly how he behaved when he thought no-one was looking, the boyish, endearing honesty of him.
She didn't need any city for that.
Though Venice was a lovely place to have.
July, 1921
A boy. A boy. An heir.
A raven-haired, porcelain-skinned, azure-eyed boy. She had decided to call him William, outside of Matthew's knowledge; when he came striding into the room, disarrayed, in waistcoat and no tie, hair on end from worried hands, she told him. He sat on the edge of the bed, clutched her hand like a man looking for penance at the side of a saint, and wept. His palm found the hard ribbing of her braided hair (she'd grown it out again soon enough, for him, though he'd never specified he wished her to), and somewhere beneath the shadows of his bent head, she could see he was smiling.
August, 1928
"Well done!" Matthew cried, applause ringing out over the pond where William surfaced, a triumphant grin on his face.
"Careful, we could have an Olympic champion on our hands," Mary said, staring at him leant back against the dock, looking up at her in amusement. She stood beside him and watched William slip under the water again. Matthew's hand lifted and he lightly touched the back of her ankle, palm curling at the edge of her heel.
"Bare feet," he whispered. "Scandalous."
She felt loose-limbed and nonchalant, rolling her ankle out toward his touch with a smirk. For a moment she only felt his fingers skim that small patch of skin, the sun hot in her hair. William appeared over the dock's edge, in bright silver cascades of water, and Matthew's hand retracted.
"Willow, your lips are blue," she said. She gave Matthew a reproachful look. He sighed and stood, lifting the boy with him; William laughed in awe when he found himself on his father's shoulders, and Matthew walked ahead of Mary, picking gracefully over the uneven ground, evidently not caring that his shirt was stained dark with water. He took a run at the small hill outlying the trees they'd come past, and William swayed dangerously, laughing, 'Pa' caught somewhere under Matthew's own low laugh.
Mary followed behind with her shoes in her hand and the grass cool under her feet; Matthew waited for her at the top of the hill, and she set her shoes down when she met them, holding his hand for balance as she slipped them on, his other holding William's knee. The heat hit her in waves, the humid stillness of it, offset by the cool still radiating from William's skin.
His toes had left neat drips of water down Matthew's shirt, the shoulders soaked, his hair mussed by small hands; he smiled and she wanted to kiss him for it, for not caring about his dishevelment, for noticing the flush in her cheeks and pressing a slick palm to the back of her neck; for returning that hand to hers and keeping hold of it all the way to the house.
The suffocating summer cocooned her as they walked, and Matthew measured his pace to hers, languidly, fingers a sure intertwining press. William's head lolled, hair dark and highlighting copper in the sun, hands slack at his sides as he fought the day's fatigue. Water dried against her neck, leaving humid tendrils of hair to tickle there; fractions of cricket song clicked in the dry fields, buzzing up through her feet, and she was sure.
"I'm pregnant," she murmured.
December, 1930
This happened, often, she knew. When he was alone and contemplative, which somehow seemed more prevalent in the extremes of seasons; she had learned to recognise his far-away gaze and not treat it with cautious avoidance, but gingerly pull him away from his thoughts. She wondered if he thought of snow in France. She wondered if he thought of the Christmas' he'd spent there, unimaginable to her.
She saw it. That's what mattered to him, she saw it, and did not patronize him. She knew it was always slightly dangerous when his shoulders straightened like that, or he looked at her foggily, as though through a not-quite clean window. She knew, and came up to him whispering his name, louder with each repeated syllable, until she felt his rapid heartbeat and was too close for his breath to appear misty with cold.
She was here. He was not. And she could see it.
The trees swayed heavily, his sight-line fractured and broken by their movement, and he could smell the tannins of black loam, feel weak sunlight, watch it filter through black needle-thin spikes. Soil grated into his clothes and boots, brass on black, face and hands pressed to the dirt bank that hid him.
Was he speaking? His mouth moved, but a low drone covered his words; black dots in the sky – angled, severe contraptions that he was mimicking the sound of, tilting his head back further as they moved overhead. His helmet fell, and when he twisted to retrieve it Charlotte stood beside him, smudging dirt on her face, mud tangled and cracking in her russet hair. Was that who he was speaking to? No no, she must get down, they will see. He wished he could afford to cry, to speak to her. Darling, you must move now, quietly, crouch beside me. His hand beckoned; her eyes were black with fear, and he could not breathe.
Matthew.
He could not cry.
Matthew, Matthew, Matthew.
He could not breathe.
"Matthew!" Sharp. A hand on his heart. "Matthew." Mary's face was above him, snow blindingly bright around them, stinging his eyes. Her footprints indicated she'd been standing where he'd projected Charlotte; the cold snapped in his lungs and he pushed her away more harshly that he intended. She straightened in affront, stepping back from where they were huddled under the cedar.
"I'm – I'm perfectly fine," he said. He shifted and the bark scraped and caught on his coat. "I just – "
Mary stopped him with a light press of her hand to his arm. "You don't have to explain," she whispered.
"Yes, I do. I've never thought of... any of you there, so I do have to explain. It was Charlotte."
Her hand stayed, head tilting; she gave a tiny nod and pressed her lips together. When he was finished, his body vibrating with the words, she put her lips to his, not fully kissing him, and whispered: "She's perfectly happy, she's fine. It's Christmas... we're fine... " It was as though her words could transfer faster to his mind if she said them this closely, fingers circling against his, his own hand coming to rest at the back of her neck.
"You're cold," he whispered, feeling the slight damp in her hair, her nose to his cheek.
"It's December."
His breath shook against her mouth. "Yes," he said, voice low and caught in his throat. "True." She kissed him properly then, body leaning over his, but he pushed her away as gently as possible, and she moved to the edge of where the snow had not reached, perching there at the edge of the radius with her back to him. In the weak light, she was caught out pale, and he stared at a small tendril of hair curling against her neck.
"Mary," he said, after a long while, pressing the pad of his thumb into a corner of tree's bark until he felt the wood's dull, aching press against his bone. "Is this all right, are we... I know I shouldn't be – I'm sorry." He rolled his thumb and it caught awkwardly, from flesh to bone beneath to flesh again.
"Oh, Matthew," she said, and it was cool and silken, detached. "You don't mean that." He was suddenly back in the night he proposed, her arms held around her in much the same manner, face lifted to the drifting snowflakes.
He went to her and pulled her back against him, pressed his face to her shoulder; felt her lean into him, hands moving to smooth over his. They heard, from the far off silhouettes, Robert's voice laughingly admonish William, Charlotte's high squeal above it. He could hear Mary breathing, here, in the insularity snow provided, shoulder rising and falling against his chest. "I love you," he murmured, delicately, into the shell of her ear.
February, 1939
Everything seems so golden one minute, then turns to ashes the next.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He gave a quiet smile when she came to sit on the bench next to him. Everything was sombre, the black and grey of his suit, but he was trying, in his features, with a wide-eyed faux innocence, to act normal. Exhaustion seeped through her and settled her limbs, rendering her immovable.
"I imagine you mother is – "
"Resting." She barely recognised her own voice, rough and full of static, grating like a needle at the record's end. Matthew's head tilted toward her, cocked at an angle of precise concern, his eyes wide and doleful. Mary gave the thinnest veil of a smile, pressing her palm against his knuckles where his hand lay between them. She watched his hair flicker in the breeze, brought forward to graze his brow.
"Come here, you look like William," she said, pushing it back gently. Matthew's eyes flickered shut, and he breathed out in a steady stream.
"I've telephoned him. He's coming up from Cambridge on the first train in the morning."
"Good. I'm glad you did that. He should be here."
He nodded. "Was Edith there with you when... "
"Yes. God, I'll have to write to Sybil."
Matthew's eyes pressed closed with the tremble of realized duty in her voice. "Darling, I'm so, so sorry," he whispered.
Their hands were still twined on the bench's smooth wood; Matthew leaned to her, but her fingers stopped him, holding his jaw and running her thumb over his mouth. "Oh, Matthew," she whispered. "It wouldn't do for the Earl to kiss a girl in black."
His head fell in her grasp, breath hitting her fingertips. "I wasn't going to kiss you," he said, voice primal, somewhere deep in his chest; his face lined with a weary sort of sadness. She could feel his pulse under her thumb. In dusk, he was turned gold and silver-green, the blackening mass of the cedar above them stirring with wind. His eyes reflected her own small features pinpointed against the hulk of the house and the sky above it, pale to yellow to red, and for the first time all day, she took a full lungful of air.
We never quite notice the sunsets.
There was still orange light in the spires from a fading sun, and she watched, one by one, as the lights in the abbey were flicked on, first downstairs then up, his pupils contracting to meet them.
In the morning, she knew, they would not be able to deny any of it. In the morning, Cora's eyes would be bloodshot, a letter to Sybil would be written, and William would arrive; she was sure she could face it all with one more night of sleep.
"It's cooler than I thought," Mary murmured, as they waited for William outside the house; her mother and Edith huddled inside, in the library, in front of the fire, but she would rather be out here with the cold burning at her lungs than in that stifling room.
"Here," Matthew whispered, and she felt his hands come round her shoulders, jacket enveloping her. She touched his forearm in thanks, shirtsleeve cool and crisp under her fingers, then absently moved her hand to the centre of his back, palm stilling there as they both looked to a fixed point down the drive, where a silhouette wavered in the outlying fog.
"Typically like you, independent of transport," Mary said. She felt Matthew's hesitant laugh, his eyes intent on William's wavering figure; even from afar he looked gaunt, this thin and lithe creature with his flop of dark hair and his bag throwing his shoulders off-kilter. He stopped a few paces short of them, and placed his bag down on the gravel. Mary's hand stayed sure on Matthew's back, his body leaning to press against it, a silent indication for her to go forward.
"Hello!" Charlotte chirped beside them, held steady under her father's hand.
"Hello, Chalkie," William said kindly.
He let out a breath and looked at his parents, hands splaying uncomfortably at his sides. "Well," he said. "Earl and Countess, then." His voice shook, eyes an ungodly blue, nervous.
She hated that he'd had to come home now. She hugged him fiercely, and he smelled different, she thought, the air of dawn caught in his coat alongside train fumes. He took a breath and turned to Matthew, whose shoulders sank in appraisal of him, a quiet study with just his eyes; reaching out to smooth a hand to the boy's hair, that gentle, jarring look returning to his face. "Little Lord William," he said, voice smaller and rougher than she'd ever heard it.
William smiled, tilting his chin up proudly. "Papa." He sniffed, looking about cursorily before softly laughing. "Awfully gallant of you to give Mama your jacket, but you must be bloody freezing out here."
Matthew pulled William sidelong against him, giving Mary a knowing look over his head. "I'm making up for my proposal. It was snowing that night, I'll have you know," he said playfully.
Mary gave a weak smile at his raised eyebrow, her hands tilting further into the wool. "I wasn't cold, then." Her eyes glowed.
"No, I suppose you weren't," Matthew murmured. William noticed the gaze between them and tactfully extricated himself from his father's grip.
"Right," he said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "I really should say hello to Grandmama. Come on then, you."
Charlotte took his hand happily. Just like that, the moment slipped, and the cold hit Mary again, watching them retreat to the door and slide from focus as she looked back into Matthew's imploring gaze, his own feet pivoting toward the house. Mary took a deep breath and followed, her hand finding Matthew's back again as they crossed the threshold; his hand reaching behind as they walked through the great hall toward the library and the sound of Cora tearfully greeting her grandson. His fingers squeezed hers, thumb brushing the inside line of her fingers and letting go as her hand slipped to his side, low on his hip, then away, and he watched her enter the room ahead of him with his jacket still on, taking in the strange, vulnerable and boxy shape of it on her frame.
He wondered what out of Robert's things they would keep. What of his father did he have? The inventory was small: photographs (those eyes were a strong trait, it seemed), letters, books. A pocket watch.
November, 1939
He was gone.
Just like Matthew had been gone all those years ago, vanished, missing, without explanation. She'd imagined him terribly wounded, torn limb from limb; she'd imagined blood and blue eyes, bluer than the hazy sky they looked to. She'd imagined him returning unrecognisable, speaking German, but still with her toy dog in his hand; she'd imagined him seeing her and not knowing who she was.
In the two months since war's outbreak, their son had donned a uniform and left for the drone of planes. Matthew, too, often disappeared.
"Do you remember we used to call him Willow?"
"After 'Wind in the Willows'."
"He only ever let you read it to him."
"Because I did all the voices. He told me once that he thought Carson was quite like Badger."
She tracked Matthew's movements from the edge of the stairs, his uneasy pacing back and forth along the carpet. "We shouldn't have let him go," she whispered. "It all makes me feel so tired, Matthew. And so very desperately sad."
He stopped moving."Understand, Mary, that he had to go," he said. "I hate it too, but he had to." She stared at him in his uniform, bleached by the low autumn light, and with the brace and the aiguillettes and the straightness with which he held his back, she could imagine they were back in 1917. He still looked fine in it, regal even; she felt a small bought of shame at such attraction being stirred below her concern, her anger; yet the conflicting emotions were a re-visitation from twenty-five years past, no different from in that earlier state of war other than the guilt was gone – she was free to admire him, to worry for him, to engage him.
"What will happen if...?"
He shut his eyes. "Is that what you think I care about, in all this?" he said, voice thick. "Whether he'll carry the line?"
"What if he dies?" she said. "What will you do about an heir then?
He gave her a dangerous look, voice crackling with emotion. "Don't play with me, Mary. We don't know what losing a child is like, thank God."
Not yet hung in the air, and her eyes were sharp, and he could tell she didn't think at all before she said what she did next. "But many people do know what that's like, now!"
Matthew was winded, felt suddenly sick with her words, seeing all those young men again; boys, from a country with a language not his own, that he had – "If we lose him – if – then we will mourn him like any other family does, and in that time I will have no thought for the bloody estate or the god-damn title."
"Oh, don't you see, Matthew?" she said, throwing up her arms. "Families like ours must worry for it. Before anything else. Why do you think my father was the way he was?"
His gaze steeled; he let out an incredulous breath, and left her alone in several quick strides of the room.
She found him in the library, staring out at the grounds, mouth a grim line. He didn't notice her come in. The wireless was on, faintly murmuring under a higher static, the volume hastily turned down. Mary came up behind him and touched his shoulder, standing at his periphery on tentative feet. "Darling, I'm sorry," she whispered.
His shoulder jumped under her palm. His eyes were a cold silver and she stepped backward until her back hit the bookshelves on the opposite side of the room. She shut her eyes, hands over her face, and breathed into her palms until she heard him move. She pushed herself toward where he was perched on the sofa. "I should be sorry," he whispered, eyes closing slowly in anguish. She sat next to him and it came as a relief that he let her pull his head into the recess of her shoulder; his breath stuttered, and she pushed his hair from his forehead, curling the dark blond of it, cool and sleek, in her fingers.
"I'm terrified, you know. For him. I know what it could mean for him and... I don't want him to be ruined."
"You're not, Matthew."
His voice was bitter and distant. "Maybe. By luck."
"No."
"Yes." He edged closer to her, until his nose was pressing into her neck; she bent over him and kissed the edge of his jaw, the jump of his pulse, his eyelashes flickering on her skin. "I thought I'd only have to wear this bloody uniform once a year," he said, cruelly. "And now I don't know when I'll be out of it. I... didn't know whether to be proud or despondent, seeing Will in his."
"Proud at first, despondent later."
A breath of laughter hit her neck.
"Anyhow," she admonished. "You're here. And all of us are on the right side of the line."
He nodded against her and said nothing more, staying still with his hands held loosely in his lap. She watched the tremor in his fingers slow, the sharp outline of the tendons recede from his skin. After some time, he shifted up from her grasp, with gracious eyes, and pressed a tiny kiss behind her ear.
The right side of the line.
ii
July, 1942
Dinner was a non-event. With only them in the house it seemed rather pointless; yet somehow, out of rigorous tradition, they had dressed for it.
He watched Mary walk out onto the terrace, shadowed by the evening. She moved toward the darkened grounds, dress glimmering in the soft oblong light from the windows. She seemed slimmer, sleeker, body folded upon itself and pale, apart from her dark head. There was a record on the gramophone, the sound floating delicately out from the great hall.
She heard his footsteps slow on the gravel as he stood behind her, his palm suddenly warm between her shoulder blades. She looked up and smiled. "It's a nice song," she murmured.
"It's from some film or another. William left it on his last leave."
She leaned her head back, hair soft under his jaw. "Did he seem all right, to you?"
"I think he seemed like his mother's storm-braving qualities had taught him well."
She straightened, turned and looked up into the softness that lined his pale eyes, the reassurance there, but still flecked with edges of doubt. He gave the tinge of a smile, sighed shyly and held his arms out to her. She stepped into them, so familiar with this feeling now, and he led them in a quiet, swaying, non-prescribed dance around the drive.
I'm old fashioned...
"Charlotte will miss him terribly," she said.
But I don't mind it...
"He'll write to her," Matthew murmured, and Mary stopped moving. "And he'll write to you, and me, and his Grandmamas. But he won't say everything."
That's how I want to be...
The night was hot and thick, without a breeze. Matthew looked up at the silent sky, half-expecting the dark smudge of planes to appear, their low drone trailing them, but he only saw Orion's belt. Mary's hand tightened on his shoulder, and he thought of how a shift of cloth could leave one collarbone more exposed than the other; he thought of imperfect symmetry, of the church arches he'd seen still standing in triptychs while the rest had fallen into rubble. He thought of bricks and mortar cracking with frost. Rain. August. Gramophones and hyacinths; he thought of these fragments of a life lived.
... As long as you agree to stay old-fashioned with me.
"It's his birthday tomorrow," she murmured. "21."
His hand lingered in hers long after they'd stopped moving; they stayed stood in the middle of the drive just out of reach of the pools of indoor light, the red edge of her dress caught in it, sparked like an ember, his eyes catching silver refractory glints.
"You know, there's something I never gave back to you," he said.
"Oh?"
"I'm afraid it may have more than a few scratches." He looked down at her from under his eyelashes, and for a moment she felt all her breath leave her. He tucked his cheek next to hers, and whispered, "I've carried her with me always."
Holding the little toy dog in her palm, she felt the momentous weight of memory spreading an ache through her throat. "Oh, Matthew," she said. "Thank you." One of its felted ears was slightly ragged, the eyes no longer gleaming, a streak of dirt worked into the cloth of its left flank. She ran her thumb over the stain, the small green collar. It felt like a neat bit of closure, where she had given it to him in the middle of one war, and here he returned it in the midst of another. She took a thick breath at the remembered image of him; Matthew leaned down and kissed her, tasting salt.
"Now," he said, looking over her head back to the house. He held her shoulders, slipping past her toward the library doors. "What do you say to a nightcap?"
Mary sniffed, tilting her head at him. "Mmm, someone was once very disapproving of my stealing the Earl's brandy."
He smiled with the undue assurance of a man confident in the immediate lay of things; boyish and charming, teeth grazing his bottom lip. He smiled proudly, with quiet poise and flirtation. He was leaning against the edge of the open french window, parallel with where it faced the drive; he turned in profile, hands in his pockets, tilting back on his heels. Mary took in the long line of him, gold catching in his hair when he eventually looked back at her.
"Ah," he said quietly. She let her fingers skim sideways over the buttons of his waistcoat as she passed him, and he sighed, eyelashes flickering. "And... what if we agree... no names, no pack drill?" he asked.
Meeting his amused gaze, she crossed her index finger over her lips.
end.
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl."
– Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
- T.S. ELIOT; THE WASTE LAND (1922)