This was written for the seven loves challenge on the forum, wherein we had to pick a character to write these seven prompts about seven different ways of love. I had to choose Mrs. Patmore, because she is awesome and a little too neglected. I agonized a bit over her first name, since I didn't want to give her one and have it jossed later, so I compromised and gave her a nickname.
Six Times Mrs. Patmore Loved
1. First Love
When the smell of bacon and eggs wafted up to the girls' bedroom in the Patmore household each morning, you can bet a bushel of berries the whole batch of them would be clamoring and clawing their way to the breakfast table. First in line always got an extra helping, and woe be to the sister who stood in the way of the shortest, the stoutest, the indomitable Miss Birdie.
That Birdie had an aptitude for appetite could not be denied. She adored food, which, while doing no favors for her hardy Patmore build, gave her a slight edge during the frenzied morning tussles, shoving her way past Nelly and trampling over Gracie with little to no compunction.
But it wasn't only the eating and tasting which gave Birdie such a passion for consumption. One morning, while still quite young, and striding triumphantly past the prostrate forms of her felled and groaning sisters to claim her spoils, her mother called out to her.
"Come to the stove, Birdie, and I'll teach you something nice."
With a flourish her mother cracked an egg over the hot, oiled skillet, and Birdie watched in delight as the translucent ooze danced and sizzled, smelled the intoxicating scent of fresh food when it first hits pan, and felt the mastery over tools and ingredients in creation of such flavors and aromas, almost an art form unto itself.
The high calling of Cooking had found her, the first and greatest love of her life.
.
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2. One-sided Love
"Pa?"
"Yes, Birdie?"
"Why do you all call me that? It ain't nothing like my real name."
Her father's face stayed glued to the front page and neglected the earnest eyes beseeching him for even the smallest evidence of regard.
"Can't say. Something your mother came up with; don't remember why now. You can go on and ask her if you're so interested."
He flicked through the pages without once looking down to his daughter, till she grew exasperated and bored, and went off to find someone else to pester.
...
"Pa?"
"Yes, Birdie?"
"I baked some cookies with your favorites: walnuts and raisins."
Her father was reclining on a chair by the fire, his eyes closed with the weariness of a hard day's work.
"Very nice of you, Birdie. Leave them right there and I may have a few later on."
He began to snore as she walked away, and the next morning when she woke he was gone for work again, the plate of cookies left untouched.
...
"Pa?"
"Yes, Birdie?"
"I've gotten word back. They're giving me the post as kitchen maid. I'll be leaving for Surrey on Thursday."
Her father's fingers stopped their work on the fence, and his gaze slowly lifted till level with hers. Her heart soared with the recognition, but collapsed just as quickly when his focus went past her to the commotion just behind.
"What's that you're doing there, Gracie? Stop fidgeting with the ladder and finish your chores! Sorry, Birdie, what's that you were telling me?"
Her father went back to mending the fence and she hurried off to obey her mother shouting for assistance in the kitchen. She left for Surrey that Thursday while he was still at work.
...
"Pa?"
Yes, Birdie?
"I've finally been made cook. Took me years of hard work, but I've been offered my first job at Downton Abbey, an estate up in Yorkshire."
Her father's tombstone was covered in weeds. The family had cleared out of the old home years ago, and no one was left to tend to the grave. The only sounds in the cemetery were the rustle of leaves overhead, but between the whispers of soft breeze she thought she could hear the replies in death that he never would have given in life.
How very good for you. Always wanted to be a cook, didn't you?
"Yes, Pa. Cooking's my life, and now I'll be able to run my own kitchen just the way I like."
I'm very proud of you. You always were the most ambitious of the lot. Wish I could have been there to see my sweet Birdie's dreams come true.
She had loved him. Loved the smudgy way his fingers looked after reading the paper. Loved the smoky way he smelled after dozing by the fire. Loved the way he had a sense for trouble even a mile off. He worked from dawn to dusk to keep them all fed and warm and clothed, and she loved him for that too.
He never said those three words she yearned to hear, but thinking back to it, she never had either. She'd say them now. She felt that somehow he could hear.
"I love you, Pa."
She felt that somehow she could hear him back.
I love you, Birdie.
.
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3. Tragic Love
The clock chimes noon and one eye opens, but she doesn't mark the late hour or consider the length of her repose. Her mind has been freed from that bliss of slumber, and all rational thought is waylaid by the unrelenting knowledge that for the past week has gripped every moment of waking conscious:
Nelly. Nelly is dead.
They were born too close together and grown too much alike to truly be friends, both their dreams settled on the single goal of who could rise from kitchen maid to cook first. And while bitter rivalry soured most of their time together, bitter regret marked all their time apart, for it was only in separation that they felt those bonds of sisterhood, so much deeper than any friendship, stretch and strengthen between them.
But Nelly's gone now, gone deep into the earth, and buried with her are the thousands of things Birdie always felt and never said, the questions she's always wondered and never asked.
Do you envy me as much as I do you? Do I inspire you as much as you do me? So many times I've wished to be you. Was it the same for you as well?
The match of tragedy has been struck. Fires of grief consume her, burn her up till she's left nothing but a heap of ashes – cold, grey, and useless. She'd like to be gathered together and scattered over the ocean, to let her despair dissolve into the deep or be carried away by the current.
She tries to blink away the swelling sting, but her eyes still become pools. Soon they will become rivers, she knows, and before her body is awash in sobs she attempts to stem the tide by burying her face in the lumpy pillow and willing her mind back to sweet unconsciousness.
The clock chimes midnight but her eyes stay closed. She's trained herself to sleep through the disturbance. And although her dreams may not always be pleasant, she prefers their pinprick to the fierce stabs of reality, and to sleep away the pain of love long lost, the remorse of love long past reclaim.
.
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4. Romantic Love
"Have you seen him?" Elsie Hughes asked with a coy smile. Mrs. Patmore almost choked on her tea at the sight, so uncharacteristic of the stodgy head housemaid.
"And just who are you talking about, Elsie?" she sputtered.
"The new chauffeur, of course!" Elsie cried, as though it should have been obvious. And really it should have. The gossip was everywhere: the Granthams were modernizing, and the addition of a new motorcar meant also the addition of its new and interesting driver.
"I haven't seen him," Mrs. Patmore informed her tartly, "nor do I care too. A lot of nothing a chauffeur has to do with the kitchens, and if I did happen to run across the fellow, I'd thank him not to track oil and petrol onto my clean floors and be on with my day."
The next morning Mr. Taylor strode boldly into the kitchen, looking trim and fine in his chauffeur's livery, and without preamble informed Mrs. Patmore that his dinner had been adequate, but the scones she sent for his breakfast that morning were unacceptable, and to remember in future that he was allergic to nuts.
Mrs. Patmore felt the heat rise to her hairline, and would have attributed her change in color to a justified rage at his impertinence, except for some odd reason she couldn't stop staring into his eyes. They were a particularly dreamy shade of brown, like the silkiest chocolate, and a traitorous voice in the back of her mind whispered that her rosy hue was most definitely an embarrassed blush, not an angry flush.
Her temper was failing her along with her voice, which remained nonplussed while he awaited her reply. Her crimson face and general ogling of his form did not go unnoticed by the young man, who, after several minutes of bemused silence, turned on his heel with a cheeky smirk and strode off just as confidently as he came.
She made sure to pack for him the nuttiest scones she could find the next morning. She reasoned that if she couldn't end all her embarrassing trouble by killing the handsome interloper outright, then at least she could keep him coming back to the kitchens everyday.
.
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5. Intense Love
She dreams about it, sometimes.
In her dreams she holds it in the palm of her hand, caresses it fondly in the dark where no other eye can see. She knows how precious it is, how others have sought to own it and keep it for themselves.
Is it love, she wonders? No, not love – nothing so pure – the intensity of feeling that boils like molten metal in her chest she can only name as lust, something she was warned since a little girl to carefully guard her heart against.
Thou shalt not covet, the Good Book says. But for Mrs. Patmore it's the one commandment she's powerless to obey.
With a steely look Mrs. Hughes pats the storeroom key hanging at her side. It sways hypnotically as the housekeeper walks away, back and forth, the rhythmic tinkling as it rattles on the crowded ring a bewitching medley to the cook's ears.
Mrs. Patmore's eyes are transfixed on the swinging key. Her hands twitch with desire.
She knows what she'll be dreaming of this night.
.
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6. True, but Imperfect Love
There's a fine spidery crack – scarcely visible when the light's streaming through – in the top window over the sink. Mr. Branson was the culprit, his sturdy cup taking a toss out of his hand after one gesticulated speech too many, to smash spectacularly into the upper pane. He looked rather pathetic and sheepish after the fact, so instead of telling anyone about it she'd simply covered the spot over with a decorative platter.
In the tile near the stove is a deep crevice where Gwen once dropped a heavy cast iron pot after a spider had crawled out of it. What the housemaid had been doing with the stoneware in the first place, she'll never know. But Gwen's horrified scream was quick replaced with mortified silence, and looking ready to burst into tears after seeing the outcome of calamity, she'd only told Gwen not to worry her pretty red head before laying a thick rug over the evidence and warning the kitchen maids not to trip over it.
Daisy, in an even dopier state than normal, once opened a cupboard so forcefully that she tore it clean off the upper hinge. Daisy had wailed that the door had been wobbling for weeks and was due for catastrophe at any moment, but even so the splintered remains were impossible not to notice, and Mr. Carson had to be informed and the carpenter sent in. But even after the repairs were completed and a fresh coat of paint had thoroughly dried, that cupboard door never did open and close quite the same way again.
In her mind Mrs. Patmore replays the scenes, and a thousand others besides, her breath heavy with remembrance and shallow with emotion as she flicks the lights off one by one. The kitchen – her kitchen – is cast in darkness, and her old, battered eyes soak in a final, sweeping glimpse.
The bags are packed. The car is waiting. The engines are humming, ready to drive her off to retirement and idleness.
A wrinkled hand runs along the oft-used counter, feeling the memories of years gone by imprinted into the nicks and grooves that run rough through her fingertips.
It's far from perfect, but it was her kitchen, and she loves it just the way it is.
(And One Time She was Loved in Return)
7. Family Love
It took four knocks till he finally answered. A wearied young man appeared at the door, his bloodshot eyes bearing an unsettling resemblance to the walking undead. Mrs. Patmore was again reminded why she had never been tempted to have a baby of her own.
He stared blearily at her first with confusion, and then with a grateful relief so palpable she was afraid he might embrace her on the spot.
"I've already been to the market, William." She warded off any untoward displays of affection with a firm hand to the lad's chest. "Just show me to the kitchen."
To the kitchen she was led, where she spent the rest of the morning doing what she did best. She was cooking, she was active once again, and that feeling of usefulness imparted a vigorous energy her old bones hadn't had the motivation to muster for some time.
Her hands whirred through the familiar movements. They were a bit rusty from misuse and infrequent practice, but enough muscle memory remained in those gnarled and knobby appendages that they maneuvered efficiently and without much concerted guidance from her aged brain. That organ instead found leisure to drift backwards to the fond nostalgia that the bygone and cherished routines evoked.
Rolling out the dough for the meat pie –
"Now lay the crust down...gently, Daisy, gently!"
"Sorry, Mrs. Patmore! Like this, then?"
"That's better. But for heaven's sake girl, use a softer grip or you'll tear the whole thing in two and have to start from the beginning!"
Setting another pot of potatoes to boil –
"You can peel them much faster if you used a knife, Daisy."
"But I'm so afraid of cutting myself!"
"Well of course you will, if you hold it like that! Grip it like this – there, that's better – and you won't have to worry about slicing a finger off."
There was a clock nearby that she couldn't see but chimed out the passing hours, till at last it alerted her to midday's arrival. She mopped her wet brow and cracked a few stiff knuckles, surveying with satisfaction the toils of charitable labor: arrayed on the counter and ready for the larder - meals aplenty for a week, at least. She gathered some of the food onto a tray to take up to the hungry new mother.
Old, creaking knees ascended slowly up the stairs to where she'd been told the nursery was nestled, and where she would greet the girl – the woman, she kept needing to remind herself – that was as close to a daughter as she'd ever had.
She opened the door with one hand, the tray of food balanced in the other. Daisy's face burst into a tired grin at her entrance, and she briefly wondered if it was herself or the food that heralded such unreserved joy.
"Mrs. Patmore!" Daisy squealed. "William said you had come!" She inhaled deeply the savory aroma of shepherd's pie. "And you've brought lunch!"
"Of course I have! Think you could keep me away after I heard the news? And what else do you think I'd bring, foolish girl! Now hand over the baby and have a bite to eat."
The baby was handed over, and Mrs. Patmore cradled the child in the crook of her elbow while Daisy chewed and munched her way through the platter. Between mouthfuls she prattled on about the details of motherhood, while Mrs. Patmore, hearing only a small fraction of what flowed from her companion's mouth, regarded the new life set in her arms: a sweet baby girl with a shock of dark curls and a set of deep blue eyes, a perfect blend of mother and father if ever she saw one.
"We haven't named her yet." Daisy's serious tone immediately tuned Mrs. Patmore back in to the conversation.
"And why not?" she charged. "Already three days old and no name? Come now, Daisy, picking a name's not so difficult a task that I'm sure even you can manage it."
"I know, but...well, we were talking and..." a hard look from Mrs. Patmore put and end to Daisy's dithering, and gave the young woman pause to smile shyly. "We'd like to name her Birdie."
The bundle cooed.
"Oh would you, now?" Mrs. Patmore forced a laugh. She worked around the growing lump in the back of her throat to ask officiously, "And just why is that?"
Daisy wasn't fooled by her posturing. Her smile broadened and her voice eased into confidence.
"I wanted to name her after someone special. Someone who we'd be proud to see her grow to be like."
No human voice broke the silence that followed, but a bird chirped out the window that made the baby gurgle.
"And who better than someone who…who taught me everything I know?" Daisy continued. "Who was always there for me? Who was like the mum I never had, and –" Through moistened eyes and a choked throat she managed to finish. "And who I love just as much?"
There was no helping it now. Mrs. Patmore had cried many times in her life, but not in recent memory, and never tears of joy. Her dripping eyes and scrunched face blared out the heart that was overflowing, but her mouth spoke softly her approval.
"I think it'd be a fine name for her," she agreed.
Both women sniffled, the crying twin images sitting three feet away and thirty five years apart. Mrs. Patmore saw the spectrum of life reflected in the one just beginning in her arms, the one in its heyday across from her, and the one near its close that sat in her chair.
Birdie was drooling, and she wiped the dainty chin with her handkerchief.
"I think you're right. She looks like a Birdie, don't she?" Daisy asked.
"She does, Daisy."
Her early years directed with purpose and ambition. Her middle days filled with triumph and loss. Now her twilight hours were fading fast. She could feel it in the ache of her back each morning, in the way she dozed every afternoon. Her joints were brittle and her hearing weak, and she groaned every time she walked more than three yards.
But she wouldn't leave this earth as empty as she once thought she would. And she would leave it knowing she was loved.
END
Hopefully #5 made sense. I was told by a certain someone that it didn't (but it may be he is just not DA-fanatical enough). Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!