Credit where credit is due: the premise for this fic came from ARCurren, so you can blame her for the angst fest. Beta by the flawless Mrstater of Mary/Richard stanning infamy. Shippy-feelings and other feedback provided by the sassy afraidnotscared. And I think Julian Fellowes might have had a part in it all, but don't quote me on that.
The sky looks like rain when he sees the reflection of her face in the brass headlight he is polishing. Before her image becomes enlarged enough to signal that she is standing right behind him, he sees her head sneak a furtive peek over her right shoulder, his heart enlivened with the idea that she has stolen away to see him.
"Branson," she begins as he turns to greet her with a courteous nod, planting himself at a respectful distance. "Could you take me into Thirsk on Thursday evening?"
"That shouldn't be a problem, milady. I'll just need to clear it with his Lordship."
"Quite right," she replies, then looks down with that cautionary, pregnant pause which he knows means her mind is brewing. Her head lifts up, the meaning in her eyes not the least bit elusive as she says, "Actually, he's already given me permission to go out that night."
He cannot account for the seemingly narrowed distance that has sprung up between them, but he takes a step forward to accommodate the trend. "But..." he says, the smile only in his voice.
Her smile is on her lips, while her voice is warm and unashamed, conspiratorial. "But he thinks I'm going to Ripon for a meeting for one of my charities."
The Guns of August have been booming for little over a year, yet so remote are they from quaint North Yorkshire that most days they can hardly hear even an echo. Aside from the occasional Bad News or an upsettingly frank article, time continues to pass in that hazy sameness that fools one into thinking no time is passing at all.
The air is like lukewarm steam while he internally peruses all of the indiscrete events occurring in Thirsk that week. "I won't take you to the ELFS peace rally," he informs her bluntly, though his elation at the prospect of being her (this time) witting accomplice is such that he decides with enough persuasion he may just amend that position.
"It's not for that." Her smile turns impish at his disbelieving look. "Not entirely!" she laughs. "Of course I want to at least see it, but I'll have you know my real purpose in going is much more innocent."
"So much more innocent that you have to lie to your father about it?"
Her grin is cheeky – "When you hear why I want to go you'll say yes" – and irresistible as well, because these days he'd probably say yes without even asking why. But he obliges:
"Why?"
She reaches into the folds of her dress and presents him with a letter. He reads it impassively, eyes widening slightly as he reaches the end, and then looks back up to her face glittering with shared excitement. "Gwen's getting married?"
The clouds thunder lightly as she beams. "She's asked me to come and I told her I would, but I don't think that kind of a wedding is something my parents would allow me to attend."
That kind, she says. My kind, he thinks, and any kindling of altruism is extinguished.
"I don't think we should be conspiring together to fool your father," he says with a backward step, handing her the letter. She accepts it gingerly, confused at the sudden cold turn. "Just tell him the truth. You said yourself that it's innocent enough."
She frowns. "They won't let me go. You know they won't." She eyes turn beseeching. "Please, Branson. I promised her."
"Then you shouldn't make promises you can't keep," he snaps the rebuke, and winces at the way she leans back and the accusatory note in her eyes. Not you too, they say before she turns around and walks briskly away.
"Wait. I didn't mean –" he calls, but she is still retreating. "Where are you going?" He runs after her. "Lady Sybil!"
He quickly catches up to her, and she forces him to walk silently beside for several minutes before she relents to stop. "'I'm going to find Lynch," she says finally. She crosses her arms. "I'll take the governess cart if I have to!"
"The governess cart? All the way to Thirsk?" He shakes his head, laughing. "You'd have to start Wednesday morning just to make it in time."
"Then so be it. But I will get there, one way or another." She continues her march to the stables, calling over her shoulder to him as the first drops of rain begin to fall:
"I always keep my promises."
Hindsight
February, 1919
They came. They saw. They conquered.
Only Branson is left standing, dumbfounded in defeat, stock still in the center of the small and emptied room, the image of Lady Mary's red coat trailing through the door a final victory blow set on infinite loop in his mind. A part of him stubbornly refuses to believe, while the rest feels it may very well take the remainder of his lifetime simply to process the events which had just unfolded as he stood helplessly by, and if time had any compassion it would have ceased to pass the moment she'd imparted her Judas' kiss of a farewell to allow him the leisure.
But the earth has not stop spinning and the minutes tick by just as evenly as they always have before he watched his future disintegrate. He hears it even now, the measured pace of the timepiece on the mantle, a steady rhythm to his own frenetic and pounding heart. A few minutes pass and the beating calms; his consuming shock and disbelief begin to dissipate, and is at last dispelled altogether a few more minutes later, after he unconsciously registers Lady Edith revving up the engine, by his first coherent thought:
I need to leave.
This is bolstered by the second, which is really an addendum to the first:
I need to leave her.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, and for the first time in years there is clarity. The rosy lenses are unhinged and his vision is no longer distorted. He sees everything with crystalline hindsight, the way she has ravaged his life, the dreams and purpose and time – so much time! – that she has usurped, that he had sacrificed again and again and again only to be left standing, cluttered garage exchanged for dingy inn room, just exactly as he'd started: lonely, still, and waiting – always waiting – waiting for her to come to him.
But she will never come. Or, more accurately, she will never stay. And if it were down to him he would be at the docks with a one-way ticket in hand by first light, bags packed, never to be heard from again. This throbbing conviction spreads through his limbs and sends them flying, to the corner of the room, where he had stowed his small case, back to the bed, where he lays it open, and finally here and there about the small room as he begins tossing in the few paltry items he has brought with him. He closes the case and heads for the door. A straight shot from North Yorkshire to Liverpool, that is the plan. A failsafe one, he decides, foolproof against the drowning waters of her eyes, the ensnaring mouth which drips of verisimilitude. He knows a single sight of her would be enough to waylay his resolve, and he heads out the door, Downton Abbey and all its inhabitants consigned to the dust in his feet, before he stops dead, a groan escaping as the fly in the ointment surfaces.
But –
But there is still the matter of the car.
It must be returned. He is to return it in the morning.
He sighs then, but does not stop walking to the staircase, although he does momentarily pause on the landing, considering briefly, really only a second or two, of getting his money's worth out of the room and leaving come dawn. He paid cash in advance when they first arrived, a detail he did not care to extrapolate to Lady Mary in the wake of his humiliation. But ultimately he decides against the idea. The scant hours he spent in the hard-backed chair getting choked to death by his tie and nerves offered no rest but plenty of happiness. But now, a comfortable night alone in a bed made for two seems a petty recompense for the destruction of his hopes, and instead he forgoes the satisfaction of rest, leaves the inn to the bemused expression of its keeper, and starts up the engine bare minutes after the getaway car sped his Lady back to her tower.
The car ride back teems with unsung poetry. There are verses on love. On loss and heartache. And above all of these is betrayal, reverberating throughout the small cab, thickening the resentment till he can eat it with a spoon.
Believe it or not, I will stay true to you.
Her emollient words did not have the desired effect. The blow was not softened. His faith was not renewed. It is late enough (or early enough) that the roads are empty, and stark trees waiting for a breath of warm Spring remain the only hindrances in an otherwise vast and unmarked night. And with the confluence of the unvarying terrain and pervading darkness his vision begins to change focus, shifting from the mottled gray of the road to a ghostly reel of images, one scene blending into the next – of Sybil, cascading down the stairs in turquoise trousers; breathless as an unexpected yet welcome hand takes hers; timidly visiting him in the garage, then later more boldly. Of Sybil, plucking a berry off of her first experiment in the kitchen; downcast and wordless in the face of an expected yet unwelcome proposal; a touch to her side, then a visit in the night that seals the matter on her decision and their mutual intentions, or so he had thought.
The reel continues.
Now they are not married. Now they are returned to Downton. Now she still visits him boldly, then later more timidly, and even later hardly at all. Now their engagement is relegated to the hypothetical, then later to the improbable, and even later to nothing as her sisters set to work and the suitors begin to pile up, until one day he awakens to find that he is once again only the chauffeur and she the Lady, with another year gone by.
Believe it or not–
His grip on the steering wheel tightens.
Or not.
For while he does not think her so weak that five seconds will be enough to undo her heart, five days, five weeks, five months, perhaps, under the pernicious tutelage of Mary's silver tongue might well see the deed done. And with her faithfulness thus besieged by the dark night and his darker mood, all of her beguiling minutiae – the curve of her cheek against his, the throaty laugh whispering in his ear, the veil of her undone hair sifting between his fingers – all of these which might have allayed his festering sense of betrayal begins to fade, and in his mind's eye there is only a single thought left in focus:
He will return the car in the night, and he will be gone before morning.
Silence devours the inside the cab, the tension mounting with a kind of dread for what the morning will bring. And they are all swimming in it, all four of them as they sit with their eyes to themselves and their mouths shut, the quietest of them Sybil, face dabbed with a pair of drying streaks that run from eye to chin.
But this reminder of her tears and former compliance belies the picture of defiance that she paints with her squared shoulders, her mouth set in a hard line that is fortified below by an upturned chin. They all believe her. She knows that's what frightens Mary into submission, excising any of her usual blistering remarks, and what presses Edith's sole into the gas pedal till the car careens.
But their ready faith in her word does not count for much. They are not the ones that need convincing. The surety of the absent party might have been concerning to some, but the way the endurance that lives in his eyes had clouded over at the moment of her departure does not trouble Sybil, for to her self-contained mind there is no need to worry. The matter of her abandonment is easily, almost clinically resolvable: A word of comfort, a kiss of affection, and they shall continue on, and upheld by a string of promises made to her – words like every waking moment, I'll stay, forever – she is able to live securely in her delusions.
Edith shuts off the lights as they enter the park, and there are still no words.
They tramp back through dry grass and cold air, and no one dares utter a syllable.
When they leave her at the door of her room she finally speaks:
"We will still marry," she says to their worn and unamused faces.
Mary's parting mouth looks to be winding up but Sybil raises a hand to stop her, "I wish to be alone" her sole valediction before she shuts the door in their faces, slips down to her undergarments, and sits composedly on the bed. She lays easily down, palms and fingers splayed across her ribcage as she exhales deeply and slowly. She is exhausted. But her mind will not be at rest, and behind her closed eyes flips image after image, like the turning of a book, its quick pace occasionally pausing to alight upon a specific page, a specific memory:
A sure hand passing back pamphlets – the first time she remembers him.
A forbidden feel of skin against her lace glove – the first time she had touched him.
Two nights ago – the first time she had kissed him.
She draws up each image as from a nourishing well, but it is the final page on which she lingers, remembering how her world had spun on a thread of silk before she had willing let it plummet into the darkness of the unknown. It had been her undoing, that moment of relinquish, for she had loved him before then, yes – of that she was certain. But it had been a love of theory, not yet practice, and once put into physical motion the momentum could not be stopped, only propelled ever onward by those laws of physics that she had never been allowed to learn but which ruled her world and body nonetheless.
And though she does not mean it to, her sleepiness begins to claim her as her liquid thoughts slip over and through one another, fluid and ever changing, yet always of him, with a single, solid thought skimming along the surface, a buoy to which all others find their locus:
Believe it or not I will be true to you.
I will.
She will marry Tom Branson, or she will marry no one at all.
Having returned and safely deposited Sybil to her bedchamber, Mary and Edith feel security enough to shrug off their fatigue, concede to their younger sister's request to be left alone to her torment, and convene in Mary's bedroom. Spiked energy thrummed through the pair the whole length of the midnight retrieval, but now the peeping dawn begins to dry up the last of their reserves, and it is in voices subdued with weariness that they discuss their next plan of attack.
A separation severe and immediate is at once agreed upon. Edith questions its feasibility, knowing well the determination of both parties involved. Mary is more sanguine about their chances of success, trusting in the sobering light of day to see cooler heads prevail.
"After all," she reasons, "it took all of two minutes for me to convince Sybil to return with us. Just think what I could do with two hours – or two days, for that matter."
"But she did promise to be true to him, whatever that means. And you know how Sybil is," Edith contests, tilting her head and flipping out her hand as if to show how Sybil is.
"Stubborn. Yes, I know." Mary sighs tiredly. "Which is why it might well be easier to work on Branson." She rises from her place on the bed to stand near the drawn window, one finger shifting the curtain to the side to allow for a slice of pre-dawn grey to slip into the darkened room. "It will all come down to tomorrow morning – or rather, this morning," she amends, squinting against the early light. "If we can keep her away and convince Branson to leave on his own accord, then it won't matter how many promises she gives."
Mary withdraws her hand. The curtain falls back in place and she turns towards Edith, her face in shadows.
"He'll be gone. And Sybil will be safe."
Edith nods. Divide and conquer is to be their tactic, and she dispatches herself rather early after quitting Mary's bedroom, permitting herself only the luxury of a quick change of coat and stockings, a few coarse brushstrokes through her hair, before she embarks on her quest. Half an hour later she is a shock of tangled strawberry hair bobbing in time with her steps which speed her out to the garage to await Branson's return.
But her haste had been in vain. At the last bend, when the garage at last swings into view, she finds the car already there, and he still in it, the engine humming with warmth and the suggestion that he is barely arrived. She changes trajectory to afford a more surreptitious view, and once closer sees him debark and stumble himself onto a bench, his face sinking into his hands and his body eerily still.
Her throat constricts. The uncomfortable work must be done sooner rather than later, so she forces a mouthful of air, utilizing all her learned caution in her approach, that of a newborn's mother entering the nursery, as if fearful of waking him from his stupor with her presence. She is pensive; her own thoughts on the matter are halfway between apology and indignation. How dare he – flares chiefly and hotly upon first introspection. He cannot expect to burn the world down, fashioning poor Sybil into his accomplice, without any attempts to thwart him. But she can undeceive her sense of propriety enough to admit that despite her misgivings, her former indiscretions have made her more pliable to the idea, this notion that a God-given love should transcend the arbitrary bounds established by mere mortals. And although she can sympathize with their cause, can hardly criticize, she has not yet mustered up enough goodwill to approve.
How strange it is, she feels as she draws closer, the many hours she spent in his company, learning how to drive as she learned about him, and all the while never once having a clue. She thought she knew him then, understood the individuality of the man underneath the ubiquitous livery, his passions, his pursuits, having been audience enough times to glean them. But as he stares wordlessly at her advancing form she is struck with the complete foreignness of the man sitting there, a challenge nesting in his eyes. Slightly rumpled, he has neither the good grace to look ashamed or stand for his betters, his face hard but still expressive, though the message on display unreadable.
"Lady Edith," is all he offers by way of greeting, and she wonders if she should modify her scruples enough to accept that this face might one day be named her brother.
"Good morning, Branson." She looks abashedly down to the ground, then back up again, reminding herself that she is not the one who committed treason last night. "I won't bother beating about the bush. I remember how to the point you are, and I'm sure you've already guessed why I'm here." She pauses for any sort of acknowledgement. When none is forthcoming, she continues. "You see, Mary and I have discussed the situation. We'd like to avoid any scandal, of course, and to spare Sybil as much as possible. We'll not tell Papa – nor anyone, for that matter – as long as you agree to leave at once and never contact Sybil again."
He blinks once. "There's no need to worry, m'lady. I don't plan on being here any longer than it'll take to pack up a few of my things."
"Oh." His easy acquiesce throws her slightly aback. "Very well, then." And has left her a little nonplussed. "And your notice?"
"I'll leave a letter for Mr. Carson. And you won't have to worry about what it'll say; I'll make it sound very legitimate."
"I see." Her fingers wring about one another. "Although I suppose leaving without proper notice won't recommend you to any future employers."
"Neither will eloping with my current employer's daughter."
He nods then, a segue for her comfortable and quick removal. Branson will leave. Sybil will stay. It was just as she desired, what Mary and she had hoped for. But like the armistice of Autumn the victory seems only half won, a sweet success made sour by the high casualty rate.
"Branson," she spurts out, though she will never pinpoint why. "I know you're keen to be off, but I…I do think it might be best if you waited at least a little while before you run off forever. At least until you've seen Sybil."
His eyes narrow. "You told me to leave at once."
"Not for long. Just to say goodbye, I mean."
"If I see her again I never will say goodbye."
His reply ends with an audible period, and this time Edith does not mismanage his cue, promptly taking her leave of him and his demons.
When Sybil awakens, primal beams of light creeping in through the undrawn window to jab open her eyes, she does so suddenly and with a cold stab, like a splintered knife dipped into the based of her spine, a terrifying suspicion superseded by those two words which always heralds only the worst anxiety:
What if –
The traitorous thought is expelled with her grogginess, before it has a chance to take root and immobilize her. But regardless of that she is still disoriented by anxiety: She fell asleep. She did not mean to fall asleep. She meant to bide her time, to sneak away, to meet him and greet him, to shower him with affection and as many more promises as would be required, and she fairly jumps out of her sheets, for this is not a time for dwelling, but a time for action, as only Sybil Crawley knows how, and on goes the skirt and the blouse and the stockings, up goes the hair in a bevy of pins, and pushing towards the door she swings it purposefully open – to find Mary on the other side, a blockade of crossed arms and disapproval.
Sybil looks as if she had been dressed by a hurricane. "And just where do you think you're going?" Mary asks.
"I think you know exactly where. Please stand aside, Mary."
"Get back inside of your room, Sybil."
Instead of outrage there is a low-pitched deadliness in her voice. "I will see him whether you want it or not."
Mary sighs. "Need I remind you that Papa's room is only three doors down, and that I have the power to send Branson away, now and forever? That I've always had it, and never used it?"
"Two minutes," Sybil hisses, and Mary steps inside, quietly shuts the door, and rounds on her.
"You promised me you wouldn't do anything stupid, Sybil."
"And you told me that you were on my side, Mary."
"I should like to think stopping you from throwing your life away and saving you from utter ruin would count as being on your side."
"I'm not throwing my life away!"
"I don't understand, your suddenly running off with him like this. You told me you didn't even like him!"
"I told you I wasn't sure!"
"And I suppose now you are?" Mary asks, the incredulity dripping off the angles in her face.
"Yes," Sybil answers. "Yes, I am sure." She folds her arms over her chest. "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."
"This isn't a game, Sybil. If you marry Branson it will be the end of everything you know. And life on the other side won't be this rustic glamor you think it. It will be work, hard work, and without the benefit of much money – a life that you are entirely unaware of and may one day come to resent."
"I know what it is to work – and I welcome it." A swell of sunlight breaches the casement, momentarily distracting her with the portent of dwindling morning. Sybil looks to it, shafts alighting on the far wall and falling across the softening edges in her face, the belligerence there ebbing to entreaty as her eyes return to Mary. "I didn't come to this decision lightly," she says softly. "I've thought about it for months – for years! Don't think for a moment that I haven't considered every other option." Her head shakes as she says, " I'm not made for this life, Mary."
"Aren't you?" One eyebrow lifts. "Sybil, if you want to keep working, if you want a new life, then appeal to Papa. Ask him to let you stay on at the hospital, to send you to university. Expand your horizons here. You don't need to run off to Dublin because you're tired of needle work and dressing up for dinner."
Sybil's eyes yield and land on the floor.
"It's more than that, Mary. You know it is."
"So you're in love with him?" Mary nearly scoffs.
She shrugs. "Something like that."
"'Something like that?' Forgive me if I'm not ready to shower you in blessings for 'Something like that'!"
The fuse is back, and shorter than ever: Sybil's collar is on fire, as are her eyes. "What do you want from me?" she snaps, one elbow jutting out from her hip, the other gesticulating in a way that is disturbingly reminiscent of the driver. "To declare it from the rooftops? To write out my love in in the sky? What I will say is this," she says on an exhale, a concession to becalm herself. "I feel that if I gave him up, I would regret it for the rest of my life. I don't want that to be my fate, and despite whatever you may think or say, I know you don't want that for me either. Now," she says, the pleading eyes back in place, "are you going to tell Papa?"
Mary's face crumbles. "Oh, darling. What do you think?"
When Sybil left Mary, doubtless face marching unrepentant towards the half-risen sun, she invoked to the elder's eye the embodiment of inexhaustible confidence.
When Mary comes to fetch her, four hours later, Sybil still maintains the facade of dignity; but the rest of her is flagging. Famished, thirsty, and overtired in way that her long hours of nursing never amounted to, every physical privation is laughed at in the face of the torture being done to her heart.
The morning is over, along with her chances. She is the cat whose last life has been forfeited to her complacency, too much in the habit has she been in taunting fate, in taunting him with her vacillating commitment. But like all creatures who have fallen over the precipice she remains in denial of the ground below. Mary can see this clearly as she draws near, and clutches her coat more tightly about her shoulders, a brace for what is to come, every step going out of its way to be conspicuous.
"Sybil, darling," she says soothingly when she has reached the figure seated at the stoop of the cottage. "It's nearly luncheon. Please, come back to the house with me."
Her insistence is non-negotiable, but as gentle as she is capable of. She knows there is only one way this stand off will end, and she is prepared to risk the sharp edges, to be the hands that collect the fragmented remains and piece them back together.
Sybil is on high alert, and has not looked at her sister even once, her eyes somewhere beyond the horizon. "No, I –" They focus forward, darting till they land on Mary – "I need to wait here for him. I want to be here when he returns" – and then flee back into the distance.
Mary murmurs:
"Darling...he's already returned."
"Then when he comes back," she replies with urgency. There is silence next, a woefully meaningful look. She requires assurances and the lack of these angers her. "He will come back for me," she argues, turning up her face, "and when he does he'll see me waiting – and then he'll know."
"Sybil. He's not coming back. He's left Downton for good."
Her short, barking laugh contains no humor and is bordering on desperate. "You're lying," she says, bolting up. "You'll say anything to get me to leave!" Her arms fly into the air to accentuate the point.
"You know I don't lie." A pause, a single glance to the side, and then softly, almost apologetically: "He's left a letter for Carson." Urgent family matters have drawn me back to Ireland. "Along with his notice, effective immediately."
Her lips tightly pressed, Sybil breathes heavily through her nose, then scrambles to the window and presses her face to the glass till her nose is touching. "His things are all inside!" Another humorless laugh. "He wouldn't leave without them!"
"He came here and packed a few things. Edith got it all from him when he arrived – she met him here and they spoke." She waits for the information to do its work, to draw her deflating sister back down the porch and to her side, and then continues: "He stopped by the post on his way to the station, to hire someone to collect the rest of his belongings and send them on after him." She shrugs. "It was all in the letter."
Sybil's run out of refutations, all the logical ones at least, and her mind begins to leap. An accident. Illness, perhaps. An infinite parade of sheep, bleating and bumping as they block the road, and him stranded at the impasse thinking only of her. But among all of the unlikely options there is only one that truly remains impossible to her:
That he's left her.
"But it's...no..." She shakes her head and glances back behind her, the sight of the now unoccupied cottage transfixing her, rooting her. "It's not possible," she whispers. "He wouldn't leave me."
"Darling..." Mary speaks softly, lest she be the final ill wind that knocks over the pillar of salt. "You're the one who's left him."
The truth drops violently, knocking the world away. Sybil is motionless as she drifts: though sightless, wide eyed and staring. Mute, yet open mouthed, lungs compressed of all air as if being hit with a sack of bricks. And for the first time that morning there is clarity. The events of the previous night replay across her transcending eyes, only now perceived through the perfecting lens of hindsight: the one-sided nature of her decisive departure, the appearance of infidelity in the aftermath of so little constancy, and the ineffable wretchedness of his parting gaze which plainly screamed that he did not believe her.
"No," Sybil cries. "But I haven't! I haven't!" And while Mary is in no need of a lesson on Sybil's integrity, she gets one regardless. "I'm still going to marry him, I – it'll just be a little while longer, that's all. And not very long, just until he gets a job and we have everything settled. And then we'll tell mama and papa, just like you said – in broad daylight." Her voice chokes. "Isn't that what you told me, Mary?" she yells, the charge in her voice evident and laid bare at her sister's feet, though in her heart Sybil knows there is no merit. The sister is faultless and a willing succor as Sybil collapses to a heap in her arms. "I don't understand...he promised me..."
"Oh, darling." Mary smooths down the wisps being taken up by the mild wind. "I'm so sorry Sybil."
"..and I told him...why didn't he believe me?"
"Because he doesn't know you as well as he ought," Mary replies, words etched with a bitterness she does not attempt to hide, "for someone who wanted to make himself your husband." The next she says gingerly: "Perhaps this is for the best."
"No." Sybil pushes away, walks a few paces off. Her eyes land somewhere, on an indistinct focal view of the Abbey, and she looks to be staring at something, at nothing. She sniffs as the racking subsides. "It's gone, isn't?"
Mary follows after. "What?"
"He would speak of it, sometimes, even before I agreed. The rows of small, modern flats that fill out the west part of the city. One bedroom, a small kitchen – 'low maintenance' he would say, and I'd tell him that he'd be responsible for all of it. How it always rained, but that after awhile you get used to it, you learned to appreciate the way it cleaned out the sky. He told me of the hospitals and clinics, the ones that he could remember. And the cinema they just built nearby, the lanes in Phoenix Park that we would walk together, the pubs and the parties – the things to do on a Sunday afternoon. And his cousin – he told me about a cousin of his who went to Trinity on scholarship. I used to imagine –" Her face suddenly screws, and her hands move up to shield her eyes. "It can't just be gone!"
"Sybil..."
"He's not gone!"
Mary envelops her, wraps her hands tightly and closely against her shivering back. "There's nothing here for you anymore. Please, come back up to the house with me."
And with every fiber rarified, every source depleted, every spring run dry, Sybil at last wearily complies, carried away in the crook of Mary's arm.
Halfway there Sybil remarks, "He asked me to marry him two years ago and has been wasting away in that damn garage ever since. What were a few more months to him?"
Mary truly seems to consider this, and perhaps, Sybil thinks, it is the through the bitter prism of experience through which she speaks her next words: "Sometimes a person can only suffer so much, no matter how great the love."
"And did I make him suffer? With my equivocating, with my caprice?" Her stride falters but does not stop, the sobs replenishing. "I told him yes, and then I left him at the first test of my faith. So tell me, Mary, have I ruined everything?"
It hits so close to the mark that Mary visibly winces, though Sybil is in no condition to notice anything that extends beyond her own misfortune.
"Of course not!" Mary cries. The personal parallels have made her generous, and she adds: "And it wasn't him, either," and pauses a moment to swallow down the gravel in her throat. "It's simply the way of things, circumstances that eclipse us. Something which neither you or he has control over, and which we are all subject to, in the end."
Sybil sniffs, and wipes her face with her sleeve. "Fate, you mean?"
Mary pauses. "Something like that."
And so Sybil, in cold comfort, is led back to the house. After entering she takes the steps by two until she reaches the top of the stairs, as fleeting as an apparition until she closes her bedroom door behind her. Mary orders Anna to bring up a tray and it arrives thirty minutes after Sybil had dropped onto the mattress. Anna leaves it without commentary upon the side table, for Lady Sybil had already fallen asleep amidst her tears, the precise volume of her anguish remaining forever a mystery to the housemaid, who never hears her mistress mention the name Tom Branson ever again; while Branson, one hundred some odd miles to the southwest, standing along the crowded shore of Liverpool side by side with his brother, waits on a pier for the next ferry departure.
The seagulls invaded at the first aroma of food, ravenous squawks clawing at his ears until they want to bleed. The batch of cold fish and chips that he is eating is tasteless and granular in his mouth, as if battered in sand, while the smell of salt and the sight of boundless mineral blue feels evermore like misery than the freedom he had envisioned.
Kieran is leaning casually, enjoying his fare, and sounds unperturbed as ever as he says, "You might have told me earlier you were coming, Tommy."
"I didn't know myself until recently. You'll forgive me."
Kieran shrugs with one shoulder. "No need. It's no hassle closing the garage for an afternoon. But if I'd known I would've booked you a passage this morning so you wouldn't have to wait."
His elbows support him as he stoops over the railing, blinking dimly out over the ocean. "I don't mind waiting," he says.
The conversation thins. Branson gulps down the last bite of soggy cod he can stomach before tossing the rest over the rail to land in the sea that has so captured his listless gaze. Its meager splash goes unheard amidst the riot of the docks and the attacking gulls, any formation of ripples lost to the choppy waves. The sun at high noon has evaporated much of his wrath, and he is longing for her again, unsure whether this is a sign that the ticket stuffed in his coat pocket is one of freedom or imprisonment. At Downton he felt anchored, guided by that blinding lodestar, by that numinous love and primal lust which were both wrapped up so bountifully in her; but now his moods are contrary, restive, his purpose changing by the hour. Every step he takes away from her amplifies his uncertainty and the feeling he is walking head first into a mistake.
"I had to leave," he says with a sudden burst of panic. "I had wanted to go back to Dublin for a good while now, and I can't stay in England. Not anymore."
The whole explanation is vague, practically begging to be teased apart. But his brother simply nods and chews, for unlike Mary Crawley, Kieran Branson is a stranger to familial duty, one who keeps himself to himself, and expects others to do the same. Incurious to a fault, he is, and rather proudly so, one who neither presses for details or even very much cares for them.
But the details harass Branson's mind, clamoring for release. A ferry ride to determine the rest of his life, and with the money already spent and nothing but a dubious subconscious to tell him otherwise, he says farewell to his nonchalant brother, walks across the gangplank, settles into the first available bench, and pulls out paper and pen, seemingly his only true friends in a world that has grown increasingly undependable.
And so it is that he has irrevocably evacuated Downton and is Dublin bound when he begins the first of his letters to her. They canonize how every second of his life at Downton was lived for only a glimpse, and then once the glimpses became commonplace a conversation, and then once the conversations became daily a gesture, or a smile, or any indication that his abiding affection was even remotely reciprocated. And how over time there had been smiles, and gestures. The secret visits in the night, the shared laughter and common purpose that to his mind meant surety, even when the creases on her brow spoke only of confusion. And how all those years were a kind of frustrated bliss, an indefinite stall in paradise. How worthy she was of every second, not a single day wasted, and how he would do them all over again if only he could believe, believe that she will stay true to him.
And the days pass.
And Cora or Robert sometimes comment on Sybil's changed demeanor. They cite the languor in her stride, the loss of zeal which used to punctuate her sentences. It does not worry them overmuch, and in Robert's case he almost smiles with a smug relief when he mentions it to his other, evasive looking daughters, who murmur about the war and then change the topic altogether. And Sybil, still freshly wounded, takes solace in the memories as she meanders the corridors, lurched along by the occasional, bursting hope that surfaces when the front bell rings, and which grows duller and more infrequent with every lonely day.
And Branson makes it safely to Ireland, to Dublin, his home city where his mother welcomes him profusely and confusedly. She feeds him and watches him, unpacks his trunk once it arrives, and never asks why. She is content never to know, as long she has him here and mostly intact, and bears with his uncharacteristic sullenness the only way she knows how, with an overdose of chatter and food. And his brothers and sisters come to parade their many and heretofore unseen children before him like prized tomatoes at the fair, each one alike in their chubbiness and precociousness, and in the painful reminder of the family that was so tantalizingly close to reach.
And the weeks pass.
And Branson applies here and there, undeterred by the fact that he is unreferenced and nearly forgotten in his old circles. On the day an acceptance letter finally arrives in the post he is shocked to see the letterhead of a local paper who only received his resume as a lark. They bestow on their newest junior reporter a healthy enough income to finance not only himself, but any burgeoning family he may happen conceive, and in this even fate seems to be laughing at him. And so he writes during the day, and when the day is over he writes during the night, infusing every page with his great love for her that will always be denied, even in acceptance had been denied. He signs them and dates them but never rereads them, and they collect in a thickening pile at the bottom of the case he had carried with him back to Dublin.
And Sybil begins to grow used to the idea that her future will not be in Ireland, and will not be with him. That it will not be brightened by bustle or his self possessed smile. Having been forbidden to go back into nursing, she pursues other avenues of occupation to distract the residing ache in her heart. Her old charities welcome her back with gusto. Extended visits to Aunt Rosamund are accomplished even when an invitation is absent. They help alleviate the worst, and the rest she overcomes as she does any enemy, with persistence and strength of mind.
And the months pass.
And Sybil begins to find a new rhythm to her life, one that does not include secrecy and deceit. It does not include much excitement, either, but she has matured enough to understand that fulfillment can be found in many ways, even the boring ones. There will be no new life but there will be lives that she can help. There will be no love but there will be good works. There will be no family of her own, but she has the love of parents and sisters, the admiration of friends, and though she has become accustomed to the permanency of regret, she is content.
And Branson, everyday, thinks he might just seal and deliver his latest masterpiece. After all, he knows her address and these days can well afford the price of a stamp. But a spate of resentment always bridles his hand just as he is sealing the envelope, or the plan is terrorized away on the way to the post office, by the fear of what he may find in her reply – or rather who he may find, not his Lady Sybil Crawley, but someone else entirely, a Lady Merton or a Viscountess Tantyl, the endless list of men who ever cast her so much as an approving smile rotating through his mind, each night haunting him as he falls remorsefully to sleep.
And the years pass.
Thanks for reading :D More to come next week.
