She woke early that morning to a dull ache low in her stomach. She stretched her hand instinctively to Tom's side of the bed, but he was gone, already on his way to work. She moved to swing her legs out of the bed and spotted a flash of red on the mattress. She felt her body grow cold and her stomach dropped, as if someone had filled it with lead.
Tom found her when he came home for his lunch, still sat on the bed in her nightdress, her knees pulled up to her chest and cheeks wet with tears. He held her to him; they remained in a silence that neither wanted to fill, until Sybil's pains began to intensify. He called for his mother, who in turn called for the midwife. Sybil knew what was happening long before the midwife confirmed it. The baby that she was just beginning to come round to the idea of just wasn't to be.
Mrs Branson sat with her after Tom was removed from the room, his concerned eyes on Sybil until the door was shut in front of him. Sybil remembered her mother-in-law's repeated words of "Sometimes these things just aren't meant to be. No fault of either of you, just not strong enough for the world." They stuck with her as the afternoon became evening and her pain continued until eventually as night was ushered in, she delivered a tiny, sleeping baby boy who was never destined to wake up.
He was wrapped up before she could really seen him and taken downstairs, Sybil was cleaned up and cocooned in clean sheets and layers of blankets. The midwife left and Mrs Branson went downstairs, the soiled linens in her arms, to be replaced by the person Sybil longed to hold her. Tom lay down next to her on the bed and pulled her toward him, pausing when he heard her draw in breath through her teeth as moving pained her. She rested her head on his chest and they cried together, mourning the child they had already begun to love but would never know. Then they slept, clinging to one another for comfort.
The next day brought with it realization.
She imagined her parent's reaction – she would have to write after all. Her mother would be genuinely saddened, the memory of the loss of her own baby in those long languid days before the outbreak of the war was still painful and raw in Cora's mind – the only son she had ever carried. Robert would show his regret and apologize out of politeness, because it was the done thing, but Sybil could not get the thought out of her head that her father might be rather glad. She knew from Mary's letters that their father saw this baby as the final nail in the coffin, a bind to a situation he wasn't entirely comfortable for his youngest daughter to be in. If just a marriage, consummated or not, existed between the two Lord Grantham could still think that Sybil may come to her senses, chalk the last year down as a youthful folly – a bit of rebellion, return to the life he had imagined for her and marry the type of man she should have been with all along. A child linking her to Tom Branson, the man who until a matter of months ago Robert had seen as nothing more than his chauffeur – a man he liked in his position in servitude, but was much less fond of when he was sharing his daughter's bed, at the bosom of the family.
They could distance themselves from the disapproval, the Irish Sea acting as something of a buffer to Lord Grantham's disapproval but still carried across, in the form of letters and the occasional parcel, the love and support Sybil desired from her own family.
Her mother's excited response to the letter informing her that she was to be a grandmother had almost erased the ill feeling Sybil had toward her parents due to their absence at her wedding. But now that too was gone. She burned the letters her mother had sent her in January and February for every one mentioned in some way or another the baby she had then been carrying.
A parcel had arrived in the days after his unexpected birth containing a hand knitted blanket and an overelaborately embroidered gown, both of which had belonged to all three of the Crawley sisters in their infant hood. The letter accompanying them stated that Cora had been saving them for her first grandchild; the words on the page had exuded excitement. Tom had hidden it from her, in the blanket chest – wanting to spare her the pain they unintentionally inflicted. She had found them weeks later, after she had informed her mother of the news and returned the little parcel to England, asking her mother to keep them until a bouncing baby was born in full health who could fill the little gown and be warmed by the blanket. Sybil's tears had stained the note.
As the first signs of spring began to appear, Sybil was plagued by a little voice which appeared during the quiet hours of the day and night, telling her it had all been her fault. Her initial dismay at finding herself pregnant, newly married, barely twenty-two, beginning her life, was the reason the baby had not survived. It had somehow known it wasn't wanted in those early weeks by its own mother.
It hadn't been until the shock had worn off and the New Year had brought with it a sense of calm that she had begun to appreciate the little life that grew inside her. Welcomed the sickness that struck her down most mornings if it meant that everything was as it ought to be. The way Tom would place his hand on her stomach when he thought she was asleep would make her smile, knowing that under his palm rested the child they had made together in those whirlwind early weeks of their marriage.
They returned to Downton twice in the following months. In late April to see Mary and Matthew wed and then for Edith's wedding in late summer, an occasion that Sybil had expected to attend round with the last few weeks of pregnancy, their baby curled in her womb. Instead she felt empty, sadness still striking her when she expected it the least. The announcement in the days following Edith's nuptials that Mary was pregnant, potentially expecting the much-needed male heir to Downton, had crushed her.
Cora had followed her youngest daughter into the gardens after the news was announced and they had stood side by side, looking over the fields, littered with piles of hay in the midst of harvest, that surrounded the house.
"It will get better, my darling. I promise with time it will get better." Sybil took her mother's hand and they slipped into a comfortable silence, each understanding the suffering of the other in a way they knew no other could. An ally found of such unlikely circumstances.
This one-shot (or rather, series of snippets) has nothing to do with my other story (which is still a work in progress), but is, I suppose the other option of what could happen to Sybil and Branson. Thinking about it, it all seems far too logical that the baby that we have been told will be born in S3 will be Sybil's. Although someone will have to get pregnant pretty sharpish to give birth in the (year long?) series 3. I'd love to hear your thoughts, I know these are all rather disconnected snippets but they just popped into my mind. I really hope you enjoyed it. LP. x