A vaguely angsty-ish oneshot that probably stems from listening to too much melancholy Scala and Kolacny Brothers.

With M/M, C/H and of course The I/E. More speculative than spoilery.

1924.

Painted Ghosts

Isobel got into bed feeling a little bit guilty. It had been her own silly fault that she hadn't asked for the dress she was wearing tomorrow to be pressed when she was getting- no, being- dressed and now she'd had to ring the bell for one of the housemaids to come and get it. One so easily went from being virtually self-sufficient to allowing the army of servants that befitted her position as the Earl of Grantham's mother to wait on her hand and foot, though that did not make her feel much better about it. Though she was tired she sat up, she didn't want whichever maid came up to feel sorry for her- poor frail old woman that she was. Of course, it was usually Mrs Hughes who was dispatched to see to her, but surely the housekeeper would be in bed by now. She ought to be if she wasn't, Isobel thought, she couldn't be that much younger than she was herself.

So much had happened recently. It was most unfortunate, for more reasons than the obvious, that old Lord Grantham's death had coincided so closely with the end of Matthew's rather disastrous marriage to Lavinia. Though perhaps, in an extremely round-about way, it would do Matthew some good: stop him brooding, his life changing all together as opposed to just half of it. Instead of moping around his house in town alone, he was here and anything but alone. There always seemed to be visitors- not always there at Matthew's invitation,she noticed, more often at one of his cousins'- there always seemed to be dancing of some sort, girls dressed in these odd new fashions. Normally she might have warned him not to overdo it on the frivolities out of respect for Robert, but he had lost four years of his youth; who was she to begrudge him a few parties?

She was snapped from her thoughts by the sound of the door clicking. When she looked up she saw that Mrs Hughes was standing beside it.

"What are you doing here?" Isobel asked her rather disbelievingly.

The housekeeper gave her half a smile.

"You did ring, didn't you?" she enquired, knowing full well she had if her tone of voice was anything to go by.

Isobel shook her head, but not sternly. She was used to the housekeeper's sense of humour by now- and liked it- and could have been rightly called a hypocrite if she'd attempted to stifle it.

"You know what I mean," Isobel informed her over the top of her spectacles, "You ought to be in bed, you know. Don't look at me like that," she added, sensing that the housekeeper was about to make a remark to the effect of that she wasn't that decrepit yet, "It wouldn't do to have you working yourself into an early grave-..."

Luckily she thought about what she was saying before she added the "as well". She saw a muscle tighten in the housekeeper's but apart from that she betrayed no outward signs of emotion. Isobel felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She should have known better than to mention that, stupid woman.

"Why did you ring?" to her credit, the housekeeper's voice was perfectly even and polite, if a little quieter than before. She was looking quite deliberately away from Isobel.

Isobel felt her own expression shift a little. She cleared her throat.

"My dress. I forgot to ask you if it could be pressed for tomorrow," she indicated quickly to the garment hanging on the wardrobe, but still kept talking, conscious of how awful she suddenly felt, "Mrs Hughes, please sit down for a moment."

The housekeeper hesitated.

"Please," Isobel repeated.

When the housekeeper finally looked up at her, she indicated to the chair at her bedside, and was immensely glad when Mrs Hughes did choose to sit down, though she did so with the air of someone ready to immediately get back up. Isobel didn't know why exactly she'd asked her to; only that she'd been growing increasingly close to this woman, once again, in the recent weeks that she'd been here and all she'd done in return for the extra work she'd been making for her was infer that she was old and no doubt cause some very painful memories to resurface.

At that thought, she could not help but curse herself again. It was well known that she had been very close to the late Mr Carson. Isobel, perhaps more than anyone, knew that. Good God, she thought to herself in renewed exasperation, they could well have been lovers! No doubt he held her in his arms and told her she was beautiful and wonderful and had meant every word of it. And here you are telling her nonchalantly that she's going to meet the same end that he did.

She poured a cup of tea from the pot on her bedside table and handed it to the housekeeper, clearing her throat a little bit.

"Are they still going, downstairs?" she asked the single most innocuous thing that came to mind, "I haven't heard anything for a while."

The music from the ballroom had finally died half and hour ago, or she had grown to tired to strain her ears to hear it.

"Most of the band has gone," the housekeeper replied, "But a few of them stayed late, and they're all dancing in the first floor drawing room. Well," she gave half a lopsided smile, "They call it dancing."

Isobel chuckled, she herself had witnessed this new spectacle a few times herself, and she had to say it bore little resemblance to how it had been done in her day.

"I dare say I might have tried it, once, if I'd had a skirt that length on," she reflected, "Though I think I should have drawn the line at the hair or lipstick."

To say the least, some of the girls had been a little... experimental with their hair and cosmetics lately; Edith in particular. Mrs Hughes smiled once more, though it did not quite reach throughout her face. It was rather extraordinary that Isobel has seen Mrs Hughes smile more sincerely during the War, than she had in the years since the Armistice. Isobel wondered if she too had noticed the way Mary and Matthew were with each other these days too. Gently approaching each other, almost as if they were shy like little children, waiting, Isobel supposed, to know each other again. She wondered if Elsie really cared, if she had noticed.

"They haven't changed," she told Isobel almost tonelessly, as if she was keeping herself in check a little, "You didn't know them when they were little. The girls: their expressions haven't changed a bit since they were children. Only they wear brighter paint on them now," she conceded. Then, after a moment's thought, "They are so much older than I was at their age."

And we are older than our mothers were at ours.

It was strange to sit here, like this, with Elsie. It felt like so long since they'd talked properly. Perhaps it was; was six years a long time? During the war they had become close, working beside each other in the hospital whenever Elise could spare the time from her other duties. And they had got on splendidly; in another world, surely they would have been best friends for all eternity.

"No doubt," she began once more, conscious of the silence, "I am making a very poor earl's-mother. Perhaps it's because I'm not technically a Dowager. I'm very bad at disapproving of the youngsters. I can't honestly say I've really tried to, but I don't think I should be able to bring myself to if I did."

"There's no shame in that," Elsie told her flatly.

Isobel smiled humourlessly. She seemed to remember times after particularly troublesome visits from old Violet, God rest her, when they had simply barricaded themselves in Elise's sitting room with a pot of tea and complained for whole hours.

"I sometimes wonder if we weren't a little bit harsh to her," she voiced, "After all, I think I'm coming to understand what her life must have been like now."

Mrs Hughes' expression showed little reaction to this observation, though her jaw did seem to tighten somewhat.

"It's different," she replied at last, "Violet never knew anything but a life like this. Her task was to marry for land and then produce and heir to maintain it."

Whereas we did. We are not used to a lack of activity, to living in the background. Though neither of us belonged to the elite, to the most important level, we each stood out in our own circles.

Isobel inhaled deeply. Truth be told, she hated it here. There was so very little to do, now that Sybil was capable enough to take charge of the hospital. She felt as if she were merely occupying space. One of the few times she looked forward to during the day was when Elsie came to see to her. It was someone to talk to, even if they weren't quite as close as they once had been. It was Elsie who was holding back, she knew it, but she was reluctant to be cross with her for it.

It had upset Mr Carson during the war, the way the proper order of things seemed to have been upset. She knew that Elsie had always tried not to upset him, but that at the same time, she was reluctant to let that dominate what she did. So despite his apparent disapproval- which Isobel had since come to be aware of- they had become good friends. It was only when his health began to decline that Elsie had become more detached from Isobel. Perhaps she blamed herself, thinking that her upsetting him had caused his infirmity, or merely wanted to ease his burden, but suddenly they- Elsie and Isobel- never seemed to speak as much. Elsie would be vague and distant and in a hurry to get away. When he died in 1919, Isobel could only suppose that his memory kept her friend from returning. She could have borne a grudge against Elsie now for it, but it was not in her nature.

And now they were back, almost friends again, even if they were not cracking wry jokes and winding each other up. Indeed at this very moment, they were doing something far more intimate than that, really, sitting here and ruing just about everything together. Elsie looked very tired, and a little drawn. Although her life could not possibly be boring like Isobel felt her own was, she had a funny feeling that it was just as empty.

They ought to get away from here, the both of them. Perhaps they could. They could live like the strange sisters that the last few years had made them in a little cottage in the village, where they could employ Molesley for tasks such as the dusting and making the tea and answering the door to keep him employed. They could plant a garden and then claim to be too old to do any work to maintain it; and let the flowers grow bright and too tall, so that they overspilled onto the street and impeded passers-by. They could get away and try to escape. From what? From the ghosts, she supposed.

"Mrs Hughes," she opened her mouth, this very idea in mind, and suddenly changed course. There was something she needed to ask first, before she suggested anything, she realised somehow, from the look on the housekeeper's face, "Were you in love with Mr Carson, Mrs Hughes? Do you love him?" she corrected herself- death cannot end love, or she herself would have been in a pretty sorry state before now.

There was a moment's pause. Perhaps she expected Elsie to be angry at the question, and was surprised that she wasn't. Only honest, in a very strange way.

"It took me the best part of twenty years to work that out for myself," she stated calmly, "Why should I tell you?"

Isobel didn't quite know why she took that as affirmative. Perhaps it was the look she saw briefly in her face when she corrected the tense.

"I don't know."

So you can sleep?

They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Elsie bowed her head and laughed down at her knees.

"Whatever I once felt, whatever I feel, it's far away at the moment," she informed her, a very blunt sort of a confession, "Do you want me to see to that dress?"

"Elsie," Isobel spoke her friend's Christian name for the first time in years, "Don't let what's past stop what's to come."

Elsie paused a second behind the wardrobe, then peered cautiously around it to look at Isobel once more. She hoped she didn't imagine the ripple of the old understanding that she felt flit between them. They were quiet for a moment, Isobel's dress half way off the hanger still in Elsie's hands.

"Come and see me again," Isobel told her, "To talk."

End.

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