A/N Thank you for your support so far! This chapter includes my head canon for Elsie's backstory. I do not go into detail though. Others have done this much better than me.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I don't make money with them.
She has been away from Argyll for so long already that it does not matter where she applies for a new job. A friend tells her of the open position at Downton Abbey in Yorkshire. It is further south from where she lives and works now. Further away from Joe but a good position in the house of an Earl not just a Baron like her current employer. It is a chance to start a new life, maybe her only one. So she takes out her finest paper and writes a letter to the housekeeper of Downton Abbey, attaches a résumé and a reference letter and posts it the next day. She is not even excited about this decision because she knows that she has to get away from this house sooner rather than later.
She is now 32 and has been in service since the age of sixteen. Staying on her parent's farm, marrying a simple farmer had never been something she could envision for her life. She hates the dirt, the untidiness, the chaos, the smell. Everything. She loves the landscape though, the green hills and the lush meadows and she misses them terribly - always. It's her home, her origin after all. But everything is better than hiding under the sheets at night, trying not to breathe, not to make a sound when he comes home from the pub. And she cannot deal with the bruises on her mother's face in the morning or the pale almost translucent skin of her younger sister who is so skinny and so fragile.
Elsie has to be strong for her sister and her mother. She is the oldest daughter and takes over responsibilities early in her life. At six she starts to help in the stables at three in the morning. When she turns eight, her father starts his nightly visits to the pub. Once, twice a week at first. There is nothing to worry about it. All the men in the village meet at the pub. But then his visits become more frequent and he is drunk when he comes home. The first time he hits her mother, Elsie was unable to sleep and on her way to the kitchen for a glass of milk. She hides in the shadows behind the door when she hears the strange noises, sees how her mother is stumbling through the kitchen, covering her face with her hands. She is terrified but cannot look away.
When she leaves home she feels guilty at first. They need her help, her comfort, her strength. But then her mother urges her to leave the house to get away from their miserable life. Aileen Hughes has fought for her daughters, taught them how to read and write, gave them the education she could afford. She wanted her daughters to get away from the farm and when Elsie told her she would go into service the tears her mother shed seemed inexhaustible. They are tears of joy, not of regret but Elsie knows that they also reflect her mother's fear.
The nightly incident makes her take a decision: She has to protect her mother and her sister. Her father will not break her and if he tries, she will fight back.
ooooo
She is employed as a housemaid at first. A young girl with long brown curly hair, not very tall for her age but strong and with an iron will to work hard. She never talks a lot, only works. Day after day, night after night. The other housemaids go out to the nearby town on their half days off. Elsie stays at the house, reads a book, walks through the gardens, enjoys the nature that surrounds her. She cannot be in the company of the other girls, laugh with them, be carefree. Not yet. What she needs is to be free, not attached to anyone or anything. She needs to be on her own. The other girls do not understand her and she knows that they gossip behind her back, also envy her because it is the strange Scottish girl that gets the praise from the old housekeeper.
She does not care about any of this. After two years in the same household they offer her the position as head housemaid and Elsie accepts it because it is her duty and because she wants to be successful in her life, get as far away from the old farm girl as possible. She wants to make her mother proud, show her that it was the right decision to leave the farm.
At first the young and the more experienced housemaids do not listen to her, do not take her seriously. She never shouts at them, is never stern or demanding. When she gives her orders her voice is strong but calm, something the others are not used to. Some of them mistake it as an offer for friendship but that is not what Elsie intended it to be. Helpful, loyal, friendly and effective is what she is. Not a friend. It's a relationship that is too close for her. Slowly the others get used to her approach and she opens up a bit, talks more, laughs a bit, joins them sometimes on their visits to the village. However, most of the time she chooses to be alone.
ooooo
She moves on from one estate to the next, like they all do, always searching for a higher position. Her third employment brings her to Northumberland when she is only 26. Still head housemaid she has gotten so used to the job that her daily routine feels like breathing to her. She does not even think about what she is doing anymore and it is a good feeling. It comforts her and confirms the decision she made ten years ago. She has changed her life successfully. Is not a farm girl any more. And then Joe enters her life, a young farmer who lives near the estate and whom she first meets at a village fair. A handsome man, blonde hair, broad shoulders. He is nice and he does not want to talk all the time. They arrange meetings in the local teashop every other month. Most of the time they just smile at each other, sometimes he tells her of his farm and the life there. It all sounds so familiar to her, too familiar at times. Although Joe is different compared to all the men she has so far met, she cannot allow herself to be attached to him or even love him.
For two years they walk out occasionally until the Baron employs a new housekeeper. A strict woman with high principles. Elsie likes her from the very beginning because they share one thing: those who work hard and do not get distracted from their task in hand earn respect and are highly valued. Gradually Elsie's work gets more difficult. Things disappear, lines return dirty from the laundry, housemaids ignore her orders, half days are rescheduled without her knowledge. To cover up all these mistakes, she works even harder, wants to show everyone that she is capable of the responsibility that she has taken over. The housekeeper thinks otherwise. A Scot, in such a high position in the household, is something she will never tolerate. Elsie discovers this when she overhears two of the younger maids talking in one of the corridors.
"How could he employ such a savage?" They imitate the housekeeper. "They cannot read, write, are uneducated and lazy."
It will take her two years to get away from all of this and they will be the most trying two years of her life. All her strength and willpower is needed.
ooooo
Her suitcase is packed and she wears her new coat and matching hat. The day the housekeeper of Downton Abbey, Mrs Barnes, has replied to her letter, has changed something deep within her. There is new strength, new hope. On her way to the train station she holds her head up high, her back straight. It is the first impression that matters and it is better to be prepared right from the beginning of her journey south. The train leaves the station on time and she is too nervous to read a book or a newspaper so she tries to focus on some distant spots on the horizon though they move past her window too quickly. Green hills, meadows, cows, sheep, some horses pass by as if there is no human civilization outside of the large towns anymore. What she sees calms her down somehow, reminds her of happier days in Scotland. When Yorkshire approaches and the train stops at Downton, the landscape is still the same.
The house is huge, incomparable to all the places she has worked before. Still, the gardens that surround it are beautiful, the atmosphere is different to that in Northumberland and the young footman that opens the backdoor for her smiles when he firsts sees her. She will like it here, Elsie thinks, if they give her the job.
TBC
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