Author's Note: "We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light." ― Jonathan Swift
Disclaimer: I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.
Making love in such a narrow bed could be a bit of challenge. It did not afford the freedom of movement a larger arena might have afforded. Consequently, there was sometimes no escape. Take tonight, for instance.
Ow! "Sybil," Tom began, "stop that! What are you doing? That hur—"
"You want me to stop?" she asked huskily, not stopping.
Oh, God! Tom's whole body began to shudder. Sybil kissed him deeply, while simultaneously still not stopping. But she lifted her mouth long enough to purr a loving repetition: "You want me to stop, Tom?"
"No," he gasped, now wide-eyed and breathless. "Please hurt me some more, love."
"Tom," Sybil asked matter-of-factly some little time later when at length both partners were gloriously sated and wrapped securely in each other's arms ready for sleep. "Why is sex so odd?"
She felt the movement of her husband's diaphragm against her back as he chuckled. "Why does it 'hurt so good,' you mean? I don't know, love. You're the nurse. You tell me. Why is it so strange? And so wondrous?"
"It's a mystery," she explained helpfully. "At least, that's what Father Cornelius told me."
Tom chortled, his breath warm against the back of her neck. "You asked a priest about… sexual congress?"
Sybil pressed her body back against the cocoon that was her husband. "Not specifically. About marriage in general."
"I'm so glad." He sounded, in fact, very glad indeed.
"Tom?"
"Yes, my darlin'?"
"I didn't really hurt you, did I? I wouldn't like to think I was causing you pain with my… passion."
"It was painful at first…" he admitted slowly. He was silent a moment, lost in thought or the memory of the sensations she had authored, then his strong arms tightened around her, cherishing her presence, her closeness, and the precious intimacy they shared on that narrow sleeping couch. She felt the release of a full lungful of breath as he sighed, obviously deeply contented, and continued, "but then… Oh, God, Sybil! ...then, in addition to being painful, it felt quite lovely as well!"
Returning from an eventful dayshift at the hospital, Sybil found herself met at the door by song.
"…crying 'Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive. Cockles and Mussels, Alive, alive-o. Alive, alive-o-oh—"
"Tom," Sybil interrupted. Something certainly smelled delectable!
"Yes, Sybil, darlin'?" her husband chirped happily.
"What's for dinner?"
He took up his song again partway through the musical phrase, leaving off the initial 'cockles' and substituting the word 'it's' in the place of 'and.' "It's Mussels—" he sang, gesturing at the covered skillet sizzling on the gas range.
"Not cockles?" she teased.
"Nope," he kissed her. "Not cockles. I couldn't possibly be guilty of such a hoary cliché." He licked his upper lip provocatively and dipped one eyelid in a wink.
"Umm, Tom, darling, mussels and what else?"
He blinked. "You want something else?" he repeated, mock-affronted. "Now who's greedy?"
"To-om," she warned.
He was irrepressible this evening, however. "You know, love, my name actually only has one syllable."
His wife pointed to the little saucepan, sitting on one of the gas range's lit burners. "So you're trying to burn a hole in the bottom of that pot, husband?"
He laughed, giving up. "It's stewed dulse."
"Hmm," she murmured, an approving sound. He hoped.
"And what else?"
He raised an eyebrow, but answered readily. "Pratie oaten." Then, when he saw her mouth open, and in case she thought to object to the 'oaten' part, though she normally liked them, he continued, "and coffee."
"Oh, Tom!" she squealed. Suddenly, his arms were full of very happy wife.
He had broken down and ventured into Bewley's for it finally. "A witless extravagance, lass. You've champagne tastes, and we've naught but a beer budget, more's the pity. His lordship was so right after all, so he was: I can't possibly hope to provide for you," Tom lamented comically, tongue-in-cheek.
Sybil was giving him a strange look. "When did Papa say that?"
Oops. "Before we left Downton," Tom replied, in a smothered way.
"Oh." His wife searched her memory diligently. "Was I there?"
"No," he said quietly. He'd been thoughtless. He hadn't told her about his interview with her father; he shouldn't have mentioned it now.
But she asked only, "And what did you say?"
A relieved smile played across the Irishman's features. "I said if you wanted that kind of life, you wouldn't be marrying me." Sybil watched as his smile deepened into a grin of genuine humour. "And look how wrong I was now, my darlin'."
Suddenly, they were both laughing.
"Tom," Sybil asked later, as they sat at the kitchen table gorging themselves on the succulent pink flesh of the steamed mussels, spooning salty dulse stewed in milk into themselves, and munching on crisp pratie oaten cakes (she rather thought the oats became actually palatable when mixed with mashed potato), "do you know what Matron said to me today?"
"Of course I know," he responded immediately, slurping down yet another mussel and grinning in that maddeningly self-satisfied way he had.
"How could you possibly know?" she demanded hotly.
"I was hiding under a patient's bed," he teased.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, gesturing wildly with a tiny fish-fork. "You are insufferable!"
He caught her flailing hand before she put out his eye with the little fork, removed the utensil gently from her buttery fingers, then raised her hand to his lips and began sucking melted butter off the delicate tapered digits by way of apology, his tongue caressing them seductively. His mouth released the delicious fingertips and his lips curved into a beguiling smile. "You're not really angry with me, are you, love?"
Tom did his level best to appear contrite, but it was hard to do when she looked so gorgeous, sapphire eyes snapping with ire, smooth rounded cheeks flushed, red lips glossy with melted butter. "Sybil?" he whispered.
"What?" she grumbled, disgruntled.
"Please tell me what Matron said," he begged wistfully.
She smiled, becoming more gruntled by the moment. "Well," she began, "it all started early this morning…"
The summer heat returned in September, fiercely enough, and for long enough, that Mam and some of the O'Neill cousins decided to sleep in the park, as many Dubliners were doing, in order to take advantage of the cool of the night. They invited Sybil and Tom along, a friendly and unusual adventure, including a bit of a picnic, as well as some gossip and song. Towards midnight the crowd finally began to settle down to try to sleep.
Tom and Sybil lay next to each other on a thin cotton blanket they'd brought along as a ground cloth, hands clasped, but in deference to the heat not otherwise touching. "I don't know if I can actually sleep," Tom confided to his wife in whispered tones, "without… you know."
Sybil chuckled, deep in her throat. "It's too hot, anyway. It's all right if you can't sleep though. We can just lie back and look at the stars."
The extended heatwave was followed almost immediately by an absolutely freakish cold snap.
"They say it's snowing in the mountains," Tom reported to his wife," and in Scotland and North Yorkshire as well."
"I wonder how they're managing at Downton," Sybil said.
Tom took her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. "Write to them," he suggested.
Sybil's free hand moved to caress his cheek lovingly. "I will," she agreed. "And I'll tell them how happy I am."
The summer's idyll was over. England, having watched Ireland, her longtime captive and concubine, setting about setting up the institutions required by all sovereign states, at long last made her move.
The police searched numerous homes supposedly in search of guns and ammunition. Two men were arrested during a raid on Sinn Féin headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street, and a detective officer of the DMP was shot dead in Gt. Brunswick Street quite literally as he left the raid. In October, feeling against the police became so high that a constable was shot in High Street.
The gamble, that Ireland would be allowed to walk away from English domination without a fight, had failed.
In November, by order of the English government, the Dáil Éirann, Sinn Féin, Cumann na mBan, the Gaelic League, and a number of newpapers (including Tom's) were suppressed as 'seditious.'