Chapter Two
Charles
Master of Downton Workhouse.
This is not the life that Charles Carson excepted; spending his days herding people through the front gates of Downton Workhouse and then cataloguing the poor souls by their age, marital status, previous employment, and whether they've have retained their sanity or if they ever had any to begin with. The whole process makes him think of the days when he helped his father herd His Lordship's horses into the barn after a day of exercising them.
His position is one of great responsibility; responsibility not only for the operation of the facility but for the welfare of his charges. He is their keeper, their employer, their priest, and their advocate. It fills him with great sadness that rules force him to separate families; mothers from children, and husbands from wives. Just because they've fallen on hard times doesn't mean that they cease to be people. People with feelings. Society, he laments has stripped them of dignity couldn't it leave their families intact? But the laws are what they are and it is his obligation to follow them to the letter.
Charles is the one who sends the "inmates" – the word leaves a bitter taste on his tongue every time he says it - out into the streets to find work only to see some of them come back later that night. There are the drunks who spend the few pennies they have on a dram and then file back through the gates before the sun sets. And then there are those who return weeks later having not been able to improve their situations at all. He knows that some of them try but cannot succeed; illness stops them in their tracks or there are too many mouths to feed and provide shelter for.
Then there are the ones who call the workhouse home. The ones like widower Michael Thompson who's stayed on for years because he's getting on in years and infirm - a burden on his family. The man is no trouble really; a crippled left leg and mostly useless left hand. But he is unable to work on his family's farm and unable to work means that he cannot earn his keep. It is a difficult decision that his family has made; at least Charles hopes that they have struggled with such a decision and not just shoved the man out of the centuries old cottage their ancestors have occupied for ages and forced him into the cold brick and tile reality of the workhouse. Occasionally, Thompson's eldest son and grandson come to visit and Charles notices how the old man's eyes light up when he sees them; how he proudly tells them that Mr. Carson has given him a job. He explains that Mr. Carson as entrusted him with the night watch at the front gate two nights a week when Mssers. Flynn and Croft have the night off. It is a job that Michael Thompson performs with pride. The meeting of people like himself, people who've fallen on hard times, who need a place to stay for the night, and Charles, in a small way, has given this man back his pride, his self-worth when it had been so easily erased by circumstance beyond his control.
And then there are those who Charles can no longer help. Those he gives Jim Barnett, groundskeeper, the orders to bury out in the pauper's section of the cemetery; their families refusing to claim the body. Perhaps they've no money to give the dead a proper burial or they've no desire to be further associated with their relative. Sometimes Charles, the workhouse staff, and a few of the inmates are the only ones to pay the departed any final respects.
His is a demanding job; one that weighs heavily on Charles's broad shoulders. In the final analysis, when he can put the workhouse out of his mind for a few moments each day, his happiness is found in his friendships, in the village cricket team, and importantly in his wife, Sarah, her belly full with his child.
When he was a boy, a skinny lad all skin and bones, sharp elbows and long spindly arms, skinny legs and knobby knees, his mother worried that he'd never pick up any weight, young Charlie dreamt of being a famous cricketer.
But little boys' dreams and reality of it all often turn out to be different. In truth, the young Yorkshire lad grew up in the shadow of his father, a well-respected groom who tended the horses at Downton Abbey in the village of Downton between Ripon and Thirsk.
Ernest Carson was well esteemed by the Crawley family for his attention to detail and his knowledge of horseflesh. Elite families from around North Yorkshire made their way to call on the keeper of the stables at Downton requesting his knowledge and asking him to judge their own stock. The old earl even allowed him to travel to the stock shows to choose colts, sires, fillies, and dams for the Downton stables without his approval. Most, including Ernest, assumed that Charles would follow in his father's footsteps. Young Charlie had other ideas. Charlie was a dreamer. A boy with his head in the clouds.
While mucking out the barns, spreading hay, or brushing down her ladyship's favorite colt, Charlie daydreamed of freshly mowed grass, of the cricket pitch, of crowds gathered around from near and far to watch his team play, to cheer him and his team mates on to victory. When his chores were complete and his father satisfied, he took to the sprawling grassy spot behind the barn to practice his technique. Young Charlie practiced every moment that he could spare. Though Ernest thought his son foolish for thinking a career in cricket a fit profession for a grown man, he admired his son's persistence at perfection and soon he joined his son at daily practice. In no time, the father could admit that the son had some talent at sport. But Ernest kept that encouragement to himself. What good would it do to push the boy out of the house and out of Downton prematurely only when heartbreak possibly lay in his future.
By the time that he was old enough, his back and chest grown broad, his arms and legs grown long and muscular, His Lordship appointed Charles assistant groom in charge of Young Lady Rosamund's Horse Triumph. Charles did well and the family took a liking to him and Lord Grantham offered him a place on the house cricket team and that year they handily defeated the village team.
When Charles Carson turned twenty he earned a place on Yorkshires's Cricket Club Team.
Charles had enjoyed the attention that the game had brought to him and had enjoyed the camaraderie among his teammates. He'd enjoyed the free pints of beer at the local pub after a win and the attentions of the women who gazed at him sweetly when he declined to join his mates and when he'd blushed as Charlie Grigg and the boys sang the bawdy tale of Sweet Joan. Charles cringed as he watched Grigg and a man named Hornsby take advantage of unsuspecting village men with whom they played cards in local pubs. Grigg and Hornsby, who came to Yorkshire Cricket Club by way of London and whose scruples were suspect, often cheated drunk farmers and townsmen out of a week's pay with no thought whatsoever. These same men chastised Charles when, once, they dragged him into a brothel and he refused to take a woman upstairs but instead paid a Miss Alice Neal, a sad, but lovely young woman to keep time with him talking, downstairs instead. Charles always wondered what Miss Neal's story was.
But an injury to his knee five years into his career prematurely ended his career and Charles found himself back home in Downton and for a long while unhappy with his circumstances. He had considered himself a failure though his injury was simply an accident, a sorry twist of fate, but a failure nonetheless. He'd come home disappointed with himself. For the first time in his life, Charles Carson had no job security.
Until he answered an advertisement in the Yorkshire Post.
Charles and Sarah, his petite, raven-haired beauty, work side by side at Downton Workhouse. She oversees her job as the Matron with gentle firmness and holds the respect of those who enter the workhouse gates. Charles insists that she lessen her duties now and let him take over. He hires an additional nurse to come in a few days a week to assist Mrs. Crawley with births as his wife can no longer assist in her midwifery duties. Truth be told in her advanced condition, Charles doesn't want Sarah in the sick wards, doesn't want her around the coughing, the blood, the dysentery, the diseased, and dying. She is determined to work until the last day of her pregnancy if the doctor allows it. Charles's hovering drives her mad, but there is nothing for it. The first-time father overflows with happiness that their home will soon be filled with the sounds of a baby's sweet cooing.
"Sarah, I wished that you would sit down and put your feet up. This can wait until the morning or if it worries you so much, I'll do it," Charles admonishes his wife as she sits uncomfortably leaned against a hard-backed chair, her corset loosened as much as can be.
"You can number the linens but you can't go downstairs to the women's ward and check that everyone is in bed and that the fires are out," she replies matter-of-factly.
She puts one hand on the desk that she's sitting at and the other on the back of her chair and pushes herself up. With a groan, she rises to her feet and smiles at her husband. "It'll not be long now," she laughs rubbing her full belly. "Must be a boy, big and strong like his dad." There's fondness in her words and a twinkle in her eye.
"Don't stay down too long. You've had a busy day," Charles gently warns as Sarah walks toward the door to their apartment.
"I'll won't be long. I promise," she assures him shaking her head at his endless, needless worrying.
Charles returns to reading the sport page, sighing when he finds the Yorkshire Cricket Club's score from the day before. He sees the names of his teammates and a wave of sadness passes over him for the life that he once had. Then he thinks on the life he has now with Sarah and the baby who is coming and he feels a bit guilt for the momentary sadness over those few short years spent playing on the cricket field. He smiles when he thinks of the babe who is soon to arrive; he can almost hear the sound of tiny feet running about the place.
It's half past eleven when Charles rubs the sleep from his eyes and realizes that Sarah hasn't returned from her rounds. He scrubs a hand across his face and through his hair. Sometimes she spends time talking with some of the women, the young fallen women, or the women, frightened and confused, who've come to them expecting little ones. But she's never stayed downstairs longer than an hour and its going on nearly two hours since she's gone down and Charles is worried.
He slips on his boots, does up the laces, and makes his way to the door that divides their little apartment from the rest of the place. He trudges down the long staircase when he stops cold in his tracks.
A/N: Since this was published on Tumblr, I've edited (Though I do not have a beta, so you will always encounter mistakes; I apologize), added some characters, changed the name of Charles's wife to Sarah from Mary. If you are interested Google the lyrics of Sweet Joan. There are multiple versions, but you can easily find the bawdy version Grigg would have sung. I thank those of you who have read, favorited, followed, and left reviews. This story is angsty in the beginning, but we will see our Chelsie together. Elsie, in canon, once told Bates something about everyone having scars seen and unseen. This exlpores those scars and the healing of them. It is drama and romance. Thank you for reading and reviewing.