A/N: Hello Mona! Thank you for telling me about Maria, I am delighted for her, and for you, especially getting a scholarship - how is her asthma doing now? I cannot believe the time has gone so quicky and she's a youg adult now. Please email me if you think there's anything I can help he with.
Have you seen Downton Abbey? You will see what Thomas is really like if you watch that series!
And you're only on the first few chapters - let me tell you, there is a rollercoaster to go!
Yes, Milo has autism, and I feel she is lucky to be in a position she is cared for by a lot of people, so many people at that time with autism were treated terribly.
So, here I am again nearing the end of a fic and procrastinating because I do not want to give it up. But there will be an end shortly, and I've decided to work through the "writer's block" by refusing to give in - I have a lot of unfinished ones which I am going to now spend some time finishing - I hope you enjoy them, my dear friend.
9th August 1945
So it was while in pursuit of Ernst Scholtz that Thomas Barrow, Tom Branson and George Crawley, Lord Grantham, missed the announcement of the bombing of Nagasaki. Abandoning his guests to their own devices, he accompanied his uncle and his friend in the Bentley, which tore along the lanes to the main London Road, and east towards York, towards Hull.
"Have you any idea where he might be going?" Master George asked Thomas.
And Thomas Barrow had. Ernst had spoken happily about his time at Constable Pickering's house, and the offer for him to stay with him and his wife. If he were to go somewhere before crossing the North Sea, it would be there.
Or else, he would have sailed, and Thomas woul be bereft.
It took Tom Branson to air the obvious and sensible idea that they should visit the police station to ascertain the Pickerings address and Master George went about the visit, speaking to a Chief Inspector who was on duty at the time, who, after listening to Lord Grantham, reluctantly passed on the address of his constable.
There Ernst was, in the garden of the Pickering house, beside someone who Thomas guessed was the policeman who had helped Ernst when he first arrived in England.
And his nerve went, as he watched the boy, so clearly comfortable in the company of the policeman and his wife, gathering apples from a tree and throwing them down to Stanley Pickering. It was selfish of Thomas to want Ernst to return with him, selfish that he wanted him close because he was a part of Milo.
But with selfishness came desire of responsibility, to offer the boy what he could, a home - not necessarily at Downton, but his grandfather's cottage in the village, and an opportunity to advance himself through work from Dr. Hartree, who had returned to Manchester but, Molesley had explained, offered to continue to tutor him.
And George Crawley had done the explaining, and Ernst had looked at Thomas with serious eyes, Constable and Mrs. Pickering eyeing them all as they strolled around the garden-cum-allotment.
"You don't have to leave!" Thomas blurted out, when he could take the silence no longer. "Your mother is alive, I have it on good authority. Why not...wait until she arrives?"
"She will, truly, if I know Milo Ashby," Tom Branson put in. "Downton Abbey is her home as much as it is Lord Grantham's, as much as it is my own." He glanced to Thomas. "As much as it is Mr. Barrow's." But Ernst gave them all a grave look, serious, resigned, as if he had already made up his mind. Then, he stopped walking.
"My name is a curse, it is, I know now that the country I grew up in had a regime which did damage to millions of people." He lowered his head. "How can I live in a country which knows that, just by opening my mouth? Reading my name?"
And then George Crawley turned, and stood before Ernst, lowering his fair head to the boy, matching his graveness.
"What if your name was not Scholtz? What if, as your mother said on your birth certificate, that you were called Ernest?"
"Ernest Scholtz?" Ernst tried. "I would have to get used to it."
"What about...Ernest Barrow?" The words came from Thomas's lips unbidden - he knew his mind had not been made up to say them, but they were out amongst them. "You could stay at Downton, work there, learn rthere. Your mother's cottage could be your own." Ernst raised his head, and his eyes danced with unexpected hopefulness, and Thomas smiled. "I am offering to adopt you as my son," Thomas added. "I was...am...married to yur mother, after all."
"I...I would have to think about it, it is a very kind offer," he told Thomas. "Can I say, Mr. Baroff,"I wish to take my time to think over it."
"He may stay with us," Constable Pickering put in, striding over the turf between his prize cabbages and his prize carrots.
"Aye," Thomas conceded. "I just htought, well - " He broke off. And George Crawley came to the rescue again.
"So, it is settled," he told them all. "Ernest will stay with you, Constable Pickering, and your wife, if you both agree."
"With pleasure!" Stanley Pickering exclaimed. "We'd be happy to have him, wouldn't we. Elsie?"
"Indeed we would!" Mrs. Pickering replied, smiling as if greeting a long lost child of her own.
"And when you have decided, we will be pleased to hear what your decision is."
And Ernest Scholtz nodded, before rushing over to Mrs. Pickering and beginning to fill her basket with the apples that he had picked which had missed the target basket that he had been aiming for on high.
Thomas's heart then rose, and emotion soared in his chest, as George Crawley handed Constable Pickering money.
"Look, I won't hear of it," Master George told the policeman, as Constable Pickering tried to wave the money away. "I consider him my responsibility while he is in your home - Barrow's responsibility," he added. "And as Barrow is my butler - " he waited as Pickering reluctantly took the money.
"Oh, you do see!" George Crawley added, his hand relieved of notes. "For his fare, his food, lodging..." He waved a hand, airily, and beckoned Ernst over.
"That seems like a lot," the police constable said, looking at what was in his hand. "As a man of the law - "
"You would return any remaining post haste," Master George told him, his manner still breezy. "He may wish to cross the North Sea rather than travel north west to us," George Crawley added, smiling to Ernst, and continue to smile as the boy looked at the notes in Constable Pickering's hand.
"Thank you, your Lordship, Mr. Grantham," Ernst told him. Tom Branson burst out laughing, and looked surprised when everyone turned their heads to him.
"Oh come on! That's funny!" And, as if to agree, they laughed along with him.
Taking them the front garden gate, then leaning on the fence, Pickering thanked George Crawley.
"I will do nothing to influence him one way or another," he told Master George, glancing to Thomas Barrow. "I do concede that you are offering him a good life, and opportunities. But it must be his choice."
Thomas felt his heart sink. It was his choice, and he had chosen to run from Downton Abbey, that he thought his difficulties were too insurmountable.
Yet, Thomas had not then made his offer to adopt him, nor told him that Milo was still alive.
With a wave and some final goodbyes, he and Master George, got back into the Bentley, and Tom Branson drove them, at a slightly lesser speed, back to Downton, back home.
88888888
Work was sent to Ernst, and he had practised calling himself Ernest. Ernest Scholtz, or Ernest Ashby - no, that was the name of his uncle - he didn't want to be confused there.
Or Ernest Barrow, as Thomas had proposed...
...the more he said the name to himself, the more he liked it.
And as well as the work sent by Hartree, Ernst found he was missing Downton, missing the people. Larry's honest face and Flora's happy, lively one. The faces of Daisy Parker and Andy. Even those of the nobility, whose lives were as rigid as clockwork - breakfast at eight; luncheon at eleven-thirty. Afternoon tea at four and dinner at nine. All lives, all revolving around food, rigid and preditable and comforting.
"Hello, dear Ernest," said the Constable one morning, "Just gettng in the harvest so to speak, in my little garden. Would you be a good young man and give me a hand with that ladder?"
So Ernst spent the day - a fortnight after Thomas's visit, harvesting Stanley Pickering's garden, and he told him about his time at Downton, and the people he had known, and the work he had been doing, both with Davies and at the school.
And that day, as fruit and vegetables were gathered in, to be taken in the main by the Women's Institute for redistribution, Ernst made a decision, and told Constable Pickering and his wife at the tea table.
"Well, I won't say I'm not sorry, young man," he told Ernst, "Because Mrs. Pickering and I would most certainly have taken you in." Elsie Pickering nodded a muted nod.
"Oh, yes, indeed," Elsie Pickering told Ernst. "And if you're as clever as your teacher tells us, why, there's the grammar school, on the Cottingham Road."
"You are vey kind," Ernst - Ernest - told them, and he thought back to Downton Abbey, at the advantages that it afforded him.
And there was the ultimate decision-maker: after these few short weeks what had impressed on Ernst the most was Thomas Barrow's unflinching dedication to caring for him, with no thought for himself, no money changing hands. Pure fatherly love. And, possibly, if what he had told Ernst was correct, motherly love.
"If you're decided, then we are behind you, Ernest Scholtz," Constable Pickering told him. "And if you ever change your mind, know that we are here and you always have a home with us."
Ernst got up. Now he had decided, there were things he needed to do.
"Here, why dont you stay the night, we've got - " Stanley Pickering picked up a handful, runner beans, new carrots, peas, "Aand look, Mrs. Pickering does a beautiful apple pie."
"I...will," conceded Ernst, "And I thank you."
After dinner, Constable and Mrs Pickering settled down in the living room for Ernst's last night, the policeman wiring up the radio. They listened to, "It's That Man Again!", the title called out the radio programme, "With me, Tommy Handley..."
And Ernst slept as well as he had done in his room at Downton Abbey.
88888888
In the morning, Ernst Scholtz knew that it was his last day on earth, with that name, at least.
"You are quite sure?" Constable Pickering told him. He smiled to Ernst, and held out a hand.
"Yes, Mr. Pickering. If, as Mr. Barrow has told me, good authorities tell him she lives, I must wait for her."
"Then, please, visit often," Mrs. Pickering said, suddenly pulling him close, and clapping him on the back. A few tears dripped onto his head, which the woman wiped away quickly. "You are welcome at any time, dear child, any time."
And, after helping with the washing up, Constable Pickering drove Ernst to the railway station at Hull. His train went to York, with the connection,then to Downton.
"We will be sorry to see you go," Stanley Pickering told Ernst. "But, please visit, as the wife says. Here," he added, "For the train fare."
"But, Mr. Pickering - " It was too much. A white five pound note? That was very valuable.
"You have a train to catch, and another. It's not cheap getting to North Yorkshire, I should know."
"But - " Ernst protested again. But Pickering shook his head.
"It's yours anyway, lad," Stanley Pickering told him pushing the money away from him. "Turns out, all those coins you had, that were in your pockets were very valuable."
"Were they?" Ernst asked, doubtfully. How could a few dozen Reichmarks and a handful of Dutch change be worth five British pounds? Constable Pickering laughed, thinking about how he had taken that Nazi money and thrust it into the Humber late one night.
"They might be, lad, they very well might be. Now, look, the driver's in, and the guard has his flag." He leaned to open one of the doors of the carriage, as the last frantic embarkation of passengers began.
"Write soon, lad," he called, as Ernst got into a seat. "The missus and I would love to hear of your time in Thirsk, and Ripon. And, of your mother, of course!" Ernst, sitting by the window waved a hand. Constable Pickering waved back.
"Not "lad" Mr. Pickering!" Ernst called back out of the small pinch-point window, leaning so the policeman could hear him. "Baroff!" he shouted, over the whistle of the train. "Ernest Ashby Scholtz Baroff!"
"Aye!" called back Constable Pickering, the smoke and steam from the express train getting into his eye and causing it to moisten. "Ernest Barrow! I like the sound of that!"