DOWNTON ABBEY 1926.
EPISODE 2. Chapter 2.
Daisy and Mrs. Patmore
Mrs. Patmore was impressed. Several days had passed before Daisy confessed her secret. Maturity, Mrs. Patmore mused, came in surprising forms.
"You know Mr. Mason," Daisy began, in a deliberately casual voice that gave her away immediately.
For a moment, Mrs. Patmore held her breath. Was ... was this about her and Mr. Mason? There was nothing between them. Oh, he'd been quite attentive ever since he'd moved to Yew Tree Farm and at New Year's he'd hinted at a deeper interest than a neighbourly sort of exchange. But then spring had come and with it the inevitable and absorbing lambing season and he'd been buried in work. And Daisy had always seemed resistant to the idea anyway. So...
"He's asked me if I'd like to call him 'dad.'"
Mrs. Patmore blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Daisy repeated what she'd said. This gave Mrs. Patmore a moment to recover.
"And?"
Daisy stared at her. "That's it."
"That's it?" The cook slammed the heel of her hand into the hill of bread dough before her. "What's got you bothered about that?" She spoke sharply. Goodness! That wasn't a problem!
Long accustomed to Mrs. Patmore's crustiness, Daisy read nothing into this reaction beyond the cook's impatience with almost everything. Instead she launched into a litany of the thoughts that had been swirling in her head since Mr. Mason had spoken.
"Well, I am his daughter-in-law and he already treats me like I'm his daughter, having me out to the old farm and now living at Yew Tree Farm so he can teach me the business. And he's given me lots of good advice like a father does. And it's not like I even remember my own father, so it's no insult to him. Or his memory." She frowned a little. She didn't even know if her father were alive or dead.
"So?" Mrs. Patmore couldn't see why Daisy was wrestling with it. All she could think about was what this said about Mr. Mason, who was a very fine man.
"But..." Daisy took a deep breath. "What if I don't want to stay on the farm? What if I decide I'm not cut out for that and I want to do something different? I wouldn't want to disappoint him or let him go on thinking we're...family, when I might leave."
Mrs. Patmore punched the dough with a vehemence that made Daisy jump, which in itself gave the cook a small jolt of satisfaction that she hadn't lost all of her former fearsomeness. She had supported Daisy's pursuit of education, believing the young woman to have a good head on her shoulders, if she were properly trained up to use it. But Daisy had gone from an apathetic resignation to her life as a kitchen drudge to a bit of a fly-by-night, flitting erratically from one option to another, satisfied with none. She fixed a fierce gaze on her one-time protegé.
"Daisy. Children come and go. That's what they do. Mr. Mason knows this better than anyone." And then she muttered something about education having been wasted on the wrong people.
"What?"
But Mrs. Patmore only glared at her. "There are people in this world with real problems, you know."
These words irritated Daisy. It was what people always said when they didn't want to hear about your concerns. Instead, they compared you to someone who was worse off, as if that had any practical application to your own dilemma.
"Have you got a problem, Daisy?" Anna had come in with a tray from the nursery. It wasn't, strictly speaking, her duty to take care of this, but she'd been on hand.
"Not to my way of thinking," Mrs. Patmore muttered and then disappeared in the direction of the larder.
Anna looked at Daisy. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
Having confided in Mrs. Patmore at last, Daisy had no qualms about repeating her news to Anna and reporting, too, the cook's reaction.
"Oh, but that's nice! And Mrs. Patmore is right. When you embrace someone like that, you don't take it back because they've decided to move to Leeds or something."
"Maybe," drawled Daisy. "But there is something else. You know I didn't love William when I married him. I felt...like I had to? Everyone - well, Mrs. Patmore and Mr. Mason - wanted me to. And I did it. And...all right, I've come around a bit on that, though it were false. But Mr. Mason - he's the only one who doesn't know it. It's still there between us. Shouldn't you be honest when you love someone, Anna?"
"Yes," Anna said promptly. "And no."
Daisy stared at her as though she had two heads.
"It's a fine line," Anna said carefully, "and one that no one but you can navigate for yourself. What you have to decide is why you want to tell him. Sometimes ... often ... it's best to clear the air. But sometimes, it's just about ourselves. Lots of people carry burdens of guilt, Daisy. Only children have the liberty to unburden themselves on others without regard for the consequences."
"And Catholics," Daisy said unexpectedly. "When they sit in those dark little boxes with the priest listening."
Anna smiled wryly. "And Catholics. You think on it," she suggested. "It'll come to you, what's right."
The conflicted expression on Daisy's face faded. "Thank you, Anna."
Dr. Clarkson and Lady Merton
Dr. Clarkson tried to pay attention to Lady Merton's disquisition on the place of Downton Cottage Hospital in the greater North Yorkshire Hospital Scheme, but it was a struggle. His mind kept straying to how it was when she first came to Downton and was so eager to play a part in the hospital's actual work, rather than its administrative affairs. His had been the voice of authority then, and she had chafed under it in the face of his resistance to her new ideas. He readily admitted now that he had resisted them. They had both adjusted and he'd liked it best when they worked together, in a partnership of sorts, toward the provision of better service for the people of Downton. That was the atmosphere within which he discovered he'd fallen in love with her. She'd put him off - gently - and he'd accepted her reasons. She did not want to marry again and she did enjoy the company of good friends, among whom she counted him.
Things were different more recently. She'd embraced the hospital reorganization scheme as part of the march of progress and vaulted over him to assume a senior administrative role that had him reporting to her. She wasn't his employer, but she was his superior. And then she'd married Lord Merton and risen in the social ranks above him as well. And still she flitted in and out of the hospital, no longer the practical, capable nurse who he had so much admired, but instead another bureaucrat convinced she knew better than the medical practitioners. He had to strain, these days, to find in her the woman who took a personal interest in the patients.
His attention came back to her abruptly when he heard the word 'retire.'
"I beg your pardon?" Even after more than a quarter of a century in Yorkshire, his voice retained the soft burr of his native Scotland. And his clear blue eyes that saw everything fixed on her with a look of bemusement.
She was staring back at him with her eyes wide with the excitement of a new idea. Mrs. Crawley - Lady Merton - he had learned long ago was a zealot. She seized on an idea, usually a good idea, with the tenacity of a terrier and campaigned for it tirelessly. It was one of her more attractive features to him.
"You ought to take some time for yourself," she said vigorously. "You've been hard at it for decades. You could find something to do that you enjoy."
Ah. Now he understood what she was talking about. He frowned. "This is my life," he said, with feeling, but still softly spoken. "I enjoy this."
"Of course you do! But there's more to life than work, Dr. Clarkson. People can change. I have." She added this proudly.
This declaration pained him. "Yes," he said. "You have."
A look of confusion flashed briefly across her face and then she brushed it off, evidently deciding not to take offense or to pursue it. "Now," she said gaily, getting up. "I must be off."
"I, too, have an appointment," he said mildly, standing as well. "By the way," he added, "I'm sorry I had to postpone our meeting until this week. People get sick."
She gave him an understanding smile. "Of course."
They walked out the door together and turned the same way. The doctor was glad their conversation turned to other things. Lady Merton began to tell him about her grandson, George, which was a much more congenial topic. Dr. Clarkson saw the boy occasionally, from a distance. He was a very healthy child and had no need for the doctor's services. They walked on, past the church and the graveyard, and by the school, he expecting any moment that they would part, as she headed off to Crawley House. But she did not and minutes later they found themselves at the gate of the Dower House.
"I thought I'd drop in on Cousin Violet," Lady Merton explained, "but if you have an appointment."
"I do." He did not like turning her away from her visit, especially as he thought the Dowager Lady Grantham would enjoy seeing her dear friend, but he had business of his own with Downton's matriarch.
"Well, then, I shan't disrupt that," Lady Merton said, clearly a little disappointed, but taking this news in stride. "Give Cousin Violet my love and please tell her that I'll drop by another day."
He nodded and for a few seconds watched as she retreated down the street.
Retire? And do what? She knew better than anyone that caring for the residents of Downton was his life's work. What on earth was there for him here other than his work? Everyone he knew in Downton he knew exclusively through the prism of his position at the Cottage Hospital. It was an anomalous situation wherein he existed on the social ladder in that lonely spot between the aristocracy on the upper rungs and the villagers and common folk on the lower ones. He had rubbed shoulders with the Crawleys and their ilk only occasionally and under special circumstances. He could not now imagine that he would, in his retirement, take up evenings of card playing with Lord Merton. Lord Merton. In the doctor's opinion, he was an affable if slothful man who had done nothing with his life, and who was content to mingle with his equally ineffectual peers at deadeningly dull teas and dinners. It was a source of continuing bewilderment to Dr. Clarkson that Lady Merton had embraced this life, when she had found it so empty of meaning for a dozen years past.
But he could not dwell on her. The Dowager awaited. It gratified him to know that she, at least, was in no hurry to push him toward retirement.
Tom and Mary
Tom and Mary were having their weekly discussion about the affairs of the estate. They were in the agent's office, at Mary's insistence.
"We'll take it more seriously," she'd said, meaning he would. And he knew it.
"You don't have to keep checking up on things," Tom said patiently. "If there was anything really important to discuss, you know I'd tell you about it."
She turned her steely gaze on him. "Stop treating me like I'm a woman, Tom. I mean it," she added, catching the look in his eye. "Papa has lapsed. I won't have it from you."
"All right." He knew enough not to challenge her.
They got on with their business.
"And that's it, really," Tom said, three quarters of an hour later. "Robert knows more about the individual farms. He's been out touring them. In the car. With the chauffeur. They don't often get a Rolls Royce in their farmyards."
Mary was slightly amused, but more interested in something else.
"What's wrong, Tom?"
He was puzzled. "What do you mean?"
But Mary only put her head to one side and raised an inquiring eyebrow, in a look that would not be gainsaid, unimpressed with Tom's attempt to forestall her.
He sighed. "It's nothing."
She continued to stare at him.
"I might ask you the same question," he countered boldly.
"I asked you first. Come on, Tom. It's a simple question."
He meditated on it for a moment and then fell back heavily in his chair. "All right," he conceded, his shoulders sagging a little. "It's about Sybbie."
"Sybbie!" She had not expected that. "And here I was thinking you had a broken heart or something. What's wrong with Sybbie?" Her concern grew when she saw a pained look cross his face. "Tom?"
"It is a broken heart, in a way," he said quietly. "I've been spending some time with her lately."
"I know. And I thought you were both enjoying that!"
"We were. We are. In a way. That is, it feels right to spend more time with her and we get on very well. She's a bright girl. Like her mother." He paused.
"And her father," Mary added. She was very fond of her brother-in-law.
"Well. But...do you remember last week, I took her on some errands?"
Mary nodded. Tom had reported on their day at dinner that evening. Things had seemed all right then.
"We went up to Condor Farm. They've got a large family, the Flemings. Several of the children are Sybbie's age - a little older or younger. I told her she could go play with them while I talked with Mr. Fleming and she ... wouldn't. She wouldn't get out of the car. She said she didn't play with ... that sort. That sort," he repeated.
A light dawned for Mary. She could hear the disappointment in Tom's voice.
"And then I heard her telling a little girl on another farm that she wasn't going to go to school in September, but would have a governess at the Abbey, because she wasn't like everyone else."
"That'll be Nanny talking," Mary said gravely.
"Those words came out of the mouth of my daughter, Mary. Sybil's daughter."
"What did you say to her?"
"Nothing. Then. I was embarrassed. Ashamed. And ... I wanted to think about it before I talked to her."
"Admirable self-denial. I couldn't have managed it."
He gave a small laugh at this. They both knew it was so.
"And ... it's made me think," he went on, becoming serious once more. "When I decided - when Sybbie was little - to live here at Downton, it made sense. She was a baby, there'd be more people around her - her family, Sybil's family - and I would be working anyway. I never meant for it to be permanent, but we've just kept going. And I was all right with it. More or less. Until this." He stared earnestly at Mary, who was trying to contain her own reaction to his words. "I don't want my daughter to be like that, Mary."
"Well, I hope you knew that I don't want George - or Stephen - to be like that either."
"I'm glad to hear it," he said with a quick smile. "But there's more to it with Sybbie. I made a big fuss about having her baptized as a Catholic and yet I let her go off with the family to the Church of England service every Sunday."
"Why shouldn't she be bored by Reverend Travis like the rest of us," Mary mused irreverently.
Tom ignored that. He was watching her closely, trying to gauge her reaction. "I've made some decisions. Some big decisions. I hope I can count on your support."
Mary was tempted to make a humourous allusion to Tom's turbulent relationship with Miss Sarah Bunting, a former schoolteacher in Downton Village, an interlude that had led her to doubt his sense, but reined in her wit. Instead she said, "Go on," in as encouraging a tone as she could muster.
He took a deep breath. "I'm going to start taking Sybbie to church myself on Sunday. To the Catholic Church in Ripon. It's only what I ought to have been doing all along. We're the only Catholics in the family. It's my responsibility. I should see to it."
"I'd be glad to fob off such a responsibility on someone else, if it meant I didn't have to go to church," Mary said. And then she sighed. "But I know it means a lot to you, Tom. Papa and Grandmamma will fuss, but not seriously."
He continued to watch her intently. "And I've decided to send her to the village school in September. It's not Catholic, but it is local. I'd like Sybbie to have school friends where she lives. I'll have to arrange with the church for preparations for the sacraments, but I think it's a good compromise."
Mary's head had gone up at this. "The village school! With Molesley teaching her!"
"Not for a few years yet," Tom said. "And I hear he's quite good. But ... yes. The village school."
In his voice Mary heard a little more of the Irish inflection. Was it a mark of his determination in the face of anticipated resistance? "That's going to be more of a challenge for Papa," she said, exhaling heavily.
"What about with you?"
But Mary was not going to fall out with him over this. "I'll fight your corner on that, too, Tom. I wonder about the wisdom of it, in terms of the education she'll get. But, then, I learned almost nothing from governesses, so how can the village school be worse?"
"There's a recommendation," Tom said wryly.
"Although the image of Sybbie tripping along every morning, down the road from Downton Abbey to the village school... Well. It does seem an awkward contrast." She frowned at the look on Tom's face. "What is it?"
"There's more," he said slowly. "We're going to move out of the Abbey, Mary."
At this Mary's jaw went slack in shock. It was not a look that suited her. "What?"
"Not off the estate," he said hastily. "I was thinking of the agent's house. It was only where we were going to go in the first place. It's empty still. You'll not be using it."
He'd meant nothing by it, had no context with her for that remark, but it stung a little anyway, when she remembered Henry's desire to have their own home.
"Will you stand by me in this, too?"
"Of course," she said, almost crossly. "And so what if Papa is aggravated. You must be able to live your own life, Tom." Again thoughts of Henry flitted through her mind. She brushed them aside impatiently. "That might make it easier for you to build a relationship with someone," she went on, trying to regain her composure as she struggled to digest this.
"Romance is a challenge in the fishbowl of the Abbey." He spoke more easily now that she had heard him out. "But that's not why I've made that decision. All things considered, I think it's the best one for Sybbie and me."
"Papa will miss you at the dinner table," Mary said lightly.
"I'll come every Sunday, just like any other average son-in-law."
This good-natured exchange revived them both.
"That's a lot of decision-making," Mary observed. "And in so short a time. It took you a year to decide to move to Boston."
"And four months to decide to move back! It wasn't right for me. It took a long time to make a bad decision. I'm willing to risk a few considered but immediate decisions now."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"Well," Mary said at last. "That was momentous. When are you going to tell Papa and Mama?"
"Soon," he promised. "Now." He sat up straight and leaned toward her a little. "What's on your mind?"
Mary's face tightened almost imperceptibly. "I'm not ready to talk about it. And even if I were, I'm not sure you're the right person with whom to do so."
Tom gazed at her keenly. "Find the right person, then," he said. "Get it off your chest."
An impassive mask descended on her fine features. "I will when I need to."
