DOWNTON ABBEY 1926
Episode 5. Chapter 2.
Tuesday September 7, 1926
Cassandra Jones
There was a moment at mid-morning when Miss Baxter, Mr. Bates, and Andy all found themselves in the servants' hall. The first was taking advantage of the lull to lay out a pattern on the broad table. The second was patiently coaxing a stain from one of His Lordship's cuffs. And the third was snatching a few minutes' rest after an arduous morning of silver polishing and sipping a cup of tea kindly supplied by Daisy. Andy was also perusing the latest issue of The Sketch, which Her Ladyship had given to her lady's maid only that morning and which Miss Baxter had left by the fire for the enjoyment of all.
"How's the new man, then?" Bates asked, looking up. "Have you been showing him the ropes?"
"Don't need to," Andy said emphatically. "He knows everything. And what he doesn't know, Mr. Barrow tells him once and he remembers. I'll be asking him questions in another week." Andy looked a little beleaguered, as though he had been trying to keep up with Lewis and failing.
Bates grinned. "He's been a footman for some time," he said reassuringly. "If he didn't know what he was doing, I'd be worried. What are you reading in there?"
The slightly pained look that had come over Andy at the mention of the other footman faded. "The society pages. I like to look at who's wearing what and where they're wearing it. I'm from London," he added, as if in explanation. The other two laughed.
"I turn right away to the letters to Cassandra Jones," Miss Baxter said. She had gained in confidence since her first appearance at Downton Abbey, but she admitted this with a slightly apologetic air. "I haven't had a chance yet with this issue."
Bates looked up again. "Read us the column, Andy."
Obligingly, Andy turned a few pages. His eyes found the appropriate section and, clearing his voice, he began to read aloud. Only months ago this would have been impossible for him. But he'd been a diligent student and now he rather enjoyed showing off his skill.
"Dear Mrs. Jones." Andy looked up. "Mrs? Why Mrs.?"
"People think single women don't know much," Miss Baxter explained.
"Go on, Andy," Bates said.
"Dear Mrs. Jones,
I work in a respectable house in the north. My lady is of one of the most notable of families and I serve her faithfully. My concern is with the butler of the house. He is an odd little man, devoted to his work, exacting in his standards. We don't rub on very well together. Indeed, there is a great deal of friction between us. And yet...I admire him. His brittle manner is almost endearing, his concentration as he pores over his stamps compelling. I find myself drawn to him, almost against my will, and I fear this is becoming a distraction. What should I do?"
As he read, Andy had gotten into the spirit of the letter, his tone becoming more melodramatic. Bates was laughing, more from the footman's antics than the silly letter. Miss Baxter's reaction was more mixed. She was amused by Andy, but the missive itself unsettled her a little.
"A maid! With a crush on the butler!" Andy rolled his eyes. "What a scandal!"
"It's a woman of a higher station by the sound of it," Bates mused. "A lady's maid? A housekeeper, maybe. A year or two ago," he added mischievously, "it might have been Mrs. Hughes."
They all laughed at the ludicrousness of his suggestion.
"Mr. Carson is not a little man," Andy said. "Or odd."
"True enough," Bates conceded. "Still, there is more romance below stairs than we often acknowledge, as I am evidence." He added this last, noting Miss Baxter's discomfort and discerning the cause. "This could have come from any house in Yorkshire."
Andy shook his head. "I can't imagine anyone writing this kind of letter to Mr. Spratt."
"Well, they don't know it's Mr. Spratt," Bates said. "We do. What does he say?"
But before Andy could read the response, they were distracted by the opening and then banging shut of the door down the passage and in another moment Miss Denker made an entrance. She never just came in as other people did.
"Tea! At mid-morning!" she exclaimed, staring at Andy. "Shouldn't you be polishing staircases in anticipation of the visit of the American Ambassador!" She gave them all a haughty look, pleased to inform them in this way that she was up to date on goings-on at the Abbey.
Her sharp words brought a flush to Andy's cheeks and he hastily drained his cup, but Bates spoke up.
"He's put in his hours this morning. Why are you here?" Bates could be as courteous as any of the gentlemen upstairs, but he did not waste it on the undeserving. Miss Denker had never won his favour.
She clearly felt the same way about him, flinging across the table at him a small stiff envelope. "My lady asked me to put this into your hand directly," she snapped. "Heaven knows what she has to say to you."
"Thank you." Bates forbore to point out that tossing correspondence like a stone on a pond was hardly the same as handing it over directly. He did not rise to the bait of her comment. Instead he put the note in his pocket and re-focused on His Lordship's shirt.
"It's not as if you're a member of our household," Denker continued, her eyes boring into him.
Bates was certain the communication was an innocuous one. The Dowager would hardly have trusted Miss Denker with anything requiring discretion. He ignored her fishing remark.
"We've just been reading Cassandra Jones in The Sketch," Andy said, hoping to deflect Miss Denker from further comment about him. Past experience with the Dowager's maid had led him to be wary of her. "Do you read it?"
"Of course not!" she said indignantly. She convinced no one. "That's Mr. Spratt, you know."
None of them reacted to this. She'd already parted with this revelation some months ago.
"I don't know why Her Ladyship puts up with it. It's demeaning. And nonsense. What could such an odd little man, a bachelor, a butler, know about the vagaries of the heart? Nothing!" She was perhaps surprised to see all three of them suddenly staring at her. But they were a dull bunch. "I must be going. I have work to do, even if the lot of you don't." She disappeared down the passage decrying the injustice of having to serve as an errand boy.
Bates turned to Andy. "Read the letter again," he said.
Andy picked up the magazine and read. Almost immediately he fell into an inflection that mirrored the cadences of Miss Denker's strident tones. The men laughed aloud. Miss Baxter smiled.
"She did call him an odd little man," Andy said with a grin.
"And I understand he collects stamp," Bates noted, his eyes crinkling mirthfully.
"Lots of people do that," Miss Baxter said. "Don't they?"
A bell rang even as she was speaking. Andy closed the magazine and leaped to his feet. "Back to my duties," he murmured, and fled the room, the magazine lying forgotten on the table behind him.
When Miss Baxter realized she'd left a necessary spool of thread in her room and got up to get it, Bates took advantage of the moment to examine the note Miss Denker had brought to him. In it the Dowager asked him to make a report at a time of his convenience sometime that week. He would have to find a window. His eyes lingered for a moment on the few words of her summons, observing the almost-erratic nature of her script. Was this age or infirmity catching up with her? Or was it only his imagination to see in her writing evidence of her declining health?
"What's that?"
He looked up sharply, irritated with himself for not having heard anyone approach. It was Anna.
He did not reply, only folding up the slip of paper, inserting it into its envelope, and returning it to his pocket. And did not respond to her question.
This perplexed Anna. She crossed the kitchen to his side. "What is it?" she asked again.
"Nothing that concerns us," he said lightly.
"You know I don't pry," Anna went on, "but I can't help thinking that you're involved in something. And if it's something you feel you can't tell me about, then it must be something serious. I thought we were all over that."
He understood her exasperation. Too often they had erred - both of them, though he more often - on the side of discretion and once or twice it had led them to disaster. Anna's concerns were legitimate in the abstract, if not in this particular case. He might have reassured her that this secret had no implications for them, that it was someone else's secret that he was carrying for a change. But he had his own axe to grind.
"Why haven't you told me what's bothering you?" he murmured, his hooded gaze fixed on her. "Do you not think I've noticed how pale you are in the morning?" He'd been trying to contain his concern, to give her the benefit of the doubt, to extend to her the trust that he hoped she would show him. But it was no good. Now that she'd made an issue of it, he would suppress it no longer. There was an edge of aggravation to his voice.
Anna stepped back and it was almost as though a door had shut between them. "I must get on," she said sharply. "I only came down to fetch a butter knife for nanny." And she turned on her heel and was gone.
Bates cursed beneath his breath. He had played it badly and had only himself to blame. And now he was more worried than ever.
Mary, George, and Barrow
"I thought I might find you here."
Lady Mary stood at the door of the butler's pantry, smiling at her son who was kneeling on the visitor's chair which was drawn up flush with the butler's desk. George was so positioned that he might closely examine the globe that sat on the desk top between the boy and the butler. Barrow had been half out of his chair when Mary came in, one index finger on the sphere, pointing to something. At the sound of her voice, Barrow quickly stood erect. George only glanced in his mother's direction.
"My lady," Barrow said politely.
She moved into the room, nodding to him but with her attention fixed on her son. "Nanny was wondering where you'd got to, George. But I told her not to worry."
George was not concerned about Nanny's distraction. "I only ever come to visit Mr. Barrow," he said in a tone that suggested Nanny ought to know as much.
Mary was not about to reprimand him. The sight of a child of the house deep in conversation with the butler in the familiar environs of the pantry brought too many fond memories to the fore. Her nanny had learned early on that Mr. Carson was her best friend and that his office below stairs was both sanctuary and schoolhouse for her, as well as her favourite place to play. She had many times taken tea here with the formidable butler of Downton Abbey and over many years formed a lasting emotional bond with him. She neither encouraged nor discouraged George in his pursuit of a relationship with Mr. Barrow, but that he gravitated to it naturally was something that warmed her heart. Barrow was not Carson. But neither was George his mother. Everyone had to make their own choices to suit themselves. Especially when it came to friends.
George set the globe spinning as his mother approached his side.
"And what have you been up to?"she asked.
"Exploring!" George declared, his bright blue eyes sparkling with the adventure.
"Indeed! Carson and I travelled the world together, too. But we used an atlas." Her eyes went automatically to the shelf by the far door where the atlas, which Carson had bought just for her, had resided for so many years. It was no longer there.
"Mr. Carson took it with him," Barrow said helpfully.
Of course he had. It was one of the few tangible mementoes he had of the little girl he loved.
"Where did you go today?" Mary asked.
George's hand stilled the globe and then he feathered it around until he could stab a finger at a purple patch. "Germany."
He'd got it right. Mary was proud and not at all surprised. Learning had always come more easily to her in this room and under Carson's tutelage than upstairs in the nursery with her odious governess. Adulthood sometimes tempered childhood judgments, but Mary's assessment of Fraulein Kelder had never softened.
"Why Germany?" She and Carson had always gone to more exotic locations - South Africa, the Northwest Passage, the Strait of Magellan, China... Which was odd, now that she thought about it in retrospect, given Carson's aversion to all things foreign. It was perhaps ungenerous of her to intrude on this moment between George and Barrow, but it was also an opportunity for her to glimpse her son in a different social setting and she was curious. She wouldn't make a habit of it, knowing how valuable it was for the relationship to develop unfettered by outside influence.
Even as she asked the question, out of the corner of her eye she saw Barrow stirring uneasily.
"Mr. Barrow has a friend there," George said promptly. He picked an envelope up off the desk and waved it at his mother. "He's just gotten a letter from there. Look at the funny stamp, Mama." Barrow started a little, as though to recover the envelope, and then stilled again.
Mary took the envelope to see what George meant. "What do they put on their stamps, now that they haven't got a Kaiser?" she mused.
"Poets," Barrow replied. "I believe that is Schiller."
"Ugh." Mary had never warmed to poetry, English or otherwise. She fanned the envelope in distaste and her eye caught the return address on the back flap. She recognized the street as the same one on the letters Henry had received from his friend, Reinhard Morden.
"Mr. Barrow and I are sad today," George went on, though he hardly sounded so. "Our friends have gone away."
Mary was puzzled. "What friend are you mourning?" she asked her son.
George rolled his eyes at her, a shock of his blond hair falling into his eyes as he did so. "Cousin Sybbie, Mama. She's my friend and my cousin."
His unconscious gesture stopped the breath in Mary's throat. It was so reminiscent of Matthew. "Of course," she said quickly, regaining her equilibrium. "But she hasn't gone very far, George." He might look and move like Matthew, but in that moment he sounded like his grandfather. "Barrow's friend," her eyes shifted briefly in the butler's direction, "is much farther away."
"But Sybbie hasn't invited me to stay since she left," George said sharply. "Mr. Barrow's friend invited him. But he can't go. So we're sad."
Barrow moved uncomfortably as Mary glanced his way. "It was an offhand suggestion, my lady," he said, clearly down-playing the invitation. "We were just ... talking ... when Er... Mr. Miller was here."
It was none of her business, so Mary did not pursue it. But she heard how he stumbled over the name and her long acquaintance with Barrow allowed her to appreciate his discomfort. She held out a hand to George. "I'm sorry to cut your visit short," she told them both, "but Lady Merton has dropped in unexpectedly and was hoping to see her grandson!"
"Grandmamma!" George said excitedly, pushing the chair back.
"Of course," Thomas said obligingly.
George took his mother's hand and skipped his way to the door. But with one hand on the doorjamb, he looked back. "Goodbye, Mr. Barrow. I shall return!"
This dramatic flourish evoked a laugh from each of the adults. But as she turned to leave, Mary glanced back once more to see the laughter fade from Barrow's countenance and his gaze fix on the letter she had put back on his desk.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Author's Note: A shorter chapter so that a single chapter did not get ridiculously get out of hand. This is going to be a very long episode.
