DOWNTON ABBEY 1926

Episode 10 Chapter 2

Monday November 1

Robert and Rosamund

On Monday afternoon, Robert met the train at Downton village station. His sister was returning to Downton. He'd thought it would be a treat for her, but the alarmed look on Rosamund's face when she saw him reminded him of the circumstances which had prompted her visit. So he waved and smiled and moved quickly to reassure her with a welcoming kiss when she stepped from the carriage.

"Nothing has changed." His first impulse was to say Everything is fine, but it wasn't and they both knew it. The waiting game had begun.

"That's a lot of baggage," Robert said, as the porter filled a cart.

"I'm going to be staying for quite a while," Rosamund said firmly, as though she could extend Mamma's life by an act of will.

"The car is over here," Robert directed the porter.

"Where is Pratt?" Rosamund asked, as they left the platform, looking around for the chauffeur.

"Puttering around the garage, I should think. I drove here."

Rosamund stopped. "You drove?"

"Yes." He saw the problem immediately. "I can drive. I've been driving for years. Well, a year. Or two."

His sister did not appear convinced, but she moved on. "How was the dinner party?" She had specifically returned to London so as not to put Isobel under the obligation of inviting her. Rosamund thought Isobel tolerable, but actively disliked Dickie Merton.

Mary had asked the same question. Robert gave his sister a different answer. "Mamma was her old self. We had Amelia Grey at our end and Mamma cut her to pieces at regular intervals." He related Mamma's clever comparison of Larry Grey to Heathcliff, and Rosamund laughed. She always enjoyed her mother's wit when it was not directed her way.

"She put on a good show," Robert went on, "but it was an effort. She felt that Isobel needed her support and rallied to the cause. But we left early."

"You and Cora can always be counted upon to act solicitously where Mamma is concerned. It is a great relief."

"Did you know that the Princess Amelia room was named for King George III's youngest child?" Robert asked abruptly.

"Yes." She looked at him oddly.

Perhaps girls and the women they grew up to be were naturally interested in the daughters of the king. Robert wouldn't have thought so. "And that she regularly met her lover, Charles FitzRoy, at Downton?"

Rosamund fixed him with a perplexed look. "No. How do you know?"

"Mamma told me the story over dinner. I can't believe she's never mentioned it."

"Robert, is Mamma likely to have told me a story about a wayward young princess carrying on in a morally reprehensible way under our very roof?"

"Hmm," he conceded. "It was a century before our time," he added.

"Still. I don't know about you, but I was brought up in an atmosphere of moral purity."

They stood by the car while the porter piled the luggage on the rack at the rear. Robert tipped him generously and then opened the door for his sister.

"I've never sat in the front," she said, flummoxed at the novelty.

Robert rolled his eyes. "Well, how will it be with you in the back and me in the front? Get in. I want to talk to be able to talk to you."

She came over wary as he slipped into the driver's seat and turned on the engine.

"I can drive," he reiterated, impatient with her hesitation. To distract her, he turned the conversation in a different direction. "Have you ever … wondered … about Mamma and Papa?"

Rosamund gave him a blank look. "Wondered what?"

He had to smile at that. Rosamund was a veteran of London society, a married and widowed woman, and a keen observer of life around her. And she enjoyed gossip as much as the next person. But she responded to his question with a question that betrayed complacent innocence where their parents were concerned.

"I teased Mamma about Prince thing-a-ma-jig. The Russian fellow. And she was her usual opaque self in response."

They exchanged a look of perfect understanding at that.

"But I have wondered since," he went on.

"About Mamma?"

"About Mamma and Papa," Robert replied, not entirely in jest. Rosamund would, of course, be prepared to hear ill of Mamma, though not of her precious Papa. Robert had loved their father, but Rosamund idolized him.

"Papa!"

Robert smiled at the predictability of his sister's response. "I'm not saying anything happened for either of them. Only … they weren't like us, you know."

"Not like us? What do you mean?"

"Cora is the love of my life," he declared, "even if we did have a somewhat mercenary beginning. And Marmaduke was yours. Tragedy prevented you from enjoying Marmaduke as you ought to have done."

"Yes." Rosamund's eyes always grew misty at the memory of her dear husband, taken before his time.

"Well, we're old sticks on that score, despite being the younger generation and all that. But Mamma and Papa …. They were, as Mamma has said on more than one occasion, the Edwardians!"

Rosamund huffed dismissively. "What a peculiar thing to think!"

Robert laughed. "Perhaps you're right. Do you know, it'll be strange to have you at the Dower House rather than the Abbey." It had been understood in the past that maintaining a little distance between overbearing mother and uncertain daughter was a good thing.

"Mamma insisted. And I'm … pleased."

"I'll visit as often as I can," he said reassuringly. "I promise."

Again their eyes met in understanding.

A thoughtful silence enveloped them for some minutes as Robert navigated the car over the cobblestone streets, through the market square, and down the road to the Dower House. He was particularly proud of his adept maneuvering of the car before the main door. Before getting out, he turned to Rosamund. "I'm so very glad you're here."

Tuesday November 2

Anna and John

Anna had reached the door of the Grantham Arms before she realized that John wasn't right there next to her. Perplexed, she looked over her shoulder to see him standing on the far side of the street, motionless She marched back over to him.

"What are you doing?"

There was a strange look on his face. Disbelief? Awe?

"Look at it, Anna," he said with a rare solemnity. "The Grantham Arms. Our new home."

She relented a little, taking his arm, taking a good look at the Grantham Arms herself and trying to see it through his eyes. "Well, it won't be our new home if we catch pneumonia and die first. Come on."

He followed her.

Inside, the Kearnses welcomed them warmly. John had predicted this correctly. The couple, who had had charge of the inn for more than a quarter of a century, were glad to see it pass into the hands of people so closely connected to the village and the Abbey.

"Alone at last," John murmured, when the Kearnses finally withdrew.

"This place means a lot to them," Anna said. "They're allowed to be emotional about it."

"I didn't know an Englishman was allowed to be emotional about anything," he teased.

"You affect stoicism, Mr. Bates. But I know better."

So she did.

"I'm only concerned that the living quarters are upstairs," Anna said, a little line creasing her brow.

Her husband knew exactly what she was saying and he had no patience with it. "One short flight is better than four long ones. I'll manage."

He had made precisely the same reassurance when he first came to Downton. Anna had been the only one who had accepted his assertion then. She thought perhaps she could believe that he knew what he was talking about now.

"I only have to manage it once each way every day. Down in the morning, up at night," John said. "And in the meantime, if I need something, I'll send one of the children upstairs for me. Little girls are especially obliging," he added, smiling.

"Are you wanting a girl, then?" Anna asked, unconsciously running a hand over her abdomen.

John reached for her other hand and held it tightly. "Girl or boy, you know it doesn't matter. Just so long as it's the four of us, safe and healthy, tucked up in our own home."

He spoke with an intensity that betrayed the longing that had lived within him for so long. Anna appreciated this, but she was in a buoyant mood and opted for a teasing response instead. "The four of us. So you've given up on children all around, have you?" It was a joke between them.

"I mustn't be greedy," he said. "And we've the children we have, will have," he corrected, with a nod to the child yet unborn, "to consider. Anna, I want the best for them."

What parent didn't? But the earnestness in his voice set her heart ready to burst with love for him.

He noticed the wetness in her eyes, glinting in the electric lamps of the pub. "What is it?" he asked gently.

"You've not changed in fundamentals, John. But you are so different from the man you were when you came to Downton."

"Of course I am," he said firmly. "And thank God for it. Then, I was a man who stood behind curtains of shadow. I was grateful just to get the position. I dared not hope for more. There've been trials in abundance since then, extraordinary trials, but it's been us in every one of them. You were insane to marry me when you did, but it was a blessed insanity. You and a dream of a life together, this life, in a place of our own and yet nestled within the embrace of the Abbey, this has sustained me through it all. We've come out the other side, Anna. I'm not saying we won't have hardships and obstacles ahead, but, God willing, they're going to be of the every-day, ordinary kind."

"That's quite a speech, Mr. Bates."

"Well, here's a shorter one: I love you."

She never tired of hearing that one.

They turned to the tasks ahead of them. There wasn't much opportunity either at work or at home to concentrate and some things needed undivided attention. The Grantham Arms was a public house and inn, serving as a gathering place for men to have a pint of an evening, a dining establishment for local and passing trade, and offering lodging with three rooms upstairs, set apart from the living quarters of the family.

"It'll be a lot of work," John mused.

"When have we not had a lot of work," Anna countered. "But we'll need help in the kitchen. Ladies' maids don't usually have a range of cooking skills."

"I'd eat mutton stew for a year to live on our own."

"If only I knew how to make it," Anna teased him back. "And I think we can do a little better than that. This is an inn, not a prison."

"I would have been glad of mutton stew in prison," John grumbled. It was true enough, but he was indulging his freedom to grumble, too.

"We'll have to hire a cook," Anna said, returning to the point.

"What about Daisy?" he said abruptly.

"What about Daisy?"

He gave her a look. Surely she could put two and two together. "As a cook. At the inn."

She continued to stare at him. "Are you joking?"

He got a little exasperated at this. "Do I look like I'm joking?"

Anna considered. "Daisy."

"She can cook," John said emphatically. "We know that. And we know her." His last statement prompted a little line to emerge on Anna's forehead again and he noticed. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I didn't think you liked Daisy much. Or at all."

"Like. Dislike. I don't like anyone but you. My feelings are not a recommendation either way. We need a cook and she can cook. And it gives her a change of scene, more authority in her own workplace, and it will keep her close to home."

"You sound like you've thought about this."

"I haven't. The idea just popped into my head. Clearly you don't think it's a good idea."

"It's not that," Anna said quickly, smiling so as not to discourage him. "Only I think Daisy needs to get away."

He shrugged. "That's that, then." He glanced about the room and then his eyes flickered Anna's way again. "What are you smiling at?"

"You," she said. "Keeping Daisy here. You, Mr. Barrow, Mr. Branson, now Daisy. Us. Downton doesn't let people go easily."

"Lots of people have left, thank God. Miss O'Brien." They both rolled their eyes at the name. "Miss Braithwaite."

"Thank God, indeed," Anna intoned.

"But we still have a problem to solve."

"We should start asking around," Anna agreed. "Or advertise. After all, we take over at the New Year."

"We can celebrate Robbie's birthday here." John grinned at the thought.

"He was born December 31st."

"I know. But it won't make any difference to him."

Anna cocked her head to one side, gazing at her husband as though puzzled by what she saw. "You're in a very strange mood tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"You're … happy." She only realized it was so as she said the word.

"I am happy!" John declared, with an uncharacteristic exuberance. "Anna." He took her hand again. "I've never been so happy!" He saw the faint shadow of worry pass over her face. "See what you've done to me?" he went on, determined to dispel any uncertainty. "Your unrelenting good cheer has won me over! I'm a new man."

"You make unrelenting good cheer sound like a bad thing," Anna said, crinkling her nose at him. And then another thought seized her attention. "I wonder how things are going with Robbie," she mused.

"He's fine," John said firmly. "His sitter is the eldest of six children. She knows more about taking care of children than we do. And the Carsons are just doors away and they have a telephone."

"I know, I know. But I'm a mother, Mr. Bates. Aren't I allowed a stray thought about my son on our first night away from him … well, away from him when he's not been at the Abbey … ever?"

She expected him to make a flippant remark, but instead his expression grew solemn. "You are allowed anything you want, forever more."

She knew this wasn't quite so, that life wasn't that easy. Nor did she expect it to be. But she did like her husband wanting it so. She reached across the table to take his hand.