DOWNTON ABBEY 1926

Episode 11

Chapter 2

Tuesday November 16, 1926

Isobel and Dickie

Dickie was sitting up in bed when Dr. Clarkson came on Tuesday.

"You've avoided a crisis," the doctor said, after listening to his lungs. "But you're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. You must maintain a strict regimen of rest, fluids, and medication."

Dickie nodded congenially. "I am kept under close supervision," he said. His smile was weak but the glow in his eyes, focused on his wife, was as vibrant as ever.

"Yes," Dr. Clarkson said shortly, his gaze flicking in Isobel's direction. "You've managed things well, Lady Merton."

Isobel acknowledged this with a nod.

The doctor gathered up his things. "I will continue to check in regularly. As always, call me if you need me. I'll see myself out."

He slipped away and Isobel let him go. She was relieved to know that Dickie was holding his own, but still unsettled by Dr. Clarkson. His words on Saturday morning had stung her, not least, she told herself, because it was so out of character for the man to indulge a fit of temper. How dare he! she had thought as he had slammed out the door that morning. She was not some novice nurse in his cottage hospital whom he might dress down for an infraction.

She consoled herself with the idea that anyone might have a bad day, even Dr. Clarkson, and thus fully expected him to apologize the next day. He did not, though she gave him the opportunity, meeting him at the door to take him up to the bedroom and then escorting him down again. Instead, it was as though his professional manner had never been discomposed. He addressed Isobel with the same detached courtesy as usual, although perhaps with a touch of greater formality. Believing herself to be the one transgressed upon, Isobel was nonplussed by his behaviour. Why, he was acting as though he were the aggrieved party! But she waited in vain for him to admit his error.

Though struck dumb by the doctor's indictment, Isobel had not said a word of it to Dickie. Dickie was ill. There was no need to trouble him with it. Though she did not know that she would have confessed it to him in any case. Great lady nurse, indeed! Lest she seem distracted now, Isobel busied herself with tidying up the bed, smiling affectionately at her husband. Dickie was a dear man. She'd not had a cross word out of him since they had married.

He was watching her with that owl-like gaze that he had, a gaze she ought to have known to be as intelligent as that of the alert night-hunter. "Is there something the matter, Isobel?"

She started and then recovered herself. "No."

He waited and she glanced his way to find those penetrating eyes fixed on her.

"There's nothing," she reiterated.

But he would not be put off. "If there's something you're not telling me, something about my own health, you know I want to hear it."

The tension his query generated dissipated. "Of course, you would," she concurred. "And I should never keep anything of that sort from you. Nor would Dr. Clarkson. He believes in patient rights." He did and she would give him that, although she said so almost grudgingly.

Dickie had a coughing fit and Isobel got him a glass of water and sat next to him until it subsided. "There is something," he persisted and then frowned thoughtfully. "It seems to me that you and Dr. Clarkson are even more eager to be rid of his daily visits than am I. What is wrong?"

He had not pressed for disclosure in the matter of Larry's indiscretions and Isobel had been grateful for that. Perhaps this was something different. "We've had a bit of a falling out, Dr. Clarkson and I." That was an understatement.

Then, at Dickie's urging, she told him of the charged conversation, of the accusations Clarkson had levelled at her, and of the rude manner of his delivery. In the re-telling of it, she became indignant all over again. "The gall of the man! He might speak to the hospital nurses that way, but I was never under his command. Well, except for during the war when Downton was a convalescent home." She paused. Dr. Clarkson had been sympathetic to her difficulties then. "And now I am a member of the hospital board!" She stopped short of deploying her title. Isobel accepted that she was Lady Merton, but she did not like to play on the influence that came with it.

Dickie was frowning thoughtfully. "There may be more to it than that." He took her hand. "Are you very angry with him, Isobel darling?"

Isobel tried hard not to be angry with anyone. Anger was such a waste of time. But…. "Yes," she said. "Were his words not something to be angry about?" She expected immediate and unwavering support, but Dickie went silent in thoughtful contemplation.

"Well?" Isobel demanded after a long moment.

Dickie roused himself. "Well, there has been friction over the hospital and we know Dr. Clarkson to be touchy about that."

"Yes, but amalgamation has gone ahead," Isobel said dismissively. "It's done. It isn't that." She revisited the brittle conversation in her head. "This was … personal."

"Mmm, yes. It does sound that way," Dickie mused. His gaze rested on Isobel and his usually genial expression went sober. "Has it occurred to you that he has a point and that your anger may perhaps be an acknowledgment of that?"

"What?" The word came out as a snap, and then Isobel shook herself. She wasn't angry at Dickie, after all. "I'm sorry," she said.

He waved it away. "Not at all. And I don't mean about our trip to the workhouse. I might have picked the bug up there. Indeed, I probably did. I spoke to a few men who were coughing. But that doesn't matter. I go where I choose and not at the behest of anyone. He was wrong there."

"But right elsewhere?" Isobel couldn't see it.

Dickie's head inclined to one side and he regarded Isobel lovingly. "Do you know that when we were talking things over after we'd made our tour and Cora was relating how involved you used to be in all sorts of projects, I thought How wonderful!And, my darling, you were radiant, even in the memory of your past activities. It seemed to me then that such … work … such active consideration for your fellow man … lit a fire within you."

"It … did," Isobel admitted, thrown off by Dickie's approach. "I like a good cause."

"And I marvelled at the diversity of your causes," Dickie went on. "The hospital, the convalescent home, the missing and dead from the war, refugees, prostitutes, the down-and-out Mr. Grigg." He laughed at this last, but his amusement could not conceal his admiration. "You were right in the thick of things, of everything. Doing. Getting your hands dirty. What happened?"

Well, there was a simple answer to that.

"Matthew," Isobel said quietly. "I didn't want to see anyone else's pain. Not anymore."

Dickie tightened his hand over hers, rubbing his thumb along the small bones along the back. They were both silent for a moment.

"You said helping Mr. Grigg helped you out of that," he said gently. "And everyone says you were so very good at all this sort of thing."

Isobel shrugged indifferently. "Not everyone. Cora, perhaps."

"And Dr. Clarkson!" Dickie reminded her. "And even the redoubtable Mrs. Daring was impressed. It sounds as though Dr. Clarkson quite admires you and is only exasperated that, to his mind anyway, you have left a useful life behind."

From Isobel's perspective this was an uncomfortable conversation and remembering what Dr. Clarkson said in light of this made her more uneasy still. She opted for a re-direction. "Would you really want your wife, Lady Merton, mucking about like that?" she asked, managing a more boisterous air. She recalled the solid phalanx of disapproval from the Crawley family when she had employed Ethel Parks as a means to rescue the woman from prostitution.

Dickie smiled. "My wife, Lady Merton, has nothing to prove to me or to anyone else – Dr. Clarkson or my sons. Lady Merton can do the formalities with the best of them! But her talents know almost no bounds. She can also do so much more!"

"I have the hospital board," Isobel protested.

"Of course, you do," Dickie said agreeably. "But … your past would suggest that you enjoy more direct involvement. You're such a social person, Isobel. You care about people. I've spent years on boards and commissions, some locally-oriented and others in the Lords. Dreary affairs. I should hate to think of you confined to such engagements and perhaps Dr. Clarkson thinks likewise. My darling, you have been – as Mrs. Daring put it – in the trenches. And you liked it."

Isobel found herself with nothing to say. She had confided reluctantly in Dickie but, having done so, anticipated that he would take her part completely. Instead, he had expanded the issue, illuminating its complexities. She was slightly bemused.

Dickie interrupted her reveries with another bout of wracking coughs. Isobel was roused to more practical concerns. She saw him through this fit and then got up to go in search of fresh tea.

"If it makes you feel any better," Dickie said, from the depths of the covers she had tucked in about him, "if Dr. Clarkson thinks you have abdicated your social responsibilities, he must think me entirely useless." Isobel made an impatient noise, but Dickie went on. "I have served on a lot of boards and committees, but I've never lent a practical hand to my fellow man in my life."

"You're exaggerating," Isobel said drily. "And it doesn't make me feel any better to think so."

"Perhaps I ought to get my hands dirty," Dickie said, his voice muffled by blankets.

"Let's just get through this, shall we?" Isobel left him fetch the tea.

Mary and Anna

Mary took up Freddy's suggestion with Anna the next day.

"Anna, I must ask for your help."

Perhaps it was the intensity with which Mary spoke that prompted Anna to a wary look.

"It's nothing uncomfortable," Mary assured her. "No under-the-cover apothecary runs to purchase discreet products. Nothing like that. It's … about my grandmother."

Anna's countenance brightened immediately. "The Dowager? How may I help, my lady?"

"Well, you see…." Mary's voice caught, surprising her. She had never wavered before hard reality, but she was startled to find her defenses so frail in this matter. "She's … she's not doing very well."

It was an understatement, but Anna nodded, understanding what lay behind these shallow words. "She has been looking frail of late," she noted.

"Yes. But … it's more than that. She won't recover." Mary steeled herself. "She is going to die, Anna. Soon." It was the first time she had put it in words and though she met Anna's gaze, her eyes blurred a little.

"I am sorry, my lady."

Mary gave her a weak smile. "I know it, Anna. Thank you."

"How may I help?"

"By helping me to become more useful."

Anna's head tilted to one side, somewhat perplexed.

"I want to learn how to … care ... for someone. Physically, I mean. I … never learned how."

"Why would you have done?" Anna asked, still puzzled.

"I know. We've servants enough and there have been nurses bytimes. But … I'd like to feel comfortable making my grandmother comfortable. I know it's possible. Sybil did it, during the war. Even Edith did, nursing William right up to the end." She paused, remembering. "Edith was rather impressive, now that I think of it. But even Matthew knew I was useless. He wouldn't marry me, knowing he would need care. Lavinia was my superior in every way there." There was rather more to that particular situation, but that was still an element. Mary shook off the past and focused on Anna again. "But I don't want to be useless in this, not with my grandmother. Could you … help me? Teach me to do things?"

It was, perhaps, one of the Lady Mary's most vulnerable moments. Anna only wished she could provide that which Lady Mary sought. It was odd, really, that she should assume in Anna a competence in this. Anna had direct experience in the care of her own child that Lady Mary lacked, but she had not otherwise been involved in the kind of attendance to which Lady Mary referred. Maids were not often called upon in this regard. But Anna had a clearer head in this moment and she was used to finding solutions for the problems presented to her by her mistress.

"I've not been in that situation myself, my lady," she said. "I'll help you so far as I can. But … I think there is a person much better suited to the task at hand. And I'm certain she'd help."

Wednesday November 17, 1926

Robert and Cora in London

Robert took a cab to Belgrave Square and Meade let him in without comment, though he had earlier warned the man that it would be a late night.

"Her Ladyship is in the library, m'lord," the butler intoned.

This surprised Robert, but he went straight in. "You're back early," he said in greeting, bending to kiss Cora, who was seated on the sofa by an inviting fire. It was more than a perfunctory exchange on both sides and they drew apart, pleased but also puzzled.

"There wasn't that much to my errand," Cora explained, pulling Robert down on the sofa beside her.

"I need a drink," Robert said, getting up again immediately. He poured himself a generous one and then returned to her side.

"You should have been gone for hours still," Cora said, raising a critical brow at the glass he was cradling. She would rather he gave up alcohol entirely, an idea he had dismissed as a pipe dream.

He did not answer immediately, only sipping his drink, as though trying to find the words. And then abruptly, he met her gaze directly. "I'd best tell you straight out. I'm finished with this diplomacy business, this whole ghastly, dull, aggravating business." It was an unambiguous declaration. He searched her face carefully, eager for a reaction.

"What?" Cora's eyes widened in surprise. "What happened?"

Robert shrugged. "Well, I'll tell you," he said, more quietly. "I've never been exactly easy with it all. I told Houghton at the beginning that whatever my … skills … in mediating village disputes, I was no diplomat. They're a different breed altogether, Cora," he said, suddenly earnest. "They speak a different language. And I don't mean French. And," he reached out to take one of her hands, "I'm sorry to put it this way, my darling, but I don't like being used by an American."

Cora swept a stray strand of hair from his face and smiled wryly. "I hope you don't like being used by anyone, Robert. I know what you mean and I don't take offense."

He came over a little more relaxed at that. "I suppose I was flattered. And it's not that I didn't do what was asked of me. I did. I have. I have re-directed conversations when tempers were rising, and asked sensible questions to restore focus to tangible matters and away from emotional outbursts, and maneuvred difficult people away from explosive situations." He paused. "I think I'm quite good at all that, actually."

"As you proved, once more, at Isobel's dinner. And so long as Miss Bunting is not in the room."

He rewarded her with a smile at that. It was an old joke between them. "But I had begun to think that my … service … in this way was a … well, if not a betrayal of my country, then at least a ranking of priorities in which Britain was not foremost. I didn't like that."

Cora rubbed his hand. "Did Sir Evan Fares put you off at that dinner?" she asked knowingly.

"Not really. He only said what others – and I – had been thinking. But tonight, Cora!" He groaned and then swallowed a fortifying gulp of whisky, pausing to enjoy the sensation of fire catching all the way down his throat into his chest.

"Tell me," Cora said.

"The Dominion ministers are in London for a conference that will transform the Empire, Cora. They're here to hold Balfour to wartime promises about greater autonomy. We're to be reinvented as a Commonwealth, with the Dominions holding equal status, as members, with Britain itself. Our very own little League of Nations, as it were. Without a pious American at the head."

Cora made an exasperated sound. "As the pious American who came up with the League of Nations never got the United States to join it, though he died in the battle for it, I think we can leave him out of it. What's wrong with the idea, Robert?" She asked this, though she knew what he would say.

"The King, sitting at a table with the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Newfoundland, as though they were the equals of his own Prime Minister!"

"But they are," Cora said with equanimity. "They aren't colonies anymore, Robert, as they proved with the blood of their young men. And," she added, tongue in cheek, "remember what happened the last time Britain stood in the way of maturing colonies."

Robert just gave her a look and decided to re-direct the conversation. "They do have important matters to discuss, so how Mr. Houghton managed a whole evening with them is beyond my understanding."

"I'm sure they were, one and all, flattered," Cora said easily. "Everyone wants the Americans onside. And perhaps Mr. Houghton wants to disrupt the new alliance, the British Commonwealth! We've always been suspicious of British tentacles encircling the globe."

"Yes, always preferring American tentacles, usually fronted by a chequebook," Robert countered, but they were both smiling. "Well, perhaps you ought to have been there in my place, darling," he said with a sigh. "You seem to have gotten the picture better than I did."

"But why did you leave early, Robert?"

He sipped his whisky. "Well, first there was the Canadian Prime Minister. Mr. King. Though he likes to be called Mackenzie King, in honour of his grandfather who led a rebellion against the Crown in the middle of the last century. As though a cocktail party with the Americans wasn't frivolous enough in the middle of an Imperial Conference, the man proposed that after the party we have a séance."

"What?"

"I am not joking, Cora. He muttered something about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I think to lure us in."*

"A séance! Perhaps we could hold one at our next house party."

Robert chose to ignore Cora's provocation. "That sort of nonsense I could overlook, but…." He paused, framing his words carefully. "The conversation took a peculiar turn at one point. Of course, it was the German question again, but it was mostly about the war and how it started and why and how it ended when it did."

"What was peculiar about that?"

Robert shifted uneasily. "It was nothing … obvious. Only there an air of implicit understanding. It was about financing." He said no more but only stared meaningfully at his wife, willing her to read between the lines.

"I'm not shocked," Cora said, though she was in fact discouraged.

"They weren't all of the same mind," he hastened to add. "And it was very mild, not as overt as the champagne salesman at Downton. But it made me think: what am I doing here? So I drew the Ambassador to one side, pleaded personal concerns – the estate and … and … Mama's health … - and resigned. Withdrew." He sighed again. "I can't tell you how relieved I am."

"You always said diplomacy wasn't for you," Cora said sympathetically.

Robert took her hand and raised it to his lips. "Now, tell me, my darling. Why are you home so early? Did Mr. Chamberlain stand you up?"

"No. He didn't stand me up. He threw me out."

"What?"

Robert was shocked but Cora waved away his indignation.

"He said I had no idea what I was talking about and that personal representations in the matter would not be considered in the making of such policy initiatives."

"I am stunned. The man did not appear to have such gumption at the dinner table at Downton, not, I admit, that I was in much condition to notice," he added ruefully. "But that is still damned ill-mannered of him."

Cora shrugged. "I think he was just terribly busy. He did look harassed. And I jumped the queue."

"He's heard Mama's sinking," Robert said grimly, "and has gotten cocky because she can't blackmail him again."

"I doubt that that's his reasoning," Cora said mildly. "And I haven't given up. I've put Ripon on the map for him. Maybe he'll consider it at the next step. And in the meantime, I'll go back to the local level. I can do something there."

"Not put off by Dickie's illness or Mr. Chamberlain's resistance or the apparent futility of banging your head against 'the system,' as Tom would put it?"

There was a teasing note in his voice and Cora smiled into it. "The workhouses have to go, but the towns and, more importantly, the people need services. That's worth fighting for, isn't it?"

Robert stared at her for a moment and there was a tenderness in his gaze. "Do you know, you sound like Sybil. She told me once that it was the dreary causes that needed our attention."

They pondered that in a comfortable silence, memories of darling Sybil misting their eyes.

"Let's go home, Robert. Tomorrow."

"We shall, my darling," he said. "In style."

* Author's Note: William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's longest-serving Prime Minister (1921-1926, 1926-1930, 1935-1948, beating Gladstone's record for prime ministerial longevity), was indeed a devotee of spiritualism. It was all the rage in Victorian England and lingered on into the 1940s. Through skillful mediums, King "communicated" with his late mother, but also with notable important political figures, including Sir Wilfrid Laurier, William Gladstone, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (post-1945), and his beloved deceased dog, Pat. Historians generally agree that, however weird this may sound, King was of sound mind and generally found voices from the spirit world in agreement with the decisions he had already made.

King's maternal grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie, did lead a rebellion against the duly-constituted colonial government of Upper Canada (the colonial precursor of the province of Ontario) in 1837. It was a disaster. Mackenzie fled to the United States, although he returned a decade later. The poverty of the Mackenzie family in consequence of political misadventure made W.L.M. King quite close with a dollar.

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, had a particular interest in psychic phenomena and spiritualism, and was known to attend seances.

The Imperial Conference of 1926 was as consequential as Robert suggests here. After three years of the blood of their sons being spattered all over the Western Front and in Turkey at the direction of the British High Command, the Dominion Prime Ministers extracted a commitment from the British war government under Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to acknowledge the several Dominions – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa – as partners rather than subordinates. Some war-time concessions were made, but the full constitutional implications were to be worked out later – at the 1926 Imperial Conference. The British Empire was reconstituted, at least as far as these nations were concerned, into the British Commonwealth. Effectively granting full independence, rather than the qualified status secured since 1867, the formalities were enshrined in legislation in the 1931 Statute of Westminster. Ireland and India also participated in the 1926 Conference, but their futures took a different turn. Newfoundland was also in for some turbulence, notably reverting to colonial status in 1934 and, in 1949, entering Canada as a province.