Downton Abbey 1926

Episode 11

Chapter 3

Thursday November 17, 1926

Mrs. Patmore, Daisy, and Andy*

"Are you very angry with me? Daisy asked, watching Mrs. Patmore out of the corner of her eye. They were standing, as they almost always were, by the long worktable, side-by-side, each elbow deep in the preliminary preparations for dinner.

Mrs. Patmore stopped pounding to look directly at her assistant. "Daisy, I'm not angry at all. Though I will be if you change your mind again," she said emphatically.

"I won't," Daisy said firmly. "I sent the papers in and all. If they accept me, I'm going."

The cook would only be convinced when Daisy got on the train. But in the moment, she felt a wave of affection for the younger woman. "I've only ever wanted what's best for you, Daisy."

"You've had your opinions," Daisy noted circumspectly. William was long ago now, and Daisy had reconciled herself to her own conduct in the matter, but the shadow of that mismatch did hover in delicate conversations with Mrs. Patmore.

"Well, you've been a bit contrary, too," was the response, that warm current of affection a fleeting one. Mrs. Patmore would take some responsibility for Daisy's behaviour, but not all of it.

Daisy smiled at her. "Well, this time I've made up my own mind and I'm confident it's right for me."

"Dare I ask how you overcame your scruples about Lady Hexham?" Mrs. Patmore asked, for she was curious.

"Now, you don't want to undo good work," Daisy said, teasing, and then relented. "It were something Dad – Mr. Mason - said."

"Good."

Daisy was a little surprised that Mrs. Patmore did not press her for additional details. "Anyway, I'll be gone and he'll be alone again."

She is turning the tables on me, Mrs. Patmore thought. "Don't get any thoughts into your head," she said warily.

"But … I thought you liked him."

"I do."

"Then, what's wrong with him?"

"Daisy!"

There were footsteps in the passage and Andy came in.

"If you will excuse me," Mrs. Patmore said, catching up a cloth to wipe off her hands. And without another word, she slipped out.

"Not down at the farm," Daisy observed, glancing at Andy.

"I'm not needed there every day," he said easily, coming to stand across the table from her. "I was hoping for a chance to talk to you."

"I'm listening."

Andy stared at her for a minute. "Daisy, I'm discouraged. I don't know if I'm coming or going with you. Or, I guess, I do know that you're going and I don't know where that leaves me."

"It won't make you feel any better, but I'm the same."

Her words bewildered him.

Daisy brushed off her hands. "I were born poor, Andy." He nodded at that, understanding. Or, thinking he did. But Daisy shook her head. "The best thing that ever happened to me in my life was to get the position here, as a scullery maid, when I were twelve. That were the best of it?" The end of her sentence trailed up, as it often did. "And then, once here, where is there to go? Years of scrubbing and laying fires and I get to be a kitchen maid. Years more and, mostly because I've been in the same place and me and Mrs. Patmore get on so well … sort of … and I'm an assistant cook. And I'll never be cook while she's here, and I'm not pushing her out or anything. Not like Mr. Barrow and Mr. Carson." They both smiled at that. "But, then what? Cook? Here? For thirty more years? Have you ever seen Mrs. Patmore not working?" That was a legitimate question. She paused. "And it's not that I'm afraid of hard work. That's my lot and I'm lucky to have what I have. But …. "And now she had come to it. "The only way out of this kitchen, or so I used to think, was marrying out."

"So, William," Andy surmised. "And Alfred."

"No!" Daisy was annoyed that he should think so. "I don't want to talk about William, but it weren't that. That were the war. And Alfred … no, I were in love with him." Andy grimaced, but Daisy ignored him. "I'd have worked here forever if he'd have stayed, and been happy to do so. And we'd have ended up like Mr. and Mrs. Carson. Only … married a lot sooner."

"Daisy, what are you trying to tell me?"

She sighed. "Andy, Alfred had a dream and he found a way to make it happen and he took it. I didn't even know I could dream. I thought this was it, unless I got married. And even then. But Miss Bunting showed me I could dream and she opened my eyes to see how I could make dreams come true."

A cloud had descended on Andy. "That's it, then. You're off to school. And then to London?" He looked perplexed and hurt.

"I'm off to school, yeah. If they accept me. Andy," there was an earnest note in her voice, for she wanted him to understand, "it's the only thing that will take me beyond this kitchen. I don't dislike the kitchen or the work. But I want to have choices. And … if I come back to a kitchen, maybe not this one, I don't know, I want to be able to do something different. I want to have ideas and to be able to act on them. That may be the farm. But even if I did take it over, I wouldn't want to run it the way it's always been run, or how Dad runs it. He's fine," she added hastily. "But it's his way. I want to find my own way."

"And me?"

She was not insensitive to his dreams, his desires, but she could only shrug at this question. "I have to know who I am first, before I tackle me with anyone else. I've done it the wrong way around once. I'm not doing that again."

It wasn't what he wanted to hear, of course. His gaze dropped and he drummed his fingers on the table top. "I see."

"Andy, it's like you coming from London and suddenly realizing that you want to be a farmer. Would you want to move back to London and to service because I wanted to work there? I doubt it."

"I would!" he declared, suddenly fierce.

But Daisy would have none of it. She shook her head. "No. You wouldn't. And you shouldn't. It wouldn't be right." She knew he hated the mention of Alfred, but she couldn't help it. "Andy, when Alfred left, Mrs. Patmore told me to wish him well and let him go."

"And he went and never came back. Is that what you're up to? And you want me to accept that?"

Daisy wasn't a romantic, not really. Her experience of life had been too rough to believe in fairy tales. But she hadn't really expected so much petty aggravation out of love. "Alfred had nothing here. It's not the same for me. It might not be the same for me," she corrected hastily, for she had seen a quick gleam in Andy's eye. "But I won't make any false promises or lead you on, Andy," she said firmly. "I'm going to school. And when I'm done, I'll see what's what then."

"And me?" he asked again.

Daisy faced him forthrightly. "You have to live your own life."

Robert and Cora

"Have you taken leave of your senses?" It wasn't the first time in her long life that Violet had addressed someone thus, and not least the first time she had spoken so to her son.

They were in the sitting room of the Dower House, Violet ensconced in her most comfortable chair, Robert sitting on the ottoman at her knee, looking tousled and exhilarated. Cora and Rosamund sat more decorously on the nearby sofa. It was clear from Rosamund's startled expression that she shared their mother's shock and equally clear that Cora did not. Cora was not included in the glare that Violet levelled at her son, but she felt the disapproval all the same.

"Mama," Robert said in a soothing tone, without losing the air of boyish enthusiasm with which he had entered the room and made his dramatic announcement. "It's fun. And it will eliminate the tug of war over the chauffeur."

"Buying a sports car?" In Rosamund's disdainful tone there was a perfect and rare accord with their mother's.

"I got the idea from Mary's friends, Freddy and Frank Daring," Robert went on, not quite oblivious to their reaction but determined to ignore it.

"And if everyone half your age should get a notion to throw over their obligations and de-camp to some islands in the Caribbean, would you do that also?" Violet did not wait for a response. "And this vehicle is now parked in my drive? People will think the Dower House has become an hotel."

"It's a Crossley," Robert said, as though someone had asked, "and it seats four, so not quite the roadster someone half my age might consider a sports car. Tom and Henry advised me on the purchase."

"And I thought they were men of good sense," Violet said acidly.

"Mama was in fine form," Robert remarked a little while later as he and Cora departed.

"I'll say," Cora murmured. She noted the satisfaction in her husband's countenance and knew it was not entirely due to the thrill of the new car he had sprung on her that morning. "She's having a good day," she added as a caution. Robert, she knew, avoided difficult things and while one didn't want to be wallowing in sorrow, a realistic understanding of the situation was necessary.

"I know," he said lightly.

They both paused to admire the car.

"Let's take the long road home, Robert."

He grinned at her and they both got in.

The car bumped over the cobblestone streets of the village before pulling out onto the smoother macadamized surface of the direct road to the Abbey. But instead of turning into the long drive, Robert kept the car on course. A lovely tree-lined avenue encircled the fields immediately adjoining the house. Before the war, it was a Sunday afternoon's pastime to take a carriage ride along this route. It wasn't quite the same thing to take it at even a leisurely pace in an automobile, but it captured enough of the aura of bygone days to charm Robert.

Cora laid a light hand on his arm. "It's been a lovely day, Robert. A real adventure."

The day had begun in London where, after Bates and Baxter had dressed them, Robert had seen the servants off with a mysterious air that, he could see, troubled his valet.

"Not to worry, Bates. We'll be home this evening, right as rain." It was perhaps unfair to keep Bates in the dark about the automobile, but Robert wanted Cora to be the first to know of it and, anticipating an enthusiastic response from Bates, Robert wanted to enjoy that separately.

Cora had been puzzled by this dismissal of the servants. Weren't they all to go to the station together? But Robert obviously had something in mind and Cora was prepared to let him play it out as he would. Infected by his excitement, she followed him to the door of the house on Belgrave Square and out onto the step. For a moment she wasn't quite sure what she was looking at. Automobiles were not very common, but one saw them more frequently in neighbourhoods like this one than in the byways of Yorkshire.

"What do you think?" Robert asked, beaming.

And then it became obvious. "The car?" Cora's eyes lit up and her mouth opened in a little O of astonishment. Robert led her to it and they stood there together, just outside the gate, gazing at it for a long, speechless moment.

It was royal blue, one of the colours of the Grantham standard that flew above Downton Abbey and Grantham House, whenever the family was in residence. Automobiles were not Cora's passion, but she was an attentive listener and had picked up a few things from the conversations of the car men at the table. It was a touring car, with whitewall tires and a detachable roof. In fact, it was the very model of the car she had seen in photographs of the Prince of Wales's international journeys. But she could not imagine what such a vehicle was doing here.

Robert anticipated her question. "I bought it," he announced. "For us. Well, for me to drive, but for us to enjoy." He paused and for a moment looked just a little uncertain. "What do you think?" he asked again.

Well! She loved it. And right there on Belgrave Square she flung her arms about him and kissed him. She could feel him laughing in delight beneath her lips.

"It was meant to be the capstone of our London ventures," Robert explained, as they relaxed in each other's arms, "not the consolation prize for our failures."

Cora would have none of that. "My failure," she said. "You didn't fail, Robert. You quit."

He shrugged noncommittally. "In some circles, quitting is tantamount to failure."

"Well, not in my circle!" Cora declared. "Not in this instance." And she kissed him again as a seal of approval.

"Thank you, my darling."

They admired it for several minutes and then….

"Are we going to drive home in it?" Cora asked.

"I had thought so." Robert spoke tentatively. Cora had been absorbed in the battle over the hospital when he'd taken the notion to learn how to drive and hadn't ever expressed much of an opinion about it. She'd blithely gotten into the car with him on the very few occasions when he'd taken the initiative and dismissed the chauffeur, but that had only been to drive in the vicinity of Downton or, at most, to York. This, on the other hand, was a cross-country trek.

But he had no need for apprehensions. Cora's face glowed. "Let's go! Oh! Our things."

Robert, thrilled by her reaction, waved away her concerns. "I had Meade look to having them packed away while we were at breakfast."

"You devil!"

And they were off.

It was, indeed, a long journey, an all-day affair, but Robert had allowed for this. What he had not been able to plan for was how Cora would receive the surprise. She was often wary of surprises. But there was no hesitation here.

It was too cold to have the top down. Bad luck, but that was what came of buying a car in November. It would be different in the summer months.

"It's more than just having another car," Cora declared, as they reached the Great Northern Road and Robert put his foot down. "This car, Robert, it's about us. I know having a chauffeur is a marker of your place in society." She paused and gave him a long-suffering look. "Your mother will point that out to you and possibly your daughter will as well." She did not have to specify Mary. That was understood. "But … perhaps having your own car, one that you drive, is a symbol of a new age."

Robert glanced at her, elated by her spirited attitude. "Finally! Something about the future that I can embrace!"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say future. It's only the present, Robert."

They both laughed.

"It'll be easier to go on a romantic outing when the chauffeur isn't lingering in the background," Cora said, smiling in that beguiling way she had about her.

"But who will carry the picnic basket?" Robert was enjoying the banter.

"Well, we have a few months to work that out."

Robert kept his eyes on the road, but he revelled in Cora's enjoyment. "Tom and Henry will want to examine it from top to bottom," he said.

"They haven't yet?"

"No. I wanted to surprise you in London, so they haven't seen it yet. But Henry had a friend in London look it over and deliver it this morning. It's in perfect working order, my darling. Of that, I can assure you."

"You did buy it through them, though, didn't you?"

"Of course. They guided me through the whole process."

Cora smiled. "We are fortunate in our sons-in-law, Robert."

"Indeed. They are all kind men. And Tom and Henry are useful, besides."

"Robert. Bertie is precisely what Edith needed."

"Amen to that."

They had not had the opportunity for a long time … could it have been months? … for such casual, uninterrupted time together. It was a blissful interlude and one almost wholly divorced from the concerns of the day. But now, rounding the final long, arched curve of the road through the estate, reality intruded once more. Just before he was to direct the car into the drive up to the Abbey, Robert pulled over for a moment. Then he reached for Cora's hand.

"Thank you for your enthusiasm today, my darling. Thank you for not asking how much it cost or whether I was up to the drive. Thank you for not interpreting this impulse, as my loving mama did, as some foolish act."

Cora squeezed his hand. "In whatever you do, Robert, know that I will be right there with you, always." And she leaned into his arms.

* Author's Note: Only one more scene after this one where Daisy has anything substantial to say. Maybe five or six lines. I promise.