Half the Story Hidden— Chapter 2, Part b: Fair Nature's Confounded Base
Continued: August 1927, 6 days later - After the morning funeral and early luncheon in the great hall for the wake of the late Dowager Countess of Grantham.
Chapter 2. Part b. Fair Nature's Confounded Base.
Afternoon—Near the Stable-hand's Stream
oOOo
Flabbergasted does not even begin to cover it. Utterly Gobsmacked might be closer to it. Speechless— most certainly. Elsie's hand has gone to cover her mouth to stop herself from vocalising any of her dismay as some sort of small squeaking animal sound, which she is sure is all that she has within her at the moment.
Oh, Dear God.
But she knows she will not, and just cannot, stay speechless for very long. She tries desperately to control her rapidly beating heart that hammers painfully within her upper ribcage, as she tries to coordinate the multitude of thoughts flitting through her head at the moment.
Well… now the proverbial bomb has well and truly gone off, hasn't it?
She fully understands her man's rage now—feels much of it roiling beneath the surface of her skin for him–for everything. She just does not know what to do with it all.
All of these years!…My God! What have we all done? What have we done? What have they been?
She just wants to….Urrrghh!... Stomp?... Scream?….Uugh! SOMETHING! …maybe… Oh, Dear God!
Then she looks up at her man, who is dangling his leaden feet in the cool water. He sits out on his favourite fishing rock in the middle of the Stable-hand's stream, leaning forward with his weight on his hands on the boulder near his thighs. His shoulders are rounded as he rests as heavily as the stone itself. His gaze is unfocussed but it casts out somewhere over the ripples that are forming in rings across the surface of the pool as he disconsolately swirls through the water with his toes and occasionally kicks listlessly across the surface of it to see the droplets fall.
Elsie feels like she is stuck in that wince invoking moment when your foot is holding open the jaws of a rabbit trap—just before you can secure the trigger pin in place that holds the whole plate and spring precariously open. The next movement can just as easily spell disaster as it may become a successful moment of elegant and deadly precision.
And yet she finds that, right now, she just desperately needs to move. She rises and starts to pace at quite a decent clip down along the riverbank until she notices that she is wringing her hands together at her waist. She takes the letter from her blouse pocket once again and reads it—for the third time now. Then she turns abruptly turns and strides all the way back to their rug—determined.
The die has been cast and the chips will fall where they may. Oh dear! I am mixing up my metaphors again! Or are they idioms? Ugghh! Good God! I could do with a stiff drink right about now!
Elsie spies the string bag tied to a stick shoved into the mud bank which holds down a couple of bottles of Chablis in the cooling water of the stream. Her Charles-love said he would bring them along with their picnic basket and she smiles grimly at his rustic cellaring techniques. She sighs heavily with the whispering willow leaves.
'All life is a series of problems which we must try and solve, first one and then the next, and then the next, until at last we die.' She said that once—that she did. The Old BAT! Elsie's mind spits out the last clearly remembers hearing the Dowager Countess saying this and thinking at the time—'Well, that's the truth of it all—to be sure.' Only, now, the caveat appears to be that we can sometimes leave all of those problems behind us when we go—all to be solved by the people who are left. But, oftentimes it appears that they will have only half of the facts in hand to work with.
Well, that's cheered you up no end, Elsie Mae Carson! Why don't you just get on with your work. Boots off this time though, she thinks ruefully as she quickly divests herself of her sturdy walking shoes and stockings. She tucks a couple of thick slices of bread into the low pockets of her blouse and grabs two short-stemmed wine glasses from the picnic basket.
Nothing for it but to take some sustainance and just try to get on.
She bends to pull one of the bottles from the floating bag at the bank and then hoists her skirts a little to go out and join her man.
He looks up at her with morose eyes as he hears her lightly splashing across the shallows towards his rock.
Brighton.
His rock.
Brighton.
"You'll get your skirt all wet, Els." His voice is a dead weight in the air.
"I think that may very well be the absolute least of our troubles right now, Charles-love. Here" she states firmly as she reaches him and turns so that he can lift her slightly to sit upon the rock next to him. "Here, we are. Get a little bread into ye. Do you have something to open the bottle with, Charles, I forgot to look in the basket and I quite suddenly feel in desperate need of a good drink."
"Huph," he sighs out around the sticky mess of bread dough he is playing around his dry mouth before he swallows it heavily down his raw throat. "What kind of a butler would I be if I never had a corkscrew with me?" He asks defeatedly, as he fishes out a Swiss army Officers knife that His Lordship had presented to him one Christmas-time during the war. "Here, allow me, Milady," he listlessly sneers, "It is apparently what I am meant to do."
"None of that now, Charles," she breathes the warning, "There is no shame in the work that you have done."
"Perhaps not… Just shame in the fact that I was ever born," he states dully as he pitches the cork into the stream and watches it disappear over the babbling brook stones and then it bobs up like a sure little boat and eventually floats on its way, stopping every so often as it gets caught in little circling eddies and swirls before it affects its further escape.
"Enough of that now, Charles," she growls out again, in another low and warning whisper.
Charles sighs heavily as he carefully pours her a glass of the yellow shining liquid. Elsie tosses back the wine almost like it is a fortifying shot of whisky for a sailor coming in from a stormy night catch. But the wine is cool and bright, and it somehow still suits the splendour of this day. The contrast from the heavy air that surrounds them in this moment is a strange delight and she holds her glass out for more before Charles has even had a chance to think about sipping his. He is not entirely sure he has much of a stomach for it yet anyway. He places his glass behind them on the flat of the rock and takes another dry bite of bread as he pours a half glass for his wife.
"Go easy on it, Love. The sugars in this one can hit heavily in this sort of weather," he disconsolately mumbles out past his bread.
At this, she casts a semi-surprised eye and quirks a small twitching smile his way. It sounded rote for him to say as much, even in such an uncustomary manner from around a mouthful of food, but somehow, it manages to make Elsie feel a little bit surer that the man that is her Charles will always remain and that he is strong and stalwart enough to see himself through all of this mess— in the end—with her always by his side, of course. She watches him as he carefully uses the blade on his pocketknife to pare back the sharp edge of fingernail he broke during his earlier efforts on that heavy boulder.
Always such delicate precision—My darling Charles.
"That sounded a bit more like you, now," she cautiously tells him.
He sharply snaps the blade shut.
"And what is that supposed to mean, Elsie! Obedient?!," he bites out the word. "Pre-dict-able?! Reliable, as ever, 'Carson'? We don't know what we would do without you –'Carson!'" He spits his own name like venom across his tongue as his volume rises. "Oh, 'Carson'— could you just…! Oh, 'CARSON', would you be so kind as to…! Fetch that for me, will you, 'CARSON?' Oh WOULD you just, 'CARSON!'" he shouts and gestures out wildly and then he growls as his voice drops ominously low, " 'Carson,' you STU-PID – LIT-TLE- BAST—"
"CHARLES CARSON! That_is_ ENOUGH! I do not ever want to hear those words uttered from your mouth again! NOT EVER!"
" I..I...Oh..I..I…I'm so terribly s-sorry, Elsie. I do beg your pardon," he stumbles out.
"Yes… Well… you are quite forgiven. 'tis but a momentary lapse, I know it… And perhaps you aren't the one who needs to be begging someone's pardon as much as the Dowager Countess should have begged yours…Did she, by the way?…Here, have some," She offers her glass to him. "It is still a lovely wine and I for one will not be letting that Old Bat completely ruin this quite spectacular summer's day for me."
Charles just looks at her somewhat incredulously.
"Do you always try to find the best of any situation?"
"You should know me well enough by now to know that is generally the case, my Love. Although, I will not deny that there is in this moment the very strong undercurrent of a desire to wring her lying—lit-tle -NECK!" she bites with increasing volume on every single syllable before she stills completely and sucks air deeply into her lungs to actively calm herself a little. "But…." she breathes out a frustrated sigh, "I know the good Lord looks poorly upon those who would think ill of the dead, and so I am afraid that I must curb it. What use is it all now anyway—what with her gone and already in the ground? And besides which, I have walked that path before, as ye well know, and I'll not be one to be accused of not learning my lessons in this life, Charles."
"You will likely never cease to amaze me, Elsie-love." As he keeps staring at her now with quite a small amount of wonder. This woman is my wife!
"Well so long as I don't shock you quite as much as the Old Bat has, hmm?"
"You could not possibly do that. Not ever. At least I still know that."
"Tell me what she said to you that last day, Charles," she asks him quietly.
"Huuuhh…" he sighs out long. He does not think he is ready to talk about this with any level of coherence, but he knows it is his only way to find some solace and a path back to his Elsie-love. He has been by this dear woman's side for all of these long years, and certainly, he has been married long enough now to have learnt this little truism and lesson: she wants him to talk. She always seems to want to hear him, even when he has been angry and rude and obstreperous. And he is still feeling most of all of those things right now. But Elsie always gives him time too. Time to himself if he needs it. Time for silence, and time for the space where no words are needed at all. But he has had enough time alone already since the Dowager Countess died, and since he left the early luncheon wake to continue to grieve alone until his Elsie-love could get away from the Abbey herself. It has all led him nowhere.
Now is the time to talk.
oOOo
"I don't even know where to begin, Elsie-love".
"Just try and tell me what she said to you that afternoon before she passed. I still need to piece some of this together in my mind. I'll not be much help to you until I can. But I will ask you this, Charles—do you believe that all she has written is the truth?"
"Well, I suppose it is the truth as far as the Dowager Countess has ever used the truth— namely in that precisely modified manner which was her 'means-to-the-end' of protecting her own interests—her own family—and of course, her precious reputation….Huuph…You know, I heard her say once 'the truth is neither here nor there, it's the look of the thing that matters'….Well, if she truly always lived by that edict…then," he shrugs "…who can really say?"
And how much have I gone and lived by that example? What a PERFORMANCE! You BLOODY OLD FOOL, Carson!
"Hmm…But, the truth of this revelation will likely do none of that for her, or her family, if it is all to come out, even now that she is gone, a Chagair."
"No, of course not! It could not possibly! It is an absolute scandal! The very worst scandal! And the absolute worst of it is that you will be dragged into all of this muck too, Elsie— through absolutely no fault of your own, except for being silly enough to ever marry me! You know how I hate the thought of scandal befalling the house, Elsie! I always have, but it is even worse if it is brought down upon you and upon OUR own house! You don't deserve any of this! And now I am at the very centre of what will bring it all crashing down around all of us! It's bad enough that I have lived a lie in service to THEM!— and now I will be the one to shatter all of the edicts that I have held dear as I tried to protect that BLOO— Bl-…the BLESSED family over all these years! And …and …Part of me is not even ready to NOT be the Grantham's loyal former butler—not here in Downton Village, Elsie! Eve-…Even though every move I have made for them over all of those years was probably manipulated to some degree or another by the Dowager! I mean…Good God! I thought I was merely serving her needs!—Not actually acting as some sort of pawn in any number of her games and machinations over the years! I always thought I was still enough of my own man to always know, and to do, and to see what is right from what is wrong, El-siee.." he almost weeps out her name in despair at the end of that diatribe, before his ire rises hot and fast once more. "Even if it would have cost me the job in the long run! I tried to do the right thing…And now?! Now!—Now, I will be an utter laughing stock of the village and beyond! Even in London! My life has been a total farce from go to woe! And, dear God! What on Earth will your family think of me now! And…and I just cannot live with everyone knowing, Els! I just could not live with the shame of everyone snickering behind my back and calling me 'poor old Carson— the old fool who gave his whole life away for NOTHING!' And…and then they will cast aspersions upon who I am— whoever THAT is!" He cries out in absolute agony and his eyes are steadily dripping hot tears. "I don't even know who I am anymore, Elsie!… Hungh-Hur-But …but …they will cast the most grievous and despicable aspersions upon you, Elsie- Love— f-for …fo-for ever being duped into marrying such a… such a…such an … utter, UTTER PATSY!"*
Elsie's eyelids flutter rapidly as a means to clear her head a little after the strength of Charles' pained tirade comes to a loud and abrupt halt when he finally stalls to draw a ragged breath back into his lungs. He is panting with it.
Quickly steadying herself, Elsie falls naturally into the response she knows her man most needs from her in this moment. "Oh now, Charles-love. Hush now, my love…Shhh-shh a Chagair," with softness and calmness that sits in direct opposition to the way he has just expressed himself at the other extreme of the emotional spectrum. She smooths her hand repeatedly over his forearm and turns into him to clear his dear cheeks of the tears that still flood down uncontrollably and drip onto his loosened necktie. "It need not come to all of that, a Chagair," she tries to soothe him as she continues as quietly as the murmuring of the nearby stream, "I may not agree with the methods, my Love, but I have to at least take what the Dowager has written in this letter as the complete truth…Well, at least as far as she understood and knew it to be over the years,… no matter how twisted it might have all become." Charles quirks a doleful and questioning eyebrow at his wife. How so? "Well Charles, it has been my experience, and I dare say it is yours too, that when it comes to the last moments of a person's life, often the truth is all that they have left to tell in the face of the ultimate truth of our mortality." Charles moves his head in a slight nod. "And Charles, I don't know why it is so," she continues musing as she smooths repeatedly over his fine woollen necktie that is wicking away the darkness of his tears, "perhaps it is fear of what God has planned for them if they have been dishonest… Or, perhaps it is for someone to finally be in some ways closer to the person they hoped they always could have been across their lifetime," and then she looks earnestly up into his broken eyes to whisper her final thought, "but, either way, I do believe that the truth will always out, a Chagair."
"Huph!" Charles squeaks out on unusually high inflection, "How appropriate!
'Well, old man, I will tell you news of…
a son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son
may, but at the length truth will out.**
"Well, indeed it still seems just so. And so, I would wager that it is the truth in this letter, Charles. We must accept it as the truth, and not another manipulation or a lie. Her Ladyship has no reason to leave this earth with her parting shot aimed at you to do you any real harm. I do believe she cared enough not to hurt you merely for the sake of it, nor do I necessarily think she was ever so weak as to use this last chance as a means to absolve herself of any guilt before she died. For, when you think of it, she could just as easily have taken this silently to her grave, and yet,…she did not. And so,…I think…well, I have to at least try to see it as…maybe… at least in the long run…as her final gift of honesty to you, Charles-Love…And so,…I must try to see the good in that….Well…Don't ….Don't you think so, Charles?
Charles wraps his arm around his wife and leans the side of his head heavily against hers. "Oh, Elsie-Love," and he turns to kiss her ever soft cheek. "Love, the only truth I know right now…is you…"
Some loose strands of her hair stick to his still wet cheeks. They tickle as she turns to rest her forehead squarely onto his.
She looks deep into his eyes before she whispers most surely to him, "And you shall always have the truth from me, a Chagair."
"Els-peth," he sighs out long, never sure of just how much of any truth he can ever truly bear, but he will always try to— always for his Elsie-love—if only she can just stay by his side to help him to bear it all. "I do know that I love you, pretty Elspeth. That much IS always true." He states it with certainty. It is the only other immovable thing he knows right now in the midst of all these turbulent waters. He continues to lean his forehead heavily onto hers and his voice squeaks out "You will not abandon me,...w-will you, pretty Elspeth?" he plaintively asks. Tears prickle painfully in his eyes once more at the horrid and wrenching thought of it. Somehow he still feels so unsure, even after all that they have been through together over all of these years.
"You should know that you do not ever— EVER— have to ask me that, a Chagair," she states with firm conviction, "We are stuck with one another, after all," and she smiles all of her sweet love for her big, hurting duffer of man right into his sad and drooping eyes as she rubs her nose lovingly against his.
"The Dowager did at least say that you are a good and fine woman, Elsie…and…and that I deserve you," he rasps out past the lump in his throat as thick tears continue to well up and overflow from his eyes.
"Well!' Elsie smiles into his face "I am most surely in agreement with the Old Bat on that front!" she quips lightly. "And I would say that it certainly confirms my notion that she was speaking her final truth to you in this letter here too, a Chagair." She waves the letter a little in her hand. "Let us try to take it all as such and make the best of it all from now on then, hmm? But first, you need to tell me all of what she said to you before she died, Charles-love."
Charles finally turns to retrieve his glass from the rock behind him. He sips a little of his wine and breathes deeply before he recalls to his Elsie-Love all of the things that the Dowager Countess said, as best as he can do through the current fog of his confused and indignant grief.
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Author Notes:
*Patsy: A dupe or a scapegoat. Appropriate for Charles to think on this, given his continued embarrassment about how days on the Halls with Charlie Griggs. However, the term 'Patsy' may have been popularized after Carson's time treading the boards. It is attributed to the vaudevillian,Billy B. Van, whose 1890s character, Patsy Bolivar, was more often than not an innocent victim of unscrupulous or nefarious characters.
** The Merchant of Venice. Act II Scene 2 lines 642-5