A/N: Thank you so much to HamiltonAsparagus and Guest for your lovely reviews, really appreciated.
I got a bit carried away writing about Edward Courtenay. I guess I just like writing about complicated characters. I also love writing about children, in case anyone hadn't already noticed! :D
***chapter 11***
Lieutenant Edward Courtenay was a handsome, well-educated man with a quiet, polite manner, thick dark hair and piercing blue eyes. That was the first thing Thomas noticed about him. Really noticed. Those eyes. Not his quiet charm or quick-fire wit or easy laughter - though of course he noticed all of this. But those eyes...They made him draw a sudden sharp breath when Dr Clarkson removed the bandages to check on his progress.
He'd been brought into the cottage hospital a few days earlier, blinded by the mustard gas the Fritz liked to chuck over the boys on the Front. Evil bloody business, that was, Thomas reflected. He'd known many a poor b*****d suffer the same fate, watched them shuffling helplessly in a crooked line of four or five, hands pressed down on each other's shoulders, being led like children to the rest camp or the dug-out of the s**t pit. Most regained their sight and there was no reason to believe Edward Courtenay wouldn't. But somehow his suffering got to him more.
He and Lady Sybil (or Nurse Crawley, as she preferred to be called) and Courtenay had struck up a friendship. Though their conversations were of necessity brief in the hustle and bustle of the ward, he could hold a listener spellbound with tales of his life as a young boy and the animals he would nurse back to health, often injecting his own special blend of humour into his stories. It was strange to hear him talk in the same breath, and even with pride, of the animals he hunted for sport. But then the lieutenant was a paradox. As if another Edward Courtenay existed beneath the self-assured persona, the clown, the raconteur, and he was merely playing a part.
And so he was.
He was born into the hunting, fishing and shooting set, and achieved the academic greatness he dreamed of under the dreaming spires of Oxford, he said with a wry smile (poking fun at himself and his string of qualifications when Thomas asked about the long row of abbreviations after his name on a letter) and, while he enjoyed those pursuits well enough, all he ever really wanted to do was farm.
For a peace settled on a man's soul when he ploughed the soil of God's earth, when he brought in the harvest, or witnessed the miracle of newborn lambs and foals on unsteady legs blinking in wonder at the world. Although often he pondered on how he could reconcile the killing of one with the nurturing of the other, it all seemed to make perfect sense inside his head as he lay listening to the ticking of the clock on the nearby wall.
He found in its rhythm a stalwart companion, when he needs must use ears instead of eyes, and together they marked the world they lived in, the timing of meals and the doctor's rounds; when medicines were dispensed by morning or when gas-lamps burned low by evening. It became a particular source of pride for him to be able to announce the time almost to the minute, and he turned it into an amusing game between Thomas, Sybil and himself, urging them to call out to ask.
Oddly enough, sweetly enough, it was a skill which Thomas, having "grown up surrounded by all manner of clocks, dials and timepieces", had acquired too, although, he admitted teasingly, with not as much accuracy and certainly not as much flair as Edward. And, while he had never come across anyone else with the same time-telling ability before, he once overheard a customer in his father's shop brag she only had to look at a woollen garment to be able to knit it from memory alone. Another time, he was sent on a Christmas errand by his first employer, Lord Buckley of Hawthorne Grange, to carry a message to a relative of his Lordship, an accomplished pianist who had played several times at the Royal Albert Hall, and who, it was claimed, had such a fine ear for music that he only need listen to a new melody once to remember every single note.
Being a naive youth of not quite fourteen, and shiny and new to Household etiquette, Master Thomas Barrow somehow weaved his way to an area of the House he never should have been in (a matter of great consternation to the Household staff after the discovery) where Sir Cecil Anthony Almond and his friend, both florid-faced from having imbibed far too much Christmas cheer, paid him no heed whatsoever as they listened to the gramophone record, the friend removed it from the turntable and then, with a bow, as though he were on stage at that very moment, Sir Cecil sat at the piano and proceeded to play the very same stirring music, while the forgotten errand boy, with "icicles dripping down from his nose on to the carpet already drenched in puddles of snow from his hobnail boots", shivered in the corner until being rudely snatched away by a horrified footman who happened by.
However, Thomas continued, as he and Courtenay, mindful that other, and sicker, patients were close by, collapsed into subdued giggles like mischievous schoolboys, it was highly unlikely they would be able to use their particular talent to knit the perfect woollen garment, and even more unlikely that they would be called upon to show off the skill at the Royal Albert Hall.
Ah, but ..! As correctly guessing the time was a skill few possessed, Edward added, "they may rest assured they would never have a usurper to their joint throne". With a deep smile Edward sensed and returned, Thomas squeezed the hand he yearned to touch with his lips, and gathered up razor, shaving brush, mug and towel, the reason for his visit. Their unique ability, albeit of somewhat limited use, was yet another way in which they bonded.
Young together, and with the whole world opening out before them, Thomas, Edward and Sybil had learnt so much about each other in such a short while, sharing hopes and dreams, doubts and fears.
Away from Downton Abbey, Thomas's iron facade crumbled. Busy with his work, he saw little of the Downstairs staff, and in any case was too exhausted to play his usual power games. At the cottage hospital, now in danger of overcrowding as more and more wounded soldiers were being brought in and more and more beds needed, he was highly valued by the other medical staff, regarded with gratitude and often affection by the patients he tended. The friendship between the three blossomed like the green shoots of spring. Words grew deeper and hearts grew closer.
Especially between Thomas and Edward.
No matter how tired his body or how tantalisingly the warm arms of slumber beckoned, he got into the habit of sitting at the lieutenant's bedside just before he finished a shift. Afternoons were as rushed as always, but night breaking into morning with its grey half-light, or the remains of the day with its lengthening shadows, were their favourite times, when the ward slowed with quieter movements, with whispers and softer footfalls and breaths of sleep. Sometimes Lady Sybil might be finishing the same shift and join them, but if they were locked in confidences, as they often were, then with a smile she would slip silently away, unnoticed.
Beyond the fact he'd had two siblings, not even Reggie had known the full story of Thomas's childhood, but he found himself telling Edward. About Paul, his first love, of their first true kiss and the sweetness of each other's lips on the day of the morning rainbow. About Kate, his staunch defender and ally, who loved and cared for him like a mother, even though she never could quite understand his ways. About Ben and their early days of brotherhood until enmity seized their souls, but must never have quite gripped their hearts because often he saw, but never quite realised, the hurt in his small brother's eyes when they argued, and how his death, like the deaths of Paul and Kate, broke his heart.
Of his tears when no one saw, and the beatings William Barrow gave his son for his "perversions", and then, from nowhere, an odd kind of pity for his father. Of the sights and sounds and smells of the clockmakers shop, the constant stream of people and wagons passing by, the shouts from the outside market, and came one day the sudden furious drunken argument and thirty men or more are gathered at the public house on the corner of the high street, yelling and jeering and scuffling, and Thomas, eight years old, pressing his face against the upstairs window of the clockmakers, half in fear, half in excitement, and frustrated he can't see anything at all for the crowd surrounding the main protagonists, and then a long, long terrible scream, which is, at first, lost among the cacophony of noise, until it rises above all, and as the crowd, silenced now, falls away, a figure lies slumped in the mouth of the alleyway and rich red blood streaks in zig-zag lines over the uneven flagstones to flow down along the gutter like tributaries to a river, while the murderer staggers and sways, brandishing the bloodied carving knife.
Of his father's unrequited love for Helen Latham, the pretty young widow, who refused to give Thomas even a small memento of her son after Paul's death, and the bitterness he still harboured toward her. Of Phyllis Baxter, seamstress and shop girl, well liked by all, even the cantankerous clockmaker, and her friendship with Kate, who, missing a mother and female confidant, too burdened with taking care of her family, from when she was barely eight years old, to have time to make friends, told Thomas she loved her like the sister she'd always dreamed of. Miss Baxter, who one morning upped and left and never any explanation, and Thomas swore he never could and never would forgive her for deserting Kate just when she most needed a friend.
Edward had led a charmed childhood in comparison, protected and cosseted as he was, growing up in the green hills and wide valleys of the countryside, far, far away from the polluted air and deaths and diseases of overcrowded towns. It was a boyhood of holidays by the seaside and in Europe; loving parents and doting nursemaids; of enough to eat and plenty of it; glittering Christmases when the Christmas tree would almost touch the ceiling at its top and be festooned by gifts at its foot; of books and toys, painting, poetry and playing piano; of small private schools and later boarding school. The latter where he discovered there were other boys like himself. Two or three, perhaps more, he speculated; it was an age of experiment and uncertainty, strong friendships and confused emotions. Though, like most did later, he denied who he truly was, deep down he knew. Ever since he could remember, he knew.
There had been however one cloud on the golden horizon. And all these years later, there still was.
Jack. His younger brother and only sibling. Even now, there was no chance of a reconciliation between Edward and Jack as there just might have between Thomas and Ben. They were, and always had been, chalk and cheese, night and day, summer and winter. Edward loved to paint, to read poetry, and play music; he could sit for hours quietly sketching the dramatic beauty of nature. Jack's world was fierce and stormy. He scorned fops and dandies, as he categorised his elder brother- at least, when he was being polite, Edward laughed. Jack welcomed the War as a chance to "kill a few dozen Huns", rising so swiftly through Army ranks that, to his great satisfaction, he was soon more senior than Edward. But then, ever since they were children he had despised his brother for being what he was, chipping away at his self-esteem, making him feel so dirty and ashamed, that for almost a decade Edward hid his feelings, even tried one or two relationships with women. Nothing came from those relationships, he said. Nothing ever could.
And he no longer wished to deny who he truly was, he whispered, his breath brushing lightly against Thomas's ear, sending delicious shivers down his companion's spine, resting his hand on his arm far longer than was necessary for a blind patient being helped by a medic to navigate the hospital grounds, although neither man objected. Thomas's hand reached up to Edward's and their fingers locked.
They had known each other for such a brief time, but the precariousness of War gave everyone, especially the young, a greater urgency. They talked tentatively of their future. They were not so alone, Edward whispered; there were places, hidden places, where men met other men. Some believed, too, that as the Continentals had no qualms about displaying their emotions openly, they might be more tolerant than the stiff upper-lipped British. Imagine the horror here, he smiled, if two Englishmen were to kiss one another on the cheeks by way of greeting! Perhaps, he added wistfully, when this war to end all wars was over, they might settle abroad. He had the means to do so, his parents had left him and his brother an inheritance. Being the eldest and therefore receiving the biggest slice of the cake, it had caused even more animosity between himself and his brother. But although Jack might try to discredit him, to threaten to have him branded a criminal and declared insane because of his homosexuality, he would never win. Like Thomas, he'd had enough of being "pushed around". Nothing would stop them from being together. Always, Thomas promised. Always.
It was the following morning when Dr Clarkson broke the news to Lieutenant Courtenay. The damage to his eyes was too severe to be reversed. His blindness would be permanent…
