Guest Thank you so much for your review. Yes, I agree about Thomas and Bates. Like all the characters Julian Fellowes created in Downton Abbey, they are not one dimensional. I particularly like writing about Thomas because he's so complicated.

A/N: Just a short chapter, as I didn't do any writing for two weeks during the Christmas period so got a bit behind, but I thought it was time I updated.

***chapter 29***

Sixteen-year-old Vinnie Walsh had three hobbies. The first was football: supporting his favourite football club, Sheffield Wednesday, and playing football at every opportunity. The second was an interest in girls, who, sadly, were not interested in Vinnie, which might have had a lot to do with the fact he thought the best way to impress any girl he liked was to behave like a ten-year-old, and so he would pull her hair or "accidentally" bump into her or snatch something she was carrying. Vinnie's third hobby, as he had never been to a Sheffield Wednesday match, had very little time to play football due to work commitments, and time aplenty on his hands to tease the young girls who worked alongside him, and who, to his astonishment, were unimpressed, was telling tall stories.

Being a hall boy at Downton Abbey was hard work but boring. He yearned to rise to the dizzy heights of valet or footman, but as this was unlikely to happen for several years, if at all, Vinnie liked to make his life sound far more interesting than it was. Thus, he did not run one hot afternoon two miles to a neighbouring village and two miles back with a polite message from Lord Grantham; he ran five miles there and five miles back (although the village itself, oddly enough, remained exactly two miles away from Downton Abbey) with an urgent life-or-death message from Lord Grantham. He did not witness Nellie, the kitchen maid, burn a dozen jam tarts on her very first day and see Mrs Patmore, the cook, roll her eyes, sigh deeply and content herself with a stern reprimand; he witnessed Nellie burn six dozen jam tarts on her very first day and saw Mrs Patmore chase her round the kitchen with a rolling pin while a terrified Nellie screamed to Vinnie for help.

And Mr Jacobs, a taciturn man who was focussed only on saving for his retirement, the very same whom we first met collecting Miss Baxter from the train station in his capacity as odd-job-man-approaching-retirement and whom nobody ever knew before to drink more than one glass of wine, and then only at Christmas, did not partake of two glasses one memorable Festive period and to actually be heard to sing the first two lines of Good King Wenceslas (those unfamiliar with the carol never did learn whether the good king was observing his surroundings on the Feast of Stephen or being ultra careful on the Feast of Stephen)*; according to Vinnie, he downed a whole bottle, leapt drunkenly up on the table and conducted a Christmas carol sing-a-long.

Given his propensity for exaggeration, it was extremely foolish of Robert Crawley, in espying young Vinnie, to send him on ahead of the ordered motor car to run and inform Anna of John Bates's accident, and to be certain to reassure her all was well, she was merely being taken to the hospital to visit her husband, but that is by the by. The 7th Earl of Grantham was blissfully unaware of Vincent Walsh's third hobby and so he was sent. And delivered the message in characteristic Vinnie fashion.

Anna was sitting by the cottage fire, basking in its warmth on the cold afternoon, with the delicious aroma of the chocolate sponge she had baked earlier permeating the air, listening to the steady ticking of the mantelshelf clock and the clacking of her knitting needles, and in that pleasant half drowsy state that often comes to us when we are exceptionally content, when she was startled out of a delightful reverie of Baby asleep in the bassinet wrapped cosily in the woollen blanket she was knitting, by a loud, frantic and continuous hammering on the cottage door. Dropping several stitches as she leapt to her feet and her knitting tumbled from her lap, she hastened to answer.

There stood a breathless and important Vinnie. And, having already forgotten His Lordship's instructions in the excitement, he supplied his own version of events.

"You gotta come fast, Mrs Bates! Mr Bates is bleedin' t'death and been rushed to hospital! They're sendin' motor car 'cos he might not make it through night!"

Truly, there was no malice in the boy. Vinnie told his stories to liven up his dull existence and he told them so often he half believed them himself. But while most of the time they could be dismissed in amusement or exasperation by his long-suffering listeners, this time it was to have dire consequences.

"You stupid, stupid idiot!" Mr Jacobs pulled up in the car Lord Grantham had ordered just in time to hear Vinnie's version of events and to see Anna collapse. "Get away back to the House, you bloody great fool, you're no earthly use here with your bloody lies! Go on, go, go!" These were the most words Norman Jacobs had ever been known to speak, such was his fury. And they are the most polite I can possibly record in the telling of them, for they were much, much longer, being peppered heavily as they were, with a language so colourful and embarrassing I must leave the rest entirely to your imagination.

Vinnie didn't need telling twice. Brought back down to earth by the tirade and suddenly realising he had gone too far with his flair for drama, terrified by Mr Jacobs' outburst and afraid he might have killed Anna, he immediately ran away.

Norman Jacobs did not generally inspire confidence, so indifferent was he to everything around him, and nobody ever thought to seek him out if a minor accident occurred, especially when there was always Mr Barrow with his vast medical experience, which knowledge, fortunately, superseded his surly attitude and he would patch up the casualty, a kitchen maid who'd cut her finger with a knife, perhaps, or someone tripped over a mop bucket and twisted their ankle, albeit with his usual sarcasm. Yet Mr Jacobs' very unexcitable nature meant he could be surprisingly calm in an emergency. As he was now, having quickly assessed the situation.

Returning to Downton Abbey would cause unnecessary commotion and delay matters. Tasking Vinnie with the errand of fetching the doctor would take too long, even if Vinnie could be trusted not to elaborate and cause further confusion. No, the wisest course of action would be to stick with the original plan and take Anna in the car to the hospital. But Anna was heavily pregnant and had fainted.

Norman did not have, nor did he claim to have, any more idea of what to do in medical matters than anyone else untrained in the profession. But, his parents losing most of their children in infancy, as so often happened in those dark days of Victorian England, he had grown up with only one sibling, a much older sister, who was heavily pregnant the morning she fainted and an eminent physician who happened to be passing, and who, it was rumoured, had once treated a member of the Royal household, came to her aid. It was a long, long time since Mr Jacobs was a boy; Amy and her baby died of tuberculosis when she was twenty-three and he just turned nine, but the day was imprinted on his memory. He recollected vividly of how awed the gathered crowd had been as the physician placed his sister on her left side and lifted her left leg towards her chest and how the onlookers clapped and cheered when she came round. This method he used now with Anna, gently and reverently turning her on her side, and hurrying inside the cottage for some water, splashed it on her face, as unruffled as if it were something he did every day.

But the fainting, he knew how to deal with. He could only hope and pray the shock of being told John Bates was dying did not send her into labour…

*Good King Wenceslas looked out

on the Feast of Stephen

ps Don't ask me why the Earl of Grantham didn't send a doctor with Mr Jacobs. That was his decision, not mine! :D