***chapter 32***

Anna dead! Anna! Had Thomas been his usual logical self he would have questioned the validity of how, when and where Lottie came by her knowledge to establish the truth of the matter. But he wasn't his usual self. His job, his home, his whole life hung in the balance and the scales tipped heavily against him. His mind was not his own.

Even while he tried to console Lottie, patting her back and uttering soothing words of comfort, his sorrow tore his soul apart. He tried to piece together what must have happened. Anna reached the hospital safely – this much he knew from Mr Jacobs' report. Nor did he doubt Dr Clarkson's optimistic prognosis or his medical expertise. But Thomas had been far from gentle when he snatched the walking stick out of Bates's hand and caused his fall, all of his long-held jealousy and resentment violently unleashed in one terrifying, furious moment that he now bitterly regretted.

John Bates was not a young man, nor a man who, until Anna, paid any attention to his weight or what he ate, and though he'd stopped drinking several years ago his history of alcoholism, with all its related health problems, was already set.

Had his wife collapsed and died when she saw how badly hurt her husband was? All who knew Anna saw her as a strong, capable woman, always ready to help, to listen, to sort out their problems. But she was only human and sometimes those who stood fast as a rock for everybody else needed a shoulder to lean on themselves. They also eat who only stand and wait. It was a play on words of the John Milton poem and long used by servants everywhere, the joke ringing hollow now.

Because Anna was dead. And it was his fault!

Thomas despised most of the other servants. The feeling was understandably mutual. Often enough, he showed his disdain for them with cruel jibes which, added to his history of manipulation and sabotage to get what he wanted, compounded their deep dislike of the ill-natured under-butler. There were, however, a handful of staff with whom the complex Mr Barrow showed a softer side.

Lottie, the very youngest, her timidity making her seen much younger, he regarded as a child and took under his wing like a protective father.

For Miss Baxter, he had mixed feelings. He would never forgive his sister's old friend for leaving Manchester when Kate needed her most, and he resented her being aware of the chinks in his armour that he so carefully built around himself in defence against a world that scorned him for his homosexuality. And yet, hidden deep in his psyche, a little piece of his heart held an affection for Phyllis Baxter and all he owed her.

He owned to some tolerance toward Mrs Hughes after she sympathised when he almost lost everything but the housekeeper was married to Carson, which kept him from, if Thomas Barrow were ever inclined to consider such an alien concept with anyone, forming a friendship.

And then there was Anna.

She was so like Kate. Not in looks. In looks, they were total opposites. His sister had been tall and stick thin while Anna was petite and curvy; Kate, as did Thomas, inherited the dark brown, almost black, hair that Mam said came from the Irish side of her family, and both Thomas and Kate tanned easily when they were children, though nowadays his butlering duties kept him more often indoors than out - while Anna was blonde and very fair-skinned. No. they didn't resemble each other at all and yet Anna was Kate.

His first week working at Downton Abbey he unwittingly dropped the photograph of himself and Kate that he always carried about his person. Anna saw and picked it up.

It was taken long ago, before Ben was born, when the clockmakers shop was doing very well indeed and they could afford trips to the seaside or days at the funfair or to have their photographs taken, all of which would come to be regarded as frivolous luxuries just few years later, after Mam died, after Thomas realised he was different, after his father turned into The Monster who beat him.

But it was as yet a happy time when Mam took them to one of the new photographic studios that were springing up in cities everywhere and were hugely popular – at least, with those who could afford to have family photographs taken, for, unlike the fairly comfortably off Barrows, many Mancunians struggled even to feed their children.

Perhaps it was Kate's birthday or Christmas or Easter, at any rate, his older sister sat good as gold, quiet and still, wearing her best Sunday frock and white Sunday gloves, a silk ribbon tied in a large bow in her hair, her hands folded demurely on her lap, waiting patiently in front of the painted photography backdrop of a rustic scene. Thomas, however, being very young and very bored, repeatedly climbed on the wooden bench and jumped down again.

His mother tried coaxing, which he heard and ignored, while the photographer sighed and pointedly hinted about a smack or two "doing the trick", which was how his clients usually dealt with their children's misbehaviour. But Mrs Barrow was ahead of her time and believed hitting children was wrong and in the end it was Kate who persuaded him to do as bidden.

"Tommy. Sit down." She patted the space next to her. "Or you'll miss the funny lights making you blink when the man switches the camera on."

That interesting statement was enough to whet his curiosity. And though they often fought like cat and dog until they grew older and needed each other, Kate's expression was enough to make him stay where he was when finally he sat down beside her. Even though she smiled in approval, she wore the look she often wore when her younger brother was troublesome. Half kindness, half don't-you-dare-cross-a-line-with-me. Tall and strong, and growing up seeing poverty all around him while the Barrows were doing very well, Thomas was learning to be tough, and yet Kate could bring him to heel in seconds

And from the moment he met Anna a similar bond was born.

She glanced at the photograph as she returned it. "You and your sister? The boy looks just like you and you're both so alike!"

But by then life had taught him to be bitter with the world and everybody in it. He swore at her, said she needed to stop poking her nose into other peoples' affairs.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. And perhaps you didn't mean to be rude."

And though he snatched the precious picture without reply, they reached an understanding then. Anna was small, not even reaching his shoulders, but it was there, Kate's look, that sympathy mixed with steely determination. The other similarities he came to notice later.

The way she furrowed her brow and rubbed her hand against her cheek when something puzzled her reminded him of the way Kate would frown and run her forefinger along her bottom lip when she was trying to work something out. The way she would wrap a lock of hair round her forefinger when she was interested in someone and which he noticed when she met John Bates the day he took Thomas's rightful job as valet was exactly the same unconscious gesture Kate would make whenever she saw her unrequited love Fred Lacey. Just as Kate did, when she yawned she would put her hand over her mouth, then stretch out her arms and even use the same tongue-in-cheek expression, "And so to bed!" The habit she had of picking up the nearest newspaper or magazine to fan her face when the weather was hot and the way Kate would wave her hat or her hand over her face on a blazing summer's day.*

He trusted few people and confided in even fewer, but it was Anna he confided in the night Lady Sybil died. She saw the tears he tried to so hard to conceal, frightened of being perceived as weak by the other servants, and quietly followed him outside. She stood by him, rubbing his arm comfortingly, letting him know he wasn't so alone.

"In my life, I can tell you not many have been kind to me. She was one of the few." he admitted in a rare moment of vulnerability. "It's the child as well, Anna," he added emotionally after a while. "Poor little mite. Never to know her mother."

"Mr Branson will be a kind and loving father to her."

He nodded reluctant agreement. For all his jumped up airs – although Thomas realised it was plain jealousy that dictated his thoughts towards the ex-chauffeur and Tom Branson had never acted like he was a cut above the rest since marrying Lady Sybil - Branson was a good and decent man who would shower his daughter with love.

"You miss a Mam, though. Never saw eye to eye with me own Dad." His guard down, he dropped the slightly more cultured voice he'd adopted to further his career and lapsed into his native Mancunian accent. Maybe one day he would tell Anna more about his childhood. Maybe he never would. Even after working at Downton for several years, he still chose not to reveal his background to anyone. He never told Lady Sybil. She guessed.

Her Ladyship never dug for information. She sensed it. Between those snatched moments of conversation he, Teddy and Nurse Sybil Crawly somehow managed to engage in amid the frantic pace of the hospital ward, she remarked on how wonderful it was that he and Edward Courtenay had come together and how different their lives had been growing up. "I don't mean in being poor or wealthy. I mean in being loved and unloved. Thomas, it's in your expression," she whispered in answer to his silent baffled question as to how she knew. "You say there's nothing much to tell whenever Edward asks you about your own childhood. But a shadow always falls across your face when you say it."

"I had a mother, a brother and a sister. For a while. That's it." He turned away and busied himself applying the new patient's dressings. He didn't need to add he wished he'd had a father who'd loved him, been as proud of him as Edward Courtenay senior had been of Teddy and his brother Jack. Maybe – who knew? - he wouldn't have been so proud if he discovered his eldest son was homosexual, but he passed away, Teddy told him, when he was just a boy. Although the way he spoke of "Father" with such nostalgic affection Thomas believed he never would have rejected him.

He found himself saying the same thing to Anna that he'd said to Lady Sybil. "At least I had a Mam for a bit, though. And a sister who mothered me after me Mam died. You need that...female influence," he finished awkwardly. Of course they knew. Some of them anyroad. Tom Branson knew from the off.

How, Thomas never could fathom; he would surely have realised if Branson were the same way as himself. Aware of how even the smallest indication could lead to a man being sentenced to years of hard labour, he masked his homosexuality well and even those he suspected might have the same tendencies had to pick up on very subtle signs. But then Branson, though as much working class as the other servants, came from a very different environment. A stormy, unsettled environment in a land already battered and bruised from its history with the English long before the Easter Rising of 1916. He hadn't learnt to hate the whole world as Thomas did, but he did hate what the English had done to his beloved Ireland. Branson had witnessed death and destruction and maybe when you'd already seen so much a man being man in love with another man seemed unimportant although it obviously unsettled him.

"I hope it's never case they don't see eye to eye with each other," he said now.

"I doubt Tom Branson will have that kind of uneasy relationship with his daughter," Anna replied. "Well, not until she's much older and wants to walk out with a beau her doting father doesn't approve of!" she continued, keen to lighten his heavy heart. Poor man. He tried hard to conceal his sensitive nature, preferring to keep up a pretence of being callous and cruel. If only others could see the real Thomas, he would not be so friendless and yet he deliberately shut them out.

"No. Probably not," Thomas concurred. "But I'll watch over the kid just the same. Her Ladyship were right good to me. I owe her."

"You're very fond of children, aren't you?" Anna remarked, with a quiet smile. She had loved Lady Sybil too. Everybody did. It was impossible not to. At times, Lady Mary could be arrogant and waspish and Lady Edith contrary and querulous, but Lady Sybil alone of the Crawley daughters was only ever kind and caring. But Anna would shed her own tears later. There were plenty among the staff who would weep with her whereas Thomas, albeit by his own choosing, was a lone wolf and consequently there was no one he could or would turn to. "You never ignore the kids in the village when they're asking for a penny for the Guy for weeks on end before Bonfire Night. And you're always so patient with Lottie when she...

But he'd already opened the window to his soul too wide, even with Anna, and he abruptly slammed it shut again. "What you on about? I can't bloody stand kids," he lied, and to anyone who had never observed how much children enjoyed Mr Barrow's company and he theirs, his vehement denial would have sounded convincing. He loved kids. They were honest and uncomplicated and funny and accepted people just as they were. But he was damned if he was going to admit to it. It was to be a few more years before Master George and Miss Marigold were born and together with little Miss Sybbie stole his heart too firm and too fast for anyone not to realise how untrue was his claim to despise the very young. "Whinging, stupid, snotty-nosed brats."

And though he stalked off, angry that she could read him so easily when he had spent a lifetime cultivating a harsh persona and vowing he would never be so careless in the future to reveal his finer emotions, he gave himself away by turning to Anna for advice again and again. Small confidences. Did she think the nanny Branson hired for Miss Sybbie was good enough? Lottie looked pale, was she eating properly? Was it worth his while signing up for a subscription to a new publication about how domestic service was changing in the twentieth century when he could see for himself?

And now Anna was dead. Yet another death on his conscience.

XXXXX

The kitchen being nearest, he guided Lottie there and left her to the care and concern of Mrs Patmore, who, assuming the under-butler to be the reason for the girl's great distress, immediately abandoned pots, pans and plates, and as Daisy, her trusted second in command, was still absent on an errand the cook sent her on earlier, yelled for the two startled scullery maids for extra help, and giving instructions as to how said abandoned pots, pans and plates should be gainfully re-employed, swept Lottie into her arms.

Providing no explanation other than a curt "Take care of her. I've work to do" Thomas hastened away, as if he was unmoved by the young girl's tears and had better things to do than attend to her welfare.

In truth, the guilt weighed down on him so heavily that he couldn't bear to be in anyone's company. Not content with killing his sister, his brother and his childhood sweetheart, in his desire for revenge, he had indirectly caused the deaths of Anna and her unborn child! And what of John Bates? How many more lives were to be lost because of Thomas? The world would be better off without him in it.

He left the kitchen area and walked into the frosted grounds, with head held high and confident stride, and yet he walked blindly. To where, he didn't know. The only certainty was that soon it would all be over.

*They also serve who only stand and wait (Sonnet 19: John Milton)

**And so to bed – Both Kate and Anna are making humorous reference to how Samuel Pepys frequently ended his diary entries.

A/N: Hmm, Thomas's vivid recollection of the photo session, what can I say? I can remember things from when I was only two or three, but only vaguely. Thomas obviously has a much better memory than the rest of us! :D

I am on holiday from next weekend and won't be doing any writing while I'm away so the next chapter will be later than the usual four-weekly update.