...
If you'll be my boat
I'll be your sea
A depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
Ebbing and flowing
And pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
...
Time and time again, Mary had been told that your loved ones never truly leave you.
But Matthew...Matthew was gone. Disappeared across the horizon, forever out of reach and out of sight.
She was convinced of it.
Mary half wishes she could still feel his presence around her, anything to prove that the years they'd spent together were more than just a figment of her imagination, a hazy fever dream of happier days after the Great War had ended.
When she walks the grounds of Downton, there are moments when she almost hears Matthew's laugh. The footsteps of Nanny and the wheels of George's pram scrape against the gravel several feet ahead of her. An unwelcome anchor to reality.
Mary wishes she could bear to look directly at her son.
The boy, everyone had told her, was the very picture of his father and only growing more and more like him with every day that passes.
It was just too painful.
It took some time but the morning chill slowly began to ebb and the murkiness of the winter's dawn tentatively brightened to the depths of pure blue.
The colour reminded Mary of snarky banter over dining room tables, curious searching looks exchanged across drawing rooms and quiet intimate moments spent roaming the grounds and planning for a future they would never have.
The piercing insistent whines of little George interrupt her thoughts.
They tug Mary back to the present with an urgent force.
She watches wordlessly powerlessly as Nanny rushes to tend to the child.
For a moment, Mary feels a totally unexpected surge of warmth rush through her. It reminds her of summer days on the estate and the calming cadences of her husband's voice.
Surprising even herself, Mary picks up her pace, pushed by the breeze, and joins with her son and Nanny at the end of the drive.
After all, she never liked to be predicable...even to herself.
"I'll do that."
...
But you can set sail to the west if you want to
And pass the horizon 'till I can't even see you
Far from here where the beaches are wide
Just leave me your wake to remember you by
...