Chapter 19 – Progress
New Year's Eve, 1928
Downton's Servants' Hall
Charlie felt good. Smashing, in fact.
He glanced around the servants' hall, as full as ever had been, all those decades ago. Nearly half of the people chatting and drinking happily didn't work here, or hadn't in some time, but they were all such welcome faces to him. Yes, all of them, he thought, taking in Thomas chatting with Mr. Molesley and Mrs. Baxter. Even the ones who vexed me to no end, in days and years past.
"Alright, Mr. Carson?" Beryl Mason was at his elbow, offering him a glass of punch, which he accepted with a smile and a brief incline of his head.
"Wool-gathering, I suppose, Mrs. Patmore," he responded. He noticed, in the past few months, that his wife and the former cook had begun calling each other by their Christian names, but he couldn't quite make himself do it, or offer it. And "Mrs. Mason" didn't describe for him, not entirely, the woman standing before him. "Mrs. Patmore" had nearly always been his friend. He hoped she understood that.
"Mr. Carson! Was quite nice of the family to invite the lot of us to the celebration, wasn't it, Berrie?" Albert Mason had come to join them, smiling at his wife. "Especially considering how Daisy'd take just about any distraction she can, these days."
"Well, she's only got a few weeks, at most left, according to Dr. Clarkson," Beryl added, looking suddenly nervous. "Not sure who's more skittish about the whole thing, me or her." Daisy and Andy's first child, announced with great pride over the summer, was due imminently.
"All will be well, m'dear, Daisy is strong, and healthy, and doin' what a woman does naturally," Albert comforted his wife. As much as he cared for his friends, Daisy and Andy included, Charles felt this conversation getting a little too familiar for him. He was about to change the subject when Beryl caught his eye, grinned knowingly.
"Yes, Al, I know, of course, but thank you for the gentle reminder," she kissed her husband chastely on the cheek. "Now, Mr. Carson, where's Elsie gotten off to? Playing secret diplomat again, I suppose?"
He relaxed slightly, glad for the shift in conversation. "I'm guessing you're correct, Mrs. Patm- Mason, but there's only so much diplomacy one housekeeper should be obligated to dole out during any given evening," he replied. He wanted his wife here, by his side, for the change of the years. And she only had twenty or so minutes to reappear.
"A different tune, with different lyrics, than the one you sang even a few short years ago, Mr. Carson," Beryl was stifling laughter. He raised his eyebrow at her, was about to retort with something witty about she and his wife's mutual influence on the other, when both Ladies Mary and Edith appeared in the doorway, glittering and lovely and most of all, smiling.
The crowd of current and former servants, and their spouses, greeted them boisterously, Anna Bates breaking from her husband's side to give Lady Mary a warm hello. He, Charles, of course, had seen both women over the past few days, as he'd been on hand to assist Barrow as needed. Mary caught his eye and smiled grandly at him, and his heart swelled with the abiding affection he had for her. A small crowd was forming around the ladies when he saw Elsie's tidy, lovely form appear in the doorway.
His heart soared in an entirely different way at the sight of his wife. Marriage wasn't at all what he'd envisioned or imagined. It was vastly better and more satisfying, vexing and mysterious and simple and true, all at once. He excused himself and began crossing the room, when he saw Thomas Barrow pause by Elsie's side. He bent and whispered something in his wife's ear, she nodded, grinned, and patted the sleeve of his jacket.
Downton's current butler smirked back at the housekeeper, in a look that Charles found all too familiar. A look that likely meant deception of some sort, possibly mischief. But what was missing from that look was the malice that nearly always accompanied it, in the past. He'd reached both of them and glowered down at them.
"You two seem to be plotting something, if I'm not mistaken," he intoned.
"We are," Elsie replied tartly, and both men looked startled, for different reasons. "Look at the pair of you, as if neither of you ever got into a lick of mischief, then deigned to admitted it." She began laughing. "Mr. Barrow was just leaving to celebrate the New Year with friends in the village. I told him you and I, Mr. Carson, would have it well under control for the rest of the evening. That's about as much plotting as this old lady does, these days."
"Happy New Year, Mrs. Hughes," Thomas replied, and Charlie saw something pass back and forth in the look between the butler and his wife. "Mr. Carson, my utmost gratitude, to you, sir, for the rest of the evening off."
"Happy New Year, Mr. Barrow," Elsie replied, then once again, startled both men by planting a kiss on the younger man's cheek. "Off with you, now, or all of our scheming will be for nothing." And with a final nod and grin to them both, the butler headed towards his study, to grab his coat.
He bent his head close to his wife, who was looking around the filled servants' hall with deep satisfaction on her face. She grinned sideways at him. He put his arm comfortably around her waist.
"Can I help you, Mr. Carson?" She queried.
Before he could reply, the ladies were upon them, in a cloud of perfume and brief cheek-kisses.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hughes, for aiding us in our adventure, but I do believe we best return to the party upstairs, lest our husbands find us missing at midnight," Edith grasped Elsie's hands, her face aglow.
"Yes, they'd be left to kiss each other instead. Think of the rumors that would start, Edith," Mary interjected dryly, and Charles looked worriedly between the two sisters.
But Edith burst into laughter. "Henry is awfully good-looking, Mary. You're right, we best hurry back." And they took off down the hall, their giggles rebounding back towards the hall.
Between Elsie and Thomas' mysterious tête-à-tête and the Crawley sisters enjoying each other's company in a way he'd not witnessed for roughly a quarter of a century, Charles' head was spinning.
"Charlie?" Elsie's cheery voice punctuated through his tumbling thoughts.
"I must admit, Elsie, I am not sure what, exactly, is going on," he finally responded, gazing down at her.
"Well, you needn't look so worried, Charlie," she leaned against him, and he relished all of the warm places their bodies touched, side by side. For a moment, they simply observed the happy party scene around them.
Finally, he spoke. "And why is that?"
"Because you are a beneficiary of it, after all," the trouble he loved so much was brewing in her eyes.
"Of what, pray tell?"
"Progress, of course, my dear curmudgeon," she replied. Over the past few years, she'd managed to turn the potential insult into a verbal caress.
"Progress," he sighed. He was afraid she was right.
"Yes, indeed," she chuckled a little, and despite they had an audience, and it wasn't quite midnight, and he was, certainly, a bit of a curmudgeon at times, she pulled him down for a New Year's kiss.