Chapter Nine

What The Dowager Countess Said

The crumpled, tear-stained letter lay beside her on the bed. His bed.

If someone had crept softly into that small sunlit bedroom and asked Sybil how long she had been sitting there alone, on Tom's bed, as the shadows lengthened and the dusk drew down about her, she would not have been able to say. But sometimes gaps in memory can be merciful.

Although the sky outside was now slowly beginning to darken, it was still very warm. For Sybil, time seemed to have stood still. She was conscious only of a blinding pain throbbing somewhere above her right eye. In her lap lay her copy of Shelley's poems, open at "Love's Philosophy". All thought of the beach long since forgotten, at some point, she must, Sybil assumed, have taken off her outer clothes. Her coat lay draped casually over the back of Tom's chair, her hat and gloves lay on top of his desk.

The window stood unlatched and open. Had she done that? If so, she had no recollection of so doing. The smell of herbs and fruit drifted in through the open window from the garden below. She could hear the distant roar of the waves breaking on the seashore on the far side of the house; the ebb and flow of the tide on the beach where she had walked with Tom the previous evening, as indeed they had done together on so many evenings in the last few weeks, ever since their arrival here in Clontarf. Somewhere outside a dog barked, and a blackbird flew up into the bough of a cherry tree close by the house and began to sing. And beyond the tree, the pale azure of the late afternoon summer sky, almost imperceptibly, but slowly and inexorably, faded into subtle shades of grey and mauve.

Then, somewhere in the silent, darkening house, a solitary board creaked.

A slight shiver rang up her spine and, raising her tear stained face, Sybil glanced up - to see Tom framed in the open doorway of the room. How long he had been standing there, was impossible to say. Through the window, and cast by the waning sun, a fleeting ray of light caught a glint in his fair hair, making it gleam like spun gold, but despite the momentary brightness of the sun, despite the warmth yet remaining of that summer evening, Sybil felt herself shiver. Tom was watching her intently, but his eyes, usually so dark, so alive, were now pale, opaque, as if sheathed in ice.

He was saying something to her. Sybil didn't really hear ... caught single words, disjointed phrases.

"... article went well …finished early for the day ... went to the hospital ... found you'd been sent home ... tram … Clontarf …I was so worried ..."

It was then that he caught sight of the creased letter lying on the bed beside her.

"You read it? All of it?"Tom seemed utterly aghast; looked visibly shaken. He was looking at her with an expression which she could not quite comprehend.

Sybil nodded weakly.

"Yes" she said icily. "All of it!"

"Sybil, love, I never … I didn't … that is I don't ... what I mean is I …" Tom stammered, and then stopped whatever it was he was trying to say. For the very first time in their relationship he was lost for words. Sybil sensed that Tom was uncharacteristically unsure of himself, seemed uncertain of what he should either say or do next. This unnerved her even more. Tom staggered, apparently unsteady on his feet, pitched forward, slumped down in his chair, elbows on his desk, his face in his hands, and began to sob uncontrollably, as violent spasms of grief convulsed his whole body.

At any other time, Sybil would have gone to him, as she had done several times before, on the deck of the Munster, in Sackville Street, here in Clontarf. She would have done anything; knelt beside him, would have cradled Tom in her arms, have held him close, to comfort him, to try to ease, to share his pain. Now, although it cost her dear in her frayed emotions, she did not respond to his all too obvious distress. Almost as motionless as Hermione's statue, Sybil merely held out the letter towards him. Then, when Tom failed to take it, failed to react, she laid it aside on the bed; said softly:

"Tom, there are things to tell me, aren't there?" He didn't answer her.

"There are things to tell me, aren't there?" persisted Sybil.

Almost indiscernibly, Tom nodded his head, then raised his equally tear stained face to meet her own.

"It's not what you think, my love. Believe me".

Sybil looked at him, mutely questioningly.

"Be that as it may Tom, even so, you must tell me, my love" she said at length. "All of it. If we are to have a future together, I have a right to know".

"Yes", said Tom, at length and at last regaining some form of his customary composure. He let out a deep sigh, was now looking at her with the same strange expression on his face, which once again she could not quite identify. A faint smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "Yes, my darling" he said more forcefully. "Yes, you most certainly do".

"Well, then ..."

A white china jug, with an upturned glass stood on the pine washstand over by the open window. Tom nodded towards it.

"Shall I pour you a glass of water, love?"

"Why?" asked Sybil curtly, immediately suspicious.

"I think you may have need of it", said Tom.

Beneath the apparent flippancy of his remark, Sybil sensed something else, something unfamiliar, unforeseen, and unknown. Instead of answering him, she shook her head. Then, slowly, almost mechanically, laying aside her book, Sybil rose to her feet and walked over to the washstand and poured herself the glass of water he had suggested he pour for her. Seated back on the bed once more, she took the barest sip of water, wondering why it was that she had not thought to fling the contents of the glass in his face.

Tom got up and crossed the few steps to where she was sitting on the bed. The overwhelming concern he had for her was etched all too plainly across his tear-stained face. Slowly, he reached forward and laid his hand gently upon her shoulder, made to sit down beside her on the bed … his bed. Sybil flinched at his touch as if she had been struck. Her head came up; her whole body shook and then went taut.

"Don't touch me!" she hissed. There was no question but that Sybil meant what she said. Tom was visibly shaken by her unexpected rejection of him, so much so that he stepped back a couple of paces. At that precise moment Sybil didn't care how much she had hurt him; she thought that what she wanted most was to see Tom suffer.

But it was then that she chanced to look up. What she saw all but took her breath away. His eyes were as blue and clear as a summer sky. She looked into Tom's well-loved face. The face of the man that - God help me she thought – even now, I love him to distraction. At the same time another more disconcerting thought came to Sybil. Tom's uneasy about telling me this; whatever "this" is all about. And the dawning realisation of this made Sybil even more frightened than ever.

For him.

For herself.

For them both.

"Don't look so expectant, my love" said Tom with a half smile. I do assure you this is one secret I'd rather not share with anyone; even with you".

"Tom, just tell me" said Sybil tautly.

"Very well then. Do you remember that day in the churchyard back at Downton, after Lavinia's funeral service was over?" asked Tom softly. The seemingly ordinariness of the nature of his question took Sybil completely by surprise. So much so that for but an instant she gaped open-mouthed at him, unsure of what to say...

"Of course I do" she snapped. "After all, how could I ever forget it? But what about it?" she asked somewhat more calmly.
"What do you recall? Specifically, I mean".

Sybil looked steadily at Tom, as slowly, she attempted laboriously to gather together her thoughts, tried to marshal in her mind whatever she could recall of that particular part of the day now under consideration. She willed herself to remember. Think Sybil … think back.

Tom's arrival in the churchyard that day had not surprised her. Whatever her family may have thought of him, Tom's manners were always impeccable. Given Sybil's overwrought state, caused in part at least by her family's all too predictable hostility to the announcement of their engagement, Tom had known that Lavinia's funeral would be an ordeal for her. He had told her that he would come, that he would be there whatever happened, even if his very presence provoked another furious outburst on the part of her father. That Tom would do that for her, simply made Sybil love him even more.

They had been standing talking on the churchyard path. Tom had been telling her when they had to be in Holyhead to catch the early morning sailing across the Irish Sea to Kingstown two days hence.

"Papa" said Sybil emphatically at last. "He asked you what you were doing there. You told him that you'd come to pay your respects to Lavinia and to see me. There was some silly nonsense on Papa's part about you referring to me as Sybil and not Lady Sybil".

Tom smiled. He nodded.

"And?" he persisted.
"And what?" asked Sybil, completely mystified by Tom's continued line of questioning.

"I mean what happened after that?"

"Papa said he assumed we'd be travelling to Dublin very soon. I said that we would be and that I wished he and I could part as friends and he asked the very same question of you. You, as I recall, said that you would like to part as friends, but didn't expect to do so; something like that".

Again Tom nodded.

"We turned to walk away and Papa said that if we were set on marrying that he saw no point in a quarrel. He told me that I'd have a very different life to the one I would have had, but that if I was sure about marrying you … I looked at you, and you looked at me, and I said that I was. So then Papa said he would give us his blessing to marry. I asked him if he would come over to Dublin for our wedding. He didn't say he would or that he wouldn't. As I recollect it, he said, that we'd talk about it later. Not that we ever did. On the day we left for Ireland, Mama told us that Papa had urgent business which necessitated his presence up in London and that he had caught the first train of the day up to town. Not that either of us believed it to be true. Papa also said that he would give us some money. "But not much" was the exact phrase!" In spite of the now strained situation between her and Tom, Sybil found herself smiling. "So like Papa".

"And then what?"

"You both shook hands and for the very first time ever in public you took my hand in yours. We set off down the church path towards the lych gate, intending to walk back up to the house". Sybil smiled broadly at the remembrance of the scene she had conjured in her mind. "Once round the corner of the churchyard wall I had to stop. There was a stone in my shoe. Remember?" The smile swiftly faded from her lips.

Tom nodded. "Yes my love, I do. I most certainly do".

"Then … then we heard Papa and granny. They were both but a short distance behind us, and were coming down that same narrow path leading from the church porch. Oh, yes. And we overheard that ridiculous comment of granny's ... about trying to make you sound rather more respectable. By telling everybody that you were political, that you were a writer, and that if all of that failed, granny would do her very best to hitch you on to an Irish gentry family "called Branson..."

"... with a place not far from Cork" finished Tom softly. "Yes my love. You see, you do remember. You remember it all. Do you also recall that I once told you, that for all her myriad of faults, I admired your grandmother tremendously? In fact, I still do".

Sybil nodded mutely. "But I still don't see ..."

"Your grandmother's comment was indeed ridiculous; but for all the wrong reasons. My love, she was far closer to the truth than even she could have ever had realised. My darling, there would be no point whatsoever in her "hitching me on to the Bransons from near Cork".

Tom paused.

He looked directly down at Sybil.

Then said calmly without a trace of emotion "… when they're already my own kith and kin".