Chapter Forty Two
Throwing Caution To The Winds
While they awaited the arrival of the doctor, with laboured breaths, Tom continued to insist, that his more recent injuries amounted to no more than several cuts and bruises added to those he had sustained in the aftermath of the explosion.
Nevertheless, in the meantime, while awaiting the doctor, despite Tom's protests that he was perfectly all right, Sybil insisted that he be made as comfortable as possible. Fetching warm water in a bowl from the bathroom, with swabs of cotton wool soaked in iodine from Mary's small supply of medicines, sitting close to Tom on the settee, Sybil set about attending to the various cuts to his face; while Edith hurried into her bedroom, returning almost immediately with two pillows and a blanket clutched in her arms which she then placed at one end of the settee before retreating to the other.
Tom looked absolutely ashen, his breathing laboured.
"Tom, darling. This is going to hurt a little, love" as she began to bathe his cuts. Tom grimaced as the iodine stung. "Take easy breaths now" urged Sybil gently smoothing back his hair from where it had fallen over his forehead, wiping her fingers softly across his damp brow. "This won't have done his heart any good at all" she said quietly more to herself than to anyone else present in the room.
"His heart?" asked Edith questioningly.
"Yes, his heart. Why do you think Tom wasn't conscripted to fight during the war?"
Mary and Edith looked nonplussed.
"He has a weak heart" snapped Sybil, now frantic with worry, tears starting in her eyes. "Mary, help me with him please, we need to make him more comfortable".
"I'm all right, Syb. Don't fuss" said Tom, sounding uncharacteristically grumpy and peevish. If the truth be told, he didn't feel right at all, not that he would say so; he didn't want to worry Sybil unduly. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead and instead of lessening, the pain in his chest seemed to be becoming worse.
"What do you need me to do?" asked Mary seeing Sybil's obvious distress.
"Unlace his shoes, and take them off. Then help me turn him, so he can lie down full length".
Surprisingly, Mary made no protest, and once she had removed Tom's shoes, between the two of them they swung his legs up onto the settee where Tom sank wearily back against the pillows which Edith had provided. Mary stood back, surveying Tom's prone form. In similar circumstances, would she herself do the same for Richard? Unconsciously she shook her head; thought it unlikely that she would.
Having bathed the cuts to his face, Sybil now busied herself helping Tom out of his jacket, deftly unbuttoned his waistcoat, removed that too, along with his tie, and then began undoing the buttons of his shirt. She heard Edith gasp.
"Sybil, surely you don't mean to ..."
"Oh for goodness' sake Edith, don't be such a goose. You helped out with the soldiers in the convalescent home at Downton during the war, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, but that was different. I was only fetching them books, writing letters, that sort of thing".
"For Heaven's sake, I've seen Tom in a great deal less than this" said Sybil. She helped Tom, now shirtless, into a sitting position, deftly raising his arms above his head while supporting his back so she could pull off his vest. Realising what she had just said, Sybil coloured red, stopped what she was doing. Mary raised an expressive eyebrow while Edith looked suitably embarrassed by their sister's startling revelation.
"Tom and I have no secrets from each other. We love each other dearly" said Sybil. Dispassionately, she continued stripping Tom of his vest. A moment later and she gasped in horror at the several rapidly darkening bruises and raw grazes now revealed to view upon Tom's naked torso.
Hearing her rapid intake of breath, Tom glanced down at his bare chest.
"It's all right, love, it ... it looks... worse than it is" he wheezed through gritted teeth.
"No. No it isn't" sobbed Sybil beginning to bathe the grazes on his chest. "How on earth could anyone do this, to you, of all people?"
Having attended to all of Tom's grazes, with infinite care, ever so gently, Sybil began to feel his ribs, praying that the bruises and grazes, bad as they themselves appeared, were indeed the sum total of his injuries. If so, in time, they would heal by themselves.
"Sybil" said Mary softly, "do you really think you should be doing ..."
Sybil seemed not to hear her. Then she looked up. "I'm sorry, Mary. What did you just say?"
Mary nodded towards Tom, now stripped to the waist, submitting patiently to Sybil's gentle and probing ministrations. Mary's practised eye missed nothing, took in Tom's masculine physique, battered and bruised to be sure, but strong and muscular all the same; the light patch of hairs nestling in the middle of his chest, saw where the curling hairs darkened and thickened as they disappeared downwards out of view beneath the waistband of his trousers.
"Darling, I know you're engaged, but do you really think...
"Oh for goodness' sake, Mary, look at me!" Sybil indicated her uniform with an angry wave of her hand. "I'm a nurse! Given what I saw during the war, do you really think this sort of thing bothers me? Besides, I've seen Tom naked several times ..."
Sybil heard Edith's sharp intake of breath.
"Oh Edith, don't be so ... so positively Victorian!" snapped Sybil, not bothering to look up or to make any attempt to hide her evident irritation with her elder sister.
For her part, Mary said nothing in response to Sybil's matter-of-fact revelation, but the twitch of her expressive eyebrows said it all. Evidently her baby sister no longer but instead a woman of the world; or so Sybil would have them believe.
"In fact" said Sybil, "you both might as well know it, not of course that it's really any of your business, but since we arrived here in Ireland, Tom and I ... well we've slept together, as man and wife, not once but several times now. And before you ask, no, Tom didn't force himself upon me. We made love together because we wanted to; the both of us".
At this juncture, Mary raised her eyebrows once again; a wry smile flickered at the corners of her mouth; a woman of the world indeed then. Edith, meanwhile, looked anywhere else other than at Sybil, or for that matter, at Tom, whose face had just turned a shade akin to vermilion.
"I really don't know why we all make such a ruddy fuss about something so completely normal" continued Sybil in her no-nonsense tone. "After all, between two people who love each other as much as Tom and I do, it's a perfectly natural thing to do. There's no point pretending we come out of the rainbow when we're eighteen, so there's an end to it! I assume neither of you have heard of Marie Stopes?" Sybil glanced casually from Mary to Edith then back again. "No, I thought not. Well no matter" said Sybil briskly.
"Love, I think... you've just ... just managed ... to shock ... your sisters" croaked Tom. He grinned, looked sheepishly up at her.
"You be quiet Mr. Branson" said Sybil curtly; unaware until now that Tom had been following her every word. "I can't find any broken bones or feel any fractures. All the same Tom, you just lie there and keep quiet until the doctor comes" added Sybil in the most authoritative tone she could command; before beginning, with a practised hand, to fold up his clothes.
"Yes milady". Tom nodded his head, chuckled, sighed a little too deeply, and then winced again with pain.
"You'd better do as she says. Tom" said Mary wryly. "Nurse's orders!"
It was just then that Mary caught sight of darling Tom's face. He was doing his very best not to laugh. Mary's face twitched as an amusing thought just struck her. What if, somehow, granny, Papa, and Mama had been present here in this room to overhear what Sybil had just said? It really was too funny for words. A moment later and she could contain herself no longer; Mary, followed, despite his injuries, by Tom, then by Edith, all promptly burst out laughing, thus dissipating the overt tensions which had arisen in the room following Sybil's startling revelation and her candid, almost casual expression to them of her opinions on matters sexual.
After all, thought Mary, given her own nocturnal encounter with the late Mr. Pamuk, who was she, let alone Edith, to lecture their youngest sister, or indeed anyone else for that matter, on what was or was not proper conduct for a lady in such matters. In any event, reflected Mary ruefully, Tom and Sybil could always be counted upon to do things differently from everyone else, would always go their own way; their unorthodox courtship and engagement bore testimony to that. It was part of what made them both who they were; was something which, now that Mary had come to see and fully appreciate just how much Tom and Sybil loved each other that, in turn, made her love the two of them all the more.
"Sybil..." began Edith.
"Hm?"
"Do you mind me asking, but who is ..."
"Yes?"
Edith tried again.
"Exactly who is ..." Once again, Edith stopped what she was saying, seemingly unable to continue. The colour of her face now matched that of Tom's from but a few minutes before.
"Oh Edith, really!" exclaimed Mary. "Here, let me. Sybil. Darling. Just who is Marie Stopes?"
"Do you really want to know?" asked Sybil not believing what it was that Mary had just asked her.
Mary, and Edith, nodded their assent.
"Well then ..." began Sybil, seemingly oblivious to Tom's presence on the settee.
Tom groaned and rolled his eyes.
What on earth would the Dowager Countess say if she could eavesdrop on her three grand-daughters' animated discussion taking place here in a hotel bedroom in Dublin on Marie Stopes' modern views on marriage and birth control, all conducted in the presence of the family's half-naked, former chauffeur?
Not for the first time, since Mary's telephone call to the reception desk of the Shelbourne Hotel requesting the attendance of a doctor, and for entirely different reasons to those which might be expected, Tom now found himself wishing that the same doctor would simply hurry up and put in an appearance.