Chapter Fifty Two
Here Be Dragons
And, so the morning of their long awaited wedding finally dawned. Of course no wedding ever goes quite as planned, and in that Tom and Sybil's was to prove no exception.
Shortly after ten o'clock that morning, and in an immaculate, chauffeur driven Rolls belonging to the Shelbourne Hotel, Mary and Edith arrived at the small whitewashed house overlooking the sea shore in Clontarf. Their journey through across Dublin had not been without incident, their motor having been stopped along with others at an army road block shortly after they had passed over the O'Connell Bridge, in connection with, had explained their chauffeur, the theft in the early hours of that morning of both ammunition and rifles from a police barracks just outside the city which afterwards had been burnt to the ground.
Mary had been incensed.
Blimey! Did the army really believe that she and Edith had a cache of stolen weapons secreted somewhere in their motor? How utterly tiresome! That apart, conversation between her and Edith had been desultory, each lost in their own thoughts, principally had they but known it much the same thoughts – revolving around shared childhood reminiscences of Sybil and coming finally to the same premise. If, years ago, someone had told them that as a young woman their adorable young sister eventually would find deep love and lasting happiness in the arms of the family's undeniably handsome Irish chauffeur, neither of them would have believed it possible.
Edith's disinclination to talk in the motor that morning was caused, at least partly, by the continuing turmoil in her own mind and her by now constant preoccupation with trying to think of way in which she could tactfully broach a certain subject with granny on their return to England.
As for Mary, part of her bad humour was caused by the continuing and deafening silence on the part of her own fiancé, Sir Richard Carlisle. For despite her telegram despatched to Downton informing their parents that she and her sisters had survived the explosion at the Shelbourne uninjured, despite the fact that what had occurred had been reported widely, and even in newspapers belonging to Sir Richard Carlisle, from the man himself there had come nothing by way of telegram or telephone call to ascertain how Mary herself had fared. And seeing how loving and how solicitous Tom and Sybil were towards each other, that had hurt even more, had really rankled.
Later, after she and Edith had returned to England, when Mary had confronted Richard about his silence he had merely observed that he had learned from her parents that she and her sisters were uninjured, so what more was there to be done? That had confirmed to Mary, if any confirmation was really necessary, of the utter hopelessness of pursuing any kind of relationship with Sir Richard Carlisle, but there remained the seemingly intransigent problem of how she was to bring to a close their relationship without things turning extremely acrimonious and at cost to herself and her reputation. After all, Sir Richard was not known for his sympathetic nature and was likely to take the ending of their engagement by Mary as nothing short of a declaration of war.
So, all things being equal, given her unrequited and continuing love for Matthew Crawley, Mary was in no mood whatsoever to hear from Edith how it was that some other more fortunate souls had met if not exactly the love of their life then their marriage partner, at someone else's wedding. And when Edith had observed that at the last wedding which Mary, she and Sybil had attended up on the remote fastness of the Northumbrian border - the marriage of a distant cousin - that the field of potential suitors there present had amounted to either unmarried elderly relatives or a halfwit, Mary let rip.
"Well darling, I don't much fancy your chances of finding someone suitable today then".
"And why might that be?" asked Edith, who before the words were out of her mouth was wishing she had kept silent.
"Surely it can't have escaped your notice, that apart from us darling, Sybil has no other relatives here in Ireland. Given what you've just said, that limits your field somewhat. Still, don't despair. Look on the bright side. If you are prepared to settle for an Irish half wit, then I don't doubt for one minute that there will be a male of the species here present at today's proceedings who qualifies as such".
Not surprisingly, the atmosphere in the Rolls throughout the rest of the journey out to Clontarf had been decidedly frosty belying the warm summer sunshine they both glimpsed through the windows of the motor.
In Clontarf, Sybil had been up at first light, insisting on helping, insofar as she could, both Ma and Emer with what still remained to be done by way of preparations for the meal to be eaten in the church hall after the wedding ceremony. What Ma and Emer had planned to provide had been more than adequate, but their task had been made that much easier by the unexpected arrival but a couple of days ago of a large wicker hamper. Initially when the driver of the motor lorry belonging to the railway company had knocked at her front door and informed Ma that he had a hamper for her from England, Ma demurred, said there must have been some mistake. No, said the driver, no mistake; none at all, and so indeed proved to be the case.
At the behest of Mama, presumably without the knowledge of Lord Grantham, packed by Mrs. Patmore, with them on the steamer, and delivered, the same day Mary and Edith arrived in Dublin, direct to Ma's house in Clontarf, by a motor lorry belonging to the Dublin and South Eastern Railway, came the large wicker hamper packed with all kinds of produce from the kitchen at Downton; causing Tom, when he saw it, to ask somewhat sniffily of Sybil if her mother really believed that food was unobtainable here in Ireland?
Sybil was not surprised by his response; knew only too well, that Tom hated anything that, as he perceived it, could be construed as charity. Yet in her heart, Sybil knew it was not in her mother's nature to dole out charity. Ma herself was rather more practical, seeing the gift for what it undoubtedly was; a wish on the part of Sybil's mother to try to try and make some form of amends for not being present at Tom and Sybil's wedding, so when Tom began to make known again, and this time in Ma's hearing too, his views about the hamper, seeing Sybil's distress, Ma had silenced him in an instant.
"Tommy Branson my lad, if you don't want to eat any of this food, then that's up to you. There will be plenty at your wedding that does!" Thereafter Tom dared say nothing more on the subject; knew that if he uttered so much as another word about the countess of Grantham's hamper amounting to charity, Ma would skin him alive.
Following the arrival of Mary and Edith, it fell to Sybil finally and at long last to introduce her two elder sisters to Ma and to Emer. Of course, Sybil was blissfully unaware of the acrimonious exchange which had passed between Mary and Edith in the motor on their way over to Clontarf. And, following their arrival, both contrived successfully to mask their true feelings towards each other for the sake of not ruining Sybil's wedding day.
To be absolutely truthful, given what she already knew of what Tom had already told Ma about Mary, and to a lesser extent what he had said to her about Edith, in his letters written home both before he and Sybil fell in love and thereafter and immediately before they had left for Ireland, Sybil had been somewhat nervous of their forthcoming encounter with Ma.
However, she need not have worried, for following the incomparable assistance Mary had rendered to "young Tommy" following the vicious beating he had received at the hands of the "poless", Ma herself was prepared to overlook anything Tom might have said to Mary's own detriment. She merely observed that Mary was "... not at all how I imagined you to be my dear", leaving Mary herself to draw her own private conclusions as to just what it was that Ma's enigmatic remark actually meant.
As for Edith, the fact that Tom had said so little about her in his letters meant that Ma knew next to nothing about her at all, apart from what Sybil had told her. However, both the obvious sincerity of Edith's approval of and her evident liking for Tom, along with the many compliments she heaped on him when recounting to Ma how Tom had helped both Sybil and her in the aftermath of the explosion at the Shelbourne Hotel won Edith Ma's unqualified approval.
Those attending the actual wedding ceremony itself would be just family, and would also be sitting down to the meal prepared by Ma and Emer, which now, of course, included much of the contents from out of the hamper dispatched with loving care from Downton. However, as Tom had enigmatically explained with a broad grin and wink to a somewhat mystified Sybil but a few days ago shortly before Mary and Edith's arrival here in Ireland, the real fun would take place out at Ciaran's farm later in the evening where what Sybil insisted on referring to as a reception and which Tom called "a céilí" had been arranged; at which Sybil would finally meet up with both friends and neighbours from Clontarf and the surrounding area who had known Tom as a boy and as a young man before he had left for England.
Several of Tom's colleagues from the Independent would also be attending the céilí, including Edmund Kelly who was to drive both Tom and Sybil out to the farm and back to Clontarf in a motor borrowed from his brother who ran a garage in Kingstown; Edmund's own motor had still not been repaired following the damage it had sustained in the ambush on the Howth road. Tom, Edmund informed him, would not be allowed anywhere near the steering wheel for, as Kelly had remarked ruefully to him in their office on Talbot Street, "the last time I lent you a motor the feckin thing came back with more holes in it than a ruddy colander". Besides which, added Edmund with a grin, "yous won't be in any feckin state to be driving anywhere after yous is hitched".
Later …
Looking extremely dapper, freshly washed, scrubbed, and shaved, his blond hair neatly trimmed and combed; Tom was sporting a new grey suit with a white carnation in the lapel. Fidgeting nervously with his gold watch chain, he glanced about him. If truth be told, Tom was becoming as restless as his young adopted nephews and nieces who, likewise equally freshly washed and scrubbed, were, notwithstanding the formidable presence in church of both Ma and their respective parents, starting to become restive and to move about in the narrow pews; even young Ruari, who seemed totally unencumbered by his broken arm, which was still in plaster following his fall from the hayloft out at the farm.
Seated immediately behind Tom, having told her own husband Peadar to stop fidgeting, Emer leaned forward, tapped Tom gently on the shoulder and whispered to him not to worry; Sybil would be here directly. Tom nodded, then glanced to his left across the aisle, and in doing so caught sight of both Mary and Edith, both elegantly attired, seated in the front pew on the other side of the church. He grinned shyly and was rewarded by two beaming smiles from both of the smartly dressed women who, in but a short while, would become his sisters-in-law.
Donal nudged Tom sharply in the ribs, and nodded towards the rector who was indicating that they should now make their way up into the chancel. So, the two of them moved out from the pew which they had been occupying and walked slowly up towards the east end of the church, to stand to one side in front of the altar rail. A moment later, as the organist began to play the opening bars of the Bridal Chorus from Wagner's Lohengrin, Tom breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, grinned broadly at Donal, while, behind them, down in the nave, the small congregation rose slowly to its feet, as dutifully Ciaran conducted Sybil at a sedate pace up the aisle towards where Tom, his eyes glistening, stood proudly awaiting her arrival.
While neither Mary nor Edith could, for one moment, have faulted Ciaran's worthy performance, much later, after the wedding, reception, and the céilí were over, and they were both on their way back to the Shelbourne Hotel, they agreed that Papa should have been present to escort Sybil up the aisle and give her away. Each admitted, one to the other, to having had tears in their eyes as they watched Tom place the ring on Sybil's finger and heard her say "I do".
And, despite Papa's very upsetting and thoroughly inexcusable absence, along with his continuing studied silence, Mary and Edith were equally in agreement that the two congratulatory telegrams, one from Cousin Isobel and the other, surprisingly, from Mama, which had arrived unexpectedly earlier that morning at the Shelbourne Hotel, and which Sybil's sisters had brought with them to the wedding, along with a letter from granny which they had brought over with them from England, had all served to buck Sybil's spirits enormously.
When they all read it, the letter from granny provoked a great deal of mirth and amusement, reducing not only Tom and Sybil, but also Mary and Edith to helpless laughter. Ever the realist, and not one, as she so adroitly put it "to make a drama out of a crisis" - not that Tom or Sybil had ever viewed their marriage as such - the Dowager Countess expressed her sincere felicitations for both Sybil and Tom upon their marriage, and then promptly turned to the practicalities of the matter as she saw them: in particular addressing something which, granny assumed, that her youngest granddaughter, in her excitement to be wed, must have overlooked.
For, given the fact that Sybil was marrying Branson, just precisely who demanded granny, with touching and genuine concern on her part, would be driving Sybil to the church? Had she thought about that? Marrying servants was all very well and good in novels, but, had she not warned Sybil, that in reality such things could prove extremely uncomfortable? After all, good chauffeurs were so difficult to come by these days. And Branson, while no doubt possessed of many admirable qualities, had, after all, always been such an excellent and reliable driver.
For Tom and Sybil, the wedding ceremony itself, the photographs – taken by a colleague of Tom's from the Independent - and the modest meal in the church hall, all passed off in something of a delightful blur. However, finally having been pronounced man and wife and having made their way down the aisle to the south door and out into the sunshine of the July day, no-one who was present in the little congregation at the short service, held that summer's morn in the grey stone church at Clontarf, would have been left in any doubt that Tom and Sybil were absolutely elated. Happy ever after; none of those who saw them pass by arm in arm would have had any doubt of that; and, for once, it seemed that it would indeed be true.
After Sybil and Tom were married, while there were, not surprisingly, several awkward silences during the simple reception, everyone did their very best to try and get along. Mary and Edith both made a genuine attempt to chat with Ciaran, Donal and Emer, whom they naturally assumed were Tom's elder brothers and sister. In fact, for the brief period of time they spent in each other's company immediately after the ceremony, Ciaran and Mary got along famously, particularly after discovering a shared interest in horses, and on learning that Edith knew not only how to drive but also to repair a Saunderson tractor, Ciaran's admiration for her knew no bounds.
"I think Tom's rather been exaggerating the extent of my capabilities" said Edith with a broad grin, but nonetheless raising her glass in unfeigned salutation to her handsome brother-in-law who was presently standing chatting with his wife and Emer on the far side of the hall.
But Ciaran refused to accept that, telling Edith that, come the autumn, he would need several tree stumps shifting, and she would be more than welcome to come over to stay, prompting Mary to raise her eyebrows, and remark quietly to Edith, once they were out of Ciaran's hearing, that that was an offer she could not possibly refuse! However, somewhat to his disappointment, Ciaran's suggestion that he show Mary and Edith over the tenanted farm out on the Clontarf Castle estate on the morrow after the evening's planned festivities was politely declined on the grounds of there being insufficient time for such a visit.
Donal was interested to learn that Downton, like many other country estates, brewed its own beer. However, given the fact that the minutiae of the operation of Downton's small brewery was not something about which any of the three sisters knew anything of note, that particular topic of conversation rapidly hit something of a proverbial brick wall.
For his part, young Peadar contributed little to any of the conversation, seemingly lost in his own thoughts and somewhat surprisingly seeming to be in a constant state of nervous agitation, for what precise reason no-one, not even Emer, could divine.
Mary and Edith were on much safer ground when asked by Aislin, Niamh, and Emer to tell them about the latest women's fashions in both clothes and hairstyles; although of course many of the names of the couturiers mentioned by Mary and Edith, without any trace of conceit on their part, were not only unknown to the other three women, but their designs quite naturally, completely beyond their limited means to purchase.
But, somewhat surprisingly, it was in fact the children who made the whole occasion rather more bearable and a great deal easier than might otherwise have been the case, all of them bombarding Mary and Edith with all manner of questions about the kind of life they led at Downton Abbey.
To the younger children, the huge house far away across the sea, with its many rooms and its large domestic staff sounded like some kind of fairy tale castle, to the extent that absent Papa and Mama assumed the elevated status of a king and queen; Mary, Edith and Sybil that of three beautiful princesses.
To Mairead and Rosaleen, Tom's youngest two nieces, the fact that their adored uncle had therefore married a princess seemed absolutely magical; the garage where their Uncle Tom and Aunt Sybil had fallen in love, assuming, for them, the nature of a secret trysting place.
For their part, Mary and Edith knew that "King Papa" took a less than romantic view of Sybil and Tom's garage assignations, that had he indeed learnt of them earlier, and if Papa had been possessed of but half of the regal powers with which the children here in Clontarf had endowed him, Tom would undoubtedly have found himself swiftly sent into exile or on his way to the executioner's block!
But, the only noticeable disappointment came when, in front of Sybil and Tom, Mary had to admit to six year old Padraig - Donal and Niamh's young son - that, as far as she was aware, there was no dungeon beneath the house. If there had been, thought Mary, Papa would undoubtedly have made use of it – in which to confine Tom, until he could have been secretly spirited away from Downton.
And, in answer to Padraig's next question, no, even when she was out hunting, Mary had, so far, failed to encounter a dragon anywhere on the estate. At that point, seeing Padraig's obvious disappointment etched so clearly across the little boy's face, Tom quickly intervened, and asked Mary with mock solemnity, belied by a broad grin and the merry twinkle in his eyes, if she had forgotten about the Dowager Countess? With a laugh, and entering into the true spirit of the occasion, Mary replied that now Tom had mentioned it, she had indeed forgotten about the Dowager Countess. At that, having blithely repeated the unfamiliar words of granny's title several times over to get them right, with a child's naive unconcern, a delighted young Padraig scampered off in search of his cousins to tell them of the confirmed existence of a dragon, called the Dowager Countess, who dwelt in a deep, dark cave called the Dower House somewhere on the Downton Abbey estate.
"And" said Mary with a grin to match that of Tom's, "if granny ever finds out that you view her as a fire breathing old dragon, grandson-in-law or not, Tom, make no mistake, she'll box your ears!"