Chapter Sixty
Of Trains And Trams
Dublin
With their arms held tightly around each other, Tom and Sybil stood watching as the mail boat finally made its departure from Kingstown bound for Holyhead and steamed slowly out into the wide waters of the Irish Sea.
Slowly, but inexorably, as evening darkened to night, the newly-weds continued to stand where they were on the quay side long after the RMS Ulster had dwindled to nothing more than a black speck on the far distant horizon and then finally disappeared out of sight altogether. The crowds thronging the quay had long since departed, and the pier, but a comparatively short time ago bustling with humanity, was now all but deserted, silent, save for the sigh and murmur of the waves gently lapping against its granite walls.
From somewhere in the direction of the harbour station, a whistle sounded heralding the arrival of the last train of the day.
"Come on" said Tom, "it's time we made our way back to the station; unless, of course, you want to walk all the way back to Dublin!"
"If it's the same to you, I'd rather not" said Sybil with a giggle. "As it happens, I can think of far more preferable ways of spending the evening than trudging back to Dublin on foot!"
"Would you like to tell me what you have in mind? Tom asked with a low chuckle.
"Do you have to even ask?" said Sybil with a broad grin.
"Why Sybil Branson, if I didn't know you better" chuckled Tom. At that, he kissed her soundly before, arm in arm, they set off for the harbour station where but a short while later, having found an empty third class compartment up near the engine, and they boarded the last train of the evening back to Westland Row station in Dublin.
A little way behind Tom and Sybil, though unobserved by either of them, someone else was also making his way home. With their departure for the railway station, down on the quayside, Merlin, Daithi's black cat sat up, arched his back, jumped down lithely from where he had been dozing in the evening sunshine atop an empty lobster creel, and padded off in the opposite direction towards the distant house of the harbour master.
Tom and Sybil's journey back to Dublin by train and thence out by tram to Clontarf both proved uneventful. With Ma staying at Emer's home to keep her company while her daughter continued, so far unsuccessfully, to find out what had become of her husband Peadar in Kilmainham Gaol, Tom and Sybil had the house in Clontarf to themselves.
From the faint red glimmer visible between the bars of the range in the kitchen, the fire was still in. However, before going upstairs, since they both had to be at work early in the morning – Sybil's shift at the Coombe started at 8.00am and Tom had to be at his desk in Talbot Street for shortly thereafter – Tom said he would add some more coal to the fire so as to ensure that they would have plenty of hot water for the morning.
"Don't be long" Sybil had said huskily – the languid, provocative, backwards glance she gave him over her shoulder as she made her way upstairs said it all; spoke volumes. Tom knew that look; what it betokened, felt the familiar hardening in his groin.
"I won't be love!" He grinned, watching, as his young wife trailed off upstairs running her hand sensuously along the banister. Tom headed swiftly into the kitchen and set about making good the fire, intending to go straight upstairs. It was then that the stark reality of their situation hit him with the full force of an express train. Tom sank down onto a chair, rested his chin in his cupped hands, and gazed at the flickering light from the range.
He had not told Sybil about the most recent threatening note, one of several he had received, unsigned of course, and posted to him at his offices on Talbot Street. Sybil was his life. If anything should happen to her. Perhaps it would be as well if along with Mary and Edith they too had both also boarded the Ulster and taken passage back to England. Not that if he had told Sybil about the notes she would ever have agreed to such a course of action.
Tom was a romantic, but he was no fool either. Given the way things were going, he wondered if it would be safer for them both if they left Ireland at least for the time being. He would never go back into service, but he was certain that he could gain employment somewhere in England, perhaps as a mechanic, at least until things over here settled down. However, with needlessly provocative acts like that committed by Stathum and his men out at the farm, acts of civil disobedience orchestrated by those sitting in the Dáil, let alone escalating acts of violence on the part of the IRA, he could not see that happening any time soon.
But, of course that was not all.
For neither had Tom told Sybil about the latest letter he had received from Maeve down at Skerries House, nor of his arrangement with Rose Duffy who ran the small florist's shop down on Henry Street who had once hawked flowers, and it was said other "wares", around the base of the Pillar on Sackville Street.
Tom had met Rose, whether that was her given name he never knew, when he had been living rough on the streets in Dublin; had found her kind and warm hearted. Given young Rose's undoubted charms, Tom could well believe the stories then doing the rounds on Sackville Street that apart from when selling flowers, Rose never occupied a vertical position in her life, but even if the rumours were true, Tom had never availed himself of what Rose had to offer. His first experience of all that had been at a very early age and the least said about it, the better. The experience had been nothing to be proud of. Tom, if not the girl, had regretted it ever afterwards. Although it was nothing to be ashamed of, he had felt somehow degraded by the whole sorry incident.
As for Rose herself, like so many before her and so many since, much like Tom, she had come to Dublin at an early age. In fact, apart from in matters sexual, their experiences had been remarkably similar. Running away from a widowed, drunken, abusive father over near Rossport in County Mayo, Rose had come to Dublin in search of fame and fortune, and instead found only degradation and squalor in the rabbit warren of decaying tenements, alleys, courts, and squares, north of the Liffey river. But then, much as with Tom when he had met up with Donal, an unexpected stroke of luck had enabled Rose to leave her life on the streets behind. One of her wealthier "clients" had died – it was said by those of an uncharitable disposition of whom there were many – of syphilis contracted from warm hearted Rose herself – not that Tom believed the tales – and left Rose a considerable sum of money enabling her to lease the shop on Henry Street.
Thereafter, she had never looked back and proved herself adept as a business woman, eventually purchasing the shop outright and buying herself a snug little house over in Monkstown.
Tom had never forgotten Rose and a chance encounter with her after he had returned to Dublin with Sybil had enabled him to ask Rose to receive the occasional letter for him from down near Cork. Rose never asked him who the letters were from, merely saying that young Tommy could ask for the moon without offering anything in return; which of course was not entirely true, but no matter. And it was to collect yet another letter from Maeve which had taken Tom down onto Henry Street the night he had encountered Stathum and his men kicking down the front door of the house opposite Rose's little shop.
Tom pulled Maeve's latest much thumbed letter out of his pocket. If what she said in it was true, then he could not delay his trip south to Cork for very much longer. Soft footfalls sounded on the stairs. Hurriedly he stuffed the letter back into his pocket before Sybil came into the kitchen.
"I thought you were coming upstairs" she said softly slipping her arms around his neck, drawing him up from his seat.
"I am" said Tom responding to her kisses. Beneath her cambric nightgown he could feel her nipples hardening, growing taut, as Sybil pressed herself against him, felt himself respond immediately in kind to Sybil's gentle but insistent caresses. On their arrival back at the house, Tom had taken off his jacket and undone his waistcoat. Slowly, Sybil began loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt.
"What's keeping you then?" she asked huskily, her eyes two dark, limpid pools.
"Nothing, really. I ... I was just thinking about ..."
"About what my love?"
Her perfume was beguiling. With her lace shawl about her shoulders, in the fading light of the summer's evening, Sybil looked as beautiful as the night she had stood before him in his lamp lit bedroom at the top of this very same house.
"About Peadar" Tom lied. "What can be done; I should really try and go out to Kilmainham tomorrow – if Harrington will give me the time".
"Tom, darling, I know you want to help Peadar, we all do, but you can do nothing about it at the moment. Without being callous, it's not as if Peadar's actually going anywhere is it?" Sybil deftly slipped her hands underneath Tom's vest, began raking his chest gently with her fingernails. "Come to bed, my love".
At her earnest entreaty, Tom smiled; let Sybil draw him slowly from the kitchen. In the hall, laughing, Tom made a feint play of resistance as Sybil stripped him of his vest before pulling her forward into his strong arms, and swiftly carrying her upstairs. Thereafter, in the privacy of their bedroom, Sybil made short work of Tom's remaining clothes and he of her nightgown. Lying pleasurably naked in bed, closely entwined in each other's arms, in the most intimate of all lovers' embraces, with any ugly thoughts of what might be happening to Peadar forgotten if only for the present, Tom and Sybil gave themselves over to the intense waves of sheer physical pleasure now engulfing the both of them.
Had Sybil but known it, she had been right about Peadar; at least in a sense.
He wasn't going anywhere.
Incarcerated in distant Kilmainham Gaol, the army's brutal interrogation of Peadar had proved singularly fruitless. Shot in the shoulder out at Ciaran's farm, despite Stathum's blithe assurances no doctor, civil or military, was ever called to examine Peadar, let alone dress his wound. Stripped to the waist, beaten, flogged, his nose and several ribs broken, bloodied and bruised, Peadar had told his interrogators nothing.
And now, he couldn't tell them, or anybody else, anything at all.
Peadar was dead.
Downton
The following morning had dawned bright and clear, with every prospect of it being a beautiful summer's day.
Refreshed after an excellent night's sleep in the London and North Western Railway Hotel at Holyhead, Mary and Edith rose languidly and breakfasted late; then caught the Irish Mail, crossing over Anglesey, traversing the Menai Strait and running along the coast of North Wales, partaking of a light luncheon in the restaurant car.
Given the particular circumstances in which they had all found themselves, for the most part unexpectedly, while over in Dublin for Tom and Sybil's wedding, both Mary and Edith had very good reason to come to terms with Sybil's choice of Tom Branson as her husband; to embrace him fully, in every sense of the word, as their brother-in-law, and nothing would ever change that. Their mutual admiration, respect, and new found love of Tom was nothing feigned, and for Sybil's sake, and while becoming better acquainted with Tom in very difficult and trying circumstances, Mary and Edith had also done their very best to rub along, setting aside their own personal differences.
When both Mary and Edith had told Tom that they would do everything in their power to fight his corner with their father they had meant exactly what they had said. And, in the days, weeks, and months to come would both do all they could to gain the earl of Grantham's genuine and unequivocal acceptance of Tom Branson both as Sybil's husband and as his son-in-law.
And yet for all their new found camaraderie, their mutual distrust and wariness of each other remained undiminished.
Throughout the train journey back to Downton, conversation between the two sisters had been at best desultory and eventually, after luncheon was over, lapsed into a mutually agreeable silence, leaving each lost in their own thoughts. Mary was debating what she should do about Sir Richard Carlisle and Edith considering how best to broach with granny what it was she suspected about Tom's antecedents. That neither of them felt able to share their thoughts with the other said a very great deal about the true nature of their relationship. After all that had happened to them over in Ireland, it seemed that nothing had really changed between them.
Thereafter their journey home took them by way of Chester, changing trains at Crewe, again at Leeds, and then finally at Ripon for the short journey to Downton, they were met at the station by Tom's replacement as chauffeur; an elderly, taciturn, married man by the name of Pratt - evidently Papa was taking no chances – who having loaded their luggage drove them home to the Abbey where they arrived just in time for afternoon tea on the lawn with Mama.
While the newspapers continued to be full of reports of the scuttling of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow, of the recent signing of the Peace Treaty at Versailles and of the successful flight by the R34 which had become the very first airship to fly across the Atlantic, there was only one matter which was of concern to the countess of Grantham and that was not to be found in any newspaper anywhere in the British Isles.
Delighted as she was to see her two elder daughters back safe on English soil, Cora was naturally, positively agog for details of Tom and Sybil's wedding and of the time spent by Mary and Edith over in Ireland. Of course, given the report of the matter in The Times, Mama was only too well aware of what had befallen them all at the Shelbourne, but when Tom's part in rescuing both Edith and Sybil from the bomb damaged dining room of the hotel was revealed to her, Cora's admiration and liking for her new son-in-law knew no bounds.
"Well" said Cora, setting down her teacup, "given all of what you've just told me, sooner rather than later, your father will just have to get used to the idea of Tom, both as Sybil's husband and as his son-in-law. I can only hope my darlings, that when your turn comes to marry, you are both as fortunate in your choice of husband as Sybil obviously is in Tom. Speaking of which, Mary have you heard from Richard?"
"Only that he is detained up in London by business and won't be joining us until the week-end".
"You don't sound unduly concerned" said Cora. "Is everything all right between you two?"
"Yes Mama. Why shouldn't it be?" asked Mary dismissively.
"No reason". Cora eyed her eldest daughter curiously. "I expect you're both very tired. Papa will be home in time for dinner. He's been out round the estate all day with Jarvis. Your grandmother will be joining us of course. Oh, I've asked Cousin Isobel and Matthew to come up as well. I hope that won't prove too taxing for you both?"
"Not at all, Mama" said Edith. "It will be lovely to see them. Won't it Mary?" Mary nodded at Edith, and then turned again to her mother.
"Why should it prove taxing?"
"I think you know why" said Cora. "Besides which, you'll have to recount everything you've just told me all over again for the benefit of your grandmother, Cousin Isobel, and Matthew".
"Safety in numbers, Mama?" asked Mary with an expressive raise of an eyebrow.
"Something like that" said Cora with a conspiratorial smile. "Now, before we all have to go in and change for dinner, tell me again about your ride on the tram. It sounded such fun".