Chapter Sixty Eight

Phantom Listeners

His head throbbed painfully; Tom assumed he must have hit it on something when he fell, when he toppled down the grassy bank, although he had no recollection of doing so.

The pain came in slowly fading waves, ebbing back and forth like the wash of the tide over a shingle beach. After someone, he never knew who, had roughly jerked the sacking hood from off from his head, it had taken Tom several minutes to shake his mind free of confusion, to react to the circumstances of his situation, and for his eyes to adjust to his immediate surroundings. Thankfully, his head, whilst still aching and sore, was now at last beginning to clear.

He was seated on a wooden chair, or rather more precisely, as Tom found out to his cost when he tried to move, he was tied to it and tightly too. Thereafter, Tom's first reaction was to do what anyone else would do on finding themselves in a similar situation: Tom struggled to set himself free.

He shifted this way and that, desperately trying to free himself, the chair rocking ominously several times, but eventually all to no avail. His arms had been pulled behind his back, his wrists bound together, and a length of rope passed several times around his chest, securing him to the chair, while a filthy piece of rag had been stuffed into his mouth as a makeshift gag.

But while he couldn't feel his hands, what Tom could feel was the rope binding his wrists together, cutting into his flesh, rubbing his skin raw, while the foul taste of the gag made him want to retch. Trussed up like a goose ready for Christmas and given the fate of geese at that particular season of the year, Tom regretted immediately thinking of that particular comparison. Turkeys had their necks wrung. What, he wondered, would be his own fate? A lone bullet in the back of his head; followed by a hasty burial in an unmarked grave on some windswept hillside.

Tom had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed since he had been taken. He could feel his anger starting to rise within him. Anger, not fear; that would come soon enough.

All this was his own feckin fault! Jaysus, why had he been so bloody naïve, so trusting? Probably, because as Sybil had once said to him, because he believed in the innate goodness of the human spirit. Innate goodness? That was a joke! Tears started to well in his eyes, he tried to blink them back, failed, spilled down his cheeks, tears not for himself, but for darling Sybil.

Sybil! Oh, God, my love, my darling, my dearest dear. He had but to close his eyes to see her before him. Nothing mattered to him but her! She would be utterly distraught; panic stricken. But no; keep calm Tom, perhaps ... perhaps she wouldn't be, at least not yet ... no, not just yet. Take comfort from that. After all, he had come home late before and at least this time he had been able to telephone the hospital to leave a message for her to say that he would be delayed. But sooner or later Sybil would realise that, even when something at the paper had delayed him, he was later than was normal. Then, then she would begin to worry, and, when she did, to who could she then turn to for help?

Oh, God, Sybil! At the very thought of her, Tom groaned.

That morning, with her shift starting later, he had been the first to leave the little house in Clontarf. That, sometimes, unfortunately was the way of it. However, as the bright morning sun had streamed unbidden into their bedroom between the gap in the curtains, Sybil had been the first of them to waken. He had heard her yawn, had felt her stretch languidly beside him in the bed, knowing, because she had told him so before they had fallen asleep, that come the morning she would be feeling pleasurably sated after their physical exertions of the night before. At the remembrance, he had smiled, had kept his eyes firmly closed.

Sometimes, he reflected, he had to pinch himself to realise that all of this, falling in love with Sybil, their engagement, their marriage, their life here together over in Ireland, both now working for a living unlikely as it all seemed, despite all the obstacles they had encountered, was no longer but a dream; was reality. Tom knew he would never grow tired of waking to each new day with Sybil lying beside him in their bed. At that realisation, Tom's smile had broadened considerably until it became a grin.

He had felt her lips gently brush his cheek; her eye lashes soft against his skin. At that, Tom had opened an inquiring eye; saw that Sybil had propped herself on her elbow, was watching him, had probably been doing so for several minutes as he feigned sleep. He had seen her lips curve in a slight smile as she leaned over, and brushed his lips with her own; saw her smile again as he stretched, yawned, reached for her, and enfolded her in a warm embrace.

"Jaysus! No, it can't be that time already?"
"It is" Sybil had said softly. "As for Jaysus, well you mentioned Him several times last night, although somehow, I don't think He was listening. But, be that as it may, someone" said Sybil, her fingers gently caressing the soft hairs on his chest "someone has to go to work".

At that, Tom had whimpered, rolled away from her, had pulled the pillow over his head. Laughing, despite his protests, Sybil had tugged it off him.

He hated mornings with an absolute vengeance.

It was, perhaps, the one thing Tom missed from his old life whilst he had been working at Downton Abbey as chauffeur to the earl of Grantham: the comparative freedom afforded to him, at least when compared to the lives of his fellow servants, of rising late.

That he could afford to do so was in part because he always kept the Renault at Downton in perfect working order, often cleaning it, polishing it, and doing any repairs that were necessary late at night, so as to take his mind off other more pleasurable ways of spending the hours of darkness.

There was no requirement that Tom join other members of the staff for breakfast unless he wished to do so; and with O'Brien sitting scowling at him from the other side of the long table in the Servants' Hall, a face on her fit to curdle milk, that was one pleasure Tom could damned well do with out.

So, Tom usually availed himself of the freedom afforded to him by virtue of his position of making himself his own breakfast in the chauffeur's cottage, for unlike all the other domestic servants at Downton, his own duties never started until much later in the day, when the telephone in the garage rang. Usually, but not always, the caller would be Mr. Carson himself, summoning Tom up to the front door of the house; to run one or other members of the family down to the village, into Ripon, or, on rare occasions, perhaps slightly further afield, as when, on that never to be forgotten occasion, he had driven Sybil to York to begin her nurse's training; a lifetime ago.

Oddly enough, in all the years that Tom had been in service at Downton Abbey, each morning when Mr. Carson had summoned him up to the house, the butler had never once said anything to him about bringing the Renault. Tom had often wondered what would have been Mr. Carson's reaction if, he had turned up at the front door of the Abbey, in his chauffeur's uniform, but on foot.

"But you asked for me, Mr. Carson. You never mentioned anything about the motor".

Tom had reached lazily for Sybil's right breast

"Tom! It's time for you to get up".

Tom glanced downwards and between his thighs.

"Whatever milady commands!" said Tom. He chuckled as his wife followed his eyes, his downwards gaze, saw what it was he saw, and then smiled broadly.

"That wasn't what I meant, Tom, as well you know!"

"Really?"
"Yes really!"

"Oh, God!"

"The Almighty has nothing to do with it!"

"I'm very glad to hear it. I do like a smidgen of credit for all my physical exertions!"

At that, Tom had laughed, made one last and desultory attempt to burrow back under the sheets and blanket, but then Sybil had begun to tickle his ribs and Tom knew that he was beaten.

"All right, all right, you win!" he had said.

"There's always tonight" Sybil had said with a saucy smile.

Only...

Thereafter, from the comfort of their bed, Sybil had watched him as he shuffled unwillingly round their bedroom, naked as the day he was born, squinting at the harsh glare of the morning sun, and retrieving his clothes from off the floor.

"I can never find anything in the morning" he had grumbled good-naturedly, trying to find his undershorts.

"That's because you never fold your clothes up, put them away properly when you take them off" said Sybil in the most matter-of-fact of tones.

"I shall have to speak to my valet about that" he had said with a chuckle and a grin.

"He's been dismissed" said Sybil with a giggle. "So, you'll just have to fend for yourself. After all, if I've learned to do it, so can you. Look for your own clothes Mr. Branson!"

"I seem to recall it wasn't me who took them off!" Tom had protested, searching under the bed, and as he did so, unconsciously giving his young wife an unrivalled view of his bare backside, which was why when Tom had finally looked up at Sybil, all he had received by way of return had been a sly grin.

At that, at last, finally having found what it was he was searching for, Tom had slipped on his undershorts, then struggled into his trousers and with his braces hanging loose, had padded downstairs, barefoot, to fetch hot water in which to wash and shave. While Sybil sat in bed, he had finished dressing, before disappearing downstairs to make them both tea, cook himself eggs and bacon, and to make some toast.

The pleasures of domesticity; don't knock them, he thought. After all, what would he not give now to be back in the kitchen of Ma's homely little house in Clontarf making toast, with Sybil seated at the table; she had come downstairs to join him, barefoot, wearing nothing but her nightgown and had sat at the scrubbed deal table, sipping scalding tea from a mug, watching him as he made himself breakfast. He could just see her doing that in the Dining Room at Downton Abbey; Mr. Carson would have a fit. The improbability of that brought the briefest of smiles to Tom's face. It was gone in a moment, his short reverie disturbed by the harshness of reality.

Outside it was raining hard; above Tom's head, the rain drummed noisily on the corrugated iron roof of the small, dimly lit hut in which he now found himself. The walls of the building appeared to be made of old railway sleepers placed upright, the joints between them caulked with tar. Inside the cabin, the air was damp and noisome, reeking of stale soot, of grease and oil, and of cigarette smoke.

What little daylight, and, at this hour, there wasn't much of it, filtered but weakly through a tiny window in the wall opposite him, its four panes of glass cracked, dirty, filmed with cobwebs. There was a brick hearth; the small cast iron grate full of cold ash and cinders, while, on a wooden shelf close by there stood several lamps and a can of oil. Up ended against the wall beneath the shelf was a wooden barrow with a broken wheel, while propped against the wall in a corner were what Tom took to be railwaymen's tools: shovels, picks, sledge hammers, crowbars, and a collection of rusty iron poles all of varying lengths. In front of him was a small, rickety table and behind it a solitary chair. The flickering flame of a lighted hurricane lantern standing on the table provided the only source of artificial illumination inside the hut.

Close at hand a whistle sounded and but a moment or two later a train roared past and away, the cabin shaking in its wake, the vibration dislodging a heavy shower of dirt and coal dust down on him from the roof. As the noise of the train faded away, somewhere a door creaked and Tom heard, or thought he heard, muffled voices, sensed movement in the lengthening shadows close behind him.

Suddenly, a pair of hands, the fingers stained with nicotine, reached round his face and, none too gently, tore the gag from Tom's mouth. He grimaced, winced, hawked, and then spat heavily onto the dirt floor.

"Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this to me?" he demanded, but, in reply to Tom's anxious question, answer came there none. As he heard the door close, Tom swallowed hard. God help me, he thought; but wondered, if it was already too late for that.

Outside, a short distance away from the cabin, two men stood smoking.

"And what if he won't talk?"

"Oh, he will! He'll sing like a bird that one. Michael will see to that".

Footsteps sounded still some way off.

"If I'm not mistaken, that'll be the big fellow himself".

"And if he doesn't?" persisted the other.

"If who doesn't what?"

"If he ..." The man nodded his head towards the hut. "If he doesn't talk?"
"Oh, him? If he doesn't talk? Mark my words, he will. After all, there's always these..."

The man gave a low chuckle, which was followed but a moment or two later by a faint metallic clicking.