Chapter Ninety Four
Of Firelight And Field Mice
"So, milady, as I was saying, what with the weather being as bad as it is, I decided it was a good idea to take Mrs. Doyle up on her offer. I went down there and asked old Potts if I could park the motor in there, at least until this bad weather's over. So, that's where it is now. And, I can make use of the stable for as long as I want".
"Just the stable?" asked Sybil with a provocatively raised eyebrow.
Tom looked at her quizzically; broke into a broad smile.
"Oh, I think the permission extends to the hayloft above it too!" Tom chuckled.
"I'm very glad to hear it!" said Sybil emphatically. She giggled.
"Sybil Branson, you'll be the death of me!"
"But what on earth are you doing back so early?" Sybil broke free, searching her husband's face. "You're all right? Nothing's happened at the paper has it? Nothing's wrong is it?"
Tom grinned again.
"No, of course not, love. Given all the work I've been doing, I've been owed some time off for ages, so, this being Christmas Eve, I went and saw Harrington this morning, after I'd been out to Malahide - that was a bloody waste of time too – the chap I was supposed to meet never even showed up, I waited at the station for nearly an hour. Anyway, I asked if I could leave early tonight. So, here I am".
Breathing a sigh of relief, putting down her handbag on the hall table, Sybil took off her cloche hat, slipped off her gloves, and having laid them beside her bag, began fumbling with the cold, heavy buttons of her thick coat.
"Here, love, let me help you with those" said Tom solicitously.
Willingly, Sybil gave herself over to Tom's welcome ministrations. As he eased her overcoat from off her shoulders, Sybil smiled broadly. Catching sight of her smile, Tom looked quizzically at her again.
"What's tickled your fancy now, love?" asked Tom with his endearing lop sided grin, broad enough to match Sybil's own smile.
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking ..."
"Thinking what?"
"Well, since you ask me, why it is that whenever you start taking off my clothes, the task of removing them always seems to be accomplished far more quickly than when I try and do it for myself!"
Tom chuckled.
"Is that so, milady?" asked Tom, his eyes sparkling with mischief, his voice taking on a husky tone as he hung Sybil's hat and coat up next to his own by the front door. "Well, practice makes perfect, and as I'm sure you know, I'd be more than happy to help you out of all of your clothes, but supper's almost ready".
"Even with my lack of culinary skills, I can tell that. So, you've done the ironing and made us both supper too?"
Tom nodded.
"Of course, after all, didn't I promise to devote every waking moment to your happiness?"
"Yes, love, you most certainly did" said Sybil, recalling bitterly the time in York when she had so cruelly dashed Tom's hopes of a future life together. How could she have been so utterly insensitive, so uncaring? Why, if it hadn't been for Tom's tenacity, his refusal to take no for an answer, well she didn't dare to contemplate what might not, might never have happened. She felt her cheeks flush; tears sprang in her eyes.
"Hush, now" said Tom drawing her close, sensing the reason for her distress. "That's all done with".
"Tom, my darling, truly, I don't know what I ever did to deserve you" sobbed Sybil.
"Oh, I can think of several things" said Tom with a chuckle.
"Would you care to enlighten me Mr. Branson?" asked Sybil, her eyes sparkling.
"Not now, but maybe later perhaps" said Tom with another laugh and a suggestive glance upstairs, at which Sybil captured his delectable lips with her own.
"There's no, maybe about it, Mr. Branson!" she said archly.
Then, slipping her arm around Tom's waist, together they walked slowly from the hall into the kitchen to eat their supper. The door to the kitchen stood open, but seeing what she now saw, Sybil paused on the threshold, stood stock still.
Apart from the faint red glow from the grate of the range, and the pale light cast by two candles, set in a pair of brass candlesticks, and which stood in the centre of the humble, deal table, the warm, homely kitchen was in darkness. Sybil recognised the candlesticks; they normally graced the mantle in the parlour. The small table was set for two, with china, cutlery, glassware, and also with two of Ma's best linen napkins, taken from the drawer in the dresser and something with which they never usually bothered.
Even in the darkness, Sybil could sense Tom was blushing.
"I know it's not exactly the dining room in Downton, but ... well, it is Christmas Eve, so I thought I'd make it a bit ..." His voice trailed off and he fell silent.
Sybil reached up and kissed him gently on his cheek.
"Tom Branson, you're a hopeless romantic and I love you for it!"
"I know" said Tom and grinned. He moved forward into the kitchen and pulled out her chair.
The meal Tom had prepared was excellent – boiled ham with potatoes and cabbage, washed down with nothing more than cold water.
"I'll do that" said Sybil, as Tom cleared away the plates and took them over to the Belfast.
Tom half turned and grinned.
"If you like" he said. "But wait until the meal's over first, eh?" He nodded toward the range, where in the flickering shadows a solitary black pot still softly simmered.
"But?" Sybil looked questioningly at him.
"What's your favourite food at Christmas time?"
"Christmas Pudding" said Sybil promptly. "Oh, Tom, you haven't?"
"Well, if you mean did I make it?" Tom shook his head. "No, it's the one from the larder. From Downton; the one your mother and sisters sent us, so I suppose all the credit should really go to Mrs. Patmore. All I did was to put it on to simmer when I got in from work".
Later, when the meal was at last truly over, and when together, they had both washed up, with the lamps turned down low, the curtains drawn, they sat together in the front room before a roaring fire, both drowsily content, Sybil on Tom's lap, her arms clasped about his neck, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder. And while Tom dozed fitfully, probably on account of the two glasses of whisky which he had drunk, poured from the bottle kept in the bottom of the dresser in the kitchen, while the fire flamed and crackled, Sybil thoughts turned to how different this Christmas Eve of 1919 was to that of the year before. Then they had both still been at Downton, still making plans for their future together, still unsure of what that would be. Tom shifted in the chair, mumbled something incomprehensible, causing Sybil to look up at him. She smiled contentedly; God how she loved him.
Tom opened an enquiring eye.
"What?" he asked.
"I was just thinking. With all that's happened, with the way things are, with Papa, I mean, if you had the chance to choose again, Tom ..."
"It would always be you" said he softly, nuzzling her hair. "After all, I told you, Sybil, there are some things in this life worth fighting for. And, my love, if something is truly worth having then it usually involves something of a struggle".
But before Sybil could make any kind of reply, it was at that moment that, faintly, from somewhere down the road, they heard the unmistakable sound of carol singers, their voices raised in song. The sound brought vividly to Sybil's mind a long gone Christmas Eve spent in the night nursery at Downton. At the time, then aged about nine or ten, she had been suffering from a very heavy cold. Quite unexpectedly, before her parents' dinner guests for the evening arrived, Mama had come upstairs and sat with her and read a chapter from Kenneth Grahame's "Wind In The Willows".
Given the time of year, the passage which Mama had chosen to read to her was particularly apposite, for, it was the part in the tale where, on Christmas Eve, Mole and Ratty had sat down to supper in Mole's little house, only to find themselves visited by a group of carol singers, in the unlikely guise of a group of field mice.
"... when sounds were heard from the fore-court – sounds like the scuffling of small feet in the gravel and a confused murmur of tiny voices.
˜I think it must be the field mice", said the Mole, with a touch of pride in his manner. They go round carol singing regularly at this time of the year. They're quite an institution in these parts. And they never pass me over – they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it. It will be like old times to hear them again".
˜Let's have a look at them!" cried the Rat, jumping up and running to the door.
It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the forecourt, lit by the dim rays of a lantern, some eight or ten little field mice stood in a semicircle, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth".
Ever since then, Sybil had always enjoyed that particular part of the story, so much so that she had even told Tom about it one night in the garage at Downton. Why, come to think of it, it had been just about this time last year. Her telling him of the tale had elicited the pithy response from Tom that if ever he found a bunch of field mice singing carols outside the garage doors at Downton on Christmas Eve, he'd make certain he changed his brand of whisky; either that or else send for the under keeper and his vermin traps, at which Sybil had stuck out her tongue.
"And that's the considered response I get from a man who believes in little men dressed in green!" she remarked tartly.
"Sybil, I never said I believed in leprechauns" Tom said somewhat shamefaced. He ducked his head, and blushed furiously. "All I said was that I'd consider the evidence for their existence".
"You can't wriggle your way out of it that easily, Mr Branson" said Sybil archly.
She smiled happily at the remembrance, would loved to have read that part of the story again tonight for herself, as she had done on so many Christmases past after Mama had first read the story to her; would, God willing, one day, read it to their child when he, or she, was old enough to understand the tale; supposed her own copy of the book must still be somewhere at Downton.
Then, from somewhere just outside the house, there came the unmistakable sound of someone clearing his throat, accompanied by a hushed babble of subdued voices and the shuffling of several pairs of small feet. There was a quiet knock at the front door.
"What the ..."
"It's carol singers, Tom".
"Oh, no" groaned Tom. He opened an enquiring eye. "Did you really say carol singers?"
Sybil nodded.
"Are they human?" asked Tom with a grin, and opened his other eye.
Sybil nodded, grinned back at him.
"I think so".
"You're certain they're not field mice?" Tom laughed.
"Perhaps" said Sybil breezily. "But, of course, the only way to find out is to open the door. Come on Tom, let's go and see them. Please, for me?" pleaded Sybil.
"Do we have to?"
"Tom, don't be difficult!" laughed Sybil.
"Oh, all right, then" he said resignedly, shaking his head. He could refuse her nothing.
Sybil slipped gently off Tom's lap. Together, hand in hand, they went out into the hall and opened wide the front door. Standing before them in a semicircle in the small porch, jigging on their feet, their hands thrust deeply into their pockets, with a backdrop behind them formed of softly falling snow, was a group of some six or seven young boys, all warmly wrapped, wearing caps and scarves, the eldest of whom held aloft a shepherd's horn lantern.
Tom grinned; made an expansive play of looking the boys over. "Well, they look normal enough to me. I can't see any pointed ears, whiskers, or tails". He tried to stifle a laugh, failed miserably in the process, and guffawed loudly.
"Tom, you'll embarrass them!"
"Sorry lads" mumbled Tom.
The young boys looked nervously one to the other, and then equally nervously back at Tom and Sybil, evidently all wondering the same thing: whether or not their present host and hostess were indeed quite sane. After all, one of them, the woman, was clearly English, and from what the young boys had overheard their parents say, from what they had been told by their elder brothers and sisters at school, if angered, probably ate small Irish children for her supper. That being the case, it was doubtless best not to annoy her. The horn lantern bobbed, the boys smiled weakly at Sybil and Tom, and shuffled their feet.
"So boys, what are you are going to sing for us?" asked Sybil at which Tom stifled a groan, rolled his eyes in mock horror, and fumbled in his trouser pockets for some loose change.
Author's note:
Belfast – refers to the sink of that name, made of solid ceramic and very popular during the Victorian era. Also known as a butler's sink, although that is slightly different, they are still made to this day.
"The Wind In The Willows", by Kenneth Grahame, was first published in 1908.