Chapter One Hundred And One
O'Brien's Revenge
Sybil did as she was told, to find that they were in fact standing just inside Ciaran's hay barn. While most of the large building, including the cattle stalls, was lost to sight in all but total darkness, a small part of it was brightly lit by the light from a dozen hurricane lanterns, hung from hooks or from square wooden pegs, several of which protruded from some of the massive upright timbers supporting the roof.
The lanterns were ranged round an obviously recently cleared and cleanly swept rectangular space in the very middle of the huge building. Hung between four of the posts, but well above the lanterns, were two long paper chains, identical to those over in the farmhouse, but here, where these met together and crossed over, above the very centre of the cleared space, there was suspended a large red bell, likewise made of paper.
Standing there, half lost in the shadows, on the very edge of the pool of light, somewhat self-consciously, grinning bashfully, and now clutching his cloth cap, was Ruari. The source of the music now stood revealed too, for next to Ruari, atop a large wooden barrel was a gramophone; similar to the one, Sybil remembered, that friends of Lavinia had given to both her and Matthew as a wedding present. The recording of Alexander's Ragtime Band warbled to a crackling stop, and, as the notes of the tune faded away, a hushed silence descended once more upon the inside of Ciaran's barn.
"You did all of this?" asked Sybil in amazement. "For me? But why?" Her eyes moistened, glistened in the pale yellow light of the lanterns.
"Because I love you darlin'", said Tom with his cheeky, lop-sided grin and a simultaneous grin and a nod towards Ruari.
"And because I know how much you love dancing, and because... well in the past few weeks you've said how much you'd miss being at this year's Servants' Ball at Downton. All that apart, I've some very fond memories of a couple of those do's myself - when that is I got the chance to dance with a certain beautiful dark haired young woman who then went by the name of Lady Sybil Crawley!" laughed Tom.
Sybil blushed with pleasure.
"So, I borrowed the gramophone off of Danny Flanagan and also some of his recordings too. You remember Danny, don't you, darlin'?"
Remembering she had indeed met Danny, once or twice, most notably down at O'Casey's Bar in Dublin at the end of the Ha'penny Bridge across the Liffey, Sybil nodded her head and seeing her do so, Tom now continued with his explanation.
"I brought them up here to the farm in the motor, on the day of my trip out to Malahide. Ruari was in on it too, helped me store all this, then set it up" added Tom, at which startling revelation, Sybil turned and bestowed on Ruari a smile of especial charm. Now I understand, she thought; the whispered asides between the two of them earlier this afternoon suddenly all made perfect sense.
"Tom Branson, I've said it before, you are a hopeless romantic!"
"I know". Tom grinned, drew her forward into his arms, his lips greedily seeking hers.
"Tom" said Sybil softly. "Ruari ..."
"He won't mind. In fact, I believe he's quite a knowledgeable lad when it comes to this sort of thing!" Tom chuckled, raising his voice so Ruari could hear precisely what it was he was saying, and winked broadly at his nephew over Sybil's right shoulder. Standing by the barrel, Ruari nodded, and now with a cheeky grin to match that of his uncle, winked equally broadly back.
To be truthful, at this precise moment in time, even if he had tried to do so, Ruari knew in his heart that he couldn't have been happier. Of course, he had some, albeit fleeting, boyhood memories of his Uncle Tom from the time before he had left Ireland and crossed over the sea to work in England as a chauffeur. But, in the months which had followed since Uncle Tom had returned home here to Ireland, bringing with him his English fiancée who was now his wife, his own family excepted, Ruari had grown to love his uncle and aunt more than anyone. Which was why, when Uncle Tom had asked him to help clean and decorate part of the large barn as a Christmas surprise for Aunt Sybil, and to keep it secret from everyone else, Ruari had readily assented. And now here he was, spending time on his own, with those two self same people. With the realisation of that dawning upon him, Ruari's smile duly broadened into a wide grin.
"Well, then, I think, one good turn deserves another, don't you?" Sybil asked softly as, a few moments later, with Tom having changed the recording, the notes of the Maple Leaf Rag spilled out through the vast echoing space of the barn, just as those of Paddy Begg's harp had done on the night of the céilí.
"Dance with me?" she asked haltingly.
"My pleasure" said Tom, his eyes sparkling with merriment, but then, and quite unexpectedly, Sybil shook her head, instead let her eyes slide past him to where Ruari, now seated on a bale of straw, sat gazing down steadfastly at the dusty barn floor at something there, which seemed to have attracted his undivided attention.
"Ruari?" At the sound of his name, the boy's dark head snapped up in astonishment.
"Me?" he asked. "But... but I don't know how", Ruari stammered; blushed red.
"Well then, I think it's high time you found out, don't you?" Laughingly, Sybil held out her hand to him.
Not believing his luck, feeling he must be dreaming, as if in a daze, in the soft glow of the lanterns, Ruari walked slowly forward to stand in the pool of lamplight directly beneath the large red paper bell. There, having taken hold of his aunt's outstretched hand, without further ado, and to the syncopated rhythm of the Maple Leaf Rag, Sybil began to lead him slowly through the steps of the foxtrot.
For her part, Sybil proved to be an excellent teacher, and Ruari an adept pupil.
"That's it" she called out encouragingly to her young, dark haired partner, as a short while later they again made their way around the improvised dance floor. "You've got it! Ruari, are you quite certain that you have never done this before? "
Ruari shook his head, his black hair falling forward over his forehead in a way so reminiscent of Tom, that instinctively Sybil reached forward and swept the boy's hair back from off his brow.
"No. Never! Not until now". Ruari laughed.
"Well then, I'm very, very much impressed. You must have a flair for it!"
Ruari smiled broadly, then catching sight of his uncle, blushed red. Sybil followed the direction of her nephew's gaze; laughed as she caught Tom's eye, saw him wink at them both, then smile broadly at her.
"Oh, take no notice of him, Ruari", giggled Sybil with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Just concentrate on what we're doing!"
"Don't mind me" called Tom. "I'll just stand here and change the recordings, shall I? I suppose, if I'm patient long enough, my turn will come!"
"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that, Mr. Branson, not if I were you. Not only is my present partner handsome, but also a talented dancer!" laughed Sybil. She and Ruari continued to drift effortlessly round the lighted space; it was almost as if they were dancing in the imposing stone-flagged entrance hall of Downton Abbey and not here, on the dirt floor of a tenant farmer's barn, lost somewhere in the wilds of County Dublin
Thereafter, Sybil continued to take turns in dancing, first with Ruari, and then with Tom. After a while, they broke off and all three of them sat contentedly together, side by side, on Ruari's bale of straw, chatting and partaking of the several bottles of lemonade and ginger beer, which, thoughtfully, Tom had wisely seen were to hand. For, as he remarked, dancing often worked up something of a thirst, as it had done in the summer at the céilí, something to which they could all attest.
However, the provision of glasses was something, which had somehow escaped Tom's otherwise meticulous planning of this evening's proceedings.
"What?" asked Sybil, on seeing a glint of mischief sparkling in Tom's deep blue eyes.
"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all!"
"Come on Tom, I know you better than that. Out with it!"
"Well, I was only thinking..."
"Thinking what?"
"If your family could see us now, sitting here in a barn, on a bale of straw, trading bottles of ginger beer and lemonade back and forth between the three of us!"
Suddenly, Tom drew in his breath and winced sharply.
"Jaysus, this stuff packs a punch for sure! Why, it's damn' near as strong as my Jameson's!" Tom shook his head. "Where the hell did you get it, Ruari?"
"Tom! Language, please!" reprimanded Sybil.
"Sorry" he mumbled.
"Just like all the other bottles, Uncle Tom, from old Mrs. O'Neill. You know, down in the village. She got it out of a crate in her storeroom at the back of the shop. She said it was the very last bottle she had left".
"I'm very pleased to hear it!" Tom croaked. He coughed, spluttered, and then wiped his watering eyes with the back of his hand.
"Why, what's wrong with it?" asked Ruari, wondering what could be the matter. After all, the family always got their ginger beer from old Mrs. O'Neill's and it had never had this effect before.
"Oh, there's nothing wrong with it, lad. It's just... er... rather strong, that's all". Uncle Tom grinned, rolled his eyes, made as if to fall off the bale of straw.
Sybil picked up the now discarded empty stone bottle and read the label. "Goodness! I'm not surprised it's so strong. Look at the name on it!" The corners of her mouth twitched expressively. Having now soothed his throat with some cooling lemonade, taking the bottle from her, squinting in the flickering light of the lanterns, Tom read out the black printed words.
"O'Brien & Company, Henry Place, Dublin". O'Brien!
There formed in Tom's mind a mental image of his mother-in-law's black clad, waspish, sour-faced lady's maid who, all at Downton both below and above stairs knew, pedalled an extremely unpleasant line in biting vitriol, matched only in her singular unpleasantness by her partner in crime, the similarly black clad, and equally unsavoury, Thomas Barrow.
On more than one occasion whilst he was at Downton, Tom had come upon the pair of them furtively engaged in yet another of their feverish, whispered, animated conversations held in the dimly lit rabbit warren of passages below the great house. Seeing the pair for what they were, Tom had as little as possible to do with either of them. However, if he detested Miss O'Brien, then Tom positively loathed Barrow.
Although he had never told Sybil about it, he remembered a particularly unpleasant encounter with Barrow during the last summer of the war. Sybil had been on duty in the hospital. It was a warm night and with no chance of seeing her, awaiting the customary call to run the Dowager Countess back to the Dower House down in the village, disconsolate, Tom had sat himself down on a bench outside in the yard by the servants' entrance. It was there, but a short while later that Barrow had found him.
Then in the army, Barrow had tried very hard, in fact too hard, to engage Tom in conversation, asking veiled, albeit pointed, questions about his love life, had said with a knowing wink, that they were both men of the world, that Tom was far from home, that he must, perforce, at times, feel lonely. Maybe the former footman had meant nothing by it all, but Tom was well aware of the rumours about Barrow's own sexual proclivities. With that in mind, and with a growing sense of unease, Tom had made his excuses and rapidly quitted the scene.
He grimaced at the remembrance, now raised his eyebrows expressively.
"Well, if that scabby old bat has started brewing her own ginger beer, then no wonder this stuff tastes the way it does! It ought to be labelled O'Brien's Revenge for sure!" Tom chuckled.
At this point Sybil now realising they were both thinking exactly the same thing, could contain herself no longer and, followed but a matter of seconds later by Tom, dissolved into a bout of prolonged laughter.
"It's only ginger beer Uncle Tom. What on earth's so funny?" asked Ruari genuinely mystified. Thereafter, watching both his aunt and uncle laughing away together, it was now that Ruari came to the inescapable conclusion that if a commonplace, empty ginger beer bottle could reduce two adults to tears of helpless laughter, then there must be a very great deal more to this mysterious business of growing up than he could possibly ever have imagined.
Sometime later, with delightful strains of dance music continuing to drift fitfully across from the barn, in the rapidly fading light of the winter's afternoon Ma, Ciaran, Aislin and the children came over from the farmhouse to see exactly what it was that was going on. Now here they all stood, crowded together in the barn doorway; open mouthed in amazement at the scene that had greeted them.
There before them, in the middle of the great barn, his face flushed, glowing with pride was Ruari; the erstwhile sensitive, shy, thirteen-year-old eldest son of an Irish tenant farmer; someone who, until this evening, had never ever set foot on a dance floor. Now, even as they watched him, to the utter astonishment of his immediate family, and in the presence of her husband, Ruari confidently swung his aunt, the youngest daughter of an English earl, into a waltz, to the singular and appropriately named tune of Please Say You Will.
Author's note:
The "King of Ragtime" Scott Joplin (c.1867/8-1917) composed Please Say You Will and the Maple Leaf Rag. Like Alexander's Ragtime Band, the latter also appeared in the White Star Line's Songbook.
John Jameson, a Scotsman, established the Bow Street Distillery in Dublin in 1780. Sold all over the world, today the Jameson brand is the most well known blend of Irish whiskey.
Selling ginger beer, O'Brien & Company of Henry Place, Dublin really did exist. As to whether a certain lady's maid had a hand in the brewing of any of its products, hopefully not; but for once history is silent!
Finally, to soak up the true atmosphere of the end of this particular chapter, find Scott Joplin's Complete Works CD1/5 on the Internet and select Please Say You Will. Who knows, you may just catch sight of young Ruari swinging his aunt, the former Lady Sybil Crawley, into a waltz!