Chapter One Hundred And Nineteen
Storm Clouds Over Cork
As their train steamed south-westward from Dublin and towards Cork, snug in their third class compartment, while Tom scribbled furiously in his notebook, Sybil reflected ruefully on the events of the past six months, not least upon the disastrous fire at Downton which had cost several servants their lives, among them O'Brien whose dramatic fall from the roof of the abbey at the height of the conflagration, had been witnessed by the entire family; was something none of them would ever forget.
Whatever its origins and there were rumours that it had not been accidental, which were, in part at least, supported by the discovery by the local constabulary in an abandoned cottage on the estate of several empty jerry cans of petroleum spirit, the fire had caused a considerable amount of damage to the abbey itself, although, it could all have been so very much worse.
Ironically, what in the end ultimately saved the centuries old house from total devastation, had very little to do with the heroic efforts made, both by the domestic servants and workers from off the estate doing their very best to save the abbey and its contents, or with the tardy arrival of the fire engine from Ripon when it had finally reached Downton. For, at least to begin with, as the fire had taken so firm a hold, it seemed that even their combined attempts to extinguish it would prove futile and be destined to end in failure; that in the cold grey light of a February dawn, nearly five hundred years of Crawley history and that of their predecessors was destined to be little more than a pile of smoking rubble.
However, it was rubble, which finally had saved the day.
To be more precise the rubble used by the medieval builders who had laboured to build the warren of rooms that now lay beneath the present eighteenth century mansion. These pre-dated the present building by many centuries and were, in part, a survival from the fortified manor house, which had once stood on the same site. The walls were in many places five or six feet thick and the ceilings of the rooms, most of which were now either disused or else had been turned into cellars were stone vaulted. In places the stone vaulting had collapsed in its entirety, but, by and large, enough of it remained intact to prevent the relentless march of the flames becoming unstoppable.
So, whilst several of the large, ornate ground floor rooms on the south side of the abbey were completely gutted and their contents totally destroyed and many of those immediately above severely damaged by heat, smoke and water, some two-thirds of the great house remained intact. As for the several rooms which had been lost to the ravages of the fire, the following day, having been driven over from the Dower House, on viewing the aftermath of what had happened during the night, the Dowager Countess was heard to remark that "every cloud has a silver lining" and that some of the contents which had been lost should never have been given house room in the first place.
It should be admitted, however, that Robert was not so sanguine about the near loss of his ancestral home. Standing among both pools of water and the snaking hoses from the fire engine, surrounded by discarded furniture and paintings saved from the flames, and now surveying the devastation wrought by the fire, Robert had grimaced.
"Thank you Mama" was the sum total of his thin-lipped reply to his elderly mother's characteristically pithy observation.
Following the undeniably heroic part played by Tom in rescuing the entire Crawley family and then leading them all to safety across the icy leads of the roof, Robert's erstwhile hostile attitude to his Irish son-in-law had undergone a remarkable and complete transformation. In the aftermath of the fire, Robert's ringing praises of Tom were so effusive that all the unpleasantness of before might never have been.
On learning of what was unfolding up at the abbey, Matthew, having hastened up to the house along with his mother, both of them arriving in time to see the Crawleys, Mary included, emerging shaken but unharmed from around the mass of the burning building, was just as complimentary, given the fact that without Tom's night-time bravery, Matthew might well have lost his bride to be.
"As I said earlier tonight, old chap, you really are the right man to have beside you in a crisis" exclaimed Matthew, clapping Tom on the shoulder and then shaking him warmly by the hand.
Clad in nothing more than a darned sweater, corduroy trousers and a pair of boots hastily loaned him by one of the gardeners, his hair singed, his face streaked with smoke and sweat,Tom had nodded and smiled briefly at Matthew. A moment later, and in front of an aghast, appalled, speechless Mr. Carson, the erstwhile chauffeur had clambered quickly up into the driving seat of the Renault to drive Sybil and her mother post-haste to the Cottage Hospital down in the village. Dr. Clarkson, with the tacit agreement of Mr. Carson, having sent one of the boys from below stairs pedalling like the wind on a borrowed bicycle to warn those at the hospital that they were on their way.
So it was, that, but a matter of hours later, in the calm tranquility of a simple white-walled single room in the Cottage Hospital, with both Tom and Cora in attendance, Master Daniel Robert Branson duly made his entrance into this world, weighing a healthy 8lb. 2oz. Although Danny had Tom's facial features, including his dark blue eyes, the smattering of dark hair on the crown of the baby's head was undeniably inherited from his mother.
For the time being at least, while the firemen remained on hand to prevent the fire re-kindling itself, Robert, too, despite the birth of his grandson, remained resolutely up at the abbey making sure that those who had been injured in the fire received every possible care and helping to supervise, some would have said impede, the ongoing salvage operation; while on learning of the birth of their little nephew, along with Isobel and Matthew, Mary and Edith had all hastened down to the hospital to meet the newest member of the family. Thereafter, upon her return to the abbey, Cora saw to it that Robert delayed no further and that he too came down to the Cottage Hospital to greet his first grandchild. On doing so for that very first time, seeing Sybil cradling her new-born son in her arms, with Tom seated on the bed beside her, his arm around her shoulders, there was absolutely no denying the tears of unbridled happiness in Robert Crawley's eyes.
And, so it was, but a matter of months later, with the extensive works necessary to restore the abbey to something of its former glory now well underway, on a bright, lovely morning in May, with his beautiful wife and gurgling baby son seated on the other side of the aisle from him, freshly scrubbed and shaved, his hair neatly parted, sporting a full morning suit, Tom Branson, the former chauffeur of Downton Abbey and now republican journalist of Dublin, stood beside Captain Matthew Crawley in the nave of the parish church of St. Mary at Downton as his Best Man, as finally, and at long last, the self same Captain Matthew Crawley and Lady Mary Crawley, likewise of Downton Abbey were married in the presence of an august, and it must be said, suitably democratic congregation made up of family, friends and servants.
And, if anyone present in that selfsame congregation standing behind the earl of Grantham's handsome Irish son-in-law thought that, at least from this particular angle, the young man looked somewhat familiar, none dared to voice their opinion within the hearing of the earl and countess of Grantham; the heroism of Mr. Branson on the night of the fire being now a matter of public record throughout the entire county of Yorkshire.
With the wedding at last over, and with Matthew and Mary thereafter having left for an extended honeymoon on the French Riviera, some days later, with his assignment in England now completed, promising to return to Downton as soon as both circumstances and time permitted, Tom and Sybil, along with young Daniel made their return voyage back across the Irish Sea to Dublin. This time, the sea was much calmer; not of course that Tom enjoyed the crossing any better, but at least it was uneventful and a matter of a few hours later, the RMS Munster, the very same steam packet which had brought them across the sea to Ireland in June 1919, now almost a year later to the day, dropped anchor in the harbour at Kingstown.
Some weeks later, given the situation now developing down in the south of Ireland, which required that the Irish Independent have a journalist of Tom's standing on the spot to report what was happening, as well as being able no longer to put off resolving the matter of Skerries House, despite Ma's heartfelt protestations,Tom, Sybil and young Daniel travelled south.
Cork, explained Tom patiently to Sybil, was Ireland's second city, whose worthy citizens thought themselves to be a cut above the rest of the Irish and claimed that their city, not Dublin, was the true capital of Ireland. Like Dublin, Cork also stood on a river, in this case the Lee and also like Dublin, it too had a port; Queenstown was to Cork what Kingstown was to Dublin. It was from Queenstown that many Irish emigrants, a great number of them from Cork and the far south-west, had left Ireland forever, in search of a better life in the United States.
However, continued Tom, as with Dublin, Cork was a city of both contradictions and paradoxes. On the surface all might have appeared to be well, at least, until comparatively recently. That, said Tom, was illusory, for like Dublin, Cork was divided: socially, politically, and religiously; the wealth of both the city and county of Cork being concentrated in the hands of the few while most lived in poverty and squalor. Out in the countryside there was just as much deprivation and it was with this in mind that Tom proposed to put Skerries House up for sale and convey the farms into the ownership of his late uncle's tenant farmers.
Tom and Sybil's long trip south westwards from Dublin to Cork began from the imposing granite built Kingsbridge station situated on St. John's Road on the south side of the city, close to the Liffey river. Their journey, by way of the Great Southern and Western Railway, took them south-west from Leinster into Munster, via Kildare, Portarlington, Maryborough, Thurles, Limerick Junction, and finally reaching their destination - Glanmire Road station in Cork, beside the River Lee - early in the evening of the same day; cold, hungry, and very weary. As things turned out, Tom and Sybil could not have picked a worse time to undertake the unavoidable journey south to Munster, County Cork and Skerries House.
Not surprisingly, by the summer of 1920, both the city and county of Cork were hotbeds of opposition to British rule and of guerrilla activity. Those responsible down there in the south west of Ireland for coordinating the open, ever more daring, and escalating attacks on the forces of the Crown were flying columns of the Irish Republican Army, three of whose brigades operated across large swathes of the county and another within the city of Cork itself.
Ranged in opposition to the Sinn Féiners, one of the more polite terms used by the British used to describe the republicans, were both regular units of the British Army and a large presence of both Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. Both the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries - the"Auxies"- based at Macroom between Cork and Killarney, had been recruited through advertisements placed in newspapers on the British mainland to help bolster the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Hurriedly recruited and poorly trained, the Auxies were drawn principally from the ranks of former officers, particularly those who had served in the army and the Royal Flying Corps. They gained a very unsavoury reputation, even worse than that of the Black and Tans for drunkenness, indiscipline, wanton brutality, and violence, the latter directed towards anyone whom they suspected of harbouring rebel sympathies - whether or not the holding of those opinions proved justified.
Their train journey, which should have taken Tom and Sybil and their baby son something in the region of three hours to complete, in fact took far longer owing to a severe shortage of railway staff caused by the suspension of ever-increasing numbers of railwaymen because of the on-going munitions controversy. For several months now, railwaymen in Ireland had refused to carry British soldiers, armed members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, or their weapons. Thereafter, the boarding of trains by members of the British Army had, in many cases, led to both engine drivers and firemen refusing to take their trains on to their destinations, thus leaving large numbers of civilian passengers stranded, as well as increasing disruption to the movement of all kinds of merchandise throughout the country.
As the military and political situation deteriorated, so the arrests of those suspected of colluding with the republicans became more widespread. The British military were given powers to execute anyone found carrying arms and ammunition, to search houses, to try suspects in military rather than civilian courts, to intern suspects without trial and, thereafter, to impose curfews, which were strictly enforced.
In an attempt to frustrate those they viewed as terrorists in their nefarious activities, many of which had involved the use of motor vehicles, the British also drastically curtailed civilian motor traffic on the roads by requiring all vehicle owners to obtain a permit authorising them to use their own motors. This caused a great deal of resentment and added to the problems for anyone wishing to travel.
Atrocity had followed reprisal and reprisal had followed atrocity in a never ending, ever escalating, spiral of violence. Shootings of alleged informers and spies by both sides became commonplace, as each of the opposing forces in the increasingly bitter and bloody struggle sought to gain the upper hand. The burnings of country houses belonging to the Anglo-Irish gentry as well as the humbler homes of republican activists and supporters, along with farms and commercial properties, had grown more frequent. The whole countryside had become increasingly lawless and Tom and Sybil had seen evidence of this from the train for themselves in the form of several burnt out farmhouses.
County Cork, observed Tom ruefully, presently resembled nothing short of an armed camp with eight British infantry battalions and one cavalry regiment stationed in the county along with four artillery and machine gun units, with soldiers drawn from a variety of British regiments including the Essex, the King's Liverpool, the Manchesters, and the South Staffordshires.
No wonder his cousin Maeve had been frightened. She had every reason to be so; had written and told Tom that she would meet them both the morning after their arrival in Cork at the little station at Skerries Road, just north of Kinsale. She would have to drive over to the station in the trap, as she had no permit allowing her the use of a motor car.