Chapter One Hundred And Thirty Two
"Between Salt Water And Sea Strand"
Here, amid the unspoilt beauty of rural County Cork, save for the rhythmic spinning of the wheels of the trap and the clip clop of shod hooves on the rough surface of the lane, the peace and quiet of the countryside remained unbroken, so much so that the horror of what had happened but a short while ago at the station at Skerries Road might never ever have been. Despite the distant rumble of thunder, the expected storm never broke, the sky swiftly cleared, the sun came out and for the rest of that afternoon the weather remained hot and dry.
Under Maeve's skilled hand the trap rattled quickly down along the narrow, twisting lane, bounded on either side by high green hedges, made colourful by the nodding spikes of golden rod, foxglove, and purple loosestrife. Between them could be seen innumerable gossamer threads of spiders' webs, bejewelled with myriad sparkling droplets of water, lingering evidence yet of last night's heavy rain. As the lightweight wooden trap bowled along the lane, the leaden summer air was heavy, heady with the scent of dog rose, honeysuckle, sweet briar, and wild thyme. And, mingling with all, was an unmistakable salty tang which blew inland towards them from off the distant sea.
While Tom continued to doze, from time to time, on both sides of the lane, over beyond the hedges, and glimpsed through the occasional field gate, Sybil saw isolated white washed, reed thatched farmhouses and verdant fields grazed by sleek black cattle. And, as they rattled ever southwards, the sky soared into an unbounded and immeasurable distance, which told now of the ever-increasing closeness of the sea.
The trap ran on ever downwards, splashed through what, at least at this time of year, should have been no more than a shallow ford. However, swollen by the rainfall from the overnight storm the brook was now in frothing spate, a racing tumble of white water. Having successfully negotiated the swirling flood, shortly afterwards the trap began a steep climb towards a distant patch of dark woodland, above which there peeped the tall chimneys of a large country house. The noise of their swift, unbroken passage through the foaming waters of the ford awoke Tom from his uneasy, drug induced slumber. Raising his head he blinked his eyes, momentarily completely disoriented.
"Where... where am I?" he asked nervously.
"It's all right my darling".
With Danny seated in her lap, Sybil now slipped her free arm beneath Tom's jacket, hugged him tightly; at the same time felt beneath the tips of her fingers the raised scars on the bare skin of his back, mute testimony of one of the savage beatings he had received when just a boy at the hands of his late uncle, Maeve's own father.
Now, catching sight of the house in the distance, feeling Sybil's fingers softly caress the scars on his back, with tears glistening in his eyes and now threatening to fall, Tom half turned towards her on his seat.
"Sybil, darlin', I can't... I can't do this".
"Yes, you can, Tom. You know you can. He can't hurt you anymore" she said softly.
Silently Tom nodded his head although, at the same time, managing to look thoroughly unconvinced.
Above them, Sybil now caught sight of a dark solitary bird, drifting slowly across the brilliant blue of the summer sky.
"Hooded crow", said Tom mournfully, following her skyward gaze. "As if we didn't have enough carrion with us already", he added bitterly, looking back at the British armoured car and staff car growling along at a sedate pace behind them in the wake of the clattering trap.
"There's no need to be nervous. Truly, there isn't" said Sybil gently.
Tom smiled a wan smile; shook his head sadly.
"Darlin', if only you knew..." he began.
"Knew what?" asked Sybil.
Silently, Tom shook his head again; seemingly lost in thought, he looked down at the wooden floor of the trap.
Night had fallen long since.
Down on the shore, below the cliff, lying all but between the salt water and the sea strand was an abandoned fisherman's cottage. Within, all was both snug and warm, thanks in part to the fire they had kindled upon their arrival. Careless of the passing hours, apparently heedless even of discovery, they both lay naked upon the improvised bedding she had contrived for them out of their clothes, while the candles and firelight kept the darkness at bay and cast flickering shadows upon the rough-hewn stone of the walls.
Well satisfied, indeed pleasurably so, unheeding that her own contentment had been bought at the price of the boy's maidenhead, the young woman lay in repose, legs wide-spread. Now, robbed of his virginity, the boy still sprawled across her, his skin brown against her whiteness, his head resting languidly between her heavy breasts, while her fingers gently sifted his fair hair as she brought the haunting, plaintive ballad she had taught him softly to its close:
When he has done and finished his work.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme:
Oh, tell him to come and he'll have his shirt,
And he shall be a true lover of mine.
In the languid afterglow of their love-making, for her as much for him, time had dripped slow. Although sated, dozing contentedly, the boy was not yet asleep and so, ever wary, indeed, understandably so, now heard above the last, lilting notes of the song, above the keening of the wind, above the roar of the waves, the sound of heavy footsteps crunching towards them through the shingle of the foreshore.
As Tom gazed again towards the distant house, Sybil saw beads of perspiration were starting on his forehead, damping the edges of his hair, saw again the tears in his eyes, saw him swallow hard, tightly grasp his knee with his right hand, saw upon his face an expression which was at once both a mixture of grief and pain. And there was something else there too, which, try as she might, she could not identify.
"Tom, darling, what is it? There's nothing to fear. You're not on your own now my love. Remember?" asked Sybil softly, enfolding the splayed fingers of his right hand within her own.
"Only so long as I have you and Danny..." he began. His voice cracked with emotion.
"Of course you do. You always will. My darling what ever makes you think otherwise?"
Tom smiled ruefully; shook his head.
"Why on earth are they still following us, Maeve? Surely they should all have kept on the road to Kinsale?" he asked, indicating the pair of military vehicles still following close behind.
"Oh didn't I say? I thought I'd told you. Some of our soldiers have been billeted up at the house, in the ostlers' quarters, next to the old stable block. It certainly makes me feel a whole lot safer having them close at hand. Did you know Ballinora was burnt last week? The Mortimers are in a terrible state about it. They've lost everything they owned".
"Our soldiers?" asked Tom aghast. "No, I hadn't heard about Ballinora. Not that it matters. At least not to me it doesn't".
Maeve shook her head.
"Well it damned well should!"
"Why, for God's sake?" Tom sounded incredulous.
"Tommy, the Mortimers are our kind of people".
Tom grimaced, pulled a face, but said nothing further, either on the fate of Ballinora, or its erstwhile owners.
Shortly after having breasted the rise in the lane, Maeve called something softly in Gaelic to the prancing mare. Then with the lightest flick of the whip, she deftly steered both the horse and the trap to the left between two weathered stone gateposts, festooned with moss and ivy, bereft of gates, and turned onto a rutted driveway. The armoured car and the staff car continued to follow and purred after them down the grass-grown track.
"I'm afraid the drive's become dreadfully overgrown", said Maeve without turning around, now ducking her head instinctively to avoid a particularly low hanging branch.
The drive ran on for more than a mile or so beneath over arching branches and in ever gathering gloom. Somewhere above their heads arched the blue vault of the sky, although with the trees in full leaf it, might just as well have been a winter's evening, so closely did they crowd in one upon the other, shutting out the light of the high summer's day and the warmth of the afternoon sunshine. From time to time, Sybil sensed movement in the shadows beneath the trees. As if reading her thoughts, again without turning her head, Maeve called out that there were deer in the woods, which might well indeed have been the case. Only Sybil was not convinced; found herself wondering just how many wild animals went on two legs instead of four. Away from the neglected thread of the drive, in the anonymity of the falling shadows, the young man with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder briefly glimpsed by Sybil, now slipped furtively away, further into the protection afforded him by the living darkness of the crowding trees.
"That'll be one of the Ryan boys out rabbiting, I'll be bound" offered Maeve by way of explanation. "Of course my father would never have tolerated it, nor the squatters, but now, without any keepers to stop them, well, it doesn't seem to matter anymore. Not much does".
Glancing at Tom, Sybil saw him look up the drive and swallow hard. Mindful of his distress, Sybil again placed a comforting arm around his hunched shoulders, and drew him close against her. Tom turned his head to her; smiled another wan smile.
"What you said, I know... I know that he can't hurt me anymore", he whispered, "I know I'm being foolish, but all the same I do so wish I'd never ..."
"It's not far now". Maeve turned briefly on her seat up on the box. Beneath hooded green eyes, which in the blackness shone as bright as those of a cat, she looked down upon them, a knowing smile played about her full lips.
"I know. I remember", said Tom tonelessly.
Then, suddenly, they found themselves trotting out of the all encroaching darkness of the trees and into a blaze of brilliant sunshine, sparkling with bird song. Ahead of them, at the top of a slight rise, reached by what once had been a broad sweep of gravel, now grass-grown, there stood an imposing, granite-built four-storey porticoed house while clearly audible, from close at hand came the roar and thunder of waves breaking on the shore below the cliffs.
And now, as the house finally hove into view and Sybil saw it again for the first time in almost twenty years memory stirred and she found herself remembering back to when she had been here last, as a little girl, on a long forgotten family outing, on an equally long gone summer's day, in July 1900; when, going in search of a path which she hoped would lead her down to the sea, she had wandered off on her own.
That Sybil had done so, had come as no surprise to her mother for, when it was first realised the little girl was indeed missing and the alarm had been duly raised, Cora had simply observed that her youngest daughter had always been impetuous, causing the Dowager Countess to remark pithily that it must have something to do with the American blood her granddaughter had the misfortune to have inherited. At that the countess of Grantham had merely smiled and continued to remain remarkably sanguine in the face of her youngest daughter's inexplicable disappearance.
Indeed, even as a search party of family members and workers from off the Skerries Estate was being hastily assembled and with darkness already beginning to fall, Cora was heard to observe that while Sybil was both headstrong and impulsive, as her mother she had no doubt whatsoever that the little girl would soon be found both safe and well; which indeed turned out to be the case.
Not that, at the time, anyone in the Crawley family could have predicted that Sybil's rashness would lead to her meeting a young boy who many years later, when both of them were adults, she would meet again, this time at Downton; with whom she would eventually fall in love and then marry. For, it had been here in County Cork, at Skerries House, having taken that wrong turning in search of a path that would lead her down to the sea, wandering instead by mistake into the stable yard, that had brought a young Lady Sybil Crawley and Master Tom Branson together for the very first time while both of them were still but children.
He was lying where he had been flung, battered, bruised, and winded, atop a pile of soiled straw. Catching sight of him, she walked purposefully over to where the boy lay, knelt down beside him in the dirt, reached forward, and gently smoothed back the hair from out of his eyes. They were the deepest shade of blue she had ever seen.
The boy looked up and, through a mist of pain and tears saw a pretty little girl with long dark hair kneeling beside him on the cobbles, looking down at him through blue grey eyes. He couldn't be sure how old she was only that she was very young.
"You look a mess" she said and in the most matter-of-fact of tones, wrinkling her nose at the smell of manure.
"Don't I just" said he, with a lop-sided grin.
The little girl smiled back.
Then reaching forward again, she helped him to sit up. That done, she continued to kneel beside him on the cobbles, dabbing gently at the cuts to his face with her white hand-kerchief soaked in cold water from the nearby water trough.
"What's your name?" she asked at length, when thanks largely to her he looked rather more presentable than when she had first laid eyes upon him.
"I'm Tom".
"What's your name?"
"I'm Sybil".
Remembering now how she and Tom had first actually met, mindful also of what the Dowager Countess of Grantham had said more recently, Sybil now found herself smiling. Granny had been right after all when, earlier this year, just before the fire, after Tom's true antecedents had finally been revealed to all the Crawleys, when both Tom and Sybil had expressed their mutual disbelief that they could have met before as children and not remembered doing so, the Dowager Countess had merely observed that coincidences did indeed happen and more often than most people ever imagined; had called it "Kismet".
And so perhaps indeed it was.
The meeting many years later of Lady Sybil Crawley and Tom Branson as adults at Downton Abbey in Yorkshire merely the last link in the shared chain of their past, a meeting, then a romance, and finally a marriage that were destined to be, right from that moment they first set eyes on each other as children, all those years ago, in the lantern lit stable yard of Skerries House, County Cork.
As the trap slowed to a stop, looking about her, Sybil now took in the neglected appearance of the house, the peeling paintwork, the closed shutters behind many of the windows, the broken balustrade, the cracked and sunken paving; saw too the unkempt state of the grass lawns and the neglected garden beyond. Immediately to one side of the house there stood a dilapidated stable block and close by, now occupied by the detachment of British soldiers, the range of derelict outbuildings which Maeve had mentioned earlier and where both the army vehicles which had been following the trap now came to a stand and the soldiers who had been travelling in them began clambering out.
Moments later, Maeve brought the trap to a gentle stop adjacent to the broad steps leading up to the front entrance of the house, whereupon a young lad ran across from the stable yard to meet them.
Beyond the house, in the distance, Sybil saw a dark stretch of water, which on first sight had the appearance of being lake. But then, almost immediately, Sybil realised that it was, in fact, a small bay, the sea cove where all those years ago she herself had played as a little child. From where she sat still seated in the trap, she also now made out dark ribbons of seaweed, glimpsed a steeply sloping shingle bank, saw the white crests of the waves as they broke upon the sea strand and, lying close in to the shore, the ruins of a small cottage. The tiny bay was all but enclosed by two long curving spits of land which served to protect it from the fury of the open sea. And, at the farthest reach of the more southerly of the two headlands, Sybil saw too the lighthouse of which Tom himself had spoken, standing sentinel on the Old Head of Kinsale.
As Sybil helped Tom slowly down out of the rear of the trap, Maeve nonchalantly tossed aside the reins to the boy and without waiting for assistance, clambered down from off the box and moved swiftly up the steps to where an elderly man, presumably the butler, a grey haired woman dressed in black and two young housemaids stood waiting.
At the top of the steps, she paused, then turned and looked down at Tom.
"Tommy, this is Pugh. You may remember him. He was butler here at Skerries when..." Fortunately, Maeve then had the good sense to let what she was about to say remain unsaid. Instead, standing on the top step, she now explained briefly and in hushed tones to the butler something of what had occurred down at the station.
Stripped to the waist, his jacket about his shoulders, the one heavily bandaged, with his left arm in its sling, slowly, Tom made his way up the flight of steps. Despite all Pugh's long years spent in service, despite what he had just been told, the butler looked utterly appalled; could not prevent himself raising his eyes heavenwards on now, for the first time, meeting the new master of Skerries House.
"This is Mrs. Treves the housekeeper. Apart from two housemaids they are the only domestic staff we have left". With a dismissive wave of her hand, Maeve indicated the two young girls standing to the other side of the front door and who, waiting until their presence was acknowledged, now each sketched a brief curtsy.
The grey haired woman nodded her head in affirmation, moved slightly forward as, helped by Sybil, Tom, now all but exhausted, finally reached the top of the steps.
"Welcome to Skerries House, sir, madam. I understand, sir, that you once lived here, when you were a boy". Mrs. Treves smiled. "If I may make so bold; welcome home, sir".
Breathing heavily,Tom paused, stood stock still and looked directly at the housekeeper. Sensing Tom's disquiet, Sybil glanced up at his face. Catching sight of his expression, she almost gasped out aloud, contrived instead a slight cough. Usually so bright, so alive with laughter and mischief, Tom's blue eyes were now pale, fathomless, opaque, as if sheeted in ice. Pray God he never looks at me like that thought Sybil.
"Thank you". Tom's voice too sounded different; was slightly off-key. He grasped hold of Sybil's hand. "I don't wish to appear rude, Mrs. Treves, indeed, I'm sure your welcome was kindly meant, but this was never my home".
Author's Note:
The title of this chapter, together with the song which the young woman sings, will be recognised by many as being from "Scarborough Fair", a traditional English ballad which, many years ago, was, in part, recorded by Simon and Garfunkel. However, what may not be so well-known is that "Scarborough Fair" is but one variation of a many centuries old tune, to which there are many different lyrics, some of which mention a place-name as the setting of the song and others which do not.