Chapter One Hundred And Forty Three

The Glow Of Lamplight

Skerries House, 8.15pm, Saturday 11th December 1920.

On this dark, wild December evening, midst the pitch blackness of the countryside of rural County Cork, here at Skerries House, just as soon as the daylight had begun to fade and it had started to grow dark, as was her want, Sybil had lit and turned up all the lamps.

For, just as each morning when the three of them were seated happily together around the plain, scrubbed table below stairs in the warm kitchen at the rear of the house eating breakfast; thereafter while cradling little Danny in her arms, Sybil in her shawl standing at the back door to watch Tom leave home on his motorcycle, so too, the lighting by her now at dusk each winter evening of the lamps in the hall, in the drawing room and in their bedroom had become for Sybil likewise something of a ritual.

No doubt to the casual observer, indeed to anyone else, each and every one of these things in themselves would have appeared completely unremarkable; mundane, usual, daily occurrences. However, as Ireland descended into chaos and darkness, for Sybil the performance of each of these otherwise simple duties, all of them scrupulously observed, had taken on increasingly the semblance of a lodestar, a talisman that in her mind would not only somehow protect and keep Tom safe but also when darkness fell, with the lighting of the lamps, serve the very real purpose of helping to guide him home. Tom had said it often enough; that she was his life and he was hers; knew too that even if they went on to have a baker's dozen of children, while they would love them all dearly, their offspring would be but proofs of their affection for each other.

For some weeks now, the fleeting warmth of St. Luke's Little Summer had been an increasingly distant memory; this evening especially so, for tonight, down here on the coast, the wind was from the east. It blew in icy, mournful, ever strengthening gusts, howling like a veritable battalion of banshees all about the outside of the house, driving stinging blasts of sleet against the stonework, staining the granite walls, rattling the ill-fitting windows thankfully well shuttered from within.

Below stairs in the kitchen, with Danny seated on her lap playing with some wooden building bricks, Sybil was patiently awaiting Tom's return. All was snug and warm, the room itself filled with a delicious savoury smell. For all his past jests and good natured jibes at the expense of Sybil about her lack of culinary skills, these were now but a distant memory. True, occasionally, Sybil still prepared and then cooked something which did not turn out quite as it should have, that did not satisfy her, but that was usually on account of the fact that as with everything else, just like Tom, Sybil was something of a perfectionist.

Notwithstanding the help given her both by Mrs. Patmore who, when Sybil had left Downton for Dublin, had furnished Sybil with a written book of her own receipts carefully copied out in her own spare time, which with the cook's eyesight as it was, had been taxing to say the least and also more practical help tendered to her by Ma in distant Clontarf, with Sybil's stolid determination to succeed, her cooking skills once wholly lacking were, by the time they came south to Skerries, more than proficient. So, after the departure of what had remained of the domestic staff here, the cook included, that Sybil had spent some of her spare time honing her culinary skills was only to be expected.

This Saturday evening would be much the same as always; indeed just like last week, with Tom puttering to a stop on his motorcycle in the service yard of the house. Then, having parked his machine by the back door, she would hear him stomping down the steps into the scullery, calling out that he was famished and that without a trace of sarcasm, thatsomething smelt really good.

She would already have seen the beam from the headlight of his motorcycle as he had ridden into the cobbled yard, had heard the engine die away, the snick of the latch, his booted footsteps on the flags of the scullery next door, but as Sybil invariably did each evening on his return, she always called out to him.

"Is that you love?"

Sybil could never imagine her mother doing the same to her father, nor indeed Mary to Matthew, but then neither her Papa, nor her much loved brother-in-law, would have spent the day criss-crossing County Cork on a motorcycle, out and about in all weathers, let alone come in through the servants' entrance of Downton Abbey and asked what was for supper, or rather dinner as Papa invariably would have called their evening meal.

At that Sybil had smiled.

Dinner.

For her that had once meant lighted candles set in heavy gilded candelabra, polished woodwork, bone china, fine linen, silver cutlery and gleaming crystal rather than a heavy, scrubbed, elm topped table, plain chinaware, no napery and a couple of glasses, all lit by the light of a solitary oil lamp. Not that for an instant would Sybil change anything of what between them, she and Tom now had.

The door to the kitchen had duly opened and Tom had come in smiling broadly as invariably he did, stripping off his goggles and gloves, unbuttoning his brown goatskin motorcycle jacket and laying aside his leather satchel. She had seen his smile broaden at the sight of her, now heavily pregnant, sitting with Danny in her lap reading to their son from "The Tale of Tom Kitten" by Beatrix Potter. As he had told her so many times before, seated there on a simple Windsor chair next to the range, at the far end of the long kitchen table, was his entire world.

"Well, let's get the wind and the rain out of my hair and perhaps we'll find out!" He had bent down kissed the top of Danny's head and then brushed Sybil's lips lightly with his own. Handing the little boy over to his father, Sybil had stood up, Tom taking her place on the chair with Danny seated in his lap just as a flurry of raindrops splattered hard against the window. He had glanced up.

"Jaysus but it's turning into a rough night. There are branches down all along the road from here back to Bandon".

"It sounds like it. I'm so glad you're back. So how did it go?" she had asked with her back to him; was busy serving generous portions of piping hot food onto their plates. From what Tom had told her that morning before he had left, he intended spending his day speaking to Protestant farmers around Bandon, who supported the British and who as a consequence felt increasingly threatened by the IRA.

"Tell you later, love. I'm absolutely starving. That really smells good".

Later, after supper was long over, on her way to the drawing room, as Sybil had been crossing the dimly lit hall, shielding the oil lamp she was carrying from the vicious draught which on windy nights always blew in under the ill-fitting front door, she paused; had set down the lamp on the side table, stood and listened and as she did so, she had smiled broadly. For, clearly audible above the sound of the wind and the rain and the multitude of noises that fill an old house on a stormy night, from upstairs came the melodious sound of Tom singing in the bath "The Wild Rover", an old Irish ballad; his voice, a rich tenor, echoing from out of the bathroom along the corridor leading to the head of the main staircase and drifting down to her through the banisters.

Last Saturday night as he had sung, Tom had sounded especially pleased with himself and Sybil knew with very good reason too. Over supper he had explained to her that he had secured an interview with the Catholic bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, whose views on the bloodshed now sweeping this part of Ireland were well known and akin to Tom's own; the bishop openly condemning all acts of violence irrespective of whoever it was who committed them, along with speaking out against reprisals and having placed an interdict on those responsible for the murder of a sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary who had been shot dead after attending mass, in the porch of Bandon church back in July.

Sybil now picked up the lamp and walked into the drawing room. With Danny snuggled down and fast asleep in his cot upstairs, Tom back home safe and sound from his daily round of pursuing leads and stories on his motorcycle across the length and breadth of County Cork, herself expecting their second child, the baby due in either late February or early March, Sybil loved this cosy domesticity. Outside the wild autumn weather could do its very worst. All that mattered to her most lay safe behind the walls of this isolated, decaying Irish mansion.

Now this evening, as she sat and once more eagerly awaited darling Tom's return, Sybil was jolted out of her reverie by the ringing of the telephone. A few moments later, upstairs in the drawing room, she picked up the receiver.

"Skerries House".

"Darlin', it's me. Something's come up..."

Author's Note:

Dating from as long ago as the sixteenth century, "The Wild Rover" is the most widely performed of all Irish songs.

Daniel Cohalan (1858-1952) was bishop of Cork from 1916 until his death. During the Irish War of Independence, the bishop was indeed outspoken in his condemnation of the violence being committed by both sides in the conflict.