Chapter One Hundred And Fifty
Leaving Liverpool
St. Mary's Church, Downton, Yorkshire, May 1921.
They had been discussing what should be done by way of a memorial to Tom.
"Well, if you're sure it's what you want" said Robert dubiously.
"I am," replied Sybil.
For Robert, once again memory stirred. He had spoken those self same words once before. Unbidden, before him, there now formed in his mind an image of his youngest daughter and himself, much as the two of them were now, standing together here in the churchyard at Downton. Only then there had been someone else standing beside her too; a handsome, smiling Irishman and who, moments later after Robert had given them both his blessing, had reached for Sybil's hand before she and Tom had set off together down the churchyard path to begin their new life together over there, across the sea, in Ireland. Robert's eyes misted. It did not do to dwell on the past, on what might have been.
Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, May 1921.
Following the Memorial Service which had been held for Tom there had arisen, predictably enough, the question of a memorial tablet. The family had insisted that it was only right and proper that one should be erected; surely, Sybil could see the decency in that? Propriety be damned had thought Sybil who went on to explain that it was not something that Tom would have wanted. After all he was not someone to whom being right and proper, doing the correct thing, had ever mattered; not at all. At that Granny had bristled and waded into the fray with her own pertinent observations on the subject, pointing out that while wall space in the Grantham Chapel was becoming increasingly restricted, if no tablet was erected to Tom then he would be the only member of the family in goodness knew how many centuries not to be commemorated by a memorial here in the parish church of Downton.
"Of course that's not strictly true," went on Violet. "There was the unfortunate business of the second earl…"
Immediately Matthew was intrigued. He set down his tea cup.
"How do you mean, unfortunate?"
Violet shook her head wearily; wished instead that she had the good sense not to have mentioned the second earl.
"Thankfully, he was of the first creation of the earldom; a real black sheep, another Robert". The Dowager Countess eyed her own son cautiously over the rim of her teacup; at which point the present earl of Grantham once again found a peculiar fascination with the plasterwork of the Library ceiling.
Matthew became ever more intrigued.
"Black sheep? Why, what did he do? Drinking? Gambling? Womanising?" asked Matthew warming to the task.
"Darling, please don't excite yourself," whispered Mary, seeing the gleam in her husband's impossibly blue eyes and laying a restraining hand gently on Matthew's arm.
"Don't be vulgar!" reprimanded the Dowager Countess. She sighed. That was the trouble with the middle class; no imagination, none whatsoever." If you must know, the second earl ended up on the wrong side during the Civil War," explained Violet with a degree of exasperation.
"Wrong side? Oh, I see you mean on the losing side. At Naseby? A Royalist then!" exclaimed Matthew.
"That's the whole point; he wasn't!" snapped Violet. "As I said he fought on the wrong side; for Parliament. It has taken the family centuries to live down that particular scandal. That is why there is no memorial to him in the Grantham Chapel. Fortunately he had the good grace to die abroad during the Commonwealth so the question of him being interred in the family chapel never arose but even now there are those here in this county who still refer to the Rebel Earl".
Realising Cousin Violet was being serious and in deadly earnest, Matthew tried his very best not to laugh.
The discussion over the problem of what to do about Tom's memorial was batted back and forth amongst the family over the next few days until oddly the aftermath of an outbreak of diphtheria in the district around Downton provided a solution to the problem, that in the end satisfied everyone.
Fortunately, this particular outbreak proved short-lived, was not that serious and those half dozen or so children stricken with the illness eventually all recovered, apparently without any of them suffering any lasting complications. However, to avoid the risk of the infection spreading, those affected had needed to be kept in isolation and it had been touch and go to find beds for all of them at the Cottage Hospital; with the very real possibility that some would have had to be sent away to other hospitals to be treated, to Ripon, to Thirsk, or even as far afield as York, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for their families to visit them.
In the end, with the outbreak not being severe, this did not happen, but in the aftermath Dr. Clarkson had expressed his very real concerns by remarking in passing to Sybil that more beds were urgently required at the Cottage Hospital.
Endowed by the present earl's grandfather, with an increasing population, he said that what the hospital desperately needed was another ward. With this in mind, later that same week, up at the abbey, at dinner, when the question of the memorial for Tom surfaced yet again, with Sybil having made mention of what Dr. Clarkson had said, it was Cousin Isobel who then made the obvious suggestion; that the family provide funds for a new ward down at the Cottage Hospital and that, if Sybil did not object, the new extension would be known as "The Tom Branson Memorial Ward" with a plaque recording this fact to be erected on one of the walls of the ward. Everyone thought it was a wonderful idea and gave it their wholehearted support, although it must be said that Violet still thought there should be a memorial erected down in the parish church.
"Every cloud has a silver lining" said Isobel brightly when on the following Sunday, with Mattins over, she and Violet walked slowly out of the church and into the summer sunshine.
"Really?" asked the Dowager Countess absent-mindedly. Inwardly, she was fuming. The rector's sermon in church that morning, about only the meek inheriting the earth, had not been to Violet's taste and she found herself wondering if Reverend Travis was now being deliberately provocative on account of her forcing his hand over the question of holding a memorial service for dear Tom.
Of course Travis had not liked it one iota when Violet had pointed out to him that the living here at Downton, with its fine Georgian rectory, was all in the gift of the earl of Grantham and that if Reverend Travis could not or would not find a way to hold a memorial service for Tom Branson, then perhaps Reverend Travis should look elsewhere for his ecclesiastical preferment. Shortly after that, having wrestled long and hard, in fact all of twenty four hours, with his clearly malleable conscience, the Reverend Travis had agreed to do as had been requested of him and duly, albeit grudgingly, conducted a memorial service for dear Tom.
"Well, darling Sybil made it perfectly clear that Tom would not have wanted money being wasted on some fusty old memorial being erected to him down here in the church. Instead the hospital will have its new ward and darling Tom will be properly commemorated by something that serves a practical and real purpose. And…"
"And what?" asked Violet.
"Well, you said it yourself; wall space in the Grantham Chapel is becoming rather restricted. Without a plaque being erected in there to Tom, when your time comes there will still be space for a memorial for you".
"How kind of you to say so; do you really think there will be?" asked Violet, having decided at this point that maybe even Martha Levinson had her good points.
"Rest assured, I'll make certain of it," said Isobel.
"My dear, you are nothing if not dependable," observed Violet ruefully.
The fund-raising for the new hospital ward began almost immediately, with the earl of Grantham providing most of the money in the form of a handsome donation, the funds for which came from the sale of part of the estate, Prior's Grange, in the far north of the county, on the border with Durham and which, the house having previously been let, the family had not used since Robert's father's time except for the shooting; since the war, the house having stood empty and untenanted. Robert smiled to himself; selling part of the estate to fund an improvement to the Cottage Hospital? Now that was something of which he felt Tom would have undoubtedly approved. However, so as to ensure that everyone down in the village, on the estate and throughout the local district felt they also had a stake in the improvements to the Cottage Hospital, with Mary's full support, Matthew suggested that a variety of local benefits be arranged to raise additional monies.
The first of these took the form of a musical soirée, held appropriately enough in the Music Room at the abbey, with refreshments being provided but with those wishing to attend being required to purchase a ticket to do so; the proceeds being donated to the fund established to pay for the new ward. Helped ably by Cousin Isobel and Edith, Matthew and Mary took charge of all the necessary arrangements, the forthcoming soirée being advertised widely both in the local press, as well as in newspapers circulating as far away in Harrogate, Leeds and York.
The Dowager Countess was not impressed, seeing in all of this once again the spectre of red revolution rearing its ugly head. While Violet had no problem whatsoever with any monies being given to the Cottage Hospital, in her view admission to the soirée should have been by invitation only. It was one thing that people attending the event be given the opportunity to consider making a donation after the recital was concluded but requiring them to pay a charge to gain admittance in the first place, let alone providing them with refreshments, why anyone able to afford the price of a ticket would thus have right of admission to the house, all manner of the hoi polloi, even commercial travellers, insurance salesmen such as the Man from the Pru; that being so, the family might just as well run up the red flag and turn the abbey into an hotel.
Nonetheless, despite Violet's studied opposition, the musical soirée was a great financial success and raised a great deal of money for the new ward at the Cottage Hospital. Sharing the reservations of the Dowager Countess as to the desirability of admitting one and all to the abbey, Mr. Carson stationed both Albert and Jimmy in the hall to ensure that no visitor wandered off away from the Music Room. After the evening's entertainment was concluded, Mr. Carson was well-satisfied with the effectiveness of his precautionary measures: all the family silver remained accounted for.
With Sybil's impending departure overseas now fast approaching, other fund-raising events for the hospital were duly organised including, among them, a garden party in the abbey grounds, the first held here since August 1914 and which Sybil herself had very good cause to remember when, if only by accident and for but an instant, she and Tom had first held hands. After all these years, she still remembered what he had said to her:
"I don't suppose…"
Quite what Tom had been going to ask of her, Sybil never knew because at that very moment their innocent flirtation had been interrupted by the appearance on the scene of Mrs. Hughes. Oddly enough, after they had been married, she had never thought to ask Tom about what it was he was going to say. Stranger still, she had not thought of the incident in years, so why, with everything else, she should have thought of it now, she could not begin to comprehend; assumed it had something to do with the event being a garden party. However, one thing was certain; she would never know what it was that Tom had been going to ask of her.
As admission to the garden party was by invitation only, the event itself was much more to the taste of the Dowager Countess, even though the local press had been admitted, to take photographs. These included one of Robert and Sybil standing, she wearing her nurse's uniform. In the photograph Saiorse lay cradled snugly in Sybil's arms while little Danny was seated cross legged on a trestle table, his proud grandfather standing behind him, his hands resting on his little grandson's shoulders and with Isis sitting beside them on the grass. The caption to the photograph referred to the earl of Grantham as "doing his bit". On reading it, Violet had winced and said it made Robert sound as if he was some kind of performing seal.
Not that anyone realised it at the time it was taken, but that single photograph was to have unforeseen consequences for them all.
Tallow Lane, Liverpool, June 1921.
Leading down to the River Mersey, with their cobbles made slippery by the persistent rain, an unseasonally chill wind was moaning through the alleys and the passageways which bisected the rows of grimy mean terraced houses, their slate roofs dull and blackened with wet. At this late hour there were few people about, even less tonight on account of the incessant rain, so, here in this narrow thoroughfare, lost midst the sprawling docks, among the massive warehouses and the wharves, where the air was usually constantly rent with the piercing whistles of engines, the mournful wail of ships' sirens, the endless hooting of tugs, the coarse cries and strident shouts of dockers, of porters and stevedores, the unceasing thump of boxes and crates and the rumble of wheels, at least for the moment all was quiet; except that was for the raucous din coming from the Ship and Anchor, the public house which stood at the far end of the street.
While outside the rain drummed noisily against the etched glass windows, within all was snug and warm, the air thick with the reek of tobacco, cigarette smoke, stale beer and sweat. The noise was altogether deafening, so much so that it was almost impossible to hear oneself speak, let alone think. The gas jets fizzed and sputtered, the fire in the grate crackled and flared, orders for drinks were shouted across the bar, spirited conversations ebbed and flowed, while a fiercely contested game of darts was in full swing between members of the crews of two ships.
Close by, gathered round a long out-of-tune piano and holding onto each other for mutual support, a group of decidedly drunken merchant seamen, evidently about to leave port, having begun over an hour since with followed by and thereafter by a selection of further equally rowdy, scurrilous ditties, were now evidently rounding off their seemingly endless repertoire of songs by belting out a boisterous, noisy performance of The Leaving of Liverpool.
Sitting alone in one corner of the noisy, smoke-filled bar, between eating mouthfuls of scalding stew and taking sips of beer, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings, a man was reading a newspaper. While his undeniably handsome features drew favourable comment and repeated furtive glances from the two blousy, gaudily dressed jigger rabbits seated with their gins at a nearby table, the two women made no attempt to engage him in conversation. With his undoubted good looks, his blue eyes, that endearing lop-sided grin, let alone his ample basket, they had sought to try their luck with him the last time he was in here over a month ago now, but all to no avail. After all, what girl wouldn't want a bloke like that to snuggle up to on a cold, wet night? In fact, forget the weather, to snuggle up to on any night. However to their intense mortification, despite their ample charms, Lizzie and Jenny had found that Paddy or had it been Mick, well no matter, whatever his name, the softly spoken Irishman simply wasn't interested.
Not that he was an omi-palone. Far from it, for, unlike many of their so-called gentlemen admirers, he had been unfailingly courteous, polite, well-mannered, had even bought them both a couple of drinks, but the Irishman had made it perfectly plain that that was all. He didn't want a charver. Lizzie, who it should be explained had been working the streets of Liverpool rather longer than Jenny, since the ripe old age of fifteen in fact and who had spent the following twelve or so years seeing that city principally from a horizontal position, had said that, all things being equal, given what she and Jenny had to offer, it was her considered opinion, that Paddy must be pining for a long-lost love.
Recognising the two women from their previous encounter, the man merely nodded, smiled and then quietly resumed both eating his meal and reading his newspaper. These days, he kept himself to himself; preferred it that way. In the last month or so, as he moved from place to place over there in Ireland seeking gainful employment, always moving on, he had worked as a peat cutter, a road mender, a farm labourer, and as a stevedore helping load and unload cargoes in the docks in Belfast, what here in Liverpool they called a lumper, before heading west, picking up what work he could as he went, eventually finding himself a berth on a tramp steamer, the Irish Rose, sailing out of Galway and bound for Nova Scotia, a ten day voyage across the wild waters of the Atlantic, all for a cargo of timber.
With his present maddening lack of papers, the captain had warned him that if he didn't want to run the risk of being arrested by the Canadian authorities, then it was for the best if he stayed on board on ship in Halifax while they took on their cargo, which he duly did. To ease his disappointment, the captain had told him that there wasn't that much to see in Halifax anyway. At least not now and not for the foreseeable future either. Just over three years ago, in December 1917, during the war, most of the port and much of the town had been levelled flat by a tremendous explosion when a French cargo ship fully loaded with munitions had been involved in a collision with another vessel and had then promptly blown up, obliterating everyone and everything within a half mile radius of the blast.
So, while the rest of the crew went off to see what few delights Halifax still had to offer, when his duties permitted it, the Irishman spent his time either reading, or else writing in the diary he had begun to pass away the time while the Irish Rose was in port and which contained his impressions of life at sea. And, when he was not doing either of these things, he could be found down below in the ship's boiler room where he seemed to have a real affinity with machinery or at least so said the Chief Engineer, a dour Glaswegian by the name of McNab.
And then, with their cargo of timber having been duly loaded, it had been back across the Atlantic, with the deck piled high with twenty feet of lumber. Their return voyage had begun well enough, with but a gentle swell in the ocean and in warm sunshine, with washing strung out between the masts to dry. Towards the end of the voyage, one day, after breakfast, brimming with health and vitality, stripped to the waist and sunburnt, sitting out on deck, the Irishman noted his latest observations in his journal:-
"Monday 30th May: 3 p.m. Unusually hot and sunny. Ship sailing through the Irish Channel. Off to port saw the Mull of Kintyre and the mountains beyond it. To starboard saw Ireland, the hills and the valleys. From here, it all looks so green and peaceful. It's really difficult to credit what's happening there. But, God, all the same it's so good to be home..."
He paused in what he was writing, sucked on the end of his pencil, gazed out to sea; saw far off there was now a scattering of other ships on the distant horizon.
"Tom, darling, it's my home too" he heard a woman say.
Startled, he looked up, looked about him, but there was no-one to be seen. That of course was not surprising, for unless one of his crew mates had somehow managed to smuggle one on board while they rode at anchor in the port of Halifax, no women were permitted on the ship. And yet, he knew he hadn't imagined what he had just heard. The voice had sounded familiar too, soft and refined. From overhead there came the sudden screech of gull and the moment passed.
Some time later, with the Isle of Man having long since fallen away to the stern and disappeared into the mist, in gathering darkness, beneath a veil of grey mist and in gently falling rain, the Irish Rose slowly nosed her way up the Mersey and dropped anchor in the foggy river to await entrance to the docks the following morning, which was how he came to be here in Liverpool; awaiting another berth. The procurement of this of course all rather depended on him finding yet another equally sympathetic sea captain who would, once again, turn a blind eye and overlook his frustrating lack of papers. While he had been careful, the wages he had earned from the voyage to Nova Scotia would not last for ever. He had heard tell that there was a steamer in need of deckhands that was leaving shortly for Barbados in the West Indies. Maybe he would try his luck there on the morrow, but for now that could wait and he contented himself in doing justice to his supper.
On his arrival here in Liverpool, he had rented a room in a cheap lodging house on Scotland Road in the shadow of St. Anthony's Church which, with its surrounding large Irish community nearby, made it feel more like home. Only, for all that, for some strange reason he knew it was not his home. Not that he could remember where home actually was. Ireland assuredly, but exactly where he came from remained a complete mystery to him.
He assumed his lack of memory must have something to do, not he thought with the Easter Rising about which he had read, but with the war. Shell shock he had been told. At least that was what the doctor he had seen here in Liverpool had told him and that seemed to be the likeliest explanation. Not that he remembered the war either; all that he knew about it was what he had gleaned from reading articles in books or from accounts written in newspapers and periodicals. He certainly had no memory of fighting. Indeed, he had the distinct impression that if he had fought, as he supposed he must, then he wouldn't have been very good at it, something born out by the two scars, one on his upper left arm, the other to his left shoulder and which the same doctor had said were consistent with wounds made by bullets. And then there was the brass button in his pocket and which he supposed was from off his military uniform
Yet, he had no memory of the trenches either, not of glutinous mud or coils of barbed wire, not of whizz-bangs or woolly bears, not of poison gas or Very lights, not of the incessant chatter of machine guns or the heavy crump of shells, nor the smell of cordite or the stench of rotting corpses, nor thankfully of any other of the horrors of which he had read. Surely, if he had been over there, then he would have remembered something of the show? In any event, he knew himself to be a lover not a fighter. Now why on earth would he be thinking that?
His whole past life was a mystery; a complete blank. But then, was that so surprising? The destruction wrought by the Great War had left countless millions dead, wounded and missing, had brought down emperors and whole empires, had wiped towns and villages from off the face of the earth, had blotted out so many things; why not the inner workings of a man's mind? There had been reports in the papers of a young woman who had been fished out of a canal in Berlin the previous year after a failed attempt to commit suicide. Now confined in a sanatorium, it was said she was claiming to be one of the daughters of the late Tsar; the general consensus seemed to be that she had lost her mind. He knew just how she must be feeling.
"They've shot the Tsar and all his family"
Who was it who had said that? He wished he could remember. But gaps in memory can be merciful...
Of course, there were other occasional flashes too, but nothing seemed to make any sense. A hotel in Galway on Eyre Square, not far from the railway station had seemed familiar when he had walked past it, but Jaysus, how the devil would he ever have had had the means to stay there, he could not even begin to fathom. Perhaps it was best not to inquire too closely. There were fleeting images too which came to him in his dreams of a large country house; he supposed it to be somewhere in Ireland. From what he could vaguely recall, it was something akin to Mountshannon House near Castleconnell in County Limerick, which he had read had been burned by the IRA in 1920 and of which he had seen pictures in the Irish Times.
However, of all the images which came to his mind, either on watch at night or when asleep in his bunk, the most constant was of an alluring, beautiful dark-haired young woman, her face always hazy and indistinct, which only made her seem even more desirable, who all but haunted his sleeping hours, always resulting in him having the most pleasant of dreams, the evidence of which was there before his eyes in the morning in the form of semen stained sheets.
With the coming of the dawn, seen from the heaving deck of the Irish Rose, his first, immediate impressions of Liverpool had not been at all favourable. For, despite the undeniable magnificence of the granite built buildings of the Pier Head – the Royal Liver, that belonging to the Cunard Steamship Company and the third to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, along with the imposing warehouses lining the massive wharves, which stretched for several miles along the east bank of the Mersey, the enormous dock gates worked by powerful chain cables as thick as a man's arm, running out over massive rollers and operated by hydraulic power which opened and closed with the ocean's tides, he thought the port to be both very dirty and extremely noisy.
Eventually, however, with the passage of time, his opinion of the place altered especially after he had spent many hours down in the docks where he found others just like him, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, those down on their luck, where his natural affability, his easy manner, his willingness to lend a sympathetic ear and his seeming ability to talk to one and all, even to the derelicts and the drunks, won him many new-found acquaintances.
That the docks were undeniably dirty was true enough, the waters especially so, made noisome with all kinds of rubbish thrown overboard from many of the countless ships, the barques, brigs, schooners and steamers which passed back and forth, up and down the great river. But, amongst the dirty, oily, slimy, sooty scum and the rest of the rubbish he saw floating on the surface of the water while the Irish Rose stood off and awaited entrance to the inner docks, what he remembered foremost following his arrival here in Liverpool had been what he saw floating among hundreds of green bananas which had been thrown into the river. For, among the rotting fruit had been a badly swollen, decomposing male body, dark-haired, the facial features unrecognisable, clad in nothing more than a tattered pair of under shorts and which had attracted the attention of a colony of gulls which, crying noisily, were now diving and swooping down to the surface of the water, gorging themselves on this unexpected source of food.
Well, he thought, looking down dispassionately from the ship's rail at the rotting bananas and the body floating among them in the water, it looks like Thomas has come to a bad end after all and no mistake. Thomas? His brows knitted in confusion. But, he didn't know anyone called Thomas; while a moment later there had come another maddening, sudden, fleeting flash of memory, of seagulls nesting high along a dark stretch of cliffs overlooking a secluded cove, where a man and a woman with a small child between them were walking barefoot along the sea-strand.
The cargoes discharged here in the sprawling docks of Liverpool came from all over the world, much imported from the furthest reaches of the far-flung British Empire. From the cavernous, dark holds of all manner of merchant ships, both large and small, came all manner of goods, whether in barrels, bottles, boxes, cans, carboys, cartons, crates, kegs, packing cases, sacks, tea chests or tubs. Sacks of coffee from Cuba, bottles of wine from France, bales of cotton from both Egypt and India, beef from the Argentine, boxes of oranges from Spain, barrels of molasses, of rum and of sugar from Jamaica, chests of tea from Ceylon and Kenya, rubber from Malaya and leaves of tobacco, as well as sheaves of wheat from America, all of which he saw down on the quays while mooching about the docks late at night, along with countless other products, animal, vegetable and mineral and, mindful of the cargo carried by the Irish Rose, all kinds of timber too, mahogany, maple, oak, pitch pine and walnut, as well as farm machinery and disassembled parts for motors which he found particularly fascinating although why he couldn't say.
And then there had been that other curious incident, involving the Renault motor car.
He had been sitting watching as a cargo of wine casks was being unloaded from off of a French vessel which had hailed out of Bordeaux. With the barrels of wine all now winched out of the hold, the last part of the ship's cargo was off loaded too. Unexpectedly, this had proved to be a motor car and he had watched with fascination as the vehicle was swung slowly down onto the quayside. Even before he reached it, he knew it was a Renault. How on earth had he known that?
More to the point, he knew too that the motor standing before him on the quay was the version with the larger 9.1-litre engine which only went into production last year when the "Type HF" version of the 40CV replaced the "Type HD" version in August 1920. He assumed he must have read about it somewhere but why on earth this fascination with motors and with French ones at that?
It was true also that he liked to keep himself abreast of what was going on in the world; he certainly had a voracious and wide ranging appetite concerning matters both historical and political. He had read recently that Germany had announced she could not pay her war reparations which in turn had been followed by a warning from the Allies that if she did not, then the Ruhr would be occupied. There had been a revolt by sailors in Kronstadt in Russia against the Bolshevik government and its brutal policies; a rebellion which had been viciously suppressed. In Italy, Mussolini's Fascists had gained nearly thirty seats in the Italian Parliament. Yet oddly enough, it seemed that he also took an interest in medical things too, as he had read that in London Dr. Marie Stopes had opened the very first birth control clinic. He smiled broadly. Sybil would surely have approved. Sybil? He shook his head in disbelief. He didn't know anyone by that name.
However, it was matters appertaining to Ireland that seemed to hold the most fascination for him. Under the terms of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Act, the country had now been partitioned into Northern and Southern Ireland with elections to Parliaments both north and south having been held. While in the north the Unionists were predictably victorious and now held sway, in the south Sinn Féin had swept the board winning 124 of the 128 seats, all without contest but so far had steadfastly refused to take their seats and were pressing for outright independence.
Even so, while the appalling violence continued unabated throughout the entire country, there were rumours too that behind the scenes, the British government was now seeking an accord with Sinn Féin to find a way to bring about an end to the senseless war, something which, he thought, could and should have been undertaken long ere now so that all the sickening brutality and bloodshed could have been avoided; or was it, he wondered, the price that had to be paid? "Sometimes a hard sacrifice must be made for a future that's worth having". Whoever had said that he knew not; but the words seemed very apt.
Because the clientele of the Ship was drawn from far and wide, by the fireplace for use as spills, there was always a stack of newspapers some old and long out of date, others more recent and it was from these which he had been reading. The next paper in the pile, dating back only a couple of weeks, its pages already beginning to yellow, made brittle by their proximity to the fire, was a local one, local that was to Yorkshire: the Ripon Gazette. Seeking something far less parochial, he was on the point of discarding the paper as being of no interest, after all what did he want to know about the price of sheep or the date of the next Nidderdale Show, whatever that was, when, probably on account of his interest in history, on an inside page, the words "… ancestral seat of the earls of Grantham" arrested his attention.
He read on, then let his eyes drift upwards to the photograph at the head of the article entitled:
"Summer Charity Bazaar At Downton Abbey"
And suddenly there it was: the large house he had seen in his dreams, not in Ireland, but here in England; for the article and the captions to the several photographs proclaimed the house to be the ancestral home of the earls of Grantham: Downton Abbey in Yorkshire.
The article was concerned principally with a report of a garden party which had been held recently mainly for the benefit of the local Cottage Hospital at Downton, to provide funds for a new ward "… to be known as the Tom Branson Memorial Ward in honour of Lady Sybil's late husband the respected Dublin based journalist, Tom Branson, tragically lost in the burning of Cork".
Tom Branson? Lady Sybil? Dublin? Journalist? Cork? In the depths and furthest recesses of his mind, something now faintly stirred …
Any additional monies raised would be used to help the local war widows. Along with her two children, Lady Sybil was "shortly to embark on the RMS Llanstephan Castle, to travel out to Kenya in East Africa to work as a nurse at the Kikuyu mission".
There were several photographs showing the exterior of the house and of the grounds, all of which looked somehow maddeningly familiar but it was the very last of the series of pictures that now claimed his full attention. It showed an older man standing somewhat self-consciously behind a little boy wearing a sailor suit seated cross-legged on a trestle table. Beside the man there stood a young woman dressed in a nurse's uniform and holding a baby in her arms. And at the sight of her, finally, at last, thankfully, the memories now all came flooding back.
"Sybil, darlin!" he croaked.
Leaving both his meal and his pint half finished, he stumbled unsteadily to his feet, drawing gruff and raucous comments from some of those crowded round the bar that here was one Paddy Mick who couldn't take his drink.
Ignoring the taunts and the jeers, stuffing the paper deeper inside his jacket, he now made his way purposefully through the boisterous, noisy throng towards the bar, where he tossed a scatter of coins down on the scuffed, drink stained surface counter of the smoke-filled saloon. That done, turning up his collar, pulling his cap down low, ready to do battle against the wind and the rain, as he reached the door of the public house, he turned on his heel, spoke clearly, evenly and with conviction to no-one in particular but to anyone who might just happen to be listening.
"And for your information, my name's not bloody Paddy and it's not feckin' Mick either. It's Tom. Tom Branson".
Author's Note:
"Leaving Liverpool" also known as "Fare Thee Well, My Own True Love" is both a folk song and a sea shanty - popular in America, Great Britain and Ireland. Its exact origins are a matter of debate.
Omi-palone is street vernacular (polari) for "homosexual". The meaning of other perhaps unfamiliar words in this passage should be clear from the context in which they appear.
The terrible explosion at Halifax in Nova Scotia in December 1917 happened as described. Until the development of nuclear weapons, the accident remaind the largest man-made blast ever.
The young woman referred to was Anna Anderson (1896-1984) who spent most of her adult life trying to prove she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the last Tsar, who had somehow survived the murder of the rest of her family. Today opinion remains divided as to the truth or otherwise of her claim.
Mountshannon House in County Limerick was indeed burned by the IRA. The ruins of the house may still be seen to this day.
Dr. Marie Stopes did indeed open her first birth control clinic in London - in March 1921.
By June 1921 the situation in Ireland was as is described.
And finally, for those of you who are not yet aware, the next chapter will bring this long story to an end.