DISCLAIMER: I don't own Downton Abbey and I make no money from this work.
"This dress is really quite short Dorothy. I'm not sure it's decent." They were waiting for Dorothy's friend at the bar in Sheekey's and Edith was panicking about her outfit. It had seemed such a good idea back at home; a daring, modern outward expression of her new daring, modern life. Here, in a restaurant, she just felt exposed. The dress was dark blue with a beaded gold neckline and pretty, floaty sleeves made from chiffon. It was drop-waisted in the latest style, with a line of beads along the waist band. The only problem with it was that it ended halfway down her calves. Edith couldn't help but think of what Granny would say.
"Stop being an old fuddy-duddy. This is the fashion. Look –" Dorothy pointed to a pretty woman sitting on a bar stool with a very handsome man. "Her's is far shorter."
"I suppose so. If it will get me talking to men like him then I'll just have to cope!"
"You don't want someone like him." Dorothy wrinkled her nose.
"Why on Earth not? He's heavenly."
"He's a member of the Middlesex regiment if I ever saw one."
Edith frowned. "What's wrong with that? I'm sure the Middlesex regiment have some very fine soldiers."
Dorothy erupted into peals of laughter so loud that everyone in the room turned to look at them. Once she had stopped and looked at Edith, she realised she hadn't been joking. "Darling, don't you know what I mean?" When Edith shook her head she lowered her voice. "That man is a Molly."
"A Molly?"
"A ho-mo-sex-ual." Dorothy articulated this word very delibreatley so Edith could be in no doubt of her meaning.
"Oh. Gosh. How can you tell?" Edith felt herself blushing. She had only ever heard of homosexuality from Mary after she had sat next to a particularly enlightened girl at a ball. They had spent hours giggling over it, wondering about the mechanics of something they knew very little about in the first place.
Dorothy waved her hand in the air. "You always can. You don't have anything gainst them, do you?"
Edith had never really thought about it. "No, I don't think so. I'm not sure I've met any before."
"Oh, you will soon. London's full of them and they're the most brilliant fun. They always know all the best people –" She broke off to wave at the blonde man who was being shown to a nearby table by the maître de. "David! Over here, darling!"
The man looked over and advanced towards Dorothy with his arms open. "Dotty! How are you?" They hugged and David looked over her shoulder at Edith. "And who is this beauty?"
"This is Lady Edith Crawley. We're rooming together in Russell Square."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Edith." He held out a small, white hand and she shook it. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about him dropping the 'Lady' so soon after meeting her, although she instinctively knew that if she wanted to break away from her old Downton life she might have to get used to it. Partly she was flattered that he wanted to be so intimate with her immediately.
"I was just telling Edith that that man over there was one of your lot." Dorothy nodded to the handsome man. "What do you think?"
"Undoubtedly." David made eye-contact with him and winked.
Edith realised what was going on and immediately looked away, pulling at the corners of a napkin to hide her inability to navigate this unknown situation.
"David's a raging homosexual himself, you know." Dorothy leaned across to impart this information.
"Absolutely raging." David added.
"I see." Edith decided that she had to try harder to seem like this was something she encountered every day. She wanted to know how Dorothy – who had just as sheltered upbringing as she had – had met all these people.
"Right, ladies what are we drinking?" David called his hands and led them to their table.
"Champagne, Davey." Dorothy said. "Only ever champagne at Sheekey's."
OoOoO
By the time they left Sheekey's Edith had had more to drink than ever before and she was feeling much the better for it. Her head was spinning, but so much that she felt like she might fall down, and everything seemed perfectly wonderful. David had one woman on each arm, and as they strode down the street, all of them giggling, he declared that everyone would think him the luckiest man in all of London with two beautiful creatures hanging off his arm.
"Where are we going now, Davey darling?" Dorothy asked.
"A little jazz club off Harcourt Street."
"My sister lives on Harcourt Street!" Edith declared excitedly.
"Why, we must invite her along too!" David declared. "If she's anything like you she'll be most welcome."
"I'm not sure we can. She lives on Harcourt Street in Dublin, you see. With her husband who used to be a chauffeur but now he's a journalist, which Granny likes a lot better. And Sybil's not like me. She's much sweeter and good. She gets all political about things, too." Her mouth felt strangely numb, and she realised she was speaking quite loudly and that her sentences were getting mixed up.
"Politics." David nodded sagely.
"Politics." Dorothy echoed.
Edith laughed for no reason at all. "Gosh I feel terribly giddy."
"It'll be all the champagne, darling."
"I better not have any more champagne. I don't know what Mary would say if she knew that I was drunk in London with a homosexual."
"Don't worry, there won't be any champagne at the club. Only gin." David said.
"Gin won't get me drunker, will it?"
Dorothy leaned across him to pat Edith's arm. "Not a bit, darling. Gin is practically a health cure."
The club, when they arrived just after midnight, was smoky and dark. There was a jazz band on the stage and people were dancing a strange, joyful dance on the ground below them. The tables around the dancefloor were small and beautiful, exotic people were crammed around them smoking, drinking and laughing. Edith thought they seemed like a different breed of people to all those she had met before.
David seemed to know everyone, and Dorothy recognized plenty of people herself, so Edith was just beginning to feel a tiny bit sober and sidelined when somebody tapped her on the shoulder.
"Lady Edith? Is that you?"
She turned to see a good-looking man with wavy dark hair smiling questioningly at her. "Evelyn Napier!" She exclaimed. "Gracious!"
Evelyn laughed in pleasant astonishment. "I wasn't sure if it was you or not – you look different. You look very well." She noticed he was looking at her appreciatively. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here now, with Dorothy Madison. In Bloomsbury." She got a little thrill out of saying that.
He looked impressed and not a little surprised. "Well done Edith. It must be a bit different from Downton. How are your parents - your Mother completely recovered after the flu?"
"Yes completely, thank goodness. They'll all fine."
"And Lady Mary?"
"She's very well. You are coming up for the wedding at Christmas, aren't you?"
Evelyn smiled. "Of course. I'm glad to hear she's well." There was a slightly uncomfortable silence where he should have asked after her younger sister.
"Sybil's quite all right as well." Edith said, sticking her chin out in defiance. Champagne had made her bold.
"Ah, yes. Good." Evelyn looked uncomfortable, and Edith felt a little guilty. They passed another ten minutes comfortably talking about mutual friends until Dorothy came and swept her away. "I'm going to have to steal her from you now, Mr. Napier." She twinkled her eyes at him.
"That's quite all right." He turned to Edith. "Listen, you must give me your address. I will call on you very soon and we can go to dinner."
Edith eagerly scrawled her address in his little notebook and they parted, her feeling triumphant and hazy.
"Ugh, why did you do that?" Dorothy made a face as she guided Edith to a table near the corner of the bar. "You'll actually have to go with him now."
"What's wrong with that? He used to be one of Mary's prospects, but he threw her over." Edith smirked. "I can't wait to tell her that he's asked me to dinner."
Dorothy frowned and stopped walking. "Edith, I'm going to put a stop to this. You are due a lot better than Mary's cast-off's, especially when they're as dull as Evelyn Napier. This is your first night in London and you're already imagining your wedding to the first man you meet - there's no use telling me that you aren't because I can see the white lace in your eyes."
Edith looked at the floor. "I feel like you're my governess."
"Good. I imagine you were always the sort of girl to listen to your governess. Now come and meet David's friends."
He was sat at the table with a man and a woman. While the woman was not pretty or delicate, she had a striking, memorable face with a strong jaw and very thick dark hair, secured with sparkling emerald hairpins. The man was dark-haired and swarthy. He looked like one of those people who would sit at the back of the room and remember everything that everyone had said. There was something unnerving in the way he rubbed his bottom lip with his index finger while looking at her – it made Edith feel as if she was being judged.
David stood up and handed her a glass. "Your gin. Darling, this is Vanessa and this is Duncan. It's far too complicated to explain how we all know each other so I shall say we are great friends and leave it at that. Vanessa, Duncan; I would like to introduce you to Edith. She's fabulous fun, especially for a Lady."
Vanessa shook her hand and Duncan inclined his head, still watching her with his flickering eyes. The others talked wittily for a while until Duncan took Dorothy to dance and David went to speak to an old friend at the bar, leaving Edith and Vanessa alone.
"So what do you do, Edith?" She asked. Her voice was thick and smoky, and in Edith's impaired state she felt like it invited confidences.
"I'm not terribly sure, really. I like driving, very much, but there isn't much call for that in London. I did some war-work on a farm, but that's not very London either." She sighed. "I need a vocation. I suppose the war gave me one for a while, but I'm certainly not cut out to be a nurse. My sister's a nurse and I wouldn't enjoy all the medical things. I like making people happy in some way, I suppose."
Vanessa lit a cigarette and watched her seriously. "That's honourable enough. You just need to find out how."
"Somebody once told me I should be a writer. I quite like the idea of that, only I'm not sure where to start."
"My sister writes. Novels and essays and the like." Vanessa blew out a cloud of smoke. "She always says that you start writing from something you know and feel, and then you can extrapolate from that. And if you want to make people happy then make them laugh. People are rarely as happy as when they laugh. Write comedies."
"Do people want to laugh? No-one at home seems to have wanted to laugh very much since the war."
"People are dying to laugh." Vanessa said. "Just make them."