A/N: This chapter was brought to you from the Munich English Gardens! Many apologies for the delay. I've been ridiculously stressed about a lot of very boring and trivial things and it completely put me off writing. Anyway, excuses are odious and I hope you like (and are a little freaked out by) the chapter. I'm now on holiday for a week and feeling much better about a lot of things. At least, for as long as I remain here! Massive thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter- it's incredibly gratifying to get such a response, really. And I promise not to beg for reviews for, oh, at least this chapter! Also huge thanks to OrangeShipper for her comments and suggestions; they were, as ever, very helpful!
Can I point you in the direction of the Consolation Prize DVD Extras? There's an alternative ending to chapter 5 up there that M/M shippers might like if they haven't seen it already. I say "alternative" in the loosest possible sense. One would hate the story to climax too early...
And yes, many bratwurst and giant pretzels were consumed in the making of this chapter! :D
Chapter Six: Sea Interlude
The Crawleys parted as Englishmen: in a stoical and methodical fashion following a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, boiled ham, and muffins. Nobody cried, nobody was hysterical, and they left so much time to get to the station that the only worry of the whole affair was whether the car would hold all the hatboxes.
Downstairs, the atmosphere was not quite so peaceful, though they all put on a calm face before the family. Gwen's new clothes for her role as ladies' maid had only been finished the day before, and the other servants were as keen to admire her smart new black dresses as Gwen herself could be, every time she caught her disbelieving reflection as she scurried about her final errands.
"Here, Gwen, somethin' for the journey." It was Daisy, beaming nervously and holding out a parcel wrapped in brown paper with lots of string.
"What is it?" replied Gwen taking it gingerly from her.
"Bakewell tart," she replied. "Mrs. Patmore made it specially for you and she said how you wasn't supposed to give any of it to Lady Mary or Lady Grantham or you'd suffer her wrath."
Gwen laughed and looked down at the rather heavy package in her arms. "I can't very well eat it all myself!" Nevertheless, she was touched.
"I dunno, I would!" Daisy frowned. "What does 'suffer wrath' mean?"
"It means-" began Gwen and then broke off at the sight of Lady Sybil peering mischievously round the door to the servants' quarters. "Your ladyship!"
"I hope you don't mind my coming down here, Gwen, when you have so much to do, but I had to see you before you left. Hello, Daisy!" She came forward into the corridor, holding her hands strangely behind her back.
Gwen smiled at her in pleasure. She had been so busy tending to Lady Mary as a well as helping the new housemaid, Ethel, settle in and take over her job, that she had hardly seen Lady Sybil at all recently and she had missed her.
"It's very good of you to think of me, my lady," she said.
"Nonsense! You know I often think of you, Gwen. Whatever do you have here?"
"This?" She nodded her head at the cake. "It's bakewell tart, a gift from Mrs. Patmore, though I don't see how I can possibly eat it all!"
"Goodness me, that was nice of her!"
"I'm very spoiled," replied Gwen with some embarrassment, as Sybil took the package from her arms and sent Daisy off with it to find a suitable bag or box to carry it in.
"Well," she cried with sparkling eyes when Daisy had gone, "I am going to spoil you some more, I'm afraid."
"Oh, you really shouldn't-"
Gwen's protests were in vain. Sybil produced with a flourish from behind her back a plain, rectangular, wooden box and handed it to her friend. As Gwen took it, feeling a mixture of pleasure and shame at such a mark of preference, Sybil explained, "It's not really a gift, you see, more bribery to induce you to do me a favour."
"Bribery? Oh, my lady, after all you've done for me- Only tell me what you want me to do!"
"Nothing so very arduous, I hope!" laughed Sybil. "Only promise that you will write to me regularly and faithfully and tell me everything that you get up to."
"Won't Lady Mary write?" queried Gwen, her fingers nervously passing over the box.
"Of course she will, once in a while. Mary's letters are beautiful;" she added, "and by that I mean she has a beautiful hand!"
This was being a little hard on her sister's powers of composition. Nevertheless, it is broadly true that Mary's letters, whilst always lovely to look at and full of the most elegant turns of phrases and prettily described anecdotes, were rather instantly forgettable containing as they did very little pertaining to their author's own feelings or experiences; in other words, all the things that distinguish a personal letter from a guide book or satirical novel.
Gwen had been working closely with Lady Mary over the last couple of weeks in order to prepare for her new position and had found her a cold and capricious mistress and a demanding taskmaster, nothing like Lady Sybil. It is entirely possible that she understood Sybil only too well on this point of letters.
She made the promise readily enough. "Of course I shall write to you as often as I am able."
"Open the box then!" Sybil ordered. "I want to know everything you see and everyone you meet – remember, there may be rich business men abroad who need secretaries – and what you think of them and where you go!" She continued to chatter, covering her anxiety at the thought that Gwen might not like the present.
She need not have worried. The box contained several dozen sheets of thick paper, two plain but elegant pens, and two little pots of black ink. It was everything that was dainty, suitable for travel, and appropriate for someone in Gwen's position. She exclaimed in delight, looking up at her benefactress, face aglow.
"Oh, Sy- Lady Sybil, you are too kind – far too kind! With such beautiful stationery I shall be writing so often I shall make myself a nuisance!"
"I'm sure you wouldn't ever do that," replied Sybil warmly and then on an impulse pulled her astonished maid into a hug. For a second Gwen could not breathe but then she tentatively placed the palms of her hands on Sybil's back and closed her eyes.
It was over too soon. Mrs. Hughes came into the passage and Sybil saw her and pulled back, all unconcerned smiles. The housekeeper looked between them a moment and then delivered her message. "They're ringing for you upstairs, Gwen. You'd better say your goodbyes quickly. Is there anything your ladyship wanted?"
"Just to wish Gwen the best of luck on her travels," replied Sybil sweetly as Gwen took Mrs. Hughes' words as an excuse to fiddle needlessly with her dress and will away her blush.
"Thank you, my lady," she muttered, unable to meet her eyes.
Her mistress had already moved away towards the stairs. She turned again at the door. "Every week, remember, Miss Dawson," she cried with a grin. "I depend on it!"
"Every week!" replied Gwen.
The first night the travellers spent away from Downton hardly felt out of the ordinary. London might have been a novelty to Gwen, but Lady Rosamund's house in Eaton Square was almost as familiar to Mary and her grandmother as their own were. They passed a pleasant evening with Rosamund and even had time for the Sunday service at St. George's the following morning (the only place to see and be seen if you were anybody who was somebody) before continuing to the coast.
They had booked an overnight passage on the S.S. Regina and although she was not due to weigh anchor until late, they embarked in the early evening to dine in comfort while still in the harbour.
Mary had been on boats before of course. Rowing boats on the Serpentine with tedious young men, keen to display the skills they had learned at university. (Probably their only skills, she thought sardonically and wondered suddenly if Matthew could row. She fancied not, but even if he could, she felt sure he would never be so boring as to show off.) The paddle steamer, Waverley, on Windermere, taken on numerous occasions that long summer they had spent in the Lakes, a trip elongated when Sybil had fallen out of an apple tree and the whole family had been obliged to stay put two months longer than they had intended. Even the little boat in Scarborough that professed to show tourists the real life of the Yorkshire fisherman for two hours on a calm afternoon – and they had paid through the nose for the privilege. Mary had never been on a boat before that did not go in circles and end up exactly where it had begun.
Today, England; tomorrow, France. It was hard, sitting in the strange, low-ceilinged dining room and feeling the gentle, almost imperceptible rock of the boat at anchor, not to feel the tug of incipient adventure. The dowager countess did all in her power, in must be said, to squash these burgeoning feelings, by making disparaging remarks about the size of their cabins, the service in the restaurant and so on, but she did not quite succeed. Mary was filled with a quiet sense of anticipation which did not show in her expression or anything she said but which she felt anyway as she calmly sipped her wine, her chin resting on her hand, staring out of the window at the shore lights twinkling on the still, murky, harbour water.
Lady Grantham did most of the talking, telling Mary stories of the times she had been abroad with her husband as a young woman. For the first time since the trip had been suggested, Mary allowed herself to listen and be amused (never mind whether anything being said was true or not), feeling for once no more no less than a granddaughter.
"Of course," Violet was saying as they lingered over coffee, "we all went to Paris the year your parents married and were at the Moulin Rouge just after it opened."
Mary raised her eyebrows. "Somehow I find it hard to picture you in a cabaret, Granny."
Her grandmother cleared her throat. "In that case I'd better stop there in case I frighten you with the rest." There was a twinkle in her eye.
Mary smiled over her coffee cup. "Perhaps I will be braver once I have seen the place for myself. Shall we go this week?"
"Oh, I think not, my dear! You would not want to go with me; let your husband take you – once you've got one!"
Immediately, Mary imagined herself in a dark and stuffy ballroom watching a line of can-can dancers, sitting bored next to the Italian equivalent of Anthony Strallon (shorter, darker, louder) who was far more interested in the immodestly dressed dancers than in his wife. She sighed. A cabaret probably could be entertaining in the right company but she doubted that would ever include Antonio Strallone. One had to be a little improper to enjoy that kind of thing, something husbands in her experience never were.
The ship had finally weighed anchor by the time they finished dinner. Straightaway the dowager declared her intention of returning to her cabin and going directly to bed.
"I may be an excellent sailor, but there's no need to put it to the test!" she said firmly, as if daring Mary to contradict her. She only smiled, kissed her and wished her goodnight. Gwen was summoned from the third class dining room to put her to bed and Mary, alone at last, slipped on her new dusky pink coat and a shawl and went up on deck.
It was a dark night, devoid of moonlight. The sea churning rhythmically under the bows was black and calm, only illuminated by the occasional glow from a porthole lower down. The deck hardly rocked, or perhaps Mary was used to the sway by now and did not notice it. One thing, however, it was impossible to ignore was the steady chug of the engines, audible all over the ship.
Mary pulled her fluttering shawl closer round her shoulders and leaned on the wooden rail. It was almost midnight and for the first time in what seemed like months she was quite perfectly alone. Here in the midst of the great expanse of sea there was nobody stifling her voice or putting words into her mouth, there were no expectations, no demands, no misunderstandings, no mistakes, no heartache, no past, no future.
She was only Lady Mary Crawley and she was all at sea.
Only the previous night she had been at home playing the piano for Sybil. Matthew had been there and she had felt – well, some things were best left unacknowledged even here. Still, it had seemed so terribly important to her not to part from him on bad terms, but she was not sure if she had succeeded and she could not tell if he had forgiven her or not. Yet why should he forgive her? Oh, she appreciated the misunderstanding between them: she had said she was impossible to be loved, unmarriageable – an immediate and foolish reaction to his dreadful silence – and he had thought she meant him. It was an impossible mistake to correct without saying what she could not say, not to mention the equally impossible-to-contemplate fury, disappointment and rejection she had felt which had caused her to say it. In the end though she only knew that the idea of being hundreds of miles away from him and knowing he thought ill of her was unbearable.
She stared out into the was nothing, really nothing, save the coldness of the wind on her face and the reassuring, noisy throb of the engines. What would happen if the vibration stopped? If the engines fell silent? If the boat tilted too far and there was no escape from sliding, ever sliding all the way over the edge?
Mary leaned further over the rail and peered down to where she could see the white foam curling away on the wave from the side of the ship. Cold, dark water. Always changing but never different. Unceasing in its motion. Falling into it, feeling the ice close over her head, the final surrender. Would that be what it would be like to drown? Was that what they had felt? Lost, alone, in the middle of a greater, colder ocean than this small, friendly channel, had they wondered the same thing before experiencing it first hand?
For the first time, almost two years late, she allowed herself to imagine her cousins' final moments. She wondered about the last minutes of their lives and what sort of things went through their minds. What on earth did one think about at the point of death? Had Patrick thought of her? Or was it Edith in his mind at that final point? Oh, she had known about that, of course: he had wanted to marry her but he had simply wanted her sister. They were quite different things, it seemed. Or perhaps he had been thinking of something completely different; taxes, the business in New York, his mother, what he had for dinner... She would prefer that, however unromantic, to Edith.
The water seemed to swirl around the ship more vigorously, sending little sprays of foam up into the night air. Mary almost fancied she could see faces in the patterns of the waves, faces she had not allowed herself to imagine even at their funeral, dead, blank, waxy faces. Her imagination brought them before her with alarming clarity. Patrick's rusty hair spread out round his head like a halo, his eyes staring in horror – gone too early, too early! His father was more serene and he wore his characteristic Crawley frown even in death. Mary sucked in a cold breath and stared harder, her lips parted and her eyes wide in horror as the faces changed before her as a wave washed them away, removed from view as much as the sea had taken the lives of the originals. In their place appeared another face, a face that still haunted her, a handsome face with wavy, dark hair and eyes that would not close no matter how many times she tried, replaying it over and over again in her nightmares. She shuddered and still could not look away.
"My lady?"
Mary almost flung herself away from the rail, spinning around to look into the normal, plain, slightly curious face of her maid. She was breathing hard, feeling as guilty as if she had been caught in a room she was forbidden to enter.
"What is it, Gwen?" she asked, relieved to find her voice was no different to usual. It hardly ever was.
"Sorry for disturbin' you, my lady. I only came out to say that her ladyship is in bed now so if you need me..." She trailed off, blushing.
Mary was glad she had come. She had been starting to frighten herself. Perhaps being alone was not always such an advantage. She managed to smile. "Thank you. I appreciate you telling me. I am not quite ready to go in yet."
For a moment they both paused, suspended in time with the rocking of the boat the only motion as Gwen tried to work out if she had been dismissed or not.
"Join me out here a moment. I suppose you've never been on the sea before, have you?" She indicated the rail and after a second Gwen joined her and they looked out side by side.
"No, my lady. I never have. It's very big, isn't it? Sorry, that must sound so stupid!"
"Not at all," replied Mary softly. "It is very big."
They stood in silence together. Mary refused to look down again and instead kept her gaze straight out ahead, keeping her thoughts as blank as the vista before her. There was no horizen; no way of telling where black sea ended and black sky began.
Eventually she said in a more conversation tone, "How are you getting on with Granny then? I hope she is not too troublesome!"
Gwen looked up at her, roused out of her own reverie. "Pretty well, thank you," she replied cautiously.
Mary smiled. "I am glad you are managing; Sybil always assured me you would. It did seem awfully unfair to inflict her on you without any preparation, but I hope you did not find me overly harsh these last couple of weeks. If you can manage me at my worst then I am sure my grandmother will present no problems!" She shrugged slightly, self-consciously, and then continued before Gwen could get her head around what she had said, "I meant to ask you, what would you like to be called?"
"My lady?"
"Well, you've always been Gwen to us but now we must call you Dawson as a matter of course. I suppose Granny does?" Gwen nodded. "What do you think about it? It's always seemed a strange sort of custom to me. I know I'd hate to be called 'Crawley'!"
Gwen gave her a bemused smile in return. "You – you can call me whatever you wish, my lady," she stammered.
"Very good then. Dawson in public, Gwen when we're alone, and Miss Dawson on Sundays and public holidays!" She was queen of the situation once more. The dead faces had been banished back where they had come from in the face of Mary's brilliance and power.
Gwen looked at her then back out at sea and did speak for a while. Then she said, "Excuse me, but why, my lady? Why did you ask?"
Mary shrugged. "Caprice probably, but I know you don't want to be a ladies maid."
"I do want to go to Italy very much though. And I promise to try my hardest to be a good maid to yourself and Lady Grantham."
Mary laughed at her earnestness. "Then I am sure we will all be very happy."
She stepped away from the side and walked a few steps along the deck before turning and saying abruptly, "I envy you that, you know."
Gwen frowned and shivered, the wind whipping tendrils of her bright hair out from under her cap, the only colour visible in all the black of her dress and the sky behind her. "What?"
"Your determination. I've never cared enough about anything to try that hard." Then she turned on her heel before Gwen could attempt to think up a suitable reply.
Mary led the way off the deck into the overly bright warmth of the ship's interior. As her eyes adjusted to the artificial light and she went down the corridor towards her cabin, she licked her lips and tasted salt.
Next chapter: Raise your hand if you want to go to Venice!