Chapter Three
Boys Will Be Boys
Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, late afternoon, 11th June 1936
Shamefaced, clearly embarrassed, standing beside the dresser in the kitchen, Tom did his very best to try and look both meek and contrite.
"I suppose I owe you an explanation, me darlin'," he drawled softly.
"You're damned right, Mr. Branson. You do!" snapped Sybil. Unaccustomed but rarely to hearing his mother raise her voice, assuming that somehow he himself must have done something terribly wrong, little Dermot began to wail.
"There! Now look what you've gone and done!"
"Me?"
"Yes, you!"
"But I didn't do a damned ..."
For the present, Sybil chose to ignore both Tom's indignant protest and also the man himself; instead she hugged little Dermot tightly to her.
"It's all right, darling. Ma's not angry with you, sweetheart. Ma's angry with your Da! You're a good little boy. Unlike some I could mention!" At this utterance Sybil shot Tom a hurt, reproachful, reproving look while, turning his little head, young Dermot now regarded his Da with wide-eyed, open-mouthed amazement, for here it seemed was a new and startling concept: that Ma got angry with Da.
With Bobby being given a piano lesson by old Miss Moore and Saiorse having tea with a school friend, Mary O'Connor, the only other member of the Branson family who was somewhere about the place was Danny. And, it was now, singularly unaware of what was happening, that at this very moment, with his face streaked with sweat, dressed in his boots and dirty overalls having been working on the Morris over in the garage, Danny chose to come in through the back door from the garden, and so made a spectacularly singularly ill-timed entry into the kitchen. On catching sight of his father, Danny broke into a broad grin.
"Ma! Da! I've managed to sort out the problem with the leaf spring".
Too late, now realising that he had blundered into one of those comparatively rare occasions when his much loved parents were at loggerheads over something or other, Danny paused in mid sentence, fell silent, and instead remained standing exactly where was in the open doorway.
Sybil spun round on her chair, taking in the dirty, dishevelled state of her eldest son at which point Danny unwisely made to move forward into the kitchen.
"Don't even think about it, young man! Danny, how many times have I told you, about taking off your boots before coming inside the house? I don't want half the bloody yard in here! Alice washed the floor this morning and I don't intend doing it all again. If you want to, then the mop and bucket are out there in the scullery".
"Sorry, Ma!"
When Ma was on the warpath, Danny knew it was best not to risk riling her any further. So now, like his Da, equally shamefaced Danny knelt down meekly on the doorstep and began untying the laces of his boots. At the same time he shot his father a sympathetic, questioning look, followed by a grin, which did not go unnoticed by Sybil who, on seeing the state of Danny's hands, returned to the fray.
"And then it's straight upstairs and into the bath for you, my lad! Plenty of soap and water, mind you get rid of all that oil and grease, and be sure you don't leave any dirty marks on the enamel like you did the last time!"
"Oh, Ma!" Danny raised his eyes.
"Don't you Oh Ma me! Oh Ma nothing! Not unless you want me to come upstairs, strip you, and wash you myself!"
A silent witness to all of this, Tom found it very difficult to suppress a ridiculous urge to smile: the elegant, former Lady Sybil Crawley arguing with her eldest son, swearing like a trooper, and worrying about the state of her kitchen floor!
For his part, at the prospect that Ma's suggestion had conjured up, Danny flushed crimson; knowing full well that if she was unduly provoked, despite her slightness of build, Ma was perfectly capable of making good and carrying out her threats. And, even if both Da and Ma had seen him naked many times when he was a little boy, at sixteen years old, these days Danny valued his privacy. "No, I didn't think so for sure!" continued Sybil in her no nonsense matter-of-fact tone that she reserved for the likes of Mr. Byrne down at the corner shop when, at least according to Ma, he had had the affrontery to short change her.
At the time, Da had thought it to have been nothing more than a genuine mistake, but Ma being Ma was having none of it; convinced that it had been deliberate, on account of her English antecedents. Apparently something similar had happened to her once before, years ago, in Dublin, or so Da said later. Watched open-mouthed by Danny, Saiorse, and also by Da, Ma had proceeded to reduce poor Mr. Byrne, a large and portly man, to a quivering wreck. So much so, that by the time she swept imperiously out of the shop with her family in tow, in a manner which even Danny's aristocratic Aunt Mary would have found hard to emulate, clutching triumphantly in her small gloved hand the money which she said she had been owed, Mr. Byrne was in a state akin to one of Mrs. White's jellies on the top shelf in the pantry at Downton Abbey.
"And when you're all done up there, Daniel Branson, mind you bring those filthy overalls back down here and put them straight in the copper in the wash house out back! Then light the fire and set them to boil. Understood? And close the door on your way out. Your Da and I have things to discuss".
"Yes, Ma," said Danny wearily, trying at the same time to also sound contrite. Like his beloved Da, he did so hate confrontations, much preferring to be a lover rather than a fighter. In his stocking feet, Danny padded his way across the quarry tiles towards the door leading into the hall. In the doorway he paused; shot his Da a final pained expression which he hoped conveyed, and in equal measure, both love and tacit support, and then quietly closed the door behind him as he had been instructed to do.
"And?" asked Sybil turning back to Tom who was still standing over by the dresser.
"Well, we were going to tell you all about it tonight, love. Do you mind if I sit down first? I've had a hell of a day, what with meetings at the Dáil with both de Valera and Bennett over last month's abolition of the Senate. Of course de Valera's cock-a-hoop that he's got his own way and Bennett's bloody furious, although to be honest I'm rather surprised that he thought he could take on de Valera and win. Any chance of a cup of tea, love? I'm absolutely parched?"
Sybil was on the point of tartly telling Tom to make it himself but something in his manner, and seeing how tired he looked, caused her instantly to relent. She nodded and waved him to the nearest chair. Both of them worked far too hard and with the demands of a growing family in which they both played their part to the full, though neither of them would have it any other way, these days, they were often bone weary. She knew that what Tom really needed was a holiday but with Matthew and Mary's social whirl and the demands of the estate, to say nothing of Matthew's involvement with the League of Nations in distant Geneva, the Bransons were not expected over at Downton until late August.
Equally, although Tom said little about it, as the years ran their round, on occasions he had seemed unaccountably out of breath, as had happened a few weeks ago, when they had all been out walking in the Dublin Mountains. With little Dermot along, the stroll had been neither arduous nor indeed long; Tom putting his shortness of breath down to nothing more than indigestion, having eaten too hearty a lunch. Since Sybil herself had cooked it, while her skills in that regard had improved considerably from what they had once been, that excuse didn't really wash.
So, although she said nothing at the time, so as not to alarm the other children, the following day, while at the Rotunda, she had sought out Dr. Keady, a colleague who hailed from County Galway, and voiced her fears openly to him. Sybil came away from that meeting somewhat reassured; accepted that it might just have been nothing more than the heat and a touch of indigestion but she knew too that Tom disliked any kind of fuss and also, in particular, hated going to see the doctor. Not that that came as any surprise. After all, during the winter months when he always went down with at least one heavy cold, while off work, sitting at home by the fire, or else in bed, even with a selection of his favourite books and newspapers placed beside him and all of them within easy reach, Tom proved a difficult and truculent patient, hating enforced idleness, something with Sybil could readily identify. However, if the problem persisted, then Sybil vowed that she would stand no further nonsense and would take him to see the doctor herself even if it meant dragging him there by force.
"All, right, I'll make it, and while I'm doing so, you can sit there quietly and tell me just what is that's going on. Here, you take Dermot".
So saying, Sybil promptly plumped the startled little boy into Tom's lap and then proceeded to bang about the kitchen, making considerably more noise than was necessary for such a simple task: first taking the empty kettle from off the stove and over to the Belfast, filling it with water, returning it to the stove. lighting the gas, and then fetching milk in a bottle from off the slate in the larder. In their turn, teapot, tea caddy, cups, spoons, and saucers all rattled onto the bare deal table. While she did so, Dermot sat playing quite contentedly with his father's watch chain. These days Tom normally wore a wrist watch. The heavy, solid gold watch and chain, with a short commemorative inscription inscribed on the reverse of the case, had been an unexpected gift from his late father-in-law back in '29, to mark Tom's appointment as Deputy Editor of the Irish Independent. As the mood took him, and these days, curious to relate, it did more often than heretofore, from time to time, Tom chose to wear it, but when he did, it was much more out of a sincere, devoted and heartfelt filial respect for the late Robert Crawley, fifth earl of Grantham, than for the intrinsic worth of the watch, which in itself was considerable.
"And?"
"Well, you remember when the four of us, Matthew, Rob, Danny and myself, all went over to the Swiss Grand Prix back in '34?"
Sybil nodded.
"So?"
"Sorry, love. I'm not explaining this very well. I mean, what happened ..."
"What do you mean, what happened?" Sybil asked. Just then, the kettle began to sing. Sybil moved to the stove, picked it up, returned with it to the table where she poured boiling water into the teapot to warm it thoroughly before discarding the water in the Belfast, spooning in the tea, adding more water, setting the kettle back on the stove, and turning off the gas. Tom waited until she had finished; was once more seated at the table before he continued with his tale.
"That Friedrich and Max were supposed to join us. Then Max slipped and fell in the garden at Rosenberg and ended up having to have a blood transfusion".
Sybil nodded again. It had been a most distressing and traumatic time for them all, what with the uncertainty as to whether or not young Max would pull through. It was especially hard for Edith, the more so since she had only just given birth to Kurt the year before.
"But I don't see what that has to do with ..." With the tea having brewed, and with young Dermot still seated contentedly in Tom's lap, Sybil began the business of pouring.
"Well you know Friedrich is in London this month, next week in fact, giving a series of lectures?"
Again Sybil nodded.
"At the British Museum. Yes, Edith wrote and told me ..."
"Well, the thing is, what you don't know is that ..."
Estate Office, Downton, late afternoon, 11th June 1936.
While outside in the cobbled stable yard it was still a very warm June afternoon, the sky an azure blue, flecked with but the merest wisps of high cloud, within the Estate Office, among all the leather bound books, the papers, and the maps, the temperature was positively glacial. So much so that Matthew thought it quite possible that in all likelihood the Arctic or the Antarctic, or indeed perhaps both, were likely to be warmer. The silence between them lengthened; deepened. Then the glass domed anniversary clock on the mantlepiece chimed the hour: four o'clock. All was not well; exceedingly so.
"I'm waiting," said Mary haughtily.
"Darling, I know it looks bad but I was going to tell you. In fact I should have done some time ago". On hearing his words, Mary gasped.
So it was true then. He was having an affair. For her part Mary saw that Matthew looked visibly shaken by her discovery of what had been going on. With her head throbbing, she blanched, sucked in her breath. Still standing by the door, Matthew now made to move towards her.
"Don't come anywhere near me! Don't touch me!" she warned.
"What is it? What on earth's the matter" he asked.
So, this is how it is going to be, thought Mary. Matthew brazening it out, pretending not to understand her.
"Do you really need me to spell it out for you? How could you, Matthew? After all these years ..." In her hand, she held out the note then looking directly at him, quoted from memory:
Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool
Mona 11.15 16th June
"It's not what you think".
"And what, pray, do I think?"
"Well, that I've been ... As I just said, I know I should have told you about it long before now but I promise I'll make it up to you!"
"Make it up to me? How could you possibly begin to ... So you admit it then?" asked Mary not waiting for him to answer
"Admit? That's a strange word to use. Admit what?" Matthew's brows furrowed. He sighed. They were clearly at cross purposes but before he could explain things any further Mary asked yet another question.
"From where?" she countered.
"Pardon?"
"Mona?"
"Oh, her," he said dismissively.
"Yes, her!"
"Birkenhead".
Well that fits, thought Mary. Just across the Mersey from Liverpool.
"She's two years old".
Good God! There's a child in all of this! Mona. Two years old. Then … Mary did a quick mental calculation. The affair … it must have been going on for some time; perhaps even while she had been enceinte with little Emily. That would make sense too. And this assignation, next week at the Adelphi Hotel, in Liverpool, was presumably with Mona's nameless mother, no doubt arranged to settle certain financial matters. How could Matthew have done this? To her, to them all? Was he not embarrassed? Evidently not.
"When was she …"
"1934," said Matthew promptly.
He's absolutely no shame, no shame at all, thought Mary. And, if the child was born in 1934, then the affair itself must definitely have begun well before ...
"She's a replacement for Fenella".
Heavens! A replacement? Mary was horrified. For Fenella? Who on earth was Fenella? An exotic sounding name. But then, or so she had heard tell, women in that profession often assumed names which they thought were alluring, even beguiling, in order to give them a sense of mystery. Fenella. Another mistress then. No doubt also discarded by Matthew when he had tired of her! In all the years she had known him, she had considered him to be an honourable man. Never once had she thought him to be callous. But clearly he was.
"Well, I think it was Fenella. Sadly, memory fails me. There have, of course, been several".
"Several?"
Matthew nodded.
"Yes. She weighs nearly 3,000 tons".
Amply proportioned then. Mary had always thought Matthew preferred women who were slender, like herself. Obviously she had been mistaken but then it seemed she had been wrong about so many things. Perhaps if she had eaten more … been of the build of the late Mrs. Patmore. 3,000 tons?
"What did you just say?"
"3,000 tons". Mary saw the corners of Matthew's mouth begin to twitch.
"I don't find this remotely amusing".
"Really?"
"Yes, really. No, what I mean is … No, I don't find …"
"Mary, she's a ship".
"Who is? I mean what is?"
"Mona".
"I beg your pardon?"
"A ship. Mona's Queen. She belongs to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. Built in Birkenhead, in 1934 as a replacement for the Fenella. You can thank our son Robert for providing me with those particular details".
"A ship," echoed Mary faintly.
"Yes".
"So you're not ..."
"Not what?"
"It doesn't matter," she said brokenly.
"Yes, it does," he said softly now moving closer, his eyes alive with mirth.
"What with all your recent trips to Liverpool, when I found this ..." Mary held out again the leaf torn from Matthew's pocketbook. "The Adelphi Hotel, Mona, I thought you were having …"
"An affair? Good God, you silly idiot!"
As with her brother-in-law Tom, Mary often found Matthew's sense of humour to be both incomprehensible and unpredictable. Apart from their deep and abiding friendship, it was something else that those two shared. And this proved to be one of those occasions, for Matthew now let out a great bellow of a laugh which was probably heard up at the house. In the next instant, he closed the last few feet between them and a moment later, holding her tightly in his arms, he was brushing feather light kisses across her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, his lips eagerly seeking her own.
"Matthew, I really don't know what to say. I didn't mean to doubt you, not after that stupid business of the comtesse de ..." She began to sob openly.
"Mary, do you honestly believe that loving you as I do, I could ever stoop to anything so base? You're the love of my life! I don't need anybody else. I never will!"
"Then what is it that you haven't told me?" she asked, nervously biting her lower lip.
"Darling, it's nothing unpleasant I assure you. Indeed, quite the reverse. In fact, it concerns young Max".
"Max?"
Matthew nodded.
"Yes. You remember when Tom, Danny, Robert, and myself, all went over to the Swiss Grand Prix in Bremgarten?"
Mary nodded.
"But I don't see how that concerns ..."
"And then Friedrich and young Max were unable to join us as planned?"
"Because of Max's fall. Yes ..."
"Well, the thing is ... Just a moment ..."
"Matthew, darling, what on earth are you doing?" Having gently broken away from her, Mary watched him stride purposefully across the floor as far as the door and turn the key in the well oiled lock. With Matthew having made a deliberate display of putting the key to the door in the pocket of his jacket, back beside her, he slid his arm around her waist and drew her to him.
"What does it look like? I'm taking steps to ensure that we're not disturbed," he said softly as he began leading Mary over to the rear of the office.
"But the men from the estate ..." she began, realising what it was he intended.
Matthew smiled; shook his head.
"The door's locked and I possess the only key. So, may I suggest we put all this silly misunderstanding behind us and resume where we left off earlier this morning?" With an undeniable twinkle in his impossibly blue eyes, with the open palm of his hand, Matthew indicated before them the old army camp bed he had installed in a partitioned off corner of the Estate Office and which, from time to time, he made use of, when he was working very late.
"And there's something else I have to tell you too ... about ... Scotland".
"Matthew, darling, truly, I don't deserve you!" Mary felt giddy; light headed with relief and also with excitement at the anticipation of what the next hour would undoubtedly bring.
"No, you don't!" he said softly as he lowered her gently onto the waiting bed.
"Matthew Crawley, if you were a gentleman, you wouldn't say such awful things".
"Perhaps not. But then, my darling I'm no gentleman. I'm only middle class. As you so often keep reminding me!"
"And I wouldn't have it any other way!"
Snaefell, Isle of Man, 17th June 1936.
Lying in the middle of the Irish Sea, almost equidistant from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, thirty two miles long and some fourteen miles wide, the Isle of Man is a self governing dependency of the English Crown.
Up here, on the highest point of the island, whichever way any of them cared to look, whether north, south, east or west, the views from the windswept, lonely summit of the mountain were truly magnificent. Even so, despite the sunshine, at an altitude of some 2,000 feet, it was still much colder than it had been but a short while earlier down on the coast in the capital, Douglas, something which, from their attire, some of their fellow travellers seemed not to have appreciated.
From where the four of them were now standing, the land fell away, ever downwards, in a series of slopes, some gentle, some precipitous, all topped with short cropped turf, interspersed here and there with patches of bog, of marsh, of slate, of scree and outcrops of bare rock, rent by goyles and gullies. Spread out below them, and in all directions, lay a wide expanse of the island, mainly given over to stone-walled green fields, some dotted with sheep and cattle, while here and there could be glimpsed the buildings of a lonely farm, as well as the little town of Peel on the west coast, famous for its kippers, and, out on the far distant horizon, somewhere over towards the Scottish coast, beyond the Point of Ayre, a smudge of dark smoke denoted the presence of a solitary steamer.
"Ah, to be sure, from here you can see God's own country!" said Tom, raising his voice somewhat so as to be heard against the deafening howl of the wind. He watched, as Matthew, holding on to his trilby, did as Tom had expected he would do; now turned and looked east, over towards England.
"Wrong way, old chap! Ireland's over here!" Likewise holding onto his cap, Tom pointed in the opposite direction.
"Not at all, old boy!" laughed Matthew, "It's you, who's looking the wrong way; you thick Irish mick!"
Danny and Robert both grinned; sniggered at their fathers' easy banter.
"I t'ink we'll be havin' to agree to differ!" said Tom, now lapsing into a thick Irish brogue and chuckling good naturedly. He turned to Danny and Rob. "It's said, that from here you can see six kingdoms: the Isle of Man, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Heaven". Looking at Matthew as he said it, Tom laid a deliberate stress on the third of the names. "Barring Heaven, one day for sure the view will take in one kingdom and five republics!"
"Perhaps," said Matthew affably.
"Look, son, there are the Mountains of Mourne!" exclaimed Tom, clearly excited.
Danny nodded; looked dutifully in the direction in which his father was now pointing excitedly but, if the truth be told, saw nothing, save the empty, silent sea, and there on the distant horizon a faint ribbon of haze which, while Da continued to insist it was the coast of Ireland, looked to Danny to be nothing more substantial than a drifting bank of mist.
"If you say so, Da!" Shaking his head in disbelief, sixteen year old Danny raised his eyes and grinned at Rob.
While the two boys walked over to look once again at the tram which had brought them from Laxey up here to the summit, Matthew and Tom took the opportunity thus afforded them for a quick chat.
"Well, we made it!" said Tom, now reluctantly tearing his eyes away from gazing seawards over towards his homeland. "For a while, back there in Blackrock, I wasn't at all sure if we would. When Sybil gets on her high horse ..."
Matthew nodded in agreement.
"Likewise. It was much the same at Downton!.
"Crawley women, eh?"" Tom chuckled.
"Agreed!"
"But then, when I explained to Sybil what we had in mind and why ..."
"As I did to Mary and that I wasn't ..."
"Having a mad fling with ... who was it again?" Tom lofted a quizzical brow.
"Fenella, from Birkenhead".
"For sure?"
"Not at all! No such luck, I'm sorry to say!" chuckled Matthew. "Well, once I'd set her straight about that, darling Mary became quite understanding; the more so when I just happened to casually let slip about a trip up to Banchory later in the year". He grinned.
"You mean you really are ..."
"Taking Mary up to Scotland. For a second honeymoon? Yes. And for that I have to thank you, old chap. What with all the demands of the estate. the League and well, me being me, I probably wouldn't even have thought of it!"
"So, are you going to tell us what the surprise is, father?" asked Rob.
"All in good time," replied Matthew with a smile.
"When we get back to the hotel," said Tom with a wink.
"Da!" exclaimed Danny.
"Wait and see! Now, unless we all want to end up walking down the mountain, I think we'd all best be getting back to the tram".
A short while later, seated in the single saloon, with brakes squealing their protest, the tramcar was in motion, and, along with everyone else, mainly day trippers who, like themselves, had made the journey to the summit, the Bransons and the Crawleys found themselves grinding their way back down the side of the mountain to distant Laxey. At The Bungalow, the tram crossed over a country road, which formed part of the course of the TT along which, the following day, Tom himself would be racing. Once down at the little village of Laxey, they got off the tram, and, after a bite to eat in the nearby inn, walked the short distance, half a mile or so, no more, to the abandoned mine workings, passing on their way a row of miners' cottages.
"And here she is," said Danny shortly thereafter. "Gentlemen, may I present to you the Lady Isabella, built in 1854, aged eighty two, the largest water wheel in the world!"
Dining Room, Sefton Hotel, Douglas, Isle of Man, 17th June 1936.
"Six," corrected the earl of Grantham. The maître d nodded his head.
"Certainly, Your Lordship. This way, if you please". Behind their fathers, Danny and Robert now exchanged surprised glances. Why six? There were indeed only four of them.
It was now, as they made their way across the dining room, wending their way among the other tables, that Danny suddenly let out a whoop of delight, causing many of the other diners present to turn and look about them to see what had occasioned such an unseemly outburst.
"It can't be …" began Robert.
"It damned well is, for sure!" exclaimed Danny.
Author's note:
After a campaign fought the previous year (1935) between those desirous of its retention and those seeking its demise, the Senate of the Irish Free State was controversially abolished in May 1936, de Valera arguing that the Senate's delay in permitting certain constitutional changes had been illegal. A new Senate was formed in 1937.
Thomas Westropp Bennett (1867-1962) was an Irish politician, magistrate and a prominent figure in Irish agriculture. As Chairman of the Senate he bitterly opposed its abolition as being unconstitutional.
The RMS Mona's Queen did belong to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. Built in 1934, at Birkenhead, she had a short life, being sunk by a mine in May 1940 during the Dunkirk evacuation.
Opened in 1895, the Snaefell Mountain Railway is still in operation today.
The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy "TT", a race between motorcyclists over public roads at very high speeds, has been held on the island ever since 1907.
The Lady Isabella is indeed the largest working waterwheel in the world and these days also a major tourist attraction.