Chapter Eight
A Summer's Afternoon
Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin, Irish Free State, July 1927.
Treading lithely and quietly like a cat, he had come upon her softly; had done so with deliberate intent after seeing her dozing, knowing that, given the circumstances, she must still be tired after the night shift she had worked at the Coombe. Tom thought she did too much; had told her long ago that she had nothing to prove; either to him or to herself.
Her head bowed, Sybil was sitting quietly, with her back to him, out of the heat of the afternoon sun, beneath the dappled shade of the apple tree at the far end of the garden which lay behind their house on Idrone Terrace; indeed, so quiet was Tom's approach that his wife remained singularly unaware of his presence until the very last minute. Then, as the dark shade of his shadow fell across her, Sybil looked up and, seeing who it was, she smiled warmly.
"Hello!"
"Hello, love!"
Tom grinned, bent down, kissed her; then, having sat down beside her on the seat, he quickly shed his jacket, unbuttoned his waistcoat, rolled up his sleeves and pulled off his tie.
"There, that's better, for sure! Jaysus but it's hot! May I?" His face flushed and glistening with sweat,Tom wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, indicating at the same time the jug of lemonade and solitary glass standing before them on the table.
"Of course".
As Tom busied himself pouring a glass of cooling lemonade, Sybil reached forward and grasped the watch he was wearing, turning his wrist so that she could see the time on the dial. A present to Tom from her on his birthday back in the summer of 1921, she had bought the watch as a replacement for the one smashed, irreparably so, by the Black and Tans and which she kept on the night stand beside their bed. On the reverse, Tom's new watch was engraved with the same inscription as the original:
"Every Waking Minute"
Her brow furrowed.
"Why, Tom, darling! It's only just after three! You're back very early! Is everything all right at the paper?" She stretched contentedly and yawned widely.
"Is that so very odd? When I have you to come home to, my darlin'? Of course, to be sure. I caught the 2.30. Pleased to see me? Or..." He paused, then grinned broadly. "Maybe you were expecting someone else. Your lover perhaps?"
Sybil laughed. She sighed contentedly; clasped her hands behind her head and stretched out her feet.
"Oh, this is nice, isn't it? Well, yes, I was. And, in case you hadn't noticed, yes, he's just arrived!"
"Who has?" Tom whipped round and now glanced back in the direction of the house from whence he had just come.
"My lover!"
"Where..."
"You, silly!"
Tom flushed scarlet then ducked his head. It amused her that for all his seeming bravado how easily it was she could still manage to embarrass him.
"But how did you manage to..."
"Privilege of rank, darlin'! The art of delegation! In fact, like yous, I'm becoming quite good at it for sure!" He grinned again and then explained exactly what he meant. "That article... the one giving my assessment on de Valera and his party entering the Dáil after the General Election?"
Sybil nodded her head.
"Well, I gave the job of proofing it to Phelan, so giving me the chance to come home early this afternoon... so as to be with my beautiful wife". Seeing her now blush, he laughed again.
"Tom!"
"Children all right?"
Sybil nodded her head.
"Yes, they're fine. Ma's taken them down to the beach".
She saw the immediate look of alarm etched upon his face. Sybil rested her hand gently on his wrist.
"It's all right, Tom. Ma said she feels perfectly fine. In all honesty, I couldn't deny her".
Earlier that same year, over in Clontarf, Ma had suffered a mild heart attack and her own doctor had prescribed complete bed rest. Not that, once she was up and about again, Ma took the slightest notice to make any meaningful attempt to curtail her comings and goings; even when Sybil concurred with what the doctor had told Ma about taking things more easily.
"Well, if you're absolutely sure..."
"If I'm sure? In case you hadn't noticed, darling, your Ma's a very strong-willed woman".
Tom nodded his head in agreement.
"For sure! So they've all gone down to the beach then?"
Sybil nodded.
"Saiorse said she wanted to look for shells and Danny wanted to go paddling. He's old enough and sensible enough to know what to do if anything should... Anyway, Ma said they wouldn't be long. Only for an hour or so. They should be back soon enough. Ah! Peace and quiet at last. Just the two of us. Well, three, I suppose".
Tom smiled; watched as Sybil now folded her hands neatly and protectively across her belly. "I shall have to tell them soon... at the Coombe I mean. I'm sure this one's another boy". Sybil smiled. Tom thought she looked radiant. Pregnancy suited her. And from the latest letter written to them from Downton and received here but a matter of days ago, it transpired that Mary was expecting another child too; also her third.
Enclosed with Mary's letter had been one from Edith and which, as usual, was full of chatty, breezy news describing some of her latest adventures – a train journey to Damascus, a visit to a Jewish farming settlement on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, further archaeological excavations out in the Near East in both Palestine and Mesopotamia, the delights of Baghdad, her first visit to Jerusalem, made mention of attending a series of lectures in Vienna and ended up by promising that this year she would try her very best and come back to England so as to be at Downton for Christmas.
"Apart from her never-ending series of digs, she seems to be spending quite a bit of time in Vienna," observed Tom.
"Yes, I thought that too," said Sybil.
Tom smiled and, with their fingers intertwined, the two of them sat together in companionable silence. The summer air was heavy with the scent of lavender, roses and new mown grass. A bee droned gently past the faintly nodding, colourful spikes of foxgloves, lupins and delphiniums in the flower border and which Tom had created for Sybil; in conscious emulation of one they had both seen and which she had very much admired, when looking over the wall adjoining a cottage in one of the back streets of Downton during the Statute Fair a couple of years ago.
He could deny her nothing and so had worked very hard and in all weathers on an especially unpromising patch of ground at the rear of their house to bring about the creation of what he chose to call her "piece of home". While Sybil had been utterly delighted with the end result, she had moved him to tears when she had said that her only home was here - in Ireland, with him and their children.
Nonetheless,there was no gainsaying the fact that in summer the result of all Tom's hard labours in their garden was a riot both of colour and of scent. The previous year even Matthew and Mary, on one of their very rare forays across the Irish Sea and staying at the Shelbourne Hotel – where else – and at which they had taken a suite "so as not to incommode you", on their arrival at the house in Idrone Terrace to "take afternoon tea" had been very much impressed.
Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin, Irish Free State, August 1926.
While, at Mary's insistence, Simon, then aged only three, had been left behind at Downton in the charge of the capable Nanny Bridges, much to Danny's infinite delight, as promised, Uncle Matthew and Aunt Mary had brought with them their elder son, his cousin, young Robert.
Despite the fact that they were expected for afternoon tea, nonetheless, Danny had spent most of that August morning kneeling on the window seat of his bedroom, watching out for the motor from the Shelbourne Hotel to make its appearance in the dusty street below. To Danny, time seemed to stand still; the hours seemed to drag and then, suddenly it was lunchtime after which he was sent upstairs to wash and to change his clothes.
Then, at 3pm precisely, the longed for motor duly arrived and in the form of a chauffeur-driven, gleaming, maroon-coloured, 3 litre Bentley, For a moment, Danny found himself seemingly unable to move, transfixed as he was by the sight of the splendid machine; enthralled as it purred gently to an exact stop outside the front door of his own home.
Watched as well by several of their intrigued neighbours, Danny now saw the liveried chauffeur descend from the driver's seat, walk slowly towards the back of the Bentley and open the rear door adjoining the pavement, enabling Danny's Aunt Mary to get out; saw her joined moments later by his Uncle Matthew and by their son, Danny's much-loved cousin Robert.
Seeing Danny kneeling in the window above, Robert waved enthusiastically, the exuberance of his greeting cut short by an obvious sharp rebuke from his mother. As his aunt turned on her heel and walked purposefully up the path towards the house, Danny saw Robert sporting a cheeky grin and shrugging his shoulders dismissively. Shouting down to his parents that Uncle Matthew and Aunt Mary had arrived at last, scrambling down from off the window seat, Danny raced downstairs so as to be at the front door in time to welcome them, along with Da, Ma and his sister Saiorse.
Once the usual greetings were over, with Eileen charged to keep a watchful eye on Saiorse in the kitchen, having been promised that he and Da could inspect the Bentley later, with his parents' permission Danny had taken Robert upstairs to his bedroom to show his cousin his new clockwork train set, while Da and Ma entertained his uncle and aunt to afternoon tea in the downstairs front room and which like Danny's bedroom overlooked the sea.
Sometime later, having exhausted all their news, with Tom and Matthew having promptly disappeared off upstairs in search of their young sons, Sybil had offered to show Mary over the house. Without waiting for her agreement - something which Mary was shortly to find out was a Branson family trait - Sybil had marched proudly ahead of her, as though, thought Mary, her youngest sister was the châtelaine of some grand property akin to Downton, rather than of a modest and, she conceded grudgingly, an admittedly attractive, small terraced house situated in a suburb here on the south side of Dublin.
Undaunted and unabashed, Sybil now conducted her eldest sister on a whirlwind tour of all the various rooms, pointing out certain pieces of furniture which they had bought, along with some of the improvements which they had made, most of which it transpired Tom had undertaken. Upstairs she paused briefly in front of a firmly closed door and from behind which four animated voices could be heard.
"And this, this is Danny's room".
With Mary following dutifully in her wake, without knocking, Sybil opened the door and breezed airily inside, to be confronted by the sight of Danny, Robert, Tom and Matthew all down on their knees on the bare boards of the floor, with Tom attending to some minor problem with one of Danny's little clockwork engines, while, totally absorbed in their task and with their backs to the door, Robert and Matthew were equally busily engaged in extending the length of line available on which to run the toy engine, tender and its half dozen tinplate coaches.
Initially, the entrance of the two women into what, on the face of it, seemed to be undeniably a male sanctum, seemed to pass almost unnoticed, until that was, Danny took it upon himself to explain something of the present proceedings.
"Da says there's a problem with the spring. My Da can fix anything" he explained to his aunt with evident pride.
"I'm sure he can". Mary smiled. On hearing her voice, Matthew and Robert now scrambled hastily to their feet.
"Hello, Mama!" Robert flushed. "I… we were…" He shot a pleading glance at his father.
"Sorry! We, er… well, as you can see," mumbled Matthew.
"Oh, don't mind me!" breezed Mary, then horrified when, taking her at her word, her two men folk promptly turned their backs on her and resumed their endeavours with the lengths of miniature railway track.
"We'll be outside then," said Sybil.
Response came there none.
"There that should do it, son," said Tom confidently.
"That's it, Uncle Matthew, we can then run it under my bed!" exclaimed Danny enthusiastically.
"We'll be outside then," repeated Sybil.
Still no response.
"These, Dan?" asked Robert picking up a pair of small coaches from off the floor and offering them to Danny.
"No, Rob, those belong with the other one". This from Danny.
"Where's the station to go?" asked Matthew holding up a colourful little building also made of tinplate.
"Over there by the chest of drawers, I think," offered Tom.
"In the garden, then," repeated Sybil crisply and with mounting exasperation.
Still no reply.
Sybil shook her head in utter disbelief.
"Mary, have you ever read The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells?" she asked loudly.
Her sister shook her head emphatically.
"No, I haven't. Why? Should I have?"
Sybil smiled.
"No, not really, no matter if you haven't but I'm sorely tempted to begin writing a sequel called The Invisible Woman. Honestly! Men!" exclaimed Sybil with mock indignation and shutting the door firmly behind her as she and Mary came out onto the narrow landing. "Anyway, garden next, I think!" she added cheerfully.
A short while later, beneath a cloudless sky, eventually having been joined outside in the garden by both their husbands and the three children, Mary found herself contemplating of all things, … a flower border, while Sybil explained with evident pride how Tom had turned an apparent wasteland into what they now saw before them: what Mary imagined must, in the suburbs of a city, pass for a garden and which to her eyes looked so insignificant in size as to hardly warrant the nomenclature.
"There's very little Tom can't turn his hand too!" explained Sybil proudly, linking her arm through her husband's. Tom grinned, leaned in for a kiss from his wife and then raised his eyes heavenwards. At their open display of affection, Mary smiled; reflecting ruefully at the same time that if asked to do so, no doubt Tom Branson would have no problem whatsoever in mounting an expedition to find Colonel Fawcett and his son missing for over two years now, lost somewhere in the dense jungles of South America.
"And I helped as well, didn't I, Ma?"
Sybil ruffled her son's dark hair.
"Yes, of course you did, my darling".
"I couldn't have done it without you, for sure!" Tom put his arm around his son's shoulders. Danny positively beamed with pride.
"And I help water them all every day, don't I, Da!" asked Saiorse with equal delight. She pointed over to where a brimming watering can stood sentinel beside a large wooden water butt.
"Yes darlin', you do!" Tom chuckled and hugged his daughter to him. Saiorse grinned. She loved her Da so very much. Unlike her cousin Robert who she disliked intensely, probably, although she had never stopped to ask herself why, on account of the fact that whenever he was around, he seemed to claim all of her adored brother, Danny's, undivided attention. And that was something which Saiorse could not, would not forgive and which she resented with a vengeance.
"Aunt Mary, please will you come and see my potatoes?" begged Danny.
"Dan's grown them all by himself, Mama!" explained Robert with something akin to awe.
"Daniel," she corrected. "Indeed?" Mary grimaced and then forced a strained smile. Potatoes? Honestly, whatever next?
In fact what came next was that and without waiting for his aunt's agreement, taking firm hold of her hand, young Danny had tugged her along a narrow brick path - laid apparently by Tom - to stand in front of what her nephew now proudly assured her was a row of potatoes.
"And those…" Danny delightedly indicated the adjoining row of plants with a broad sweep of his hand, "those, are my carrots! And over there, those are my peas!"
Mary dutifully tried her very best to look impressed; not that, apart from a collection of twigs placed for some mysterious purpose over one row the reason for which Danny had not vouchsafed to her, could she discern the slightest difference whatsoever between the three admittedly neatly ordered lines of small plants.
"Really, Daniel? Yes, very nice, indeed".
"And Da says if there are enough potatoes, I can take them into Dublin to sell on O'Connell Street".
"How delightful for you!" There really was little else which, in all honesty, Mary felt she could say.
And, it was as she continued to contemplate stolidly the three rows of green shoots with something which she hoped passed for feigned interest, that Mary found herself wondering what precisely it was about mud and soil that seemed to so fascinate her two sisters. After all, there was Edith forever down on her knees, scrambling about in the dirt either on the banks of the Nile in Egypt or somewhere in the sand dunes of distant Mesopotamia looking for broken pieces of pottery, while, here in Dublin, it was Sybil waxing lyrical about the flowers and vegetables she had planted in her pocket handkerchief sized garden.
Mary sighed heavily and with decided resignation. She simply could not understand the attraction of grubbing about in the dirt. However, on reflection, perhaps… perhaps she should be somewhat more charitably disposed and also very thankful for small mercies; after all, the results of some of Sybil's labours were, unlike Edith's, presumably, at least, edible and, besides, no member of Mary's immediate family had shown the slightest interest in digging and getting their hands dirty.
However, as things turned out, her confidence was both misplaced and premature. For, but a short while later, with Tom and Danny duly having inspected the Bentley and then with their farewells having been made, sitting on the rear seat of the motor en route back to the Shelbourne Hotel, where later that same evening Matthew and Mary were entertaining Tom and Sybil to dinner, young Robert had turned to his father and asked him politely if he might be permitted to have his own vegetable patch in the kitchen garden back at Downton.
"Of course! Absolutely! Splendid idea, old chap!" exclaimed Matthew.
Mary could not believe the evidence of her own ears, did her very best not to grimace, turned her head and looked out of the window of the Bentley at the passing streets of Dublin. While she loved him dearly, at this precise moment in time, it was her considered opinion that Tom Branson had a very great deal for which to answer.
Whereupon, Mary experienced a sudden nightmarish vision of, after they had returned home to Downton, her elder son gleefully presenting her at breakfast with an unwanted sack of potatoes and with Matthew then insisting that she help Robert sell them on a stall in the market down in the village. Mary winced and, convinced without doubt that before this day was over she would be experiencing one of her famous migraines, she pressed her fingers gingerly to her temples.
Dear God, whatever next?
Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin, Irish Free State, July 1927.
Across the road, beyond the railway line, the insistent ebb and flow of the incoming tide on the far side of the house was clearly audible, broken only by the whistle of an express train rattling at speed through the little station at Blackrock.
When he had approached her earlier, Tom had seen that Sybil had a leather bound photograph album open resting upon her knees.
"Reminiscing?" he asked with a grin and tapped the album which lay open at a series of photographs taken several years ago when they had travelled down to County Cork in the summer of 1924, in the aftermath of the ending of the Irish Civil War.
Sybil nodded. She now pointed to one of the sepia coloured photographs taken on her first camera, a Box Brownie; his Christmas present to her in December 1922 and with which she had been especially delighted.
"Do you remember..."
Author's Note:
"The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells was first published in 1897.
A General Election had been held in the Irish Free State in June 1927, leading to a hung Dáil and with Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera, entering the Dáil for the very first time.
Lieutenant Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett (1867 -1925?) was a British artillery officer, archaeologist and explorer. In 1925, he and his eldest son Jack vanished in the jungles of Brazil while searching for a lost city which Fawcett believed to be El Dorado. Despite several expeditions to try and find out what had become of Fawcett and his companions, to this day no trace of them has ever been found.