A/N: thank you so much for your warm welcome back you're awesome.
It's a proper job and he is handsomely paid. There are clean sheets every week, and a good meal twice a day. The splendour and excitement of London - pulling off parties and balls and tea's. Listening to them talk about art galleries and plays.
Always living through them in Yorkshire but one afternoon a week he can be part of it when they're in London. Windows full of perfectly made leather gloves, bookstores harbouring illicit literature, bakeries selling french pastries. There's excitement in the air.
The hum of the city around him makes it easier to be inside. He serves at dinner perfectly, pours glass after glass of expensive wine without spilling a drop. Lady Edith speaks about the Bloomsbury group and he knows how to get to that part of the city. Lady Mary comes home from a gruelling day of shopping with a new hat - which he has seen in a shop window when he was on his way to the National Gallery.
The constant buzzing of the city soothes him. He feels more himself. Less picked upon. Respected. Setting one foot on the train to Yorkshire already makes his stomach ache with instant homesickness. He is a Yorkshire lad, but his heart isn't in the Dales.
Back in Downton he feels cold and cramped. The rain never stops pouring. His room in the attic is frigid. The old goat bellows at him. He dreams of late night cabaret and listening to jazz in a dingy basement. He thinks about his fingers, greasy from the fish and chips he'd been eating out of a newspaper, wrapped around a glass of gin.
One day he overhears Lord Grantham talking to the old goat. What do we need an underbutler for?
Being sacked is constantly on his mind. He's been doing well, he'll be given excellent references and a handsome pay-off. Besides: he knows enough about many visitors to Downton that he'll probably never have to work again. Of course he'll have to leave his comfortable home, but he'll not miss it much.
He won't miss it much at all.