Chapter Nine
A Mother's Intuition
For most people, the waiting room of a railway station would not be the most likely of settings to choose as the place in which to divulge startling revelations of a highly personal nature, such as those which Lady Edith Crawley had just made known, both to her sisters and to her two brothers-in-law. And, had it not been for the fact that those other passengers now waiting patiently to board the Rome Express had chosen to stay outside on the platform, and so take advantage of the warm July sunshine, it is unlikely that Edith would have just told all of her immediate family here present what she had but a short time ago seen fit to impart to them.
With its faded travel posters, albeit in French, and apparently extolling the delights of places as diverse as Boulogne, Cayeux-sur-Mer, and le Touquet, along with its drab, dark painted wooden benches, the quayside salle d'attente here at Calais was much like any other comparable railway waiting room, even those back across the Channel in England.
Nevertheless, the salle d'attente of the Gare Maritime was also both light and airy and it was because of this, and with a distinct sense of shock, that Sybil now saw for the first time that whichever of them it had been and, on reflection, she thought it was Matthew, who had remarked upon meeting Edith on the quayside, as to how well she was looking, had merely been doing what was expected; making the usual, customary greeting, exchanging the normal pleasantries, observing the common courtesies, when meeting with a friend or relative whom one has not seen for some considerable time and seeing only skin deep and not seeing what lay beneath the surface, or, in fairness to darling Matthew, in this case, only seeing what Edith had allowed him to see, what she had wanted them all to see.
Last Christmas, as things turned out, Sybil had very little opportunity to spend much time with her elder sister, for, on Boxing Day, young Bobby had started running a high temperature, and thereafter had proceeded to go down with a heavy cold for much of what remained of the festive period. Sybil had spent a great deal of time upstairs with Bobby, causing even Tom, who was always just as concerned as she about the health and well being of their three children, to remark that she fussed too much; went on to say that neither he, nor anyone else for that matter, seemed to have seen much of Sybil in the last few days, adding that all Bobby had, was a bad cold, unpleasant enough for the little chap to be sure, but no more than that.
As Tom had always been, with their two eldest children when they too were ill, and to whom he was equally devoted, while Tom was more than happy to take it in turns with Sybil, in sitting with the little boy, loving him, trying to keep his spirits up by reading to him, and even helping him do a jigsaw if Bobby felt well enough to attempt it, aspirin, bed rest, keeping warm, and drinking plenty of hot lemon drinks was all that the young lad really needed, or so said Tom, causing Sybil to ask of him pithily, as she had done once before, just where precisely it was that Tom had studied medicine.
At that, and in the interests of keeping the peace, let alone little Bobby's welfare, which of course was what mattered most of all to them both, without further ado, Tom had quietly taken himself off to the desk Cora had so thoughtfully seen had been provided for him in one of the spare bedrooms. Once there, Tom had busied himself redrafting a piece he had been drafting on the ramifications of the Statute of Westminster and the likely effect its passing into law would have on the Irish Free State.
To be truthful though, but a short while after Tom had left their bedroom and when she herself had calmed down, part of Sybil realised that Tom spoke only the truth, but then, Sybil's third pregnancy had been particularly stressful, and Bobby, who, even when but a few days old, had looked so like darling Tom, and to whom, not that she had ever had, or would admit to having, a favourite, Sybil was nevertheless utterly devoted, had always seemed to succumb far more readily to childhood ailments than ever had either Danny or Saiorse.
Then, of course, there had come Edith's abrupt and wholly unanticipated moonlit flit from Downton. With Bobby at last recovering, and, given what Tom had said to her earlier, more to keep him company than for any other reason, Sybil had felt able to join the others for the shoot, not that either she or Tom took any interest in the proceedings whatsoever, but as a result of which, Sybil, like the rest of the family, had been away from the house when Edith had disappeared so suddenly and unexpectedly from Downton,
But now, sitting on the bench next to both Edith and young Max, here in the waiting room of the Gare Maritime, with the warm, strong sunlight of high summer streaming in through the large windows, Sybil realised that Matthew had been wrong. Of course, none of them were getting any younger; in fact, quite the reverse, but there were, thought Sybil, dark circles under Edith's eyes which had not been there before, and even the odd grey hairs at her temples. And, under the cursory veneer of glowing health, she now saw that Edith's skin was like parchment, stretched taut and thin over her cheekbones, a fact which was made so much more obvious by the colour now flooding across her face as she responded both angrily and defensively, to Mary's unsurprising annoyance at young Max's perceptive, if unwise, and implied criticism of his elder aunt, and which Mary saw as impertinence on the part of her young nephew.
There was, thought Sybil, as indeed Edith herself had intimated to them earlier, something else, that so far her elder sister had not yet seen fit to divulge, either to her or to Mary, and was, felt Sybil, the real key as to why it was Edith had been standing here on the quayside at Calais to greet them all as the Canterbury had hove into view and then docked at the steamer pier reserved for those intending to board the Rome Express; something which, Edith was, as Sybil had already surmised, extremely reluctant to impart, and which, had nothing at all to do with either the fact that she had given birth to an illegitimate child by her lover, or the rapidly unravelling political situation in post war Austria.
However, Mary's reaction to Edith's startling news, while predictable, would not, thought Sybil, help progress the matter in hand any further, in fact was extremely unlikely to do anything other than to result in a blazing row between her two older sisters, which would be of benefit to no-one, least of all Edith herself. But how best to try and pour oil on troubled waters? Mary had never been one to accept criticism, from any quarter, and certainly not from a young child; the fact that what young Max had said was undoubtedly true, only served to make matters worse, and, understandably, Edith would not take lightly Mary taking her young son to task for his forwardness.
"Why the impertinent little dev..." had begun Mary vehemently, but, to her credit, had stopped in mid sentence as she saw young Max clearly flinch, saw the little sandy haired boy instantly recoil, saw the naked fear upon his face, and then saw him snuggle protectively in against his mother's side. Edith, her eyes glittering, hugged Max tightly to her, guarding him with all the ferocity of a lioness protecting her infant cub from harm.
"Don't you dare Mary..." began Edith.
It was now that Sybil chose to do her level best to try and defuse an already stressful situation which was so perilously close to spiralling completely out of control.
"Darling, when... when you left Downton... so suddenly last Christmas, it was... it was because of Max, wasn't it?" she asked of Edith, interrupting gently.
Edith turned to Sybil, her surprise all too evident, etched clearly upon her face.
"Why yes" she said. "But how on earth did you..."
"Did I know?" asked Sybil. "Call it a mother's intuition, I suppose". Sybil smiled warmly at Edith, and then looked pointedly at Mary, urging her to desist.
"Blimey!" exclaimed Mary. "So, is that all it takes? A mother's intuition? Well, in case it has escaped your notice, both of you, I happen to be a mother too!"
Then, from outside, as if in confirmation of Mary's boldly stated assertion there came incontrovertible proof of the same, as the sound of the excited voices of her two younger children outside on the platform now drifted audibly in through the window of the salle d'attente.
"There, what did I tell you?" she said triumphantly.
"But not quite in the same sense as either of us, I think" said Edith softly.
"Why, whatever do you mean by that?"
"When was the last time you ever got up to see to any of your children when they were ill at night? Did you, when they were infants, ever once change a nappy?" asked Edith with a sudden ferocity.
At that, Mary blanched, forbore to mention that the one and only time she had ever tried to follow Sybil's lead and change young Robert's soiled nappy, that one time had been more than enough. Never again had she vowed. In any case, after all, that was what nanny was there for.
"Don't you..." she began.
"Mary, all Edith is saying is that you have others to attend to those sorts of things for you".
"Well so would you, if you hadn't run..."
"Off with the chauffeur? Oh, Mary...
"Now don't you start that "Oh Mary" nonsense!" snapped the countess of Grantham.
Sybil shook her head in disbelief.
"Mary! After all this time! After everything that's happened since then! To bring that up again! Don't you remember, when Papa died, his very last words went not to you, not to Edith, not even to me, but to Tom?"
"Yes, I remember. Of course I remember" said Mary softly, her voice now suddenly losing some of it harshness.
At the time, she had never said just how bitterly hurt she had been by the fact that as he lay dying, fighting for his very last breath, in that remote valley on the western edge of the estate, that her beloved father's last thoughts went not to her, his first born, but to Tom Branson, her admittedly much loved brother-in-law, the ex-chauffeur turned republican journalist, and deputy editor of the Irish Independent.
Well, thought Mary, with a fleeting remembrance of her and Tom's encounter at the foot of the grand staircase of the Shelbourne Hotel, in the aftermath of the bombing back in the summer of 1919, the mistake she had made then as to the identity of his employer, at least I now know the name of the bloody paper for which he works.
Author's Note:
The Statute of Westminster, which was passed into law in December 1931, established legislative equality between the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire (such as Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, and New Zealand) effectively, making these countries legislatively independent of Great Britain. The Free State used the provisions of the Act to begin loosening any remaining ties with the United Kingdom.