GETTING MARRIED

Chapter 5 The Best Man

The Pressing Issue

They'd gotten back to their easy companionship, almost as if that commotion over the nature of their marriage had never happened and they were both glad of it. If anything, there was a greater harmony between them these days, for having surmounted that obstacle. They knew each other's feelings now and were comfortable with their expectations. In fact, a sense of anticipation enveloped them both and, though they had not admitted it to each other, Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes were both counting the days.

And since their passionate kiss and embrace in the resolution of that issue between them, they had been warmer to each other, and not only when they were alone. They still observed a decorous distance, but they had stopped pretending there was nothing between them. Their greater public amity had led, at the dinner table, to a few discreet smiles between Anna and Mr. Bates, a few embarrassed giggles from the young maids who now came up from the village, and the occasional impatient eye-rolling from Mr. Barrow, who fervently wished the butler and the housekeeper would keep their affections to themselves.

In this new era of pre-marital felicity, they slipped more frequently in and out of each other's offices during the day, often to raise particular questions about their impending marriage, but sometimes just for the purpose of seeing one another. And they took tea together more regularly.

Mrs. Hughes took advantage of this ritual to take up a matter she felt could no longer be ignored.

"Have you asked him yet?" she asked abruptly.

His great eyes widened in incomprehension. "Who?"

"Don't be disingenuous with me, Mr. Carson," she said, in that reproving manner she had often turned on him, though it was tinged here with amusement. "You only have one thing to worry about. You know what I mean."

He hesitated, as if contemplating battle, and then surrendered. "No," he admitted. "I haven't."

"Well, you might want to get on that. His Lordship will have made other plans if you don't speak to him soon."

She was being ridiculous about it. His Lordship would not miss their wedding. "He hasn't made other plans."

"He's probably wondering why you haven't asked him already," she went on. "I know I am."

He sighed. "I'm sure he is not. And I'm not certain it's the right thing to do."

Mrs. Hughes tried to corral her exasperation. "No one, including His Lordship, could imagine you asking anyone else. For goodness sake, Mr. Carson, he's your best friend."

She knew that to be a provocative statement, no matter how accurate it might be. Predictably, the relaxed manner he had brought to her sitting room disappeared beneath a facade of frosty formality.

"His Lordship and I are not friends," he said emphatically. "He is the lord of the manor and I am his butler. It may come across as presumptuous for me to ask this of him. Courtesy might well oblige him to agree, but I'm just don't know that it's proper."

His reticence only made Mrs. Hughes shake her head in wonder. "I can't believe you don't know, one way or the other. I thought knowing these things was your whole purpose in life."

She was teasing him now and he really wasn't in the mood for it, not about something as serious as this. "As we know, Mrs. Hughes," he said, with an almost sarcastic inflection, "the circumstances are unprecedented, therefore there is no existing rule. And that being the case, I must rely on the spirit of convention rather than a hard and fast precedent, and I am not convinced it is reasonable."

He was determined to make a simple question complicated, and yet he needed to resolve the matter. Mrs. Hughes was a practical woman. If not His Lordship... "Well, who else, then? Mr. Bates?" She paused and then said mischievously, "Mr. Barrow?"

He glowered at her at that, and then looked away. It was not in his character to avoid difficult issues, but this one had him caught between a rock and hard place. He did not want to impose on His Lordship, but he did not want anyone else either.

A long moment of silence ensued.

"I think you'd better talk to His Lordship, Mr. Carson," she advised finally. "And the sooner the better. Promise me that you'll speak to him today. The worst thing that can happen is that he says 'no.' And then at least you'll have an answer to the question for future reference."

An Unlikely Intercessor

Mr. Carson and Mr. Bates did not often converse. It was surprising, really, how little need there was for interaction between them. This was due in part to the nature of the valet's job. While technically under the supervision of the butler as the senior staff member, the valet yet stood slightly apart from the day-to-day responsibilities that required the butler's attention. The distance between the two men also owed much to the fact that Mr. Bates knew his business and rarely had reason to consult with Mr. Carson on any aspect of his work. This had gone a long way to endearing him to the butler, as Mr. Carson liked a man who knew what he was about even more than he valued someone who did not trouble him unnecessarily.

Personality also contributed. Mr. Carson did not go out of his way to cultivate personal relationships with the staff, believing this to be unprofessional, as well as a complication in a situation where he might be called upon to reprimand or sack someone. Mrs. Hughes had long been the exception to Mr. Carson's aloofness. He technically held the authority to dismiss her, though he would hardly have done so on his own account. But it was more that she had never zealously observed the lines between them, treating him as a colleague rather than a superior. And she was, effectively, Mr. Carson's counterpart in her position of authority over the female staff.

Had Mr. Bates pressed the issue with Mr. Carson, as Mrs. Hughes had done, there might have been some level of camaraderie between the two men. But Bates's own disposition militated against it. He was a loner whose armor only Anna had pierced. So the two men were cordial, held each other in high regard, and generally had little to do with each other beyond the functional interactions of their work.

All of this gave Bates pause before he sought out the butler for a conversation about the upcoming wedding. In most circumstances, Bates would not even have considered an intervention. But his scruples were, in this instance, complicated by other loyalties. His Lordship had raised with his valet the issue of Mr. Carson's best man and had seemed a little chagrined about it. He hoped to be asked to fill that post and nothing had as yet come of it. His Lordship had not commissioned Bates to act in the matter, either directly or obliquely - there had been no "will no one prompt my errant butler?" so to speak. But Bates could not help but feel a slight responsibility. The situation broadened his understanding of the knights' reaction to Henry II's rhetorical plea with regard to Thomas a Becket, though the circumstances were, of course, very different.

Still, Bates might have declined to act were it not that he believed the situation much simpler than it was perceived by either of the involved parties. The problem, as he saw it, was the respective social stations of His Lordship and Mr. Carson. In deference to His Lordship's status, Mr. Carson could not ask such a favour. His Lordship, in his turn, could not make even delicate inquiries without sounding like he was forcing the issue.

Bates knew what His Lordship wanted and was fairly confident Mr. Carson wanted the same thing. But neither could reasonably act, bound as they were by the strictures of the system to which they both so faithfully adhered in theory, if not always in practice. They needed a bridge and the valet felt he could perform this service.

And so, knowing already where His Lordship stood, he took the matter to Mr. Carson.

"Mr. Bates." Carson knew how rare it was to find the valet at his door, but was not unhappy to see him there. Of all the members of staff - apart from Mrs. Hughes - Bates's appearance was the least likely to mean a problem. "Come in."

Bates closed the door behind him and took the seat offered. Mr. Carson had a decanter of sherry and two glasses at the ready - no doubt to share later with Mrs. Hughes. He did not offer this or any other drink to the valet, whom he knew to refrain from alcohol except on the rarest of occasions.

"How may I help you, Mr. Bates?"

Bates considered. "I'm on a bit of a mission, Mr. Carson." The valet had thought this a fairly benign opening and was puzzled to see Mr. Carson pale a little.

Carson could not imagine the direction this conversation might take, but the last time he'd been confronted with someone on a mission - Mrs. Patmore voicing Mrs. Hughes's concerns regarding marital intimacy - it had turned out to be the most uncomfortable conversation of his life. And yet...Mr. Bates seemed an unlikely source of such discord.

"Go on," he said cautiously.

Bates forged ahead. "I'm no good at subterfuge, Mr. Carson. I want to be blunt." Unlike Mrs. Patmore in that fateful conversation, Bates was not at all unsettled by the subject matter he was here to address. He only apprehended that Mr. Carson might find it so, if slightly.

"You are causing me some alarm," Mr. Carson said, his even tone belying his suddenly palpitating heart.

"There is no cause for that, I can assure you," Bates said easily. "I only have a question about the wedding, Mr. Carson, and it is a simple one. Have you chosen a best man?"

This query both relieved Mr. Carson and created a quandary for him. He wanted to dismiss it as something he had not yet gotten around to thinking about, but to say so would have been a lie, and he did not lie easily. Or well. And it had been preying on his mind, as Mrs. Hughes had recognized, and despite her urgings he had made no progress. He did not know how to approach it. Hearing it boldly put from Mr. Bates heightened his unease. He decided to try a diversion while attempting to discern why Mr. Bates was asking this.

"I don't know that I need a best man," he said carefully.

Recognizing an evasion when he saw one, Bates smiled mildly. "Oh, I think you do."

"You didn't have one," Carson said, almost a little belligerently.

"No," Bates said agreeably, "I did not. But Anna and I had a Registry Office wedding, Mr. Carson. You're having the church and all. The family will be there, and half the village as well, with the other half waiting outside to pelt you with rice. I'm afraid you have embraced the formalities and must conform to them."

Carson's reflex response to any direction about his private life from anyone other than Mrs. Hughes - and on occasion her as well - was blustering irritation. But he didn't even attempt it here, because whatever Mr. Bates's motivations, what he had said was true. Carson sighed. "Of course, you're right." It was the proper way to do things and no one was more committed to doing things properly than he.

"You've not chosen one yet, then" Bates surmised.

It was a simple enough question, but not for Carson. "Not...exactly," he said.

Although this was hardly a clear response, it told Bates that what he suspected was true. "Perhaps I might be of assistance, Mr. Carson."

Agitated though he was about the subject itself, a different concern descended upon Carson at these words. Was Bates suggesting...? Was he volunteering?

Before he could voice this apprehension, or even begin to try to formulate a response to it, the valet stepped in again. "I'm offering my help in resolving your dilemma, Mr. Carson, not proposing my candidacy. Not, that is, unless you want me to serve. But I think you've got someone else in mind." He paused, but Mr. Carson, though slightly relieved, said nothing.

Bates saw that he was going to have to lead the butler into it. "Forget everything else for a moment, Mr. Carson, and tell who you want to be your best man."

Although they were not friends, nor even close associates, Carson was confident that he could trust the valet. "It is not a matter of who I would like, Mr. Bates," he said quietly, "but of what is appropriate."

Bates waited. He appreciated Mr. Carson's predicament. The regulations that prohibited fraternization between officers and men in the army were not unlike those that governed the relationships between a lord and his servants. But Bates knew from his own interaction with His Lordship that the man was not as inflexible in his domestic relations as he would have been in the equivalent military situation. His Lordship had noted with satisfaction on more than one occasion that he and Bates had transcended "the great divide." To Bates's way of thinking, Lord Grantham was, if anything, even closer to his butler. It was only that neither His Lordship nor Mr. Carson could acknowledge in words the relationship they had in practice.

Carson sighed and leaned back in his chair. "If I'm honest with myself, Mr. Bates, and if I could ignore all the prevailing rules and habits that have regulated my life, my choice - indeed, the only person I would want in such a capacity - would be...Lord Grantham." It was a relief to admit this, although it hardly solved the problem. "But I cannot impose on him in this way. If I ask, His Lordship, in politeness, will feel he must accept. And I do not want His Lordship to feel obliged to...lower himself...for that reason."

Nothing Mr. Carson said surprised Bates. He understood the regard the butler had for His Lordship because he shared it. He could not characterize, as Mr. Carson did, His Lordship's acceptance of the role as 'lowering himself,' but he appreciated the butler's argument nonetheless. Still, he also knew better. "Ask him, Mr. Carson," Bates said. "He wants you to ask him."

Carson looked up sharply. "Are you acting on his behalf, Mr. Bates?" He was unhappy with the idea of yet another intermediary.

"I am not, Mr. Carson," Bates said firmly. "His Lordship made his views on the subject clear, but in a passing comment. He has not enlisted my services in this matter. I undertook this on my own initiative." He got to his feet. "I know of what I speak, Mr. Carson. Ask him."

Bates left the office door ajar as he had found it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a contemplative look on Mr. Carson's face. Satisfied, Bates moved toward the servants' hall in search of Anna. He had done what he could to facilitate the navigation of social barriers. Now it was up to Mr. Carson to cross the bridge Bates had built for him.

The Best Man

Robert knew nothing of Bates's attempted intervention, nor did he appreciate Carson's internal agitation on the same issue. He himself was becoming increasingly resigned to waiting the situation out, as Cora had advised, although patience was not his strongest suit. Left alone with his brandy when the ladies withdrew to the drawing room after dinner, he pondered the unsatisfactory reality of being the only male member of the family. He was about to take his drink in to join the rest of them, desiring more company than his own, when Carson returned unexpectedly. He came into the room, saw that Robert was on his feet and moving toward the door, and froze, almost as though he had forgotten what he had come in for.

"You seem distracted, Carson."

Although Robert had spoken mildly, Carson responded as though he had received a sharp reprimand, for it was his job to be paying attention at all times. And his mind was occupied elsewhere. "I beg your pardon, my lord," he said.

Robert waved away the other's contrition. "You're getting married, Carson," he said gently. "If you weren't distracted, I would fear you had ceased to breathe. Is there...," he paused meaningfully, "...anything in particular on your mind?"

"No. Not really." Carson did not know why he felt the need for dissimulation. Perhaps it was the natural impulse to avoid burdening His Lordship with his own problems. He sighed. Now he was even lying to himself. Alone with His Lordship, he had the opportunity to broach the subject that troubled him and he still shied away from it. "It doesn't seem that men have much to do with weddings," he said instead.

This evoked an understanding guffaw from Robert. "No, well, they don't. But...are you all prepared? Any task you have left to complete?"

Mrs. Hughes would tell him that he should just come right out with it, but he could not. Still, His Lordship had given him an opening of sorts. "Ah,...yes, one or two things."

"Anything that I might help you with?"

Well. That was the thing, wasn't it? But Carson had the most finely developed sense of place in the house, and although barricades had fallen thick and fast ever since The War, he had embraced it almost as part of his job description to resist further concessions. And yet...

If he were not so convinced that he should be Carson's best man and, indeed, that Carson wanted him to be, Robert might have been more patient. He understood the dance they were engaged in, but was exasperated by it, too. He wondered, in passing, how many years it had taken Carson to cross the barriers involved in asking Mrs. Hughes to marry him. He decided to try being more direct. "If you're having trouble with some decisions, a best man could help. Have you chosen someone?"

Carson had not anticipated this turn. "I've not quite focused on the question, my lord." Now he spewing untruths with reckless abandon.

"Someone downstairs?" Robert went on. "It ought to be someone you can rely on, someone with whom you feel comfortable."

"I'm not really close to anyone downstairs," Carson said slowly, trying to make his way around to the blunt question.

Robert had exhausted his capacity for dissembling. "Upstairs, then?"

Their eyes met. They had known each too long not to know what was going on in the other's mind. Carson yielded.

"My lord," Carson began, "I do not wish to presume..."

"Just be frank, Carson."

Could it be that simple? The butler cleared his throat. "I would be honoured, my lord, if you would consent to be my best man."

"I would be honoured, Carson," Robert declared, smiling broadly. In a flash his impatience with Carson's dogged commitment to propriety vanished. "And," he added, "I would have been disappointed if you hadn't asked me."

"Really, my lord?"

Carson looked genuinely astonished and Robert had to wonder at the man's obtuseness. "Of course! Who else is there? For God's sake, Carson, you've known me all my life. You held the pony's head the first time I climbed into a saddle. You wept with me at my father's grave." This spoke rather more of Robert's attachment to Carson than Carson's to Robert, but did not mean that the corollary could not be true.

It was true, and their long history together was, of course, why Carson could not imagine anyone but Lord Grantham as his best man, however socially incongruous it might seem. His last comment diverted Carson. "I was very lucky to have had His Lordship's favour," he said, referring to the Sixth Earl of Grantham.

"It wasn't luck, Carson. My father was a discerning judge of character. He wanted us to share the challenges of running Downton. And we have worked together in that mission for a quarter of a century. No one else loves Downton as we do. Honestly, man, to think that you might have chosen someone else." Robert just shook his head.

Carson felt it necessary to make some contribution to this moderately emotional exchange. "I would have had no one, rather than choose someone else, my lord," he said.

"Well, I'm delighted to be your best man, Carson," Robert went on, much relieved that this business of communicating at a personal level was behind them. "But you'll have to tell Lady Mary. I think she may have imagined, somehow, that she might stand up with you."

For a moment, Carson seemed concerned. And then the tension eased. "I think that is a delicate task better entrusted to a best man, my lord," he said, quite deliberately.

Robert thought to protest and then surrendered. "All right," he said in grim resolution. "But I hope you know I would only do this for you."