GETTING MARRIED

Chapter 16 The "Stag Party"

They drove to York as they would drive anywhere else, with Robert in the back and Carson in the front with the driver, and neither of them gave the arrangement any thought. Robert was bending convention by serving as his butler's best man and by having dinner with him, but these transgressions did not lead to a wholesale abandonment of the system. Carson remained ill at ease about the whole thing, but would have agreed that the outing was a distraction, if not necessarily as His Lordship had meant it.

As Mr. Stark threaded the car through the streets of York, both Robert and Carson keenly studied the city for signs of the recent unrest. The General Strike had ended three weeks earlier, but the massive disruption of the nation's transportation and service networks, occasioned by the application of the most formidable tool in organized labour's arsenal, could hardly be expected to have dissipated completely.* And yet they saw little evidence of the strike.

"Bolsheviks!" Robert had thundered at the breakfast table, reading about the strike in the papers. It was the first time that he was glad Tom had gone to America. A sympathetic word for the strikers might have led to blows in the dining room. Carson made the same single-word declaration over the same newspaper in the servants' hall and Daisy, with a warning look from Mrs. Patmore, had the good sense not to raise a voice in protest. But the revolutionary instrument had not led to revolution itself and, after the fact, the two men pointed proudly to the resiliency of the British constitution and the parliamentary system, which contrasted favourably to the rotten autocracies of Europe that had crumbled in the revolutions of 1917-19 at the war's end.

"Things appear to have quieted down," Robert remarked, looking around as they got out of the car.

"Order has been restored," Carson intoned, echoing Robert's conclusion but with a more heavy-handed interpretation.

They were dining in the restaurant of the Royal York Hotel, the best dining establishment in the city. Robert was known there and everyone from the doorman to the maître d' greeted him with the deference he still took for granted, although its automatic observance was no longer a given. Things were changing and not for the better.

Carson was caught betwixt and between on this. The hotel staff treated him with the respectful consideration accorded an associate of the Earl of Grantham and such he was from their perspective. But it took conscious effort on his part to abstain from the pedestrian niceties - taking His Lordship's hat, holding his chair for him at the table - that he performed unthinkingly on a daily basis at Downton Abbey. Navigating these unfamiliar currents impeded his enjoyment of the benefits as they extended to him.

Although their outing involved a violation of social rules, Robert had ceased to think about it. Transgressions were easier from the superior position. He wished Carson would let it go so that they could both enjoy themselves. Alcohol would help and, with that in mind, Robert ordered a bottle of Chateau Gruard Larose, confident that Carson would enjoy it. Among Robert's acquaintances, he knew few who had a better appreciation of wine than his own butler.

"Of course, I object to strikes," Robert said, "and a general strike, in particular. But one can't help thinking that the responsibility in this case lies more with the mine owners, than the mines. I blame Mr. Churchill and the Germans." He paused thoughtfully, and then added, "No, not the Germans, so much as the Americans for letting the Germans back into the international coal market. Plummeting prices and plummeting wages follow. What a surprise."**

They perused the menu for several minutes. Carson was not a stranger to fine dining. Although downstairs seldom saw the kind of meals regularly served in the dining room of Downton Abbey, there were exceptions. When Sir Anthony Strallan abandoned Lady Edith at the altar, the entire elaborate wedding meal had to be disposed of quickly and the downstairs staff did their duty in this, even as they sympathized with Lady Edith in her distress. The family's annual migration to London for the Season provided Carson with rare, but less emotionally fraught, opportunities to savour the culinary delights of that great city on his half-days. He liked to eat well, though he did not like eating alone. But there was no alternative, as no other member of staff could have afforded the luxury and the only person he might even have wanted to while away his leisure hours with was the one who would never have agreed. Mrs. Hughes had ever been frugal. Now he knew why. And now here he was in a very good restaurant and more uncomfortable than if he had been alone, because of the social incongruity of dining with His Lordship.

"His Majesty agrees with you," Carson said, returning to the subject of the strike. "Fancy King George saying 'Try living on their wages before you judge them.'"

Robert concurred. "I think it was a dig at Churchill. I cannot countenance Mr. Baldwin appointing him Chancellor of the Exchequer, not with his dodgy past. And then approving our return to the gold standard. I mean," Robert spoke earnestly, "I would very much like to turn the clock back to the summer before the war, too, but sometimes you just can't go back."

It was a remark almost as radical as the idea of a general strike and the two men stared at each other for a moment as though Robert had spoken blasphemously.

"Well. You know what I mean." Robert hastened to brush it off.

Carson moved to help him. "I believe Mr. Churchill's decision about the gold standard is widely viewed as ill-considered," he said circumspectly. "He was a curious choice for Chancellor. I just can't trust a man who keeps switching parties all over the place. Or," he added disparagingly, "anyone who has served under Mr. Lloyd George."***

Robert nodded vigorously. "Winston Churchill is even more unreliable than ever his father was. His star is waning. When this government goes, I'm sure it'll be the end of him."****

The political discussion and the arrival of the wine soothed Carson's sensibilities for a while. They talked desultorily of the Prince of Wales, but their conversation there was a little constricted. Robert thought the fellow a fop and Carson preferred the Duke of York, but neither wanted to express to each other their disenchantment with the heir to the throne for fear of coming across disloyal. Labour Party leader and former Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald was a more satisfying target. They both despised him, although nothing on the scale of their mutual contempt for Lloyd George. They also wrangled a bit over what had developed into the international question of the decade - the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles - but soon abandoned it as a topic that would only irritate them.

When the talk of politics lapsed, Carson's social disquiet returned. Robert welcomed a second bottle of wine, although he was mindful of Cora's admonition, delivered at they had dressed for dinner, not to get Carson inebriated. That being the case, he decided to approach Carson's unease more directly.

"Carson, you've got that look on your face that you get when something's not right with the dinner setting. Fix it so that we can get past it."

"It's not the dinner setting," Carson responded, although he did adjust two transposed forks and then stared fixedly at Robert's place until he also addressed the error before him. "It is the anomaly of eating with you, my lord. I am sorry for it, but I don't adapt easily."

That was an understatement. Robert forbore to point out that getting married was likely to have far more impact on Carson's life in terms of the transformations it required than a single dinner that crossed class lines. He turned in another direction.

"But it's not the first time we've shared a meal."

This caught Carson up short. "My lord?"

"You don't remember."

Carson said nothing. He had no idea what Robert was talking about.

Robert smiled. "One day when we were boys. I was just six, actually. I remember because it was just before I was to start school and the prospect of going away from home for the first time frightened the life out of me. Meanwhile you were banging around the stables, impatient to be getting back to the grammar school in Ripon, and the study of Greek and Latin and whatever else. I followed you into your cottage and your mother invited me for lunch."

Carson's jaw went slack with astonishment. He did not remember this.

"You don't remember, of course, because what did it mean to you? Nothing. It was so commonplace. But to me... Your mother gave us each a wedge of chicken pie and when she turned around, you picked up yours in your hand and started wolfing it down. I did the same. I'd never eaten in a cottage before. I didn't know - maybe that's how it was done there. And then your mother caught us at it and scolded us both, you in particular, naturally, for setting a bad example and putting on such a bad show in front of 'my lord.'" The memory had Robert laughing.

The prospect of having corrupted a youthful Robert Crawley horrified Carson less than the idea that he had once done something so uncouth.

Robert could see how Carson recoiled at the tale, but this did not put him off at all. "She made us take up our forks and eat the rest of it properly. And then she gave us a large slice of delicious apple pie apiece and ordered us to behave ourselves. And you...," Robert could hardly speak coherently now for the hilarity of the incident, "you ostentatiously cut your pie in half, managed to get one big chunk onto a fork, and then stuffed it into your mouth! I thought Mrs. Carson was going to box your ears for that, but she just burst out laughing! And you did, too, spewing little bits of pie everywhere!" Robert had to contain his mirth even now, the dining room of the Royal York hardly the appropriate place for such an outburst. Indeed, if he'd erupted into such an explosion of amusement even in his own dining room, his family might have looked askance. "I laughed so hard that I fell out of my chair!"

It wasn't exactly the usual sort of story told at a stag party, but if the effect of such tales was to embarrass or discomfit the groom, then it achieved its effect nonetheless. Carson could not have been more disapproving if Robert had related a risque anecdote to a room full of drunken witnesses.

"I don't remember that," Carson said stiffly, and so faintly that Robert hardly heard him.

"You were fourteen, Carson." Robert reminded him, shaking his head at the man's determination to hold himself to an exacting standard, even retroactively. But he was pleased to hear the note of censure in the other's voice. So it was possible to jar the butler from his deferential demeanour with the right provocation. "You were having a laugh with your mother," he added, charmed by this recollection of mother and son.

"I didn't get away from Nanny often," Robert mused, "but when I did, I always went to the kitchen or the stables. Mrs. Yardley would let me have a taste of anything that was going to be part of upstairs dinner, which was always a treat. Nanny was such a stickler for bland food for children. But I liked the stables even better. You were always there, with your father." His tone turned a little wistful.

"That's why I went there. To see my father. I envied you, you know, your easy access to your parents. One doesn't want them around all the time, of course, but... I knew, I think, from a very early age, that the way to my father's heart was through riding."

Carson appreciated the shift in the conversation away from his behaviour. He was more comfortable attending to His Lordship's moods that reliving his own past. "His Lordship was very proud of you, my lord," he said quickly. He meant loved you very much, but could not presume such a personal level.

Robert understood the message, being an able practitioner of indirect speech himself. "I know," he said simply. "But we never spent as much time together as I might have liked. That wasn't his way."

Thinking of how things were with his father led Robert to thoughts of his relationship with his own children, and to a subject closer to Carson's heart.

"Was Lady Mary on her best behaviour this afternoon?" Robert asked, just slightly mischievously.

Carson brightened. "Lady Mary is never otherwise," he intoned, not willing to admit that the eldest of the Crawley girls was anything less than perfect.

Robert smiled at Carson's resolute loyalty. "Now, we both know that isn't so, Carson."

"We reminisced a bit," Carson admitted cautiously, and despite himself a gentle smile edged its way onto his face. Did he ever think about Lady Mary with anything other than pride and affection?

Robert noticed and was pleased. He had always found it heart-warming that Carson had such an affection for Lady Mary. Playfully he tried to rattle it. "Did she recall the time she broke one of the crystal goblets while playing with it and you took responsibility for it?"

"It was my responsibility, my lord," Carson said immediately, loyal to Lady Mary's childhood transgressions even at this late date. "I had given her to believe that she might handle such items."

"She took your keys and opened the cupboard herself, without your permission or your supervision," Robert corrected him. "As she told us herself when she saw how displeased we were with you over its loss. A broken goblet was as nothing compared to Lady Mary's refusal to let you take responsibility for a misdeed of her own." He paused thoughtfully. "You helped her to become a better person, Carson. We were grateful."

Carson acknowledged His Lordship's remarks with a nod.

"I remember when you used to let her pick the wines for dinner. Ghastly results." Robert had been amused, and relieved, to learn the cause of the mismatched wines that Carson had produced on those occasions. He had suggested to Carson that he might find some discreet way to direct Miss Mary's choices, especially if the Dowager were coming to dinner.

"She enjoyed the wine cellar, my lord," Carson said modestly.

Robert gazed at him keenly. "She enjoyed all the time she spent with you. I don't know how you put up with a child underneath your feet so much. It would've driven me bats."

"Lady Mary was never an inconvenience, my lord."

The exchange prompted Robert to a reflection of how the two of them had dealt with Mary over the years. He remembered wanting, as a young father, to play with his little girls, and to indulge them, but refraining in the awareness that both his father and mother frowned upon such behaviour. In their world, children were brought in for an hour a day, were - hopefully - in good humour, and might at that point be petted and fawned upon - in moderation - before being sent back to the nursery. It was the way Robert had been brought up.

It was hard on Cora. They did things differently in America, apparently. But she had her own challenges in that household, living under the eye of her domineering mother-in-law and ever subject to the pressures of her assigned purpose, that of producing an heir.

Robert had adhered to his father's example, in conformity with the practices of his class and of the day, but against his own better judgment. He did not often swim against the tide. What would my father have said? he had asked, decades later, when Cora had observed him lying on the library floor, playing a board game with their oldest grandchild.

The traditional approach left him with a very fond and affectionate but distant relationship with baby Mary, and later Edith, and by the time his father died, the pattern was set, although he managed to loosen up a bit with Sybil, who came later. Everyone around him, from his mother, to his wife, to his daughters themselves, knew him to be a loving but arm's length Papa. And he played into it, telling himself that children did get underfoot and that he would be closer to them as they got older and became more companionable. And that did happen.

Even as he had seen this developing and felt himself powerless to stop it, he had observed something entirely different unfolding between Mary and Carson. Carson, who was obliged by his position to maintain a formal manner on every occasion in which he dealt directly with the family (and many where he did not), had yet been able to establish an informal and openly affectionate relationship with Mary. Robert didn't really know when it had begun, but became aware as Mary grew from baby to toddler to small child that she had a particular affinity for the butler. It wasn't that she ignored her parents. In that hour of the day when she appeared with her sisters for parental inspection, she was keen to soak up any attention they gave her and to elbow Edith out of the way. (Never Sybil. She was always gentle and indulgent in her own way with Sybil.) But she would, when Carson came in to make an announcement, run to him as well. He hardly unbent on such occasions, especially when Robert's father was still alive, but even a slight thaw in that glacial exterior was a major accomplishment and Mary seemed to understand an almost imperceptible nod from him on such occasions as a special acknowledgment.

Downstairs was different. When he was in his own element, Carson could afford to be much more open with Mary and he was. Robert learned this from Mary herself, from her tales of tea parties and card games, of long talks of far away places and of pictures in an atlas Carson apparently kept for her amusement. It was the butler who comforted her when her child's world came apart, or kissed and made better the scrapes on her hands and knees when she fell. And it was in Carson's arms she knew the uninhibited warmth of a father's love.

Robert and Cora only became overtly aware of the amount of time Mary spent downstairs in the butler's pantry when Nanny began to complain about losing Mary, by which time the child was almost five years old. Robert understood the nature of the developing relationship and approved of and accepted it. He had known the warm affection of a few servants in his own childhood - Mrs. Yardley, the cook, had indulged him, feeding him sweets and offering him refuge when he fell afoul of Nanny. Remembering those good times, he was glad that Mary had discovered this world, too.

Cora gradually came around. She had enjoyed a warmer and more direct relationship with her own parents, and was not quite as sanguine about a servant filling such a role. But she did appreciate that tensions already ran high between her older daughters, and that Edith was suffering for it. Alone with Nanny and later sharing the nursery with baby Sybil, Edith had more room to grow. And Mary did seem to benefit from the individual attention she received downstairs, although Cora thought it peculiar that her vibrant daughter should have been drawn to Carson, the very epitome of the staid servant.

To Robert this was less of a mystery. In some small, undisturbed cobweb corner of his mind, Robert knew that Carson sacrificed a great deal in personal terms for his life in service to the Earl of Grantham and to Downton Abbey. And while Robert did not challenge the way things were, he saw it as a good thing that the man might have this connection. The butler's position, celibate by convention, isolated by authority, allowed few outlets for personal feelings. Mary reaped the golden harvest of this situation in the emotional warmth and openness that Carson could show to no one else. Robert trusted the man with his home, and his family, and most especially his daughter. He did not begrudge or resent the fact that Carson provided her with the emotional parenting that he himself could not offer. Instead it pleased him that he might share his child in this way with a man he liked and respected, and whose well-being meant something more to him than just whether he was capable of performing his official duties. And hadn't Mary blossomed under this paternal partnership?

As they spoke of Lady Mary, Robert watched the tension that had gripped Carson for much of the evening ebb away. She had always been the middle ground between them, the only place where they might communicate simply as men.

It would have been inappropriate to go the whole evening before Carson's marriage without mentioning the bride.

"I envy you a little, marrying a woman with whom you are in love," Robert remarked reflectively as they lingered over their port. Immediately a look of consternation passed over Carson's face. Robert sighed. "Come on, Carson. We both know I wasn't in love with Her Ladyship when we married. She knows it. We were fortunate. It went that way soon thereafter. But for you it's there from the beginning."

Carson was not disturbed about the revelation about His Lordship, because he had known that. For six months during the tumultuous year in which Robert Crawley had courted Cora Levinson, Carson had served as valet to Viscount Grantham - as His Lordship had then been - as part of the apprenticeship framed by His Lordship's father and his long-time butler, Mr. Finch, to train Carson up as a butler. It had been their shared conviction that he ought to have exposure to all forms of the work he would eventually supervise.

Viscount Grantham was still in the army then and his uniforms were a protocol nightmare for a valet with no military experience. And then Robert Crawley had also been actively wife-hunting, in pursuit of a means to secure the often-precarious financial stability of the estate. This had meant a taxing social round and an endless parade of clothing changes. As Carson would acknowledge in later years, when the terror of a misplaced medal or incorrectly folded strap was long past, it had been an education.

It had also thrown the two young men together in circumstances that forged a personal bond. They'd known each other for years, of course, but had never played together, a consequence of the difference in age, rather than class. Carson had not served Robert Crawley directly again until the man succeeded to the title on the death of his father, the Sixth Earl, eight years later. It helped smooth the transition that they had worked together before and that, Carson only appreciated after the fact, had also been part of the late Earl's plan. They were an intense six months and Carson had become privy to many delicate details about His Lordship then, including the fact about his marriage to which Robert Crawley now alluded.

Carson preferred to pretend at he did not know, or at least did not remember, such details. Discretion was a byword with him. But in this moment he was more unsettled by His Lordship's reference to his own relationship and to the nature of his affections for Mrs. Hughes. They had never spoken of these things. How could His Lordship know how he felt?

If he had put the question directly, which he never would, Robert would have had an answer for him. The Carson he knew would not have challenged the bulwark of tradition for anything less than the most compelling of reasons. If it were only a matter of companionship, or some more prosaic need such as care in the face of infirmity, Robert was certain that Carson would have found a less revolutionary course to take in its resolution. That Carson had chosen marriage told Robert that this was nothing less than love. Even without this reasoning, Robert would have known. They were both Englishmen, reared to mastery over the overt expression of their feelings in a society that brooked no public displays of affection in word or deed. To communicate their feelings they had recourse to other means. In Carson's case, the eyes said it all.

"Getting married is much more complicated than I thought," Carson mused, his admission evidence that the alcohol had had some effect.

"Hah!" Robert laughed. "Carson. There's nothing more complicated, or more fraught with danger than a wedding. And I say that," he added, "as someone who's been on a battlefield. Women and emotions are involved, after all." Alcohol had made Robert more outspoken as well.

Before Christmas Eve, Carson might have demurred on this. Mrs. Hughes was a well-grounded woman with an exceptional level of common sense. She was not easily flustered. But he had caught glimpses in the past few months of a different side of her, a more emotional side. He was not deterred by this, only surprised. Indeed, it was gratifying to know that there were things about her he did not know, insights yet to be gained. He looked forward to discovering others.

"But things will get simpler," Robert went on. "Eventually." At Carson's alarmed look, Robert grinned. "Everything about getting married is complicated, Carson. And there are joys and tears in abundance until...well, everything settles down. Try not to take it too personally. It happens to everyone. Just try to be understanding in the first few days and everything will work itself out."

It was for both of them a reasonably early night. Robert felt he had done his duty as both a best man and an empathetic representative of married men in offering Carson some distraction and helping him to fill those agonizing hours on the eve of the great event. And he had exercised moderation, ensuring that neither he nor Carson had imbibed excessively. He could send his charge off to bed with his own conscience clear. He received with modesty Carson's thanks for his company and his solicitude.

"It was my pleasure," he assured Carson. "Now, try to get some sleep."

As he climbed the stairs to the men's quarters, realizing as he did so that this was the last time he would take this journey for such a purpose, Carson felt a contentment he knew he could not attribute to the wine he had consumed. His Lordship had set out to distract him on this evening when he was so anxious and impatient for things to come and he had been successful in doing so. Mrs. Hughes had never vanished from his mind, but his single-minded absorption with her had been dampened a little, if only for a little while.

Now, fewer than twelve hours remained before he would be married, and tomorrow night, by this time, he would be a very different man.

*A/N1. The General Strike lasted from May 4 to May 13, 1926. A 'general strike' is a large-scale labour action the purpose of which is to secure advances in labour relations by effectively shutting down a specific jurisdiction, whether at a city, provincial/state, or national level. In 1905, a gigantic general strike in Russia played a major role in the revolution that year. The 1926 strike in the U.K. was calmer than most and a failure for labour.

**A/N2. Winston Churchill was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1926. Under the 1924 Dawes Plan, an American-sponsored revision of some of the financial terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, economic concessions were made to Germany for the purposes of enabling that nation to pay war reparations. It was a widely-held view in governing circles in the 1920s, in England and the United States, that the Treaty of Versailles had punished Germany excessively, although American intervention was also motivated by a desire to get the European powers to pay their war loans. Not everyone agreed with these positions.

***A/N3. Winston Churchill did shift between political parties. He started as a Conservative, served under Liberal Prime Ministers Asquith and Lloyd George, and then returned to the Conservative fold in the mid-1920s. Some people thought ill of him for this. Churchill claimed it was the parties who shifted, not him.

****A/N4. What's a Downton Abbey episode without Robert making a totally wrong prediction about the future?

And, if you're still reading at this point, a postscript. I just wasn't sure which way I wanted to end the chapter.

Robert Gets it Wrong. Again.

"What did you and Carson talk about?"

Robert shrugged. "Politics mostly. The strike. Mr. Churchill's decision to put us back on the gold standard." He thought for a minute and then smiled. "And Mary, of course."

This was the kind of information that made Cora despair about her husband. It had never surprised her in the least that Robert relied so much on Carson. With whom else was such a mundane conversation possible?

"Did you give him the benefit of your experience?" she asked in a beguiling tone, pulling back the bedclothes so that he could climb in beside her.

Robert smiled his thanks for her consideration, but looked puzzled at her words. "What do you mean?"

An exasperated sound escaped Cora. "What do you think I mean, Robert? He's getting married tomorrow. For the first time. You're a married man. Did you talk about what a lot of fun he was about to have?" Even as she said this, Cora tried to suppress the mental images that her own words had conjured.

Her husband stared at her with a look mingling distaste and incredulity. "Of course not!" he said indignantly. "Really." He shook his head. "Cora," he began again, with a slightly patronizing tone, "Carson is a man with a past. He's had more experience than I ever did, and I was a soldier. It might have been a long time ago, but there it is."

Cora ignored his allusion to his own past. "Robert, we're talking about Carson."

"Yes, we are. And I think I have a better idea of the situation there than you do."

She shifted away from him so that she could turn out the light. "That would be a first," she murmured.