Chapter Two

December 1962

"Ugh."

The bed moved beneath her, her husband - long and broad - rocking the antique frame that cocooned them in what little warmth remained of their slumber. Sybbie, her eyes still closed and the blankets pulled tightly to her nose, grinned at his discomfort, knowing all too well the three things Paul would complain about first: the cold, the bed, the formality of breakfast.

"It's freezing."

Sybbie moved the duvet, in a sort of agreement, and curled her fingers more tightly around the green fabric. "Yes," she yawned in return, and then nestled her shoulder down more deeply into the mattress. "It's winter."

"Ugh."

"And …" another yawn, "it's quite an old house, Paul." She shifted her weight more on her side, pulling the blankets up further still, marking with some amusement the long sigh that her husband emitted in the curtained darkness of the room.

"As you remind me every year."

"As I remind you every year," she echoed, smirking in spite of her tiredness.

She could hear him grumble, rustling over her shoulder, moving blankets that allowed small whispers of cold air at her feet.

"All the same, they could use some space heaters. Or…" more rustling, more tugging at the heavy blankets, " … modern central heating."

She laughed openly at that, the idea of the mechanic hum of central heating warming the centuries old estate's 300 rooms, her aunt Mary writing the check with a flourish and grin. "Indeed."

"...an electric blanket would've been useful as well. I -"

Sybbie shook her head against the feather pillow, rolling her eyes awake. "- Paul. Paul, darling. Just go and put on your jumper."

"And sleep in it?"

She felt no need to respond, not to this man who knew so much better than he let on. How many years had they been doing this, coming back to Downton for Christmas and New Years, and how many years had he complained of the cold? Much too many to count, now. Fifteen? Sixteen? Blaming his warm bloodedness, she yanked the covers away from him and nearly immediately felt his weight leave the bed. She listened as he shuffled quickly toward the chair near the window and heard as he grumbled, yet again, his complaints.

"I don't want to sleep in my sweater. I shouldn't have to sleep in a woolen sweater, Syb."

There was a pause, a muffling of his voice as he pulled on the offending garment.

"The bed's uncomfortable enough. Scratchy and hard. And creaky, too. Crickets chirping every time I roll over. "

Eventually, however, Paul's grumbles faded away, the sounds of his movements in the room overtaking the annual complaint he seemed to express at every wintry visit. The soft noise, instead, of slippers being shuffled about, a watch being picked up from the bedside table, the deep rustle of the heavy curtain being pulled open for a peek of the sunrise, filled the room instead. And with it, the glow of the light warmed Sybbie's lids.

And it lingered.

"Hmm." Sybbie scrunched her face, pulling the blanket over her eyes. "Paul -"

"Your grandfather..." he was quiet after he said it, and motionless she could tell, as she exhaled softly, knowing what her husband saw. She could clearly picture the scene, the same scene she'd witnessed for sixteen years, every morning … every morning. The steady gait of her elderly grandfather along the gravel path, his hat pulled down, his collar flipped up at the back, his cane falling in a slow rhythm against the earth … like a heartbeat.

Sybbie turned over, then, and opened her eyes. The morning light poured over Paul's sandy features, his fingers holding back the curtain, his green eyes still peering at the figure he saw below.

"He's going to see Granny," she said to the room, both she and Paul knowing full well that was indeed what Donk was doing.

All the same, Paul, quiet and unmoving, nodded at her small voice.

"Yeah," he said with a small smile. "Just before breakfast. Like always."

The white breast of the horse always fascinated her. Even as a girl.

Sybbie stared up at the lines of the muscles, at the prancing legs, the rounded knees, and squinted her eyes, tracing again and again the curves of the giant portrait she'd memorized in this room, and smiling at the warm familiarity of it all.

No, Carson was not standing to attention to the side, and no Mrs Patmore's kedgeree was not steaming beneath the fresh floral arrangement brought in just hours before, but the same dishes were used, and the same chairs, the same silver coffee kettle and the same porcelain creamer with the small pink roses painted on the side. Turning from the buffet, Sybbie realized, the only thing that had really changed were the faces around her - some older, some new … some absent from the place they resided in her memory.

She smiled at them all, though, as she approached the table with her plate. At George and Grace, Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry, at Dad, at the young ones who had been allowed to eat breakfast downstairs, her cousin reminding his youngest that it was indeed impolite to balance a spoon on one's nose at the table. Sybbie watched as Rory frowned, dropping his spoon to the cloth with a small thud, egg falling away. Uncle Henry's wrinkled wink, however, produced a small grin and Sybbie smiled as that end of the table, her sons included, laughed and squirmed happily in their seats.

The place which remained empty was beside the very head of the table - beside Donk. Sybbie looked at the back of him as she came forward, at the shine in the white of his downy hair, the top thin, but a few wisps of stubborn curls remaining. The width of his shoulders had thinned with time as well, and his very tall, very straight back had now a very slight curve, as if he were, at any moment, going to announce his departure and make to stand. But it seemed that was beginning to grow more difficult for him as well. Even from behind him, she noticed the aged tremble of his still-large hands, the cream serviette not flowing as quickly nor as fluidly to his lap as it may have even the year before, the newspaper still folded neatly beside a plate that she was not sure he made himself. She settled herself neatly into the chair beside her grandfather, her father buttering his toast to her right, Aunt Mary sipping her tea quietly opposite. She felt home again, here, amongst the people who had raised her. These people, those she leaned on and looked to, they were her home really, all lovingly enveloped in the great, cold house they shared for so many years.

Sybbie looked into her plate and chose her fork, piercing a small tomato with its prongs and then at the tomato's weight, letting her wrist fall limp again. In her periphery she could see as Donk peered upward at his family over the rim of his unsteady cup. His eyes blinked over them all, the dozen people who gathered before him, and then down again into his coffee.

"Did you sleep well?"

Sybbie smiled and turned to her father, nodding. Then, committing to the sliced tomato, she pulled it between her teeth.

"Mmm," she answered, and chewed; her father's eyes crinkled with his grin. "And you?" She swallowed and lifted her chin toward him. "Have you settled in properly again?"

Tom nodded back at her, his smile changing from one of cordiality to one of unsaid words, the subject they spoke of still rather sore … still rather not something Sybbie was comfortable discussing. But of course, she knew they must. For the fact was, Donk was growing much older, and there was only so much Uncle Henry could do when George and Grace were in London. After all, Henry was growing older as well. And Dad for that matter.

Sybbie looked down at her own hand, the heel of her palm on the edge of the table, the silver fork she held glinting, and she sighed.

They were all growing older.

"But he's doing well," she heard herself whisper against her better judgment, her eyes flicking toward her grandfather and watching him a moment as he slowly cut his food upon his plate. His thick brow furrowed, his round chin moving slightly as he worked, he suddenly looked his age, and Sybbie knew what an age that was. She looked back to her father. "He is doing well, isn't he? He's healthy."

"He is healthy, love. But … " Her father held her gaze, his voice soft and tentative. His lips parted to say something more, but he did not. Not right away. She watched as he exhaled, his eyes going to Robert, and then back to her, as if he wanted to be sure of something. And when he was, he spoke again, the words barely moving at all. "When the heart is ready, Sybbie, the body will follow."

"No, Dad." Sybbie pressed her lips together, averting her eyes from her father's soft gaze. She picked up her knife in order to distract herself from the heaviness that had settled between her ribs, but she was no longer hungry. She looked to Aunt Mary across from her, her aunt's only granddaughter explaining something to her with delightfully alive gesticulations, her pale eyes shining in the sunlight that danced across her face

"- and I've put them on the piano in the drawing room. Shirley said she'd let the others know not to bother the box there until the people from the paper arrive."

Sybbie brought her gaze down to her eggs. "Donk's fine," she lied to no one in particular, for no one listened save for her father. And he knew the truth. "He's the picture of health for his age," she cut into the center of the yolk, the yellow seeping across her plate. "And his heart isn't ready. Not when he has all of us."

"But he doesn't have her. He's tired of not having her."

She let her fork fall with a clank. "The paper?"

The others at the table turned to Sybbie at her curt interruption, Grace's fork pausing before her mouth, Paul's coffee remaining unswallowed for a moment longer than natural. Aunt Mary, though, nodded at Sybbie, letting her cup fall delicately into her saucer, the only sign of her surprise was her still-dark brow rising for a fraction of a moment.

"Yes," she answered. "They've decided to run a story of the estate preceding the opening. A way to gain interest."

"But it did well in June, didn't it?" Sybbie shifted her gaze from her aunt to her cousin's daughter, and then back again. "That's what drove the final decision to open it permanently, that the house did so well. Wasn't it?"

"Well, that is, that success partly drove the decision, contrary to what they'll tell you."

Sybbie looked at George at the far end of the table that was cluttered with small boys. His blue eyes twinkled as they always did when he knew he was right, which, Sybbie admitted, was far more often than the rest of them. She watched him narrow his gaze toward their grandfather and then nod.

"Mama and Donk are the captains of this ship, steering it as they like. I'm merely the first mate, aren't I, Donk? My opinions do not fill the sails."

"That isn't true." Aunt Mary took a sip of her coffee. "Honestly. Between you and Caroline, Henry and I are bossed no end."

George rolled his eyes.

"And for that matter, Papa agrees with me, don't you?" Mary turned to Donk, then, catching his attention in the form of his dabbing his lips with his napkin. He lifted his brows as he worked. "It is a very safe investment for the house, George. It needs repairs and if this is the way to ensure that it will be around for generations to come, then I daresay it is worth it."

"I daresay it's mad."

Quiet.

Everyone looked to Donk, watched him as he shakily laid his napkin upon the table and as he pushed his chair out from behind him; Mary's granddaughter, Coco, jumped from her chair to help him.

"What?" Sybbie could hear the bewilderment in Aunt Mary's voice. "Papa, only three days ago you were so terribly pleased with it all."

Sybbie watched the way he patted the serviette in its place, and as he picked up the paper he hadn't yet read, all very slowly, though, a movement taking its time in the space of things, allowing it to be done correctly and with precision. "That was three days ago," he answered evenly. "And today is today."

"Oh, Papa -"

He began to move through, waving Coco away from him as he made his way across the rug to the door. He didn't turn back as he mumbled under his breath, Sybbie catching the words "private" and "intrusion" among the trenchant grumbling.

When he was gone, the dining room remained quiet, only Aunt Mary sighing into her cup, the children around Uncle Henry and George even subdued. Paul whispered Sybbie's name, but she ignored it, and instead looked to where Donk had left them, his soft, but angry words, reverberating in her head.

Coco seemed to hear Sybbie's silent question, and, still standing near Donk's empty chair, she turned toward her, the long dark curl of her ponytail bouncing slightly, her blue eyes a shade darker than before, the excitement in them quieter, nearly snuffed out completely.

"He doesn't want us to open her room." She exhaled. "He doesn't want the public seeing it."

Sybbie knitted her brow. "Whose room?"

"Granny's."

George's voice, though quiet, fell hard on her chest, the heaviness that was there before returning with the terrible sounds of her father's words: When the heart is ready, the body will follow.

The blue was the same as she remembered. Exactly the same. The golden curtains drawn, the cool midmorning light shining in on the white of the window seats, she could almost see Granny sitting there, her ankles crossed, a book open upon her lap, smiling up at her and extending her hand.

But she wasn't there. No one was. Boxes, and little piles of papers, and a small stack of what seemed to be letters still in envelopes sat in that spot instead, little items that Granny had touched, had saved, lying still where she had sat, where Sybbie could still feel her soft presence, the light jasmine scent, the gentle perfume of roses.

Behind her, her family worked. Grace lifted up a book and squinted at an inscription inside the cover before adding it to the pile upon the bed.

The bed was only a mattress now. No golden duvet.

Coco sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the bed where a small settee used to be. She flipped through old photographs, pulling from a small trunk and settling them in piles that made no sense to Sybbie. Aunt Mary, perched on the small stool of the vanity and a tiny pair of spectacles perched likewise at the end of her nose, carefully went through a glass jewelry box, a larger safe by her feet.

Sybbie watched as a long string of pearls was pulled from the enclosure, long, so very long, the luster of them shining in the winter light, and a memory of them came to her suddenly, unbidden. It was an odd memory, a sort of dream-like memory of bunting and glasses of punch and speeches. Of people laughing. And applauding. It was a memory of Donk picking her up and kissing her - of Granny taking her from Donk and holding her close, swaying with her.

Granny's voice was harder to remember now, the way she spoke was nearly gone from memory, but the words she had said - the "You've come back, Sybbie" - louder and clearer than anything else. And the feeling of the pearls pressed between them. She remembered that. The pearls. She could feel them, even now, against her stockinged knee, through the coat she wore. She could feel them.

And she saw them as Aunt Mary laid them to rest inside the velvet-lined safe.

"And Coco, you will look after every item you're collecting for the article. You are to keep them somewhere safe…"

George was here now, and Sybbie took in a breath and turned to him. His hair, her milk and honey cousin, was beginning to gray.

"I will, Daddy."

"I mean it, Cor. These things cannot be replaced. Lord knows Donk is upset enough as it is."

Aunt Mary rolled her eyes, dropping the bracelet she held to her lap. "Enough of that. Have you called on Jack? Is he coming to help move the trunks down?"

"He is," George glanced at his watch, and then back again at his mother. "He said Anna was eager to come and see the room, as well. They'll drive over after luncheon."

"Oh, good!" Aunt Mary grinned happily and stood to leave, letting the bracelet fall now back into the glass jewelry box, the diamonds shimmering in the light. "Well, I'm going down. Must be sure when your aunt Edith is coming. Let's go, George."

She took the glasses from her nose, and she folded them neatly in her hand, holding them close. She made to leave, her cashmere cardigan brushing lightly against Sybbie's shoulder and making her smile. The Formidable Lady Mary, as always - never really moving aside for anyone else.

"Oh." Aunt Mary turned and pointed with her glasses toward a golden frame, its portrait covered with a white sheet. "Show Sybbie, won't you?" Mary caught Sybbie's gaze and smiled again, warmly. And then, with a turn and George at her heel, left.

Sybbie furrowed her brow slightly, and frowned in curiosity. "What it is?"

Coco was quick to stand, her eyes bright as they had been at breakfast, her smile playful and delightful. She brushed off her black capri trousers as she spoke, her ponytail bouncing against her green sweater. "Oh, wait until you see, Cousin Sybbie. Daddy and Uncle Tom found it stashed away in the office upstairs - the one with the large shelves of all the leather-bound ledgers." Here Coco pulled away the sheet, and behind it was a girl - a girl sketched there, pencil strokes, dark and light, who could not have been very much older than Coco herself. "It was between two shelves of ledgers from the 1890s."

Sybbie stepped closer and peered down at it; the young woman drawn there sat to the side, her chin pulled subtly toward the artist. Her long neck was bare, the chiffon-like fabric, all drawn in light strokes, fell away from her shoulders; the smile was very soft and only slightly crooked. Sybbie drew her eyes across the tiny curve of her nose, the straight line of her jaw, up to the light shading of the eyes, barely a pencil's touch, leaving them pale and piercing. But kind.

"Cora hated that."

The group of women in the room turned to the door, Donk's voice, though slightly shaky, strong enough to startle them. He walked into the room, speaking as he came inside.

"She had Carson take it down half a dozen times. Though I believe she hid it herself."

Coco laughed. "But why?"

Donk settled into a creamy chair near the window, resting his wrinkled hands upon the arms of it and sighing. "She thought it unlike her."

"Is it unlike her?"

Coco turned back to the portrait, studying it as it rest upon the floor, leaned against the fireplace. Sybbie saw her turn, but she did not. Sybbie's eyes remained on her grandfather, at the long, silent exhale his thinned shoulders heaved, at the way his glassy eyes, like a clouded winter sky, stared at the portrait from a distance, and the solemn shake of his head.

"No. It isn't unlike her."

Grace was quiet by the bed, and still. Sybbie, too, remained still and silent watching with an ache somewhere inside of her chest as Coco nearly bounced toward the little piles of photos she had stacked all around her, picking up a collection and bringing them with glee to her great-grandfather.

Donk removed a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, his hands shaking as he placed them unsteadily on his nose. He blinked down at the photographs that Coco shoved into his hands, angling his round chin backwards, his brows rising at he studied the faces of years and years ago.

"I wasn't sure who they were, Donk. This one here. And this fellow." She pointed to relatives that Sybbie could not see from this distance, and she heard Grace began to move behind her, returning to her sorting. "I thought that maybe this was Granny Violet -"

"No. That is Aunt Roberta. My cousin, Susan. The man there is … well, it is Shrimpie."

Coco pulled the photo from him, and pointed to another. "Then, who is this here?"

Sybbie watched Donk's eyes narrow for a moment, his eyes scanning the image captured in his hands. "I - well … it's James. I believe … I'm not -"

His voice shook, as his hands had done, and Sybbie felt the ache move into something different, something more like panic, something more like eagerness to go to him and hold him to her as he had done for her so many times before.

"Mum, should we keep this one out, then? Or perhaps no?"

"I'm not sure. Sybbie -"

But Coco had moved that photo away as well, holding it against the one of Shrimpie, collecting people in her left hand who she'd never met, who she'd never know, who didn't matter to the article.

Who didn't matter now.

"And these?"

Sybbie watched Donk's eyes blink again, harder, his mouth turned down, shaking the deeper the corners of it dipped. His brow thick and furrowed trembled.

"It's from Granny's trunk," Coco climbed onto the arm of the chair, she leaned down close to her Donk; she pointed to the photograph that he held tightly in his trembling hand. "Is it in New York? There's only a date on the back - April 1889. But that does look like New York, doesn't it?"

Grace sighed at the bed. Sybbie could hear her place a final book onto a stack and then stop. "Coconut?"

"Hmm?" Coco glanced up at her mother; Donk's eyes lingered on the photo he held.

"Won't you take over for me here, darling?"

Grace shifted her gaze from her daughter to Sybbie, and Sybbie could detect a small nod, a message unheard but very easily understood.

Donk.

"You'll finish sorting the books? Ones to go downstairs here. The ones for storage just here, and then the loveliest ones for the room. Yes?"

Coco nodded at her mother, and slid from the arm of the chair. Donk did not seem to notice.

Sybbie watched as Coco went to the books, as Grace rubbed her shoulder and moved away, placing a hand on Donk's arm as she left. Again, he did not respond. He remained in the past of the photograph. Looking at it. Turning it over in his shaking hand and reading the limited inscription.

Sybbie blinked her eyes away from him and to Coco at the bed. Her cousin held up a green, leather book, gilded ivy creeping up the front, the word Lady glistening in the cold sunlight as it was tossed haphazardly into a pile: Storage.

She turned away from her and back to Donk. She forced herself to move toward him, her heart reaching him long before her hands could. She crouched before him, her fingers on his knee, and she peered up at his shifting eyes.

"Donk?" Nothing. "Are you tired? Would you like to rest? I'll take you to lie down."

"I can't remember." His voice was even, younger it seemed, but terribly, terribly hollow. Sybbie swallowed down the tightening of her throat. "It's not New York … it's … it's Newport. And this is …"

Sybbie frowned at the wipe at his eyes, the press of his fingers against his lids. "Oh, confound it. Cora's aunt. It's the Newport house and Cora's aunt. Her … her beloved aunt, I can't recall …"

But Sybbie sat before him, helpless. She didn't know. She hadn't learned Granny's aunt's name. She barely knew she had one at all, the only mention of her had been once when she had mentioned Paul had family in New York. But that was sixteen long years ago, a passing mention, and now the woman whom her Granny adored smiled up at them, sunlight kissing her strangely familiar features, nameless forever more.

Donk dropped the photo to his other knee. His eyes stared into some unseen middle distance.

"Come on, then." Sybbie stood, she held out her hand, she sighed a smile. "I'll have Shirley bring up a cuppa, hmm? I could do for a cuppa; couldn't you?"

But he didn't move. Not exactly. Donk looked up at her and then down again, toward the photograph.

"Cousin Sybbie, if you're going down, you'll bring down that paper there, closest to the vanity? Please?"

Sybbie turned away from Donk and toward Coco. The girl smiled sweetly up toward them, her eyes glancing to Donk and smiling softer to him. Sybbie felt irritation creeping into her joints, but of course her young cousin was not to blame. Coco meant well. She did. But the fact remained that she was only a sixteen year old child, unaware of the history that surrounded her. Unaware of the history that made up who she was.

"It's waste, but Mum took down the basket yesterday and I've forgotten to bring it up again."

Sybbie nodded, though she didn't want to. She collected the pile of paper from the window seat, all various sizes, various shapes, receipts of purchase and small scribbled notes, crumbled and forgotten. She picked them up, and gathering them into her hands, stood beside Donk as he scanned the paper odds and ends.

"Let's go down, then? Hmm?" Sybbie tipped her head toward him, her bob tickling at her neck. "You heard that Anna is coming, haven't you? I'm sure she'll want -"

"- Stop."

Sybbie stopped, she held the paper outward to where Donk reached, his white brows furrowed and vexed.

"This isn't waste. This." He pulled from her grasp a little paper, small and rectangular with words written in loopy uneven penmanship - a strange little list - a sharp line at the bottom there, Donk's unmistakably precise handwriting beneath. Sybbie moved her thumb in order to allow the paper's release, clumsily really, trying to prevent the smaller more irregularly shaped items from falling out before it. She was mostly unsuccessful as Donk removed his paper, and as the little papers fell, Sybbie watched as he froze.

His face was white.

"Donk?"

He stared at the paper near his feet, the deep wrinkles in his forehead deepening further, his frosted eyes growing clearer the longer he stared.

The little yellowed rectangle, barely the width of Sybbie's palm, lay face up on the floor. It was careworn, folded once, maybe twice, faded and tired. The once straight edges of the thing were blunt now, softer, showing its age. The printed words GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY whispered up at Sybbie's eyes, KING'S CROSS STATION followed, and the smaller signature of Robert Crawley scribbled below a line that read First Class.

Still, Donk did not move.

But, uncertain and confused, Sybbie did.

She leaned down to the paper and made to pick it up from the carpet, her fingers brushing the worried little ticket stub, but stopping at his touch.

Donk's frail and trembling hand lightly touched her own, his eyes still moving over the ticket again and again. "The date?" he asked quietly, and Sybbie leaned toward him.

"What?"

"The date there. On the ticket?"

She read it silently from the floor and then pressed her lips. "But why?"

Donk peered up at her, though, almost like a child. His skin looked so thin, his face sunken, his nose and chin round, and yet, and yet everything seemed so frail.

Sybbie sighed. "16th of December. 1890."

His hand trembled when he held it out, and Sybbie blinked at him, stooping to the floor and picking up the little yellow ticket, placing it in his palm. He held it as one would hold a petal.

Coco came nearer, she peeked around Sybbie, Sybbie could sense her there, but her eyes remained fastened on Donk as he stared down at the little paper resting in his shaking hand.

His mouth formed her name, and Coco touched Sybbie's arm.

She kept this.

Robert read the date again, and again, images of her - soft, young … God, they were so terribly young … flickered in his mind. The golden duvet. The glow of firelight. The warmth of her head, her face buried in his neck, her fingers clinging to his coat, he could almost feel them now. But she was not here. Their grandchild. Their great-grandchild stood before him. She was not here.

She kept this.

He hadn't known she had. How she got it, how she saved it, he didn't know. He'd never know. But he knew what it was. Of course, he knew what it was.

"This isn't waste."

His voice, somehow, didn't seem like his own. When did it become so thin, so quivering? When had this happened? When? What had happened to the years? Were they still in this room, trapped, cramped and crumbled in the long fingers of his granddaughter. His great-granddaughter.

Cora.

No. No. He moved to stand. His knees hurt. His back straightened slower than his brain commanded.

"None of these things are waste."