4.
August 1970
"Mam, where is Zurich?"
The pastry was ready. While Daisy Parker rolled it out with the practised expertise of a woman who had done this for over seventy years, her daughter was busy with the lemon posset.
"Why?" Daisy asked, glancing over to Flora. It always concerned her when little Florrie asked questions - not so little any more, now a fully grown woman with a family of her own. So very self-assured and forthright, little made her come to her mum for advice, even if her mother was now housekeeper at Downton Abbey. So Daisy was prepared with questions of her own.
"Because," Florrie replied slowly, "I overheard Ernest on the phone with Uncle Henry the other night, and he was talking about Zurich. And I was wondering where it is."
Daisy gave her daughter a half-glance longer, but no, no sign of concern or worry. Just chatting, then.
"Dunnoh," Daisy replied. "Have you asked Ernest? Looked it up in an atlas?" Florrie looked over to her mother, then shook her head.
"Silly, really. I thought it might be in Germany; I thought Ernest might be talking about somewhere where he was born."
And there it was, Daisy thought, Flora's only concern when it came to Ernest: no matter they had been married for nearly twenty years, or they had children, or that Ernest had a thriving clock, watch and jewellery business with Thomas's brother and a British passport. Or that, despite what his accent betrayed and the country of his birth, Ernest was not about to leave Downton, or England for that matter.
"Why? What were they sayin'?" She passed the pastry to Florrie, who worked it with her rolling pin with practised strokes, barely giving it a look.
"It were summat about a, now, what was it they were caalling it? A Sympersium?"
"Sympersium?" Daisy repeated, turning her attention to the lemons and began zesting them.
"Yeah," Florrie agreed. "Somewhere they can talk to other watch and clock makers about their businesses."
"And that's in Zurich, is it?" Florrie stopped rolling the pastry and had a think.
"Zoo-rik," she pronounced, carefully.
"Well," concluded Daisy, "There ya are then. Yer kner he was never gonna be a farmer like yer father and Laurie. Yer kner he was good at mathematics, like - "
" - like Melusina," Florrie finished. "And can make things like she could, an all, says Thomas."
"That's true," Daisy replied, paying attention to the cream with the whisk. You could never whisk the cream for a posset enough, so Mrs Patmore had once told Daisy. She had to agree. And focusing on the desserts meant she could lessen the guilt of the parent in her who was not going to name Milo as to whom Ernest got his mathematical ability from.
"They speak German there," Florrie continued, thoughtfully. "I don't often hear Ernest speak German. He has taught some to Janet though. Christopher wasn't interested, though."
Christopher had come in for a lot of bullying for having Ernest as his father, and had borne it all with fierce pride. The current queen's great great grandparents were German, Christpher had always declared. A lot of people in the country had German ancestors.
Take Tolkien - his father's family had been related to the Hohenzollerns, and he had written to the German publisher of the Hobbit and told him not to publish in Nazi Germany. Christopher had many examples. But his mother knew it did not sit comfortably with him sometimes and she would counsel her son on the virtues of patience and understanding. "Your father chose his Englishness - he wanted to be here. He IS English."
A younger Christopher had got into fights. It was hard not to agree to someone who has their foot on your chest and had an infallible logical response. Until the threat by his father that he would be taken to the boys' house and made to make amends for these incursions stopped him.
Janet, on the other hand, would not let it get in her way of anything. Sometimes the girls at her school would say nasty things. But she would just shrug, or ask if they would like to visit: "My mam is the cook at Downton Abbey; my grandma was once the head cook and is now the housekeeper." One or two girls did come back with Janet and would sit in Downton's kitchen and have tea. There was a calmness about Janet that made even Christopher's tempers lose their energy.
"If he is going to Zurich," Florrie continued, picking up the whipped cream and filling the posset dishes, "I would like to go with him. I know it's Laurie who likes travelling," she conceded, "But - "
"Of course yer must go!" Daisy declared, her white hair pulled back and pinned in place. Florrie's was as chestnut as her mother's had once been.
"Would Master Georgie allow it?" Daisy stopped in the whipping of the cream.
"Allow it? We have more say than he does now. He needs us, but we could get jobs anywhere, with the skills we have. He's grateful to have us."
It was true, Florrie thought. Downton had been on the brink of going under. Just Georgie Crawley's skill in finding his father's and grandfather's documents and networking with other upper class men, that meant it had been reprieved. Until now. Daisy rather suspected that now the dower house had been acquired by the building company, Downton Abbey and its land would follow. It had been Tom Branson who had been behind that legal document and, like the entail, had proved unbreakable.
"Let's get these up for Master Georgie. He has two lawyers with him today. They knew Matthew Crawley," Daisy said, laying the trays.
But it was not Zurich that was in Ernest and Henry Barrow's near future plans, but somewhere nearer to home.
"Birmingham?" Florrie asked, when Ernest told her that evening. "Why do you want to go to Birmingham?"
"Clocks," her husband explained to her, holding out a Victorian timepiece for her perusal. "Timekeeping. And the university. They are doing marvellous things with clocks of another sort. And I intend to find out exactly what that is."