In the spring, it seemed that much of the world's focus on the growing unrest in Spain, the Imperial expansion of the Japanese Empire, and the consolidation of power in Nazi Germany, took a back seat.
Seven years into The Great Depression – or "The Slump" as they called it in England – was taking its toll. The year of 1932, in particular, seemed to be one of the worst that anyone had seen. Years past, none seemed to have recovered. Thus, as the breadlines stretched for six blocks, and the wanted ads seemed to be more popular than "The Guardian" as a whole, it seemed that everyone needed some sort of distraction. And so, it was, by no means the design of any, that a rookie reporter of a New York magazine flicked through back catalogues in the archives for something – anything - to spark the public imagination. For two days had he come across a grueling stack of a year's worth in coverage of one Ms. Cora Levinson's wedding to the 37th Lord of Downton, a Major Robert Crawley of Queen Victoria's elite Northern Regiment, in 1888.
Tap, tap, tap, went the microfiche, as he sighed, cleaning his glasses twice. There was sketches of Ms. Levinson's silk and pearl Worth Wedding Dress … and he gave a ponder of where it was today. There was a mostly fictionalized backstory of Downton Abbey, the grand gothic castle to which the 37th Lord of Downton's title originated – or so he assumed. There were guest lists, menu suggestions, profiles on the Lord's friends and comrades in his regiment. There was even a scandalous claim that Hugh MacClare, Laird of Duneagle, was trying to steal the beautiful Ms. Levinson right from underneath Lord Crawley's own nose. It was 'shameless shit' as the reporter had put it defeatedly.
Yet, by the third day, he had become rather engrossed by the whole thing. Then, by the end of the week, he was invested in a wedding that happened near fifty years ago. With a cup of coffee and a cherry turnover, he started his mornings on the wedding gossip. Alone at lunch, he thought about if it was true that Lady Rosamund Crawley would feel rather overshadowed by her soon-to-be sister-in-law's glamour … in fact, whatever happened to Lady Rosamund? Then, by the end of his day, his pals at O'Malley's - down the street from the magazine offices - wondered what the fuck happened. Talk of the "Goddamn Dodgers" was taken down some dark alley were their pal was drunkenly ranting how dresses were much more regal back in the old days.
To be terribly honest, there was no one more disappointed in the world than a young man in the dark archive room to have missed an event held some forty-seven years ago. But more disappointed still was the fact that the now Lady Cora Crawley, Viscountess of Downton Abbey, had disappeared. Once she was married, it seemed that no one cared anymore. The raven haired and cerulean eyed grand beauty, heiress of the famed Levinson tin fortune in Cincinnati and the last profitable New Orleans commercial cotton concern, just sort of faded away. And to say that - after three weeks of the most fascinating trip down memory lane in their country's history - was quite disappointing. The last true Antebellum Southern Belle, the richest Heiress of her age, and the most beautiful girl in all of New York City of the Gilded Age …
He had to know what happened to her.
The editors weren't exactly against his pitch. Miranda, in particular, thought it wasn't a bad thought. She had remembered Ms. Levinson when she was a girl. She had sat on her uncle's shoulders to see her carriage park by the church. She had remembered her wave to the crowd as they cheered her inside … and ten years later, that same young woman's own wedding dress was designed to be somewhat of what she remembered of Ms. Cora's. It was Miranda's own fascination in nostalgia that had protected the Reporter from being swept out of the meeting in roaring mockery. In fact, in these hard times, nostalgia was what the public craved out there. It was the main reason that "Hillbilly Music" was outselling whatever was coming out of "Tin-Pan Alley" these days at least three-to-one. And the Crawley and Levinson wedding had been truly the last spectacle wedding in New York, the last hurrah of the Gilded Age … and there wasn't a little girl at that time which hadn't dreamt of being Cora Levinson.
But it was the name … the name. Why was Crawley so familiar? What was going on that Crawley had been in the forefront? It took a call to Susan down in 'Societal' for them to realize why the name was important. Lady Mary Josephine Crawley, London Fashion Queen, Self-Made Business Tycoon, and purveyor of English Cultural Heritage. She just announced her engagement to Roger Sinclair, wasn't she? It took two days of digging to realize, much to the invested reporter's amazement, that Lady Mary Crawley was the eldest child of Lord and Lady Grantham … Cora and Robert Crawley! How do you like that!?
Moreover, there was no one in the world that didn't like Roger Sinclair.
Sure, he was only third in top grossing box office, but the man sure had style. Most believed that it was the accent. He and Erol Flynn might have been from the same cloth, but they sure were cut differently. Flynn was all dash and energy. Sinclair was what your kid sister or your girlfriend imagine Mr. Darcy or Edward Rochester looked like. He might save you from marrying the wrong man, but not before he judges you in pride and makes wrong assumptions of your character. But the dames will take the abuse, they'll always take the abuse, because, Sinclair always leaves that door open in brief glances that says he might not mean what he says. If there was some adaption of a British novel with a continental gentlemen type in period drama, then you better believe that Roger Sinclair was going to be in it. Thus, the difference was plain. Perhaps no one would mistake Sinclair for a masculine icon … but no one could say he was not a serious actor.
Thus, it only made sense that such a man that was, as one "Hollywood Reporter" article put it, 'a walking and talking British Consulate', would marry only the finest and most beautiful of Great British Ladies. No one was saying that Lady Mary was not going in damaged. She had been married twice. Her first husband died "In the War". The second had been a race car driver, one Henry Talbot, who was now remarried to an actress himself and worked as a stunt driver for the growing flicker business. She had no biological children, just an adopted daughter, Ms. Sybil Branson. Of her, they said that it was only a matter of time before the whole world would know her name. She was too beautiful not to be photographed, to be put on movie screens … if her doting and enraptured step-papa had anything to say about it.
The Reporter had a hard time pinning down Lady Mary Josephine Crawley. The line on her was that she was a tragic figure, a heroine of a gothic romance novel - and a cover girl for one to boot. The press wanted to play it as all foggy moors, ancient manors, and cold beauty in the tall tower. Sinclair's press team was on it for months. If they played the business magnet angle, there'd be a lot of unfriendly female fans, sending hate letters and boycotting Sinclair's productions. But if they played Lady Mary up as a wounded and forlorn beauty, rehabilitated by the charming and suave Englishman returned home from Hollywood in search of love and family - you'd have to be a heartless dame to not root for Lady Mary Crawley.
But there were questions that some of the editors had. One being that there was a report in an American published British newspaper about Matthew Crawley's death. They reported, at the time, that Mr. Matthew Crawley was killed in a car accident in Northern Yorkshire in 1920. To that, Sinclair's team claimed that it was a misprint … it was another Matthew Crawley – that chap was born in Cornwall, Mary's husband was a lawyer in Manchester. Then, there was the question of George "The Comet" Crawley. They couldn't deny the existence of the famed adventurer and detective – vigilante if you believe some - of whom Lady Edith Pelham, Marchioness of Hexham - Lady Mary's own sister - writes about in her magazine. If Lady Mary Crawley has no biological children, then who the fuck is George Crawley? To that they said that George Crawley was Lady Mary's nephew, an unfortunate illegitimate son of her late younger sister Lady Sybil - the family doesn't like talking about it. All of these answers seemed dubious at best, but then, who was gonna care?
They were journalists, not accountants - if they cook their books all they'll get was more readers.
All month, the rookie set it up. He took down notes and got everything ready for Ben - their best writer - to take a crack at it. Miranda made sure they got cover – "Where are They Now: The Gilded Age Bride". And on the front was Ms. Cora Levinson's portrait by John Singer Sargent. By the end of the week they had to go to a second printing of the issue. It was the pictures and the words, telling the story of a girl born in the Reconstructed South, the last true Southern Belle, who had gone to New York and took it by storm. The prized beauty overcoming prejudice and scorn from Knickerbocker society matrons and found her one true love in England. Her legacy of beauty, triumph, and tragedy was now all bequiffed to her daughter, Lady Mary Josephine Crawley. And at the end of the article they pondered if Lady Mary would find her own mother's happiness in the arms of another dapper English gent – "Roger Sinclair: The Right Man for the Right Job."
Within a month, the whole thing blew 'The Fuck' up. People were sending in letters after letters with their own memories of Ms. Cora's wedding and how she was 'the most perfect girl in the world'. Playing to the crowd, they picked some of the best letters, put a few more archived photos of the wedding and societal balls from Levinson Manor in Newport and released a special issue. It perhaps endeared the readers more at the fact that of Cora and Robert's wedding and love, they seemed to be the only transatlantic marriage to have survived the culture shocks. Now, the public, swimming in and craving nostalgia, had become obsessed with the story of Cora Levinson and, like wise, of her little girl, Lady Mary.
Thus - the media business being what it was - there was a copy-cat article a week later, then another, and before long there came two or three. But furthermore, selling the rights to article and special issue to Sinclair's PR team, the originals were reprinted into a book and sold in Los Angeles and London. Soon, the wholesomeness, the old-world glamour, overtook both Republic and Imperium in a fervor that snowballed, and then avalanched. By the early autumn all anyone could talk about, all anyone wrote about, was the upcoming 'fairytale' wedding of Lady Mary Josephine Crawley and Mr. Roger Sinclair.
And it was, nearing nine months since the day that a rookie reporter got transported into a magical land of grand balls, Worth dresses, and societal intrigue, that he found himself a bestselling author, standing on a street corner. Yet, he was less than satisfied to find that he felt as if he was right back where he started, rather than where he wanted to be. 'Come back to me, kid, when you got three or four big hits and a fucking piece of junk trophy from the Pulitzer. Then, you can pick your goddamn assignments!' He could still hear his editor screaming into the phone. In truth, he had come down to Newport in search of the allusive Levinson Manor, to take pictures of the place. The magazine was gonna bleed the Lady Grantham/Lady Mary angle like a stuck pig.
However, he never got close to the gate. There was an entourage of cars – class and diplomatic sort of rides that don't come cheap. He and Ernie – his photographer – came running up, demanding to know where they all had come from, thinking that some other publications had gotten the idea first. But they were met not by other reporters for society and glamour rags. Instead, the guard that was set about the battered down corroded and twisted gates were big men, tall men, in suits and red fez. They had coarse black beards and an assortment of scars and eye patches. Each of them had a naked scimitar sword and none knew any other facial expressions but a glower. They were invited to leave the blockade of fancy cars … and then they were told. The Reporter did not mourn his notepad that was swiftly cut in twine, fore, in the retrospect over a hotdog and snow cone, he realized he and Ernie could've been mourning a collection of other things the big Turks threatened to cut off if they didn't get the hell out.
Now, one phone call later, they were at the Newport train station. "Russell Way" had been built in the mid-1880s by railroad tycoon George Russell when he and his wife, Bertha, decided to but down some summertime roots in Newport. It was an older station, there were towns all around Rhode Island that had newer places, but old man Russell knew how to create an aesthetic. Its charm, its futuristic but antiquated Americana décor of a country, of a people, and a culture, rising quickly, did much to inspire the current apathy of a town on its knees. When the Stock Market crashed, so did Newport. All their wealthier donors and benefactors for nearly fifty years that kept the town clean for their own benefit, sunk with most of the millionaires on 'Black Tuesday'. Since then, tax policies to try and make up for the deficit of willing donors to pay for upkeep had sent many of the local businesses belly up like their once wealthy patrons and servants.
After nearly fifty years, they did it, the old Dutch families finally beat the New Money. Vanderbilt is hanging on by a thread. The Russell's sold up their railroad shares and now are getting into Automobile manufacturing to escape Roosevelt's taxes. And the Levinson's were completely wiped out in a single day. He could not imagine having a fortune - more money than God – for over sixty years and then, in a span of an afternoon, having absolutely nothing. It was the same for so many in the town now. All that was left had been struggling farmers, a few preachers, and the breadline filled with footmen, valets, maids, and hall boys. One day they were cleaning the mistress's heels for dinner, the next morning they all found out they had no jobs by their employer eating his own pistol in the drawing room – their severance package lost along with all the rest of the assets. Brutal.
Nostalgia, especially in this town, seemed like a drug they were all living on. When the Reporter and Ernie first showed up, they couldn't get a moment to breathe. The instant that they introduced themselves and their intentions, there was a former maid wearing a wheat sack for a skirt, a man in a ratty butler's livery for a jacket, trying to show them the spots. This was where Viscount Gillingham and Ms. Gladys Russell had dinner on the night of their engagement. That now boarded up building filled with cobwebs had been a sweets shop that the 37th Lord of Downton and Ms. Cora Levinson used to go to everyday to buy jelly candies for their walk around the Levinson Estate. They asked if they had been to the Levinson's Polo Pitch, or the Russell's racetrack. The overgrown tennis club where they swear Mr. Oscar Van Rhijn and Lord Gillingham got into fist to cuffs over Ms. Gladys. At the rundown club where Lord Downton – now Earl of Grantham – got into a heated drinking competition with Larry Russell. They swear it ended with both of them and Mr. Levinson getting drunk and going to serenade outside Ms. Cora's window, but ended up outside Mrs. Astor's by mistake.
Newport was a ghost town where the phantoms were more alive than the real people who remember them.
That type of sorrow, that type of hopelessness - the acceptance of the future being nonexistent - was hard for the Reporter to come to grips with. He felt like a narcotic peddler, pusher, selling his wares to addicts. It didn't seem that there was a young person, someone of his own age, for miles and miles. 'Gone to California' they say, land of milk and honey. Anyone that still had hope for a future, for a way out of this crippling poverty, had gone West – Manifest Destiny, he guessed. And all those left behind survived only on what some called 'that good vintage'. Not liquor – who had money for that? – but memories, the places that used to mean something when the world made sense, when they were all racing toward that dream. Now, they, and everyone else, had hit the wall. They broke and splintered into tiny pieces, remnants of their whole scattered in shards backward through time.
It was only when it was gone, when the party was over, that they realized what they had. Now, they'd sell anything and everything – their very souls – for one last glimpse of those fine carriages crawling up those ruined hills and these mangled streets. The fine ladies in their preposterous gowns inviting themselves over to each other's 'cottages' on Bellevue Avenue. And it wasn't because they worshiped them, nor admired them – well, perhaps a little. It was, because, when they glanced all those rich folk and their excess, it made them feel that they could have a bit of that pie. Maybe not a daughter off to marry a titled English Lord, but they could get a nice house, have a man open their front door for them with a 'Good evening and welcome home, Sir' after a hard day at work. In those days, when a new and vibrant American nation was rising, when electricity was lighting the world up like God's own eyes, anything was possible.
There was optimism in the South for the President's "New Deal". It was a belief that all of these new Government Programs would help get people to work. Yet, if the Reporter was going to be honest – how exactly is working for the government gonna help anyone? More Programs meant larger taxes, and when the fortunes of the millionaires went down the shitter in '29, who exactly was gonna pay for all these new Government workers' salaries? The answer: They are. Roosevelt – the local boy – was gonna pay men their own money they give up in Taxes … it was a hell of a scheme. Roosevelt looks like a hero, the unemployed push around rocks getting paid back half of what they'll pay in taxes, and the old Knickerbocker Four Hundred get to imbed themselves in the administration and arbitration of it all.
It was why the Reporter despised having to stand here at "Russell's Way" among a dozen political staffers, sweaty reporters from every popular East Coast newspaper, and a great many apathetic locals that were promised some pop and a hotdog if they crowded up the old station. Now they were all pack in tighter than a can of sardines. James M. Pendergrass was announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate. He wanted a spectacle, a front page spread on every East Coast periodical. He wanted to get the eye of President Roosevelt, who was having a hard time getting the votes outside the Democratic Party stronghold of the segregated South.
In New York he had the Irish, who felt segregation by color helped them in the job market. But he would have a hard time convincing the guineas and krauts of his policies. The Italian Americans didn't go in for his fascistic left-wing "New Deal" – modeled from Mussolini and Hitler's own unemployment projects and inspired by Lenin's philosophies. While the German Americans would never support a Democrat Party whose main tenant remained segregation. As long as the 'Dixiecrats' set the majority agenda, and as long as the Democratic Leadership kissed the Klu Klux Klan's rings - fueling fear of Jim Crow coming North - Roosevelt wasn't going to be winning over any of his home states anytime soon. But Pendergrass had a plan -
They'd bring the South up North.
For nearly a hundred years, the poverty-stricken Southern Americans had longed for the age of Antebellum, before the War of Secession. Their cries of 'The South Will Rise Again' had been shouted everywhere below the Mason-Dixon line since Reconstruction. The burning, raping, and destroying of every aspect of their life in the Union Army's campaign of "Total War" had left entire future generations behind in the Southern States. Thus, this hard poverty, this hard-scrabbled life, had bred a longing for times when men were gentlemen and women were belles. Where cotton was tall, and the weeds were short. And this revelry, this idealized world before an entire generation of Southern men disappeared in a rich man's war for an outdated way of life, had been the 'in' that the Democratic Party used to gain and keep control over the main white voting bloc in the Southern States.
Whenever America was inching closer and closer to moving beyond racial issues, the Democratic Party waved a Confederate Flag, retread old injustices made by 'Yankee' soldiers and businessmen – Carpet Baggers – using the excuse of the emancipation of the Negro. The Klan marched, burning Catholic Churches and lynching black men and Jews. They used the ratification of Women's Suffrage and recruited it's famed champions to tour the South, scaring the new white female vote into fortifying Jim Crow and other segregation laws, claiming that it was their feminist duty to protect their daughters from 'unchecked lusty negro men.' Still preaching that the Republicans only want to put women back in chains. Yet, in all this time - nearly hundred years now - nothing got better, nothing changed, in the American South. Fore, if it did, if the poor whites were educated, if they got out of poverty … what would they need of the Democratic Party or their Klu Klux Klan? Perhaps, still, they'd find much in common with this feared negro underclass that lived in the same harsh conditions, spoke the same language, and indeed, prayed to the same God as they had.
Now, as the Depression worsened all around them, that longing for the post-reconstruction era, when the war was behind them and the whole country united under a glorious tomorrow, had gripped the East Coast. Shuttered factories, ramshackle huts for homes, 'Hooverville's' at the edge of every town and in every city park. After years of studying their ways as a clerk for a Woodrow Wilson appointed Federal Judge in New Orleans, Pendergrass would bring the political philosophy of 'nostalgia' to Rhode Island, to champion the President's "New Deal". He'd wave an American flag, speak much of the "Gilded Age" with envy, and promise that it would come again – that is, if they vote for him. Ambitious, handsome, and the grandson of The Mrs. Caroline Astor, there was no one more fit to win over Rhode Island to the Knickerbocker's new crusade. Perhaps, if he could do this thing, there was a political appointment for him, a spot in the inner-circle, and even a shot at the presidency in the 1940's.
That was why they were all here. The Reporter didn't even know that Pendergrass was launching his political career today. But when he called back to the office to say that something was going on at Levinson Manor, his editor told him that he didn't give two shits about that. They needed someone out there to cover the announcement and press conference. He would ask why their magazine would need to cover politics; it certainly wasn't what their readers care about. But then he saw a lot of faces from O'Malley's that he wouldn't dream would be out here covering this either. Sometimes he forgot that the owner of his magazine, along with theirs', belonged to a printing cabal. The Knickerbockers would look the other way of mentioning Cora Levinson in their printing presses as long as it was making them money. But when the call comes down from Washington, from the Democrat Party's WHIP, with the new narrative, every magazine and newspaper, every editor and reporter, had their marching orders. And today the narrative was that James M. Pendergrass was going to help President Franklin Delano Roosevelt save Washington, save America.
A high school band from Massachusetts was playing patriotic songs in their candy apple red uniforms with gold tassel and brass buttons on double breasted liveries. There wasn't as much of a festive mood in the air as there was a strange curiosity of the commotion that seemed to be everywhere. It had been a long time since anything of note had happened in Newport and it seemed that the reintroduction, the reinvigoration, of life had shocked the citizenry out of the melodic spell that had been cast over everyone and everything. They all seemed to wander about and gather like zombies. Some of them were not even sure what they were seeing was actually real.
Yet, if it was or wasn't didn't really matter in the end when one was getting free eats for simply standing around – something they do all day anyway.
On the main train platform there was raised a dais that held a podium that seemed to have three or four microphones with large netted grating covers that belonged to every major national radio station. They wouldn't broadcast the whole speech, but they'd be content to pick up a few keynotes for the nightly news. The Reporter watched men in sharp suits with double breasted buttons and pointed brim fedoras worn cocked to the side, rush in and out of the station master's office. Some of them held papers, others had combs, spray bottles, and he could've even sworn he saw a make-up kit.
As a short older man with deeply tanned skin and greasy comb over ran across the dais with a telegram and a leger of timetables for trains, the Reporter yawned. There was only a passing thought that the station manager in his white shirt, suspenders, and green visor, was really moving. The worried – nearly panicked – man pushed past staffers and Democratic National Committee campaign officials, trying desperately to squeeze through. He was shaking a telegram, shouting something that was lost in a sudden congregation of voices that began singing with the band that was playing a folk song that all the locals seemed to know. With a bored sigh and a check of his watch, the Reporter turned to Ernie.
His photographer said he was eighteen. Yet, the rolls of fat and side fade of straight blonde hair seemed to work against his claims. His chubby jowls and plump lips made his teeth smaller than they were, giving him a permanent baby face. Their editor often complained that being 'a Rolly Polly' in this economy was a goddamn disgrace! But Ernie would only reply bashfully that his 'auntie' says that it was just God's armor. Some of the guys down at O'Malley's had claimed that if they all get 'shit-canned' when Lady Hexham puts them out of business that they could live off Ernie for a year. But the always good natured and happy tempered youth shot back that if they ate him, they'd all end up looking just like him by the time they were done. Yet, beyond being the Reporter's good friend, there wasn't a better photographer in the office …
Though, his fascination with the booger he just picked made the Reporter afear of what he planned to do with it.
Rather than stick around to find out, he looked away with a frown and a shake of his head. Blinking hard, he glanced about at the crowd. It was a sea of completely laconic and unenthusiastic faces that looked as if they had to be bribed to come here … and not with the good stuff. The reporters were jaunting a few details. A crowd of distracted and distant spectators would soon become star-eyed patriots with gumption that stayed late and cheered loud. The brass band of high school kids playing half-heartedly nearby would soon be a hundred-piece orchestra of broad chested military men draped in the stars and stripes. And, most importantly to the Knickerbockers and the Democrats in Washington … there wasn't a negro in sight.
It was then that he caught peak of someone that seemed familiar to him. Standing off to the side, away from the crowd, was a tall and dapper looking older man. He wore a tailored tan suit that deflected the sun. Under the stylish oversized suit with large double-breasted buttons was a white linin shirt with a black tie that had a classy pin. What seemed familiar about him was the cut of his silhouette as he leaned against a rusted metal support beam that held the covered roof of the outdoor station. It was his hair - slicked back, stylish, combed neatly. What was once jet black, now, in age, had been allowed to grey at his temples and sides, while keeping the top of his hair still it's original color. It was the same for his goatee that was spackled with salt and pepper. The immaculate grooming and styling of the older man gave him an air of dignity and class that morphed from a youth of immaculately good looks.
"Hello …"
"Afternoon."
The Reporter was taken aback by the sound of an extremely refined and polished English accent that came from the classy man in a Hollywood cut suit. For a moment he was speechless as the older man checked his watch, glancing up suspiciously from his timepiece at the commotion of the Station Chief shaking a telegram. The Campaign Manager was condescendingly nodding while pushing him away from his own crowded office that was occupied by Washington men and political staffers. The Reporter was suddenly interested in the Englishman's attentiveness of the confrontation, checking his watch one last time. He leaned forward, straining around the author turned political reporter to check the rail line.
"I hope you're not waiting for a train." He replied. The man was nearly startled when he remembered – or finally realized – that someone was there.
"I beg your pardon?" The Englishman said with a frown.
"Oh, I … uh …" The Reporter was stuck between engaging in a conversation and trying to place him. "I was saying that they delayed all trains coming through today. Pendergrass apparently has something special planned." He shrugged.
"Yes, I'm fully aware … in fact, I'm waiting for some – or well, it." His smile was friendly but there was something rather … shark like about it, about him.
"Do you, uh, do you work for the campaign?" He asked, taking out his brand-new notepad for an impromptu statement or interview.
"No, not exactly …" The Englishman replied. "I just know someone who is gonna be on 'The surprise'." The man glanced at his watch again. "Well, in theory, anyway." He scoffed. The Reporter noted a strange hint of worry. Not the worry of someone who thought they might miss their train, might spoil the timing of a political stunt … but the worry of a parent at the idea that a child will somehow miss their stop.
"Oh, you, um, know the engineer then?" He began jotting down the detail on his notepad.
"Well …" The classy foreigner grunted. "Possibly." He said distractedly, watching some staffers run out to grab the station manager, leading him into the room and pointing to something going on in his office. The reflection on the glass pane of his door showing a blonde woman in snappy blue dress holding a phone and shaking it angrily at the short-tanned man.
"Huh …" The Reporter made a frown of interest, clearly not seeing what was going on in the office. "Any hints about the big surprise?" He asked following the dapper Brit that began pacing closer to the platform to get a better look at what might be going on across the tracks in the office.
"Yeah …" He said distractedly. "One of those old black iron locomotives of old man Russell's is supposed to roll up at the right moment with Pendergrass's campaign slogan." He answered distractedly.
"Uh, not bad."
The Reporter made a shrug of reserved amusement as he wrote it down in his notepad. He followed the Englishman to the edge of the platform where he was seriously eyeing the mini pandemonium going on across the way. Both older and younger watched the political candidate shouting at someone for his speech cards, as the woman in the snappy blue dress was squirting some perfumed liquid into his mouth. But when it got on his chin instead, the man ripped the bottle from her hand and dashed it against the wall. As he forced his way out of the office, there was still a local woman trying to comb his hair, another had some sort of make-up powder brush that she was trying to dust on a cheek, and all the while he still had on a green bib around his neck. He ripped it off and threw it away. Yet, caught on the breeze, it boomeranged right back and stuck to his ankle. He tried to kick it free as he argued with the people around him. The blonde woman that crouched down came perilously close to getting a shoe toe in the face twice by her client and partner in adultery while he argued with his campaign manager who was waving cards in his face – not liking some language in his speech.
"Not a well-oiled machine at all, are they?" The Englishman asked rhetorically, checking his watch again.
"Eh, how do you coast on being Caroline Astor's grandson when everyone who gave a shit about that stuck their head in the oven in '29?" The reporter replied, scratching his neck with his pencil.
"You should come to England sometime." The dapper brit replied facetiously with a shake of his head.
"I plan to …" The Reporter said. "Well, I hope to." He shrugged. "I've got a good shot at going over to cover Roger Sinclair and Lady Mary Crawley's wedding – whenever that is." He sniffed; his voice distant in dreamlike longing. This caught the Englishman's attention suddenly.
"Oh, you're covering that, are you?" He asked. Once more he checked the tracks, as if the mention of Lady Mary reawakened some parental anxiety for his missing … child? Friend?
"Yeah, well, I wrote – well, not really wrote, but helped put together …"
"Uh-huh …"
Without the Englishman realizing it, the Reporter began following the dapper and handsome older man as he shadowed the politician and his team as they made way to cross over a rusted metal and grated bridge that arched over the train tracks that connected one platform to the other. It seemed an excess now, but once, when George Russell designed the station, it was a practicality for all of the rich families from all over Fifth Avenue and "Dutch Town". With efficient precision, could they all move their small armies of servants and luggage to and from New York when they came to occupy their seaside mansions and 'cottages' on Bellevue. The Englishman took a roundabout route through the forest of greened brass columns of the old station, looking not to be noticed by the bustling politician and his hanger's on, but still overhear what they were saying.
"Flag it down!"
"We can't, sir. There's no one driving it!"
"That's preposterous!"
"We should postpone!"
"No!"
"There could be an incident!"
"I said no!"
The Englishman waited in the shadows till the whirlwind passed, stepping onto the crowded platform where the man of the hour slipped effortlessly from angry and combative into winning smile and charm. The band struck up a rendition of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" as people began to applaud – signaled by a female staffer on stage to do so. When they were gone, there was a face of intense worry and fear on the handsome British gentlemen that immerged from the shadows. He looked one way than the other upon the tracks, before - as if developing a nervous tick - checked his watch again.
"- I did the research really, so, I guess I could claim that I did the article, cause, it was technically my idea." The Reporter continued his thought, oblivious of what was happening around him.
"You really should, it was good."
"Thanks, Ernie."
"No problem."
"So, yeah, I think I really should be allowed to go to England to cover Sinclair's wedding to Lady Mary."
"We, should …"
"Right, We."
"…"
"…"
Looking up from his only comfort, the older man was suddenly startled to find that not only had the young rookie reporter followed him, but now there was a short and pudgy blonde boy with a camera and a red nose. He looked between them in confusion, not realizing - in anxiety – not expecting, that he was somehow in the middle of a conversation that hadn't stopped. His eyes flicked from one to the other with a frown as they stared at him expectantly.
"What?" He asked in genuine confusion.
"I said that the article was my idea."
"What article?"
"What article?" The pudgy baby-faced boy guffawed.
"And you are?" The Englishman asked.
"Oh, that's Ernie, my photographer." The Reporter replied.
Suddenly, the young man raised his camera and took the English Gentleman's picture with a flash right in his face.
"Hi!" He said with friendliness as he began unscrewing the flashbulb to replace it.
"Bloody-Hell … I think I'm blind!" The gent blinked rapidly.
"It'll come back to you." The photographer comforted, reaching into his knapsack.
"Sorry …" The Reporter elbowed his friend. "He gets excited." He apologized.
"Does he?" The older man growled. "Couldn't tell." He rubbed his eyes with a snarled frustration.
"I'm Gerry Mangold …" The reporter offered his hand.
"Blimey ..." The Englishman blindly searched for the hand, nearly hitting him in the face in momentary loss of depth perception. "And what's that on a Sunday?" He asked with a doubtful sarcasm, allowing the youth to lead his hand in for the shake.
"Siegelbaum … but only when I'm at home or at Synagogue." The boy said ruefully, giving a knowing look to the commiserating low whistle from his photographer who was screwing in a new flashbulb and shaking his head.
"Thomas." The older man nodded in greeting, giving a clear social signal that they were done talking.
"Thomas … Thomas …?" The Reporter frowned, saying the name again and again in sudden recognition – nearly there.
"Right, you've got it." The Englishman gave a facetious pat on the younger man's shoulder in mock encouragement and began to walk away.
"Barrow … Thomas … Barrow! You're Thomas Barrow!"
The dapper man stopped on a dime.
"I knew it! I knew I've seen you somewhere before!" Mangold said in elation, snapping a finger passionately. The photographer looked up and then from his friend back to the Englishman.
"No way, not the Thomas Barrow … the stiff that killed Guy Dexter." The boy said loud enough that his voice carried through the lull in the band music as Pendergrass was taking the stage. This seemingly touched a nerve. The man turned back with a tight spin.
"I didn't kill anyone." He tried to remain pleasant, but the frustration, the anger – having, but one more time, to go through this conversation – was visible in his stiff and immaculate posture as he uncoiled into a stiff board of a man. Both reporter and photographer exchanged a look as he turned to walk away.
"Of course, not …" The reporter called, motioning his head for the photographer to follow. "I read about the story." They chased after him.
"We …"
"Right, we, followed the story." The reporter corrected as they flanked the man from both sides as he was leaning over to look down the tracks again. "You were, uh, cleared of the charges." The reporter began flipping pages to start a new thread of a much better story.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I was." There was a warning behind that perfect smile that never showed teeth.
"'The Comet' got you off?" The photographer said.
"No …"
Thomas was about to contest. However, before he could, the photographer took his picture again. Yet, this time, the man turned his head at the last moment, avoiding the glare. Mr. Barrow seized the fat boy's arm and pushed his camera down.
"'Getting off' implies that I was guilty and that they just couldn't prove it. Captain Crawley proved - without a shadow of a doubt - that I was innocent. It was Guy's co-star, Ivy Trubridge, who murdered him. The Captain more than just proved it; he caught the psycho bitch himself before she could jump ship to New Zealand." Mr. Barrow said angrily
"Yeah, right, fifty yards from her yacht on the San Francisco Harbor … I remember." The reporter bit on the end of his pencil. "Helluva case though, with Dexter turning out to be this big homo and Trubridge's ex-husband - that bandleader - gonna out him to ruin her career. Everyone knew Trubridge was vapid … maybe had a screw loose, but who would've thought she'd actually murder Guy Dexter just to avoid the bad press on her big come back?" He shook his head, writing things down on his pad. "You know, it's too bad they never found Dexter's male-lover. They should've hired 'The Comet' to hunt down that guy next, right? The queer stories he could tell about Hollywood?" The reporter said into his notebook. But when he looked up, there seemed, for just a moment, something incredibly haunted on the older man's handsome countenance.
"Yeah …" He grunted, looking away a moment in sorrow. Both reporter and photographer shared a glance in quandary.
"Well …" Mangold grunted. "I guess you're lucky that George "The Comet" Crawley was the only one in a thousand miles that didn't think that the butler did it, eh, pal?" He tapped Thomas on the forearm with his pencil jokingly. Trying to break the tension, both young reporter and photographer gave a chortle that only elicited the weakest of mirth and superficial of smiles.
"My … lucky day." There was a deep well of sorrow that was pushed down so far that it seemed only a memory now, the phantasm of an echo, the quiet tremble in a cold voice.
Both young men exchanged glances, sympathy leaking into their heart. One would've had to be tough, near made of iron, to have survived what Thomas Barrow had. No one, not a soul, believed that he was innocent. A prominent star, a high-profile closeted queer, and the only suspect with motive being the butler from England – stolen right from under Lady Mary Talbot's nose – that would have no place else to go if his employer lost his career. And how strange, and for what purpose, was this Mr. Barrow from the far, far, fairyland of Downton Abbey, the sole beneficiary of Guy Dexter's will? As far as the LAPD was concerned, it was an open and shut case.
The only one who didn't buy into the narrative, who didn't believe a word that the entertainment rags printed in two countries, had been a nameless wayfarer. The wandering ronin had immerged unknown and unlooked for from the Senora Desert. It was said that he had escaped "The Mission" in Saltillo Penitentiary. Of the oldest and most haunted criminal asylums of the New World, had it been said that there was a sleepless malice of evil itself within the very darkness of those limestone and adobe cells. Yet, despite everything - his wild and worn appearance - the young stranger had been greeted as a friend, embraced, by Minna Davis, the Irish starlet that built "Brady-American Studios". Having come across a "Los Angeles Times" paper in Tajuana that announced the arrest and guilt of Thomas Barrow, the teenage ronin had come to Los Angeles to exonerate his friend – the very first friend he ever had in the world.
And it was, despite his age, and his poorer means, had the youth lived up to the name given to him long ago by the Imakandi Tribe of the African Serengeti – "The Magic Eye". Years of anatomy and chemistry lessons from Ms. Mina Murray, tracking and woodcraft from Sir Allan Quartermain, and detection from Sir Dennis Nayland-Smith – along with the experience of many adventures - had put to shame LAPD Homicide – more interested in ink then the truth. While the whole of Hollywood, the whole of the country, beat upon court room doors to see Thomas Barrow hang for the death of the handsome and charismatic Guy Dexter, a teenage kid was using Brady-American's special effects studio as a forensics lab.
"The Shadow" was what the mysterious youth had been mockingly named by the press and Homicide. Yet, still, no crime scene was off limit, no visit to the embattled and defeated Mr. Barrow was denied, fore no one had ever said no to the boy's benefactor, Minna Davis. The cops, reporters, and even the "Brady-American" security men, all made fun of the 'Great Detective's' methods. Boiling beakers and bubbling vials of a chemistry set that he used to experiment on Guy Dexter and Thomas Barrow's clothes. The stacks and stacks of women's heels from the costume department that he had Celia Brady – the suddenly terribly smitten teenage studio heiress – put on, step in soil, then onto granite tiles to leave imprints that he compared to crime scene photographs. What was the point of all of it? What was the point of Minna's ruggedly handsome but somewhat odd young friend at all? Pat Brady, the studio head, wanted to know how long Minna's 'Pulp Hero' was gonna occupy his lot and make his little girl try on heels? But Mrs. Davis's doting husband, Monroe Stahr, had told his partner to give it some more time … 'The Kid might be onto something.'
When Ivy Trubridge, the aged silent film star seeking a revival – if nothing else, to cover child support – was dragged away by men in white coats, snarling, raving, clawing as she was wrestled into a white van, the world simply moved on. When Thomas Barrow was let out the next morning, there was no remuneration, no apology, not even a 'tough break' in passing. The cops that taunted him, the secretaries that gawked at him, and the city that wanted him to pay for their favorite star's death - now, no one had a thing to say to him. He left lock-up, his worst nightmare, like a wraith - accompanied by the dregs of the local Hollywood 'Drunk Tank' - to find an apathetic and uncaring press and people that had ruined his life and reputation. It was on to the next story, the next scandal – there was a little girl named Shirley Temple that was just lighting up the world.
When he walked out into that cold and unforgiving Los Angeles dawn to an empty and ruined life, there was only one person there to meet him. The young man that wouldn't let it go, who believed in Thomas Barrow when no one else in the entire world had. He was sitting on a patrol car hood, eating donuts. When they were reunited in person – without glass between them – for the first time in six years, there was no hug, no emotional outburst. George Crawley simply handed his once butler and father figure a paper cup of coffee and held open a bag of donuts for him to take one. They both sat atop the police car, staring out at the rising sun over the distant hills while eating. A laconic Thomas, staring off in the distance, asked where the young master got the donuts. The answer given by the distracted youth, sharing the view, was a twenty-four-hour bakery that tossed out their night inventory at dawn to make fresh ones for the morning rush – George and the owner's niece have an arrangement.
It still remained the best meal Thomas Barrow ever had.
"You used to be butler to Lady Mary Crawley." The reporter asked, trying to move past the awkward pause in the conversation.
"Feels like a lifetime ago." The older man replied distantly. There was emotion in his eyes at the dredging up of old memories and pains, and the missing element in all of them that he was waiting pins and needles upon.
"Right, but you know Lady Mary?"
"Yes, once."
"Great! Cause, I'm writing a follow up article on my …"
"Our!"
"Our … wait, you didn't work on that article!"
"I did too! I took pictures of the church where Cora Levinson and Lord Grantham got married! And I photographed San Sochi – the old Levinson place – up on Fifth Avenue. Well, where it used to be, anyway. You know, before the Pinkerton's tried to burn 'The Comet' out, back in '32 …" The photographer paused and then turned to Thomas suddenly. "Hey, you know "The Comet" don't you?" He asked hopefully.
"Better than that reckless 'pain in my back' thinks or wants to admit." There was a paternal chastisement to someone that wasn't there … yet. Thomas Barrow checked his watch again as if the time, train, and this 'walking arthritis' with the cheek of the devil, was somehow all related. Yet, he lived to regret giving the answer when he saw both young men's eyes lighten up.
He felt tired already … and the hard part of today hadn't even begun.
"That's great! So, do you know … and this can be as on and off the record as you want - how "The Comet" feels about his aunt's coming marriage?"
"First of all, I wouldn't call the Captain "Comet" to his face – he doesn't like that name." Thomas corrected. Yet, as if processing the final question, he whirled about in confusion with a deep frown that betrayed his middle-age.
"You said his aunt is getting married?" He asked. This caused the reporter to glare.
"Uh, ye-ah …" He drew the word out slowly. "We just had a conversation about this." He shook his head.
"Did Lady Edith get a divorce from Lord Hexham?" Thomas asked in surprise.
"Edith Pelham? No, not that I'm aware."
"Lady Rose - or Lady Sinderby, that is?"
"Who?"
"Did Mrs. Branson call it quits? Though she's not technically his aunt, more like his first and long pining crush."
"I don't … I have no idea who that is either."
"My, now we're both playing grab the tail in the dark."
"Lady Mary!"
"Lady Mary?"
"Yes, remember, she just got engaged to Roger Sinclair?"
"Yes, oddly enough, I remember something of our previous exchanges."
"Off the record, I want to let you know that I resent that remark. Now, on the record, does "The Com-" I mean, does Captain Crawley have an opinion of his aunt's engagement to Hollywood's third top grossing movie star?" He looked down at his notepad to write.
"Why do you keep saying that?"
"Saying what?"
"Calling Lady Mary his aunt?"
"Well, isn't she?"
"Wha- who told you that?"
"She did … or well, that is what they're saying at Downton Abbey these days."
"Are they? are they, indeed?"
"Sure. The line they gave us on George "The Comet" Crawley is that he's actually the illegitimate son of the dead youngest daughter, a, uh …"
"Lady Sybil?"
"Right, right, and since there aren't any heirs left to inherit the titles, they just got the King of England or whatever to legitimize him and slapped Lady Mary's name on the official documentation so the whole thing was copasetic, you know? According to the PR people Lady Mary Crawley has had only one biological child, a baby girl with that stunt driver Henry Talbot. But the baby died before her first birthday in 1926."
"I remem – I held her little bod -." Thomas swallowed down a sudden and sorrowed emotion that he forgotten had been there for so long. He cleared his throat. "And that's it?" He asked with a cold English stoicism to make up for the crack of humanity at the reminiscence of that poor baby - so perfect, and yet, so very and terribly still in his own arms.
"As far as they told us. The whole thing came out with Sinclair's press release and they printed it in all the papers. George Crawley is technically a Grantham, but … you know, nudge-nudge, wink-wink."
The look that came over Thomas Barrow could not be quantified nor explained by strangers. The pleasant smirk upon his ponderous face had not a smidge of mirth in it. Outrage, anger, violent emotions of a deep resentment, was tampered down to a smoldering pouted look of intensity that was directed at a hotdog wrapper that was being carried up the tracks by the spring breeze. The only thing worse than the holy and blessed "Bloody" Mary trying to fudge the past, to erase the young master from existence, was to ruin the reputation of Lady Sybil in doing it.
She could've said it was anyone else, anyone at all? She could've tarnish Lady Edith's reputation a bit more and say that his young Lordship was her secret son – and who would deny it? Fore, Lady Hexham surely wouldn't. She had loved that boy more than anyone – and still did. Why not ask Lady Rose to take the hit? There was certainly no one in London from those days, who watched the young and beautiful daughter of the Marquess of Flintshire go from love affair to love affair, that wouldn't believe of an errant pregnancy in her wild days. Why not Lucy Branson? Sure, they didn't know one another but half-a-year, But Mrs. Lucy was a born member of the House of Grantham, and from what he knew, Mrs. Lucy had an immediate and special affection for her young Lordship from the very moment they met. It would be hard for her not to claim public maternity for one she grew to love so greatly and so quickly.
So, why Lady Sybil? The most beautiful and generous soul that Thomas Barrow had ever known. How could Mr. Branson, Lord and Lady Grantham, and Lady Edith, stand for this, any of it? Perhaps, on a whole, Master George would have been better off as Lady Sybil's son – he certainly was her spitting image in both appearance and spirt, and she certainly would've loved him as her own. But the tarnishing, the degrading, of his Lady, of the woman whose child – children now, he guessed – had been his charges, his escape from the cruelty of the world, and his joy in hard times. It was almost impossible for Thomas Barrow to withhold his anger at such degenerate filth. More so, and most importantly, he knew that such a thing, such a claim, would hurt his young Lordship terribly. It didn't matter what he said, how cool and unfazed the young renegade acted – such a thing would be a terrible blow to a man grown, much less a teenage boy.
It was but one more cruelty of Lady Mary Crawley that she would leave Thomas Barrow to patch up and attempt to make right in a young man's heart.
"So … about George Crawley?" The reporter began again. This time he smelt something in the air that twigged his news hound senses that there was something bigger here, something that was worth breaking.
"Yeah?" Thomas Barrow wasn't listening again, fore, in the distance – looking up from his timepiece – he saw the glint of something approaching … fast.
"Does he have an opinion?"
"About what?"
"Lady Mary's engagement …"
"I'm, uh … sure he does." Barrow said, giving a maximum effort to watching the object in the distance.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, a great deal of them."
"Off or on the record?"
"That is entirely up to him …"
It wasn't slowing.
"Can you give me a hint?"
"No, not really …"
"Why not?"
Spark could be seen as the screeching of iron on steel sounded in the distance drawing eyes away from the opening remarks of the politician's speech.
"Cause, I'm pretty sure that you can ask him yourself."
James M. Pendergrass was haunted by a summer in 1908. To many, that season in Newport was the last, the very last, hurrah of the Gilded Age. It had been decades since the fifty "Buccaneers" had gone across the Atlantic to marry their English Lords – almost all of their relationships ending in divorce. It was a moment in time in which all three generations of the nuevo rich and the Knickerbockers had gathered in a rather strange reunion of sorts.
There was the elder generation, the progenitors of the now legendary high-society arms race. The familiar faces of Alva Vanderbilt, George and Bertha Russell, and Nicolas and Martha Levinson, that mixed – for the first time in decades – with the likes of Caroline Astor, Marion "Mamie" Fish, Agnes Van Rhijn, and Maryse Van Houten. With them, congregating in a strange nostalgia virus that seemed to infect the whole of New York Finance and British Aristocracy, had been their children – the ropes of many a tug-of-war between great matrons of New York society in the 1880's.
Lord Robert and Lady Cora Crawley, now the Earl and Countess of Grantham. Lord John and Lady Gladys Russell-Foyle, Viscount and Viscountess of Gillingham. The now divorced Lady Consuelo Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. And Mr. Larry and Mrs. Marian Russell - whose coupling of the Russell fortune with an old Dutch name caused quite a scandal that played absolutely no factor in their happy marriage. They were joined by both ancient rivals and the oldest of friends. Carrie Astor Wilson, Lady Gladys Foyle, and Lady Cora Crawley were as inseparable together as they had been as girls – going together everywhere as if twenty years hadn't passed. Larry Russell still tried to outdrink Lord Grantham, eighteen years since their last match. Lord Gillingham and Oscar Van Rijn still had to be separated after fist-to-cuffs at Martha Levinson's picknick. Maryse Van Houten, even married to the richest banker in New York, still set her cap to plotting against Cora and Robert Crawley out of spite and hatred for their 'unnatural' love. And Mamie Fish still threw the strangest parties that made many an English husband and grandchild … rather uncomfortable – which was the point.
But among this strange reunion and gathering of the clans of almost forty years of New York Societal history – captains of American industry rubbing elbows with British Gentry – there was one thing, one person, that haunted James M. Pendergrass. Her name had been Lady Mary Josephine Crawley, eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Grantham. She and her two sisters had come with their parents to spend the summer in Newport at Levinson Manor. For two months had the middle grandson of the Astor clan tried everything to get the young and beautiful English Lady to notice him. At seventeen, near marrying age, just on the cusp of coming out into society, Lady Mary was the talk of the summer.
He still remembered her red tinted amber eyes, her long silky chocolate hair, and the body of a Grecian goddess cut from the smoothest and most supple pearly marble. She never faulted, never wavered, whatever she said had to be law, and allowed no one – neither old Lady Levinson nor Agnes Van Rhijn herself, contradict her. By the end of the first two weeks, every boy was in love with her. At all times was she surrounded by suitors, groups of boys that waited hand and foot – beggars out with bowls wanting just a sprinkle of her attention. They all followed her daily on her walks down to town with young Anthony Foyle as her and Lady Sybil's appointed 'bodyguard'. It frustrated and begrieved him that he never got the barest of 'look-ins' from the girl. As a grandson on the maternal side of the Astor's, whose father was a city official that had connections needed for business – and little else – he was not any English Lord's preferred son-in-law. In fact, he didn't think that Lady Mary even noticed him, even when her spotlight like stare fell upon and over him.
That was supposed to change at the Levinson's polo pitch. Pendergrass was making his bones on an athletic scholarship as an Ivy League equestrian champion. Perhaps his father in civil service, his middle child mother of lesser distinguishment in a greatly distinguished New York family name, wouldn't get him noticed in the Levinson's legendary ballroom. But on the polo pitch? On the polo pitch he was surely the only one that was going to matter. Lady Mary Crawley, dressed in white with matching parasol, sitting with Lady Grantham, Mrs. Levinson, Mrs. Russell, and Lady Gillingham, would be sure to notice him. He had it all worked out in his head – and it ended with a private smile and toast of his performance on the field today from the beautiful English rose at Mr. Russell's table tonight.
But all his hopes were dashed when Lady Mary Crawley, in riding gear and mounted upon her grandpapa's own horse, rode out with the rest of the boys to play.
It remained a nightmare that somehow defined him. Fore, rather than a spectator, a supporter, even a vaguely interested party, Lady Mary became a competitor, a rival. The Artemis of the English Hunt back home had set her eyes upon him as he had wished, but it was not for love making. She had heard he was the best in Newport, in New York, and she was determined to prove that she was better than him. Soon, he found himself on the defensive. It was not a charming game of smiles and flirtation, of grins and comradery. Lady Mary Crawley was out there to prove to the world, her world – daughter of American Millionaires and British Nobility – that she was the best of both worlds. And the cost of such a point was the pride of James M. Pendergrass.
Aggressive, merciless, and bad sported, had the girl been as she continuously went after him. She outraced him, out rode him, and even caned him once or twice. Five goals had the girl scored on him, the most that he had ever given up to anyone. And in between did she abuse him most awfully – scorning him in front of the chaps to their delight and laughter. By the end of the match, no one ever took him seriously again as a sportsman.
His humiliation was not unchecked, for the moment that Lady Mary dismounted, Lady Grantham was on her daughter. Publicly scolded, her accomplishment stripped, and disciplined in front of all of New York society, she was sent back to Levinson Manor not to immerge for a week till she learned some humility. When she stormed off in tears, escorted by her jailers of Mr. Levinson and Lady Edith - comforted by both Lady Gillingham and Marion Russell - Lord and Lady Grantham unreservedly apologized to Pendergrass for their daughter's vulgar and unsporting behavior on the field. Yet, somehow, that made it all worse. The rest of the chaps blamed him for it - for sending their goddess away. And when Lady Mary Crawley immerged from her imprisonment at Levinson Manor a week later, forced to apologize to him, there was nothing but a frightful contempt. She set her cold eyes upon him as a middling and unimportant nobody that made her look the child in front of some of the most legendary and historic matrons in the history of society. In one look did this cold beauty swear she'd hate him forever.
He never forgot that, the way it made him feel. It was a driving force behind everything he ever did from then on. There was never a time, despite his lower station in the Astor family, that he ever wanted to settle for being a spare, a surplus, grandchild of a famous matron. Like his father before him, politics seemed to be the only ladder available to him in which to climb. He had played the game and picked his spots, and now was his chance to make right what had been sticking in his throat for nearly thirty years now. It seemed destiny was calling, the universe signaling something coming. Pendergrass had seen her picture the other day. Lady Mary Crawley was on the cover of "Life", photographed in front of her gothic castle – the famed and notorious Downton Abbey. She was still as beautiful as he remembered her, an unattainable sharp-eyed Artemis with the body of Aphrodite cut from supple pearl marble. But now there was a stately regality to her, glamorous and dignified – not aged a day in nearly twenty years.
And it galled him.
Long ago had he been alleviated of his lust and desire for her, while other men still carried her affliction in their diseased hearts. Now, he only wished to prove how important, how very much not middling he was. Something about her picture, her undimmed beauty and untouchable splendor after all this time had gotten into his head. On that same day, in the same hour, had he a run in with that kid in the diner. It was a simple question, an opinion on his campaign slogan. And there it was, that look again - nearly thirty years later. The face of the young man that mocked him - asked him what that slogan 'even means'? For a moment, under the young republican's scrutiny, he was on the polo field again. It was the specter, phantasm, of that teenage girl's hubris in the young man that looked so very much like her in that moment that it nearly froze his heart. Since that encounter, once more being the laughingstock of Newport in the young man's parting remarks, there had been an anger, a desire – burning him inside out – to get this show on the road. Today he would avenge what Lady Mary Crawley took from him on that summer day in 1908.
Today, he was gonna make everything right.
However, James M. Pendergrass never got to say a word of the speech that he had been writing for months. Fore, as he was about to launch into his life story, the wisdom of his grandmother – Caroline Astor. The duty instilled in him by his civil servant father - the nobility of state-run programs of the President's "New Deal". There was a squeal of iron on steel. More and more of his paid crowd and democrat bought newspapers and magazines turned to look at the oncoming whirlwind that was flying down the tracks completely unchecked and without control. Gasps percolated, startles bubbled, and then cries of fear boiled over, as people from the crowd began to bolt. Taking the microphone, the Democratic Party candidate tried to calm everyone. There was no need to panic, it was all part of the show, the spectacle, the 'surprise' … right?
Forever to live in infamy, a black-eye to the memory of the old 400 families – in league with his Uncle John dying on the RMS Titanic while in company with his barely legal and pregnant mistress - was the picture so here described.
In the forefront was a mad scramble of high school marching band members. Dozens of adolescents in their candy-apple red liveries and gilded buttons, their tall felt red hats with black leather brims, looking absolutely terrified. They were all over the stage in a stampede of bodies, some of them leaping from the dais. And there, at the podium, front and center, was James M. Pendergrass. He was bug eyed, face contorted in a strange and off kilter look of goofy derangement. Once a Democratic politician that not only clerked for a Dixiecrat Federal Judge but claimed proudly that his political mentor was a senator from Tupelo Mississippi– a Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Now, that same man was being lifted completely off his feet by a nearly six-foot, three hundred-pound, black teenager who - in a panic - was screaming shrilly as he was carrying off Pendergrass.
In the foreground was the blurry motion lines of an old Russell model locomotive with two spare passenger cars – a relic of the high days of the Gilded Age. Atop the green painted passenger cars, over the chaos below, was the silhouettes of two young men. One was in a black overcoat that should've belonged to a hero in a Jane Austen novel - his leather gloves gripping a Saracen Scimitar of the First Ottoman Sultan. The other young man, representing the blue eyes and black waving curls of the Levenson's, wore a dashing peacoat of mahogany leather with the collar turned up in the back - he was armed with a Victorian British Officer's saber of the once Major Robert Crawley. They both seemed to be fencing, dueling – perhaps to the very death – atop what was now obvious to be a runaway train that was storming through the very heart of Newport, Rhode Island.
Below their swordfight was a banner with James M. Pendergrass's campaign slogan – "A Vote for Pendergrass is one for the Masses!" However, due to the extreme speed of the runaway locomotive and the gunfight between Turkish footmen of the House of Pamuk and a young adventurer, the banner was torn and tattered in places. Thus, to live forever in a single photograph that would grace the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the American Republic – and many in the British Imperium. Just above the scene of the screeching three-hundred-pound tuba player carrying off an ambitious Knickerbocker with the most unfortunate of faces ever pulled on camera … the banner said simply this:
PENDERGRASS IS ONE ASS
Enact're Music
"The Lido Shuffle" - Boz Scaggs