The oldest, yet the latest thing (Part 2) III
And it is his friendship with this man that he has just jeopardised!
He is so angry with himself that it feels almost logical to assign at least part of the blame to Wright. (If the man hadn't felt the need to parade his posh little behind around in front of Barrow, Jimmy wouldn’t have snapped, right? After all, why did the valet have to leer at him like Alfred does at Mrs Patmore’s crème brûlée or Bates does at the idea of smarming up to his personal saint, Lord Grantham?)
Speaking of Alfred, the other footman is still fuming about Wright in his corner of their shared bedroom, his agitated voice mingling with the sound of the raindrops pattering on the slate-shingled roof above them. Jimmy has stopped listening about half an hour ago, and still, Alfred is going on and on and on about the Dullops’ valet.
“And then, that nitwit’s idiotic smile! Don’t even get me started on that,” Alfred seethes somewhere in the darkness.
“Yes … yes, that,” Jimmy replies non-committally, immediately zoning out of the conversation-turned-monologue again.
Is this how Eddie feels at night? Lonely, curled up in his rickety bed, lying in the dark and staring at the moving shadows on the ceiling? Or is that something only adults do? Will his son start doing that once he reaches pubescence and starts to mature, starts to hate his dad, to ponder the question why his father was never there for him? Jimmy thinks he felt something when Barrow met Eddie … as if … as if the two of them had instantly had a connection of some sort …
And now he had to go and ruin it all! Barrow will move away and their friendship will be over …
Jimmy knows that the underbutler is currently finalising the deal with Murray - smiling and humming to himself every evening in the servants’ hall while Jimmy tinkles on the piano and broods about his life; the fact that Mr Carson hasn’t stopped frowning and muttering about it for days (“An underbutler owning a house? … unheard-of … improper …”) only seems to spur Barrow on, amusing him all the more, if anything.
So … Only a fortnight now until the man moves out. (Why the thought makes him so unbearably sad and squeezes his heart into a tiny, aching lump, Jimmy doesn’t know. After all, the underbutler will be here every day. He’ll turn up just before breakfast every morning and leave for his house late after the staff dinner. Nothing will change. Except for the fact that the man won’t be sleeping across the hall from him anymore. And that’s a thought that would have meant a great relief to Jimmy a mere six months ago. So, why does he suddenly dread it so much?)
“Oi! Are you listening?” Alfred’s still livid voice suddenly cuts through his thoughts.
“Er … yes. Yes, of course.”
“No, you’re not!” Alfred disagrees with a short snort of laughter. “I can practically hear you making faces over there in the dark.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jimmy grumbles, throwing his pillow in Alfred’s direction. Judging by the sound, it misses him by a good foot or so and hits the wall with a soft, muffled thud.
“No, I won’t,” Alfred laughs again, throwing the pillow back and hitting Jimmy squarely in the face despite the semi-darkness in the room. “You weren’t listening to what I was saying.”
It takes Jimmy a few seconds to re-emerge from under the pillow; then he replies, “Yes, I was.”
“Oh?” Alfred mocks. “Well, what was the last thing I said, then?”
Jimmy frantically scrambles to come up with something, anything. It is a feeling strangely reminiscent of the one he had experienced every time he had made up excuses as a pupil at school to spare his buttocks a thorough caning from of a teacher or the headmaster, which sometimes had, but mostly hadn’t worked, resulting in him having to bend over a desk and getting ‘six of the best’ on the seat of his trousers. “You, erm, you said … you were … you were talking about … about Ivy and Mr Wright,” he improvises quickly.
To Jimmy’s surprise, Alfred, good ol’ guileless Alfred, actually believes him. “Oh, so you were listening, after all? … Well, as I was saying,” the footman jumps right back into his rant, “what in God's name does she see in him?! I mean, have you seen those glasses? He’s probably too blind to even appreciate her beauty.”
‘Or too much of a daffodil,’ Jimmy adds in his thoughts.
“Maybe there should be a ban on pretty people falling for blind people,” Alfred mutters. “It’s not fair.”
“Technically, he isn’t blind, though. Just short-sighted,” Jimmy points out cautiously.
“Why are you taking his side?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Traitor!” Alfred growls, only half serious.
“Look! Is that mould up there?” Jimmy asks quickly, pointing at the ceiling above him.
“Just a cobweb. And don’t deflect.”
“I’m not deflecting. I don’t like Wright either,” Jimmy says truthfully.
“Yes, but Ivy does,” Alfred sighs, returning to his new favourite topic. “Lord knows what goes on in women’s heads sometimes. Honestly, they are strange creatures. First she fancies you (even though you’re tiny); then she’s suddenly head over heels for this Wright cove. And the other day, she even said she thought Mr Barrow was handsome!”
“Well, he is handsome,” Jimmy mutters, if only on impulse.
The light in his head goes off one second too late - like the bluish light of a street gas lantern that only flares up after the lamplighter has poked the wick a bit with his long pole.
‘Uh-oh,’ he thinks.
And the deafening silence from across the darkened room only confirms that he’s just said something stupid.
For once, he has apparently managed to render Alfred absolutely speechless. (And after half an hour of listening to the other footman’s tirade, at that!) Jimmy would almost congratulate himself were it not for the obvious slip-up.
But if Jimmy has learnt one thing in his life, it’s that to save your skin after any such lapse, you should never deny what you’ve said - quite the opposite, actually: you should repeat it with real conviction in your voice.
“Well, he is!” Jimmy insists, curling his naked, clammy toes into the cold sheets. For a moment, he counts his own breaths in the uncomfortable silence, listening to the rain continuing unabated outside.
Then finally, Alfred mutters darkly, “You should be the last person to make jokes about that, mate.”
“Well, er … er … If you asked the girls who they’d rather kiss: Mr Carson or Mr Barrow, what do you think their answer would be, hm?”
There is a short, contemplative pause.
“True,” Alfred admits finally. “That would be Mr Barrow, of course.” Then he suddenly starts laughing. “Not that the girls would have any luck with that.”
“No, Mr Barrow’s interests lie elsewhere,” Jimmy laughs shakily.
And just like that, the uncomfortable silence is back, with both of them biting their lips and staring at the rain-stained ceiling. It’s obvious where Barrow’s interests lie; the man has made that very clear, after all. And it was Alfred, of all people, who got to witness it. So, it’s obvious, really, why they’re both suddenly shying away from saying anything.
“Why do you think he goes around kissing other coves,” Alfred breathes, “when he could have any girl he wanted? … Hell, if he were thus inclined, there would probably be girls queuing up in front of his door … Not that I know what women even see in men,” he then adds quickly.
“Nor do I,” Jimmy assures him, just as quickly.
‘But it’s not exactly true, is it?’ a small voice in the back of his mind whispers. Because it’s so obvious, really, why women like men. Of course, they do! Why wouldn’t they?
Men are strong, confident and brave … What’s not to like? And if they're handsome, their beauty often has a certain edginess to it, a mesmerising toughness and roughness that women (at least, in Jimmy’s opinion) lack, no matter how pretty they are.
Yes, there is a straightforwardness and almost brutal assertiveness about men that makes them attractive in many more ways than just their looks. It is their raw aggressiveness, their spontaneity, the quirkiness of their humour, a directness and candour that Jimmy appreciates … Not even to mention the aspect of physical strength … There is a reason why all those sculptor chappies back in ancient Greece worshipped the male form, after all.
Yes, Jimmy sighs inwardly, it is obvious why women like men. He almost feels a bit envious of them. After all, it is much more difficult to find a suitable girl. If Jimmy were a woman, he would fall for a man in a heartbeat.
Not that Alfred needs to know any of this. He would just get the wrong idea. (Because it would be the wrong idea, wouldn’t it?)
“As I said,” Alfred suddenly growls. “Half the time, you don’t know what’s going on in girls’ silly heads. And the other half, you don’t want to know … Not that I know what goes on in Mr Barrow’s head either, but that I really have no wish to know anything about. It must be abhorrent.” The rustling sound from across the room indicates that the footman is cringing or wincing in disgust.
“Oh, absolutely!” Jimmy agrees, going for a fervent tone of voice.
Secretly, however, he’s got to admit that he always wonders what goes on in Barrow’s head. The man just seems like such a mystery that it’s intriguing. But it’s not like Alfred needs to know any of this, Jimmy decides as they finally bid each other goodnight and fall asleep, dreaming of a future neither of them is sure of and a home neither has a chance of having …
🚬
Their guests stay longer than expected. Upstairs, everyone assures them how wholesome their company is to the still-grieving Lady Mary (even though the recently bereaved widow hasn’t so much as left her room since they arrived).
Jimmy refuses to believe there’s anything wholesome about these snotty Londoners at all.
Lady Dullop, for example, has the most annoying accent he’s ever heard in his life. She’s been living in London for more than a decade now - ever since she married Lord Dullop - but she either can't or doesn't want to get rid of this ridiculous French accent that betrays her origins and sets Jimmy’s teeth on edge.
He gets a taste of her equally French temperament first thing when the motor drops the Dullops off on Downton's doorstep on the first day: Lady Dullop walks in, takes off her expensive, rain-heavy paletot and hands it to him since he happens to be the servant standing by her elbow.
Then she gives him a quick once-over through her long (probably false) eyelashes, and her little Cupid-bowed mouth breaks into an enigmatic smile. “Ah, bien sûr,” she states, “Il y a toujours un valet pédé … euh … de pied.”
And with these mysterious words, she hands Jimmy her cloche hat, a sable muff, a silk umbrella, and a fox (!) that she has just taken off from around her neck and stalks off, leaving him standing there with his mouth open and a pile of clothes in his outstretched arms - among them an entire dead animal, for it’s not just a fur collar or stole but the whole thing: four long paws, a bushy red tail, and green glass eyes staring up at him as if to say, ‘Mate, you’re going to have fun with this one.’
On the next morning, when he is serving her and her husband breakfast, she once again manages to render Jimmy speechless when she announces that she doesn’t like the coffee he has just poured for her from the Meissen porcelain coffee pot on the table.
“Ze coffee eez too bitter, Jacques,” she complains, raising the thin, finely pencilled arc that is her eyebrow at Jimmy. (The fact that she insists on calling him ‘Jacques’ is more than just a little unnerving, but there is nothing Jimmy can do about that.)
He hurries to pass her the silver sugar bowl, which has been sitting on the table right in front of her, anyway.
Continued here