The oldest, yet the latest thing (Part 2) IV
He hurries to pass her the silver sugar bowl, which has been sitting on the table right in front of her, anyway. But after adding a few spoonfuls of sugar, she suddenly announces, “Now, eet eez too sweet. Beurk!”
She gives him a sulky pout at that, even going so far as to bite her plump, scarlet-painted bottom lip, making him wonder if she is really just complaining or … if this rather mature woman in her forties is, in fact, aggressively flirting with him.
Lord Dullop, for his part, doesn't seem to care, sitting there in his silk lounging pyjamas and velvet dressing gown, enjoying his first pre-breakfast cigarillo and flipping through the paper.
“Rrreally, Jacques!” Lady Dullop’s affected Gallic accent snaps Jimmy out of his thoughts as she continues to try to engage him in verbal foreplay. “Ze coffee in zeez cœntry! Tss tss tss! Eet tastes like dishwatœrrr. Nothing like un petit noir in Paris, hein!” (She says ‘Paree’, omitting the ‘s’ at the end.) When Jimmy doesn’t respond, she adds, “Jacques, mon petit lapin, ‘ow about you bring me another?”
‘Or how about you just get used to drinking tea, seeing as you’re in England now, you stupid cow?!’ Jimmy thinks, trying hard not to show that he is seething on the inside.
Out loud, he says, “Of course, my lad- madame. Will that be all?” When she nods, he gives a quick bow and turns around to head downstairs.
Behind himself, he can hear Lord Dullop turn a page and chuckle, “You know, chérie, if you just wanted to take a look at his bottom, you could have just asked him to turn around. You know I don’t mind.”
‘Not so boring after all, eh,’ Jimmy thinks. ‘Seems as if their notion of marriage is a bit … French, as well.’
Through the open door, he can still make out Lady Dullop’s answering laugh. “No chance zere, mon amour.”
“And here I thought you had given him your best ‘Déshabillez-moi’ look,” her husband replies nonchalantly.
“Oh, but eezn’t eet obvious zat Jacques eez like my brother in zat …”
In what way he allegedly resembles Lady Dullop’s cher frère, Jimmy will never find out, though, since he is already quickly jogging down the worn-out wooden stairs towards the kitchen.
Over the next few days, he remains largely puzzled by Lady Dullop’s behaviour. He is no stranger to female attention, of course. But then, the straightforward way in which their French guest expresses hers doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the manner in which all those young, wide-eyed English girls usually (and unfortunately) bat their eyelashes at Jimmy.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing … Because the way in which she half-attacks, half-teases, half-claims him for her amusement (and in front of her apparently indifferent or even consenting husband at that!) is really something else! And Jimmy wonders, more than once, if Lady Dullop’s aggressively cheerful flirting maybe just makes him so angry because some deeply repressed part of his mind actually likes the lewd comments directed at him, because he secretly revels in her abrasive attention, because there’s something in that good-humoured arrogance that he unwittingly craves … A certain something, an unselfconscious confidence, that is so different from the oohing and awing of all those innocently blushing girls that usually cross his path. Maybe some hidden part of him enjoys the forbidden thrill of being pursued like this (even if it’s mostly in jest on her part). Maybe he desires it even …
It’s a frightening thought, really, and every time it creeps up on him like a ruffian in the dark, he quickly banishes it from his mind, getting angry at himself. What good does it do to dwell on these things after all?
But it’s not just Lady Dullop and the valet Mr Wright who are a bit odd.
Lord Dullop himself is quite the character, too. Apparently, one of his grandfathers or great-grandfathers (Jimmy can’t be arsed to remember it) was Chancellor of the Exchequer at a time when the Almighty was still busily sawing away on Adam's rib … well, a long time ago, anyway. Long before Jimmy was even born.
In any case, that would explain why the man is so unfazed by all that is going on around him that he’s constantly threatening to fall asleep mid-conversation. Maybe it’s just in his blood to react with stony-faced stoicism to whatever turmoil or drama is happening around him and to whatever theatrics his wife and his valet have in store for him.
On the evening following Jimmy’s nightly conversation with Alfred for example, when they’re serving dinner upstairs, Lord Dullop actually does doze off right at the dinner table, his old-fashioned monocle popping out of his eye-socket and flopping right into the hors d'œuvres, gold monocle chain trailing in his apéritif.
Jimmy has to fight the urge to burst out laughing at that. ‘Well, maybe you should have chosen normal glasses like your valet. Monocles don’t exactly seem the safest type of eyewear when you find yourself so boring that you literally cannot stay awake listening to yourself,’ he thinks, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from grinning and watching Lady Dullop’s fruitless attempts to discreetly remove the offending object from her husband’s plate with her oyster fork, which ends up with her digging it even deeper into the various dainty amuse-gueules on his plate.
“Eustace!” she hisses out of the corner of her mouth. “Eustace, wake œp!”
Behind her, Jimmy silently vows to himself that, should his eyesight ever fail with age, he will never consider wearing a monocle, seeing as it holds such potential for embarrassment.
(“The Dullops’ daughter Salomé wears a monocle too,” the smug Mr Wright has told them all earlier, downstairs in the servants’ hall. Though what he’s meant by that cryptic remark and why Barrow responded to it with a snort eludes Jimmy.)
Meanwhile, Lady Dullop has started fidgeting in her seat, and Jimmy has to admit that he quite enjoys the spectacle unfurling before his vigilant servant's eyes and likes the sight of her embarrassed suffering - if only out of a feeling of revenge for being put through all that inner turmoil for her amusement.
He correctly predicts the moment when she discreetly starts to turn her head in the direction where he is standing to attention behind her to give him a pleading look and quickly turns away … just in time to make it seem as if he hasn’t noticed her predicament, busying himself with the Venetian wine decanter on the table.
It’s a thing of extraordinary beauty, made of blue Murano glass that sparkles in the light of the chandeliers and makes the deep red claret inside shine with an intense violet glow, that turns as black as an onyx stone when the decanter is set down in a dark corner. Jimmy admires the thing every time he has to pick it up to make his rounds and refill all the wine glasses on the table with the Grand Cru du jour, but this time he enjoys it even more, knowing that he has just abandoned Lady Dullop in her quest to wake her husband without anyone noticing and has left her with no option but to rudely elbow the man in his rotund belly, thus disrupting the flow of conversation around the dinner table.
He suppresses a devious smirk the moment the room suddenly goes quiet at Lord Dullop’s surprised gasp and bows over yet another wine glass, revelling in his revenge.
If Mr Carson were present, he wouldn’t have dared to ignore a guest like that. But ever since Carson and Barrow have started taking turns presiding over dinner, Jimmy has become aware of the fact that sometimes his shenanigans will go unpunished.
For a moment, he briefly panics when he sees Barrow freeze out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he has misjudged the situation and will get in trouble now. After all, Barrow must still be livid over Jimmy’s indiscreet questioning of him on the day before. But then he notices that certain glint in Barrow’s cool eyes and knows he is out of danger. For whether the underbutler is still cross with him or not, he is most certainly amused by what he’s just witnessed.
But apparently, Lady Dullop doesn’t exactly need Jimmy’s help to thoroughly affront everyone at the table, as he finds out a few minutes later while serving the main course.
Ever since the Dullops’ have arrived, Lady Rose has been pestering them with questions about life in the metropolis, curious to know every little detail now that she is effectively ‘banished to Siberia’, as she puts it. So, it doesn't come as a surprise when, once she has asked every question about London she can think of, she suddenly exclaims, “So, what’s going on in Paris, then? That dress you're wearing, is it from your Rue de la Paix couturier? I think Paris is so exciting!”
Lady Dullop just shakes her pretty head a few times at that and exhales sharply through her nose. “Oh, I ‘aven’t been in Paree’ in ages, Rosalie,” she replies dismissively. “It’s ‘orrible zeese days. Full of Americans.”
Jimmy thinks he can actually hear the sound of his jaw popping. Everyone at the table freezes in shock as well, and a suspiciously Irish-sounding, “Oh, dear!” floats across the table from Mr Branson’s direction.
Across from him, Lady Grantham has, for once, lost that smile that Jimmy has always thought was sewn onto her face permanently.
‘Well, well,’ Jimmy thinks, staring at Lady Dullop’s back from where he is, once again, standing behind her. ‘I’d be willing to bet Lady Grantham is wondering right now how on earth the Jacobins could forget to chop off your ancestors' heads while they were at it.’
Then Jimmy and the rest of the attending staff are treated to the second-hand embarrassment inducing experience of having to watch Lady Dullop back-pedal and apologise to Lady Grantham while everyone else at the table busily pretends to be extremely interested in the confit de canard on their plates.
The only one who looks as if he hasn’t got a worry in the world is Lord Dullop, who still appears to be fighting boredom, monocle precariously trembling in his eye-socket once again.
Later, the conversation turns to the grieving Lady Mary and the fact that the young widow has once again refused to grace them with her presence at dinner.
“Pauvre fille,” Lady Dullop trills. “Per‘aps she suffers from mélancolie?”
“That is very likely, yes,” Lord Grantham nods - if only to keep the polite conversation flowing. “But there isn’t anything we can do about it, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, but zere eez!” Lady Dullop disagrees with a laugh, once again proving that her foreign instincts are woefully out of touch with how an Englishman declares the discussion on a particular matter closed and how he words his disapproval of a certain topic of conversation. “You know, my sister Prudence ‘as always ‘ad zeese … dark moods. But now that she ‘as found zis brilliant nerve specialist, zis ‘ypnotist, in Paree’, she is all bettœrrr. Zis man ‘as completely cured ‘er of eet by means of ‘ypnosis. ‘Ee eez such a marvel! You see, ‘ee uses zeese spectacular methods of Mesmerism, magnetising ‘is patients and such.”
From where he is standing behind her, Jimmy can see a polite, yet helplessly sceptical smile stretch Lord Grantham’s pained face as she goes on and on about ‘energetic transferences’, ‘universal harmony’ and ‘magnetic sleep’.
Jimmy himself is wondering why any physician would want to magnetise anyone of all things. ‘Good luck with getting Lady Mary to do that,’ he thinks quietly. ‘She’s got enough on her plate without spoons and trays getting stuck to her at inopportune moments as she walks by.’
“As for electrotherapy,” Lady Dullop continues, undeterred, “zere are lots of sanatoriums zat offer galvanic baths. Zey are supposed to be ‘ighly stimulating, revitalising and ‘olesome. I mean, electricity eez such a mysteerious force, after all.”
“Indeed,” Lady Grantham says politely, while Mr Branson secretly rolls his eyes.
From the way Lord Grantham is touching his greying temple in between his sips of wine, it’s obvious that he is getting a headache.
Jimmy, for his part, is suddenly assailed by a rather Carson-ish thought. ‘Maybe it’s not her; it’s us! Lady Dullop isn’t behaving outlandishly or rudely. It’s just that we’ve all been cooped up out here in the countryside for too long. We don’t know what people in the big cities are like anymore. She isn’t being impolite. This is what it’s like now. These are the new people.’ It’s a strange and almost saddening thought, steeped in a quiet nostalgia, that suddenly makes him feel lost and very small. As if he, and with him all the people here at Downton, were stuck in a circular reel tin, caught on nitrate film, forgotten on the dusty shelf of some cinema somewhere. As if they were all mere spectres of a world long gone by.
“Anyway, my sister says zat what zis docteur eez doing eez really ‘elping ‘er,” Lady Dullop concludes her tale in the meantime.
Her husband, who has chosen this very moment to come to from his half-comatose state, turns to her and mutters so quietly that only she and Jimmy can make it out, “If you think that is all your sister is doing with him, you’re blind, chérie.”
It takes Jimmy a moment to realise that there are probably two other people in the room who must have heard this remark as well.
Because while he is still trying to mentally pick his jaw up off the floor, he can clearly make out that Lady Edith, who is sitting across from their guests, is … no, not looking shocked, quite the opposite, actually … The sly young woman is smirking, actually smirking, at the suggestive comment. (‘Does this mean she’s one of those new people now, as well?’ Jimmy wonders.)
Behind her, a wide-eyed Alfred is standing with a puzzled expression on his face, as if still trying to work out what else Lady Dullop’s sister and her nerve specialist could have got up to.
“I’m sure you mean well, Claudette,” Lady Grantham interrupts the silent scene with a polite smile, “but I don’t know if there are any doctors like that in England.”
“Well, zere must be someone in London, no?” Lady Dullop asks, spearing a morsel of duck with her fork. “Oh, and therapeutic baths do ‘elp as well. You know, thermal springs and mineral watœrrr and all zat. You could send Marie to Bath or to Bagnoles-de-l'Orne. In Baden-Baden, zey even offer radium baths zeese days. You know, of course, ‘ow invigorating and refreshing radioactivity eez supposed to be for ze body and ze mind.”
(Later in the evening, in the servants’ hall, Mr Bates, that pretentious old prick, will laugh about this while listening to their retelling of the goings-on upstairs. “Anyone who knows their Dostoyevsky knows that people don’t go to Baden-Baden for the baths,” he will say. Jimmy doesn’t know anyone called Dostoyevsky and consequently has no idea what the man is going on about. It doesn’t escape him, though, that Barrow gives a sudden laugh at Bates’s incomprehensible joke. It even takes the underbutler a second to realise that he has just laughed at something his arch-nemesis has said, which is when he quickly schools his expression back into one of gloomy indifference and mutters to no one in particular, “Well, and also … hypnosis is quackery.”)
As the main course draws to a close, Lady Dullop manages to make one last faux pas for the evening. This time, it’s a particularly disturbing one, though.
“Poor Master Georges,” she sighs, once again disregarding their hosts’ express wish not to talk about this particular topic. “Well, on ze whole, ‘ee still got lucky, of course.”
That raises a few eyebrows around the table, but everyone remains silent, waiting for her to elaborate.
“Eet eez better zis way round, you know. With ‘is father dying and ‘is mother being zere for ‘im, I mean. Just imagine what would ‘ave ‘appened if eet were zee ozer way round. A child without a mother - zat’s just cruel. No child should be raised by a man. Zat would be almost criminal. A child without a mother eez like-”
This time, Lord Grantham’s fork actually falls onto his plate with a clatter. And from where Jimmy is standing, he can see that Branson’s face has gone as white as the damask napkin in his hand.
But he doesn’t even hear the ensuing apologies anymore, doesn't hear the desperate reassurances as Lady Dullop tries to back-pedal her way out of this awkward situation too, doesn't hear the buzz of distressed chatter erupting in the dining room, doesn’t hear the words, ‘Lady Sybil’ and ‘poor widower’ and ‘motherless child’ floating through the air.
No, Jimmy doesn’t hear anything anymore.
Continued here