The oldest, yet the latest thing (Part 2) VI
And all of that, with just a few words, a sure smile and a cool head. It is admirable, this way in which he seizes an opportunity and just claims something for himself, always in control of the situation.
The stare-down between Barrow and Lord Grantham continues, and everyone in the room waits, with bated breath, if the underbutler’s going to get chastised for speaking out of turn. Then finally, Lord Grantham averts his eyes first - uncertainly as if to say that he has just handed over power to his adversary, apparently resigning himself to playing second, nay, third fiddle to this man for the rest of his life.
“Well, if that’s all, my lord,” Barrow says snidely, cutting through the thick silence, “I’ll go check what’s taking so long with the pudding course.” He gives a short bow (that isn’t fooling anyone; Lord Grantham seems to have understood now that Barrow has just taken over) and exits the room in a few sure strides.
Across the table, Lady Rose elbows Lady Edith, jerking her thumb in the direction of Barrow’s retreating back, and asks in a giggly whisper, “So, is he already spoken for or …?”
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There are mainly three reasons why lingering in Downton’s kitchens like a fruit fly in a wine glass is the best way to spend what little free time one has got as a servant: One, there’s always free food, exotic foreign delicacies, that they usually don’t get served downstairs, but that one gets to taste in Mrs Patmore’s realm. Two, it’s the simplest way to spend time around Ivy, who can mostly be found somewhere in the vicinity of the pots and pans.
Both these reasons are extremely important to Alfred, but they’re not exactly at the forefront of Jimmy’s mind whenever he wanders into the kitchen.
It’s the third reason that Jimmy finds most compelling: it’s the only room downstairs that ever gets truly warm in winter.
Which is why he sighs unhappily upon discovering that Daisy is already putting out the fires for the night when he strolls by the open door. (Also, he can hear Alfred’s voice in there, pestering her for leftover food from upstairs, and judging by the girl’s infatuation with the tall ginger menace, Jimmy just knows that Alfred will get what he wants from her, meaning that the kitchen is currently not the best spot for unwinding.)
Jimmy shivers at the thought of having to spend the evening in the ever-cold servants’ hall with its draughty, single-glazed cellar windows. But since the option of leaning against the old cast-iron cooker in the kitchen and enjoying some peace and quiet isn’t on the table anymore, he decides to get himself warmed up by playing a few jaunty tunes on the piano and wanders back to the servants’ hall.
The evening starts out as so many others have over the past six months, with Barrow meditatively sucking on his cigarette and reading the day’s newspaper and Jimmy letting his fingers stumble listlessly through Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan, which proves to be quite a challenge, what with said digits being all stiff from the cold and refusing to obey him throughout the faster passages. Some of the notes get swallowed, his articulation lacking clarity; the fast sweeping runs (especially the ones in the right hand) sound sloppy and slurred together, and his slipping, tripping fingers don’t seem to know how to trill thirds properly anymore. (Deep down, Jimmy knows that it’s not just the cold. The piece is just too difficult for him. That’s the sad truth. His fingers have got slower and clumsier over time, weaker and less precise.) It's extremely frustrating, of course. Because he can still hear it in his head the way it’s supposed to sound, but then, when he plays it, it's all so dulled and fuzzy that it makes him want to scream. It’s like forgetting one’s native language, painful, frustrating and soul-destroying. A nightmare of helplessness and humiliation. And there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s not like he gets the two or three hours of practice a day that any pianist would need to master this, and without constant training, his fingers will just continue to weaken. Then, one day, he won’t be able to play a simple children’s song anymore. It’s the sad, bitter truth. God knows if he’ll ever be able to teach his son to play the way his father once taught him.
He hits a few wrong notes, forgetting the three sharps at the beginning of the stave, and cringes at the dissonance, then jerks his hands off the keyboard angrily as if they’ve been burnt. ‘This sounds awful, anyway. Stupid Ravel! Stupid, repetitive, maritime tinkling nonsense!’ Jimmy huffs inwardly.
“God, don’t you just hate the French?!” he exclaims out loud, impatiently tearing the sheet music off the music stand and throwing it onto the piano top with a loud slap. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Barrow raise a questioning eyebrow at him. When he notices Jimmy looking, though, he quickly buries his nose in his newspaper again.
Jimmy remains sitting at the piano, emptily staring at the keys, wondering what tune to play to brighten the mood. Above him, the wind is splattering the window pane with raindrops and gravel.
Why they all think that he’s a lucky boy, Jimmy doesn’t know. But they really seem to think that. A golden boy, who got lucky in every aspect of life: looks, dancing skills, piano prowess …
In reality, he is painfully aware of his shortcomings, of how he's getting progressively worse at playing the piano or remembering his parents’ faces, of how everything is slipping away from under his fingers like desert sand, of how he is desperately trying to hold on to something and yet failing as everything fades into nothingness … ‘Practising the piano is like rolling a stone up a long, steep hill,’ his father had always said. ‘The moment you stop, the stone starts rolling down again.’ And sometimes, Jimmy wonders if maybe his entire life will consist of nothing but Sisyphean tasks, of nothing but uphill battles and downward spirals. An endless chain of frustrations till the day he dies … And he hates it when people call him pretty. It’s a slap in the face more than anything. The last and crowning insult to his manhood.
He lets his fingers rest on the piano keys for a moment without playing and shivers at the realisation of how cool they feel against his skin.
The one moment in his life that had felt different had been when he had first held his son, for Eddie had stepped into his life like a little ray of sunshine. But even at that, Jimmy is failing. Maybe because parenting is a bit like catching sunbeams with your bare hands. (At least, that's what it feels like to him.) Somewhere deep down, he suspects that he is failing at it because he is alone in this endeavour. Because you can’t catch a sunbeam with your bare hands alone; you need help. A mirror by your side to cage the light. To let it freely bounce back and forth between reflective surfaces, that hold it safely and protectively, yet let it dance and play and shine with unbounded radiance. But that’s a line of thinking that he’s uncomfortable with because …
At this moment, Alfred barges into the room like a crazed giraffe. “Look what I’ve got!” he exclaims triumphantly, holding up a large tin tray. “Petit fours! Lady Dullop didn’t like them. And His Lordship claims this evening's dinner conversation has given him indigestion.”
“Too much information, Alfred,” Barrow mutters around his cigarette, releasing the words sideways out of the corner of his mouth.
For a moment, Alfred just stares at the underbutler as if he doesn’t quite understand why Lord Grantham’s bowel movements shouldn’t be a suitable topic of conversation; then he clears his throat, face suddenly lighting up again. “So, do you want some? They’re delicious.”
“Actually, I’m with His Lordship on that one,” Jimmy bites out acerbically, noticing how Barrow throws him a sharp look out of the corner of his eyes. But Jimmy just can’t stop himself. It all comes flooding back to him: the things Lady Dullop has said, this overpowering feeling of helplessness and guilt …
“You sure?” Alfred asks incredulously. “You know, they really are-”
“No! I said no! For Christ’s sake, Alfred, will you stop?!” It’s not even just a matter of Jimmy’s feelings from earlier pouring out again. And it’s certainly not just the fact that he has eaten already, still full from the gravy-soaked dinner they’ve had earlier, and doesn’t want any French nonsense being shoved in his face. It’s not that. It’s at least not what makes Jimmy explode in Alfred’s face like this, feeling his own features contort in wild rage and his head flush bright red with white-hot, pent-up anger as he snarls at the other footman. No, it’s not just that.
It’s the fact that he gets offered things that he will never be able to purchase for his child. And little children deserve to be spoilt - at least, every once in a while. But he can’t afford to buy Eddie any sweets or toys or anything frivolous at all, not a single striped caramel on a stick, nothing. And it breaks his heart that he’s got to say no to those big blue eyes every single time. Because once, just once, he would love to give in and make his son beam with giddy joy about some ridiculous trinket (an animal colouring book or some silly penny toy or a small tin of boiled sweets). But he can’t. It pains him almost physically that he can’t. Because he would want to. Desperately. And here, Alfred is standing, practically plying Jimmy with exquisite pastries, that those snotty, good-for-nothing upstairs brats didn’t even want? It makes him want to scream, shout and ball his fists at the injustice of it all.
As it turns out, Alfred is much more patient and good-natured than Jimmy would have given him credit for. (Or maybe he is just used to Jimmy’s bouts of temper by now like a docile donkey plodding uphill with an air of stoic suffering.) “Well, you’re really missing out, you know. They’re good,” he says, then adds with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “No wonder you didn’t grow properly if you never eat any sweets.”
“Sweets don’t make children grow faster, you twat!” Jimmy snaps nastily at him, not even realising that the remark was probably just a jovial dig; he suddenly feels like bursting out of his skin with frustration. “There are children who grow just fine without constantly getting sweets shoved in their faces. Children like E-”
“I’ll have some of those petit fours, Alfred, if you please,” Barrow quickly speaks over Jimmy, shooting him a sharp glance, that says, ‘What are you doing?!’
Alfred guilelessly forks over about half of his strange French biscuits to Barrow while Jimmy feels himself gulp a few times, eyes wide with shock at his own blunder. ‘God, I’m practically coming apart at the seams,’ he thinks, rubbing his sweaty palms on his trousers.
“Well, I think I’ll head up to bed,” Alfred announces, cautiously gauging Jimmy’s reaction as if waiting for him to snap again. “Try not to wake me when you wander in in the middle of the night, Jimmy.”
“I promise I’ll let you snore on peacefully,” Jimmy mutters, but his voice sounds small now, having lost its bite.
“I don’t snore,” Alfred protests with a mock glower.
“Oh, yes, you do. It’s no wonder I sleep so badly all the time.”
“You’re one to talk,” Alfred huffs in amusement. “It’s you who keeps me awake for hours on end with your bloody sleep-talking, after all.”
“What?!” Jimmy’s heart slams into his throat so violently that he thinks it’ll surely burst out of his body for a moment.
“Yes … You know, you almost sound pained whenever you talk about her in your sleep,” Alfred laughs. “She must be quite the looker, this Mrs Petersen of yours.”
“Mrs Petersen?” Jimmy’s heart stutters to a sudden halt in his chest. From the corner of his eye, he can see that Barrow’s hand has frozen on its way to one of the petit fours on the table.
“Missis, eh?!” Alfred whistles, raising his eyebrows. “So, she a married one, then? … ‘Cause that’s where you go on your days off, innit? Oh, don’t worry; your secret’s safe with us. Right, Mr Barrow? … Good night, Casanova.”
It takes Jimmy a few moments to recover as the tall footman exits the servants' hall with a happy chuckle on his lips and saunters off.
He can feel his eyes blink owlishly a few times, open and shut, open and shut, trying to come up with something to say, then finally settles on mumbling, “Thank you, Mr Barrow.”
The underbutler doesn’t look at him when he replies, “That’s quite all right, James,” eyes intently fixed on the same paragraph in his newspaper for just that bit too long to make his indifference seem believable.
“Sometimes I really don’t know how to thank you,” Jimmy blurts out against his better judgement.
Something in the corner of Barrow’s mouth looks a bit softer for a moment, a bit warmer, and the man clears his throat twice, as if not entirely sure how to respond. “That’s- … Don’t worry about it, James. Just … just play me something again.”
Jimmy feels a strange flutter below his sternum at the idea of playing something specifically for the other man, at the realisation that the man has actually asked him outright to do so.
“Something that isn’t French, that is,” Barrow adds with a twinkle in his eye, as if to cover up his earlier sincerity with a joke.
“Of course,” Jimmy replies - it comes out a bit hoarse - and quickly starts flicking through the remaining sheet music on the piano stand.
A dog-eared copy of Liszt’s Waldesrauschen? Too difficult. (He doesn’t want a fiasco like earlier.)
Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu? Much too difficult. (God, if only his fingers would do as they’re told! His father had always played this one like a true virtuoso.)
A stack of American ragtimes? Bit too trivial to impress Mr Barrow with, Jimmy thinks, biting his bottom lip in frustration.
Finally, he settles on Debussy’s Rêverie. He’s never played it before, but it doesn’t look too difficult. Simpler, in any case, than that Ravel he’s made a shipwreck of earlier. ‘So? Another French piece, after all? The French are really persistent today, aren’t they?’ Jimmy thinks with an inward snort, grabbing his little chewed-up pencil off the music stand.
He places one hand on the cool keys and tentatively plays the first few notes, the first hesitant accompaniment figure of the left hand, that is supposed to support the expressive, dreamy melody of the right beginning to unfold in the third bar. Then he stops, a few quavers into the second line, leaning forward, and busily starts scribbling numbers on the page, then repeats what he’s just played, adding the right-hand theme, pencil stuck between his teeth, and stops again to fill in a few more numbers.
“Why have you stopped?” Barrow’s soft voice asks behind him. “That sounded lovely.”
Continued here