I could not speak, and my eyes failed
III
January, 1919
Downton.
He wondered what they would think of him, how strangely weary his inaction felt, his cowardice, how wrong it was for him to be out of uniform; how unkempt he could look in the mornings, in fallen braces and bare feet, after a nightmare-interrupted sleep and too much tobacco on his fingers.
Would they know a strained and sombre, smoking man? Would they understand that he had finally run, and did not quite know how to return?
“Hello,” Mary said, formal and poised as ever; in the grey day, she was monochromatic: her clothes, her eyes, her skin. The only flash came from her jewellery, a simple pendant at her neck, her earrings, her fingers bare as they clutched his. Her left hand stayed at her side, but he noticed its starkness, too, turned in against the dark drape of her dress.
This isn't black and white, darling. And yet here she was, in tones.
“Hello,” he said. A small tug at the corner of her mouth as her eyes met his, like she was biting the inside of her lip. This is much more vibrant than we could ever know.
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They always seemed to confer at twilight; were most honest at the transitory times of day, when light hit their faces in ways which hid expression.
Throughout the shoot, throughout the day, Mary had watched him from a distance, this impossibly lean and severe version of Matthew, and could not reconcile him with the man of seven years ago; he was all angles, flashing hooded eyes, his voice thicker and with a deeper timbre than she remembered, more resonant and rich. Their meetings had become a matter of force, colliding spheres of influence and expectation.
Now she watched him stand on the gravel drive, staying long after they had waved off the Dowager and the others had gone inside. She watched his head bend, hands cup to his face with the bright flare of a match; the edge of his cheek that she could see rounded as he breathed in, hand shaking out the flame, body straightening elegantly against the house. He did not start when she walked up beside him, did not even look at her, and she stared at his fiercely squared shoulders, the taper to his waist more definite in this shorter cut of tuxedo, the small red ember of his cigarette dancing against the blue night.
“I didn't know you smoked,” she said.
He made a non-committal sound. “Nasty habit from the trenches.” She was fascinated by the delicate way he held the cigarette between his fingers, the ember's light only reaching to illuminate the half-moon crescent of his thumb when he inhaled. “Can't seem to give it up,” he said. “Sorry, you probably don't want to breathe this muck.” He gestured to the thick white haze around them.
She watched it dissipate as his palm disturbed its slow trajectory skyward. “No. It's all right,” she said quietly.
He smiled. “You know, I saw Evelyn Napier in London once. I was fresh off the Somme. He was smoking. I thought it so odd, then.”
“Hmm,” she said, holding her arms lightly around herself.
“He spoke to me. Thought we were married.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. You... did correct him, didn't you?”
He gave a playful smile and a sidelong glance. “I didn't say a thing.” He smirked at her stare, eyes glittering, cigarette hanging loosely from his clasped lips. It was delicately balanced there, tilting as his mouth moved, falling away to be caught lightly in his fingertips.
“It was years ago, Mary,” he said. “Besides, would it really have been so bad, being married to a sea-monster?” That rich, dark, bold voice again.
Sea-monster. “I broke off with Richard.”
He took another long, contemplative drag, and she watched shadow shift into his cheeks upon inhaling. “Why?” he asked; her focus shifted to his speech, the low soothing current of it.
“If I told you the reason you would despise me and that I really couldn't bear.”
He turned fully toward her. “Tell me,” he whispered. She stayed silent, shyly staring at her hands, but he dipped his head to meet her, voice soft and gentle enough to make her think it might not be dangerous to say this, to put some small fragment of it out in the open.
Yet when she met his eyes, looking at her with an earnestness not unlike his first proposal, she could not say it. “Not yet. Not even Papa knows, and I couldn't - you see, Matthew, you're only - ”
“I'm only what?” He straightened and looked to the sky, voice clearer. “Mary, whatever it is cannot be enough to marry a man who appeared to view his vows as a business contract.”
She threw her arms up. “But that's what it was, between us!” she cried. “What it had to be.”
“But why?”
She said nothing, hearing his exasperated sigh.
He turned again and stepped close, near enough to feel the heat of him against her bare arms. “Tell me, please.” In that suspended moment of presumption he was entirely alluring, and she thought Yes, I could say this and we would be all right. She shut her eyes, frustrated by her attraction, still, now, when things were so very difficult.
“Mary,” he whispered, and then his hand was on her arm, the warmth a shock on her skin. Then they were walking, and her feet found grass without looking, allowing him to guide her blindly for all but a few seconds; they were under the cedar tree, hesitating next to the bench. He sat down expectantly but she could not move, could only stand in front of him unsteadily with her eyes fixed on the dark and knotted bark behind his head. “Please.”
Her eyes flickered to his, wide in the dark, at a reverent angle, hands clasped gently in front of him.
“I - Kemal Pamuk. Do you remember him?”
As she spoke, tripping over the words, she watched his hands come to his mouth, eyes move down, a frown etching there; she nearly stopped altogether when his fingers dragged across his lips, head angling down so far that she could only see the neat parting of his hair, the sleek comb lines in it. She faltered, and his head snapped up. “It's all right,” he whispered, reaching out to her in placation and then dropping away. He tried to smile, but it faltered just as much as her voice, as his shaking hands.
“Was it love?” he asked, when she'd finished, her shoulders hunched inward, staring at his shoulders equally concave, gentlemanly stance forgotten, elbows on knees, eyes to the ground between his feet. “Because if it was love, then - ”
“It was lust, Matthew! Or something in him that I - oh what does it matter?”
“I'm only trying to understand, Mary,” he snapped, then sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face.“You were wrong about one thing, you know,” he said, from behind his fingertips. “I never would - I - ” He stood, kept a few feet between them, but his eyes straight on hers. “I never could despise you.”
She stayed quiet, staring at him. The deft angles of his shoulders had returned, his stance proud, but he looked at her so gently that she felt a fresh surge of love for him well up beneath her dissipating nervousness. “I'm going to America,” she said quietly, smoothing out her gloves. He made a soft noise of surprise, eyes flitting away.
I don't care.
I forgive you.
“You're - you're sure you can't brave the storm here? Because, God, Mary, I've never met a better storm-braver than you.”
I love you.
She smiled softly at him. “Maybe.”
“Would Carlisle make your life such a nightmare if you stayed?”
“I couldn't say.” She could feel tiredness seeping into her limbs, into her voice. “It will be a few months at most, Matthew.”
His fingers came up and lightly touched the edge of her jaw, three fingers spanning the length of its left side. Then his touch slipped from her, and then he retreated to the house, leaving her with that triptych, those points of warmth.
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November, 1919
The scandal broke in March. Mary returned in June.
She smiled easily and wore sparkling gowns and her hair slightly differently, her slim hands gripping his shoulders as she kissed his cheek. She was bright and languid through the summer, subdued and beautiful. She would smile at him across a room, with something like relief, and he knew they were all right, on an even plane.
Yet today was strained and cautious, his morning fraught, slipping into starched cotton and thick wool and heading toward Downton. His boots clicked loudly, snapped and creaked on the ground. The tight confines of his jacket made him feel stifled; he rolled his shoulders slightly.
I do wish you'd fight for her, you know, his mother had told him before he'd left, with quiet demarcation. He felt so suddenly tired, bone-deep; had been fighting too long, too wearily, fighting for King and country and her, of course. His duty, his honour, his heart. “Yes,” he had whispered, leaving, hasty to cover the shame which flushed his face and made his hands shake more than holding any weapon ever had.
_
Once he was around the garden wall, out of view of the house, he turned his face to the sky, its pale blue growing in pigment as the sun rose. He breathed deep, closed his eyes. For a moment he kept utterly still, rocking back on his heels until he nearly tipped. Perhaps they were not on an even plane at all; perhaps America had changed her. But the war had changed him, with irrevocable certainty, so why should they not be honest with each other?
He breathed.
And then he walked.
And then he saw Mary.
She was wearing the same coat and hat as when she'd given him her good luck charm, the red standing out against the village walls, and he felt the tiny toy dog in his pocket, a burning talisman. She nodded to him, with a small smile, as the crowd gathered; he watched her through the service, separated from him by black coats and army fatigues. At the end, he stood still and waited as people departed; he waited for her to turn to him, her face cautious, hands clasped carefully in front of her. He tried not to flinch at her trepidation, easing his shoulders down from their plane at attention.
“Would you like company, walking back?”
He made sure not to look startled, or too relieved to be shaken from the dark reflection the two minutes silence had afforded him. “Of course.”
He offered her his arm. Her palm fit smoothly into the crook of his elbow, her gloved fingers pressing lightly, reassuringly, into his forearm. He wanted to smile at how much his strides were shortened by her; it felt entirely normal, this, between them, her hand at his arm and their shoulders bumping and his walking pace stunted to match hers.
For a long while, they did not speak, a surprisingly amiable silence spreading between them through the sifting crowd; he could feel Mary glance at him occasionally, as though she expected some sort of fear or sadness to be plain on his face, and then she asked a question she had asked three years ago, one he had not expected again.
“What was it like, Matthew?”
“It was - senseless.” This was not as veiled as he thought, fleetingly, perhaps it should be. No, he was to be honest with her, in degrees. What he could not tell her was that the man in the trenches had somehow shut off all he was outside them; there, he was training and weaponry and the clothes on his back - he was not hers, nor Lavinia's, nor even his own; he was France's entirely, a creature constructed of that flat and fractured earth. He was not Matthew, he was not even Crawley, at times - he was the red and gold regiment tag on the back of his tunic, and only when the frenetic energy of battle slowed did he allow pieces to filter back - the man who knew fractions of German, who led a company, who had a name and a home and a good luck charm. The man who had been to Oxford, the man who rode a bicycle. The man who could write letters to England using somewhat normal phrases.
“... but sometimes, when we rose at dawn, the sun was so spectacular looking. It's - it was because of the... smoke, you see, it took the light and made its colours so strong. We never quite noticed the sunsets because there was so much else to concentrate on then, but the mornings... There was a quiet lull, a few moments where you could truly appreciate it.”
Mary made a small humming sound at the back of her throat.
He gave a rueful smile. “That is, until you saw everything the night flares failed to illuminate.”
They were at the gates to the grounds; Mary had to let go of his arm to keep him from seeing how she was suddenly shaking. His words made her want so desperately to hold his face and his hands and hug him, but they had been distant for too long, and such physical intimacy was not hers to have.
She stood across from him, silent.
“It felt like - in the morning,” he said, his voice far-off, “none of the men could lie anymore. Not to themselves, and not to anyone else, not about our situation.” She watched his eyes flit to the ground and back up; he spoke again, after an uneven breath. “Dawn has a funny way with revelation, don't you think? Like the light is too pure to play tricks.”
“Yes,” she said, hand tightening on his arm. “I suppose it does.”
He only nodded, a single, sad incline of his head, and looked at her with soft, resigned eyes. There was that open-mouthed, bright-eyed Matthew again, who looked at her a little too long; he straightened and averted his gaze uncomfortably. She stared at him, at his greatcoat and his riding boots and how tightly he was clutching his hands; she imagined she clung to the edges of that greatcoat, her foot bumping the toe of those riding boots, her fingers brushing the knuckles of that tightly bound hand. Physical intimacy was not hers to give, least today of all day, but how horribly it was wanted, in those strained moments before the others reached them.
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January, 1920
She wore bold, jewel-tone blue. “America?” he asked, as they danced, the fabric catching silver at every turn.
“It reminded me of someone,” she said, her eyes near black, glittering.
“Oh?” he asked innocently, but his hand on her waist sat a little tighter, her own gloved fingers smoothing across his shoulder.
“Honestly, Matthew,” she whispered, her voice bubbling with amusement, “When on earth are you going to let me marry you?”
He was not aware they had stopped dancing. She took his arm and slipped between the arches, heading for the library. “I'm used to seeing you in red,” he said, to defer the shocking boldness of her words, the bright glint of her hairpin at his eye level, the feel of her hand on his arm again, halfway between wrist and elbow, her black satin gloves blending into his sleeve.
She moved her hand down and her thumb caught against his cufflink. “That's hardly a proposal,” she said, with a haughtiness that was also good-humoured, gliding away from him, and he tried not to notice the way fabric pooled and straightened against her as she walked.
He followed her through the corridor and out the library doors. The music and laughter inside were muffled, the air shockingly cold, and it was snowing.
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part IV