a great lament (ch.2)
ii.
we all live in a harsh world, but at least I know I do.
February, 1925
London was in a constant fog, and Edith passed through the long, dark panelled hallways of the building, her shoes clicking, the overhead lights making a soft glow of the marble tiles. Everywhere smelled of cigarette smoke, and her coat was too warm, the fur collar tickling at her neck. "Michael?" she called. Laughter, two male voices. In his office, Michael sat perched on the edge of the lamp-lit desk, mahogany gleaming, another man leaned back in the chair in front of a typewriter with fingers poised on the keys. Smoke spiralled from their mouths, the quick beat of the gramophone incongruous with their languid state.
"I thought everything was shut up for the night," she said, Michael twisting at her voice, the other man's eyes flicking to her.
"My typewriter's on the fritz," the man said. "I threw it across a room." He grinned, sitting forward into the light and tamping his cigarette out. "And I've got a deadline to meet."
Michael stood and walked over to her, placing a hand to the small of her back. "Edith, this is Lord Anthony Gillingham, he writes for the Times."
"Lord?" Edith questioned.
Anthony gave a hooded look to Michael. "I told you I was done with peerage nonsense."
Michael laughed, the press of his palm slipping away from her. "Well I'm certain it's all that got you that column," he said. Anthony waved dismissively, bending forward on his elbows so the white gleam of his shirtsleeves and cufflinks caught under the light. He sighed and unwound the paper from the typewriter, standing and swinging his jacket on. He was remarkably tall, Edith thought, a long line of charcoal grey suit, dark hair and shadowed eyes.
She watched him tuck the paper into an envelope. "No, I got it because of my wit and education," he said, then looked up sharply to the gramophone needle dragging as Michael lifted it. "If you scratch that I'm shipping you to America to buy another copy," he warned.
"Go home, Gillingham," Michael said fondly.
He sighed, then bent to gather his coat. "Goodnight," he said. "Lovely to meet you, Edith." He smiled, nodding to her and striding into the corridor, where his footsteps rapidly disappeared.
"He was in my regiment," Michael said. "The family's lost all its privilege now, though he's the only one left to see it go."
"How dreadful for him."
"I'm not sure he views it that way."
He was leaning out the window of their sitting room the next time she met him. All she saw was his back, the arc of waistcoated shoulders, until he ducked back inside but kept his wrist against the ledge, cigarette dangling from his fingers. "Oh, hello again," he said genially, smiling at her.
"I was just saying what I told you," Michael said upon kissing her cheek. "Anthony should meet Mary, shouldn't he?"
Anthony raised an eyebrow. "I can see where this is headed already," he said dryly. "You're not terribly subtle, and lovely as I'm sure she is, I'm not looking to act the part of suitor at the moment."
"You're not looking at all," Michael muttered. "That's the problem."
"I thought I had no-one left to judge me for it," Anthony sighed, drawing away from the window and pushing it shut. He sat neatly in the wing back chair across from them.
"You'll lose your looks, you know," Michael said seriously.
She watched Anthony's hand twitch to his mouth, his smirk bloom into a laugh which he quickly cut off in a long intake of breath. "Oh dear," he said. "I should hope the woman I marry will value more aspects of my character than looks." He glanced to Edith with an amused glint in his eyes. "Is your sister very shallow, Edith?"
Edith had not made particular note of it that night in Michael's office, or perhaps it was because of the outdoor lighting now in this room, but as he looked straight at her she saw his face was graceful, strong angled. "I - no, I don't suppose Mary is, anymore," she said.
His head tilted. "Anymore?"
"People grow up," she replied deftly, thinking of how much she herself had matured, of her relationship with Mary having moved from its petty sparring after Sybil's death. Mary had caged herself near completely after Matthew, but Edith thought she could understand such an action. And of course the war had changed her. Sybil had said as much, that day in the library, when she had spoken of her wish to be freed from their life at Downton. Edith wondered at this moment if she had taken that advice to heart herself, somewhat unconsciously, and if her actions would have made Sybil proud.
Anthony nodded. "Of course they do," he said. She watched his features straighten and rearrange into something dark-lined. "Often because circumstance forces adulthood upon them."
The photographer fussed, and Mary shifted Matthew on her hip impatiently. He crouched beneath the black cloth draping the camera again and Mary turned her gaze beyond him, to the entrance hall where Carson was opening the door, pale sunlight spilling to the carpet. She watched Violet go slowly into the library, until the camera shutter took her attention and the smell of magnesium cloyed the air. The photographer nodded, and Matthew squirmed away from her to descend the last few steps, too small to hold the bannister. She followed him with one hand wavering behind his back, buoyed by his triumphant grin at the bottom. She hugged him against her side for a moment. She smoothed his hair back, the thick unruly mess of it a muddy brown she thought could have been her own father's once, with a catch of gold in it making her throat close. "Go say hello to Granny, darling," she murmured, ushering him away.
Her insistence on photographic portraits were an equivalent to what lined the walls of this very hall, the domineering paintings of ancestors she could not name except for a few. She wondered at how long this archiving would last, whether it would dwindle as Matthew began to leave her in favour of school and adulthood. She wondered about his future cautiously, in small measured steps. Brave boy, best boy, only boy, my prince. It was strange to wish for stasis, but that was exactly what she wanted, captured in a camera's lens, an impersonal eye: the fixed image of a certain moment and date and memory of feeling.
Mary stirred her tea into a neat whirlpool around the spoon, conscious of each clink it made against the fine china. Edith sat across from her, Violet to her right, and the arrangement made Mary feel as though she were being interrogated, sat in the centre of the settee with Matthew tucked against her side. He had refused a nap, but she could see his attention waning, his eyes closing for longer and longer moments as the adults spoke.
Violet watched him fondly, contemplating what Edith had just reiterated about her time in London. Then she scoffed. "Goodness, we don't want to welcome a friend of that newspaper man, he'll be up to tricks," she said, looking askance.
"He's a Lord, Granny," Mary reminded her gently.
"Not from a family we know, surely," Violet chuckled, purposely looking to her younger granddaughter. "No-one we know would associate with such commoners as Gregson."
Edith pursed her lips. "If it must matter, his full title is as the Right Honourable Lord Anthony Gillingham, Earl of Rothbury, formerly with an estate at Bradford Park."
"Don't sound so smug about it, dear." Violet tilted her head."What do you mean 'formerly'?"
"Apparently his father filed for bankruptcy," Edith answered inside a sigh. "So of course he's out of Lord's as well."
Mary nodded. "I did say once that many great houses would fall after the war."
Violet's eyes flicked to her. "Yes, and that you didn't intend to be one of them," she said, taking up her cane where it rested next to her.
"We aren't one of them."
"Thanks to our dearest Matthew, no."
There was a large pause as Edith looked to the fire and Mary began fiddling with the beads of her dress. Dear departed. She stroked a hand absently over her son's hair where his head was tucked to her ribcage, a warm weight against her. She reached to his small hand and his fingers wrapped her thumb, like they always did as he fell into sleep. After a moment she looked up and found a smile on Violet's face.
"Does this man have any prospects, Edith?" she asked.
"He is a journalist," Edith said defensively. "In politics."
"That is decidedly not an asset to his character," Violet replied.
Mary raised an eyebrow. "A working Lord. How modern."
"Or he's keeping himself out of the poorhouse."
"Perhaps," Mary conceded, looking to Edith with amusement trained in her voice. "Does he believe in a weekend?" Even as she said it her stomach twisted, the milk of her tea tracing sourness in her mouth. Wait and see, she told herself, but she could not help but worry that despite his fallings, this man would be pushed at her. It was a cycle repeating itself, complications of her own making creating fear that she would not deflect as easily as she once had, nor put out barbs in the form of literary comparisons and slights. That she was not as cold and careful as she may wish to be.
Wait and see repeated in her mind as she settled into her evening dress, black and drop-waist alongside simple jewellery. Despite its shortness Anna had pinned her hair up, and Mary tensed her knuckles under the satin of her gloves, watching the diamond of her wedding rings flex against the fabric. "Will I do?" she asked, turning at the vanity table.
"Of course, milady," Anna said, gathering clothes over her arm.
Mary looked too and fro in the mirror, stood and sighed then moved to the door. She paused, smiling at Anna, then went into the corridor with her head high, an old confidence sweeping through her. She could not name why, but descending the stairs she felt a slight dizziness claim her again, and as the pillars shifted in her view she caught sight of a man stood before the great hall's fireplace, eyes up to the ceiling in awe.
"Have they abandoned you already?" she asked from the last step. He pivoted to her voice, hands behind his back.
His face broke into a smile. "Not at all, your butler told me to wait here. It's been some time since I've set foot in such a grand house." His gaze followed her as she came into the light of the hall. "You're Lady Mary, I presume," he said quietly.
"And you're Lord Rothbury," she returned. "Really Edith should be making the introductions."
"Yes." His eyes lowered to the carpet and she took a chance to study him. He was, to her relief, nothing like Matthew, and nothing like she had expected him to be: taller, slighter, much less fair, an athletic frame shrouded in white tie.
They both looked up to movement on the stairs, and then it was a flurry of introductions, his expression turning bashful as the two of them were paired to enter the dining room together. She took his arm, fingers barely resting against his elbow, staring ahead at her mother's mirrored position at her father's side, and suddenly she resented it, the obviousness of it, the ridiculous formality. She took a deep breath against Cora's pointed look at the seating arrangement, thanking God that Tom flanked her other side. He smiled at her as she sat, and so before the meal had even begun she was eager for the turning when she could speak to her allied brother-in-law.
Tension rattled in the poised cutlery and schooled faces of everyone around the table except Robert, whose grip on his glass was near shattering it. "So you did nothing to save it?"
Anthony looked at him levelly across the table. "No."
"But as heir surely you felt a duty to - "
"Robert, if this must be discussed couldn't you keep it until the ladies go through?" Cora admonished.
"Gregson and Tom will have to act as referees," Violet said, clearly gleeful at the outcome of conversation.
To her left, Mary watched Anthony set down his glass before speaking. "I don't agree that it is a duty, Lord Grantham," he said calmly. "It made for a wonderful childhood, but since the war houses like mine and like this one have had to repurpose or peter out, and to be frank I'm quite relieved to see it go." He smiled at Robert clearly trying to hide his affronted expression. "Yours has been lucky while mine has not, but that was down to my father's mismanagement, so I've inherited a hollow title," he said simply. "The difference between us is that Downton is a home. Bradford was... a pile."
"Goodness," Violet murmured from the other end of the table. "He truly is another one with modern opinions."
Tom hid his smirk in his napkin. Michael cleared his throat and began steering Robert in a more private conversation, while Anthony turned to Mary.
"I apologize," he said. "Perhaps I am being somewhat forward."
"Not at all," Mary smiled. "You're testament that our generation is much more willing to accept the world's changes."
He laughed and looked back at his plate. "So you agree with me, Lady Mary?"
"It is very much down to good management and some luck," she said, putting down her cutlery.
Anthony nodded emphatically. "Exactly," he said. Mary looked on him with sudden caution, surprised they could see eye-to-eye so suddenly; she was restless for a complication. He turned in profile, looking to where Robert sat diagonal from him, and his head tilted in conceit. "Unfortunately to my father management was all within a grey area."
"And he'd have none of your advice?"
"It was a collaborative effort he didn't want to collaborate on." He gave a rueful smile. "I wasn't to go outside my set responsibilities." His gaze flicked down, long into shadow, and he sighed. "When the financial troubles began I was in... in France."
Mary watched him swallow, and allowed a quiet moment to pass between them. "Well, thankfully Tom has been progressive enough to pull my father into the modern era."
"And your husband was too, I'd heard. On the legal side."
It was Mary's turn to pause. "Yes, he was." She could feel him looking at her intently, trained on her bent head, and when she straightened he moved his eyes away quickly, his fingers curling into his palms. "What was Bradford like?" she asked with a false brightness.
He shook his head. "Oh, all marble and echoing rooms. Quite cold, really, for just the three of us." His voice quieted, near reverent."Nothing like here," he said, and as she searched the planes of his face she thought again of Matthew, so briefly, of salted puddings, a photograph she kept tucked in her bedside drawer, of blue eyes made silver by sun and a paper print. Anthony's eyes met hers, held still for a brief moment that felt like it was understanding. She had not noticed a man's eyes in four years, but his were a rare and pale green, and his mouth tipped up at the edges as he turned away. She paused before looking to Tom. She let herself be hit by the thought that perhaps she had been wearing black for far too long.
tbc.