Chapter Text
Thomas exhales in a rush, but says nothing.
"For how long?" Sybil demands.
As her eyes adjust to the dark—or, near dark; in addition to the windows there's just a sliver of light from the gap beneath and at the edges of the door to his bedroom—she comes to find that Thomas is only half dressed, his sleeves rolled up instead of fastened, his collar open and his shirtfront rumpled, one bracestrap nearer to the edge of his shoulder than it might otherwise be.
"Heavens, aren't you curious," Thomas says eventually, as though he means to go on, but he only wets his lips and looks away before pulling something out of his pocket—and before she can blink he's got a lit cigarette in his hand.
Sybil takes off her gloves and hat, and sits upon their bench to unlace her boots. Thomas brightens a lamp. In addition to the general dishevelment he is not cleanshaven.
She hadn't expected that.
(Then, she's sure her hair is a disaster .)
"—you and her have a nice time?"
Even knowing what he means to do by asking, the question makes Sybil smile—and blush. "We did, rather."
"What's she like, besides Italian?"
"Italian-American."
(She's made her thoughts about the hyphen clear.)
"What's she like, besides Italian-American ?"
Kind and principled and driven and honest and clever and beautiful ...
"Political," answers Sybil.
"She never is."
Sybil rolls her eyes.
"Could've guessed that," Thomas adds. "She's sleeping with you, isn't she?"
"She wasn't until today."
"Well, well, fancy that," he says, flatly, but he's smiling; he's happy for her.
He may also think he's evaded her line of questioning, but he hasn't—still, she would like to talk about Cecilia. As she unwraps her scarf from her neck he adds, "what is she, then?"
Except that is one thing she wouldn't like to talk about…at least not yet. It could spoil his opinion. She shouldn't have said it, but of course it's how Cecilia likes to be defined, and she wouldn't be pleased if she knew Sybil was hiding it from someone she trusts so much.
"An anarchist."
Thomas gives her a very pointed look.
"And she works in a shop," Sybil goes on, attempting to move past it, but he doesn't oblige her, a quirk at his mouth, eyebrows raised.
"They've got shops now, have they?"
"A workshop," she clarifies. "A small one, not in her home; she's a finisher."
"Which union?"
Always the next question.
"ILG."
He nods, satisfied. "And?"
"And?" she echoes, stubborn.
But he's stubborn, himself, of course. "Is she an anarchist all alone, or has she got friends?"
"Of course she has friends," says Sybil indignantly.
" Sybil ."
"She goes to meetings," she obliges, "I've been invited, but I haven't gone yet —I've been so busy at college."
"'Course you have."
She doesn't know what to make of such a statement...
Sybil tugs one boot off, then the other. Just a little, it frustrates her, that he can ask her such questions and expect immediate, truthful answers, when he hasn't given him an answer of his own... and when he doesn't always seem willing or even able to speak with her directly about his own thoughts and feelings— especially where lovers are concerned. Especially where his lover is concerned.
If she were to pen a list of things she shouldn't like to come home to at the end of a very long day, and a holiday at that, the scene she witnessed would be rather near the top of it.
"Look, just look out for yourself," Thomas says, pushing against her silence, his voice foreboding enough that she looks back up at him. He meets her eyes. "Don't get in for the wrong reasons." (And that is possibly the most hypocritical thing she has ever heard him say... but he does have a point, after last summer.) He is much more obliging as he continues: "but anyway—what else do you like about her?"
Oh, fine ...
Once Sybil starts talking, she isn't able to stop: the things she loves, or is going to love, falling-in-love with, everything they have in common despite geography and background—
And the differences, too: not a Suffragist, "–never been to New England." It doesn't truly matter where she has and hasn't been, but it does mean something. "Nor to…"
"Old England?"
"Yes."
And nobody would recognise her name, nor her family; there aren't any expectations for her to meet beyond her own. Culturally things are a little different (very different, sometimes), but there oughtn't be any rifts the way there were before—all those things Sybil left behind on purpose rearing their heads again. None of that.
Quite the opposite.
"How'd you meet again?"
"She has family in Manhattan."
Thomas chooses not to press (and he wouldn't have the right if he chose otherwise).
"Her being a working woman'll make for a nice change," he says. He's been biting back a smile; she hopes he doesn't think he's already got out of it.
"I think it will, rather."
"Was about time you found somebody new," he tells her, "and from all you've said it seems to me like you get on well–"
"We do," she says, rising to her feet. "For example, she answers my questions."
"Sybil, for crying out loud–"
"Why was Marion here?" she demands.
Thomas closes his eyes and drops his head back with a long-suffering sigh—only to cross the room as soon as she steps toward him, to make use of the ash tray. "Why do you think," he mumbles.
It's not a very big room, but it was still rude.
"Well, it wasn't for very long."
"Yeah, well, we spent the day together and we've both got stuff to do tomorrow, so there wasn't any point in making a night of it."
"Then why–"
"Maybe we wanted to do it in a bed this go round."
She would quite like to stomp her feet and raise her voice... Instead she grants him the last word (whether he'll let it be the last word is up to him), finally takes off her coat and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. The floorboards are cold through her stockings.
At the sink the water runs steaming hot within moments—if not owing to Thomas, probably to a neighbor. With the tap still rushing Sybil scrubs at her hands: suds against her palms, between her fingers, beneath her nails. She'd manicured them in the morning, trimmed and filed after brushing her teeth and before finishing her hair. Originally she'd been thinking only of work.
She rinses her hands and dries them with a tea towel that should probably be laundered soon.
"We don't take hours," Thomas calls out while she's taking the pitcher from the icebox.
It can't have been more than a minute, but it was still long enough he must have been thinking about what to say… It would probably be amusing if it were at any other time or about any other person. As it stands, she has no patience for it. He can goad all he likes, but Sybil made up her mind about this months ago, and she can't even fathom all that would have to be different for her to change it.
(It does, however, require some effort to resist asking him just how it was they spent the day together, if they don't take hours. )
She isn't angry, but she would like to understand.
Sybil takes a glass from the cupboard, and then another when she hears him behind her.
"I don't have to tell you everything," he says, prodding.
It works. "I never said you did," Sybil replies, without turning back to face him.
"You certainly act like it."
"I don't do it on purpose."
Maybe she is angry, a little.
"Oh, yes, you started shouting at me by accident…"
She closes her eyes, willing patience. "If I was shouting, that was an accident."
From behind her he makes a sound between a sigh and a scoff. By all means does he have the right to privacy, but he doesn't have the right to be so indignant now—not when they talked about it, and when he promised. He broke his word, and not for the first time.
"No," Thomas says, his voice hollow; he clears his throat but only sounds as though he's pretending to be unbothered. "No, you weren't."
Sybil turns.
He's buttoned his collar and unrolled his sleeves; they are loose at his wrists because he hasn't yet fastened them. The glove is off, but she can't remember if it was before.
He notices her looking—she can tell by the way he presses his lips together, by the defensive narrowing of his eyes and the nervous clasp of his hands. He's always in such a dreadful mood after spending time with him…
Over the last year Sybil has come to many conclusions, and one of them is that loving a person shouldn't feel stifling. It should feel the opposite, especially for women and men like them, who only have so many chances to be free.
She didn't reach the conclusion all on her own; she learned it from him . (And from experience, more and more of it as time passes.) But if she's ever seen him free, if she's ever seen him liberated , wholly, truly, and she can't decide now if she really has, she's sure that it looked nothing like this.
Thomas accepts her offered glass. He murmurs "thank you," and, "I'm sorry."
"Thank you." She pauses. "So am I."
"Don't be," he says. "Wasn't… I wasn't trying to keep it from you."
She doesn't think she believes that. "You weren't going out of your way to tell me about it," Sybil replies.
"Shift last night was fourteen hours, you know," says Thomas, mumbling again. It's much too easy to be irritated with him right now—and just when the day had been going so well.
But she does know.
She accepts the change of subject, though she has half a mind not to.
"You work hard," she says. They both do, but her hours are capped and his aren't.
"Normally it's closer to twelve, but–"
"That's still a lot of time."
"But the thing is," he goes on, more loudly, but she can't tell if he wants her to think of it as an offense, "is that's bloody nothing, compared to service—was fourteen at the least, from start to finish, even when you lot were away..."
Sybil nods.
"...And I'm much more useful here, I'll tell you that—besides, you remember what it was like, in the war."
"Of course I do."
"So if I'd like to– to take up with somebody in my off hours, that's my business."
"You know it's not about that."
She's just done the same, after all.
"Dunno which part it is you find so objectionable, then–"
" Really, Thomas, it's the person –"
"You don't know him."
"I know how he treats you," she counters.
He won't take the words kindly, she can be sure of that—
"How can you, when you've never been in the same room for more than five minutes?"
That's not true, but even so, "I don't have to be in the same room with him to know that he–"
"It's better this time," he says, insistent, but as a child might be when convincing an adult of something imaginary, not as an adult making a proper argument. "It's different, and I'm fine now , aren't I, nothing's happened–"
"What an alarming thing to say–"
"You don't know him–"
"But I do know you , Thomas, and–"
"Sybil, you don't know him, " Thomas interrupts, more firmly than she expected. "Not like I do."
It gives her pause.
"He doesn't want for me to know him," she counters eventually.
Her, or any of the friends they share. And isn't that enough to be concerning all on its own, when it comes down to it?
Thomas doesn't agree: "him and nobody else I've ever met, so I think you can get over it."
"That isn't fair," Sybil says.
He shrugs.
"That isn't why I mind," she insists. "Wouldn't you be worried if I were seeing a woman who wanted nothing to do with you?"
"Oh, I couldn't say," he simpers, " that's never happened before, to my memory–"
"That's what I mean , Thomas," Sybil says firmly, and of course he takes it differently than she means it:
"But was I worried ?" he snaps, "did I mind ? no, because it never bloody meant anything–"
"It meant something to me."
"Well, I don't expect your new one–"
She thinks he's about to barrel on but he stops, suddenly, to incline his head at her.
"Cecilia."
And then he is speaking in a new voice, as though means to start over, but the look on his face is the very same and he doesn't seem to feel any differently than he did before: "I don't expect Cecilia will be having me over for tea anytime soon, so you may as well throw in the towel now, if that's what you're hoping for—but you had better be ready to turn away every girl who ever paws at your skirt again."
Sybil can only stare at him, more cross by the second and trying very hard not to be.
She's too tired for this.
"...I don't know that you've noticed , Sybil, but I'm not an easy person to get on with."
"I don't see you that way."
"Explains why we're palling around at the moment."
"Everyone quarrels sometimes," she counters. "Things can't always be peaceful."
"Yeah, well, I'm lucky to be with somebody who's not bothered."
"Is that what he tells you?"
It is much too harsh a thing to say, but he doesn't seem to be worried about being harsh...
It's just they've talked about this so many times before, and after each conversation she always thinks he must finally understand, only to discover later that nothing has really changed at all... It's positively maddening, and everyone finds it tiresome, not only her.
And she worries about him. That's what it's really about, at the root of it: she's worried, and she's sure their friends will be worried, too, when they find out. Nothing else matters as much as that, that they all have reason to worry.
Thomas puts his hands to his face, rubbing at eyes, his shoulders tense. "I don't have to listen to this," he starts, "mind your own business for once," which stings —
—and Sybil interrupts, talking over him: "Then we can talk about it more later," a touch short. Maybe more than a touch. "When we've had some rest."
"–or at least don't talk to me like I was born yesterday–"
Even after a year (more than a year; they were friends before they married, after all), he always stumbles when she puts a stop to things—it might frustrate her if it weren't so consistent. It's never very difficult to figure out what he expects will happen.
But that isn't the nature of their friendship.
Their marriage.
"I shouldn't have said that," she says. "It wasn't kind."
"Well, I'm not very kind right now either, am I," he says, eyes downcast, head dropped; when he looks up he looks away, to the window. "We could talk about it... but it's been a few weeks..."
She hadn't even had an inkling… but, a lot has happened, lately.
"...Maybe longer," mutters Thomas.
"Longer?" she asks.
"Christmas or thereabouts."
"But that's nearly two months."
"Yes, well, we've been busy, haven't we? You and me—didn't get serious until a week ago," he clarifies, "before that we were just…"
He won't look at her as he says it. Sybil waits.
"Use your brain," he finishes.
Well.
"I know you were worried, before," Thomas adds. "Didn't have reason to be, but I know you were, so I'm sorry, only I don't see how it's any concern of yours who I go to bed with unless I tell you, and since I give you the same courtesy…"
She raises her eyebrows.
"I think I've got it figured out now, how to..." he goes on, slowly. He's fidgeting with his sleeve, eyes downcast. "He's giving me another chance, isn't he, after everything, so I think this time he's…"
" I think he's taking advantage."
"Lucky I didn't ask what you think, then, aren't I?" he says shortly.
That's why I'm so nervous, she could say. She won't, though, because it wouldn't be fair, and it's frightfully self-centred besides. She knows that he doesn't have to tell her everything, that she can't solve every problem, especially if he doesn't see them as problems to begin with… Knowing something and always following its path are two different things.
"You know I don't like to wait for people to ask my opinion before giving it," says Sybil eventually.
He laughs, sort of, which is what she had wanted.
"Thomas, I don't care how you make love," she starts; he coughs, "oh, you know what I mean—and I don't care with whom, as long as he treats you properly."
"Well, I don't recall ever saying that he didn't..."
If only he were always the best judge.
"You're very…" She has to search for the right word; in the end she uses that of someone else. "Devoted."
"You think I'm obsessed with him," Thomas says flatly.
"No, I think what I said." Sybil huffs. "It's not a bad thing…" She's very familiar with this part of him, too, having seen it with others, and felt it herself. "I didn't intend to say it was."
Thomas says, "you made it sound that way."
"I think it's wonderful," she insists, and an explanation leaves her mouth before she can stop it: "Once Schuyler said that you were the most loyal lover he'd ever had."
"Schuyler did?"
"Yes."
"Hark at that."
"Why shouldn't he have, if it's true?" And Thomas has no reason to be surprised, as he does the same thing, given the opportunity. In fact it had taken her by surprise—where opportunity is concerned, he never misses one to speak ill of anyone else's former lovers… but with his own it's a different story.
As she expected he has nothing to say, turning away again; she takes a breath.
"It was before you..."
"Before he ."
"But wasn't it cordial? Haven't you said he probably knows you better than anyone?"
It might have been the wrong thing to say, now that she sees the look on his face, but...
Even since they parted, they seem to know one another very well—it wasn't a very long liaison, but it was very serious… That had been the most evident thing, that Thomas would devote himself without a second thought, without even choosing, if he thought he had reason to. That he would readily jump into the line of fire to shield someone else, no matter how hopeless such an act might be.
Upon the chorus of agreement, she hadn't known if or how to say to the others that he'd actually spent two years doing something very similar to that—there's a reason the men don't talk about the war much.
But at the time she'd guessed it was an intentional comparison.
What it comes down to is that, if one has good intentions, it can be very hard to resist the attention of a person who would do anything for one, whether it was desired or not. Of course, Schuyler had said more recently that it had felt suffocating, before too long… that was why it had ended, after all. But everyone is like that, with habits and ideas that can be good or bad depending upon how one looks at them, at how they come into being. Goodness knows she and Thomas are far from perfect.
Ruby had liked that she was invested and involved—until her mind changed and it became nagging and meddling.
Finally Thomas says, "except you."
"It's a two way street," Sybil replies.
For a very long moment she thinks that may be the rest of it, but...
"I shouldn't've…"
He gestures. She understands.
Everyone had spoken about that, too, about how honest he could be, how sincere, in the right places and at the right times. She imagines that if one makes a habit of availing oneself of others' affection, it's simpler to do when they speak their feelings outright at each opportunity.
Thomas wears his heart on his sleeve.
"But I still agree with him," Sybil informs him, "and so does everyone else."
Unfortunately she realises too late that he is not willing to take her words for what they are at the moment.
"You're all talking about me behind my back, then, is that it?"
She should have known bringing it up would go this way. "It isn't behind your back," she counters. "I'm telling you about it now."
But she knows exactly how she would feel if he said the same thing to her—and, she recognizes with a tight feeling in her chest, if they talk about Thomas when he's not around (and about Gracie and Franklin and Schuyler and Charlotte and all of their friends) they must talk about her, too.
They're not going to get anywhere else with this tonight—he's only glaring at her, lips pursed, stiff-shouldered with flexing fingers. She's just thinking about how expressive he can be behind closed doors, wondering what he must be like with lovers (with this lover, who somehow knows him very well and not at all at the same time), when he says, "you need to train yourself out of that, if we're going to Downton."
For now, she'll let him—and herself—breathe easily.
She's had a long day, too.
"Out of what?"
"Looking like you've got feelings."
Sybil straightens her spine and sets her shoulders; it only serves his point. "I'm sure I won't have a problem once I'm there."
No matter all the peculiarities that have slipped into her manner over the last year, she suspects that the moment she sets foot in Downton she'll remember everything she's ever been taught all at once. It's at turns comforting and horrifying.
It may also be wishful thinking.
"And so am I," Thomas says, "but there's no denying it'll be different."
For him, especially. Whatever space they are granted will be one he's never before occupied.
She's never been away from home for this long.
That she still thinks of it as home even knowing she's unwelcome in the eyes of the person who has the most say about it probably says something about her. Thomas would be more likely to know what than she would. He's been through the same thing before. Most of the time, he had to do it alone—now that it's her turn she doesn't, because she has him, and she intends to be grateful.
(She does worry a little that she may not want to come back.)
"I meant to here," Thomas says, "not to before."
"Either is true, isn't it?"
He chuckles, sort of. More of an exhale, really. "Wonder how they've handled how things've changed."
"You've forgotten what my family is like if you think they've accepted that anything has changed."
And in fact, she doesn't actually know how much things have changed at home. Neither in the village nor the county nor in England. How could she? All around them everyone seems to have invented a new world and then embraced it with open arms, together, but that isn't quite what people like to do where they come from.
What she's certain will be the same are all of the things about daily life she's successfully done without: all the unspoken rules to follow, all the things that never really mattered. Doing everything according to tradition, with no other reason save that it was more comfortable for everyone else to keep things the same. Even things that were so commonplace, things like paying calls and dressing for dinner—rather, being dressed for dinner—are foreign and frivolous now, more than they were even when she was realising just how much she wanted to leave them behind. It's hardly been more than a year, but that has been more than enough time to break old habits and begin to form new ones, especially when the process had already begun before she left. New York still feels at times like it must be on another planet, but it's no longer one she minds living on, usually… Homesickness is painful and she's desperate to go back, but she likes it here. They have friends. They have purpose.
The last time she was at Downton she had those things, too, but it wasn't the same. Everyone was perfectly happy to return to what the world was like before in a way that didn't suit her, that hadn't suited her for months and months.
Most of the people she knew don't want to know her anymore, and she has forced herself to accept the fact that they would be unlikely to understand her even if they did.
Although…
"We must talk about the wedding," Sybil realises.
He blinks. "Thought we already were."
"Things have changed," she tells him, and she recounts the conversation with Grandmama: the tickets, the ship, their class (First), the dates, what she had and hadn't argued with her about, the infuriating nature of the entire discussion, and…
And how very glad she is that it's all settled now and they can go back home after all. Thomas doesn't have anything to say to that beyond that he's pleased she feels that way. Really, he isn't as frustrated with the news as she'd worried he might be—only thoughtful.
Thoughtful and very quiet, until he tells her, almost grave, "we've got something else very important to talk about, then."
"But shouldn't it be simple now?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"Have you changed your–"
"No," Thomas says firmly, interrupting her. "We're going all right, no doubt about that now—you still want coffee?"
The reassurance has her shoulders drop, a tension she hadn't realised was there releasing. Sybil nods, adds, "yes, please," and at the amused twitch at his lips, "of course I can do it myself–"
"I offered, didn't I," replies Thomas, slightly more cheerful than before. He pulls a Western Union cablegram envelope out of nowhere and slaps it on the table. "You'll want to sit down for this one."
He is enjoying this far too much.
She looks down, bewildered. "Has someone died?" she asks, unthinkingly. No matter how dearly she loves Edith, it's very unlikely to be an engagement announcement; the last time they received a telegram from Downton prior to January it was because someone had died.
If the wedding's been cancelled…
Thomas shakes his head, a turn at his lips. "Just have a look at it..."
"When did it come?"
"This morning," annoyed. "'Bout eight, so you'd gone already."
"Weren't you asleep when I left?"
"Didn't sleep here, actually." She raises her eyebrows. "–look, we'll talk about that later–"
"Will we?"
"–just get on with it, would you?"
She is unbearably curious… Sybil sits.
It's been opened, but Thomas refolded it perfectly. The paper is heavier between her fingers than an ordinary cable should be as she undoes his work.
Of course she then sees why.
"Crikey," Sybil breathes.
Thomas nods, that quirk back at the corner of his mouth; his eyes are smiling. Normal again. "That's more or less what I said."
"My God ."
"Bit closer..."
Someone from Downton has wired them six hundred and eighty-three dollars.
