Chapter Text
“Syb, I really do need you to stop moping around if you’re gonna stay here any longer.”
“Thomas, I don’t do moping.”
“Well, wouldn’t you call eating Ben & Jerry and watching period dramas for a living doing a bit of moping?”
Sybil tossed a pillow at her friend, who only chuckled and dodged it. She had been staying at his little Brixton flat for a couple of days now — it wasn’t a permanent thing, mind you, but she had nowhere else to go. At least not without explaining what had happened with Larry. Thomas had been her snarky, quiet best friend ever since his mother went into service after her husband’s untimely death and took little Thomas with her to work at Downton, the magnificent countryside estate where Sybil and her older sisters had grown up. The two of them had clicked immediately — Thomas was quiet and tenacious, whereas Sybil was a brighter, more extroverted sort of girl, but they shared a love for books, tea, and politically involved young men and bonded immensely throughout their childhood and, most importantly, their teenage years — Sybil was the first person that Thomas came out to, both a little too drunk on Lord Grantham’s Scottish whiskey, and he was the first one to find out after Sybil and Larry got together, only a little before graduating from university. They had stayed in touch even after Thomas moved to London and met the blond-haired barista that he was now dating, and he was the first person she thought of when she stormed out of the flat she had shared with Larry, after finding him in bed with one of her fellow nurses.
Thomas took a seat next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I do think you should tell your sisters about it, though,” he suggested, in his usual quiet tone. Mary had called him monotonous while growing up, but Sybil liked the way his voice never inflected in its tone unless he was feeling a very strong emotion. “After all, they do live in the city, and I suppose being with your nieces and nephew would be nicer than crashing on my sofa.”
“Your sofa’s nice enough, Thomas,” Sybil half-joked, a faint smile on her cheeks. She then shrugged and awkwardly cast her eyes down to the ground. “It’s just that — well, I don’t know. I suppose I’m going to have to tell them eventually, yes. But they’re — they’re all grown up, Thomas. Edith has got beautiful little Marigold, and she’s seeing this journalist that she’s met at work and who’s very possibly the nicest man on Earth. Mary and Matthew — their life is so complete, they’ve kids and everything, and they live in this gorgeous apartment near Canary Wharf. How could I ever show up over there and explain to them that my entire adulthood has been built up on a lie?”
“That’s a bit dramatic, Syb. You studied Nursing, and you’re one helluva good one. You’ve got a steady job; you could manage on your own if you wanted to. S’not like me and Jimmy — I’m practically begging him to move in just so that we can split the rent.” He chuckled. That was Thomas Barrow at his finest — always trying to mask up the fact that there was nothing else he longed for more than to build a life of his own with the man that he had fallen in love with. “Besides, I know Mary can be a little judgemental, but that Matthew bloke sounds understanding enough. And Edith’s got a heart of gold, you know that.”
“I do. I really do,” Sybil sighed, pressing the palms of her hands against her cheeks. She couldn’t believe she was twenty-five and feeling just as lost as she did when she was nineteen and struggled to tell her parents about wanting to switch from her Medicine degree in Cambridge to a Nursing one at the University of York. “I just feel like I’m the odd one out. I’ve always been, in a way — Mary with her brilliant career in Economics, Edith with her writing skills and how she’s managed to take care of a little girl and the newspaper all on her own . . . I really do love them, Thomas, but I wish I could feel a little less overwhelmed by all their achievements.”
Thomas’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “There’s no need to belittle yourself, though. If facing them is too much right now — why don’t you just go back to your parents’ at Downton? Take a few days off work and just relax for a bit. I could lend you this absolutely amazing book by Paul Auster that I only just finished reading.”
“That does sound like a good idea,” Sybil nodded with a faint smile. She then glanced up at Thomas and pressed a kiss to his cheek, which made her friend scrunch is nose in feign annoyance. “You’re such a bold human being, Thomas Barrow.”
In spite of his stoic nature, Thomas did a half-smile and shrugged. “You and Jimmy are my weak spots, I s’pose.”
“That’s actually so flattering,” she giggled against his shoulder. Thomas was usually one to avoid physical contact with other people unless they were extremely important to him, so the fact that he allowed her so close to him, his arms around her shoulders as she rested her head on his chest, almost felt like a privilege. “You really are the best, Tomtom.”
“Whoa, you haven’t called me that in years.” Thomas chuckled, but squeezed her shoulder ever so gently. “Thank you, Sybsyb.”
She would go home, she decided then. She would go home, tell her parents all about Larry and how she had never really thought they’d end up together because, even though Mary usually acted very stoic about her relationship with Matthew, she knew that she had never felt half as bubbly and as giddy as her older sister did when the boy she had brought over for Christmas as a friend from university had kissed her at the front door just as the New Year chimed in, or when she had announced to her two younger sisters that he had proposed to her on a brief holiday that they’d spent in Athens. Her relationship with Larry had been a far more consequential one — she knew him from school and a group of common friends had pushed them together, but she had never felt a true connection to him. He was careless about politics — which annoyed Sybil to no end — and even thought that the way she declared herself a fierce feminist was a bit too much at times, which had caused more than a row or two between them. Still, Sybil had stayed with him — because he was the only serious relationship that she had ever had, and because deep down she did know that it was what her parents expected of her. To marry a well-off boy, have a couple of kids, relax and be happy instead of working twelve-hour shifts at some NHC-funded hospital in London where the commoners went to get their free healthcare, and where the pay would never be worth all the trouble. The least she could do was to please them in that sense, but she had eventually failed at that too. Perhaps if she hadn’t wandered off to explore London on her own that often, or if she had toned down during one of their fights . . .
No, she decided, she hadn’t done anything wrong. If anything, the only mistake she could have possibly made was thinking that a relationship between Larry and her could work in the long run.
•••
Sybil couldn’t help but smile when she first stepped onto the platform, allowing herself to breathe in the fresh air that surrounded her as she walked down the streets of Ripon, the town that she had gotten to know so well during the early years of her life. Even though they lived in a country estate and didn’t visit the town on a daily basis, Sybil had always loved going there, whether it be with her mother and sisters on a sunny Saturday afternoon or while helping Mrs Patmore, their cook, whenever she needed a hand carrying the groceries back to Downton. Even though her father had never been all too keen on the idea, Sybil tended to spend a lot of her free time downstairs, with the staff that worked for her family — she played with Thomas while his mother sewed one of Lady Grantham’s dresses, listened to the old chauffeur’s stories about the town he came from in Southern Ireland, and helped Mrs Patmore and her young daughter Daisy whenever she could, with poor old Carson, the house butler, insisting on her going upstairs to the library, where her sisters were enjoying a good cup of hot chocolate and watching some telly before dinner. But the truth was that Sybil felt at ease when she was downstairs — sometimes even more so than she did upstairs, surrounded by her father’s rich friends and her sisters’ increasingly obnoxious acquaintances from Cambridge.
She stopped by the local pub and peered through the window, smiling when she recognized the old man who had been its owner ever since she was a little girl. She observed the few people who were wandering around the place at that time — a couple of men on their early fifties who were already downing the first beer of the day, their bodies a little too chubby and their hairline receding in an almost threatening manner. A younger woman sat by the window, focused on a pile of papers and a laptop — a Graduate student at the University of Leeds or York who was visiting her parents for the weekend, probably.
“Everything looks so peaceful, don’t it?”
Sybil frowned and wheeled around to find a tall, broad-shouldered young man standing behind her, a rather amused smile on his face. She wasn’t exactly fond of men approaching women in the middle of the street, but it was undeniable that he looked like a rather inoffensive one, his face round and his big blue eyes eyeing her curiously. Still, she shrugged her shoulders and clutched her bag protectively.
“All right, sorry,” his hands rose up in a defensive gesture. She couldn’t help but notice that he also happened to brand a very Irish accent. “Should’ve thought that would come off as a little creepy. You’re free to go, miss.”
Sybil couldn’t help but laugh a little at that. “No, it’s . . . it’s okay. I forget that country people tend to strike up the most random conversations in the middle of the street.”
The man clicked his tongue and shook his head a little. “Country people? Nah, I wish. I’m a city boy, missus — born and raised in Dublin, you see. I live in London now, but I’ve been sent here for the weekend.”
“How come?” Her eyebrows rose curiously, the grip on her bag relaxing little by little. “I was born here, you know.”
“Really? You definitely don’t strike me as a country girl.” The man chuckled ever so lightly, and then shrugged. “I’m a journalist, and I’ve been sent here to interview this Earl of Grantham bloke, who has apparently just donated a ton of money to some refugee camp in Greece. Can you believe it? These aristocrats were the ones who ruined Asia and Africa to begin with, and all their wealth comes from exploiting the natives — and now they’re trying to come clean by donating a ridiculous part of all that blood-stained money just so that some prick in my office would send me here and interview him. Sound and fury, that’s all they want.”
Sybil felt how her cheeks reddened. She hadn’t heard any news from her parents about them donating part of their estate to a charity — she momentarily felt how a certain sense of pride bubbled inside her chest, only to be flattened out by the young man’s spiteful approach to the reason behind her father’s donations. And, because of that, she couldn’t help but retort in reply.
“Well, at least they’re doing something about it, aren’t they?” She replied, albeit a little coldly. “I mean, I totally get your point, but — but Hell, they could have just kept it for themselves and buy some farm in the middle of the countryside instead of donating it. People aren’t born good or bad just because of their social status, you know.”
The man’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t have imagined that he was talking to one of Lord Grantham’s daughters, obviously — Sybil was wearing a flowered blouse and tattered shorts, her sneakers still bearing little drops of mud from the last time she and her sisters went to Glastonbury Festival together, and she had always been told that she had never looked like the daughter of an earl. She had always taken a certain pride to the idea, because the idea of standing out among her peers just because of her family’s aristocratic origins simply mortified her — but she also felt extremely loyal towards those parents who had given her nothing but kindness and love over the course of the years.
“You English people have always revered your aristocrats, haven’t you?” He laughed finally, shrugging the matter off with a smile. A certainly handsome one, Sybil noted. “Anyway, I’m supposed to go up to the chap’s estate in a bit, so I guess I should get going. Will you be staying here?”
Sybil blinked several times, then shook her head a little. Shit, he was going to her family’s house. “Uh, no. My parents live right outside the town, so . . . yeah, I’m staying there.”
“That’s a shame,” the man said, a sheepish smile on his face. Why couldn’t she just tell him? “I — well, I’ll be here till Monday morning. Perhaps we could get a beer here sometime?”
“Oh . . . sure?” Sybil nodded, feeling a little dumbfounded by the course of the events. “I — I could come back later tonight, I suppose.”
“Sounds great. I’ll tell you all about my interview then!” The man beamed, then added, “I’m Tom, by the way.”
“Sybil,” she said, a softer expression on her face. She shook Tom’s hand and then nodded towards the pub, trying not to seem too obvious. “I — I think I’m going to have a bite before heading home, it’s been a long journey.”
“Sure! I’ll leave you to it.” Tom beamed yet again, and Sybil felt how a rather bubbly feeling burst inside her stomach when he looked at her that way. “Nice to meet you, Sybil.”
“Nice to meet you, Tom.”
•••
She decided to stay in Ripon for a couple of hours, then sneak into the house through the kitchen door and say hello to Mrs Patmore and Daisy before heading off to see her parents. It would be a nice surprise, she gathered, although deep down all she wanted was to avoid Tom. Not because she hadn’t liked him — quite the contrary — but simply because she would feel too embarrassed if he caught her sneaking into her own home. And she was looking forward to that little meet-up at the pub later that night, after all.
Downton still looked just as majestic as ever. She knew that her Papa had grown up there, too, the son of a wealthy earl who had earned himself a reputation for having fought in both World Wars, and the heiress to the earldom, who was none other than Sybil’s Granny Violet and lived in a tiny cottage next to their house. She smiled when she saw Daisy picking up a few boxes from the kitchen entrance, and waved at her when the girl noticed her presence.
“Sybil!” Daisy was a few years younger than her and Thomas, but had also grown in the house, so she had always been like a little sister to her. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
“Neither did I,” Sybil confessed, a rueful smile on her face. When Daisy left the box on the ground, the older girl enveloped her in a warm hug. “How have you been?”
“I’m fine, really,” Daisy said in her usual rushed tone. “Been gettin’ ready for my A-Levels and whatnot. I wanna study in Leeds next year, so that I can come back every other weekend and help Mam with the kitchen.”
“You know you really don’t have to do that, right?” Sybil replied. When Daisy shrugged, she just rubbed the eighteen-year-old’s back and smiled. “Mrs Patmore’s lucky to have you, honestly.”
“So why are you here? Where’s Larry? Have you seen Thomas lately? He came over a couple of months ago, but the only info I’m getting on him is by stalking his boyfriend’s Instagram account. He’s really pretty, isn’t he? Saw they went to Florence a few months ago?”
“All right, all right,” Sybil said, shaking her head at the amount of questions that the younger girl was tossing at her. “First off, Thomas’s fine. Better than ever, actually. He and Jimmy are really smitten. I’ve stayed at his flat for a couple of days, and the fellow came over for dinner on Tuesday or Wednesday. Real cute, brought wine and everything.” After snorting at the dreamy expression in Daisy’s eyes, Sybil added, “And, about Larry . . . well, we’re not together anymore, I’m afraid.”
Daisy was visibly taken aback by her words. After all, the girl had been ten or eleven when the two of them had gotten together, and he was the only boyfriend that her parents and the staff at Downton had ever heard of — mainly because he was the only boy she had been involved with, at least in a serious way.
“What? I’m so sorry, Syb,” Daisy said. “I . . . are you all right? D’you need to stay here for a bit?”
“Oh, no, don’t worry,” Sybil said, shrugging her shoulders. For once, she didn’t feel as though her stomach was about to sink upon the thought of Larry still sleeping in the bed that they had bought together, probably with that girl from work that she had daftly enough decided to bring home one evening. “I’m fine, I promise. It’s just been a rough patch, but I’m getting over it. I’m only going to stay for a few days, and then I suppose I’ll go back and look for a new, smaller flat. That’s just life, isn’t it?”
Daisy shrugged, which reminded Sybil that the girl wasn’t supposed to have the slightest idea of what life was at age eighteen. “Still, I’m sorry. Must’ve been a hard blow.”
“Don’t worry,” Sybil patted her head like she used to do when the girl was younger, and smiled. “Let’s go get some of your Ma’s biscuits to celebrate that I’m going to be coming home a lot more often from now on, shall we?”
Daisy beamed. “Sure thing! She just made a fresh batch this morning. With chocolate chips and everything!”
The girl took Sybil’s hand and ushered her downstairs, a joyful smile on her face. That was Daisy — ever the optimist, the little girl whose love of Downton and cooking and the older children that she had grown up with would never quite fade. Thomas usually feigned annoyance towards her generally bubbly nature, but she knew that deep down he cared for her just about as much as he did for Sybil.
Once they got to the kitchen, the girl pressed an amused finger to her lips and pointed towards the freshly baked tray of biscuits that rested on the table. Mrs Patmore was nowhere to be seen — probably taking a nap after having prepared dinner for Sybil’s parents — and the chauffeur was in the garage getting Lord Grantham’s official car fixed, so the two of them sat at the table just like they did when they were little girls and took a few of the biscuits, equally devilish smile on their lips.
“You sure Mrs Patmore won’t mind?” Sybil asked as she sunk her teeth into the first one. God, she had almost forgotten how good their cook’s bakery was.
“Nah, she’s made a whole lot of them,” Daisy replied. “Prolly will just scold me for eating too much, but that’s it.”
The two of them spent the following couple of hours catching up with each other’s lives. Daisy told Sybil all about this boy at her school, William, who had been her friend all her life but had somehow grown to fancy her, which bothered Daisy to a certain degree because she loved him, but not that way. She also told Sybil about how she loved cooking but wanted to study Biology at university, and that she was particularly interested in becoming a botanist and having a little cottage of her own where her mother could go live too when she retired. Sybil was happy to see that the girl that had once crawled and learned to walk on the very cobbled floors that lay under their feet was now full of dreams and ambitions, and she found herself itching to know more of what Daisy had planned for herself.
“Well, I think I should go upstairs and say hello to Mama and Papa,” she said a while later, glancing at the clock. “It’s nearly tea time, and your mother’s going to be up any minute anyway. But let’s meet up again sometime tomorrow!”
“We could go out tonight,” Daisy offered, a bright smile on her face. “I’m eighteen now, and I s’pose Mam won’t mind as long as you’re with me.”
Sybil began to nod, but then remembered that she had already told that man that he met in Ripon that they’d get together that evening.
“I . . . I don’t think I can make it tonight, unfortunately, but let’s go get brunch tomorrow at that little café near the station!” She offered. When Daisy eyed her curiously, she just shrugged her shoulders. “I told an old friend that I was coming for the weekend and we decided to meet up for a beer or two.”
Daisy did a half-smile. “All right, all right. Just let me know how it goes, will you?”
Sybil rolled her eyes as she stood up. “Life’s not a Jane Austen novel, Dee.” And with that, she pressed a kiss on the top of the girl’s head before making her way upstairs, a small smile on her face.
No, life wasn’t a Jane Austen novel. Because she had most definitely never written an Irish love interest for any of her heroines.