Chapter Text
York, 1945
George looks at the hastily scribbled address as he makes his way down the street a little way from the train station. York has changed since he was last here, before the war, but then George hasn’t been much in the county these last few years. Not since he went away to Eton, even.
There are scars everywhere, and in places open wounds, but now the war is over, he has a wife and a child on the way, he’s an Earl except the only thing he feels like is a soldier. And a soldier needs a directive; his is Downton.
Thomas had been vague when George telephoned, but he’d given the address, and extended an invitation for George to visit, anytime. It's a risk, dropping in unannounced, but he didn't quite have the courage to ask on the phone and it would be a wasted journey if he lost courage now.
George finds the house in a terraced street mercifully free of any damage. He raps smartly on the door and waits.
The man who answers is not Thomas.
‘Good afternoon, I do beg your pardon, I seem to have the wrong house, I was looking for a Mr Thomas Barrow.’
‘No, you’ve come to the right place, sir. Mr Barrow lives here,’ the man must be about Thomas’s age, tanned forearms in rolled up shirt sleeves and smiling broadly.
‘Right,’ George had thought he’d never get used to being addressed as milord but now someone hasn't, it's jarring. In the little bubble at Downton it can be easy to forget how much the world has changed; the idyll of his grandfather’s day a quickly fading memory.
‘Might I trouble him for a moment?’
‘He’s not at home, if you like I can tell him you called, Mr…?’
George has never had a conversation on someone’s doorstep in his life, no training in etiquette could quite cover it, but he had a purpose in coming here and he’s not going to be put off by feeling a little out of his depth.
‘Crawley. George Crawley. I’m afraid I’m only in York for the day so...’
The man beams at him, laughter in his voice, ‘you’re Master George, Thomas’s Master George?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose, although it’s Lord Gratham now,’ he feels he makes the correction as unobtrusively as possible, it does no good to embarrass people and if he’s going to insist on it he might as well try to live up to the title. It makes no difference to the man’s demeanour, no squaring of shoulders, no averting of eyes. George finds it quite refreshing.
‘Thomas mentioned you might be dropping by only not quite so soon. He’ll be back from the hospital any moment if you’d like to come in and wait?’
‘Thank you.’
He’s led into a parlour, small but well looked after; there’s a gramophone in the corner and shelves full of books. On a small table a clock sits in parts.
‘Thomas likes to keep his eye in, tries not to let the family skill die out,’ says the man when he spots George looking, ‘can I get you a cup of tea?’
George nods and takes a seat without being asked. He’s starting to relax, the man’s easy friendliness more like the lads he knew in the army than the tedious aristocrats he has to entertain these days and it seems wrong, somehow, to insist on deference from someone more than twice his age, someone who doesn’t know him and has no reason to believe he deserves his title in the first place.
He settles comfortably into the armchair anxious to be left alone in someone else's house but he’s not been waiting long when the front door slams open and Thomas’s voice from the hallway calls out, ‘Richard? Did you have time to…’
George sits up straight, his great Grandmother's voice echoing in his head, don't slouch!, and looks towards the door. Thomas stands in the doorway to the parlour and Richard appears in the doorway to the kitchen and George sits between them as Thomas stands, mouth slightly open, seemingly at a loss as to where to look.
‘Hello. We have company,’ Richard gestures with a towel and there’s an entire conversation going on between them without words.
Thomas shakes his head, looking bewildered, ‘yes, Master Ge -, I mean -, I wasn’t expecting you today, milord?’
George stands, ‘I had business in York, I thought I’d take a chance. How are you, Barrow?’ he extends his hand and Thomas shakes it, firm. It's a momentary shock that their hands, his smooth, Thomas’s beginning to show his age, are now the same size. Last time he saw Thomas, George was still a boy, a child.
‘I’m well, milord. And you?’
‘I think, by now, you can call me George.’
‘Well, then you must call me Thomas,’ he scrubs at the back of his neck, his hair is longer than George remembers it.
‘Very well,’ George turns, ‘and you’re Richard? We haven’t been properly introduced?’
‘Yes, sir. Richard Ellis, at your service,’ he gives an ironic little bow and George knows instinctively that this man used to work in service and couldn’t be happier to have given it up.
‘I’ll just get on with the tea,’ Richard gives Thomas another significant look as he heads back out.
‘Shall we sit?’ Thomas doesn't seem inclined to take the lead, still looking slightly stunned.
‘By all means, milord. I -. George.’
‘I was pleased to speak to you the other day,’ says George, getting a proper look at Thomas at last. He looks exactly the same; the same handsome face, his dark hair threaded with silver at the temples, his bearing not shifted an inch from years and years of waiting on other people.
‘I was glad to hear that you’d made it through, well, when so many didn’t,’ says Thomas, looking at a point somewhere over George’s shoulder.
George nods quickly, dismissively. Just like on the streets of York the war is not over in so many ways, not least in his own mind. He’ll carry the scars, one way or another, for some time, just as Thomas has, from the last one.
‘You’ll have heard about my grandfather?’
‘Yes, I was sorry to miss the funeral but I couldn’t get away. How is Lady Grantham, and your mother?’
‘Mama is as you’d expect, getting on. Granny, I think, feels it’s disloyal to me to still be grieving, but she is, and I don’t blame her. And of course the county hasn’t had an Earl as young as me for some time.’
It’s the truth and as such it’s far too much to share with a servant, albeit a former one, a virtual stranger he hasn’t seen in almost a decade but it feels a relief to talk to someone who knows his family but doesn’t feel the need to be unnecessarily deferential.
Ellen is wonderful, but she’s still finding her feet, and their meeting and marriage was a whirlwind, not disapproved of per se but romances during wartime are regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. She’s always on her best behaviour, reticent to speak against her in-laws and George finds relief in knowing there are things Thomas understands about his family that George never will and intimacies that don’t need to be explained.
‘They’ll adjust. They aren’t just missing a father or a husband but a figurehead. A reminder of better times.’
‘Were they better, really?’
Thomas laughs but it’s cold, ‘not for me, no.’
It could be awkward but Richard chooses that moment to come in with the tea, setting it out between them.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he puts a hand to Thomas’s shoulder, which Thomas instinctively covers with his own, just for a moment, ‘if you need me, I’m in the garden.’
‘Where do I know him from?’
Thomas’s eyes widen and he looks up in surprise from where he was pouring the tea, ‘I’m surprised you remember. Richard was the King’s Valet in 1927, when the King and Queen visited Downton.’
‘That must be it.’
George doesn’t press but understanding dawns on him as if he has always known, there is no great surprise merely clarity of something he has understood implicitly for a long time.
‘How many are you, now, at Downton?’
‘There’s Granny, I can’t bear to send her to the Dower House just yet, and Mama. Henry of course, still just about running the dealership with Uncle Tom. Cousin Sybbie drops in but she’s always dashing about. She’s been up at Cambridge campaigning for women to be awarded degrees for their studies.’
‘And so she should. If she’s anything like her mother she’ll be successful. You’re married, too?’
George can’t help himself from grinning, ‘yes, Lady Ellen Compton. Her father’s a Viscount.’
‘When did you meet?’
‘1941, when I was on leave. She’s expecting, too.’
‘Congratulations,’ Thomas’s smile is warm and George is reminded of a childhood spent clinging to Mr Barrow’s back, indulged and doted on by a man who would likely never have children of his own. It was joyful to him then, the callous ignorance of a child, but he sees now there would have been sorrow there too.
‘It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind but a happy one. We’ve needed some happiness, these last few years.’
Something of a shadow crosses Thomas’s face before he asks, ‘and downstairs?’
George could kick himself, of course, Thomas would rather hear about the people he knew as friends and colleagues over the dramas of his old employers.
‘Mrs Bates is still the Housekeeper but I had no need of a valet so Mr Bates retired. Daisy, Mrs Parker, came back to run the kitchen and we’ve a few maids that come in from the village. Your replacement never made it home. We’re getting by but it’s not what it was.’
‘No, nothing is,’ Thomas looks down at his hands, he’s not wearing his glove, maybe he doesn’t wear it at all anymore, and the wound on his hand shines silver for a moment.
Here is George’s chance, this must be it, to ask what he came here to ask, ‘that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I had hoped you would consider coming back to Downton, as Butler.’
Thomas looks up sharply, ‘master George. George. I don’t think…’
‘Please consider it. You’re more of an old hand at this than I am and I need all the help I can get. It’s not easy stepping into my grandfather’s shoes.’
‘You’ll do just fine.’
‘So you’ll think about it?’
‘I’m very flattered, I’m sure, but I’m not as young as I was, you wouldn’t get many working years out of me.’
‘Thomas, you forget I know exactly how old you are and I’m still here asking.’
George spreads his hands on his knees, in supplication and in hope. The task ahead of him is so huge he would get on his knees and beg if he had to.
‘Well, yes, it’s just, you see, I couldn’t leave Richard and...
‘I’m sure we could find room for him too,’ he won’t insult them, he’s not offering charity, but if finding a job for Richard is what it takes, he’ll manage it.
Thomas is still shaking his head.
‘The life we have here, it’s a life we couldn’t have in Downton.’
George looks towards the window, out onto the street, noisy now as children return home from school; his own childhood feels a million miles away, a lifetime already, at only 24 years old. If the war hadn’t happened he’d have gone to university like Sybbie and his adulthood would only just be beginning. Except he’d still be a new Earl in a changing world begging a man he hasn’t seen since he was a child to come help him shore up the old one.
‘Well, I won’t press you. It seems like your mind is made up.’
‘I’m afraid it is,’ Thomas takes a sip of tea and the finality of it almost makes George wince. He wants to apologise for trying but he won’t insult Thomas; he asked an honest question and got an honest answer.
Richard reappears in the doorway, with impeccable timing, to ask, ‘would you like to stay for supper?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ George stands, shakes Richard’s hand first, then Thomas’s, ‘but we’ll keep in touch?’
Thomas looks at him in surprise, it seems most of what George has come here to say has been unexpected, ‘if you like, George, yes.’
George holds onto his hand for a moment, steadying, and then turns to leave.
As they see him off, together on the threshold of their home, George stops on the doorstep. He knows he won’t persuade them, either of them, but he has to try, for Downton.
‘Are you sure? Truly?’
‘Yes,’ Thomas looks away and George understands all over again why he’s been refused, why a man like Thomas wouldn’t, couldn’t, go back not even for the boy he looked out for all those years ago. It’s not out of a lack of loyalty but a question of survival.
‘Things are changing…’
Thomas shakes his head, ‘not fast enough for us, milord.’
Downton, 1973
‘Hello, Richard? George Crawley. I know it’s been a while but might I speak to Thomas?’
‘Good Afternoon, George, how nice to hear from you,’ there’s something in Richard’s voice, or something lacking; there’s no warmth, the smile you can almost always hear is missing and it sinks to the pit of George’s stomach.
‘Richard? What’s happened?’
‘I’m afraid Thomas has passed away, sir,’
George closes his eyes, the phone in the cradle of his hand pressed hard to his ear. He last spoke to Thomas not three months ago. At 52 losses like this should become easier to bear but it never gets any easier, everything and everyone of the old world coming to an end.
There are responses appropriate for the Earl of Grantham to impart, condolences stiff with repression and closed off from real feeling. He can’t manage any of that just now with tears stinging behind his eyelids so he goes with the truth.
‘I’m so sorry, Richard. You must know he loved you very much.’
‘Yes, thank you. It means a lot. To hear someone from the old days say it. ’
With a steadying breath George opens his eyes, ‘when did it happen?’
‘Only end of last week.’
‘My goodness, is there anything you need? Do you have someone who can help you?’
‘Yes, we have friends here. I have friends here.’
‘Would you...that is to say, it’s only an idea, but would you perhaps want to bury Thomas here, at Downton? I dare say I can get it all arranged.’
‘I -, that is -,’ Richard pauses and George can sense a gathering of strength from the other end of the phone line, ‘he spoke of Downton very fondly.’
‘Well, of course, it’s where you both met.’
‘And he always said you’d get him back there, in the end.’
George doesn’t speak. What is there to say? Richard isn’t being cruel but it’s a harsh reality; he doesn't think Thomas resented maintaining a friendship all these years but it was a link to Downton, a part of his old life, a reminder of the good times and with them the bad.
‘I will think about it,’ Richard says, apology in his voice.
‘I’ll leave it with you. Just let me know as soon as is convenient,’ George says firmly and there it is, he’s the Earl again, a protection against the grief.
Richard clears his throat, ‘did you have some news? For Thomas? Could I help at all?’
‘Oh, well, yes, I just wanted to let him know, let you both know, that my grandson has been born, safe and sound.’
‘What good news,’ Richard’s voice is tense, ‘Thomas would have been so pleased to hear there are children at Downton again.’
‘I like to think so.’
‘And his name?’
George presses his head to the wall in front him, fights back the rising tide, grief and joy together, ‘Matthew. Matthew Robert Crawley.’
He would have liked to share this final joy with Thomas, as he has in letters and phone calls and occasional meetings over the last thirty years but he finds it’s enough, in the end, to know Thomas was happy with Richard, that they were happy together, and in refusing to come back to Downton he was able to do more than survive, he was able to live.