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Thomas Barrow had taken on an increasingly worrisome paleness.
It wasn’t as if his bed was particularly comfortable, one size too small and with a frame that could be felt through the mattress, or his skin tone wasn’t already a shade sallower than half of the staff at Downton. Both were the case, and yet something gave Tom Branson the impression that neither of those facts were responsible for the lightness of his complexion or the bags beneath his eyes.
The Downstairs—Tom thought of it with a capital “D”—was bustling today, and Ms Patmore had done her best to see to it that if he had to spend time Downstairs it would be out of her way. He’d never gotten on with them in an intimate way—not before his marriage to Sybil, and certainly not after—but the faces were familiar, at least, and he could let his shoulders drop and his newfound professionalism slide for a moment, stolen away from The Upstairs (also with a capital “U”).
Thomas Barrow, who had never had the reputation of being particularly agreeable, as far as Tom could tell, lit a smoke at the dining table when the rest of the room found itself empty. Even the drags from his cigarette were slower these days, the Irishman had noticed. He’d not spoken to the man in his recent time spent Downstairs, but eavesdropping and people watching had always been a bad habit of Tom’s. Standing in the doorway, hands shoved deep in the brown pockets of a pair of his more casual trousers, Tom watched the man’s shoulders slump and the black strands of his hair threaten to fall forward out of their place as he stubbed out the cigarette against the table. (Cheeky, Tom thought).
“You look like you could use some better sleep, Mr. Barrow,” he piped up, rocking on the balls of his feet as he did so.
The dark-haired man looked up and scoffed, though quietly, before sucking his cheeks in as he considered his response.
“There is no rest for the wicked, Mr. Branson.”
Tom broke into a smile, though he tried to keep it to himself. Even looking like hell, Barrow was witty.
“Maybe so, but something’s got to give,” he insisted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve been looking rather rough these past few weeks, Mr. Barrow. I hope you don’t mind my saying; only I couldn’t help but notice.”
Tom stepped forward and pulled a chair out, taking a seat at the table directly across from the self-proclaimed “wicked man.” He toyed with it a moment, and eventually the words spilled out as they always seemed to do, his tongue working quicker than his decision-making skills could.
“We haven’t spoken much, these years, but I know you were close to Sybil before she passed.” It seemed strange to say—it had been years, now—but it felt like one of the only things the two of them might have had in common, and it was as good a start to friendship as any. He noted the way Barrow’s jaw tensed though, and his gaze stayed low, as if mulling over emotions that weighed heavy on his tongue but were too dangerous to let out of his mouth.
Tom started again. It felt like he was doing an awful lot of the talking, but that was alright, as far as he was concerned.
“I only mean to help, Mr. Barrow.”
“Barrow is fine,” the man corrected, the formalities feeling more than unnecessary, especially since the Irishman had taken his place upstairs. Everybody else called him Barrow, or Thomas. After all, what had he done to deserve the honorific? He wasn’t particularly liked, for one. On top of it, he hardly felt like a man worth having a name of his own in the first place, some days.
“Right, Barrow.” Tom could respect his wishes. “I hope you don’t take offense to it, but I’d like you to tell me what’s wrong, if you think you can muster it.” He nodded to the doorway, where outside the servants moved about, to and fro, here and there, having forgotten the man at the table, gaunt cheeks and devilment alike. “They might not see it, but I do.”
Thomas looked at him, then. They’d spoken once or twice, perhaps, maybe had a tiff or a harsh exchange of words before the man had been wed to the loveliest woman that Thomas had ever met. They’d teamed up at a fair in Thirsk for a Tug O’ War match, as well, now that he thought about it. But there was nothing in his memory, no closeness nor kindness, that could have prepared him for the revelation that when everyone else seemed to be blind, Tom Branson could see him.
Even now the man was making a conscious effort to keep his hands from trembling. As sick as he might look, he was doing well to keep himself so composed. His gaze stayed down. He picked one particular spot on the table and fixed his line of sight there. There was something in his chest, big and terrible and welling up to the point of suffocation, and he pushed his jaw forward in what Tom recognized as an awful attempt not to cry. How many times had he done it himself, sitting through conversations about Sybil or going to bed knowing that the space beside him would be empty another night without her? Too many to count, and he saw it in Barrow now.
Thomas spoke with a voice that was even, despite the slight tremble that accompanied it.
“If you’d really like to know, Mr. Branson, it’s going to be a lot easier if I just show you…”
Tom gave a nod. Good! Progress!
“You’ll have to come to my room…” He hesitated when he said it. He could only hope that Tom was going to be as accepting of the situation as he made himself seem. If inviting him to his room didn’t scare him off, the conversation that had to follow might do a good job of it. Tom stood then, hands clasped behind his back, and he gave another nod.
“All's well with me,” he assured Thomas, who inhaled deeply through his nose and pushed his chair back, giving a subtle nod of his own. They were in agreement, then.
Thomas rounded the table, and with his head low, he made his way through the halls to the Men’s Quarters, a briskness in his step that almost covered the way he winced at every turn.
Tom trailed behind him with hands clasped behind his back and a sense of belonging in his own step, as if Downstairs was the most natural place in the world for him to be this time of day. He waited for Barrow to turn the knob to his room before stepping inside after him, Barrow easing the door shut behind them in the moments after. He lingered near the door, his back to the room and Branson alike, before he straightened his posture and lifted his chin, decidedly too far into this to back out now.
“Mr. Branson, you know I’m…” He trailed off again. The words were still hard, no matter how definitively he’d made up his mind to say them.
“A homosexual?” he finished, with a nod to accompany it.
Barrow cast his eyes down again, not as willing to admit it as he’d used to be. Tom’s eyes scanned over him, picking up on his insecurities and the shame the man had attached to his own confession.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he clarified, assuring the man he meant no harm by the statement.
Thomas’s breath hitched at his next inhale, and the weight of that big, terrible thing inside his chest was welling up again and moving its way into his throat, where sobs were known to be given life. He tried—God he did—but the tears came anyway, hanging on his lower lashline like great drops of rain destined to roll off ravens’ wings.
“I’ve not been a happy man, Tom.”
His voice cracked at the man’s name. He hoped it was okay, to drop formalities like that, but he felt that the sincerity of his statement might be lost without it. To Tom, there had never been a problem with being called by his given name in the first place. If anything, it labeled them equals, a foundation of trust. Barrow—Thomas, since Branson figured they were past last names, now—spoke on, after a pause.
“I’ve not been a happy man, and I thought… I might fix it. That if I could fix me, or not be me anymore, I might be happier. That people might like me more.” He tugged his shirt up, then, pulling the tail from his pants to show skin, the natural whiteness of his complexion muddled purple and red and hot with swelling. He looked up to meet the man’s eyes, now, though his chin was still tipped down with some timidness. “I thought it would help, but it’s been bad. I can’t sleep, I’ve got no appetite, I can hardly focus on my tasks around the house… But if I stop the medicine now, I’ve got nothing else that might make things better…”
Tom’s lips twitched downward and he moved, deliberately, to take a seat at the edge of Thomas’s bed. Most people were comfortable sitting, he found, when there was something serious to be said. He gestured to the empty space on the mattress beside him.
“Have a sit, won't you?”
Thomas thought about it a moment. A sit… on the bed with Branson… He conceded, and sat next to the man, shoulders slumped and knees spread, elbows resting atop them and taking most of his weight. He glanced up and over to the man whose motives he still didn’t understand, though he could see, reflected in Tom, a mirror of Sybil, if he tried. Tom turned and looked at him, eyes flickering from the top of Thomas’s black hair down to the hands clasped between his knees.
“I think you’re fine the way you are, Thomas.”
He reached to rest a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, gripping it firmly. The kind of touch that was grounding, that was supposed to let Thomas know that everything he heard and everything that he was being told was real.
“If you can be you, the way you are, why be anybody else?”
Thomas’s lips twitched in response to the words, pressing themselves together as his brows knit. The pitiful, crying thing struggling to leave his throat was full of relief, now. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t stop himself: he turned to grip the side of Branson’s vest in his good hand, falling into his chest with sobs that wracked his body and spilled tears quietly into the man’s tie.
Tom rested a hand at Thomas’s back, the weight welcome and warm, and wrapped an arm around his broad shoulders, letting him cry. He leaned into Thomas’s hair, scented with styling gel and smoke.
“I don’t claim to have all the answers, Thomas. But God knows you’re just as good as the rest of us.” He lifted his jaw from the smokey black hair and gave Thomas’s shoulder a firm squeeze. Beneath the weight of Tom's hand and grounded by the firmness of his grip, Thomas’s sobs and shaking shoulders eventually slowed into evened breaths and the wet spot at Branson’s shirt stopped expanding.
He didn’t move, though. Neither of them did.
It was okay, for a while, to simply be.