Work Text:
Chapter 1: Champagne Problems
Mary listens to the radio when she commutes to work every weekday.
She listens absentmindedly, one hand on the wheel of her Rolls-Royce and the other drumming on its gleaming dashboard. Occasionally she switches the station, from pop to classical to jazz to rock and back again.
Sybil likes rock and roll and indie girl power bands. Edith is an avid jazz fan. Her grandmother prefers classical music, her mother the decidedly American country music. Her father abhors modern pop music, calling it tasteless, and collects Beatles records. And Mary, Mary’s guilty pleasure has always been romantic ballads.
As a girl, she was spellbound by the high notes of “Tonight” from West Side Story - her mother’s favorite musical - and longed for her own Tony. As a teenager, she waltzed around her room to Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect,” imagining her waltz partner thought she was as breathtaking as the songwriter thought his childhood sweetheart was. As a young woman, she danced with Matthew to “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” at a family party, and they broke into tipsy giggles as they tried and failed to replicate the famous Dirty Dancing lift. Then, her life played out like a movie, with these love songs as the soundtrack as she fell for him.
And now, as she nears thirty, Mary flips the station when the melancholy ones come on. The happy ones, with their bubbling lyrics and soaring choruses, painfully remind her of what she once had - but the sad ones needle her where it hurts the most, with their mournful turn of phrase and minor key. They resurrect the feelings she’s attempted to bury deep within her.
One evening, Mary is taking the subway back from her Westminster office to her flat in Marylebone when a new Taylor Swift song plays. “Champagne Problems” - she doesn’t pay much attention at first since Sybil is more of a Swift fan than she is. But as the metro stops go by - St. James, Green Park - she plays the song again and begins to see the story in the song. It’s that of a woman who turns down her college sweetheart’s proposal due to her own anxieties and worries, and it characterizes her problems as those of a privileged girl like Mary.
The woman’s family and friends talk about how she should have done things differently, and Mary thinks the woman later regrets it. I never was ready so I watch you go. She’s never resonated with a song more, and even as she disembarks, she falls into a reverie of her memories.
A few years ago, she dawdled when Matthew proposed to her, worrying he might not be able to provide her the luxurious and aristocratic life that she coveted on his modest country lawyer’s salary. Used to the comforts of Downton Abbey, her family’s sprawling and majestic estate, she couldn’t picture herself living in a flat with him above his firm’s office in Ripon. Aunt Rosamund had pointed that out to her when Mary had told her of Matthew’s proposal. “Sybil might be happy living a middle class lifestyle, but you never could,” she’d told her. “I know Matthew may seem like he runs Downtown, but he’s not truly one of us. After your father dies, Downton will pass to your mother, so it could be up to fifty years before you inherit it. In the meantime, Matthew - not your parents - will be the one providing for you.”
Rosamund then reminded her of how much Mary had disliked Matthew when they first met two years before, when he arrived, with his overbearing mother in tow, to give her father legal guidance on the estate. Robert Crawley had good intentions, but he didn’t have the head for finance or estate management like Matthew did, and since Matthew was a very distant relation, he trusted him to be an honest man rather than a smooth-talking swindler. Mary had resented how quickly Matthew became embedded as the son Robert had always longed for but that Cora had never given him and how he listened to his suggestions the way he’d never given thought to Mary’s - even though she’d just finished studying economics at university. And she resented even more the way her grandmother and her mother had unsubtly pushed her and Matthew together.
But eventually she ceased her adamant resistance and her jealousy melted away as they got to know each other better. She began to lose herself in his mind, his witty humor, his heart, and his warm sky-blue eyes. They went for hours-long walks on estate grounds, talking about everything from classic literature to old movies to village gossip to the stock market. He fit right in with her family - even her grandmama - at their nightly dinners. He was like a big brother to Sybil, even rescuing her when the political protest she attended turned violent. Mary had kissed him for the first time that night - or rather, they’d kissed each other, moving closer to each other as if they were two opposite magnetic poles.
Ever since that night, she hadn’t been able to focus on anything but thinking about Matthew for long. He seemed to see the kinder and softer side that no one else saw in her, and he coaxed it out of her. They spent every moment they could together, and he proposed to her on their favorite bench at Downton. She’d accepted immediately, and they’d run to the gazebo and stroked their hands and their mouths all over each other’s bodies. He wasn’t her first time, but he was the first person she’d made love to rather than had sex with, the first person who made her buzz with a mix of love and desire for him. They spent hours in each other’s arms thereafter, talking excitedly about their future. The future Mr. and Mrs. Crawley had imagined themselves both being consultants to Robert (him legal, her financial) about honeymooning in Greece (to see the site of the fabled Oracle of Delphi from the myths they so enjoyed), about the children they’d one day have (one girl, one boy).
Too ecstatic to wait, Mary had woken her mother up and told her the news. Everyone in the family - besides the ever-jealous Edith - had been thrilled, and Isobel Crawley told her she’d love to have her as a daughter-in-law. And then Mary had gone to London for fashion week and had stayed with Rosamund, and her perspective shifted astronomically.
Mary loved Matthew, and yet she had heeded her aunt’s advice, the aunt who knew her better than anyone outside of her immediate family. Matthew had approached her at a garden party and confronted her about the cold feet she had about wedding planning. She still remembers the way Matthew’s expression crumbled when she informed him of her decision and the tears that formed in his eyes. And how she’d uncharacteristically sobbed after and sought comfort in Carson, the family butler who was like a father to her.
She’d chosen logic over instinct, her brain and her greed over her heart and her desire. And she’s rued that decision ever since.
As Mary unlocks the expensive flat she shares with her university friend, she ponders giving Matthew a call. It’s been a while, after all, and maybe she should apologize. Maybe they’d both obtain some semblance of clarity that way.
Yet Mary knows he’s moved on by now, that he’s probably found “the real thing” instead by now. He wouldn’t want to remember all of her so-called champagne problems - they would only remind him of the life they could have had together if only she had placed confidence in him and the future filled with blank possibility that had stretched in front of them.