Chapter Text
The letter arrives in an unremarkable, if slightly upscale envelope. Thomas doesn’t think much about it at first. It’s one of many, stacked between bills and telegrams, and only when he sits down to go through the downstairs mail after the upstairs breakfast, he gives it the attention it deserves. The writing is unfamiliar, and there’s no return address. He slices the envelope open with a practiced twist of his wrist, stops before taking out the card inside when there’s noise coming from the hallway. But it’s only Mrs. Patmore, harping on about something, and Daisy giving as good as she gets.
The card that glides into his left palm is of better quality then the envelope and holds the key to the destruction of his heart.
Mr. & Mrs. Theodor Chapman
and
Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin Ellis
request the honor of your presence at the marriage ceremony of their children
Florence
and
Richard
On Sunday Morning, May 5th, 1928
at 10 a.m.
It’s funny, how a handful of words can stop your world from spinning.
There’s nothing else inside the envelope. Thomas has looked about a million times by now, but there’s no note or scrap of paper, nothing, to explain what he holds between his fingers. It’s just the invitation, and the font they – they – chose almost seems violent, sneering up at him in bold black.
Thomas isn’t even that surprised, resignation winning over when shock has worn off, and he realizes how sad that must seem to others. To expect your beloved to choose a compromise over you, to have so little faith in yourself that you can even understand such a decision. He knows Richard will be better off like this, far better than he ever could have been at Thomas’ side. And Thomas had known how Richard longed for a stable, settled life, more than Thomas ever did, so it makes sense. He’d always been the one, when it came to public outings and such, to steer them away from anything dangerous, he’d been the one taking an extra step away from Thomas and the one letting go of his hand first. Always a bit more circumspect.
Thomas wonders, for a second, what it would be like to value yourself and your life so much so, that you’d do anything to keep it safe. He knows it’s about safety, above all, about earning respect and good standing and living a save life. He cannot begrudge him that.
But what he can and will begrudge him, is that he sent Thomas a fucking wedding invitation to inform him of it. It hurts, he can’t deny it – the bold letters, black on white, declaring the marriage of his love to someone else so naturally and irrefutably. As if it expects him to read the words with joy and gratitude at having been thought of to invite, the sheer gall to invite him of all people in the first place.
Thomas begins to waver and doubt – the Richard he knew would have never sent him news like this, not so mean-spirited and thoughtless, and never would have expected him to attend the ceremony. But maybe he did want him there, as a twisted sort of peace offering or compromise. Maybe he wants to keep you on, like a concubine, there to please when the lights are out, a menacing voice whispers in the back of Thomas’ head. He stands up abruptly, pacing to the fireplace and back to get rid of it. It doesn’t work, and when Mrs. Hughes knocks at the pantry’s door he’s back behind his desk, trying to drown his mind in work.
“Yes?” He snaps, sharper than intended. She opens the door, entering at his nod. He continues to work while she stands and watches him for a minute, silent.
“…Mrs. Hughes, can I help you or did you just come to stand there and stare?”
“I deduct a letter of yours didn’t contain any good news?” Her tone is firm, even a bit nonchalant in her no-nonsense kind of voice. It makes him look up, and her steady gaze reigns Thomas’ temper right back in. With a sigh, he leans back. “Sorry.”
She waits, sitting down across from him in lieu of an answer. Thomas thinks for a second, tries to think of an excuse or plausible half-truth, but none come forth. So in the end, he makes do with what is and blurts out: “Do you remember Richar- Mr. Ellis? From the royal visit, he was His Majesty’s second valet.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Hughes nods, a slight twinkle in her eyes as she adds: “He has beautiful handwriting.”
Right. Who was he fooling? He throws her a look, then continues. “He- well, let me cut it short if you already know. He had some news to share.”
“News?” Mrs. Hughes asks with a frown. Without another word, Thomas hands her the card. He watches as her eyes narrow while she tries to decipher the words, then widen when she does. She’s careful in handling her surprise, carefully tucks away anything that might upset him. He hates when she does that, feeling like a stranger she feels the need to walk on eggshells around, not like the people they are having known each other for the better part of his life.
“I gather he was a…special friend of yours.” She gives him back the card. He contemplates throwing it across the room and right into the flames of the fireplace but doesn’t. Instead, he just watches the flickering shadows dancing along the blackened stone and quietly answers: “Very special.” And suddenly he feels unbearably sad.
Mrs. Hughes nods and is silent. She probably tries to think of a way to handle him when he is obviously feeling so low. He wouldn’t be very much surprised if she stood up and went to fetch Phyllis from the other side of the canal, not feeling up to the unmanageable task. But she doesn’t, and eventually opens her mouth. “The life you’re living is not an easy one, Thomas.” Her voice is quiet. “It’s not fair – you have to choose between being true to yourself or being safe, and I’m afraid Mr. Ellis…”
“He chose being safe. I know that. I can’t hold that against him, and I won’t.” He looks down as he interlaces his fingers.
“…And don’t you want to be safe too, Thomas?” She asks, slight pleading tone creeping into her words.
“Not like this.” He whispers. It’s not the answer she had hoped for, but the one she expected, and so she nods.
“Then you have chosen to live a brave, but very lonely life, Thomas.” He doesn’t have anything to say, doesn’t want to say anything to that. It’s true, yet it vexes him that she apparently felt the need to say it out loud. “Maybe you’ll be lucky, in the future.” She adds, but her attempt at smiling falls flat. “There’s always hope in the future.” None of them can muster up sufficient optimism at the statement. She pats his hand, and leaves shortly after.
And when the door closes behind her, Thomas feels something heavy settle inside his chest.
He’s out of breath from going up to the second floor. What the fuck? Thomas has taken those stairs, two at a time or sometimes even three, about a billion times in his life. The only time he had had to fight for his breath on these steps was after he had tried to take his life, in the following weeks of hardship and recovery, as he had tried to train back a stamina he’d had, up until then, taken for granted.
Never before, never again. Until now.
Thomas takes the last three steps at a slower pace and thinks so this is what getting old feels like as he slides through the green baize door into the hallway of the bachelor’s corridor.
Richard hadn’t liked the smell of stale smoke. He’d confessed this when they had been seven months deep into courtship, or whatever it was one could call it with two blokes closer to forty than thirty, deeply in love with each other and unable to express it in any meaningful way. He didn’t mind the smell when it was fresh, and bizarrely enough didn’t care for the taste lingering on Thomas’ lips or tongue when they kissed, but there was apparently something very unsettling about the odor when it had grown old and cold. I imagine that’s what ghosts smell like, he had said, and Thomas had laughed, lying next to him in the bed they had rented for the night, and had put out the cigarette he had been smoking. Richard had frowned, chagrined, and had protested. You don’t need to quit because of me, I’ll get used to it. But Thomas had wanted to.
He had rapidly brought down his daily consumption, reducing smoking to the evening hours, and sometimes middle of the night, when he couldn’t sleep. He made sure to not smoke for at least two days before their meet ups, and only smoke shortly before they had to say goodbye, so Richard wasn’t there anymore when the smoke would grow old. Thomas came to associate the smell of stale smoke with Richard’s absence, and the feeling of a fresh, warm cigarette between his lips with reading his lover’s letters or standing next to him on a platform, soaking in as much of the other before they had to separate yet again.
He tries to forget all that when he escapes from the chaos of the film crew settling in at the Abbey to the quietude of the servants’ backyard. It’s habit, really, that makes his fingers slide inside his jacket and retrieve the small box of cigarettes. He’s earned it, by god he has, and he pushes away any reflex to check the date or to look up to make sure of the time for the departure of a train. With fluid and quick motions, he pulls out a fag, stows away the packet and gets out his lighter. It takes three times to bring it to lighten up, and when Thomas shakes the lighter he can feel the low level of fuel inside. He’ll need to refill, now that he is free to smoke again, as much as he wants to, whenever, wherever-
The first pull is shallow. He puffs out the smoke before it can truly travel down, to make sure the fag stays lit. When the end glows reassuringly orange, he takes another drag, breathing deep and slow- It catches inside his throat and before he knows it he’s coughing in his sleeve like an amateur who tried to play up his first time with a cig. The coughing fit lasts an embarrassingly long time, and he’s winded when he straightens again. The cigarette is reduced to an unsmoked line of ash, precariously balanced between his fingers. He doesn’t have time for a second one.
In the next days, Thomas’ coughing doesn’t ease up. As soon as he moves too quickly or for too long, his lungs cop out. He’s quick to become breathless, and there’s a constant pressure in his chest that has nothing to do with his broken heart. Mrs. Hughes notices of course, but embarrassingly enough she isn’t the only one – Andy starts casting worried glances over his shoulder ever since Thomas had paused on their way up to dinner to catch his breath once, Daisy secretly adds lemon to his tea and Anna doesn’t ask him but Albert when she needs something from the village. Even Molesley has shot one or two concerned glances in his direction.
Mrs. Hughes urges him to go see the doctor. Thomas says he will but keeps putting it off. He knows that he’s growing old, and that a lifetime of smoking can do a number on your lungs – no need to make extra work for the doctor, he thinks, and keeps it at that.