Archive of Our Own

I

“ ‘Ere, Ada—you hear our Richard’s got into Ripon Grammar?”

Ada—all bosom, apron, and quick judgement—turns from Richard’s mother to Richard himself, surveying him with one eyebrow lifted. The cake batter she was previously beating to death with a wooden spoon slides into the basin with a plop, and after a long deliberation, Ada decides the appropriate response is, “He never.”

“The letter came yesterday,” Richard says.

Already he sounds posher, like he’s putting on airs, talking around a plum someone has shoved in his mouth. He can still hear the echoing of his own footfall in the cloisters—a word he’d never heard before the Open Day—and feel the prickle of apprehension at the bottom of his spine as he took in the vast stone building.

Get in there and you’ve got it made, lad.

Smart boy like you, there’s no reason you wouldn’t pass.

Ripon Grammar is one of the best schools in the country. To be invited to the Open Day is a privilege extended to few and you’ll be wise to act accordingly.

“Must be right chuffed.”

Richard nods, but he can already tell his part in the conversation is done. He retreats to the pile of washing up and grabs a tea towel, stares at the noticeboard above the sink while he dries the teacups and stacks them with a series of tiny clinks. Ever since his teacher mentioned he might be clever enough to take the entrance exam, he’s been grappling with whether or not he wanted to go, whether he wanted to abandon his friends, whether he’d fit in. He can’t help thinking he’s more of a community hall Sunday school washing up boy than the sort who attends somewhere with a motto in a language no one has spoken for centuries, but everyone’s acting like it’s a foregone conclusion.

Maybe it is. Come September, he’ll have a new uniform that’ll mark him out and that’ll be that.

Giorne ymb lare ymb diowotdomas.

The oven door slams, and Ada stands back, cake now in the lap of the gods. “You know they reckon you only get seven moments of happiness your entire life,” she says.

Richard’s mother looks up from the roses she’s hastily shoving into a vase. “I should be so lucky,” she says.

With a dismissive snort, she whisks the arrangement out to where it’ll sit and slowly die on top of the piano, until next Sunday, when she’ll empty the vase out, swap the dead roses for fresh ones, which’ll meet the same fate.

“Seven,” Ada says. “You’re one down. Don’t waste ‘em. Mark my words, lad.”

Richard doesn’t mean to.

But he does.

II

The House Master is a tall man with a bad temper and a nose like a strawberry. The older boys laugh about him falling out of pubs and attempting to cycle back to the school, toppling over as he tries to get his bicycle clips on, but Richard has no idea if there’s any truth in their talk. All he knows is his punishments are doled out with a leather belt worn thin and jagged at the edges and he often loses count, and Richard has been summoned to his office for forgetting to hand in his History homework.

“What have you got to say for yourself, Ellis?”

Richard straightens. The truth—that he was distracted by a letter about his father’s failing health—is unlikely to protect him. He could grovel for forgiveness and promise to do better, but he’s heard others try that and leave with welts.

“Is Mr. Whiting sure it’s not in the pile, sir?” Richard says, making his tone curious, deferential, likeable. “Maybe it slipped from the pile and got lost. I put it on top of Mann’s. He might remember—we were talking about football.”

Richard has never spoken to Mann, but he’s the star striker on the football team, greyhound fast and twice as beady-eyed, darling of the staff room.

The House Master considers his words, fingering the buckle on his belt. The rubbed brass glints beneath his robes.

In for a penny, Richard thinks. Might as well be hanged for a guinea as a farthing.

“He thinks I should try out. What do you think, sir?”

“We could use a decent midfielder.”

“That’s what Mann said, sir. He thinks I’ve the right build.”

The House Master turns this information over.

Richard recalls a spy novel he read, where the protagonist revealed the key to lying is to keep it small, believable, and add just enough detail for it to seem real, but not too much, like you’re trying to be convincing. It’s a fine line Richard has been practicing treading—small stuff here and there with the older boys—seeing how far he can go, how casual and off-hand he can make sound phrases which are nothing of the sort.

“What was the subject of the homework?”

“Essay, sir, on the Napoleonic Wars.”

“Treaty of Amiens. What do you know about that, Ellis?”

“Britain ended it in May 1803, declaring war on France, sir.” Richard keeps his gaze steady, information tripping calmly off his tongue. “At that point, it had been in place for a little over a year, having been signed initially in March 1802. Britain withdrew, feeling Napoleon’s stance on George III not deserving a say in continental matters was an insult, in light of the King being an elector for the Holy Roman Empire.”

The House Master murmurs.

Richard knows he’s convincingly played the wrongly accused, because no shirker would know that. He’s not sure it’s happiness, as such, that washes through him as the House Master dismisses him and says he expects to see him at football practice next week. But there’s satisfaction, a nervous giddiness to getting away with it, to being able to defend himself—save himself—with his wits.

When he walks down the corridor, heels clicking on the stone, he feels just a little bit more at home in the vast building, as well as inside himself.

III

The football pitch is rucked with mud, a good deal of it splattered up Richard’s thighs and even as far as his face. His legs feel like lead as he traipses to the corner, eyeing his teammates and their bright red shirts through the drizzle.

It’s Richard’s first real match. He’s been on as a substitute a few times, but Kenny Perry is out with flu and Richard’s been drafted in for the full ninety minutes, eighty-five of which have thankfully already elapsed. Fog swirls around the goalpost and the goalie for their opponents—another grammar school from the south—slaps his hands together, the noise of it falling away as if muffled by the weather.

The ball is heavy, smooth leather, and slippery with mud and grass. Mann is waiting on the near side of the goalmouth, hair damp and in his eyes. His posture is expectant, confident. Even though the two defenders are twice his size and have been all over him since halftime, he never wavers in his conviction he can score.

Richard squints at him and places the ball on the marker. The referee blows the whistle. Richard looks at the goal, the goalie, Mann, and back at the goalie. He’s inching towards Mann, arms out, and one of the defenders has his elbow in Mann’s ribs. It’s a split-second decision. Richard kicks the ball, but instead of aiming for Mann, he lobs it over him towards the far corner.

The goalie leaps for the ball and the defenders dart towards it with an air of panic. The goalie gets a hand to it, but it’s too slippery, and rather than batting it away, he just helps it across the goal line, where it lands with a definitive splatter and skids towards the handful of spectators clustered under umbrellas.

The toot of the whistle is lost beneath the excited, surprised clamour of Richard’s team. He collects pats on the shoulder—even from Mann—and jogs to retrieve the ball to hide his face so they can’t see what it means to him written all over it. It’s not the goal and it’s not their approval that does it, it’s the sense of having pulled off a trick. Richard has cemented his place in the eyes of the others as a good egg, a solid, dependable chap. He’s made them believe he’s just like they are, that he dreams of lifting football trophies, rather than of the men whose hands he’s seen wrapped around them, sweaty and grinning, in the paper.

It’s only later that he realises he wasted a moment of happiness, let it slip through his fingers without realising, and now it’s gone, and he can never get it back.

IV

After that, Richard starts to ration, to guard his emotions, to pick them apart until joy turns to dust. The moments don’t count if he destroys them, he decides, and he needs to save them for later. What if he meets a girl he wants to marry and he hasn’t saved one for that?

He already suspects there’s never going to be a girl, but just in case, he meets successful exam results with an easy yet indifferent smile, pushes any praise that comes his way off again like an errant cat. He even finds himself stamping down the warmth that attempts to cosset him, to welcome him home, when he sees York Minster peeking up above the rooftops from the window of the bus.

The cobbled streets are slick with rain, storm clouds thick and heavy overhead. He winds his way through the Shambles, looking in the windows of the bookshops, the bric-a-brac stores, the places that sell fudge. His reflection is the affable yet slightly wary mask he’s been perfecting through the final years of his schooling, the one that will take him into the next phase of his life with as many moments left intact as he can. He ducks inside the sweet shop, hands over enough for a bag of cough drops and some toffee, the black sort that sticks your teeth together.

On his way to the house, he sees Ada in the distance, dragging her shopping basket up the hill with her hair damped down by the rain. He wants to tell her he marked her words, that they’ve been written right the way through him like Blackpool in a stick of rock, but she’s too far away and her eyes skate over him as if he’s a stranger.

His dad’s in bed, his mother uneasily offering apologies she couldn’t get him up and about, as if what Richard thinks is more important than the noise of the hacking cough that’s threatening to shake the walls. She’s been like this since he was accepted at Ripon, as if he’s above them now, in a place to judge. He wants to snap at her, sometimes, because isn’t this what she wanted? A better life for him than the one she had herself? Isn’t that the point of it all, of the Latin and the classics and the endless rote learning of battles and treaties?

He puts the bag of cough drops on the chair next to the bed. There’s a glass of water on it and a neatly folded hanky with primroses embroidered in the corner, and two different bottles of pills.

“Doctor been?” Richard says.

In the doorway, his mother nods, before going over to the wardrobe and rearranging the shirts that don’t need rearranging.

His father is the same colour as the pillows, a grimy off-white like he’s been through the wash too many times. His breath rattles on the way in and the way out and his pupils are tiny, hard like currants.

“It’s this blasted weather,” his mother says. 

Richard digs the trophy he was presented with during assembly out of his pocket. It’s not much—a wooden base with a brass shield and an engraving of a footballer—but it has his name on it and the words Man of the Match. He sets it down on the bed.

“Won,” his dad says, hoarse breath more than word. “Last minute goal.”

Richard smiles.

He wishes it meant less to him that his father reads his letters, even if he never replies.

It’s become his thing, last-minute goal from a corner he’s forced. Sometimes their opponents have learnt to anticipate it, but that doesn’t mean they can do much about it when the ball sails over their heads, Richard using his height to his advantage. It’s been useful, having the excuse of needing to practice to stay out on the field for long hours at a time, a valid reason to keep away from the changing room in case his eyes stray where they shouldn’t.

He’s not the star player—Mann’s record still stands, and Richard has taken pains to avoid getting too close to it, not wanting to incur his wrath—he’s the solid, dependable midfielder, picking up stray balls when the defenders lose sight of them, making a run from the halfway line to set something up, forcing an error at crucial moments.

He’s done so well at curtailing the impulse to euphoria that spreads like wildfire through his team that he can’t even tell if he enjoys playing anymore, or if it’s just something he does. Something to give him an excuse when the other lads go into town to make eyes at girls, something to pretend to focus on, something that gives him the veneer of normality at school, for the future, even here.

“Pass us one,” his dad says, gesturing to the paper bag of cough drops on his makeshift nightstand.

This time when Richard smiles, it’s a real one.

V

Cigarette smoke curls on the air, disrupting the smell of claggy clay and blood.

The shelling has stopped, at least for now, but gunfire still putters away in the distance, like the urgent bleating of a mechanical animal. Fog curls over no man’s land, obscuring the barbed wire, creating an entirely false sense of safety, of privacy, almost, as night descends.

The private he was pinned down with knocks Richard’s elbow with his own and holds out his tobacco tin. Richard takes it, but the bloke doesn’t let go, fingers lingering on his, grime overlaying the freckles that pepper the back of his hand. There’s grime on his face, too. It covers the shadows under his eyes but not the suggestive curve of his mouth.

It’s a flicker of a second, no longer than a heartbeat, a tiny tug of war for tobacco Richard doesn’t even want. But no one has ever looked at him like that before, not blatant with longing, or if they have, he wanted it even less than he wants a smoke.

He thinks he wants it now, whatever this bloke is suggesting. And he might as well. He could be dead tomorrow—they both could—and damnation tastes less bitter when it feels like you’re already in hell.

Richard jerks his head to indicate a dugout and the bloke nods, follows him—close—when Richard moves towards it. The ground squelches, sandbags doing little to absorb the rain that pelted them all night and most of the morning, but at least they’re alone.

Or as alone as you can be in the middle of what used to be fields, men all around knee deep in mud and the blood of fallen comrades. It’s not the worst trench Richard’s been in. The worst have body parts shoved into the walls, a grimly casual reminder of the fate that awaits him if his luck runs out. This dugout’s deep enough for a makeshift door, duckboards lashed together, and if he squints, Richard can imagine the lantern someone abandoned gives it a homely air.

The bloke reaches for Richard’s belt—Richard wishes he could remember his name; he’s left it too long to ask. His heart flutters as he’s tugged closer.

It might be the look in the bloke’s big, grey eyes, the idea of his mouth.

Or it might just be the settling of the realisation like dew on his sleeve:

It’s not just rumours, idle chitter-chatter.

There are others.

There are others.

It’s not just rumours, it’s not just me who wants the things I want.

VI

His shoulder’s healing nicely, according to the doctor who poked at it last, barely looking up from his notes before moving on to a fellow who’s had half his face blown off. It doesn’t feel like it is. Pain pings off the shrapnel, bouncing around like a ball, and Richard grits his teeth and reminds himself for the umpteenth time that he got off lightly and he’s lucky not to already be on his way back to France.

There are rumours the war’s ending—for real, this time—that the higher ups are waiting to see what happens, don’t want to waste resources on transport if a ceasefire is about to be declared. The ward—if you can call a dozen beds partitioned off behind a curtain in what used to be the hospital kitchen that—has been awash with whispers about what’ll happen to them if it’s over. Will they be moved or stay here, will they still get the surgeries they’ve been promised, will anyone care if they can walk or talk or eat again if there’s no one to point guns at?

Richard supposes people can get used to anything when they have to, but it strikes him as odd that even the end of a war feels like a dangerous thing to invest in, to waste a moment on.

The letter arrives in the hands of a nurse, who thrusts it at Richard as if it’s his fault she’s had to interrupt her routine to play postman. The envelope isn’t the sort that he’s used to, the ones his mum buys, the paper so thin it’s almost see-through, her handwriting cramped and uneven. He tears the corner, using the elbow of his injured arm to hold the envelope down against the mattress until he can wriggle a finger in enough to tear the top.

He’s not sure what he was expecting.

He reads the letter through twice, still unsure when he gets to the signature at the end if he’s really read what he thinks he has. A job offer, from the palace. He’s not entirely sure what a brusher does, if he’s honest, but he understands what a royal crest on a letterhead means well enough. His uncle works for the Family, and before that, his mother’s father—a big chested, staunch man Richard remembers bellowing orders at everyone from underneath a substantial moustache. Richard used to imitate him for the amusement of his cousins. He always thought he was his mother’s family’s least favourite because of that, but apparently not. Strings have been pulled somewhere by someone; maybe that’s why he feels like a puppet being forced to dance.

“You must be chuffed,” the nurse says.

The phrase takes Richard back to the community hall, to the noticeboard stuffed with old adverts for things no one needed any more and reminders about the harvest festival. Richard longs to say, must I? Do I have to be?

But he won’t, because it’s not his way to say how he feels, to let his thoughts out into the ether. He knows it’s not the sort of thing you say no to, so he just nods.

His mother is over the moon. She tells him repeatedly what an honour it is, that this is what happens when you go to a school like Ripon Grammar, how proud his dad—still clinging on to life by his fingernails—is.

It’s supposed to mean something, isn’t it? It’s supposed to make you happy when you make your mother proud, and failing that, when the stormy eyes of a man who’s been increasingly suspicious of your lack of interest in girlfriends clear for a moment and he just sees you as a man.

But Richard doesn’t feel much of anything, when it comes to it. He tells himself he’s rationing again, saving happiness for later so he doesn’t run out, but he knows deep down it’s not that. 

V

“You’re from Yorkshire originally, aren’t you?”

“I am, Mr. Wilson.”

“Jolly good. You can translate the locals for us, if needs be.”

Wilson dismisses Richard with an irritated wave, as if Richard burst into his office and demanded an audience rather than being summoned in order to be handed an itinerary.

Richard scans the sheet in the corridor, mentally divvying up the necessary tasks, the ones he’ll give to the brushers and the ones he’ll do himself. The military uniform will need airing sooner rather than later and the medals will need particular attention, but he can’t help the way his thoughts drift from that to the cobblestones and the rolling hills of home, to the vast, leaden sky that so often covers them both.

It’s been too long since he’s been back. London has started to feel oppressive, as if the bustling crowds are encroaching more and more inside his head and leaving too little room for himself.

Granted, he’ll mostly see the inside of a car and the lid of a trunk as he packs, unpacks, repacks, but he might be able to wrangle time off to see his mother, and hopefully in a scenario other than her standing on a street corner waving a flag. He writes that night to let her know the dates and make a tentative plan, doesn’t let his thoughts stray too far into what it’ll be like at the house.

His father died three years ago—slipped away during the night, Ada said, on the telephone, breaking the news on his mother’s behalf because she started crying too hard to get the words out. He imagines it feels very quiet there, now, that the sombre mood of the funeral lingered, coating everything like dust.

His mother’ll be glad to see him. At least there’s that. He’ll have to dodge the questions about if he’s got a girl at the palace, but he’s got it down, the patter, the light-hearted jokes about himself, the believable, self-deprecating excuses. You know I don’t have time for any of that, I’m hardly ever there long enough to have a conversation, let alone anything else, I think you may be overestimating what a catch I am. He’s convincing, he thinks, at least enough that if it ever comes out, they’ll all be able tell themselves he was good at acting. He can give them that, an excuse for falling for a charade it would, in truth, be easy to poke holes in, but it’s always easiest to fool those who most want to be fooled.

VI

“Mr. Barrow, isn’t it? I wonder if you might assist me for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Barrow obligingly lifts the other end of the trunk the footmen abandoned in the hallway, and together, they carry it into the dressing room, set it down on the stand that was waiting for it.

“That the last of it?” Barrow says.

“Thankfully.”

 Barrow smiles. It’s a nice smile, quick and prim, but it makes his eyes come alive, and Richard’s heart beats a little bit faster at the sight of it in spite of the twinge in his shoulder from hauling the trunk about.

There’s no reason for Barrow to linger, but he does, hovering in front of the window. The curtains have been recently beaten and the dust orbits him, catching the lazy sunshine like twinkling stars and giving the impression of a disintegrating halo.

Normally, Richard keeps himself to himself with the staff they’ve shoved in amongst, but he wants to give Barrow an excuse to stay, if he wants.

Richard wants him to want.

“You been here long?”

It’s Richard’s standard question, an easy-in, and he’s learned that people like him when he gives them an opportunity to talk about themselves.

Barrow rolls his eyes. “Half my life, feels like.”

“It’s a nice house.”

“I’ll be sure to convey your compliments to the architect. He built it specially. ‘Course, he’s been dead more than a century so it might be difficult to get a message to him. Maybe if I stand in the graveyard and shout.”

Richard laughs, which makes Barrow smile again, more genuinely this time, as if he’s not used to his humour being appreciated.

“You got much still to do?” he adds.

It’s probably his standard question; he’s likely realised the same thing Richard has.

“Always.” 

“I know that feeling.”

“You probably had enough to do before we upended everything. Be glad when we’re gone again, I expect.”

Barrow purses his lips, glances to the hallway where the noise of a burgeoning commotion with the footmen is becoming impossible to ignore. “Wouldn’t say that.”

When his gaze comes back, Richard feels like a sailor who’s been lost at sea and has finally spotted the beam of a lighthouse.

“I suppose I’d best get on. Let me know if there’s anything you need, though. I’m not too busy to lend a hand.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barrow. I’ll take you up on that.”

The room feels smaller when he’s gone, the tasks more arduous, even though Richard is well-prepared and used to the routine. As he undoes the trunk and lifts the lid, his mind wanders. He’s never met a butler his own age before and he wonders how that came about: if the war shook things up even inside these old, staid houses, these relics of the past. He’s never met one who shucked off formality so easily and quickly in his presence, either. Most of them want a good report, as if they might be plucked from their position and asked to run Sandringham, as if the King is asking Richard’s opinion on staffing as he polishes his cufflinks.

He taps his fingers lightly on the door of the wardrobe, pondering how else Barrow might be unexpected, what other secrets might be hiding behind the starch in his shirt.

Richard seeks him out later in the Servants’ Hall in an attempt to find out. Barrow’s eyes are lively with perhaps one too many cups of coffee, and he seems like he did when they arrived—harassed and trying not show it as he leafs through a folder of cards with the numbers of tradesmen on.

“Keeping you busy?” Richard says.

Barrow looks up, startled but not displeased by the interruption. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Well you know what they say,” Richard says. “Illegitimi non carborundum.”

“What’s that mean when it’s at home?”

Richard leans in closer, lowers his voice, catches the way Barrow’s breath halts as Richard meets his eye. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” he says.

Barrow opens his mouth to reply, but before he can, a woman yells, “Oh bleedin’ hell,” from the direction of the pantry.

“Duty calls,” Barrow says, stepping away with an air of reluctance and a lingering gaze that makes Richard all the keener to try and get him alone.

VII

The police station gives Richard the same feeling Ripon Grammar did when he went there for the Open Day, every bit of it designed to impress upon him that he doesn’t belong. Richard does what he did then, squares his shoulders and refuses to give in to it, approaches the desk as if he’s been there a dozen times and always left with whatever he wanted right in the palm of his hand.

The voice and the posture come easy enough, the words a little less so, this time, but he never met a person he couldn’t dissect, couldn’t split open and expose the heart of, even when it was buried so deep it was shielded from themselves. The sergeant is no different; his disdain hands Richard a scalpel he’s only too happy to wield.

When he’s back outside, cool air inside the collar of his shirt and a sour taste in his mouth, Richard leans on the car. He catches himself do it, decide what to look like even though there’s no one around. He’s felt like this half his life, observed even when he’s alone.

The police station door opens and Barrow edges out, donning his hat with a sigh. He clocks Richard, walks over, meets his gaze, a tired, haunted look in his eyes that Richard’s only previously seen in the mirror.

“I’ve been a silly boy,” he says, and Richard feels it like a punch to the stomach.

Barrow’s being who he thinks he’s supposed to be in this scenario.

And he’s doing it to survive.

Richard puts a finger to his lips and watches surprise, then recognition, flicker in Barrow’s eyes.

That’s the thing with hiding inside versions of yourself. You end up hiding from those you want to be able to see you as well as everybody else. He jerks his head towards the car, and drives.

“That was good of you,” Barrow says, as the town gives way to the shifting blue shadows of the countryside. “Didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine.”

“You wouldn’t. No one would,” Richard says. “And any time, Mr. Barrow.”

“Given the circumstances, I think calling me Thomas is allowed.”

Richard glances across at him with a wry smile. “That is where I was hoping to get to this evening,” he says, “me calling you Thomas and you calling me Richard, although I had quite different means in mind.”

Thomas looks out of the window, closes his eyes with a swift exhale.

Richard watches his reflection, can almost hear Thomas cursing himself. “Easily done,” Richard says, “when everything’s under the surface, not spelled out.”

“I’d’ve waited longer,” Thomas says, “if I’d known.”

“Would you?”

“ ‘Course,” Thomas says. “They’d have had to kick me out at closing time.”

It’s the wrong moment—absolutely the wrong moment—to feel happy, but Richard does, and for the first time in as long as he can remember, he doesn’t try and tear the feeling apart.

Thomas shifts on his seat to look at Richard properly. “Can I ask you something?”

At Richard’s nod, Thomas goes on.

“Have you always known?” he says. “Who you are inside?”

It’s not a question Richard has a rote-learned answer for because it’s not something he ever expected to be asked. He adjusts the position of his hands on the steering wheel, focuses ahead, where the noise of the car startles birds out of the hedgerow and they skitter across the inky sky.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he says.

He tells Thomas about the footballers in the paper, then the ones on his team, how he’d scrupulously keep his eyes to himself as they changed, about the soldier who would kiss him on the neck but not the mouth as if that didn’t count.

By the time they get back to Downton, he has Thomas’s stories entwined around his own: how he’s made a fool of himself with everyone from a footman to a duke, how he just wants what everyone else wants and he’s sick of people telling him he doesn’t have the right.

They talk all the way through the kitchen and up flight after flight of stairs, voices getting lower and lower until everything sounds like a secret. They hover in the hallway, stealing glances at each other in the flickering lamp light.

Richard thinks goodnight is inevitable, but Thomas turns the doorknob to his room and whispers, “You want to come in for a minute? Owe you a drink—I’ve got a bottle I keep for emergencies and I’m fairly sure this counts.”

VIII

“We can’t just go gallivanting round the park at night,” Thomas says, with the same air of disbelief he’d adopt if Richard suggested they ballroom dance on Jupiter. “People’ll think we’re up to something.”

“We are up to something.” Richard straightens his hat, turns around and walks backwards through the gate. “Or at least I hope we are.”

Thomas rolls his eyes, but he’s amused, in that incredulous way Richard’s starting to enjoy a little too much. It was a surprise when Thomas not only answered his letter but suggested a date they could meet, time-off he was owed that he’d been storing up for a while, looking for an excuse to use it up.

Richard fingers the cinema ticket stub in his pocket, already knowing he’ll keep it to use as a bookmark, a casual reminder of Thomas Barrow’s knee against his, elbows kissing on the shared armrest in the dark.

The trees cluster, turn to shadows around the edges of the path, and they make their way to the statue of a general on horseback which lauds it over a crossroads and a map. Richard comes here all the time to escape from the bickering servants, to breathe in the scent of fallen leaves and make believe the grass rolls away and becomes hills rather than the traffic around Marble Arch. He knows the place and he wanted that, wanted somewhere he felt at home, not some pub he’s never been to before. Besides, he already tried that. 

Thomas hasn’t asked about the palace, or the King, or any of it. Richard’s not sure if it’s because he thinks Richard signed some sort of privacy agreement and any attempt to extract information will result in him being arrested for treason, or if the gilded shine of the monarchy just doesn’t interest him that much. He certainly had no qualms about giving up his chance to do some flag waving at the parade, nor to pull the wool over the royal household’s eyes, and Richard likes that to Thomas he’s just an ordinary bloke, not part of the establishment, however low down.

“Hard to believe we’re in Mayfair,” Thomas murmurs. He glances across. “We are in Mayfair, right? Can’t always get my bearings in London.”

“You never fancied a job down here?”

Thomas adjusts his gloves. “Thought about it, sometimes. There were moments I wanted to start again, somewhere new—be someone new.”

“What happened?”

“Life,” Thomas says, with a quiet, soft laugh. “And, well, it’s a lot of effort, isn’t it? Pretending to be someone you’re not.”

Richard can’t argue with that.

He gestures to the bandstand so they can sit and take the weight off, can look out at the canopy of trees, the whole of Hyde Park quiet and dark like it exists just to be their backdrop. He knows men come here sometimes, that it’s a point on the invisible map of the city they all keep folded in their pockets: places it’s safer to go and places it’s not. The only people likely to disturb them are those who came for the same thing, who will smile to themselves that they’ve been beaten to it and shuffle off.

“You haven’t told me what you thought of the film.” Thomas’s eyes glint, mischievous, like he can tell Richard spent the entire thing focused on the proximity of their elbows, their knees, their feet, that Richard couldn’t recount the plot if his life depended on it because he was lost in a thought about how they fold their coats the same way and if it means something about the how their lives could fit together.

“You haven’t either.”

“I liked the bit with the dog.”

Richard leans closer. “Was there a dog?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Thomas’s mouth is soft under his, less shocked than the first time they did this, but no less eager. He rests his hand on Richard’s thigh and Richard imagines being truly alone, his back against the wall and Thomas’s fingers underneath his clothes.

They both regret that they have to stop, pull away from each other with rueful smiles, walk with elbows touching back to the gate where they’ll go their separate ways. But something has been admitted, exchanged without saying anything, and it feels as real to Richard as the scrap of paper in his pocket that he’ll tuck into a book as soon as he gets home.

IX

They pull over on the brow of a hill, York laid out in front of them, streetlights like pinpricks of fallen stars. Everything is silent, save for the engine ticking down and the sound of Thomas breathing, a little shallow, a little fast. They’ll hear a car approaching, will see the headlights long before they have the chance to illuminate their faces, so it’s not that.

Thomas takes his hat off and holds it in his lap. They’ve been out three times now, but he still gets nervous, and Richard likes it, the idea he’s the sort of person a man like Thomas might get butterflies about.

“Enjoy the play?” Richard says.

“Was interesting enough.”

It’s one Richard studied at school; he chose it specifically in case Thomas wanted to talk about metaphor and catharsis, unconvinced he’d be able to do it on the fly about something he’d never read.

“There’s something tragic about Shakespeare’s comedies, isn’t there?” he says, and Thomas eyes him like he’s gone mad. “What?”

“You bring me all the way up here to talk about that?”

“Culture’s important, Barrow.”

“You know I don’t give a shit about that. We only went to have something to say if anyone asks what we were doing, didn’t we?”

Stifling a laugh, Richard leans in, presses his mouth to Thomas’s, almost sighing when Thomas’s fingers brush against his cheek, not quite familiar yet but almost, so brilliantly almost. Thomas kisses with tentative passion, like he’s afraid of giving away how much he wants but can’t quite help himself. He’s bolder than he’s been before, leans across the gear stick and takes hold of Richard’s tie.

Not for the first time, Richard wishes he could walk Thomas home and press him against the doorjamb, imagines what it would be like to be sweethearts, where all that would happen if they were caught would be jokes from Thomas’s colleagues. He brushes Thomas’s lip with his thumb as Thomas pulls away, fingers still curled around Richard’s tie. “You’re smiling.”

“People do that,” Thomas says, “when something makes them happy. It’s quite common, think you’ll find.” Richard looks down. “What?”

“Did you know,” Richard says, “you only get seven moments of happiness your entire life?”

“Who told you that?”

Richard glances at the windshield, desperate for a fox or a rabbit in the hedgerow to catch his attention, for the leaves to skitter and signal impending rain and they should make a move before they get stranded. He’s always better when action is required, hates this feeling of having voluntarily split himself open like a lab rat goading someone into inspecting his insides. He shrugs. “Just something I heard ages ago.”

“Seven?” Thomas looks past him in thought. “I’m considered to be a miserable bastard by most,” he says, “and even I’ve probably managed more than that.”

“Forget I said anything.”

“No,” Thomas says. “I won’t, thanks. It obviously means something to you, or you wouldn’t have said owt.” Richard swallows and Thomas tugs his tie. “Out with it, Ellis,” he says.

When Richard doesn’t say anything, Thomas smooths the material all the way to Richard’s waistcoat, fingers lingering above the button.

“You can tell me,” Thomas says, and there’s a new gentleness, the coaxing kind, in his tone. “I’d like you to, if you want. I won’t tell anyone.”

When they met—Richard assured and confident and Thomas a whirlwind, lost and out of his depth—Richard never imagined he’d be the one feeling flustered and unsure. He’s supposed to be able to control his emotions, to only let them out when he wants to, and only then a very little at a time.

“I suppose it always bothered me,” Richard says. “The idea they’re finite.”

“You’re not scared you’ll run out?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”

“No more than anything else. No more than the things other people believe in. Sometimes they get you, don’t they, these ideas, especially when they poke at where you’ve already been hurt.” Thomas shifts into Richard’s eye line, squints at him, perplexed. “How would that even work, though?” he says. “Who’s measuring them and cutting you off if you’ve had too many?”

Richard shrugs. He never really thought about it like that. Ada and his mother seemed so definitive about it; he just accepted it unquestioningly as truth.

He’s not sure why, now.

Maybe because happiness felt precious, rare, and scarce. He’d had so little to that point and already knew, even back then in the village hall, the moments that would be coming for others, the weddings and the children, would pass him by.

“War’s been over for a while, Richard. There’s no need to keep on rationing.”

Richard wishes it was as easy as that.

X

The wind rustles the grass, makes goosebumps appear all up Richard’s arms.

In truth, it’s too cold to be lying here like they are, but it’s been a while since they’ve been in the same country let alone county, so they’re both pretending they didn’t see the sun disappear behind a wall of cloud.

Thomas nudges his elbow with the bottle they’ve been sharing, lemonade turned lukewarm while they got reacquainted with each other’s mouths.

Richard props himself up on his hand, pushing his hair out of his eyes, watching Thomas watch the bob of his throat as he swallows a mouthful down. He’ll taste sweet and sour if Thomas kisses him again, and he almost wants to say it out loud.

“Been thinking about what you said,” Thomas says.

He’s taken his jacket off and his shirt’s rumpled from where Richard’s hands traced the shape of him, the button of his collar open and the knot of his tie just undone enough to reveal the hollow of his throat. He looks like the subject of a painting, sprawled out on the grass underneath a weeping willow in the far corner of Downton’s grounds. If he was, he’d be called something like a stolen moment on someone else’s land.

“Oh?”

“I don’t think you’re wrong. Not entirely.”

“That’s a relief,” Richard says, and takes another mouthful of lemonade. “About what?”

Thomas sits up, turns to face him, reaching for the bottle. His fingers brush Richard’s, but as he tries to take it, Richard refuses to let go, meets his eye with challenge. Thomas tugs harder, as if he’ll actually fight Richard for the lemonade if he has to, and Richard tugs back, compelled to try and replace a memory from a long time ago with one from here and now.

They tug back and forth, neither ceding, until Richard lets go and Thomas topples backwards, laughing as lemonade sloshes over his hand. He shakes his head as he shakes it off, takes a swig. “About being happy,” he says. “The seven moments thing.”

Richard’s been trying not to think about it, to stop counting, to stop wondering when his last moment will have elapsed. Will he know? Will something warn him? Will he be able to feel it slipping through his fingers?

He’s not entirely sure it’s not coming now, the tug of war over a bottle of lukewarm lemonade with all the bubbles already popped the final flicker, because he’s revealed himself to be too strange and melancholier than is good for him and he’s about to get the brush off.

“Just, well, there’s happy and there’s happy, isn’t there?” Thomas says.

“I don’t follow.”

“Well there’s big types of happy and then there’s little ones. There’s finding an apple you’d forgotten you had when you’re hungry and there’s someone who’s made your life a misery declaring that they’re leaving. They both might make you happy, but they’re not the same. And depending on who you are, you might mistake the little ones for big ones.”

“You don’t think everyone’s the same?

“ ‘Course not. Say you’ve been an ordinary bloke all your life, worked in a factory or as a footman—how do you tell if it’s one of the seven or just something that’s a bit less shit than what you’re used to? Because we’re used to making do, aren’t we? We get used to hand-me-downs and cast-offs, leftovers from someone else’s dinner that they didn’t want—and when you’ve had nothing, that feels like something.” Thomas’s gaze is earnest, bold with it, like he’s really given this thought and he’s certain of the words coming out of his mouth. “Not just stuff. We get the scraps, don’t we, blokes like us, when everyone else gets romance. So whatever number you think you’ve had, have you really? Or did you just not know when they happened what happiness actually feels like, and you thought that was it, but it’s not enough to actually qualify if you look at it objectively?”

“So you think you do get seven moments after all, I just might misattribute them through lack of experience with the feeling?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, yeah.” Thomas turns the bottle around in his hands. “Or it might still be rubbish. I just know that some things I thought made me happy in the past didn’t really.”

“And now you know different?”

“I learned. I learned the hard way, but I did.”

“Giorne ymb lare ymb diowotdomas,” Richard murmurs. 

Thomas squints at him, head tilted to one side. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s my old school motto.”

“Fuck,” Thomas mutters. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“You’re posh.”

“I’m n—”

“You know Latin. That’s posh where I come from.”

“Was Old English, not Latin.”

“What about the bastard thing you said before?”

“Oh, well, that was Latin.”

“So you know Old English and Latin, but you expect me to believe you’re not posh?”

Richard nods, plucks a blade of grass and tosses it at him.

With an amused, weary sigh, Thomas hands him the bottle back. “Drink your pop like a commoner,” he says, “or I’ll be forced to conclude you’re too good for me.”

Richard laughs, but he does as he’s told, and as his reward, Thomas leans in and kisses the lemonade taste right out of his mouth.

XI

The trophy has moved to the mantel, not quite pride of place but not quite not, either. The brass has lost its shine and gone spotty, dust settled in the grooves of Richard’s name. He digs his thumbnail into it, working the grime out of it, then the outline of the footballer with his arms raised aloft.

“Dad’s prize possession, that was.”

Richard puts it back.

It’s never felt less like he earned it. The pretence of it all weighs too heavy in his hand.

Over tea, he and his mother do the usual round of enquiries—how’s Ada, how’s cousin Beryl, how’s your job—but when they get to the one about if there’s a girl he’s got his eye on, Richard’s practiced answer stalls in his throat. He thinks of Thomas with grass in his hair, checking his clothes are straight and trying to keep the smirk off his mouth as he heads back towards the house.

“You know there’s not,” Richard says.

His mother’s sharp intake of breath lets Richard know his meaning isn’t lost.

He’s not sure what possessed him. He grips his teacup, squares his shoulders, donning the posture of someone who didn’t just tell the only truth that has ever truly mattered to him, the one he’s kept buried inside himself since he was old enough to understand the sermons every Sunday, not because he wanted it to be hidden, but because he knew no one else wanted it on show.

By force of will, he doesn’t let his shoulders sag when his mother acts as if he hasn’t spoken, lurches into a somewhat brittle anecdote about the goings on at Sunday school.

Richard makes his excuses, not long after. He walks the cobblestone streets, peering into shop windows as if there’s nothing on his mind but looking past his own reflection to the contents of the display. The confectioners are different to the ones that populated his youth, the bookshops largely the same. He ends up at the community hall, wonders if Ada still makes cakes too hard to bite through in one go, if his mother puts flowers in a vase just so they can spend a week dying on top of the piano.

He’s not sure why he ever thought either of them knew anything about happiness. It was never in their eyes, or their actions, or their hearts. He has no idea what to do with the revelation, so he just walks until it’s dark and he’s run out of places to pretend he wants to go.

It’s a risk, knocking the door this late at night, but Richard has his excuses lined up: he left a glove, he burst a tire, he has an urgent message he can’t reveal the contents of to anyone but Barrow. His jaw tightens as the words rotate in his head, ready to trip out of his mouth on an easy but forgettable smile, and god he hates it, this constant readiness to defend himself.

Thomas opens the door, keys jangling in his hand, eyebrows scrunched low on his forehead. “Thought you were staying at your mum’s?”

“Change of plan.”

Thomas’s hand rests gently on Richard’s arm, ushering him inside. “Is everything alright?”

“You still got that whiskey for emergencies?”

Thomas’s room is smaller and less well furnished than Richard’s at the palace, but the glow from the lamp gives a cosy feel to his meagre possessions. He fingers a book on the chest of drawers while Thomas pours him a drink, crossing the floor to press it into Richard’s hand.

“What’s going on?” he says.

Richard’s not sure where to start. He can’t say he’s been lost since he was eleven, that he’s been bobbing on a vast ocean of being someone else—not even someone specific, a cast of characters as changeable as the weather—that he felt like a boat successfully navigating choppy water with dangerous rocks underneath the surface until Thomas smiled at him like a lighthouse.

He can’t say: I think you’re my path to the shore. He can’t say that. He can’t say any of it.

He knocks his drink back, sits on the edge of the bed and lets the liquid burn in his throat.

The springs creak as Thomas sits next to him, plucks the glass from his fingers, and sets it down on the rug. Stupidly, Richard flashes with panic that Thomas will tell him to get out, that he wants affable, fun Richard back, not whoever this is that he’s chosen to be.

Instead, Thomas nudges Richard’s nose with his, softly kisses the corner of his mouth. He teases more out of him slowly, gently, careful and coaxing until Richard relaxes into it, kissing him properly, with a fervour befitting having stolen into his bedroom at this hour.

As Thomas pushes his jacket off his shoulders, starts working on his tie, Richard thinks about the things Thomas has said about himself—the silly boy, the miserable bastard, the bloke who made a fool of himself with a footman and a duke. None of them are the Thomas beneath his hands. They’re layers of pretence, the ones that have kept Thomas safe. They were easy to spot, to peel back, because Richard knew what to look for. If he can do that to Thomas, Thomas can surely do that to him, and he can’t help the unease that permeates at the thought.

Richard rests his hand on Thomas’s cheek, just enough to gently push him back.

Rather than being annoyed, Thomas takes his hand and lifts it to his mouth.

“You thinking about being happy again?” Thomas murmurs to Richard’s knuckles as he brushes them against his lip.

“Sorry. I can’t help it.”

“You don’t think people like us can be happy? That we don’t deserve it? Is that it?” He looks up from where he’s kissing Richard’s palm. “If you ask me, it’s the people it comes easy to, the ones who have it all on a platter, the ones who take it for granted that should have to count their happiness out. Not us.”

Richard recalls wanting to know Thomas’s secrets, to pick him apart, to use all his cunning and charm to cut him open and see what lay underneath the starch in his shirt. He wasn’t expecting that the thing Thomas was hiding—and rather ineptly, sometimes, at that—was this tenderness, this crushing, defiant sort of hope, this staunch, often wordless, faith. Without meaning to, he’s used it to slice Richard open, heart on show for passing birds to peck at.

“Are you always so certain?” Richard whispers, sounding more amused than he intended.

“No.” Thomas undoes Richard’s cufflink, starts to slowly turn his sleeve back, kissing his forearm, the inside of his wrist, so light it tickles. “But when it comes to being happy, I don’t question it. I just know when I’m with you, I am.”

XII

The funeral is a stilted affair in the drafty church that formed the cornerstone of Richard’s childhood. Stained glass saints with sad expressions look down as they stumble their way through the hymns, out of time with both the choir and the organ, and the vicar talks about Ada’s service to the community and how greatly she’ll be missed by all who knew her, especially for her inimitable cakes.

They file out to the graveyard, to the hole in the ground that will be her eternal dwelling place, stand with their heads bowed for the committal.

Thomas is at his elbow, and a glance from his mother tells Richard she knows what his presence means. They can both pretend he’s a friend for the benefit of others, but it’s a flimsy charade, these days, only suitable for those who still insist on needing to be fooled.

After, they go to the community hall like they did every Sunday. It hasn’t changed—the walls are still a greenish grey that always looks like it needs redoing, and the teacups clink the same way they always did as they locate in their saucers.

The room was bigger, inside Richard’s head. He remembers feeling dwarfed by it. Maybe it’s the school he attended or the muddy plains of France, the palaces he’s strolled through or that he, himself, is just bigger now.

His mother disappears into the kitchen, keen—as ever—to make herself seem busy, useful, necessary. Richard sets his cup down and follows her.

The noticeboard has had an upgrade—it’s got a sign at the top that says Notices, now—but the harvest festival reminders and the pinned timetable of who’s volunteering for what could’ve been there since he was eleven.

“Do you think she got them?” Richard says. “Ada? Her seven?”

Richard’s mother looks up from the roses she’s shoving into a vase. “Her seven what?”

“Moments of happiness. Remember? She said you only get seven, so I should be careful not to waste them.”

“Did she, now? I should be so lucky.” Richard’s mother sighs at the vase. “I suppose that’ll have to do,” she says, and she takes them out to put them on top of the piano, where they’ll spend the week dying, then be replaced, as if they were never there.

Richard drums his fingers on the draining board before doing the washing up. Sometimes he wonders what the trajectory of his life would’ve been like if he hadn’t gone to Ripon, if he’d stayed here with his mother and Ada, if the letter from the palace had never come, or if he’d bungled the interview with Wilson like he was tempted to.

Wilson reminded him of his old House Master, quick to judge and twice as fast to punish, but easily impressed by things that aren’t really impressive. Richard spewed out what he knew of treaties and history, let that stand-in for allegiance, saving himself on his wits like he always had, slitting Wilson open right then and there until he could see written in the cavity of his chest what he was all about. Duty. Diligence. Unquestioning acceptance of authority. He supposes he wouldn’t have got very far if he’d been himself, that wherever life saw fit to shunt him, he would’ve had to pretend to be someone or other, and diligent, dutiful Ellis is as good as anyone else.

If he’d said no to Ripon, if he’d chosen another path, he wonders if it would still have led him to Downton. He can’t see how it would’ve, and if that hadn’t happened, he never would’ve found—somewhere between the twist of a doorknob and a glass of whiskey—the person with whom all pretence can be dropped. 

He dries his hands, goes back into the main room, where the doomed roses are sitting on top of the piano.

Thomas—ever the butler—lifts the teapot he’s apparently been touring the room with, filling everybody’s cup. “You want another?”

“No thanks,” Richard says. “Thought we’d take off. Catch a film, maybe, before I have to head back.”

Thomas nods, and as they step out into the sunshine, he glances across, takes in Richard’s smile. “Got what you needed, I take it?” he says.

Richard glances around, slips his fingers into the gap between where Thomas’s sleeve ends, and his glove begins to touch his skin. He’s already imagining their elbows kissing on the armrest, the torn ticket he’ll use as a bookmark, so many of them now he’s almost out of books to use them in.

“I have now,” Richard says. 

The wool of Thomas’s coat is soft and warm, just like the smile he offers Richard, and it seems ludicrous that once upon a time, Richard thought happiness was something you can count.