Chapter Text
Only forty-eight hours had passed, the memory still fresh, but Thomas knew he would never forget how time stood still the day Sybil Branson took her last breath. Her newborn child wailing in the next room, blissfully unaware, and the chilling succession of gasps that slid through the servants’ hall. The ticking of the clock.
The bracing reality was just as Mrs Hughes had professed, that the sweetest spirit under the abbey roof was gone. The truest friendship Thomas had ever known and the bizarre gravitational pull that transcended any normal relationship between a servant and an earl’s daughter, much less between an invert and a young lady, was gone.
Their time together in the war had extinguished any professionalism between them, and long after the war ended they had begun an unspoken routine of meeting in the courtyard every Friday at ten o’clock, after dinner, before Lady Sybil would retire to bed. While she was in Ireland, Thomas found that he missed her terribly. He’d never felt like that about anyone. Sybil cornered him as soon as she returned home over a year later to rekindle their friendship. Once again, every Friday they would catch up on the week’s events, the latest family drama and the growing love triangle taking place downstairs. Perched on the bench around the corner from the back door, they’d sit there for at least an hour, but for Thomas their time together was painfully fleeting. He’d dread the clock striking eleven, willing Sybil to bed, leaving him desperate for the following Friday to roll around.
Their conversations were far from dull or ill-natured and always ended in kinks of laughter or warm testaments, in stark contrast from the gloomy gossip sessions had with Miss O’Brien before the war. Thomas couldn’t bear to imagine a world in which he was made to live without the childlike innocence and lighthearted comfort of Sybil’s words.
“Thank you for not smoking around us.” Sybil chuckled, lightly rubbing her tummy.
She was about ready to pop but nevertheless had dragged herself along the gravel to the courtyard. Thomas would usually get through at least four cigarettes in the time they spent together each week; while she was pregnant, however, he was courteous enough not to smoke around her, instead chewing his thumbnail and fiddling with his box of matches in an attempt to satiate his craving.
"Wouldn’t dream of it, milady.” He smiled softly back. “How are you feeling?”
"Alright, I think. Tom is constantly up a height about the christening and I feel as though I resemble the hot air balloon that carried Signor Lunardi across London, but I have to admit I am rather excited.” She looked down, smiling.
Thomas smiled with her, shaking his head, disapproving of her pulling her swollen ankles all the way from the dining room just to see him, but selfishly relieved that she had showed up despite her condition.
“You should be resting. I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”
"I would never stand my best friend up.” She said softly, trying to hide the fact that she was out of breath and sweating profusely, just as Thomas was trying to hide the fact that his heart was doing backflips and his pale cheeks were starting to flush at the mere suggestion of being someone’s best friend. It was an entirely foreign scenario. A light chuckle escaped from his throat.
“I’ve been called many things in my time, but never a best friend.” He was trying to play it cool, but it wasn’t working. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Thomas dragged himself out of the memory, barely able to confront the fact that it was the last time he and Sybil saw each other. It was a week prior, but felt like a lifetime as he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his eyes red raw from two nights of crying. The only sound in his bedroom was the ticking of the clock. Growing up the son of a clockmaker, that sound never bothered him. Being on the shop floor from such a young age made him immune to it. It impaled him from all angles, but it never bothered him. Now every tick was a painful reminder of the time passing without the comfort of knowing he had a friend under Downton’s roof. Each second another one gone without meaning something to someone.
“Six o’clock, Mr Barrow!” Mr Carson’s voice boomed through the crack of the door. Thomas let out a sigh collected from the deepest parts of his aching chest. He hadn’t slept a wink since it happened and doubted he would for a while. Every time he closed his eyes he could only see her face, hear her little girl crying, and relive the tragedy. He slung his heavy legs out of bed and got ready for the day.
The conversation in the servants’ hall was understandably minimal. Thomas was not alone in his sore eyes and lack of sleep. Anna in particular was glum and withdrawn. She forced a pathetic smile when he shuffled to his chair, which he attempted to reciprocate. Miss O’Brien was sitting in her regular seat opposite him wearing her usual poker face. She met his gaze and, as per usual, her expression was impossible to gauge. He never knew whether she cared for him or wanted him dead and there never seemed to be an option in between those.
“Didn’t you sleep well, Mr Barrow? You look awfully tired.” Mrs Hughes was probably trying to be considerate, she was grieving too, but Thomas hadn’t the energy to entertain too many niceties, genuine or otherwise. Not when he was being made to work after losing someone he considered more of a sister than a friend, expected to carry on like nothing happened. He said nothing and felt nothing as he shrugged and slowly sipped his tea.
“A great tragedy has taken place, there’s no doubt about that, but we must all carry on. Every single one of us.” Mr Carson’s world-weary yet stern eyes drifted to Thomas as he spoke, who in turn sighed and rose from his seat.
“You’re right, Mr Carson. Better get on.” He said flatly, trudging miserably to the courtyard for his morning smoke.
The morning sun was already in full force, only a handful of clouds wisped across the sky and birds were chirping in the distance. Sybil was twenty-four years of age when she died, a young mother with a husband and a whole life ahead of her. She’d died fifty years before her time. It wasn’t right that the world kept turning like this without her. Broken and powerless, Thomas’ heart ran colder than usual when he looked over at the wooden bench. It was where he and Sybil had shared so many laughs and stories, a scattering of cigarette butts on one side and scratches in the wood on the other. Thomas had noticed Sybil’s funny little habit of carving into the table absentmindedly as they spoke with his old pocketknife, which she had “borrowed” one day.
“What on earth are you doing?” Thomas watched curiously through his cigarette smoke as Sybil hunched over the side of their bench, body twisted and contorted as if pursuing a career as a circus freak.
“You’ll see!” Her voice was strained from stretching, making Thomas chuckle in response. Eventually, she leaned back, putting the pocketknife on the table and dusting off her hands. “You can look now.”
Thomas craned his neck round the bench to view her artwork. She had carefully carved “S+T” into the wood, wobbly but unmistakably their initials.
Thomas felt like he’d run out of tears at this point, striking a match to light his cigarette and dragging himself over to the bench. Smoking with one hand, he used the other to run his fingers over the carvings in the wood, feeling a lump in the back of his throat as he closed his eyes, hand resting on the engraving.
“It must be very hard.” O’Brien’s monotone voice jarred him back to reality. His head snapped to the left to see her standing by the back door, as cold as a statue. “I know you were friends during the war.”
“Yes. We were.” He held the pack of cigarettes out, which she accepted. Thomas forcefully swallowed the tears that had threatened to show.
“I always thought you were a queer pairing. A servant and the daughter of an earl, but I can see now that you were more than that.”
“Yes..” Thomas trailed off as his fag burned away in between his fingers, almost getting lost again in memories of Sybil. “It’s strange but I always felt a connection between us.. even before the war. It was like we had always known each other so well.”
“How very odd. Although I’m sure Lady Sybil had that effect on a lot of people.” O’Brien narrowed her eyes, eager to change the subject. “We must get on with our work before Mr Carson sends out a search party.”
Thomas watched her drift back into the house. He wasn’t sure if any of her spiel was actually sympathetic or sentimental, but he appreciated his pain being acknowledged nonetheless. His eyes lingered on the bench once more before he discarded his cigarette and followed Miss O’Brien inside.