Chapter Text
Courtenay didn’t have many belongings to pack, and Sybil took her time finding a place for all of them.
“Try and think of it as a good thing, going to Farley Hall. It means you’re moving forward, getting stronger.”
Courtenay hadn’t spoken since Sybil had started—he sat on the edge of his bed, shoulders slumped, one hand running across the mattress behind him as if he were searching for a weak spot he might burrow into, so deep no one could pull him out.
“You sound like Corporal Barrow,” he murmured.
Of course—no one could tell Courtenay anything that Corporal Barrow hadn’t told him better.
“And what does he say?”
“That I’m not a victim, that I should stand on my own two feet and fight for what’s mine.”
“And he’s right.”
Courtenay frowned. “But that’s the trouble—I don’t think any of it is mine. If something can be taken from you, just like that...it wasn’t ever yours. That’s what I’m beginning to understand.”
If only his family would stop sending those horrible letters to him...Sybil was tired of reading paragraphs on paragraphs of excuses for writing Courtenay out of his own life. He was perfectly capable of managing, with just a little extra help, some adjustments here and there.
They were adjustments his family had no imagination to make. When he first arrived, he’d complained of not being able to shoot anymore, and Sybil hadn’t truly understood why until she’d read the letters and realized that shooting meant more than the act itself. Its importance was both symbolic and entirely invented, by men born long before any of them; Edward Courtenay couldn’t hope to dismantle the whole thing without a fight.
Corporal Barrow was right in telling him to fight it anyway, in telling him he could win...but who could face such a fight without trepidation? It meant taking a hammer to the foundation of everything he was.
“And the people who take them from you, they weren’t yours, either,” Courtenay continued, a mounting frustration in his voice that worried Sybil. “They’re somewhere else, they’re…”
He waved a hand in front of him, as if that might express something his words couldn’t.
“...everything’s so far away,” he finished miserably.
Sybil bit the inside of her lip—she and Corporal Barrow had felt the same gut instinct that morning, and she was surer of it every moment she spent with Courtenay.
It was wrong to send him to Farley Hall, and any good that came of it would have to either be won by force or happened upon by accident.
“It isn’t, really,” she said softly. “It just feels that way right now. But it will change. I promise it will.”
He shook his head. “I’m falling backwards, that’s what it feels like. I don’t know why, exactly...except I can’t stop it. I don’t know how.”
She set down the undershirt she’d folded, moving to stand closer by his side.
“You aren’t falling, backwards or any other way. Here…” She placed a steadying hand on his shoulder, trying not to be alarmed at how he was shaking. “We’ll write to you, and when the war’s over, you can come and visit us all again.”
He tried to smile, but the effort didn’t seem worth the result.
“If someone will take me,” he said, words dripping with bitterness.
“We’ll come and fetch you if they don’t.” Courtenay closed his eyes at that, ducking his head towards his chest, and Sybil pressed her hand more firmly against his shoulder. “Corporal Barrow and I—well, he won’t be a Corporal then, but anyway—we’ll come and steal you away.”
His breathing was ragged—Sybil felt sure he was going to start crying, but he seemed determined not to.
“Isn’t there any way—?” he breathed.
She squeezed his shoulder.
“Give it time.”
“Right.”
“—and someone must write to the family—”
“—we sent a telegram.” Major Clarkson looked between Sybil and Cousin Isobel. His posture behind his desk had changed overnight, like so many other things. He was deflated, defeated by a problem that he’d dismissed the reality of until it was too late.
That was the worst part—the wondering. Could they have kept him from Farley Hall, if they’d tried? For how long? Would he have lived if they had?
No one knew. No one could ever know. And while Sybil had spent all night tossing in bed over it, Major Clarkson hadn’t really wondered until this morning, when there was nothing to be done.
He was trying to find something anyway.
“Now, the most important thing is to keep an extra eye on the other patients. These kinds of feelings can spread, especially in an environment like this one.”
“Corporal Barrow and I—”
He stopped her with a hand, and Sybil bristled at the irritation in the gesture.
“Let’s leave Corporal Barrow out of any plans for the time being. I don’t know how helpful he’ll be, under the circumstances.”
Which seemed unkind, to Sybil, but not—perhaps—untrue.
She wished she’d been the one to tell him, but he’d stumbled on the scene early in the morning, and it had been Nurse Greer on duty. She was prone to hysterics at the best of times, so Sybil was sure Corporal Barrow had been told in the most frightful way…
She poked her head into his room. They weren’t really supposed to go into the men’s quarters, but hospitals weren’t anything like great houses—so long as it was in the daytime and the door was propped, no one caused much of a fuss. They saw men every day, in all states.
Some things didn’t matter as much in this new world, even though they still had to pretend they did.
His eyes were red, though he wasn’t crying when she entered. He was sitting forward on the edge of his bed, hands clasped together between his knees, eyes staring blankly at the wall. He didn’t look up as Sybil approached.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” he said.
“Major Clarkson said there was no need, if you aren’t up for it.”
Mentioning Clarkson was a mistake; she knew that at once.
“That’s not what he said yesterday, when we were all so very busy, was it?” he said, voice low but furious. “Too busy to talk anything over, too busy to care if something wasn’t right.”
“I’m sure he’s sorry for what’s happened.”
“What good does that do now?”
For Courtenay, not much...but of course they couldn’t move forward with that thought in their heads.
“Things might change,” she said. “I know that doesn’t sound like much just now, but it will matter to the next person, if we can get things right.”
While she was speaking, she saw him cock his head to the side, considering her answer as she gave it (though the narrowness in his eyes made her sure he was preparing to argue).
“How is it going to change, just like that? When it couldn’t change for him—for one person who everyone knew needed it? How is it supposed to change for everyone else?”
Sybil pondered the question, bolstered by the energy in his voice. Even if he doubted...what mattered was that he cared. That was the main thing.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “But we’ll talk about it, and—”
“—we won’t be doing anything,” he said, and his talking over her in such a way was proof enough of how muddled grief had made him. “ They’ll talk about it and tell us what to do. And it’ll be wrong, and we’ll have to do it anyway.”
Sybil didn’t have it in her to defend against such an accusation, not when it could very well be true. It didn’t matter, just now. They’d have days and weeks and months to talk about the hospital and convalescing and what to do about the next patient who didn’t want to be sent away.
They wouldn’t have as many chances to discuss Courtenay.
“You cared for him better than anyone else could have,” she said, setting the conversation on a different course.
“No, I didn’t,” he said, so quickly Sybil could hardly believe he’d really heard the words. He was being contrary because he was heartbroken.
“You did,” she insisted. “You were patient, you knew how to talk to him.”
“Not more than you did.”
“Much more than I did. You were so alike.”
This he considered, brow still furrowed.
“Not really,” he said, a question still in his voice. “We’d never have spoken, in peacetime. He’d never have looked at me.”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t alike. It just means all the rest got in the way.”
He shifted in his seat, looking almost guilty.
“Yeah, and he’d have been better off if it had stayed that way,” he said. Though his voice was hard, Sybil didn’t feel he was fighting with her, not really.
He was fighting with himself.
“I don’t agree,” she said. “You read his letters from home—no one understood him there, he’d never have been happy going on with his life the way it had been planned.”
“Because he was living out his dreams here…”
“It wasn’t here that was the problem.” Sybil stepped forward. “It wasn’t even his eyes, not really. He was managing so well, you saw how proud he was.”
He stared at her like he might pull the answer to his question out of her without speaking.
“So why?”
He asked a question that was impossible to answer—they wouldn’t really know, not ever. But Sybil gave him her best guess anyway.
“We let him be proud, you and I,” she said. “And stubborn and sad and brave and perfectly wonderful. And he didn’t know if anyone would at Farley Hall, or when he went back home. Probably because no one ever had before.”
She watched his face fall as he accepted the weight of her theory. He’d read the letters, just as she had, and Sybil was sure he knew more than she did about the way the words inside had pained Courtenay. They’d had such a bond.
Still, she watched him try and brush it aside, shaking his head and straightening, just a little.
“Yeah, well...he was daft, then, wasn’t he?” he said, adding in an unconvincing shrug. “It’s the people at Farley Hall’s job to do all that, just like how we did.”
He was still afraid, and Sybil was too tired to try and find ways around it, not now. Not when they were living through all the reasons why you had to face the truth and walk right through to the other side.
He’d never know not to be afraid if she kept being afraid right along with him.
“I don’t think anyone at Farley Hall was going to love him the way you did.”
He didn’t say anything, just sat there like he hadn’t heard. Except he must have, for his jaw had gone tense.
“It was wonderful,” Sybil prompted. She could ease him out, now that they were both in the center of it.
But something in his face went cold, too quickly for her to stop its cooling.
“What was, exactly?” he said, a painted-on wrinkle in his brow that he lifted his chin to show off. He still wasn’t really looking at her.
“That you loved him.” She persisted, despite the way her heart was leaping in her chest. “The way it made you care for him.”
With every word, she tried to push through enough sincerity to warm him back up, to bring him back to a place where he knew her. Because he did know her, already. Better than most people had ever managed.
All she wanted to do was return the favor.
“I did my job, Nurse Crawley, the same as you,” he said, looking entirely unswayed. “Which is what I’ve told the nurses who’ve asked about you making eyes at him every day...said it must be in their imagination. I wouldn’t like to think I was wrong.”
It was so obvious and futile a tactic that nothing about it should have stung, yet Sybil felt something in the pit of her stomach twist.
“Don’t be nasty.” She hated how her voice shook.
“Is it nasty, to say so?” Corporal Barrow said—whatever lay behind his eyes had turned icy. “Seems perfectly ordinary to me. Why shouldn’t you fancy him? He’s a gentleman, you’re a lady—or you will be, when the war’s over. Back to normal.”
“I—”
“—if all goes well, you’ll be married right on schedule, or just about. Plenty of other fish in the sea.”
She was a threat, and he would say whatever he needed to in order to make her feel small enough to be manageable.
It was working too well, from where she stood. Better than he could possibly realize.
“That’s not what I want,” she said, with a fervency that shocked her. Even an hour ago, she’d have admitted to putting it off, to thinking that marriage was a wasted concern just now...she wanted to do other things, before she settled down. She’d find time for it later. She’d stop playing silly games eventually, if they only would give her more time…
But looking into Corporal Barrow’s cold, proud stare, all she wanted to do was scream that she didn’t want those things, not ever, didn’t he see that? Wasn’t that what it was all about, what it had been about from the beginning? Their conversations, the way they’d worked so well together, Lieutenant Courtenay…
Courtenay had needed more help than they did, he’d been worse off than they were...he had been the canary they’d shared between them as they marched through the dark, an assurance that their movements weren’t kicking up anything dangerous. As long as he sang, they were safe.
Only now he’d stopped singing, and they both knew why.
I’m not happy, either. I can’t be happy, going on as they’ve told me I must. I’ll die, don’t you see that?
But he didn’t see it—how could he, when she hadn’t seen it herself before a moment ago?
“Not yet, it isn’t,” he said, lips turning up at the corners. He smiled like Mary did—tight-lipped and miserable (were any of them happy, really)?
“No, I mean—” she faltered in the face of his impassivity, in the way he seemed to think he’d won a battle she’d never meant to start. “Never mind. You don’t want to listen.”
“To what? The latest from the suffrage move—”
“To me!” she shouted. “To me, to how I feel, what I’m trying to say to you…”
But what, exactly, was she trying to say? She pressed a hand to her forehead...it was too hot, and she was too angry to think just now...except that whatever she meant to say, she wasn’t going to say it this way, she wasn’t going to scream and cry her way through to the truth, not to a man who was sneering at her, she wasn’t…
“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, taking a shaking breath. “You don’t care.”
The air had gone from the room. He was slack-jawed, hands open on his knees. He hadn’t moved, but there was something lighter in his posture, like he was getting ready to catch her in case she fainted.
“I—”
But he didn’t say anything else, just stared at her with wide eyes that looked more afraid than ever.
“It’s fine,” she said, sniffing away the tears that she wished more than anything would go away. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll go. You can stay here and think I’m stupid and silly and-and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes had settled somewhere near her knees. “You keep saying that.”
“Oh, stop it,” she snapped, before turning on her heel.
She gave herself three minutes to dry her tears and wash her face before getting back to work.
By teatime, she wondered if she’d made it all up—the feeling that she couldn’t get married, that she’d been born into the wrong life, that a sense of doom hung over her every move…
She’d have been better off minding her own business. Corporal Barrow’s feelings were his own affair, and he knew what he needed to manage them without her help.
He might even have been right, about her being keen on Courtenay...she hadn’t thought she was, but of course that would explain why just now the thought of being married off to anyone seemed so frightening…
It would pass. She’d feel better, and the panic would pass.
They were going to try turning Downton Abbey into a convalescent home—Cousin Isobel had come up with the idea so easily that Sybil wondered why no one had suggested it before. (The answer, probably, was that Grandmama and Papa would take some convincing...not too much, Sybil thought, but enough to scare off the faint-hearted).
They were going to have to bully their way in, but things would be better once they did. It was a real solution, one that would work...so Corporal Barrow hadn’t been right about everything…
It was as if he’d heard her thoughts—Sybil spotted him trudging through the grass, over to the spot she’d landed without realizing: the corner of the yard where they’d taught Courtenay to walk, as best they could.
As he drew closer, she knew what he was going to say, what he was going to ask her to do. He was squinting into the lowering sun even under the brim of his hat, looking as cowed as she’d ever seen him. But she wasn’t angry with him, not anymore...maybe she hadn’t ever been.
No, she thought, even as she smiled to herself. She’d been terribly angry with him, and he’d been angry with her, and neither of them had known what to do with themselves.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t learn.
“It’s still hot,” he said once he’d reached her. He fiddled with his front pocket, and Sybil wondered if he was really thinking about lighting a cigarette, or if it was a force of habit. Whatever the case, he eventually dropped an empty hand to his side, taking in a breath before looking up at the sky.
“Owe you an apology.”
Sybil turned the toe of her boot into the grass, shaking her head. He did owe her one, really, but that was only a single piece of what they had to talk about, now that they were in the center of it all (they’d found it at last).
“I know I frightened you,” she murmured. “I thought it would be worse to feel it alone, but if I was wrong to mention it, then I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, but of course that’s what I was doing.”
“You meant to be kind,” he said. “You are kind—kinder than anyone I’ve known, and that’s the truth.”
Sybil’s breath caught in her throat. Of course, it wasn’t a secret or a shock that he would feel apart from most people, that he’d been pushed to the margins out of a disgust Sybil had never understood. But her mind had acted as a buffer—it had softened the edges of his life and his loneliness because she’d so badly wanted to believe that she wasn’t the first person to tell him the truth.
“I didn’t know how to think of it as kindness, at first,” Corporal Barrow continued, his voice low. “People don’t talk like that. Not to me.”
“Then they ought to.” How could it be possible that no one had?
They would, if they’d only seen his smile when Courtenay seamlessly dodged a chair set in his path for the first time, if they knew how nothing had made him happier than to circle the best parts of the morning paper to read to Courtenay when he found the chance (“so as not to waste your time, sir,” he’d always said, and Courtenay had always broken out into a grin before telling him to hurry up, then).
There was nothing frightful about it, nothing at all, when you took out all the pages and pages of rules that hardly anyone could bear to follow. It was the rules that frightened everyone—what it meant to break them—not the things themselves (and certainly not the people: few men she’d met were less frightening than Thomas Barrow).
“I meant it, you know,” she said. He gave a small smile.
“I don’t think you’re one for saying things you don’t mean.” He fiddled with his pocket again, this time pulling out a pack and his lighter.
“Talking of which…” he murmured as he lit up, his eyes meeting hers with an expectancy bolstered by knowledge.
“What?” she said, grinning at his widening smile. “I don’t know if I want to get married. I don’t know if I could ever like somebody enough to do it.”
It felt true, saying it to him now. True and not at all frightening.
He wanted something else from her, but Sybil wasn’t sure she could say it, not without his asking.
“It’s probably for the best,” he said, his feigned indifference unconvincing.
“So where’s mine?” Sybil asked, tilting her head teasingly to one side.
“Your what?”
“My apology.”
“Oh, that…” He took a drag of his cigarette and blew smoke at the ground before speaking.
“I am sorry, Nurse Crawley,” he said. “The trouble is, I do say things I don’t mean—or things I don’t want to mean, anyway. But you didn’t deserve that. Other people might, but they’re not here. And I am sorry. Truly.”
It was enough. Sybil reached into her pocket for the peace offering she’d been holding onto since luncheon.
“Here,” she said, handing him a Chelsea bun wrapped in cloth. “They sent another basket, today. I think they must have heard.”
“Haven’t you told them yet that you don’t like them?” he asked, taking it from her.
“But you do,” Sybil answered.
Thomas grinned at his shoes.
“If I were nicer, Mrs. Patmore would make me up my own basket,” he said ruefully, unwrapping the pastry.
Sybil raised an eyebrow. “She wouldn’t.”
“No, she wouldn’t…” Thomas laughed.
A breeze had started, and the air was cooler. Sybil watched Thomas, wondering if she should tell him. She’d wanted to tell someone, and he was someone who might understand…
It might even make him happy , she thought, if he knew.
“Do you remember Maude Tilney?”
Thomas frowned. “Not really, no. Why?”
Sybil paused, shading her eyes to look up at the sky before speaking.
“We were friends, back before the war. Since we were girls.”
Sybil took Thomas’s silence as evidence that he’d just about guessed what she was going to tell him—she didn’t dare look at him, now.
“I kissed her once, at a house party,” she said to the clouds, swallowing back a sense of dizziness that had come over her. “She kissed me, really, but I let her. I wanted her to do it.”
Her eyes came back to earth and found Thomas watching her with an expression she couldn’t read (though just now, she didn’t think she could read much of anything...her heart was pounding dreadfully).
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Thomas smiled—he was happy, she could see that even now...
“I’m thinking how some people have all the luck, and Maude Tilney’s one of them.”
Had she sat and thought about it all day—every day since it had happened, even—Sybil couldn’t have thought up a more delightful answer, nor could she have imagined how it would feel to have someone say it to her.
She had to stand on her toes to reach his cheek, but she managed it, one hand resting on his arm to steady herself. She thought she heard a soft, ‘oh!’ when she kissed his cheek, and she could feel the proof of his smile before she pulled away to see it.
“Careful, Nurse Crawley, or people will say we’ve gone soft…”
“Surely you can call me Sybil now?”
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” he teased.
But he did start calling her Sybil, at least some of the time.