Work Text:
Downton Abbey, 20th December, 2001
Matt will get in trouble from the archivist for kicking around in the upstairs rooms at Downton because they’re full of things she hasn’t catalogued yet and there’s a system Matthew Crawley, how many times!
She’s been the archivist since he was 6 years old so he knows just how to push his luck and besides he’s bored, the rest of the family haven't arrived for Christmas yet, and poking about upstairs is his only option lest he be roped into another game of chess.
He’s rubbish at chess.
So, he’s abandoned his boyfriend and his grandpa to play without him and set off to explore the house he knows like the back of his hand but still manages to surprise him with the secrets she keeps.
It’s the servants quarters he’s found himself in today, tiny rooms filled with boxes and empty picture frames. He used to play hide and seek up here as a child, the rooms and corridors feeling labyrinthine and endless, but today he’s struck by how small they are and thinks of the lives of the servants played out in rooms the size of matchboxes while his family went about their dramas with more space than was good for them.
Grandpa George only lives in a few rooms these days, set out as apartments, while the rest of the house is open to the public for most of the year. Matt’s father won’t live here when he inherits the Earldom and by the time the title’s Matt’s who knows what the state of the country house in England will be. The National Trust has been on at them forever but George is insistent a Crawley should always be at Downton even if it’s only to veto selling ugly toys in the giftshop.
Under the eaves of the room he’s in now he can barely stand up straight. He’s trying to peer out of the little window to the small slice of sky he can see from this high up, shoving at a box with his feet when his foot slips hard against the wall and a rectangle of skirting board detaches itself.
‘Shit. Shit,’ this he really will get in trouble for.
He kneels down on the dusty floor squeezed in amid the boxes, hopeful he can fix the damage well enough that no one will notice, and there in the space behind the skirting board is a bundle of letters. There are no more than ten, tied up with rough string but carefully so, and when Matt flicks through them he can see most have been opened but the last, addressed in a different hand is still sealed.
The first opened envelope says:
Mr Thomas Barrow
Downton Abbey
Downton
Yorkshire
Matt pauses, it seems disrespectful to read them, given how carefully they were hidden, even if the writer and recipient are long dead but he’s curious and more importantly, bored. He sits down on the floor proper and unties the string. The envelope has been hastily ripped open but the letter is soft, falling apart at the folds as if it’s been unfolded and reread several times.
24 July 1927
Dear Mr Barrow,
I wanted to write thank you for your hospitality during our stay at Downton. I wanted to write as soon as I could but no sooner had I sat down on the train back to London did I nod off. It seems a visit to Downton is a tiring affair, but a pleasant one all the same. H.M said similarly when he returned.
Please pass on my thanks to the rest of the staff.
I hope to see you again soon, if it can be arranged.
Yours,
R. Ellis
Matt turns the page over but that’s all there is, the postmark is London and the paper feels expensive, in spite of its age; not a lot to go on and certainly nothing worth pouring over. He flicks through the others again, they’re all addressed to this Thomas Barrow, who must have worked at Downton in the 20s, but the unopened letter is to Richard Ellis at Buckingham Palace. That does make things a bit more interesting. The Royal Visit to Downton is legendary in their family even though his Grandpa was only five when it happened and surely can’t remember it in that much detail; it’s a story that gets passed around and embellished with every retelling. He supposes Thomas and Richard must have met downstairs during the visit and started up writing to each other.
He spreads the letters out making sure he has them in the right order. The next one is longer and this time has a Yorkshire postmark.
10 August 1927
Dear Thomas,
It pains me to be so close and not be able to visit you but in service we are so often in thrall to the whims of others, as you well know. My mum was not best pleased either but won’t say a bad word against H.M so it’s Mr W and Mr M that bore the brunt in her latest letter.
You say that you never know what to write but I like to hear about your day to day. You’re very lucky to work with such good people who have loyalty to each other as well as to the house they serve.
Give Daisy and Andy my congratulations. I am glad they have finally got wed. Three couples downstairs in one house is unheard of but Downton Abbey continues to surprise.
The landscape here is beautiful. I know I'm a city boy really and I always miss wearing away my shoe leather on York’s cobbles or London’s paving stones but there is something to be said for the space here. And I like the thought that the sky I’m looking at is closer to the sky you look at too. I’ll never be a poet so I’ll stop before I get carried away with myself.
We’re headed to Scotland at the end of August for god knows how long - a journey I do not relish. It'll be kippers for breakfast and endless rain, mark my words. And I think I shall be roped into helping with the shooting this time. I know you enjoy it but I’ve never seen the point if one doesn’t get an opportunity to shoot too.
The Ghillies Ball will be a highlight. Have I told you I love to dance? I know you do.
Yours, affectionately,
Richard
The next was sent from Norfolk.
23rd October 1927
Dear Thomas,
By the time you get this I shall more than likely be back in London.
Norfolk is pleasant enough but not as nice as Yorkshire in the summertime and further away from you, more’s the pity. We’ll be back here again in November and for Christmas, of course.
At least it hasn’t been raining. Scotland was diabolical and nowhere to go for miles on end. Please extend my apologies to Mrs Hughes for disparaging her homeland but I have yet to have an experience with the place that endeared me to it.
I thought of you and that sustained me and I continue to think of you as I travel hither and thither across the country.
If you keep heaping praise on my prose I shall get ideas above my station and start composing you poetry. You have been warned.
With affection,
Richard
Matt’s knowledge of history is poor to say the least, he’s much more of a sciences man, studied chemistry at uni, partly because it seemed self-centred to engage with history when his family were so much a part of it in a way other people considered important; like the value he places on the people he loves has nothing to do with it. It’s a privilege really, being influential enough to have your name in the history books just because of how much money you’ve got, and he grew up wanting for nothing so it’s churlish to complain but he does sometimes wish he could have been ordinary.
But the point is he really doesn’t know how people would write to each other in those days. 1927 was 74 years ago, another world entirely, one that he knows nothing of but in only a few short weeks the tone of the letters has changed dramatically to something that seems far more than friendly. There’s affection here, if not more, and if Matt was reticent to read the opened letters, opening the unsent one really does seem a step too far now even though he’s more intrigued than ever. There are only three left from Richard, he can read those, surely, now he’s started.
14th November 1927
Dearest Thomas,
I am so sorry to hear of the passing of Old Lady Grantham. I know you were fond of her. From what you’ve told me it sounds as if she had no trouble speaking her mind, as do you, so as far as I’m concerned you’re two peas in a pod, but no doubt Downton won’t be the same without her.
I’m sure Daisy and Andy will make a fine job of tending Mr Mason’s farm. You must see it as a continuation of their journey, not an ending, and they will still be close by and will pop in from time to time. Mrs Hughes is right, things are changing and service not being what it was you can’t begrudge folks for wanting to leave.
In the end we all have choices to make and make them we must.
I’m going to try and make it to the coast here when we’re back for Christmas. You will say the weather will be abysmal but I like to look at the sea and imagine the possibilities that are out there.
I am yours,
Richard
P.S with every tragedy always comes a blessing; give my best wishes to Mr and Mrs Bates on their news.
Matt’s fingers hover over the signature, I am yours, would you sign off that way to a friend? He sends Chris texts and emails filled with tiny declarations, draws hearts on the shopping list almost without thinking and yet it seems there's more contained in these three words than any casual love you he’s shouted while heading out to work. Would this be enough, if the letters had been found, to be damning evidence against them? But Richard has done it, given himself up at great risk to tell a man he loves him. It’s clear as day to Matt, he’s sure of it.
It’s odd, too, to read of strangers commiserating the death of his great, great, great grandmother. George was six when she died, his memories of her had become family mythology long before he could make any real memories of his own. In her portrait in the library she looks incredibly severe, a frequent figure in Matt’s nightmares as a child but here she’s discussed with affection, if not reverence.
Perspective is everything, the further we get from the past, the easier it is to see objectively but how can he be objective when he wants so much to see himself here, too. All he can do is read on.
21st November 1927
Dear Thomas,
This is a quick note to let you know I will be in York visiting my mum between 23rd - 27th November if you can get the time off. It’s unorthodox, I know, but she is longing to meet you. I can’t stay longer as I have to be back in London before we head to Sandringham for the festive season.
Let me know by telegram as the post may take too long to arrive.
With hope and affection,
Richard
Matt wonders at the significance of these letters, why they in particular were kept and hidden and if are others are they somewhere else or did they contain more incriminating affection than he can already see in these pages and so were destroyed? He feels after only a few short paragraphs from one half of this couple that he knows them, feels intensely the longing and the love they shared.
The last letter from Richard to Downton is written on different stationary, it’s postmark dated 1930.
6th May 1930
Thomas,
Spring brings with it so many things; longer and warmer days and hope for the year to come. Even in London there is a sense of growth and renewal. You see a lot more of that in the fine countryside of the North Country but sunshine can do a lot for a man when he’s staring down The Mall at an ungodly hour of the morning.
I think often of leaving service these days. Mum is getting on and I should like to be with her in her final years as I wasn’t for dad. And if I came back to York I could be nearer to Downton.
We could set up together, we both have enough collective experience for work outside of service, so it shouldn't be so difficult to get by. These are idle dreams, I know you could never leave Downton, not with your soul still so firmly rooted there, but I like to think some of your heart abides with me and maybe in the future we can make plans.
Yours always,
Richard
There’s no doubt now, in Matt’s mind, that these men were lovers. He feels it with a certainty born of experience, teenage years wrestling with knowledge of himself that he sought to hide for so long.
Suddenly the years between 1927 and today don’t feel so impenetrable anymore.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, with Richard’s words, until Chris looks in at the door, ‘there you are, babe. Are you coming down?’
Matt startles and begins hastily putting the letters back in their rightful envelopes.
‘George says the rest of your family will be here soon and it looks bad if your boyfriend is there to greet them and you aren’t.’
Matt rolls his eyes and smiles, everyone likes Chris more than they like him, Chris can actually play chess for one thing.
‘Yeah, I’m coming.’
‘Are you ok? Mrs Bathurst will have your knackers for being in here.’
‘I was just reading some old letters,’ he gets up and dusts off his jeans, giving Chris a quick kiss as he goes past into the corridor, ‘and you’ll keep my secrets for me won’t you?’
‘I’m only with you for your money, you know that,’ Chris grew up on a council estate in East London but seems to tolerate the ridiculousness of Matt’s family with ease, fits in more than Matt does, sometimes. Maybe being an outsider makes it easier somehow.
‘Don’t let Grandpa hear you say that, he’ll go off you.’
‘He could never. Anyway he’s my favourite, I’d never do anything to upset George.’
Chris takes his hand in the corridor and Matt has to kiss him again, because he can, here in this house where no one would bat an eye, now.
‘What was that for?’ Chris is beaming.
‘Just because.’
They go down and through into the apartments his Grandpa lives in and it’s easy to get swept up into the festivities, greeting his family; his sister, Laura, back from her second year at York Uni, his mum and dad, tired from having driven up from London, his aunt Ellen and her two girls, now 9 and 12 and already planning several renditions of scenes from The Princess Diaries for the assembled company.
‘And Uncle Robbie says we can watch the Sound of Music which also has Julie Andrews in it when she was younger,’ says Elodie, beaming and hanging off Matt’s arm.
He looks over at his dad, ‘did he now? And how does he feel about you singing him all of the songs?’
‘He says we’ll have a concert in the Hall when we’ve learned them,’ Phoebe looks up from where she’s showing Chris a selection of cuddly toys and telling him about their latest school play, simultaneously.
‘My darling brother may well regret his generosity in discussing the collected works of Julie Andrews by the time we’ve watched Mary Poppins five times in a row,’ says Ellen.
Matt’s mum laughs, ‘I don’t know, he does a very good Dick Van Dyke if he’s had enough to drink.’
‘Beth! You’re meant to be on my side,’ laughs Ellen, ‘no more Mary Poppins, please.’
And on it goes, the comfortable teasing and easy affection, so much noise, enough to fill this house, for sure.
‘Alright, wanker,’ Laura punches him on the arm. She’s dyed her again desperate to resist the stereotype of horses and holidays most girls of their background delight in living up to.
‘Hello to you too, shitface,’ he’s always been a disappointment to her; her careful and ordinary older brother, but he’s gay so that’s enough difference to be getting on with in a family like theirs.
‘How’s it been here with Grandpapa? Mum and dad would not shut up in the car about how he’s too old to be living on his own and how I’m the closest so I should drive up more often. Like I don’t have a life. He’s ok isn’t he?’
‘Ten months out of the year this place is full of tourists, he’s never on his own.’
‘You know what I mean.’
They look over to where George is talking to Elodie and Phoebe.
‘He’s fine. And anyway I might stay on a bit longer, after Christmas is over.’
Laura gives him a look as if he’s lost his mind but her hand on his arm is thanks and he knows it.
Dinner is boisterous, everyone talking at once, at ever increasing volumes and Matt remembers again the appeal of houses as big as this one, there’s always a quiet corner you can escape to, if you know where to look.
In a lull between his dad’s excellent roast chicken and Ellen’s trifle, if they keep eating like this every day until Christmas he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep up, he manages to catch his Grandpa’s eye.
‘What were you up to upstairs earlier, Matthew?’
Only Grandpa George ever calls him Matthew. Named for the father George never knew it seems important to let him.
‘Chris and I could have used you as referee for our chess game,’ George fixes him with a steely look like he knows exactly what he was up to and that he probably shouldn’t have been up to it.
‘I was looking in the servants quarters. I found some old letters, actually.’
‘Did you ask Mrs Bathurst first?’ Elodie says and Phoebe makes a face. Only Matt knows how to charm Mrs Bathurst.
He sticks his tongue out at them, to make them laugh, ‘of course I didn’t,’ and turns back to George, ‘do you remember someone who worked here called Thomas Barrow?’
George smiles, ‘of course I remember Mr Barrow, he was the Butler here for ten years.’
‘I thought the Butler was called Carson?’ says Robbie from across the table.
Everyone has fallen silent. No conversation had over the dinner table in this house is private and regardless when George speaks, you listen.
‘Yes, and Mr Barrow was the Butler after him, do keep up Robbie, it’s like you never listen to a word I say.’
‘What was he like? Mr Barrow?’ says Chris just as Laura says, ‘what do the letters say?’
George holds up a hand for silence, as in charge as he ever was, here, ‘Mr Barrow was a footman, started at the age of nineteen, I believe, and became Butler when Mr Carson retired, in 1926. I was five then. He was good to me and my cousins, always had time to play with us.’
‘But he left? When he was still a young man?’ asks Ellen.
‘He left when I was 15, he must have been in his forties,’ George shrugs, ‘I was away at Eton then, of course, but we kept in touch over the years.’
Matt takes a breath, asks what he’s been dying to know, for sure, all day, ‘Grandpa, do you think...do think Mr Barrow was gay?’
His family are supportive, more than tolerant, welcoming to Chris, but it’s always there, under his skin like a thorn, he’s not supposed to be gay, it would be easier for everyone if he wasn’t. Consciously expressed or not there’s a distance between him and his family, experience they’ve never had and can never hope to understand. He doesn’t hold Chris’s hand every time he wants to because he can’t , there are conversations their friends have about marriage and babies that sting just a little. It’s important to him to know that he’s recognised a truth, that the letters stand as testament to something important.
Of all the reactions he doesn’t expect George to laugh, it’s not dismissive, rather delighted, ‘I don’t think I know. ’
‘What?’ Robbie is frowning as he always does when his father displays even a passing familiarity with anything approaching the modern world, ‘how could you have known?’
‘This was in what? The 1920s?’ Beth is the historian in the family, Matt can already see the cogs turning and wishes he’d kept it to himself for longer, or found a quiet moment to ask George alone, before it all became history to the rest of them. Sat upstairs in that tiny bedroom it was present, happening, the one sided back and forth, a relationship developing as words were put down on paper.
But he needs to know more, regardless of his family all around him, talking at once, ‘carry on, Grandpa.’
‘Mr Barrow left Downton in 1936 to move to York with a Mr...Ellis his name was,’ George continues, ‘worked for the King I think. I only found this out after the fact, you understand, from Mr Barrow himself, but they lived together in York until Mr Barrow died, 1973, the same year you were born, Matthew. I should have liked it if he’d met you, my first grandchild, but it wasn’t to be.’
‘What did he do in York?’ Laura interrupts, ‘what do you do when you’re not a Butler anymore?’
‘He worked at the York County Hospital. He was in the Medical Corps during the war so that gave him the experience,’ says George but he looks back to Matt and smiles, gently, ‘they’re buried, both of them, in the churchyard at Downton, if you’d like to see them.’
Matt just nods and Chris takes his hand under the table, ‘we can go tomorrow?’
‘Let’s all go,’ says Robbie, to hums of agreement from the rest.
‘Matthew and I will go,’ says George, final, and Matt has never been more grateful to his Grandpa in his life.
They drive into the village the next morning, just the two of them, Matt and his Grandpa.
It’s icy along the path through the graveyard but George seems to know the way, right towards the family plot, Matt’s hand on his arm to steady his balance.
The stone is set a little back from the family markers, all those familiar names, so many stories told over the years; Sybil, Violet, Robert and Cora, and the strange little twist at seeing your own name on a gravestone, Matthew Crawley, even if it’s for a man who died 80 years before you were born.
George brandishes his stick triumphantly, ‘here we are.’
And here it is.
Their names side by side on a headstone:
Thomas Barrow
22 March 1888 - 10 November 1973
Richard Ellis
11 May 1890 - 18 August 1975
Beneath are the words:
Together, in love, for eternity.
‘Why were they buried here and not in York?’
‘Neither of them had any family to speak of when they died. This was the place they met so I suspect it had significance.’
‘Who chose the inscription?’
‘I did.’
‘Why? They were servants, they were...’ he trails off, he doesn’t want to accuse his Grandpa of prejudices he obviously doesn’t have but still, even in the seventies, that was only a few years after decriminalisation, it couldn’t have been easy . It’s not always easy now.
‘My childhood was very different to yours. I spent more of my time with the servants than I did with my family and Mr Barrow was always very kind to me. And if you mean the other thing, that they were gay, you should have more faith in the older generations, Matthew. You didn’t invent it. Thomas and Richard were together for longer than you’ve been alive, almost as long as me and your grandmother. That should be remembered don’t you think?’
‘But why didn’t you tell me about them?’
‘I suppose I should have. But I can tell you all about them now.’
Matt takes his Grandpa's hand, rough with age but warm, ‘thank you.’
Later, as he waits for Chris to get ready for bed Matt holds the unopened envelope, it’s edges sharp against his palm. A letter, he assumes, written by Thomas to Richard but never sent. It feels like this holds a secret more so than anything he’s found out today about these men who lived lives so unlike his own but in one fundamental way were the same. He wants to read Thomas’s words but even Richard never got that pleasure.
There’s a letter opener on the dressing table, and he crosses the room to it, letting it swing on it’s point under his hand. Maybe he owes it to them, to read the last record of their relationship, to give them the final words.
28th November 1927
Dear Richard,
You’ll tell me off for this. It isn’t circumspect enough but I long for you. It’s been less than 24 hours since we parted and the touch of your hands still lingers and the feel of your mouth on mine is all I can think of when I close my eyes.
You’ve said many times that you’re not a poet, well, neither am I. All I can do is tell you I ache for the day men like us no longer have to hide.
I look at everyone here, husbands and wives, and I want that for us but most of all I want to live in peace. With you I think I could.
I probably won’t post this letter but if I do, burn after reading.
I love you.
Your silly boy,
Thomas
They wanted to be known to each other, whatever the risk, and now they are known to him and Matt can’t help the tears welling up as he reads.
Chris comes into the room in his pyjamas, hair mussed and damp, ‘babe, are you ok?’
Matt inhales, wipes the tears from his face, ‘yep, yes. I was just reading this last letter. Thomas never sent it but -, they loved each other, you know, they made a life together even though it must have been so hard, all those years ago.’
Chris sits beside him on the bed, ‘well then, imagine telling him, this Thomas, “I’m the grandson of George Crawley, 8th Earl of Grantham and I’m here at Downton Abbey with my boyfriend,” and think how pleased he’d be.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ they kiss, a soft and gentle press of lips, as easy as breathing, holding no pain or fear and it’s good.
Thomas sits in his armchair, contemplating the words he’s just written, it’s too much, too soon and if anyone got a hold of this letter he’d be finished. Richard too, Richard worse, as always, they have so much to lose. He seals the envelope and tucks it with the others behind the baseboard by the window and taking up a new sheet of paper he begins again.
28th November 1927
Dear Richard,
Please thank your mother for her hospitality, I have never known a welcome like it or such a delicious fruitcake. A fact I will not be sharing with Mrs Patmore.
I’m sorry to miss you for Christmas but have a nice time in Norfolk. Try not to get too swept up when you visit the sea; there are plenty of possibilities for you here.
The festive season will be different this year. As you are so fond of saying I will see it as a beginning, rather than an end.
He taps his pen against the page. Maybe there are some risks worth taking and signs off.
All my love,
Thomas