Chapter Text
Downton, 22nd July 1927
Dear Mr Ellis,
I am writing to thank you for your advice and assistance during the days of the Royal Visit at Downton. I learned a great many things over the course of your stay, and I wish it could have been longer so I could have profited even more from your superior experience and your confident handling of the various crises, great and small, that occurred throughout this period. The Royal Visit has left an indelible impression on my mind and heart, and the memories of it will stay with me for a long time and serve to lift my spirits whenever the need arises. I am looking forward to renewing our acquaintance at the earliest opportunity, and remain
Yours faithfully,
Th. Barrow.
Thomas crumples up the paper, takes aim and lobs it in the fireplace. There's no fire burning in there, of course, on this mild summer evening, but he feels the gesture is warranted.
He's trying to be clever, and cautious, and he's sure that the man he already thinks of as Richard would catch his true meaning. But the words sound hollow in his ears, stilted, terribly impersonal. It could be months, it could be next year until they get a chance to meet again. Is this really how they'll be talking to each other until then?
While Thomas still agonises over what to say and how to say it, Richard solves the problem by making a bold first move. They seem to have a pattern there already.
Somewhere between Doncaster and Newark, 22nd July 1927
Dear Thomas,
if my writing is a bit wonky, it's because I'm on the train. But I'm worried that once I'm back in London I won't find the time to write right away, and I don't want to keep you waiting longer than need be. I want you to know that I haven't felt as alive in a long time as I've felt in the past few days, and I owe that to you and the fine people in your charge.
Let's not waste any more time. We've already wasted a whole evening that could have gone very differently, if it hadn't been for me and the one vice of mine – tardiness - that I am genuinely ashamed of. There are so many things that I don't know but want to know, so many things I didn't say but wanted to say. And until there's another way, pen and paper will have to do.
Do you remember the morning when everyone at Downton was running around like headless chickens getting everything ready to receive their King, and you were sitting in the empty servants' hall, doing a blessed crossword as if history wasn't unfolding right above your head? That's what you are to me, Thomas, and that's what I'll try to do. Solve the crossword puzzle that is you. I've figured out a few words already, of course, some of them intersecting, others not. The rest is blank spaces that I want to fill in as soon as may be. Tell me when we can start. I'm champing at the bit.
Richard
And so they begin, their conversations on paper, back and forth over the next weeks and months, sometimes every day, sometimes a couple a week, sometimes fewer, when their respective duties don't leave them enough time to get into much detail. But it's a steady stream nonetheless, and quite unlike any other letters Thomas has ever written or received. Then again, Richard himself is unlike anyone else Thomas has ever spoken to, spent time around, conspired with... or touched with his lips.
And while Richard may be the one who invented the template and set the tone, Thomas gets to ask the first question. Because this is not going to be a one-way street if he can help it.
One across: How do you even know my first name?
Most butlers I've met have two faces, Richard replies, just like that Roman god of transitions, doorways and passages. One face for upstairs, one for downstairs. But you have three – one for upstairs and two for downstairs. I don't pretend to understand how exactly it works, how you can be both Mr Barrow-in-that-chair-at-the-head-of-the-table and Thomas-you-should-really-take-a-day-off to the same people at the same time. All I know is that I find it delightful. And don't say it's just because you've all worked together for a long time. The same would be true of a lot of other great houses, and yet in many of them, people would barely know what their butler's Christian name is, let alone use it, and within earshot of a visiting stranger, too.
Obvious, really. Thomas had to nick Richard's fancy calling card to learn that he was Richard in the first place. All Richard had to do was prick up his ears in the servants' hall. Thomas' first impulse is to be embarrassed, but Richard disagrees. I'd say you're lucky to live and work in a place like that, he concludes, and he sounds downright envious.
Thomas thinks back to the times when the opposite was true; when Downton felt like a prison with invisible walls and bars that he couldn't escape from, no matter how hard he tried; or when Downton tried to shake him off like some irritating fly while he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth.
Lucky is one way of putting it, he writes back. We're complicated, the Abbey and I. Love it, hate it, can't live without it, apparently - way too much history, way too much baggage.
Just like any other long marriage then, Richard replies, proving that he can actually grin in writing.
Two (both across and down) is all about Richard's work and how he's busy fulfilling the destiny of every male member of the Ellis family for the past two hundred years, which is to squander the best years of their youth in an apprenticeship with the best of their trade in Savile Row and then in service to someone who's at least a Royal Highness, until they finally return to join the family business in York. Richard is the first Ellis in a century who has scooped an actual ruling monarch, but…
… that's maybe a bit unfair to my ancestors, he concedes, considering that for sixty-three years of the past one hundred, there was no ruling monarch who could in all conscience be dressed by a man.
Three, and Richard turns the conversation back to Thomas.
Three down: If you're from a family of clockmakers, how come you went into service in the first place?
By accident. Maybe Thomas was a little afraid of the question, but he can't deny Richard the right to ask it. I was nineteen and sitting in the third class waiting room at Birmingham New Street with nothing but the clothes on my back, a few shillings in my pocket, a bag of tools at my feet and the vague hope that if I could make it to London, someone there might take me on. There was a man sitting opposite me who was trying and failing to wind his watch. He shook it angrily, and I heard that the mainspring had come loose. I offered to fix it for him, and we got talking. I told him of my plans, and he laughed, said that cities like London ate striplings like me for breakfast, and advised me to sell my good looks (his words, not mine) where they'd profit me more than on some seedy street corner in Soho. He was a manservant, he said, valet to an earl, and their household always had room for another footman. There was no one to warn me what exactly I was getting myself into, and at that point I was willing to say yes to anything that gave me a roof over my head and four square meals a day. And I proved to be quite good at what I was supposed to do, if I say so myself. So that was that, and I've somehow never managed to get out again, though not for lack of trying.
I'm sorry there was nobody back at home who stood up for you, Richard writes back, putting his finger right on the crux of the matter in spite of Thomas' best efforts to skip that particular part of the tale. I know it's a common experience, and I actually feel guilty sometimes that it wasn't like that for me. I know I'm extremely lucky in that way, and endlessly grateful to my own parents, but I'm often at a loss what to say to those who weren't.
I don't actually want you to say anything, Thomas replies after pondering his answer for a while. I'm just glad it is the way it is for you. You would not be you if your family had treated you differently, and that would be my loss, as much as anyone else's.
His loss, emphatically. Richard is such a marvel to him precisely because he is what he is without being so… marred by it.
Step by tentative step, their letters become substitutes not only for the conversations they haven't yet had in person, but also for what all their five senses could have told them if they'd got more of a chance. This takes Thomas a while to get used to – it's not something he'd put into words, normally – but he eventually comes to love it when it happens. There's a particular kind of intimacy to these exchanges.
Four down: Do you ever sing, Richard asks, and is your singing voice pitched higher or lower than your speaking voice?
As I child, I was always told that singing was for sissies, but I do enjoy it now when I get the chance.
I'm the tenor to your baritone, is what Thomas really wants to say, his mind briefly spinning out of control with thoughts of their voices joining together in a very unchaste kind of duet.
I love music, Richard replies when Thomas bounces the question back to him. But I don't sing nearly as much as I used to. Six years of York Minster School are the best I can offer in that department.
Thomas raises his eyebrows at this particular piece of information. I didn't exactly have you down as a choirboy, he can’t resist remarking. Should I prepare for a disappointment?
I will have you know that choirboys are routinely underestimated, Richard protests immediately. I learned a lot of things during that time, about myself as much as about anything else. I certainly discovered the beauty of duets. I've much preferred them to solos ever since.
Touché.
Five is all about the War, but Thomas keeps it brief. Their experiences don't really match up, and Thomas has learned over the years that there are some things that you just can't explain to someone who hasn't lived through them himself. Not that Richard had much fun aboard HMS Collingwood at Jutland, either, standing on deck behind the King's second son and looking on while ship after ship around them blew up and went down, nearly ten thousand men lost in the course of a single day and night.
The one thing they do share, and which they of course share with everybody else who's come through alive, is the eternal question, why them and not me? Needless to say, neither of them has an answer.
They don't dwell on it.
Richard's turn again, Six across: What's your hair like when you leave it alone?
I don't know, floppy, limp, Thomas replies honestly. It gets in my eyes and itches and I admit I don't like it much.
Is it even long enough to get in your eyes?
It used to be. Maybe one of these days I'll be brave enough to send you a picture. Say something about yours.
Because that's a memory that Thomas loves to revisit, the silky-soft fuzz of short hair on the back of Richard's head in that very brief moment when Thomas felt it under his fingertips.
There's nothing to tell that you don't know already, I'm afraid. Bit wavy. Common ordinary brown.
There's nothing common or ordinary about you, Richard Ellis.
Thomas looks through his desk drawers for old pictures, and the first he unearths is the one they tacked onto his travel documents when he went to the States with Lord Grantham five years ago. He promptly shoves it back inside. Richard will want nothing to do with this strange, pale creature that had simmering resentment oozing out of every pore.
Thomas also finds a clipping from a local newspaper that he's kept, dating more than a year back, "A Change at the Helm of Downton Abbey". But sending Richard that one is out of the question, too. Thomas was still so new to his position then, and so nervous on the day the reporter came, that he made the mistake of trying to hide his insecurity by looking extra stern and forbidding in the picture they took of him and Carson side by side outside the front door.
The result was, of course, exactly as terrible as you would expect, he justifies his reluctance to let Richard see that one, too. "Straight out of a gothic horror story," our cook said when she thought I was out of earshot, and unfortunately, I agree.
Besides, the article itself expounds Carson's decades-long career in such adulatory detail that Thomas suspects it was dictated word for word by Lady Mary herself, and why would Richard be interested in that. Thomas himself gets only one quick mention in the final paragraph, and they've managed to misspell his name, too.
... although being named after the homestead of a sylvan animal is maybe marginally better than being named after a two-wheeled cart.
To be honest, I always thought your Barrow was the prehistoric burial mound rather than the cart, Richard writes back. But if you insist on losing a fair amount of mystique and being Mr Burrow from now on, I'll get used to that, too.
I have a feeling that I could get used to being Mr Ellis, Thomas wants to say so badly that it hurts, but there is a limit to what he can put in a letter without literally risking both their necks, he knows that well enough. Besides, it seems a little forward to even think such things, after knowing Richard for less than three weeks.
I can't say I'm keen on being Mr Burrow, he jokes instead. But I can't deny that I would prefer you to think of me as a fox rather than a mouldy skeleton.
A fox? I was thinking a bunny. With soft, fluffy ears.
Richard clearly has a different definition of "forward" than most people.
Are you brave enough by now? Richard revisits the topic of photographs a few weeks later. Or are you starving me on purpose?
Thomas has conveniently forgotten by this point that he has as good as promised Richard a picture. The truth is, he simply has no recent one, apart from the grainy newspaper image of the Butler From Hell. And the idea of going to have a new one taken for this particular purpose, of sitting on that stool at the photographer's trying to look his very best, makes Thomas highly uncomfortable. Sure, he wouldn't be the first young-ish man (very –ish, it sometimes feels these days) whom the people at the studio would ease through the process with indulgent smiles and well-meant jokes, but he'd just… really rather not.
He's still putting it off when the perfect solution presents itself, out of the blue and almost entirely without Thomas' doing. It's a particularly hectic morning in the servants' hall, and somehow Albert manages to collide head-on with the kitchen maid who was taking the breakfast things back out on her tray. Apart from the tray and the maid herself, nothing survives crashing to the floor. While Albert picks up the crying girl and Daisy comes marching over from the kitchen with broom and dustpan, Thomas spots something interesting among the crash victims. It's the small framed photograph that has hung on the wall between the two door openings for over a year. It's a mystery how that fell down as well, but the glass is broken now, and if he's quick enough…
"I'll see if that can be saved," he says and stoops down to retrieve it from among the debris. On closer examination, the picture itself is in perfect order. Under cover of the general hullabaloo, Thomas bins the shattered glass, leaves the frame for Andy to glue back together later, and diverts the photograph to his pantry.
He'd never have stolen it off the wall just like that, as there would have been no way to replace it without arousing suspicion. But this opportunity is too good to miss.
"Sorry, the picture's got cuts and kinks all over now," he says to Andy when the footman frowns at the ruin of the frame later that morning. "But I'll write to Brancaster and ask for another print. I'll pay, if necessary."
Thomas looks at it for some long minutes before he puts it in a cover to send to London that night. It's a bit of a wrench letting it go, even if he's fairly sure they can get a replacement. He's spent many a moment casually lingering in the doorway of the servants' hall for no other reason than to get some joy from looking at it.
New Year's Eve 1925, Lady Edith's wedding, Thomas provides some context for Richard. Lord Hexham's best man made the rounds of the great hall that night with one of those clever little handheld German cameras, capturing memories for the new Marchioness to take to Brancaster with her. She sent us this one afterwards, as a memento.
The best man was nothing if not methodical, so although technically just a visitor at the time, Thomas found himself thrust in among the downstairs ranks for an impromptu group shot. The Bateses are missing from it, having been too busy being parents at the time. But everyone else is there, looking very cheery with the exception of Carson, who had already blurted out his resignation at this point. Consequently Thomas himself, in the centre of the back row, is grinning like a fool, an arm around Andy on one side and Mr Mason, of all people, on the other.
It's a lovely memory of Downton and its people, Richard writes in acknowledgment. Thank you for letting me have it. I think I recognise almost everyone. Nice to see Mrs H. smiling, since I only know her breathing a constant stream of fire. Seven down: Who is the bearded gent next to you? I don't recall meeting him.
That's our first footman's father-in-law, Thomas explains, then remembers that it's still soon-to-be father-in-law, then remembers that's not technically true, either. What do you even call that relationship? Father-in-law once removed? Not that it matters, so Thomas starts again. That's the father of a man whom I used to treat very shabbily indeed for no reason at all, and who died in the War before I could apologise. I don't know how his father even manages to talk to me civilly, but I seem to be a bit of a Collector of Undeserved Mercies.
That sounds almost like a court title, Richard remarks.
Seriously, who does the man think he is, the King's dresser or the King's jester?
Talking of undeserved mercies, it's a thing of pure beauty that accompanies Richard's response. Thomas didn't even have to ask.
Not a staged portrait, either, but an everyday moment, Richard and Mr Miller at work together in a dressing room at the palace, one of His Majesty's uniform coats laid out on the table before them. Grey-haired Mr Miller watches while Richard leans over the garment. His hands are busy pinning some medal or ribbon onto it, but his eyes look up straight into the lens. The light in the room is strangely soft, no sharp angles or cast shadows anywhere, and the smile on Richard's face is softer still.
What are you smiling about? Thomas wonders, but he doesn't ask. It's a far too pleasant fantasy to imagine that it could have been Thomas himself standing in that doorway and taking the picture, "Richard?".
The photograph is too precious to crease, of course, so carrying it around in his breast pocket, close to his heart where it belongs, is not an option. But Thomas takes it out of its hiding place often and sits on the side of his narrow bed holding it in his hands, in the mornings or at bedtime, drinking in Richard's smile until he feels ready to face another busy day or another solitary night. Sometimes he puts it on the pages of an open book to look at while he's at his desk writing his letters, left hand under the cover, ready to flip it shut the moment someone enters. He dreams of a different world where he could put the picture in a silver frame and place it right there on his desk for all the world to see.