Chapter Text
Robert rubbed his eyes.
Another night of insufficient sleep and another long day awaiting him
The camp that was now his home-away-from home was about five miles north of the City of Bath, nestled in a group of fields on the northern edge of a village called Marshfield. The village was at the top of the long stretch of hill that sloped up from the city below, and was full old Georgian buildings and even some Tudor and Stuart houses.
While the recruits were billeted in marquee tents and the NCOs in new purpose-built huts in the camp, the officers had the privilege of staying in various rooms around the village. Most of them had been welcomed into the homes and spare bedrooms of the more well-to-do locals, but Robert had had the good luck of being assigned to one of the three guest rooms at the village inn, a lovely old building called The Catherine Wheel. This meant he got a proper bed in an unshared bedroom, access to a private breakfasting nook just off the taproom, and importantly, the use of a bathroom with indoor plumbing!
It was no Downton, certainly, but it was perfectly clean and comfortable, and the owners – a Mr and Mrs Hart and son – were as polite and welcoming as you could expect from any good British Citizen.
Now if only Robert could manage to sleep well.
It wasn’t noise keeping him awake. The village was almost as quiet and sleepy as Downton once darkness fell, and thanks to the government’s new Defence of the Realm Act, the small taproom was only able to serve until 9:30 pm. This meant that the men of the village had all cleared out by 10 pm each night and so Robert and the other officers weren’t disturbed once they retired to their rooms.
Neither was it disturbances from the enlisted men in the camp. Rumour ran rife in the army, every little scrap of news dissected and repeated until it no longer bore any resemblance to the original truth, but some of the pieces that had stayed fairly unaltered, were the tales of disorder coming from some of the other training camps around Britain. Stories of clothing theft due to uniform shortages were particularly prominent, along with those of groups of recruits absconding to the nearest pub without a leave pass and then returning drunk and disorderly. He and the other ranking officer of their camp had therefore been particularly strict regarding conduct and so far military order had been maintained.
So no, it wasn’t noise or the camp leaving Robert tired and restless.
Dare he say it, but he rather suspected that it was the absence of his wife! Bar the occasional night or two at his club in London, Robert hadn’t slept alone for quiet a number of years. Definitely not for stretches of time as long as he was enduring now. God help him, he truly was a pathetic sap.
Sitting up against the narrow headboard, he closed his eyes and let himself sigh deeply. Any moment now, the camp bugler would sound Reveille and another night’s torment would be at an end. Any moment now, Robert would instead have to begin the laborious task of crawling out of bed so he could prepare himself for the day.
Like the calm before the storm, the world beyond his cramped but cosy room seemed to almost be holding its breath.
… And there it is, he thought to himself as the first golden notes echoed faintly through the pre-dawn light. In the room next door, young Lieutenant Henderson’s brass alarm clock also began to ring shrilly.
Time to crack on then.
In fairly short order, Robert had wrestled himself into a fresh under-shirt and his serge breeches and gone to begin the daily orderly procession to the bathroom. As the most senior officer in the building, he had precedence, but that meant he had to get a move on as it wouldn’t do to hold everyone else up.
Upon his return, socks and boots were the next order of business. Rising to just above his ankles, his boots were good, strong leather, and while they weren’t yet as worn-in as he would like, they were excellently waterproof. Then it was time to wind his loathsome puttees around his lower legs, but he’d only just reached for the first one when a polite knock sounded on the door. Private Whitmore undoubtedly, come to act as soldier-servant.
Robert abandoned the blasted puttee and went to let him in.
“Major,” Whitmore greeted him, standing crisply to attention. He didn’t salute, but Robert wasn’t wearing his hat so he wasn’t supposed to. Apparently that was the way of things in the RAMC, even if Robert’s infantry-trained sensibilities were rather offended by the lack.
Whitmore was a reserve army corporal but was, as they say, getting a bit long in the tooth and thus had been held back from overseas service. Originally an infantryman with the Northumberland Fusiliers, he’d been in the army long enough to have been considered an old hand in the last war, and almost certainly would have been retiring for good about now if not for the mess on the continent. Instead, he was here, acting as the military equivalent of a valet while scowling at anyone who dared suggest he ought to hand in his uniform and go back home to his grandchildren.
“Corporal,” Robert greeted in turn. “As you were.”
He waved the man in.
Whitmore was rather more chatty than he ought to be, but he was also an efficient sort of chap so it didn’t take him long to see Robert the rest of the way dressed. And the chatter wasn’t too bad, given that he didn’t seem to expect much of a response to his ramblings; that is to say, it was irritating, but not quite enough to be worth making a proper point about.
“… So I had to explain it to him sir,” he was now saying as he finished squaring the buckles of Robert’s Sam Browne belt. “Batmen are for cavalry officers, not infantry or corps-men. Even if the officer mounts for marching, his man is still a soldier-servant, not a batman. One looks after an officer, the other spends most of his time looking after the officer’s horse.”
“Indeed,” Robert intoned, though he didn’t see why it particularly mattered. Bates’ had never been especially hung-up on the difference back in Africa, but he supposed Whitmore was correct in the technical sense.
“It’s the principal of the matter,” Whitmore continued on cheerily. “If you’re going to do a thing, you might as well see it done right. And if you’re going to name a thing… Well, I needn’t spell it out, sir.”
“Indeed Corporal,” Robert repeated in a slightly more irate tone.
Thankfully, Whitmore seemed to catch on to Robert’s growing exasperation, as he straightened up and quickly clipped through the last of his duties with far more military discipline.
Breakfast downstairs then proved to be a quiet and leisurely affair, with only Robert and two of the Lieutenants in attendance. Robert helped himself to a cup of café au lait as well as his usual portion of tea, hoping it might help him shake off the worst of his tired listlessness.
And then it was time to head outside and up to the camp.
The sun had risen by the time he was passing between the sentries posted at the front entrance, but it was a misty sort of morning, and a bitterly cold one at at that. He probably ought to feel bad for all the poor buggers sleeping out here in tents, but he reasoned that they’d all been provided with elevated wooden flooring to keep them off the frozen ground, as well as a little stove to complement their blankets.
And they wouldn’t be complaining about the cold right now, as the Sergeants seemed to have split them all into four groups and set them off running laps around the camp’s perimeter. Robert paused to watch the nearest group for a moment, and then made his way over to the wooden hut designated as the office block.
It was warm enough inside that he started to strip out of his greatcoat and hat as soon as the usual formalities were completed; the front half of the hut was where the unit’s complement of subalterns kept their desks, so there was quite a few of them to exchange salutes with. That done though, he started to make his way to the back of the room where a short corridor led to the more private offices; he and Major Brandon had a large one each, while the four Captains shared the two smaller ones between them.
Except he’d barely managed to sit behind his own desk before Major Brandon was knocking on his open door frame with a pinched look.
“Grantham,” Brandon greeted him with. “Apologies for launching straight into business, but I’ve just received a telephone call from London. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but apparently its time to be moving our current recruits on so that we can receive the next batch.”
He and Brandon were technically of the same rank, but Robert had gone to some pains to reassure the other officer that as the new boy to the corps, he was well aware that he was really only second fiddle. Thankfully it turned out that while Brandon was a damn good doctor, he had little to no patience for army logistics or politicking and so was very glad to have Robert to hand.
That’s not to say Brandon couldn’t do it when necessary – he’d just much rather… not.
“Already?” Robert replied to this news. He gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk and the Major perched himself on it carefully, his posture military-perfect. “But we’ve not yet had them four weeks!”
“I’m as mystified as you are,” Brandon sighed. “I gather that someone at General Headquarters has decided that as non combatants, four weeks is all they need. I suspect this will be the norm going forward.”
“They cannot be serious.”
Major Brandon pulled a face, his thick white moustache scrunching up. Clearly he agreed that it was a ridiculous state of affairs, but he also recognised they could do precisely sod all about it.
Robert echoed the other man’s sigh, resisting the urge to swear under his breath.
“We shall have to dispense with the initial fortnight of physical conditioning,” he started planning aloud. “And introduce the stretcher drills almost immediately. You would know much better than I how to go about condensing the medical lecture series, but I can think of a couple of ways we could combine some of the field exercises. Those few that I have observed at least.”
“Perhaps when the new men arrive, we could add an extra hour to the day,” Brandon suggested, though it was clear he found this idea distasteful. “The current group would obviously not stand for it, but if we are to replace them entirely… the fresh recruits would not know it had ever been otherwise.”
“Perhaps,” Robert grimaced, imagining the complaints from all the NCOs and other enlisted men who most likely wouldn’t be leaving.
“In any case, we have but three days before we’re to march them down to Bathampton station and put them on a train to Aldershot. It was not stated explicitly, but I am given to understand that they shall be put to work in Cambridge Hospital for a spell.”
Throughout his life, Robert had been to Aldershot several times, as the camp there was functionally (if not strictly on paper) the main headquarters of the British Army. There were multiple groups of brick barracks there, for quite a number of the various regiments and corps, as well as a large military hospital, an army rail depot, and a significant number of warehouses and munitions storage buildings.
In fact, it was fair to say that the town of Aldershot had only grown into existence because of how large the military camp was.
It was also fair to say, that the reason he and Major Brandon been instructed to establish a new training camp all the way out near Bath of all places, was because back in August, Aldershot had been so overrun with New Army recruits that they’d run out of fields to pitch tents in. They must had have requisitioned enough surrounding land to have solved that problem by now, but Robert still couldn’t say he understood the logic in cramming in even more men.
That at least, was a problem for someone other than him.
Brandon’s posture had slipped slightly as they’d talked, and he now leaned back so that he could pull one puttee-wrapped ankle onto his opposite knee. He had thick white sideburns to match the thick white moustache, and he tapped the left one with his first finger, the rhythm rapid but steady as he frowned thoughtfully
“At least it will be some months before anyone considers sending them overseas,” he hummed consideringly. “I am aware that we ran out of both regular and reserve Field Ambulances back in early October, but those in charge won’t be quite that desperate for replacements yet. No, they shall pull New Army orderlies who have been posted to the south coast base hospitals first, and then if they are still short, there will be a shuffle of men forward from the regional territorial hospitals.”
Chatham, Robert suspected, was one the base hospitals in question. He supposed he ought to send a message of warning through to his once-staff somehow. Via Bates perhaps? Or would that not be entirely cricket?
Brandon, oblivious to the turn of Robert’s thoughts, sighed in an exaggerated manner and tilted his head until his neck cracked loudly.
“Honestly, dear fellow,” he bemoaned slowly. “My main issue with with this crackpot plan of the war office, is that not a single one of our current batch of recruits has sat their Red Cross exam yet!”
It took a moment for the implications of that to sink in. When they did, Robert did swear under his breath this time.
Bloody hell! Vis-à-vis the Geneva Convention, you weren’t allowed to sew red crosses on your tunics or otherwise mark yourself as medic unless you’d passed an appropriate examination. Which meant they had less than three days to not only organise the sitting of said written exam, but also to mark all the damn things too! On top of everything else!
“Would you kill me,” Robert chuckled humourlessly. “If I simply buggered off back home on leave instead?”
“Grantham! I am tempted to order you hung, drawn and quartered for the mere suggestion!”
Anna was finding Downton to be a strange place to live and work since the outbreak of war.
It was rapidly approaching Christmas now, but the usual festive cheer that enveloped the house seemed rather absent this year. All the usual decorations had gone up of course, and plans for a grand Christmas dinner (both upstairs and down) were in the works, but it rather felt like everyone was simply putting a brave face on it.
Her Ladyship was missing his Lordship, Lady Mary was missing Mr Matthew, and all of the downstairs staff were missing Thomas and William.
Well. Mr Carson wasn’t missing specifically Thomas and William. No, it was fairly obvious that what the butler missed was having two properly trained footmen in the house, but the overall effect on the downstairs mood was more or less the same. Especially as Miss O’Brien was the other exception in that regard; she was positively gleeful that Thomas in particular had left, and her good cheer almost always made everyone else glum.
Case in point, the atmosphere in the servants’ hall was currently utterly tepid thanks to the presence of the odious Lady’s maid. When Anna had come and sat down to work on some lace half an hour ago, three of the house maids, two hall boys, and Mr Branson from outside had also been enjoying the quiet, but only ten minutes of O’Brien’s presence had whittled that down to just Anna and Florence.
And now O’Brien was reading a letter. And smirking.
Which of course, was extremely suspicious.
Watching the woman out of the corner of her eye, Anna looped another bead through the cuff decoration she was working on and pondered her options. Three years ago, she would have just shrugged it off as none of her business and left well enough alone, but Thomas had taught her better than that. What if it was part of another plot to oust Mr Bates from the house? What if she was spinning some scheme to embroil Thomas or William in trouble with the Army? Or what if the target was the Ladies or the reputation of the family?
Anna didn’t think it would be that last one as ruining the family would ultimately result in her ruining her own employment, but the point was that there could be anything written in that letter.
It might even be something entirely innocent and innocuous. But then why was she smirking?
Anna wove in silence for a few more minutes, watching as O’Brien carefully folded the letter back up and tucked it inside her cardigan. In an ideal world, Anna would now think of a way to sneak a peak at it, but short of creeping into the woman’s bedroom and hoping that it had just been left in plain view, she didn’t think she’d manage it.
Perhaps Mr Bates would have a better idea?
Slowly, Anna began to pack away her small lace frame and weaving implements, placing them all in the wicker basket that she kept for that purpose. Then, carefully not looking at O’Brien, she murmured a farewell to Florence and picked her way around the table, intending to head towards the boot room. She and Mr Bates had not been secluding themselves in there often now that Thomas and William weren’t here to act as pseudo-chaperones, but–
The dressing gong reverberated through the house. Anna sighed and diverted her path towards the back staircase instead.
“Good evening m’Lady,” she curtsied as she entered the Ladies’ dressing room. Lady Edith was already seated in front of the leftmost dressing table, peering critically at one eyebrow.
“Anna,” came the fond reply. “I passed Sybil on the way up – she’s just gone to speak to Mama quickly and then she’ll be along.”
“Very good m’Lady.”
“Mary on the other hand,” Lady Edith continued with an eye roll, “was still ensconced in Papa’s study when the gong rang. Hunched over those ledgers again, you know? You might have to ask Carson to chase her out, if you want to have her dressed in time for dinner.”
“We’ll give her a few minutes yet m’Lady, before we resort to anything drastic.”
But then twenty minutes went by and there was still no sign of the eldest Crawley daughter. Anna had dressed both Lady Edith and Lady Sybil in their evening attire, had put their hair up in artful twists, and was now helping Lady Sybil select a pair of earrings and still, Lady Mary had not appeared.
“Perhaps I should go and ask Mrs Hughes to speak to her,” Anna fretted as she lifted another jewellery box out of the dresser drawer. She really would have to rush through Lady Mary’s routine now, to have her ready by the first course – and it would have to be the second course they aimed for, if she didn’t come upstairs within the next ten minutes.
“She really is being frightfully inconsiderate,” Lady Edith huffed in recrimination.
“I doubt she has done this deliberately,” Lady Sybil refuted with much more forgiveness. “She will have heard the dressing gong and then accidentality become engrossed in her work again. It is so terribly easy to loose track of the time when one is engaged in an interesting pursuit!”
Anna borrowed another leaf out of Thomas’ book and simply made a non-committal noise. That way she wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing with either of the Ladies.
“Here,” Lady Sybil then said as she reached up and took an earring from Anna. “There is only mine and Edith’s jewellery to choose now and I dare say we can manage that ourselves. That should give you a few minutes to pop downstairs.”
“Are you sure m’Lady?”
“Of course!”
Anna quickly bustled out of the room and went looking for the housekeeper.
She found her overseeing the transfer of the starter dishes from the kitchen up to the upstairs pantry. That was ordinarily a job for the second footman, but as they currently only had Benji, Mr Carson had (very grudgingly) conceded that Harold and Gracie could be trusted with the task in lieu. Anna quickly relayed the Lady Mary situation to her, hoping that she could leave the matter in her hands and return to finish her own current task.
But Mrs Hughes only sighed and shook her head.
“Mr Carson won’t thank me for leaving downstairs unsupervised right before dinner,” she lamented. “If Mr Bates were available, I could leave watching over the junior staff in his capable hands, but alas he’s still up in the attics. No, I shall have to remain here for the moment.”
“Of course Mrs Hughes,” Anna demurred, wondering what on earth she was supposed to do instead. Perhaps she could nip up to the dining room and ask Mr Carson to see to her? He wouldn’t thank her for disturbing him just as he was completing the table setting, but it looked as if there was no other option.
But it seemed that the housekeeper did have an alternative idea.
“You shall have to speak to Lady Mary yourself,” she declared boldly. “You’ve a sensible head on your shoulders Anna, I trust you to approach her with the delicacy and tact required.”
Anna hesitated. Mrs Hughes shot her a knowing look.
“Perhaps we shall neglect to mention this arrangement to Mr Carson, hmm?”
“...That might be wise, Mrs Hughes.”
The housekeeper chuckled fondly. Anna returned her smile and then turned and scurried back towards the stairs again; if she wanted to escape Mr Carson’s notice, it would be best to get this over with quickly.
As Lady Edith had stated, Lady Mary was sitting behind her father’s desk in his study, peering down at a collection of large tome-like books. She held a silver fountain pen inlaid with gold in one delicate hand, while the other was nudging a red bead on an abacus back and forth, her expression one of intense concentration.
There was no door to knock on, so Anna sucked up her courage and called out a gentle my Lady.
“Anna!” Lady Mary exclaimed in surprise, her head shooting up. She blinked a couple of times and then seemed to notice that darkness had fallen beyond the windows. Doing a double take, her gaze then swivelled over to the mantelpiece clock and her mouth dropped open slightly. “My goodness!” she said. “I’ve not paid attention to the time at all, have I?”
“You’ve a lot on your mind recently, m’Lady.”
Lady Mary grimaced, no doubt recognising that as the tactful platitude that it was.
“It turns out that running an estate is rather more involved than I first thought,” she admitted quietly as she stood and began closing the books. “Or rather, I should say that it involves a great deal more arithmetic than I had imagined. I think I’ve got a grasp on the agricultural spending now, but the abbey finances have my head in a spin. Did you know that my sisters and I each have an annual dress budget that’s four times your entire yearly pay? And I do mean each of us!”
Anna did know that, but had no idea how to say as much without sounding impertinent. Instead, she stepped forward and began to help with tidying the desk.
“And that’s to say nothing of the madness held within Papa’s investment portfolio,” Lady Mary continued. “It does seem to be making money but I find myself rather stumped as to how!”
“I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it,” Anna told her with a polite smile.
“I shall,” she declared, head held high. And then, with another guilty glance at the clock, she added, “But that is a challenge for another day, I should think.”
Indeed it was.
And so at last Lady Mary made her way upstairs.
Chatham in the winter was proving to be much like Chatham in the autumn; cold, wet, and frequently foggy. Storms and squalls still blew in from the North Sea regularly, only now they carried an icy edge as well as a promise of damp misery. And when it was dry, it was also either overcast or frosty. Or both.
But despite the poor weather, things were going alright for Thomas.
The eleven of them had been posted to Fort Pitt Hospital for nearly two months now and life had settled into a steady and manageable routine. As a general rule, they now all alternated one week on wards with one week doing everything else that needed doing around the buildings and grounds, and it was a hot topic of debate as to which half of the schedule was preferable.
Wards was Thomas’ firm opinion, even though he always spent what seemed like half his shift slogging away in one of the scullery rooms. He would never admit it out loud, but tackling the mounds of washing up that built up three times a day had certainly given him a new sense of respect for poor Daisy back in Downton. Or at the very least, a new appreciation for why she moaned and complained so often.
But yes, bastarding greasy plates and cutlery aside, life was alright.
“Do you know what I think the best part of wards is?” Lucky-Luck asked as he and Thomas methodically stripped the beds of all the patients who’d just been escorted down to the chapel for the Sunday Catholic service. The Anglican one had been earlier in the morning, and Thomas had gone only because people looked at you funny if you appeared to be abstaining from religion entirely. “Not having to do bloody parade out in the sodding rain! Look at it out there, it’s absolutely pissing it down!”
The two of them were assigned to ward K today, which consisted of two adjacent officer’s medical rooms with a scullery and a sink room in-between them. Medical, Thomas had learnt, simply meant that the ward was a general one for those that had an injury or condition which didn’t fit into the other more specialist categories – eye wounds, limb fractures, venereal diseases, and so on.
“Indeed,” Thomas agreed. “I’m not looking forward to trudging into town in it later.”
Lucky-Luck made the appropriate conciliatory noise and then asked, “You one of the lucky bastards whose Sunday pass was granted then?”
“I am. Though I’ll have you know it’s the first one I’ve put in for since we got here. Usually I let them with kiddies have them and just make do with the few hours we occasionally get on weekday evenings.”
Luck mumbled an acknowledgement at that and then hefted an armful of bedding over to the linen laundry sacks. Once he’d stuffed it all in, he hastened over to the where Thomas had left his notepad and dutifully added a tally mark for each item he’d just stripped from the bed; they all knew better than to risk the wrath of the laundry-wallah.
Thomas then shoved his own share of used bedding into the sacks and added his own tally marks.
That complete, he peered around critically and grunted, “Right then. Sister’s still in absentia so I reckon we can abscond to the scullery for five minutes before we tackle remaking these beds.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Luck agreed readily.
Lucky-Luck was still being a Methodist about the temptation that was smoking, so it was just Thomas who pulled a pack out and lit up once they were out of sight. If they’d have been on a men’s ward rather than an officers’, he could have smoked while out there stripping beds, but it wasn’t the done thing to smoke in front of the brass any more than it was to smoke in front of your social betters.
“Reckon I’ve got the time to make myself a cup of tea?” Luck asked, poking desultorily at the spirit stove and kettle.
“Reckon you might,” Thomas told him with a tilt of his head, “If you start doing all this washing up while you wait for it to boil.”
“...I suppose I did ought to look busy in case the Sister comes back.”
Thomas grunted wordlessly and took another drag of his fag.
When he’d smoked it down to his fingers, he threw the butt in the designated pot and left Lucky to his damp and greasy fate. He tackled the bed making first, then moved on to gathering up the patients’ abandoned tea cups. That led into dusting, and then into sweeping and he was just about to reluctantly give in and go help Luck with the breakfast dishes when Sister Easley finally returned.
Instead, he found himself sent to accompany Dawson – a freshly handless artillery Lieutenant – to the officer's baths.
And so went the rest of the morning, until it was time to deal with the patients’ midday meal. The ambulatory ones were rounded up and sent off to the officer’s mess hall, while the rest were provided with trays in bed. Thomas hung around the ward long enough to see everyone given a cup of tea to wash their food down with, and then smugly fished his leave pass out.
After a very quick dash over to their billet, he buttoned his greatcoat up round his neck and set off into Chatham.
The hospital and grounds were very conveniently located only one road up from the town’s high street, so it only took five minutes to walk from the front gates over to the café he’d pre-selected. Situated on the ground floor of an end-terrace building, it had been doing very well for itself recently, the result of it being the sort of place where it was seen as respectable for enlisted army men to meet their families regardless of their social class. And it also likely helped that the bloke who worked behind the counter most days brewed tea so strong that the tannins would probably strip the enamel off your teeth if you drank it too often.
The little bell above the door chimed as Thomas hurried in out of the rain. Pulling his peaked army cap off, he glanced around the modest space and was pleased to discover that only a couple of the tables had been claimed so far, leaving half a dozen others free. Beelining for the one in the far corner, he nodded politely at a Navy bloke and his wife who smiled at him, and then pulled out a chair and started to shrug his damp coat off.
Once he’d hung it over the back of his chair, he settled in to wait.
Less than ten minutes later, the little door bell chimed again. Thomas looked up and let himself smirk.
“Private Barrow,” Mr Bates greeted him warmly once he’d limped over. “You’re looking well.”
Thomas had already pushed himself back to his feet and now reached over the table to shake the other man’s hand.
“Thank you, Mr Bates; it’s quite wondrous what being out from under Carson’s thumb does for one’s constitution!”
Bates laughed, clearly appreciating the glib remark.
In fairly short order, the two men had bought themselves a pot of the infamous tea to share, as well as a bowl of soup and a slice of cake each. They exchanged the usual pleasantries as they poured their first cups – mostly complaints about the abhorrent weather – but by the time the scalding liquid had cooled enough to actually drink it, they’d moved on to far more interesting topics.
“So now Anna is worried that she’s plotting something nefarious again,” Bates grimaced, having just finished explaining that Miss O’Brien seemed to be returning to her old tricks; smirking at letters, and skulking about, among other things.
“She really is an odious woman,” Thomas sneered.
Bates shook his head silently and dunked a small chunk of crusty bread into his soup.
“I’d hoped that whatever queer mood it was that overtook her just before the garden party was going to be here to stay,” he remarked quietly. “But alas, she seems to be getting over whatever it was that had her being so meek and mild.”
“You’ll just have to keep an eye on her,” Thomas shrugged. “Wait for her to tip her hand.”
“Hmmm,” agreed Mr Bates.
“I’m glad we don’t have anyone like her at the hospital, that’s for sure. I think the closest anyone comes is Lloyd, but he’s mostly just a poncy git.”
“Ah, I think William mentioned him in one of his letters. Posh chap, spends most of his time either pontificating or talking about his bygone school days?”
“That’s the one,” Thomas nodded. “He seems convinced that he ought to be a commissioned officer really, but its fairly obvious he can’t even afford to supply his own uniform. How he thinks he’s going to fund the rest of an officer’s lifestyle is bloody well beyond me.”
“We had one or two like that in Africa,” Bates commiserated with him. “Just let him keep running his mouth; either an officer or an NCO will hear it eventually and then he’ll find himself hoisted on his own petard.”
Thomas tipped his head sideways in acknowledgement of that suggestion – he was fairly sure it was a tactic the Downton staff had used on him several times before Bates had come along and he’d learned to just keep his bloody mouth shut.
The café was starting to fill up now, the ambient noise level rising as more men came in with their wives and children. A Sapper – a solider from the Royal Engineer corps, that was – claimed the square table to Bates’ left, and Thomas absently noted that he was a rather handsome chap. His brown hair was slightly longer than regulation and so curled around his ears, and his pretty eyes glinted in the weak sunlight filtering in through the rain lashed windows.
“But you’re getting on alright?” Bates asked, drawing Thomas’ attention back to him. “Not much to complain about other than this Lloyd fellow?”
“It’s the army, there’s always something to complain about,” Thomas snorted. “Doing parade in the mud and rain, cold food in the mess hall, the sodding dinner tin. Honestly, I swear to god that if I ever find out who designed those bloody dinner tins, I’ll string them up like them Vikings used to. A spread eagle, or whatever it’s called when they crack your ribs outwards.”
“That bad, hmm?”
Bates was smiling at him fondly as he asked, so Thomas was easily able to deduce that the valet was deliberately giving him an opportunity to have a good moan. More fool Bates; Thomas was desperate to have a good moan.
“A dinner tin,” he began to explain with a derisive sneer, “is a three foot long solid metal trough designed as a torture device for innocent medical orderlies. They each have three compartments and a sort of false bottom that runs entire length, one that’s meant to be filled with hot water to keep the food warm. So of course, once the compartments actually are full of food, the damnable things weigh so much that it takes two of us just to lift it off the kitchen trolley.”
“Goodness. They do sound bothersomely heavy.”
“It’s not even the weight I really object to,” Thomas huffed, gesticulating with his soup spoon. “Carting stretchers around is much worse in that respect. No, it’s the grease I loathe, Bates. The grease.”
This time, Bates merely raised an eyebrow.
Thomas cheerfully continued his tirade.
“It doesn’t matter what food the cookhouse puts in the compartments, it all inevitably congeals in the base. Beef suet, pudding batter, milk skim, cold treacle, broccoli buds, stodgy gravy. All of it. And of course, it being three foot long means it doesn’t fit in the blasted sink. Add in that dry stores never issue you enough soda to last the week, and you’ve created the perfect washing nightmare!”
“And I suppose if you don’t clean it properly, whoever runs the cookhouse stores threatens to have your guts for garters?”
“Indeed,” Thomas concluded bitterly. The sergeant responsible for all of the hospital’s food serving implements was appropriately referred to as a the pan-wallah, and while he wasn’t quite as curmudgeonly as the laundry-wallah, he wasn’t far short.
“At least you don’t have to polish all the silver any more,” Bates joked. “Carson’s had me helping Benjamin with it, now there’s only one footman.”
“I suppose there’s not much proper valeting work to be done with his Lordship off at his camp.”
“No,” Bates grimaced. “There isn’t. In fact, there’s so little of it that Mr Carson had to be talked out of giving me the sack! Surplus to needs, was the phrase he used.”
“Bastard.”
Bates heaved a knowing sigh rather than agreeing verbally. Thomas sipped at his tea and silently thanked God that dealing with Carson wasn’t his problem any more.
“It was Mrs Hughes who talked him into keeping me on,” the valet eventually continued. “He’d waited until his Lordship had already left to tell me I ought to move on of course, so that he couldn’t be overruled easily. But Mrs Hughes reminded him that while Lord Grantham may be physically away from the estate, he was still in range of a telegram and wouldn’t be best pleased to hear I’d been sent away without his approval. Especially as he plans on visiting at least once a month. So now I’m to keep my job for the duration of his absence so long as I pitch in with other tasks around the house.”
“Like polishing the silver,” Thomas huffed.
“Like polishing the silver,” Bates echoed him. “And ironing the newspapers, and washing the crystal, and helping Anna with the Ladies’ dress alterations. Turns out there’s plenty to keep me busy once you start thinking outside the box, even considering the restrictions imposed by my leg.”
“Sounds like you’ve enough to be going on with then,” Thomas made himself say, instead of the they’ve got you sewing girls clothes!? that initially sprung to mind. It was probably a bit hypocritical to sneer at the man for doing woman’s work when he was technically a bloody nurse himself now.
Technically.
That word was doing a lot of heavy lifting to be honest, as the orderlies weren’t allowed to do any of the actual medical work, not when there were plenty of actual nurses in the hospital to do it. Apparently that wasn’t true over in France and Belgium, but here in merry old England, the nurses did the nursing, and the orderlies stuck to being general dog’s bodies.
It was a little bit irritating, when they’d had all that first aid training back in the Leicester camp. But they were still getting lectures from the Medical Officers at least once a week, and you picked up quite a bit of stuff just being around patients so often, so it wasn’t too bad overall. He wished that–
Thomas’ train of thought was cut off completely when David Awbrey suddenly barrelled into the café absolutely dripping wet, both his hat and his khaki greatcoat missing. His head swivelled round rapidly until he spotted Thomas sitting in the corner, at which point he began almost-shoving his way over to him.
“Barrow!” the young curly haired Welshman gasped when he reached the table. “I couldn’t wait for you to come back to the billet to hear the news! That Major everyone keeps seeing walking around, the one with the star shaped cap badge–”
“He’s a Coldstream Guard,” Thomas interrupted.
“–Yeah, him. Well, turns out he’s been assessing the hospital’s efficiency and now he’s decided there’s more orderlies than there needs to be. We all just got called into our mess hall so they could line us all up on parade for the Lieutenant-Colonel. And well… As soon as we were dismissed, I snuck out the side gate and legged it down here to tell you!”
“...Tell me what?” Thomas demanded. He could probably guess what, but...
“That straight after Christmas next week, they’re sending our section over to France!”