Downton Abbey Comment Ficathon
With the new season upon us, and fandom all extra-enthusiastic, I figured now would be a great time for this. Because there can never be enough Downton Abbey fic, and there certainly isn't enough now!
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It shames her to say this, but she’s not looked at her second daughter for some five or six years now.
Not truly looked, not properly looked, not when you look at your child and see not only what she is but who she is, who she might become, what lies buried deep beneath the skin. She finds herself doing this all the time with Mary - darling Mary, who weaves dramas like other women might weave tapestries, glittering and golden and drawing all eyes towards her - she can’t be in the same room with Mary without looking at her and wondering what’s inside. And Sybil - more and more she turns to see her youngest child watching her with soft, quizzical eyes and she begins to think How, in all this grand English pomp and ceremony did we ever create a girl like you?
But Edith. Edith is a mystery.
It takes her by surprise, one particularly sunny afternoon sitting in the garden, to glance up from her novel and see a perfect stranger striding along across the grass. A friend of the girls’? she thinks, and raises a hand to greet her. But no - another look and she sees this young woman, clad in men’s trousers and a tatty old tweed jacket dug out from one of Robert’s trunks, is her middle daughter.
It shouldn’t truly be a shock to her, but Edith is quite wonderful out there in the sunlight and the first blossoms in the trees.
Mary is fashionable and Sybil is lovely, but Edith is what men might call ‘fair’, a true country girl, reminiscent of spring and summer and autumn all rolled into one. Her cheeks are flushed with colour, her hair splays like knotted grass beneath a crooked hat. She strides out with hearty, confident movements; her face cast back to receive the beams of the sun. Something has changed, and Cora realises with her heart in her mouth that she appears comfortable in her skin for the first time in an age.
When they were little, in their nursery, it was always Edith who would toddle up to her - she was never a confident walker, even at the age of five she was tripping over her feet - and curl up into her mother’s lap. Her sisters would plan great adventures and expeditions and plans to tease the servants, and there Edith would be, contemplatively sucking her thumb, her head nestled into Cora’s shoulder. She always said she liked it better there.
Where oh where did my clumsy little girl go? she thinks to herself in abject wonder.
And then, right on the heels of that thought: I see you. Oh, my darling, I see you.
“Hello!” By now Edith’s almost on top of her, mud and dust streaked down the side of one cheek, breathing heavily. “I’ve just come back from the Drake farm; I was on my way in to change.”
She nods, cautiously; faced with this new creature she isn’t quite sure what to do with herself. “Good, good.” Can it really be that she doesn’t know how to speak with her own daughter. “How was it?”
To her everlasting embarrassment, Edith looks surprised she’s even asked.
“Rather well, actually.” This little encounter done with, she smiles, turns to go.
We said Edith would be the one to care for us in our old age. Can she be slipping away from us already?
“Wait!” Sunbeams thread through her fingers as she reaches out, snatches at her daughter by the sleeve. Edith’s hands are as warm as the sunlight. “I…would like you to tell me a little more about your work on the farm.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Edith looks around, as if certain she’s the victim of a practical joke. “You don’t…want me to go and fetch Papa, or Mary, or anyone like that?”
“No darling.” Cora turns and signals to one of the gardeners labouring peacefully under the hedges; within seconds a second chair is brought to her side. She pats it hopefully. “I want to talk about you.”
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Where oh where did my clumsy little girl go? she thinks to herself in abject wonder.
And then, right on the heels of that thought: I see you. Oh, my darling, I see you.
Just gorgeous. ♥
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As a middle child, this touched me deeply. Bravo!
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--frostyblossom
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