igenlode | A Year in Shorthand (Reply)

So here's my "Downton Abbey" story... The scene headings are taken from actual chapter titles of a 1913 shorthand manual!

A Year in Shorthand

* Directions to the student *

Mr. Carson, at the head of the table, cleared his throat sonorously, and the chatter in the servants' hall died away as if by magic. He had the household post in his hands; Gwen caught sight of a square envelope among the rest and felt her heart miss a beat in what was half terror, half anticipation. It couldn't be — not so soon — could it?

"This is for you, William." A smudged letter on cheap greyish paper: the young second footman shot to his feet, all elbows and knees as usual, and took his post with pink cheeks and a murmur of thanks. He still got homesick, Gwen knew. Those few scrawled lines from his father up at the farm would be carried round until they fell apart at the fold.

"And there's a package for you, Gwen." Mr. Carson smiled down at her benignly, and Gwen bobbed to her feet in turn, reaching for the brown-paper packet with an eagerness she couldn't hide.

"Thank you, Mr. Carson." One glance at the address — "Miss Gwen Dawson" beautifully inscribed in a regular copperplate hand — was enough to tell her that this was the correspondence she'd been waiting for. She'd sent off the postal order barely a week ago: gone in to Thirsk on her half-day to hand the money in through the window at the big post-office there to avoid awkward questions.

But she hadn't expected to get a reply this morning. She wasn't ready...

Everyone round the table seemed to be staring at her. Gwen could feel her face going as pink as William's in the way that she hated, an unbecoming colour that clashed with the carrot-red of her hair. She'd been teased about that hair often enough at school. At least at Downton it was always pinned up out of the way behind her housemaid's cap.

Not that it had stopped Thomas passing a few choice remarks about it when she first arrived. His good looks and devastatingly agile tongue had kept her in awe of him for weeks, until the glamour had worn off and she'd started to notice that for all those brains of his the senior footman was bone-idle and not above petty dishonesty where their employers were concerned...

Not above a little idle malice, either, when it came to personal secrets. His eyes were quick with curiosity, and Gwen slid the packet hurriedly into the folds of her apron beneath the table.

"It'll be the gloves I left at home, come Mothering Sunday. Mam said she'd send them on when she laid hands on them." Gwen knew she was pinker than ever, but she'd have to hope Thomas hadn't got enough of a look to distinguish the black ink of that fine office hand from her mother's straggling capitals.

Anna, sitting next to her, was giving her a funny look. She knew better than anyone just where those gloves were — she'd helped Gwen dab a stain out with milk only this Sunday, and lent her some paper and a fold of lavender to put them away in a drawer of their shared little bedroom — but she'd cover for Gwen without question if she had to. The two of them had worked together more than long enough for that.

"I'll take that up to our room, if you like," Anna offered quietly as the buzz of conversation around the table began again and attention ebbed. "I've finished breakfast, anyway — I've got a moment before we do the drawing-room."

As head housemaid, she wouldn't be questioned. Gwen nodded and slid the precious package across into Anna's lap. She felt rather guilty at not sharing the secret — she was sure her friend was expecting confidences later — but the fewer people at Downton who knew what she was doing, the better. She didn't think she'd have the nerve to go through with it if they all knew.

Even kind Mrs Hughes would say she was getting above herself, and no wonder. The housekeeper had been in service all her life, since she was no older than Gwen. She would never understand how anyone could feel trapped by this life that they led, or aspire to more than a ring of keys and the rule of a house full of staff...

Gwen Dawson had been born with nothing. She wasn't like William, the only son of a small farmer with stock and fields of his own, and the apple of his parents' eye. She was the eldest of seven, brought up in a tied cottage with her brothers and sisters by a father who was a common labourer — an unlettered farmhand who came in each night too tired to talk — and a place as maid at Downton Abbey was the best chance she'd ever had. She got her wages and bed and board, and a room shared with Anna instead of four little sisters... and it was wickedly ungrateful of her to want more.

But she did.

* Long vowels *

It wasn't until hours later that Gwen herself managed to snatch enough time to slip away up the back stairs and break the seal on the big manila envelope. Anna had left it on her pillow. tucked discreetly beneath the smoothed-down counterpane. Too hurried and excited to be careful any longer, Gwen pulled the flap open and caught up the thick sheaf of papers inside. The elaborate letterhead of the Phonetic Institute swam up from the page before suddenly dizzy eyes.

So it was real, then. She'd paid, and they'd accepted her on their course. She was going to learn shorthand. She was going to be a secretary.

The crisp feel and faintly inky scent of freshly printed paper in her hands set her heart beating a little faster. Soon she too would be handling papers like these every day of her life. She wouldn't be up to her knees in the cow-byre like her father, or up to her elbows in dusters and polish like the rest of the maids here at Downton. She would be the first in her family to earn a living with her head, and not with the sweat of her brow. It was what she'd wanted ever since she was a little girl.

She'd been the best scholar in the village, everyone had said that. Even mean cats like Libby Thwaites, who'd pulled her hair and called her Carrots, had copied her spellings. She'd written the neatest hand of any of the girls, and in her last year at school she'd won the composition prize for her page on "Heroes of the British Empire". The Vicar himself had written on the flyleaf of the Prayer Book he'd handed her, and she'd stood up in the classroom in front of the whole school and they'd all clapped.

Gwen had always known that she'd have to leave and go out to work like all the rest of them. She'd learnt to read and write and figure, and that was as much and more as any girl like her needed. And she didn't want to be a woman student at one of the new colleges, aping the men and getting laughed at, or even a scholarship girl at Whitefriars High School, twenty miles away from home in the big town, where the other girls would all have pianos and parlours and look down their noses at a farmhand's daughter.

But she knew she was quick, and bright, and made for better things than a lifetime spent cleaning other people's houses. And she'd seen the lady secretaries at the rent-office in Thirsk, with their high-collared blouses pinned just so and their busy fingers flying across the page as fast as a man could speak. Vicar couldn't do that, for all his book-learning. Mr. Carson couldn't do it, and no more — the thought quailed before her own daring — no more could Lord Grantham, even if he was an Earl with land as far as the eye could see.

Gwen could. She was sure she could.

So when she'd come across the advertisement for correspondence courses from the Phonetic Institute in Bath, in that old newspaper she'd found in the boot-room, it had seemed like a sign. More than that — it had seemed meant.

A sudden clatter of hoofs echoed up from outside, carried on some fluke of the brisk March wind, and Gwen dropped the papers on her bed and scrambled over to the high dormer window in a momentary panic as to whether there were more guests arriving that she hadn't been told about. But it was only Lady Edith's grey being led round from the stableyard, stolid middle-aged Lynch, the groom, holding the mare as tight as if she'd been apt to bolt. Which she was not; even without knowing Lady Edith for a poor rider, farm-bred Gwen could tell a sluggish mount when she saw one.

Mr. Patrick had decided to join his Lordship in riding out round the estate, then. Nothing else could have caused the grey to be brought round in a hurry, when there had been no word of Lady Edith accompanying her father before...

It was a shame, really, to see the way she trailed round after her cousin when Mr. Patrick, kind as he was, never seemed to notice. Poor Edith. The middle daughter of an Earl couldn't do shorthand — she couldn't so much as boil an egg for herself. And she couldn't even win a man away from the older sister who didn't want him.

With a face and a sour tongue like hers, it wasn't likely she'd ever marry, Gwen thought. And marriage was the only way for a born lady to make a life for herself away from her father's house... Abandoning the window Gwen plumped back down onto her bed with a jangle of springs, and prepared to spend the last few minutes of her precious free time on the printed pages that were to form her own escape from Downton Abbey.

The top sheet was a standard letter thanking her for her payment. She discarded that. The next few pages seemed to be a long theoretical introduction... Gwen studied the small print with increasing dismay, as phrases like "imperfect and cumbrous instrument", "coincide minutely" and — worst of all — "explodents, continuants and coalescents" floated up from the rolling syllables under her eye.

Well, she didn't need to know all that, she reasoned. Shorthand worked. The course had said anyone could learn it in a year. It hadn't said anything about how it worked.

She put the introduction to one side and reached for the first page of the course. This was more like it. Exercise One: the nib, the notebook, the desk. Maybe she could use the top of the chest of drawers? The new nib she'd bought would be just fine.

The diagrams on the paper looked more like geometry than the pothooks she'd seen the secretaries writing. She flicked ahead to the end of the section she'd been sent, saw loops and hooks, and was reassured. That came later, seemingly... Puzzled but willing, she turned back past the rows of thick and thin strokes to the first actual exercise. "Write the first sound heard in the following words..."

Lips moving, Gwen Dawson spelt her way through the impossible list with a sense of rapidly increasing despair. She wasn't even going to be able to start. The whole page was full of trick words that took a head full of book-learning to read out, and she didn't know what half of them meant, let alone how to say them.

The final straw was the monstrosity that read "p-hl-eg-m". Gwen stared at it and felt the tears spill over. How could you say that out loud? How could you do an exercise that might as well be written in some heathen language? How was she ever going to be a secretary now?

* Grammalogues *

One thing about life at Downton, it didn't leave much time for feeling sorry for yourself.

Gwen had splashed her face with water from the ewer, repinned her cap, and almost run down the steep stairs to catch up with Maisie, the under-housemaid, before the girl could do too much damage to the ornaments in the library. Mrs Hughes was very particular about how the dusting should be done and the order in which everything had to be put back, and with his Lordship out for the afternoon it was a good chance to get everything dealt with at once. But she'd strictly told Gwen not to leave Maisie alone in there, and they'd been due to start five minutes ago. If the younger girl took it into her head to start getting the dust out of the curtains, they'd be cleaning in the corners for a month of Sundays...

Hard work was the best cure for tears, her mother had always said, and it was a piece of good Yorkshire sense that Gwen had had plenty of opportunity to put to the test. As usual, her mother was right.

Outside the library windows, stubborn yellow daffodils tossed and streamed flat under the wind only to spring back again obstinately upright. It was chilly for March, and the fire was laid but not lit. But Gwen barely noticed, half her attention on Maisie and the other half mulling fiercely over the challenge waiting for her upstairs.

There had to be a way round it. The girls that worked in those offices didn't have any fancy education — their accents were just as normal as any you'd hear back home. She wasn't going to be beaten at the very start.

For the rest of the day she didn't have so much as a moment to herself, and by the time she'd helped William clear the place settings after dinner was served, and Mr. Carson had locked away the silver, it didn't take much pretence to plead exhaustion and get to bed early. She pulled out the Introduction again and read through the long, pompous phrasing with determination as she shook out and plaited her hair for the night.

It is probable that the student will meet in these Exercises with some words that are unfamiliar... you could say that again, Gwen added silently. He is recommended in this case invariably to refer to a dictionary... the transcription of shorthand notes is all the more easy when the meaning of the words is perfectly understood by the writer.

Anna's quick step came along the corridor outside, and Gwen rolled over quickly away from the door and slipped her envelope under the mattress.

"Another day over, another day older..." Anna came in unpinning her cap and sat down with a sigh, wriggling black-stockinged toes on the linoleum. "You asleep, Gwen?"

"Not yet." Gwen turned over again, pulling the covers up around her ears for warmth. It wasn't quite cold enough for her breath to smoke about her face, but the nights were still chilly up here. "Anything downstairs that I missed?"

"Not much." Anna emerged from beneath her dress with a grunt and much waving of arms, and began rolling first one stocking down and then the other. "William played 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee'... he wanted you to sing, but you'd gone."

"I'm not singing 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee' with William Mason — people might get ideas." Not that it wasn't a pretty song, mind. "Anyway, he's sweet on Daisy in the kitchen — didn't you know?"

"You never!" The other girl's reaction to this tid-bit was all anyone could have hoped for, and kept them both pleasurably occupied until Anna slipped between the sheets and leaned over to blow out the light.

"Oh, I forgot—" She looked across at Gwen, the candle still burning. "Mrs Hughes says we're to strip the sheets from the guest-rooms tomorrow: Mr. Crawley and Mr. Patrick are going back early. A cable came while Mr. Patrick was out this afternoon — some Foreign Office business that's got to be seen to before they leave for America."

"Thomas'll be glad, then." The first footman had been acting as valet to both James Crawley and his son, and complaining loudly belowstairs about the extra duties.

"Don't be daft. You know he fancies himself as his Lordship's valet some day... and he'll miss Mr. Patrick's open-handed ways."

"We'll all miss Mr. Patrick." Gwen yawned. "Wonder if I'll still be here when he's Earl? Funny to think of him and Lady Mary as Lord and Lady Grantham."

But obliging and considerate as young Patrick Crawley undoubtedly was, she couldn't help hoping she'd be long gone from Downton by then. Working in some big town, with theatres and lending libraries and maybe even a new electric kinema...

The candle went out as Anna blew on it and lay back, and Gwen sat up in the darkness.

"Anna?"

"Mmm?"

"You... you don't have a dictionary, do you? One I could borrow, I mean?"

Anna giggled. "Gwen Dawson, I'm surprised at you. Whatever have you been up to?"

"I want to improve myself, that's all." Gwen was grateful her blush didn't show.

"Well, what makes you think I've got a dictionary?" A moment's silence in the little bedroom, as the window rattled in the wind. "There's always his Lordship's library. He's very kind — I'm sure he wouldn't mind you taking a quick look."

"Oh, I'd never dare..." The thought took her breath away: all those rows of volumes with their rough-edged pages and their worn leather covers. There had only ever been one book in her parents' cottage, and that was the prize she'd won at school.

She'd never dare to try... but all the same, she knew she would.

* Joined strokes *

The student should name aloud each shorthand stroke as he writes it, the opening exercises advised her. Satisfactory progress will only be made if a portion of time is devoted to the study EVERY DAY...

Both of which might be all very well for pimple-faced clerks studying in their employers' time, or girls in secretarial colleges, Gwen told herself, but when you were a housemaid in a place the size of Downton you had to make what time you could, and what practice you could. Right now she was busy making Lady Edith's bed with Anna; but in her mind's eye she was rehearsing strokes, thick and thin, curved and straight, and reciting their names under her breath as she did so.

She made a little mental chant of it, like the ABC they'd learned at school. "Ith, thee, ess, zee, shay — dee, bee, tee, chay, ray—"

"Gwen." Anna was looking at her strangely as they lifted and shook out the feather bed in unison, and the pit drained out of her stomach as she realised she'd been muttering out loud. "Gwen, what are you talking about?"

"I was just—" Gwen couldn't think of a single plausible explanation. She went on shaking the feather bed mechanically, until all the down had drifted over to Anna's end and she was left holding empty folds of cloth. She looked down at the result with dismay.

"I was just — just trying to find a rhyme, that's all." Even to her own ears it sounded lame, and Anna raised an eyebrow, starting to shake the feathers back into their proper place.

"Rhymes, dictionaries, parcels... I'm sure I don't know what's got into you, Gwen." Her eyes began to dance with the dawn of an unholy inspiration. "Or no, wait — I think I do."

She dropped the feather bed back onto its mattress, and shook open a fresh sheet from the pile they'd carried in, tossing the other side across to Gwen.

"Don't tell me you've started writing poetry... flowers in May, kisses in June? Now who's the lucky man to spark that off? Not Sweet William for real, I hope: I doubt the poor boy would ever get over the shock!"

Gwen had bent down to thrust the clean linen firmly under the mattress. Her face was scarlet, and she plucked at the surface of the sheet to smooth out a non-existent fold and stooped to tuck it home, taking advantage of the excuse to hide her hot colour. At least it gave her a few seconds to think...

Anna was already shaking out the top sheet by the time she looked up; the older girl's laugh was a kind one. "Don't look so scared... I was having you on, Gwen. I won't tell, if you don't want to say. I had a sister myself who sent in poetry to ladies' journals. She even won a five-shilling prize once."

It was a way out, and Gwen took it gratefully.

"I won't be winning any prizes, I don't think." She tucked in the second sheet and folded it back over Lady Edith's blankets as Anna restored the rest of the bedding from the back of the chair where she'd hung it. The bolster went back into position, and Gwen began shaking the pillows back into shape.

"I wouldn't want anyone reading anything I wrote—" another half-truth, skirting carefully around the edges of outright falsehood— "but it's good to think about something sometimes outside life in the servants' hall."

Beds and slop-pails and running gloves down dusty bannisters... a spasm of rebellious frustration shook her for a moment. Oh, Anna was smiling at her across the bed and murmuring agreement, but that was only because she was nice that way, and because she was a friend. Mrs Hughes and Anna and even Miss O'Brien — for all the lady's-maid liked to complain more about life in service than any of them — none of them could see beyond the bounds of Downton, or some other house like it. Gwen was the only one who wanted something more: something completely different.

"Well, I wish you'd let me see it, but I won't insist," Anna was saying, taking the pillows from Gwen's hands and stacking them back into place, and for a moment Gwen couldn't even remember what she was talking about. Poetry, that was it.

Now there was a joke. Anything less like poetry than those laboured copybook rows of strokes — chay, ray, hay, ell, jay — she couldn't imagine. She marked them mentally on the smooth page of Lady Edith's coverlet as she spread it, keeping their names firmly to herself.

A thick stroke. A thin stroke. An upward curve... and down again. Press hard in the centre of the curve and let the nib close again at the tail. A hairline downstroke. Remember the curve is the right-hand side of the copperplate 's'...

Sighing, she picked up the pile of clean sheets — now, thank goodness, decreased further by the sum of one more bed's worth of work this morning — and let Anna bundle up the used pair for the week's laundry, Maybe she couldn't find time to sit down and write out her shorthand drill before breakfast every day. But nothing was going to stop her doing all the practice she could in her head.

* Short vowels between strokes *

Mr. Crawley and Mr. Patrick were dead, and Downton would never be the same again.

The whole house seemed in shock, for a while. Even Daisy the kitchenmaid felt it, and for Mr. Carson it was worst of all, Gwen thought — it was as if the Family were his own flesh and blood and the double bereavement had been of his own son and grandson, rather than his employer's cousin and his heir.

He'd known Mr. Patrick all his life, of course, since the young man had been a small boy in knickerbockers trailing kites with a trio of little girls chasing after. Though Gwen, personally, could not picture Lady Mary ever allowing Mr. Patrick to set the pace, even when she still had her nursemaid in tow...

It was wrong of her so much as to think it, especially with poor sweet-natured Patrick so lately and tragically dead. But there had never been any doubt in Gwen's mind — or anyone else's — just who would have held the whip-hand when that long-awaited marriage finally took place. Lady Mary had never yet played second fiddle to any man, and no wedding was likely to change that. Least of all to a cousin she'd known since his cradle.

Mr. Carson could never have admitted as much, but he knew it too. Lady Mary could bend him round her little finger when she wanted to, for all her imperious ways. She'd always been his favourite, and as Mr. Patrick's wife there'd have been no question but that she gave the orders at Downton.

But it wasn't for the sake of Lady Mary's broken heart that Mr. Carson's world had shattered: indeed, Gwen sometimes thought privately that Lord Grantham's eldest daughter seemed to care less about Mr. Patrick's death than any of them. They'd all liked the young man belowstairs, and the thought of that hopeless end in the icy waters — with the boats filled with women and children rowing away — was enough to give Gwen herself the shivers. But for all that Mr. Carson had watched Mr. Patrick growing up and been closer perhaps to the Crawley family than anyone else in their employ, the true shock was the loss of Downton's future.

James Crawley had been heir-presumptive to the estate for fifteen years or more, and a familiar presence for longer than that. They'd all known that some day young Mr. Patrick would marry Lady Mary and inherit the title in his turn, and their children after him. The future had been known and secure, with a welcoming face.

Now the next Lord Grantham would be some remote relative who'd never seen the estate, and cared nothing for the household or any of its dependants. Lady Mary and her sisters would lose their home and their mother's rich inheritance. And no-one at Downton knew for certain what would happen next.

Even Gwen, who'd only been in service here a few years, felt it. She was sorry about Mr. Patrick for his own sake — he'd been a nice boy, as young William was a nice boy — though she'd scarcely known his father and couldn't claim any real regret at that loss. But she'd seen deaths enough, even in her short lifespan, from the little brother who'd died of a fever at eight days old to Jeb Althorpe who'd been larking on the haycart and fallen clean under the wheels as they brought the harvest home. Jeb had been only twenty-two, and he'd taken four days to die of it: Gwen still remembered the helpless look on his mother's face as she sat all those hours by his bedside watching her boy's life ebb away.

It was a tragedy that all those people had drowned on the Titanic, and truly sad that one of them had been Mr. Patrick whom she knew. But when she went through her days feeling numb and disconnected, it was not because a young man with a warm smile had died somewhere far away. It was because her world had been turned upside-down, and those in authority over her were reeling and insecure.

Mrs Hughes for one wasn't prepared to venture an opinion on what was to come. "We'll just have to wait and see what manner of man the new heir — this Matthew Crawley — may be," she'd said firmly when Daisy had broached the subject, and that was all that even Thomas had been able to get out of her.

But life went on. Bluebells in their masses were filling the woods down by the river, and up in the village churchyard, where the memorial service was being held, the primroses were in flower. The Earl and his family and half the village would be there at this minute, filing out perhaps with a few words of condolence and laying James and Patrick Crawley firmly to rest.

There had never been any question of Gwen going, of course. With beds and food to arrange for all the guests at the ceremony, the house had been in turmoil since dawn.

She'd made up the bed in the Blue Room single-handed and helped Anna with the Lady Caroline Room, working all the while in the strange detachment that had descended since the news of the disaster. Shorthand helped. Gwen had thought she'd never be able to concentrate, but it did help.

When thoughts started running through her head and she couldn't stop them — thoughts of ice and drowning, thoughts of Downton closed up and the Crawleys moving away — she would turn them into shapes in the drills that she'd learnt. Making an exercise of the words made them harmless: just a collection of sounds to be split up without meaning, like the long strange words she looked up secretly down in Lord Grantham's library.

The strokes sketched themselves in her mind, and sometimes at the end of a moving finger in mid-air. Titanic: T-T-N-K. Ice: S. Downton: D-N-T-N. Everything could be reduced to those few simple shapes: SH-P-S. Her finger went back in a series of jerks to dot in the vowels, with a fierce little frown of concentration.

It still took her longer to copy out the shorthand outlines than it did to scribble down the longhand version beneath, though she had almost reached the end of the first set of exercises the Bath Institute had sent her. She'd have to find some way on the quiet to post back the work she'd done without letting everyone else know — she couldn't just put the parcel in the postbag along with his Lordship's correspondence. But she had stuck to the discipline of it grimly, practising in her head every hour she could and on paper when she got the chance.

Phonography. She knew the word now. She was learning phonography, and Patrick's death made it more important than ever.

* Phraseography *

"Why do you leave the life of the village when you can get so much joy out of it?"

Both Gwen's eyebrows went up as she spelt out the exercise, and her expression had taken on a decidedly wry twist. Whoever had compiled these sentences didn't know much about country life, that was for sure.

"How can you wish to enjoy the daily hubbub of the busy thoroughfare, to lunch daily at a café...?" Well, she didn't know how it came about, but somehow she did wish just that: the shady wood with the oak, the elm and the beech and life on the farm weren't nearly all they were cracked up to be when you'd been born with no choice in the matter. As for the beauty of the bat on the wing and the mole... she couldn't help giggling at the very idea. She reckoned the writer had never set eyes on either.

But her pen moved steadily across the paper in a neat row of marks fitting one after the other, and that progress held a joy and a beauty all of its own. She'd got the hang of this: leave and life and village all echoing the same shapes in succession, and monstrous words like hedgerow reduced to two or three lines on a page.

What-do-you think? began the final line of the exercise, and Gwen stacked the three short signs with studious pleasure: the little angle of the 'what', the heavy D to stand for 'do', and the tiny hump-backed bridge of the 'you' at its tail. 'Think' — that was another single sign, a logogram. And there was her sentence written already, all in two outlines, and however small she wrote she couldn't squeeze the longhand version under that...

She could do this, Gwen thought. She'd known it in her bones for a while, but today was the first day she'd let that certainty sink in. It wasn't magic: it was just rules and abbreviations to learn that made the same shapes shorter and shorter. She'd always been good at memorising. She could do this. She had the right sort of mind.

A bumblebee buzzed insistently against the glass above her head, searching for freedom, and Gwen jumped up with her completed sheet of work in her hand to chivvy it back towards the door, and whatever open window had let it inside in the first place. Outside, the trees in the park were heavy with summer, and the long road to the village white with dust.

She'd taken off her cap and apron when she'd come up: supposedly in order to change into her afternoon dress, but Mrs Hughes let them have a few minutes to themselves these days, while the house was half-closed in mourning. Her fresh apron lay still neatly folded and waiting. Up here under the eaves the tiles above her head were baking in the sun, and the little room was too stuffy to wear more of her uniform than she had to.

She rummaged among her belongings for the battered tin box that held all her important papers — letters from her mother, a fold of blotting-paper with pressed violets in it — and pulled out the much-handled book that kept a record of her savings. Slipped inside was the printed advertising sheet that had come with the latest instalments of her correspondence course.

The picture of a grand typewriter, the 'Royal', was displayed enticingly at the head of the page, framed by an ornate border that enclosed a list of prices for purchase and carriage. Four rows of keys and a sturdy enamelled frame proclaimed high quality at a cost to match, and Gwen knew better than even to look at it. It was the cheap models on the bottom row that were within her pocket — just.

Yet again she compared the prices with the slender total on the final leaf of her savings-book. Eleven pounds a year was a fair wage, but when it had to cover her uniforms and the money she sent to her mother it seemed to dwindle alarmingly. The only saving grace was that she'd had very little free time in which to spend it.

The cheapest and meanest of the typewriters offered was the 'Empire', and the paper was creased already at that point, where she'd traced the row across repeatedly. If she scrimped and saved for the rest of the year, she might just afford the 'Alexandra', Gwen thought, but she needed the machine to start learning on now. Shorthand and typing was what all the offices wanted, and now that she'd got a handle on the shorthand at last it was high time to put her money where her mouth was and get the hang of the typing too. It was going to be hard enough to find a way for even the smallest of typewriters to be delivered to Downton without the whole house knowing.

Gwen sighed. She'd have to go down to the village on her next half-day and talk to the carrier in private. Maybe she could get the case brought up to the kitchen door with the vegetables and left in the yard somewhere. She'd have to smuggle it upstairs herself, but then she'd been getting very good at that sort of thing. And she'd carried enough weight up and down that steep little stair in her time.

She folded up the completed sheet of exercises and tucked them into their envelope for posting with the rest, returning the savings-book to the safety of its tin. If she moved the trunks on top of the wardrobe, there might be room for a typewriter — a small one.

* Initial hooks to curves *

"I can get down from a stile on my own, Wiliam Mason," Daisy said firmly, twitching her coarse skirts around her and jumping clear. The empty baskets on her arm swung wildly, and William had to step back in a hurry. He looked so disconsolate that Gwen, labouring over the stile in her turn, couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

Of course, it was feeling sorry for William that had got her into this in the first place. After four miles of field-paths and steep scrambles — with goose-grass clinging to her skirts and hayseed prickling in her stockings — she wasn't feeling quite so softhearted about this expedition of his any more.

She could have put her foot down when he'd first suggested blackberry-picking, or at least let on to Mrs Hughes that she was none too keen on the idea. But the look of appeal she'd got from him over the housekeeper's shoulder had been too much, and she'd held her tongue.

"Well, if Mr. Carson can spare William and Mrs Patmore can spare Daisy, I dare say I can make do without your services, Gwen. And I'll not deny it would be nice to have the jam." Mrs Hughes had given permission readily enough. "So if William can find this prize bramble-patch of his and bring back enough berries to be worthwhile, I don't see why the three of you shouldn't take a bite to eat and make a day of it. There's not a drop of rain in the sky..."

No, and no hint of a breeze neither, Gwen thought now, heaving the heavy pail of berries up the stile. There was a prickle of perspiration across her back, and her hair was clinging around her temples in damp wisps under her hat.

"Here, William, you can take this for a start." She thrust the pail in his direction. "Mind the lid — and try not to bang it about too much, or the whole lot will go to mush."

To do him justice, he was neat-handed, for all his air of overgrown puppyhood: that came of footman's training, she supposed.

"And now, whatever Miss Daisy says, I wouldn't say no to a hand down from here myself." She gave him a tart eye until he took the hint, reaching up with both hands as she balanced on the top step to catch her by the waist and swing her down with brotherly competence.

It was Daisy he'd dreamed of helping, of course. But Daisy had marched on ahead of him all day, with the sharp end of her tongue at the ready — "and who do you think will be up till midnight slaving over the jelly-pots?" she'd retorted when even Gwen had been moved to intervene — and all in all things hadn't gone quite the way he'd so clearly hoped.

Gwen couldn't say if Daisy truly didn't see the way William looked at her, or if she simply had no intention of giving him any encouragement. But if he'd dragged Gwen out here to play chaperone, then the least he could do, in her opinion, was make himself useful.

"This doesn't look a likely spot to me," Daisy said suspiciously, heading up the track across the rough turf on the uphill side of the stile. "We should have stayed down in the woods. All you'll get up here is bilberries — and if you can see Mrs Patmore serving up bilberry pie to his Lordship and the rest of them, then all I can say is you'd best think again."

"It's only a step further," William assured her. "Just round this corner... see..."

"I don't see any more brambles," Gwen pointed out, folding her arms as he set down the pail with an air of having reached their destination.

"No, but it's a grand place to sit and eat." William's grin held all a little boy's mischief. "There's even a breeze, look..."

He was busy unfolding the cloth from around the little packet of food that Mrs Patmore had put up for them, and Gwen had to admit that she too was ravenous. She joined Daisy in collapsing down to sit on the turf with more haste than decorum — she was wearing her oldest dress, and it was already snagged and berry-stained from their earlier efforts — while William unwrapped three hard-boiled eggs, two plums apiece, and an inexpertly-tied parcel of newspaper that bore all the marks of being Daisy's own work.

"What's this — sandwiches?"

"That's hores-dervers," Daisy told him loftily. "Mrs Patmore said we could use them up."

"Looks like cold stuff to me," Gwen said, investigating, and Daisy scowled.

"So it is. It's the left-overs from what they had upstairs last night — all that chopping and slicing, my arms fair fell off..."

"Very tasty. You're a dab hand, Daisy," William told her earnestly through a mouthful of sandwich, and got a brief and ungracious look of thanks in reward.

It would all be different once the new heir arrived, any day now, Gwen thought, watching them. She'd heard this Mr. Matthew was a common lawyer from Manchester: some clodhopper who wouldn't know his fish-knife from a soup-spoon, according to Thomas. Maybe Daisy would be busy helping make bilberry pie after all, rather than 'hores-dervers'.

But she couldn't avoid a little wistful pang of her own at the thought of a lawyer's office in Manchester. There would be dictation, and clients, and busy, businesslike girls typing...

Privately, behind the cover of the upturned baskets, Gwen poised her fingers over imagined keys and ran through the touch-typing drill, elbows kept well in to her sides, fingers curved, and wrists held level. The train is late this evening but there is time yet, she typed out on the noiseless turf; a delightful change has been seen in him. Effective measures are in sight—

"Plums, Gwen?"

She jumped, and flushed a little at William's look of surprise.

"Sorry — I must have been wool-gathering. Pass them over here, would you? Thanks..."

* The aspirate *

It was a tremendous relief, in the end, to have her secret out in the open after so long. It was a wonder she'd managed to keep it as long as she had, Gwen admitted to herself. And Anna seemed genuinely admiring, even if the others had all followed Miss O'Brien's lead.

Anna had stood up for her in the face of united disapproval, and comforted her when she'd broken down in tears at the hopelessness of the whole thing. But what made Gwen feel better now, a week later, was the way her friend actually seemed impressed by what she'd achieved.

"So you can really do shorthand?" Anna said again, leafing through the sheets Gwen had showed her. "You could sit down there at table tonight and write down everything everyone said?"

"Not quite." Gwen flushed. "I'm pretty good, but I'm not that good yet. I mean, I can do the exercises, but it's not the same when you have to keep up with real people."

Anna seized on that, eyes dancing. "Oh, so you've tried?"

"Just a bit." She could feel herself going pinker than ever. Mr. Carson did like the sound of his own voice, there was no denying it, and those long speeches of his were the nearest she was going to get to dictation...

"Well, I've always said Miss O'Brien and Thomas should have been on the boards as a double act." Mr. Bates had mentioned double acts at breakfast-time, and he and Anna had exchanged a brief smile then; an echo of that same fleeting twinkle warmed Anna's eyes now. But whatever the joke, she didn't share it. "You ought to try writing down a few of their lines, Gwen, give us all a laugh in the long winter evenings. More fun than taking dictation from old Carson, anyway."

"I never—"

"No, but it wasn't hard to guess." Anna laughed, but put an arm round her shoulders in reassurance. "You know I won't tell... I just wish there was some way I could really help, that's all."

"Just not having to hide makes so much difference," Gwen said, and meant it with all her heart. But it was between that moment and the next that the idea came to her.

She caught up the final instalments of her shorthand course from where they lay on the bed, and pulled out a page at random, holding it out to Anna. "If you could just do real dictation for me... these model letters here, look. So I can practice doing it slowly. And then we can try and get it faster, and faster. All I need is for you to read it out loud—"

In her anxiety she was starting to gabble, and Anna stopped the flow of words with a gentle hand.

"Of course I will."

Gwen looked at her, and dissolved quite unexpectedly into tears.

"Sorry—" She fished for a handkerchief, and snuffled into it, feeling a complete fool. "Sorry — it's just — you've been so kind. And Lady Sybil too... she said she'd give me a reference to say I was a hard worker and honest, and never a word about being only a housemaid..."

"And that's no more than your due, " Anna said stoutly as Gwen looked up. "A housemaid works harder than most, and I've never seen you shirk, Gwen Dawson — so don't let them tell you different. Not that it isn't kind of Lady Sybil to go out of her way to help, mind."

She sat down on the edge of her own bed, and patted a place for Gwen to sit beside her. "But then she's been sweet-natured that way since she was a child. Softhearted, but stubborn as Old Nick when it comes to what she thinks is right — I'll never forget those kittens in the cupboard—"

Gwen blew her nose again, intrigued despite her tears. "Kittens?" she prompted as Anna paused.

"Well, it was back when big Beattie was head housemaid, so Lady Sybil couldn't have been more than twelve. One of the stable cats got into the house, the artful creature, and hid away her kittens in the linen-cupboard so Lynch couldn't drown them. It was a week before Beattie found them, all snugged up in the best tablecloth — and two Dukes and a Marquess to dinner that night. I'll never forget the scene. Beattie in hysterics, and her Ladyship beside herself, and the old dowager laying down the law—"

She chuckled. "The mother cat was swearing fit to raise the dead, and Sybil was plain furious. She'd been feeding them, of course."

The mental image of gentle Lady Sybil as an indignant twelve-year-old had Gwen giggling too. "So what happened?"

"She wanted to keep them, of course, but old Violet put her foot down, and anyhow his Lordship's dog wouldn't have stood for cats around the place. But the child wouldn't have them drowned, and she got her way. Back out to the stables they went, and off to new homes on the farms when they were old enough... and that's Lady Sybil for you. Always one for the waifs and strays."

"Meaning me, I suppose," Gwen said, and Anna gave her a sharp look.

"Don't take Lady Sybil lightly, Gwen. She won't give up once she's on your side."

"Yes, but—" Her hands tightened around the balled-up handkerchief in her lap. "I'm not ready for this. I'm not qualified. I don't have my certificate — I can't do dictation—"

"Then we can work on that right now and go for the certificate later," Anna said firmly, glancing down at the sheet of exercises Gwen had given her. "Come on then. By the looks of it, this'll send us both right off to sleep after a hard day's work..."

Gwen, scrambling for pen and paper, grinned. "Try that bottom one," she suggested, and heard Anna, skimming the page, choke with laughter.

"I'd give a good deal to know who comes up with this stuff of yours... Right. Are you ready?" She took a deep breath and began to dictate, carefully keeping a straight face.

"Dear Mr. Scott — Since I wrote to you last I have heard that you were injured in a railway accident. Is this true? I trust not. If it is, you are not likely to be improved by my letter..."

* Suffixes and terminations *

It was a fine thing when the first sunny days started to dawn after a long grey winter, Gwen thought — but not so fine when it came to cleaning. There was something about the new-minted sunshine of spring that seemed to show up every grain of dust or smear on polished wood, and the light that streamed through the windows of the drawing-room was enough to reveal months of grime clinging to the panes. She'd spent most of the day washing and scouring the marks of those raindrops clean, with a bowl of vinegar in one hand and a pad of newspaper in the other, and if she never saw another pane of glass in her life it wouldn't be too soon...

But a general scrape of chairs around the table heralded Mr. Carson's approaching tread, and she came automatically to her feet with Anna and the others. There was an opened telegram in the butler's hand with the rest of the evening post, and she knew a momentary jolt of panic at the thought of some fresh disaster; followed by a pang at just how little now any of them ever remembered that tragedy that had once loomed so large. Downton hadn't crumbled, after all. The new Mr. Crawley was a mite strange in his ways, but he meant well enough. And the telegram was nothing more than a message sent up from London to let the household know of his Lordship's impending return.

"—And a packet for you, Gwen."

For a moment — as the distribution of post reached its close — Mr. Carson's words almost failed to register. Looking up hastily, she saw the great man's eyebrows drawing down, and was barely in time to accept the offered envelope before he was forced to the unheard-of expedient of having to repeat himself.

"It'll be the usual, I dare say." Miss O'Brien spared a brief upwards glance from the flounce she was darning, the bright contempt of her eyes as dismissive as ever. "More teach-yourself tricks..."

"It's not." Thomas, on the other side of the table, had glimpsed the fancy heading on the single sheet as Gwen slit the envelope. The heavy embossed portrait stared up at her from between its wings of decorated text — old Sir Isaac himself — and with a clench of excitement she caught sight of her own name. This is to certify that Gwen Dawson —

"Maybe it's an invitation to sell soap from Lady Leverhulme," Thomas was suggesting with idle malice, and Gwen — who'd thought herself long since inured to his ideas of amusement — felt fury suddenly prickle along her spine.

She'd worked for this. She'd worked harder than any of them in every free moment she had, and she was not going to let those two steal away her achievement with their twisted little games.

"It's my Theory Certificate." She slapped the evidence of her year's learning down in the centre of the table, her chin held high, and took a secret pride in seeing them all jump. Heads turned, all the way up to Mrs Hughes herself. "It's proof of my shorthand — as good as you'd get from any college in the land."

She'd sat for two hours in Lord Grantham's library to gain this, with Lord Grantham's own daughter to watch her and attest that it was all her own unaided effort. Asking Lady Sybil to help her sit the test had taken almost more courage than she'd known she had in her, but the Crawley name on the application form had to be worth something, surely... And Lady Sybil had seemed almost more eager for her to go through with it than Gwen herself.

She'd produced that day's newspaper, and between them they'd chosen a column for Gwen to copy out. Then she'd sat patiently watching for the whole two hours as Gwen struggled with contractions and vocalisations and sheet after sheet of paper was filled. William had tried to come in halfway through with a laden tea-tray for Sybil's benefit, and been sent packing with a flea in his ear he didn't at all understand — Gwen could giggle over it now in retrospect, but she'd been mortified — but in the end, the specimen had been duly completed, and the original matter clipped from the paper and neatly attached.

They'd both signed the form, and Gwen had added her own name and address a second time in Phonography as required, subscribing herself proudly in the section provided as 'self-taught'. Lady Sybil, despite Gwen's protests, had insisted on taking the application down to the post herself and on paying for the two-shilling postal order. She'd been trying to catch Gwen's eye ever since, hoping for news.

Gwen had been sure, almost certain sure, that she would pass... but to be almost certain was one thing. To know it for real — with this sudden leaping blaze of pride at the back of her throat — was something else.

She'd done it. She'd proved herself, and she'd never be only a skivvy again.

"So will you be leaving us now, Gwen?" Mrs Hughes' quiet voice carried across the general hubbub in concern: she hadn't believed it either until now, Gwen could see, and the knowledge hurt a little. She'd always trusted the housekeeper's judgement. Well, there was a world out there that none of them knew.

Lady Sybil had found her one advertisement for a post already. There'd be more. Beyond the great houses in their sleepy estates, escape beckoned for the first time: bright lights and hard work and a future within her grasp.

"I'll let you have my notice as soon as I've got a place, Mrs. Hughes," she said firmly, and heard the renewed buzz around her at the daring of it. She didn't care.

Gwen Dawson sat among the rest of them with her head held high, looking neither to left nor to right, and let herself dream of a road ahead that led out of Downton Abbey.