Moranthology (20 page)

 

I went through a spell of reviewing
Downton
every single week—just because simply describing what was happening often made me senseless with laughter.

D
OWNTON
A
BBEY
R
EVIEW
2: SEX
WILL
BE
HAD
!
SEX
WILL
BE
HAD
!

“D
o the plots in
Downton
move too quickly?” is the question many are asking at the moment. And with good reason. After all, as we realized last week, the entire First World War has only taken five episodes of
Downton.
At this rate, Maggie Smith could be making imperious comments about the etiquette of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon (“But has he been intro
duced
to the Clangers? Does he know their
family
?”)
by Christmas.

But you know what? As long as you just strap yourself in—and maybe partake of a medicinal sherry beforehand—the rapid pacing is fine. It's a hoot! Just think of an episode of
Downton Abbey
as a “Haunted House” style ride—such as you would find at a fair, or on a pier. You burst in through the double doors to find the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) kissing a widowed housemaid in the pantry, mount a gantry to view Ethel's illegitimate baby in the pantry—then take in a final straight that includes an elopement, a miracle cure and a revelation of unrequited love before the final credits. Put your hands in the air, and scream if you wanna go faster! It's only two quid, fun for aaaawl the family.

Of course, some fast plots are bigger than other fast plots. The megaplot that
Downton
currently revolves around is the state of Cousin Matthew's (Dan Stevens) trousers. It is all going off in Cousin Matthew's trousers, these days. That's where all the narrative is being stored.

Cousin Matthew, you may recall, is the preternaturally beautiful blonde heir to Downton Abbey, who bravely went off to the hell of war to serve his King and country—only popping back to Downton half-a-dozen times for key concerts, balls, scenes where it just generally felt good to have him around, and angsty forbidden-love stare-offs with Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery).

At one point, Cousin Matthew popped back from the war halfway through Lady Mary singing
If You Were the Only Boy in the World
at a concert—then joined her in a loving duet for the last verse, before immediately going back to the war again. It's the scene Vera Brittain never had the balls or insanity to write in
A Testament of Youth—
but, now, finally brought to life by Julian Fellowes in
Downton.
Hurrah! If the thinking remains as blue-sky as this, Season Three of
Downton—
set in the Depression—can have Bugsy Malone with a splurge-gun, or even—fuck it!—Scarlett O'Hara escaping a burning Atlanta in a horse and cart, with Miss Melly giving birth in the back. You might as well go for it, that's what I say! Scream if you wanna go faster!

Anyway. Matthew's trousers. In a war full of unspeakable atrocities, the Hun's most beastly move has been an attack on Cousin Matthew's—possibly literal, given his poshness—crown jewels. When he returned from the front in Episode Five, it was in a wheelchair—“an impotent cripple, smelling of sick,” as he called himself, clearly on a bit of a Downton downer.

For a few, amazing moments, it seemed as if
Downton
might have gone the whole hog, and written in a character who'd had his nads blown off in the heat of battle—only the second-ever drama to attempt this, after the BBC's groundbreaking, testicle-exploding
Lilies
in 2007.

And, indeed, the first scene of last Sunday's episode seemed to confirm this: the Earl of Downton watching solemnly as a car departed down the driveway, his somber expression suggesting that the vehicle contained Matthew's balls on a tray, being taken off for a decent burial.

But—to infinite rejoicing—we found this was not the case. Not the case at all. Matthew was, in fact,
trousioso intacta,
as I'm sure the Latin would have it. The contents of his orangery were all present and correct—it was merely the “sexual reflex” that was missing. Or was it? Ten minutes later, sitting in his wheelchair, Matthew stared out into the middle distance.

“Bates,” he said to his valet. “If I were to feel a . . . tingling, what would that mean? The doctors keep saying it's the memory of a tingling—but I keep feeling it.”

“If something is changing, it will make itself known,” Bates said, with all the wisdom of a man who'd had a broad country upbringing.

Although it sometimes felt like it,
Downton
was not all about Cousin Matthew's trousers, of course. My favorite subplot involved the villainous Mrs. O'Brien and Thomas entering the post-war black market economy—and trying to rip off the Downton estate by selling hooky foodstuffs to Cook.

While initially keen on sourcing such luxe ingredients—“I've not seen this since before the war!” Cook exclaimed, holding up candied peel as if it were an unquestioning attitude of deference toward the upper classes—Cook found, on tasting the resultant cake, that Thomas had been sold a pup.

“This is plaster dust!” Cook shouting, spitting cake all over the floor, then getting all
Watchdog
on Thomas's ass.

Thomas eventually returned to his warehouse full of now-unsellable, poisonous ingredients, and—furious—started to trash the lot. As he repeatedly punched a massive sack while shouting “NO!!!”, it occurred to me that this was the first time I had ever seen a man fighting “some flour”—and I gave thanks, yet again, to the mad majesty of
Downton.

But, in the end, Sunday's episode ended as it had begun: in Cousin Matthew's trousers. Post-Tinglegate, we were all on high alert for further developments in Matthew's pelvis—but were aware that the breakthrough he needed might come at a high cost. Previous cases of people in dramas “spontaneously” recovering from paraplegia seem to center around high drama—suddenly finding the power in their legs when a loved one is in danger, say, or when their own lives are at risk.

In the event, Matthew's miracle recovery didn't quite play out like that.

Joining Matthew in the drawing room, Lavinia—his current, wrongful fiancée—noticed something was seriously awry at Downton:

“Look!” she said, pointing to a table, with six cups and saucers on it. “They've forgotten to clear the tea things!”

Walking over to correct the servants' heinous mistake, Lavinia was given fair warning by Matthew.

“It's too heavy for you!” he said, as she picked up a tray.

But, too late! Lavinia had—inevitably—paid the price for the lower-orders' carelessness: tripping over an ornately-embroidered footstool, and having to steady herself by putting her hand on the marble fireplace, next to the ormulu clock.

“Heavens! That was a near thing!” she exclaimed, breathlessly—before they both realized that this moment of peril had jolted Matthew out of his paralysis: he was now standing next to her, broken spine a thing of the past, future now rosily re-filling with the possibility of rumpy.

On discovering the happy news about his heir, the Earl of Grantham rushed around Downton insisting everyone come and see Matthew in the drawing room at once. Really, he appeared one whisky away from ringing the bells in Downton chapel and shouting, “SEX WILL BE HAD! SEX WILL BE HAD!” to the entire cast.

I'm sure the staff were subsequently instructed to bring out the special “Heir's rediscovered sexual reflex” dinner service, as has been in the family for generations, in order that all of Downton might celebrate in the most Downton way it knows how—with the maximum of formality, oddness, and washing-up for the peasants.

 

We make a good team, Pete and I. Both journalists, both into carbohydrates, both agreed that the perfect babysitter for the children during the summer holidays is a man of dubious qualifications and reputation touting some massive see-through hamster balls, in which you can place your children.

S
UMMER
I
S AN
E
MERGENCY

“T
he thing about summer is, if you work and you've got kids, it's an emergency,” my husband says. “A total emergency.”

Today is the worst day of August, so far: both of us are sitting next to a forty-foot paddling pool, on the seafront, in Brighton.

A cheerful, chainsmoking goblin from Manchester has set up some manner of novel amusement here: gigantic plastic “hamster balls,” into which children can be inserted, then launched onto the paddling pool. Our children have taken to this activity with all the enthusiasm of genuine hamsters. They keep tumbling past us, upside down, screaming, “THIS IS AWESOME, DUDE!” and flashing peace signs.

Sitting at the picnic tables we wave, shout things like, “You look totally deranged! We're going to leave you here, and go home alone!”, then go back to typing, furiously. My husband is trying to write the definitive overview of UB40's first, politically outraged, critically revered album. I am writing a stirring 4,000-word, pro-feminist refutation of waxing: both Brazilians, and Hollywoods.

Every so often, my husband stares at me blankly, and says “Dub.”

I stare back at him, equally blankly, and say “Pubes.”

The children wheel past in the background, screaming “COWABUNGA, MAN!”

Today—having run out of holiday allowance, two weeks into the summer holidays—this paddling pool is our office. An office with no ceiling, in which drizzle is falling onto our laptops. It's far more exciting than it sounds, though: for with Brighton council being inexplicably heel-draggy about providing free power outlets on any part of the seafront, we also have an thrilling, against-the-clock element of trying to finish writing before our batteries conk out.

“How long have you got left? I'm on thirty-seven minutes,” I will say, anxiously checking the stats.

“I'm down to seventeen,” my husband replies. “I've turned the ‘Screen Brightness' down so low, it looks like a window onto eternal night.”

It is like an episode of
24
centered on Jack Bauer sending a single, very important email.

Of course, to complain about this would be to suffer a gigantic loss of perspective. We are, by no stretch of the imagination, the most stressed parents this summer. We aren't even the most stressed parents on Brighton seafront—earlier, I had passed a child jack-knifing on the floor, wailing, “I don't WANT Nanna to be dead forever!”

At least, I tell myself, cheerfully, we're dandy, teleworking media nobs who
can
bring our work to a giant inflatable paddling pool in Brighton.

“Imagine having to bring your
lathe
down here,” I keep thinking. “Or your
furnace.
Or the
mountain
you had to climb—because you are a professional mountaineer, like Chris Bonham. We are the lucky ones.”

If you're working parents, the fact is simple: the holiday math doesn't add up. You, the parents, have four weeks of holiday a year. Your children, on the other hand, have thirteen. Ergo, you are about to lose your mind. It's not a system anyone would come up with now. It's a vexing remnant of the patriarchy—a society in complete denial that both a) MUMMY IS ON A DEADLINE TOO, NOW, and b) MOST CHILDREN DISLIKE GOING TO A THREE-WEEK-LONG DRAMA WORKSHOP WITH A LOAD OF RANDOMS AS MUCH AS YOU WOULD. The solution to two-parent-working families is
not
to get thousands of kids to learn the
Bugsy Malone
songbook—although, as I write that, I do realize how much my core beliefs have changed since I was twelve, and wanted to be Blousey Brown.

Two weeks later, it is the first day of autumn term. The school gates resemble the first assembly point after a plane crash. Slightly stunned parents stand around, waving goodbye to their children, with the auras of people who've recently spent so much money, and begged so many favors from Grandma and Grandpa, that they might now have to go home and lie very, very still for five days, before they can feel normal again.

“You got through, then?” one says.

“Yeah. Don't quite remember how, though. I appear to have spent over £6,000 on
Doctor Who
DVD box sets and bags of Mini Cheddars.”

They then get on their mobiles, and start wearily arranging the transportation of their lathes, back from Polperro.

But you know what? Secretly, this is why I love the summer holidays. Unlike my husband, I get off on an emergency. In the summer, you can basically pretend it's the Second World War—running out into the street in your rollers, clutching a kettle, screaming, “THE GERMANS ARE COMING!”, smoking black market fags.

Now it's autumn, however, you can't get away with that kind of stuff anymore. There's no more putting the kids to sleep in a cardboard box under the patio table. No more gin on the lawn at 2
AM
. No more giving everyone Kit Kats and apples for breakfast. You just have to retrieve your shoes—from the lavendar bush, where you threw them, in July—put them back on, and go back to being normal, and sensible, again.

Until Christmas, anyway.

 

Here is pretty much my entire life story in 830 words. Note a return to the justification of not going abroad. I don't know who I'm aiming all this “I will not travel” ranting at, really. Maybe the Thomas Cook in my head.

T
IME
T
RAVEL IN THE
S
AME
F
OUR
P
LACES

I
'm not a great believer in “traveling.” Every holiday I've ever had somewhere “novel” seemed to consist of repeatedly walking past much nicer restaurants than the one we'd just eaten in, while crying, “Oh! That place looks delightful! There's no feral one-eyed cats under the table
there.”

And that's ignoring the actual travel of “travel”: a thing so awful it warrants its own insurance, sickness, and tiny hairdryers. Every time I think of some distant wonder I might quite like to see—Sydney Harbour at night, for instance; or Venice from a bridge—I ask myself, “Do I want to see it so much that I would take my shoes off at Heathrow security at 6:55
AM
?”

And every time the answer comes back, “No. I would rather keep my shoes on and watch a documentary about them instead, thank you.”

So instead of travelling, I just . . . go to places, instead. The same four places, for the last twenty years: Aberystwyth, Brighton, Gower, Ullapool. That's it. Nowhere else. Over and over, repeat and return. Like a casting-on stitch done over and over in the same spot—but at slightly different angles. When I go back to these places, I can see my ghosts from every previous visit. When I go to these places, I don't travel in space—but in time, instead.

So when I go to Ullapool, in the Highlands, I walk the main street seeing flickery, analogue broadcasts from earlier parts of my life. The timecode on the oldest ghost is 1986. August—the August we bought a campervan. We've been driven off every other campsite in the area, as the owners think—what with my seven siblings, and rainbow-colored wellies—that we are travelers, displaced from Stonehenge. It's a miserable holiday: the rain is solid, cold. All we can do is eat sausage soup and read
Kidnapped
aloud to each other in increasingly risible Scottish accents. Everyone is angry. The dog nearly drowns. I want us to climb a mountain or swim in the sea, but we spend five days in a space the size of a wardrobe, staring at running windows, and then go home.

A decade later, and the ghosts from 1995 are of better quality—a brighter picture. I am nineteen, now. I've convinced a friend who has a car to drive me back to Ullapool, so I can finally see it in the sunshine—or at least through the rainy windows of somewhere more spacious, like a hotel. In the day, we both climb a mountain
and
swim in the sea, because I'm in charge of me now. At night, after drinking the most expensive wine we have ever ordered—£22!—we realize we're probably in love, and walk to the same bedroom without saying a word. Four years later we come back on our honeymoon, and spend the first night crying, even though we love each other, because. . . .

Here I am on the seafront in Brighton, in 1994. I have just told my best friend that we shouldn't go out with each other.

“We were meant to be just friends,” I am saying. I have read about love in novels, and am sure I know all about it. This is one of the cleverest things I have ever done. I am eighteen. I exhale my cigarette, like a grown-up.

Here I am four years later, on the same stretch of seafront, with the same friend. We are on a bench. My head is in his lap. We are talking about what to call our baby in my belly. My wedding dress is in a bag at our feet. We get married in three days. Since we were last here, I have learned that I knew nothing at the age of eighteen. I know now that love can be a quiet, sure thing—like the first April sun on your arms—and not the pycroclastic blast I was waiting for.

In nineteen hours, we will find out the baby is dead. The grief that is coming for us has five blades on each hand: it will fall on us like a blizzard, and leave us on the floor.

We will weep on our honeymoon in Ullapool—so lost I could not tell you if it did rain at all, that time. At the time, I thought the deep sea pressure of sorrow was so great, it would crush my heart smaller, forever. I was sure I knew everything about it.

T
his morning, at the start of my holiday in Brighton, I watched our two daughters—eight and ten—on the beach.

“My heart is even bigger now,” I thought. “And I know what love is, and I don't smoke, and the grief did not kill me, and I know I still no nothing, and I'm in charge of me, now.”

A casting-on stitch done in the same place, over and over again, gets stronger. In Ullapool, Gower, Aberystwyth and Brighton, I don't travel to broaden the mind.

I return—something completely different.