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Sybbie Branson grows up surrounded by the regal walls of Downton Abbey, its beautiful grounds and with a dead woman’s ghost over her shoulder. Nannies, governesses and accomplishments fly by her.
Let’s talk about Sybbie Branson who grows up ear against the door, listening to debates about how Sybil would want this and that but I am her father so…! Brought up by the joined forces of Tom Branson and Crawleys, how could a girl ever be ordinary. Cousin George just down the hall - who will inherit their home, become an Earl - leaves for Eton and Cousin Marigold moves to Uncle Bertie’s estate. For nearly ten years Sybbie is the only child in the house.
Someone forgets that Sybbie’s new big girl room belonged to Sybil in another life. Tom in his grief never set foot in that room and no one else dared to touch its contents. Diaries, letters and drawings that her mother had left behind. Sybbie’s head spins with tales of a spoiled childhood, stolen kisses in the garage and insecurities turned ambitions. Those diaries filled with teenage crushes and rage against Grandpapa’s rules make Sybbie’s heart ache the most.
Sybil is remembered as a sweet, perfect child by her parents. Tom talks about a steady and sensible woman who should have had so many more years to fully understand herself. Sometimes Aunt Mary rolls her eyes when she speaks about Sybil, talking about her kindness or soft-heartedness with a droll voice. Only those diaries make her mother seem like a real woman - someone who’s escaped her casket and remembered as just a girl who wanted to escape and see the real world with a man she loved. Sybbie ignored the folded paper tucked between Bible pages that is filled with baby names.
She is the daughter of an estate-manager who managed social mobility and a lady. She learns waltzing, French and etiquette.
Sybbie, who is presented to Their Majesties in 1939 with Marigold, pours over newspapers. Nazi Germany invades Poland; Britain declares war against Germany; children are getting shipped to the countryside to safety while soldiers leave for France.
Let’s talk about Sybbie who follows her mother’s footsteps. She joins Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, gets her uniform and is sent to France. Let’s talk about Sybbie who sees more direct action than Sybil ever did. Her group is stationed near the front. They bandage and comfort, perform surgeries and sit with dying men. Daddy has that old heart murmur and Grandpapa is getting on with age so, really, Sybbie is the only one in the family involved in the war with any real effort. Grandmama won’t let her house be turned into a makeshift hospital for a second time. She claws her way to join the nurses on the beaches of Normandy.
Let’s talk about Sybbie, a war-worn Sybbie who looks a man in the eyes and says it’s alright, it won’t hurt, it’ll be so peaceful and your gran will be there. Maybe she has a romance with a young corporal, or maybe she forms lifelong relationships with her fellow nurses.
Her director gets a telegram telling that Nurse Sybil Branson is one of the ones being called back to England to join the homefront in the local hospitals. Sybbie who cannot really forgive that, but the Crawleys hug her so lovingly, so tightly, because they cannot lose another Downton girl who took up nursing. Just like her mother, Sybbie settles for the convalescent hospital near home. She, though, sleeps in a questionable dormitory with the other nurses and doesn’t wear the proper evening dresses when she joins the Crawleys for dinner. She’s not a lord’s daughter, she is a woman who swore an oath and will not let homesickness stray her away from that.
War makes people different. Grandpapa will talk about his glory days, but Mr Barrow gets quiet and glum if Sybbie asks about it. War leaves a scar on Sybbie’s leg and it gives her a calling.
“You’ve never looked so much like your mother as you do now,” Daddy says when Sybbie tells him she’s applied for a proper nursing school. She knows it’s a compliment, but it rings hollow.
With a nursing license and a midwife’s training, Sybbie leaves the dreamland that is Downton Abbey. She finds herself in the East End of London, working with nurses, midwives and nuns. After seeing the war, rats, disease and cruelty are not that surprising. She delivers babies almost everyday and thinks if her own mother got to hold her before dying. She always tries to be quick about cutting the cord, so the mother would get the chance, just in case. One cannot live in the poor side of London, tend to its wounds, rebuild it after the bombings and bring life, love and laughter back into it without it growing on you.
Sybbie, a socialist and suffragette’s daughter, who sees poverty cannot return to Downton with an unguilty mind.
Let’s talk about Sybbie who looks at her father and sees his past socialist ideas, asks about her mother’s desires to be political and leans into them. Sybbie Branson, who will be called Nurse Branson till her death, advocates for the pill, no-fault divorce and abortion rights. She joins speeches about expanding the NHS, twisting a catholic cross-necklace with her fingers and nodding that yes, a moral country should provide an equal health treatment for all.
Maybe Sybbie falls in love with an older, twice divorced Irish poet who encourages her to learn Gaeilge and reminds her that yes, she is Irish, not just an Irishman's child who sounds like the Queen of England. They’d have two children; Cillian and Thomas (you would sooner faint than decide if it’s after Branson or Barrow). Sybbie would move with her little family to a three-bedroom house with a garden and never miss an old, decaying country estate.
Or maybe she would remain a spinster, dedicated to nursing and midwifery, dying in her uniform after bandaging a child’s hurt.
Can she call the Crawleys undeserving of their wealth, titles and superiority all while still loving her family? Her father bent and molded around them, but Sybbie will not.
She grew up in opulence, then saw death and poverty. She wants a warm cup of tea, feel soil under her nails as she tends to a little home garden and a good life. She has a dead woman’s name, a part of her soul in hers, and just wants to honor that life by living hers with all the freedom she was denied.