Work Text:
Gwen discovers the sketches while cleaning the room that the household still refers to as "the school room" that, for several years now, has in fact been Sybil Crawley’s studio. The east-facing windows provide clear light all year round, though in the winter the sun rises late and sets early, barely rising above the bare trees that stand as sentinels across the gardens.
It is winter now, and there has been a heavy frost that sketches its lines across the panes of glass through which the low sun is shining.
Gwen shivers, even in her winter woolens, as she moves around the empty room picking up fallen books and dusting around the art supplies she has learned by now are not to be touched.
Sybil doesn’t visibly anger when her things are re-arranged, but Gwen has observed how her spine straightens and her lips thin when she feels someone else has been handling her materials.
These physical objects that speak so eloquently in her hands.
It is the thought of Sybil bent over her work, the graceful curve of her neck and the tendrils of hair that -- try as she might -- always escape the pins and ribbons restraining them, that distracts Gwen at her dusting. That causes her to turn and bruise her hip painfully against the corner of the work table where Sybil has hastily stacked a sheaf of charcoal sketches.
The table jerks and the papers, perilously close to the edge to begin with, slide off their perch and scatter across the floor in disarray.
Gwen makes a small sound of irritation under her breath and stoops to collect the pages.
Then her breath catches and she sinks slowly to her knees.
The top half-dozen pages are studies of familiar faces: Lady Crawley reading, Lady Mary at the piano, Lady Edith poised over a needlepoint. Sybil’s father, Lord Crawley, walking out with to the stables, half a dozen hounds at his heels. Sure lines in black, they are suggestive of faces and gestures, utterly unmistakable despite their unfinished, almost hasty, nature.
What Gwen’s clumsiness has revealed is work of a similar, yet wholly unexpected subject: studies of the female form. The female form, more specifically, without underthings.
Gwen feels herself blushing, and not simply because the drawings are of a naked woman -- growing up with five elder sisters (not to mention a mother, aunts, and cousins) in a small cottage had meant great familiarity with the human body in all its states of undress.
No, Gwen is blushing because the drawings are unmistakably Sybil. They depict -- in fluid lines both abstract and utterly eloquent -- the specific contours of a body that Gwen has fought valiantly to conceive of as null. As inaccessible. A body that she has struggled to imagine as belonging to a class of people with whom she would never want in that way: the body of her little sister Kate or cousin Sophie.
These drawings, spread out on the floor before her, do nothing to support this conception of Sybil. Instead, they surround Gwen with a vibrant, active, joyful, vulnerable, and above all utterly sexual Sybil: a Sybil who has consciously undressed herself and studied herself and depicted herself as a woman whose naked form is pleasing to the eye, whose sensuality invites the viewer in.
Gwen’s hands shake as she reaches out to pull the drawing paper toward herself.
Here is Sybil, sitting with her back to the artist (She must have had a full-length mirror, thinks Gwen), looking boldly over her shoulder, hair pulled forward to reveal the straight line of her spine, the small dark cleft between her buttocks.
Here is Sybil bent to her work, as Gwen has often seen her, yet naked: her small breasts drooping to brush nipples against the polished wood of the very table Gwen so recently bruised herself against, the folds of her belly a series of dark lines that manage to convey the leaning-in, the concentration which the artist is giving to her work.
Here is Sybil standing before the viewer, sketch pad in hand, the dark curls between her legs, the slope of her belly and the dark hair that tiptoes from navel to groin, the soft curve of her breasts, the line of her collarbone (the one that Gwen has -- in a haze of longing -- come this close to trailing fingers along as she assists Sybil with her weekly bath).
Here -- Gwen gasps, partly in shock and partly with desire -- is Sybil reclining on the cushions of the window seat, one foot on the floor, one knee crooked up on the cushion, and her hand between her thighs. Her head is tilted in graceful submission, her posture from the waist up (if one can ignore the lack of clothing) the picture of demure feminine propriety: one hand raised to the necklace at her throat, a thoughtful inward-looking expression on her face. And yet her hand is, unmistakeably, touching that place where Gwen knows no good girls have any business touching (though she herself gave up long ago the losing battle of being a “good girl”)
She closes her eyes, momentarily. Her heart is racing. She can feel her skin tingling with the sensations she has so carefully not allowed herself to acknowledge, except in the darkness of her own garret room, and certainly not in relation to Sybil, the daughter of her employer.
There are a series of sketches on one single sheet of paper:
Sybil’s hand cupping her breast, finger and thumb teasing the nipple to stiff attention.
Sybil’s hand splayed across her belly, thumb against the navel and pinkie finger dipping delicately down between her legs, across the swath of dark curls.
The crease between her thigh and hip, the soft full swell of her belly giving way to darkness.
Legs splayed open, rampant curls and the suggestion of -- Gwen cannot look anymore and physically covers her face with her hands, rocking forward on her knees and pressing her fingers into her temples in an effort to erase or at least dull the flesh-and-blood fantasies the drawings have conjured inside of her.
Her breath is ragged. Her pulse is pounding and she can feel a dull ache deep in her belly, feel a trickle of liquid against her inner thigh, the uncomfortable scratch of cotton drawers against over-sensitive skin.
Needing to put distance between herself and the provocative drawings, she hastily returns the papers to the desk (covering Sybil’s self-portraiture with the bucolic scenes of family life) and retreats from the room altogether, fumbling her way along the hall until she finds the door to a seldom-used (and blissfully dark) linen cupboard. She wrenches open the door, ducks inside, and pulls the handle behind her until she hears the latch click into place and full darkness descends.
She is alone, with no chance that any person (that Sybil) will walk in without warning and find her gazing with such pure longing at the pictures that were obviously intended for no eyes but Sybil’s own.
Then why did she leave them out in the open? whispers a voice inside her head. She knows who cleans her studio. Those drawings were meant for you.
“Don’t be daft.” Gwen whispers to herself, though the mere thought that Sybil might have drawn those pictures with an audience in mind -- with Gwen in mind -- is breathtaking in the extreme and causes things between Gwen’s legs to pull tight in exquisite agony.
She moans softly, leaning back against the cupboard door.
It is quiet down this hallway, and the closet smells of lavender and dust. The air is cool and still.
She closes her eyes and lets herself drift for a moment, imagining the (entirely impossible) world in which Sybil Crawley not only noticed Gwen’s existence, which Gwen is aware that she does in a sweetly observant sort of way, but noted it. And noted it in the way that Gwen ardently desires (but never expects) her to note it. Note it in a way that might, in some mad, utterly mad, turn of events, lead her to draw herself naked, knowing, wanting, lusting, and leave those drawings for Gwen to find.
Gwen isn’t quite sure how or when it happens, but she is suddenly aware of the fact that her skirts are rucked up to mid-thigh and her drawers pushed down and her hands are between her thighs, sliding on already-slick skin, spreading her shaking limbs apart to give her questing fingers access to that secret place that no one but Gwen ever sees or touches, tastes or smells, no one but Gwen ever knows.
She lets herself imagine what it might be like for Sybil to see and touch, taste and smell. What it would be like for her to know.
She bites back another moan, louder this time, and arches back against the wooden door, bracing with her right hand against the shelf for support while her left fingers deftly circle, tug, press, stroke. She can feel the tension -- already fairly advanced -- winding steadily toward the familiar peak.
She pauses, panting.
What if (she allows herself to imagine) what if one day it could be like this -- except instead of hiding away in a dark cupboard she could lay herself out in the patch of wintery sunshine on the floor of the School Room and spread her legs wide so that Sybil could crawl between them.
Naked.
What if (her eyelids flutter at the thought) what if one day she could also be naked, so that when Sybil leans over her body, pins her wrists to the floor, straddles her hips and leans in for a kiss, hot flesh would meet hot flesh, the hard nipples on Sybil’s breasts brushing the swollen, yearning tips of her own?
What if (God, she can feel herself nearing the end) what if one day Sybil would walk passed the linen cupboard while Gwen was hidden inside and somehow knew she was there -- and stopped -- and unlatched the door -- and instead of being shocked or violently angry or reporting Gwen to her superiors, Sybil ascertained at a glance what activity she had interrupted Gwen in the middle of -- and she joined her?
What if this hand, circling so frantically around that center point, was no longer her own but Sybil’s instead?
It is the thought of Sybil’s sure fingers there that finally pushes Gwen over the edge. She arches back against the door, heels in their work boots braced against the uneven floorboards and fingers numb as they grip the shelf in an effort to stay upright. Her legs are shaking, her chest heaving, her temples broken out in a sweat.
And then it is over, and she slides carefully down to a seated position on the floor, skirts in disarray, legs and arms limp and spent.
If only such foolish dreams could come true.
And how was she ever, ever going to face Sybil again?