Downton Abbey

by Julian Fellowes

  Robert stands to shake William’s hand.

  ROBERT: We certainly do. Good luck, William.

  WILLIAM: Thank you, m’lord.

  William and Carson go.

  ROBERT: So both my footmen have gone to the war, while I cut ribbons and make speeches.

  CORA: And keep people’s spirits up, which is very important.

  ROBERT: By God, I envy them, though. I envy their self-respect, and I envy their ability to sleep at night.

  8 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Lang is cleaning some medals and Ethel is reading when O’Brien comes in with a box of buttons to sort.

  O’BRIEN: Mr Carson doesn’t like the smell of cleaning materials in the servants’ hall. Not just before luncheon.

  Lang nods and starts to tidy up the things.

  ETHEL: Go on, Miss O’Brien. We don’t want to be unfriendly, do we?

  O’BRIEN: You obviously don’t.

  But she sees that Lang’s hands are shaking and he is finding it difficult to get the top back on the jar of spirits.

  O’BRIEN (CONT’D): Never mind. Finish it now you’ve started, but don’t blame me if Mr Carson takes a bite out of you.

  As Lang looks up to thank her, Molesley comes in.

  MOLESLEY: Hello, Mr Lang. Everything all right?

  LANG: Why do you say that?

  MOLESLEY: No reason. I only meant I hope you’re enjoying yourself. I know I would be, in your shoes.

  O’BRIEN: You never tried for the job, did you?

  MOLESLEY: I hav’na got the chance. I’d no sooner heard that Mr Bates was gone than he arrived.

  Molesley’s jealousy of Lang is slightly uncomfortable.

  O’BRIEN: What brings you here, Mr Molesley?

  MOLESLEY: I was wondering if Anna was anywhere around.

  ETHEL: I could find her if you like.

  MOLESLEY: No, no, no… just give her this. We were talking about it the other day, and I came across a copy. In Ripon.

  He hands over the book and retreats. Ethel picks it up.

  ETHEL: Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Whatever’s that about?

  O’BRIEN: It’s about an invitation to talk some more, that’s what.*

  * Elizabeth and Her German Garden was a tremendously popular book that was first published in 1898, and which led to the beginning of a writing career for an English woman, Elizabeth von Arnim, who had married a German aristocrat and lived in Germany. Because in German society it still was not acceptable for a noblewoman to have her name on the spine of a novel, all her books were published as being ‘by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden’. She wrote: ‘All needlework and dressmaking is of the devil, designed to keep women from study.’ Not surprisingly, it was very much an iconic book of the period, as it chimed with what so many women were thinking.

  9 EXT. HOSPITAL. DOWNTON VILLAGE. DAY.

  Cora walks past the hospital sign. She is overtaken by Branson, who opens the door for her. She goes inside.

  10 INT. HOSPITAL. DOWNTON VILLAGE. DAY.

  Branson comes in after Cora. The place is a hive of activity. Isobel and Sybil are there. Sybil is in a nurse’s uniform.

  CORA: Is Doctor Clarkson anywhere about?

  SYBIL: He’s in his consulting room.

  CORA: Will you be home for dinner tonight? Granny’s coming.

  SYBIL: Oh, Mama. Of course not.

  Cora nods philosophically and leaves.

  BRANSON: You’re busy, then?

  SYBIL: We’re preparing for a big intake from Arras. If only they’d tell us when they’re coming.

  ISOBEL: Sybil, Lieutenant Courtenay is asking for you.

  Sybil walks over to the bed of a young man. His eyes are bandaged. He is blind. She is affectionately impatient.

  SYBIL: What is it this time?

  COURTENAY: Could I have some water?

  SYBIL: Of course. But really, anyone would have helped you with that.

  COURTENAY: Not as well as you.

  SYBIL: Lieutenant, I’m glad you’re better, but I can assure you every nurse here knows her job as well as I do.

  COURTENAY: Maybe, but none of the rest of them smell as sweet.

  This makes her laugh, which Branson, still by the door, sees.

  11 EXT. HOSPITAL. DOWNTON VILLAGE. DAY.

  Cora’s interview with Doctor Clarkson is not as she had imagined it.

  CORA: Goodbye, Doctor Clarkson.

  CLARKSON: Lady Grantham, I’d love to help but it’s not within my power to hook men from hither and thither as I please.

  CORA: That’s not at all what I was asking.

  CLARKSON: Forgive me, but I thought you were saying that you wanted Corporal Barrow to come and work here, when he’s fully recovered?

  CORA: I think it a credit to him that he wants to continue to serve in this way, after he’s been wounded.

  CLARKSON: Well, that’s as maybe. But it’s not for me to decide what happens next.

  12 INT. HOSPITAL. DOWNTON VILLAGE. EVE.

  Sybil is by Courtenay’s bed.

  SYBIL: You must be comfortable now. I’ve remade it three times.

  COURTENAY: How soon can you make it again?

  She laughs and walks off, but Isobel has been watching.

  ISOBEL: We want to encourage him to feel less of an invalid.

  SYBIL: But he’s blind.

  ISOBEL: Blind, but not ill. His wounds are healed. It’s time he moved on.

  SYBIL: I don’t think he’s ready.

  ISOBEL: My dear, you know very well every bed will be at a premium when the new casualties arrive.

  13 INT. SERVERY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Anna has come in and found Carson trying to pull the cork out of a bottle. He is red-faced and sinks back in exhaustion.

  ANNA: Mr Carson? Are you quite well?

  CARSON: Oh, leave me alone!

  He almost slops the wine into a decanter and rushes out.

  14 INT. DINING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Carson pours wine from the decanter. Violet glances at him.

  VIOLET: Oh, are you all right, Carson?

  CARSON: Of course! That is, I’m perfectly all right, your ladyship, thank you.

  EDITH: Cousin Isobel says Matthew’s coming home in a fortnight. He’s touring England with some general.

  ROBERT: We’ll have a dinner when he’s here.

  MARY: I was going to ask Richard Carlisle about then. For Saturday to Monday.*

  EDITH: That’s the first we’ve heard of it.

  MARY: Nonsense. Mama knows. Don’t you?

  CORA: Certainly.

  But her look to Mary tells us this is not true.

  VIOLET: Be careful, Mary. Sir Richard mustn’t think you’re after him.

  EDITH: Isn’t that the truth?

  VIOLET: The truth is neither here nor there. It’s the look of the thing that matters. Ask Rosamund. It’ll take the edge off it.

  ROBERT: That’d be nice. Like before the war.

  CORA: How can we manage a great pre-war house party without a single footman?

  VIOLET: Rosamund is not a house party. She’s blood.

  Edith has something she’s been longing to say.

  EDITH: I saw Mrs Drake when I went into the village… The wife of John Drake? Who has Longfield Farm?

  ROBERT: Oh? What did she have to say?

  EDITH: Apparently, their final able-bodied farmhand has been called up. They need a man to drive the tractor.

  ROBERT: Hasn’t Drake recovered from his illness? I thought he was better.

  EDITH: No, he is. He’s much, much better. But he doesn’t drive.

  None of them know where this story is going.

  EDITH (CONT’D): So I told her I could do it.

  CORA: What?

  EDITH: I said I could drive the tractor.

  VIOLET: Edith, you are a lady, not Toad of Toad Hall.*

  EDITH: Well, I’m doing it.

  * The word ‘weekend’, out of which Maggie Smith
and Downton have had such fun, was still considered a little bit common. It implied a holiday from a working week, which had not applied to most of the upper classes – at least to the heads of those families – before the war, and even if things were changing, a lot of them didn’t want to admit it. You can trace the word coming into use in the Thirties, when slang was creeping in more. As always, the young would say it before their older relations.

  * As we all know, Kenneth Grahame’s novel was published in 1908 as The Wind in the Willows, but the character of Toad rapidly gained currency after A. A. Milne titled his dramatisation of the book Toad of Toad Hall.

  15 INT. CORA’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  O’Brien is tidying up at the end of the day.

  O’BRIEN: When you think of what he’s taken from this family! You ask one tiny favour and that’s all the answer you get! I think it’s a liberty.

  Robert enters in his dressing gown. O’Brien goes.

  ROBERT: What’s she on about now?

  CORA: She thinks we’ve been treated rather shabbily by Doctor Clarkson.

  ROBERT: Old Clarkson? Why?

  CORA: There was just something I thought he might take a more sympathetic view of. But it doesn’t matter.

  16 EXT. DRAKES’ FARM. DAY.

  Edith bicycles along a track and into a farmyard.

  17 INT. DRAKES’ FARMHOUSE. DAY.

  John Drake and his wife are puzzled.

  EDITH: Don’t look so bewildered. It’s simple. I will drive the tractor.

  MRS DRAKE: But can you do that?

  EDITH: Absolutely. Can you hitch up the plough or whatever it is I’m dragging?

  DRAKE: Of course.

  EDITH: When would you like me to start?

  MRS DRAKE: Well, I’d better get you something to wear, then.*

  * This is the return of the Drakes. I thought they were very good in the first series, when John Drake almost died from dropsy, and I knew that the actors would like to come back. When I realised we needed a tenant farmer on the estate for this storyline, I thought, well, we’ve got one already set up.

  18 INT. KITCHEN. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Mrs Patmore is laying pastry over a funnel as Anna comes in.

  ANNA: Oh, I like a bit of life in the house, but I just hope Mr Carson doesn’t spontaneously combust.

  Mrs Patmore isn’t listening. She takes out a letter.

  MRS PATMORE: I had a letter yesterday…

  ANNA: Yes?

  MRS PATMORE: It’s my sister’s boy… He’s with the Lancashire Fusiliers… Only, he’s gone missing. ‘Missing, presumed dead’, they call it.

  ANNA: Oh, no. How did it happen?

  MRS PATMORE: That’s just it. They can’t find out. How it happened, why it happened, whether we can be sure it did happen or he isn’t lying prisoner somewhere.

  ANNA: Why not ask his lordship? He’ll have friends in the War Office; they can dig something up.

  MRS PATMORE: Oh, I don’t like to bother him.

  ANNA: Why not? He’s got broad shoulders.

  19 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Isobel is with Robert and Cora as Isis snoozes.

  ISOBEL: Oh, very, very good news! He’s been made a captain and he’s going to be away from the front for two or three months at least! He’s got a few days before he begins his tour of the army camps, so he’s bringing Lavinia to see me.

  CORA: Then we’ll expect you all for dinner. By the way, Mary’s made me invite the newspaper man, Sir Richard Carlisle. He’ll be here.

  ISOBEL: I don’t think I’ll tell Matthew. He might chuck.

  ROBERT: They’ll have to rub along, sooner or later.

  20 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Lang is doing some invisible mending on a tweed coat.

  ETHEL: That’s ever so fine, Mr Lang. However can you make those big hands do such delicate work?

  LANG: I hadn’t thought about it.

  ETHEL: I expect there’s no end to the things they could manage.

  O’BRIEN: Giving you a slap for a start.

  But O’Brien is curious and she comes to inspect.

  O’BRIEN (CONT’D): That is good. Very good. I like to see a proper skill. These days, blokes think they can be a valet if they can smile and tie a shoelace. But there’s an art to it, and I can tell you’ve got it.

  LANG: My mother taught me. She was a lady’s maid, like you.

  O’BRIEN: Well, she knew what she was about.

  Carson leans in.

  CARSON: Oh, Mr Lang, as you know, Sir Richard Carlisle arrives later and the Crawleys are coming for dinner tonight. I really can’t have maids in the dining room for such a party, so I’d be grateful if you’d help me and play the footman.

  LANG: Me? Wait at table?

  CARSON: It’s not ideal, but I’m afraid I’ve no choice. The footmen’s liveries are in a cupboard just past Mrs Hughes’s sitting room. You should find one to fit you.

  He leaves, in a nervous frenzy. Lang is frozen with fear.

  21 INT. LIBRARY. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Mrs Patmore is with Robert.

  ROBERT: I’m not sure what I can do, but I’m happy to try. What’s his name?

  MRS PATMORE: Archie — that is, Archibald Philpotts. He was in the Lancashire Fusiliers. They think he was in northern France.

  ROBERT: You realise the most likely outcome is that he has indeed been killed?

  MRS PATMORE: I understand, m’lord. But we’d rather know the worst than wonder.*

  * This is about the paternalistic role of the aristocracy, which was in many ways a reality. At that time, the country was still, by and large, run by the upper middle classes, with the upper classes as the display in the shop window. It meant that, at one remove, these people could normally pull a string to find out something in practically any area of the country or department of public life. Now that’s rather gone, because aristocrats, as a class I mean, are not in charge of much any more. The point being that they formed a comparatively compact group, while the middle classes, who are in charge now, are a much, much larger mass of people, and they do not all know each other. So, the days when you could ring someone up and say: ‘Fruity, old boy, do you know anyone at the Health Ministry?’ were really finished by the end of the Sixties. But in 1916 that system was still in operation, and so for Mrs Patmore to appeal to Robert to find something out is not at all stupid. It would be very easy for him, whereas it would be very difficult for her.

  22 INT. KITCHEN PASSAGE. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Anna is walking down the passage, carrying an evening skirt. She stops. Molesley is by the servants’ staircase.

  MOLESLEY: Ah!

  ANNA: Ah, hello, Mr Molesley. What are you doing here?

  MOLESLEY: I asked inside, and they said you were over at the laundry.

  ANNA: Lady Mary wants to wear this tonight. I wasn’t sure it was done.

  MOLESLEY: I was really wondering if you’d had a chance to read that book.

  ANNA: You only gave it to me yesterday.

  MOLESLEY: Of course, of course. But when you have read it, I hope we can exchange our views.

  ANNA: That’d be nice. Perhaps we might bring some of the others in. We could have a sort of reading club.

  MOLESLEY: We could do that. Or we could talk about it together. Just we two.

  O’Brien walks past, up the stairs, carrying some linen.

  ANNA: Heavens. It’s later than I thought. I must get on.

  She hurries up after the other maid. He watches her go.

  23 INT. CORA’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Cora is at her glass with O’Brien when Robert looks in.

  ROBERT: I’m off to change, but I wanted you to know I sent a note down to Clarkson, which should do the trick.

  CORA: What did you say?

  ROBERT: Only that I gathered you’d asked a favour and, given that the estate shoulders the hospital costs, it did seem a little unfair if we weren’t allowed a few perks.

  CORA
: Quite right. Thank you, darling.

  He goes. O’Brien nods to her mistress in the glass.

  O’BRIEN: Well done, m’lady. If you don’t stand up for your rights in this world, people’ll walk all over you.*

  * Every now and then, I think it is important to demonstrate the sense of entitlement that is one of the things that divides the upper classes from the rest of the community. And it is at the root of their power, then and now. I am not, as it happens, a fan of the Eleven Plus exam, as it seems to throw children onto the scrapheap before they’ve had a chance, but that said, the grammar schools in many ways allowed people who had come from ordinary backgrounds to acquire a sense of entitlement that empowered them to compete with the born privileged on an even ground. By the time a grammar school leaver went to university, they could not be put down by someone from Eton or Harrow or anywhere else, and there was no reason why they should not get to the top of any profession. But the comprehensives have been less successful in inculcating this sense of entitlement and, as a result, the middle classes have retaken a great many of those areas of employment where the working class made serious inroads thirty or forty years ago.

  It is difficult to challenge, because entitlement becomes, in many cases, a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are families where the children go to public school, on to university and into great jobs, even though their lineage is no great shakes and there’s no real money. In fact, they will achieve the way of life they were used to as babies, all because of their sense of entitlement. Here, Cora, who may be a liberal, who may be American, still thinks the doctor should have done what he was told because he’s a doctor and she’s a countess, and there’s no question about that.

  END OF ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  24 EXT. DRAKES’ FARM. DAY.

  A sheepdog watches as Drake ties a chain around a sawn-off stump of an apple tree. The other end is fastened to a tractor, which Edith is driving.

  EDITH: Ready?

  DRAKE: Ready!

  EDITH: Come on, damn you!

  She slams it into gear and forces it forward. The trunk is torn up by the roots. She stops.

  EDITH (CONT’D): Victory!

  DRAKE: Ho-oh! Yes!

  She climbs down. Drake is pouring some cider from a covered jug. He gives her a tin mug and pours one for himself.

  DRAKE: To the victor the spoils.

  EDITH: Did you plant that tree?