Downton Abbey

by Julian Fellowes

  Robert and Cora are on their feet.

  CORA: I knew it!

  ROBERT: My dear boy. My very dear boy.

  Matthew catches something in Mary’s expression, in all of their moods, but he wants to keep the moment light.

  MATTHEW: Come on. Don’t stop for me.

  But the audience is still silent, absorbed in watching Mary. Then Edith starts to play again, and Matthew takes her cue, walking up to stand next to Mary.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): ‘I would say such wonderful things to you…’

  Mary, regaining her composure, joins him.

  MARY AND MATTHEW: ‘There would be such wonderful things to do…’

  And now the whole room takes up the refrain.

  EVERYONE: ‘If you were the only girl in the world and I were the only boy.’

  The result is applause and happiness. Edith’s noted it all.

  * I’m afraid, for me, Major Bryant was not a very convincing conjurer, and to be honest, I suspect we should probably have given him something else to do. It is not at all his fault, because it is absolutely bred into your bones as an actor that when some potential employer asks you if you can do something, you must always say ‘Yes’ and then go off and try to learn it as best you can. In their brain they think, well, I’m sure I could ride, if I had three lessons on Wimbledon Common. I’m sure, if I get the job, I’ve got time. One director, driven mad by actors saying they could ride when it was perfectly obvious, when filming started, that they couldn’t, said to me, ‘How do I avoid this?’ I told him it was very simple. Initially, you ask, ‘Can you ride?’ The actor will think for a moment, and answer, ‘Yes’. Then you say, ‘And are you happy jumping?’ And at that moment, the actor who wishes to see middle age will, on the whole, reply, ‘Well, no, I’m not too sure about jumping.’ Now, if you can ride, you can jump, so it’s a failsafe test.

  * We feature the verse of the song in this scene, which you never normally hear, but which places ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ firmly in its original period. We were lucky. Michelle Dockery has a very pretty voice, and does in fact sing – she accompanies herself on the guitar – all of which I was aware of. So, when I was writing the episode, I knew we were not going to have a problem with her singing. This is an unashamedly romantic moment, and it always makes me cry when I watch it, which tells you more about me than the show. But in war, life is reduced to its essentials, and while the danger and uncertainty bring worry and sorrow and tragedy, there are also moments of heightened emotion and romance, as most people who have been through a war will confess.

  59 INT. HALL. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  The company is milling about. Carson serves a wine cup handed round by the servants. Mary is with Matthew and Robert.

  MATTHEW: Somehow we got lost and then we were trapped behind some Germans for three days. When we got out of that we stumbled into a Field Dressing Station where we were immediately admitted, but we weren’t in any danger so they didn’t inform our unit.

  ROBERT: Well, they should have jolly well told us when you got back to base.

  MATTHEW: That’s army bureaucracy for you. I hope Mother wasn’t frightened.

  ROBERT: I doubt she knew. Nobody knows how to get hold of her. Do you?

  MATTHEW: No. If she sent me a message, I never got it. Then Molesley and Mrs Bird didn’t even know I was missing. So we weren’t at all prepared for our reception.

  MARY: But you managed to steal the show.

  MATTHEW: I hope you weren’t really worried.

  ROBERT: Oh, you know us. We like to be sure of our hero at the front.

  MRS HUGHES: I beg your pardon, m’lord, but the Dowager Countess is leaving.

  Robert smiles at Matthew. As he walks away, he passes William and pats him on the shoulder as he does so.

  MARY: What will you do with the rest of your leave?

  MATTHEW: Well, since Mother isn’t here, I think I’ll run up to London and see Lavinia.

  The mention of Lavinia has somehow altered things.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): I got your letter about Carlisle.

  MARY: I hope you’ll approve. I know you don’t like him much now —

  MATTHEW: I hardly know him. I’m sure I’ll like him when I do. That’s if he’s good to you. If he’s not, he’ll have me to answer to.

  She smiles and raises her fists like a fighter. But her gesture seems to take him somewhere else.

  MARY: What’s the matter? You suddenly look quite haunted.

  MATTHEW: I am haunted… I only don’t talk about it because it doesn’t help. You see, when I’m here, I like to think it’s not real. That I won’t have to go back. But of course it never leaves me.

  MARY: Take care of yourself. Please. It really can’t be long now, and the worst thing of all is when people are… hurt, just before the end.

  Near the service door, Bates is with Anna.

  BATES: Who would have thought an amateur concert could be the summit of all joy? I’ve lived in such a fog of misery since I left you, I think I’d forgotten what happiness is.

  ANNA: Me, too. But now we must get used to feeling happy. And trust it.

  BATES: God, I want to.

  Thomas is with O’Brien as they look at Bates and Anna.

  O’BRIEN: Love’s young dream, I don’t think.

  THOMAS: I’m not sure I care much.

  O’BRIEN: You going soft in your old age?

  THOMAS: I don’t like him because he’s a patronising bastard who sneaks behind my back, but I’ve got other things to worry about.

  O’BRIEN: Really? That’s interesting.

  THOMAS: Why?

  O’BRIEN: Because obviously I hold a grudge longer than you.

  Daisy and Mrs Patmore are with William in the corner.

  MRS PATMORE: I knew nothing bad had happened. I felt it in my waters.

  WILLIAM: What about you? Did you have me boxed up and buried?

  DAISY: I am glad you’re all right. Honest.

  WILLIAM: You should be. It’s the thought of you that keeps me going.

  Which makes Daisy uncomfortable. At the back of the party, a hall boy whispers something to Mrs Hughes and she slips away.

  60 INT. KITCHEN PASSAGE/MRS HUGHES’S SITTING ROOM. NIGHT.

  Mrs Hughes comes down into the deserted kitchens.*

  MRS HUGHES: Hello? Hello? Who is it? Who wants me?

  A figure steps out of a shadowed doorway. It is Ethel.

  MRS HUGHES (CONT’D): Ethel? What on earth are you doing here?

  ETHEL: I had to come, Mrs Hughes. I’m sorry to push in, but I was sitting alone until I couldn’t stand it no more. You’ve got to help me.

  MRS HUGHES: I haven’t got to do anything. But what do you mean? Help with what? Is this about Major Bryant?

  Ethel nods. Mrs Hughes shakes her head angrily.

  MRS HUGHES (CONT’D): I blame myself for not stepping in earlier. That I will admit. How long had it been going on?

  ETHEL: Long enough to get me pregnant. Mrs Hughes… I’m going to have a baby.

  Which silences the housekeeper and stops her in her tracks.

  * One of the main ways in which these houses have changed in the modern day is that they are no longer full of people. When you stay in them, even in those that are still run on pretty affluent lines – and actually that happens more than it did forty years ago, because there’s more money around – you may have a few nice women working in the kitchen, but seldom more than that. In the old days, these places were like factories, humming with energy. If you went down into the kitchens, there would be fifteen, twenty people walking around doing their jobs – working, talking, hurrying. At Chatsworth, dinner in the servants’ hall numbered well over a hundred when all the Duke’s children were staying with their families in the 1920s. So for me, anyway, there is something a little bit eerie about the silence in those halls and passages today.

  END OF EPISODE FOUR

  ACT ONE

  1 EXT. TRENCHES. DAY.
>
  Amiens, France, 1918. Against the roar of guns and explosions, soldiers are assembled. There is a sense of apprehension as they wait.*

  * Now comes the moment when we had to put our principles to the test by wounding and killing characters who were known and loved. Obviously, Gareth Neame, Liz Trubridge and I talked about this ad infinitum, but we did feel it wouldn’t be right if no one from our running cast died. Because many, many men did die. In my own family, my grandfather died, my great-aunt’s husband died, and cousins without number. One of them, Octavia Longhurst, having married the Governor of Nigeria in those dead imperial days, was torpedoed by the Germans in 1916 on her way back to England on board the SS Appah. She got off the ship, but the enemy then torpedoed the lifeboats and drowned the survivors, thereby rather proving the stories of the wicked Hun that nowadays we like to feel were cooked up by a hostile press. Torpedoing lifeboats is pretty bad in my book. Anyway, she died.

  Since Downton is about an English family of a certain type, it seemed wrong to let them off scot-free. Of course, you are reluctant to kill your principals, but we knew that the one who would die had to be popular. It wouldn’t be enough to introduce a character, give them seven lines and then kill them. It’s like a whodunit. The killer has to be someone who was there all the time. You can’t bring in a new character for the fifth act and have them turn out to be the murderer.

  2 INT. DUG-OUT. TRENCHES. DAY.

  Matthew stares. William is checking Matthew’s uniform is correct.

  MATTHEW: Am I ready?

  WILLIAM: Only you can answer that, sir.

  MATTHEW: They’re going to chuck everything they’ve got at us.

  WILLIAM: Then we shall have to chuck it back, won’t we, sir?

  MATTHEW: Quite right.

  3 EXT. TRENCHES. DAY

  Matthew addresses the men. As he does so, he strolls down the line, directing different parts of his speech to them.

  MATTHEW: Now, there’s no point in pretending that this is going to be easy.

  He stops by one soldier, fingering his uniform.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): You’ve mended it. Well done.

  He lifts his voice slightly.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): It’s General Ludendorff’s last throw of the dice and he’ll throw them hard. But remember, it is the last throw. It must be.*

  He stops by another soldier.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): How are you, Thompson? Have you shaken that cold?

  THOMPSON: I’m all right, sir, thank you.

  Which makes Matthew smile. He brings them in.

  MATTHEW: Good man. We’re nearly there, chaps. Just hold fast, it won’t be long now.

  SOLDIER: We’re with you, sir.

  MATTHEW: I know you are, Wakefield. I can’t tell you how much lighter that makes the task. Right Sergeant. Let’s go.

  SERGEANT: Fix bayonets!

  Matthew blows his whistle. He pulls himself over the top. William and the others follow.

  * It is the style of Downton for characters to refer to people and events and places without making a point of explaining them. We’ve done that always, and, for this reason, I was sorry to lose Matthew’s comment on Ludendorff, the German commander, which was there to give a sense of the enemy’s predicament. But we must lose some things.

  4 INT. KITCHEN. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Daisy is whipping some cream. Slowly, she stops, and shivers.

  MRS PATMORE: Daisy? Whatever’s the matter with you?

  DAISY: Someone walked over me grave.

  4A EXT. BATTLEFIELD. DAY.

  The battle is raging. Men are falling left, right and centre.

  MATTHEW: Forward!

  5 INT. SMALL LIBRARY. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Violet, Cora and Mary are together. Carson is serving coffee.

  CORA: He just wants a date for the wedding. And he’d like to make the engagement public. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

  MARY: But why can’t we just go on as we are?

  VIOLET: Because only parlour maids have long engagements. Ladies say yes and get on with it.

  MARY: But the war’s nearly over. Everyone says so. And I don’t want a wartime wedding when, if we’d waited a week, we could have just what we want.

  CORA: Are you sure? Mrs Patmore tells me the rationing is getting worse.

  MARY: Even if it is, I’d like to walk out of the church and know that everyone there will live forever.*

  Suddenly, she trembles. The cup falls, spilling its contents.

  MARY (CONT’D): I’m so sorry.

  CARSON: No matter, m’lady. I’ll fetch a cloth.

  He goes out. The others are puzzled.

  VIOLET: What happened?

  MARY: I don’t know. I suddenly felt terribly cold.

  * Of all the sections cut in this episode, this is one I did regret, because (a) it’s got a good line for Violet – ‘only parlour maids have long engagements. Ladies say yes and get on with it’ – which was more or less a direct quote from my grandmother. But also (b) it introduced the whole business of rationing, which few people realise came in towards the end of the First World War. We get into it later with Thomas trying to make money out of the black market, but it would have been nice to begin it here. In fact, rationing arrived in the last year of the war, in January 1918, and it lingered until being gradually phased out, item by item, between December 1919 and March 1921. Still, I suppose we felt that the Thomas plot would give it to us.

  6 EXT. BATTLEFIELD. DAY.

  Matthew is running through shot and shell. He sees a crater and dives for it. Two others are there; one of them is William.

  MATTHEW: Not much longer. One more push and then we go back.

  WILLIAM: Right, sir. I don’t mind saying, I won’t be sorry when this one’s over.

  MATTHEW: Don’t worry. We’ve been through so much. He won’t fail us now.

  But just then there is the sound of a shell. William, quick as a flash, covers Matthew with his body and throws him backwards.

  WILLIAM: Sir!

  They are still falling when the shell explodes. In the thick smoke we can see that the third soldier is dead. Matthew is motionless, with William spread-eagled across him.*

  * Daisy and Mary’s almost supernatural experiences are the kind of funny things that are difficult to explain, but do happen. Almost everyone has some similar tale, so I don’t think we’ve gone into the realms of The Sixth Sense. My mother was crossing from England to Egypt in 1948 to join my father, who had been posted to the Embassy there, when my brother Rory, aged two, suddenly sat up in the middle of the night and said, ‘Hello, Granddaddy.’ The next day she learned that her father had died, back in London, at exactly that moment, so we must surely agree with Hamlet that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy’. Anyway, it is clear that something terrible has happened. To make Matthew’s injuries believable, which we come to shortly, he had to fall on a hard surface, but just putting a rock behind him didn’t seem to make the point. We could hardly fling him over a cliff, so, if you look carefully, you can see a hard wheel that he is blown directly onto by the force of the explosion.

  7 EXT. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  The great house is quiet and at peace. But not for long. A man is running up to the front of the house. It’s Molesley. He rings and hammers on the door when he gets there.

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

  O’Brien, in her night clothes, is shaking Cora awake.

  O’BRIEN: M’lady, m’lady, wake up.*

  ROBERT: What on earth —?

  O’BRIEN: You’d better come downstairs.

  * The lady’s maid was always the one who was sent into the shared bedroom. For some reason, it was thought acceptable that a lady’s maid would see the master of the house in his dressing gown quite often, or indeed in his pyjamas, when she brought in the tea in the morning. But it was not acceptable for the valet to see the mistress of the house in her nightdress. And so, whe
never they were both going to be in the room, only the maid went in. If a message or some midnight rousing was necessary, it would definitely have been the maid who was given the job.

  9 INT. SMALL LIBRARY/HALL. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  MOLESLEY: I didn’t know what else to do when I saw the telegram. I knew it was urgent, so I hope it was right.

  ROBERT: Quite right. Mrs Crawley won’t mind my opening it. The main thing is, he’s not dead. Not yet, anyway.

  Mary is standing, hands over her mouth, white as a sheet.

  SYBIL: When did it happen?

  ROBERT: It looks like Monday or Tuesday.

  SYBIL: Sometimes they wait to see which telegram they should send.

  ROBERT: They’ve patched him up. They’re bringing him to the hospital in Downton, which shows someone has their wits about them.

  CORA: When do they think he’ll get here?

  ROBERT: It doesn’t say.

  CORA: But how do we contact Isobel, how will she get back?

  ROBERT: One thing at a time. I’ll ring the War Office in the morning.

  CORA: Maybe they know she’s out there. Perhaps she’s with him now.

  ROBERT: They wouldn’t have sent a telegram here, and she’d have rung. No, it’s the usual balls — usual mess up, I’m afraid.

  At the door, Carson stands in his dressing gown.

  CARSON: Beg pardon, m’lord, but we’re all very anxious to know the news…

  ROBERT: Yes, of course.

  He strides to the door. Most of the staff is in the hall.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): It appears that, a few days ago, Captain Crawley was wounded. It’s serious, I’m afraid, but he’s alive and on his way home, to the hospital in the village.

  MRS HUGHES: Where there’s life, there’s hope.

  DAISY: What about William? Is he all right?

  ROBERT: I’ll find out what I can tomorrow. I’m not sure there’s much more we can do tonight.

  BATES: William’s father would have had a telegram if anything had happened.

  EDITH: I’ll drive over in the morning.

  The servants are going back to bed. The family is all in the hall now and Cora, Edith and Sybil start upstairs.

  MARY: Whatever you discover, tell me. Don’t keep anything back.