DRAKE: Steady on. It must be forty years old.
EDITH: It’s not a flattering light.
Which makes him laugh.
DRAKE: My father planted it. But you have to be tough with fruit trees and not let them outstay their welcome.
EDITH: Farming needs a kind of toughness, doesn’t it? There’s room for sentiment, but not sentimentality.
DRAKE: Beautifully put, if I may say so, m’lady. You should be a writer.
EDITH: Thank you.
Edith blushes, as Mrs Drake walks towards them with a bundle.
MRS DRAKE: How are you getting on?
DRAKE: Very well, I think.
MRS DRAKE: And it’s not too hard for you?
EDITH: Not at all.
DRAKE: She’s stronger than she looks.
MRS DRAKE: I’ve brought you something to eat, m’lady, though I’m afraid it’s not what you’re used to. [To the dog] Eh, it’s not for you.
DRAKE: They say hunger’s the best sauce.
EDITH: And I’m starving!
She laughs, flopping down by the ploughman’s lunch and fondling the dog, which Drake sees and loves her for.
24A EXT. DOWNTON. DAY.
A man in uniform walks towards the great house.
25 EXT. KITCHEN COURTYARD. DOWNTON. DAY.
O’Brien walks out to find Thomas smoking and smiling.
O’BRIEN: So it is you. Ethel thought I must have a soldier fancy man.
THOMAS: Is she the new maid?
O’BRIEN: Yes. She’s a soppy sort… So, tell me. Was Doctor Clarkson thrilled to have your services?
THOMAS: It’s Major Clarkson now, but yes. I don’t know how you did it.
O’BRIEN: What about your Blighty?
As an answer he pulls off his glove. It is horrific.
O’BRIEN (CONT’D): My God.
THOMAS: It’s not so bad. And it lived up to its name and got me home.
He puts on his glove again.
O’BRIEN: You’d better come inside.
26 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.
Some of the other servants watch the new arrival warily.
THOMAS: Where’s William?
DAISY: Training for the Army.
THOMAS: I thought he might have died for love of you.
DAISY: Don’t be nasty. Not as soon as you’re back.
THOMAS: Imagine Carson without a footman! Like a ringmaster without a pony.
MRS HUGHES (V.O.): We’ll have none of your cheek, thank you, Thomas.
THOMAS: I’m very sorry, Mrs Hughes, but I’m not a servant any more. I take my orders from Major Clarkson. Who’s this?
He has seen Ethel eyeing him.
O’BRIEN: Ethel. The new maid. I told you.
ETHEL: When I saw you out there, I didn’t realise I was dealing with an ex-footman.
THOMAS: I’m the one that got away.
ETHEL: Gives hope to us all.
She smiles, which Thomas rather enjoys. Carson looks in.
CARSON: Ethel, get ready to help with the luggage. They’re nearly back with Sir Richard.
O’BRIEN: We’ve got a visitor, Mr Carson.
CARSON: I’ve seen him.
He goes. Thomas looks round this room he knows so well.
THOMAS: Where’s Mr Bates?
O’BRIEN: Gone. Replaced by Mr Lang.
THOMAS: So not all the changes were bad.
He punctuates this with a glance at Anna.
27 EXT. DOWNTON. DAY.
Sir Richard Carlisle shakes hands with Cora (without a glove). Rosamund Painswick is there. So are Robert and Mary.*
CARLISLE: Hello.
CORA: We’re so pleased to have you here, Sir Richard.
CARLISLE: Lady Grantham.
ROBERT: Welcome.
CARLISLE: Thank you.
CORA: I hope the train wasn’t too tiring?
ROSAMUND (V.O.): Hello, Mary.
CARLISLE: Not a bit, no. I got a lot done.
MARY: Hello, Aunt Rosamund.
Rosamund kisses Mary and then Robert.
ROSAMUND: Brother, dear.
ROBERT: How are you?
CORA: Lovely to see you, Rosamund.
The others have gone in and Mary is alone with her aunt.
MARY: He’s nice, isn’t he?
ROSAMUND: To be honest, he spent the entire journey reading his own papers. But I’m sure I’ll love him dearly, if he’ll ever look up from the page.
They go inside. Ethel, a valet and a lady’s maid are taking some suitcases in, leaving Branson unstrapping the rest.
ETHEL: Come with me. I’ll show you the rooms. And, as if you didn’t know, theirs are a lot nicer than yours.
She leads the way to the rear, as Cora hurries out.
CORA: Branson, when you’ve finished unloading, run down to the hospital and remind Lady Sybil that we expect her here for dinner. And tell her I mean it. Really, they’re working her like a packhorse in a mine!
BRANSON: I think she enjoys it, though.
This is impertinent. Cora’s voice is firmer.
CORA: Please tell her to come home in time to change.
* The stage direction, ‘without a glove’, seems rather bizarre, but it comes from an incident during the first series that drove me mad. When Mary’s potential suitor, the Duke of Crowborough, arrived, he shook hands with Cora with his glove still on his hand, which no gentleman in those days would ever have done. It was one of those learning moments when I am made to realise that I am now officially an old fart, and much of what I thought was general knowledge has in fact vanished forever. Unfortunately, we did not have a tighter shot, meaning we could not cut it so as to lose the hand from vision. So, as you can see here, by the time we got to Richard Carlisle’s arrival in the second series, I wasn’t taking any chances.
28 INT. HOSPITAL. DOWNTON VILLAGE. DAY.
Sybil is indignant with Branson, under the eye of Isobel. Some of the other nurses glance at the chauffeur and giggle.
SYBIL: I can’t possibly come! Really, Mama is incorrigible!
ISOBEL: It’s not poor Branson’s fault.
SYBIL: But what is the point of Mama’s soirées? What are they for?*
ISOBEL: Well, I’m going up for dinner tonight and I’m glad. Is that wrong?
Sybil has been defeated. Thomas comes into the hospital.
ISOBEL (CONT’D): Thomas, you can cover for Nurse Crawley, can’t you?
THOMAS: I can.
BRANSON: So you’re back, then, safe and sound.
THOMAS: That’s not how I’d put it, with my hand the way it is. But yes, Major Clarkson’s found me a place. And I’m grateful.
SYBIL: Can you give Lieutenant Courtenay his pills? Tell him I’ve had to go.
THOMAS: ’Course I can. I’d be glad to.
She gives Thomas the pills and walks off. He goes to Courtenay’s bed and puts the pills in his hand.
THOMAS (CONT’D): She’s had to —
COURTENAY: I heard. Do you know her well?
THOMAS: Who?
COURTENAY: You know who.
THOMAS: Yes and no. I was a footman at her home before I joined the Medical Corps. Lady Sybil must have been about fifteen when I first arrived.
COURTENAY: ‘Lady’ Sybil? She’s very grand, then?
THOMAS: No. Not in herself.
COURTENAY: Is she as pretty as she sounds?
THOMAS: I suppose so. Quite pretty, yes.
COURTENAY: Don’t worry. I know that’s all over for me now.
* Sybil being caught in the middle, trying to live in two worlds at once, comes from my own experience. When I left drama school in 1973 to become an actor, my career choice wasn’t so much considered silly as completely mad. People would say, ‘You should come shooting,’ and I’d say, ‘No, I’m working, I’m filming something.’ They’d say, ‘Can’t you get out of it?’ And I’d say (a) ‘No,’ and (b) ‘I haven’t the slightest desire to get out of it.’ After all, it practically killed m
e getting into it. And I suppose, looking back, I think that if you move out of your old world to take up an alien occupation, your challenge is to synthesise the two parts of your existence.
For me, when I was starting out as an actor – and I often suggest this, actually, to young actors – I found it easier to avoid my old pals until my career brought me back into London in a West End show. Of course, when I was in a play at the Comedy Theatre, then suddenly my choice ceased to be quite so mad, and it became fun. My friends from the old days would come and see the show, and we’d all go out for dinner, and everything would be lovely. But during those years at the beginning – about five years, really, if you include drama school – I hardly saw any of them, because I knew I would be facing a negative force, and it was tough enough without that. This is what we’re dealing with here. Cora doesn’t accept that Sybil has, in a sense, ceased to be Lady Sybil Crawley, a daughter of the house, and has become a nurse at the local hospital. She wants to keep pulling her back into her old life, whereas Isobel understands Sybil’s dilemma much more clearly.
29 INT. MRS HUGHES’S SITTING ROOM. DOWNTON. EVE.
Mrs Hughes is at her desk when Anna comes in.
MRS HUGHES: Is everything under control?
ANNA: Mr Lang seems a bit nervous…
MRS HUGHES: Stage fright. But what about you?
ANNA: Oh, I’m a trooper. And we can’t complain, can we? Not when you think what’s going on in France.
MRS HUGHES: Still, a broken heart can be as painful as a broken limb.
ANNA: Don’t feel sorry for me, Mrs Hughes. I’m not. I know what real love is, and there aren’t many who can say that. I’m one of the lucky ones.
MRS HUGHES: If you say so.
30 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
The party, all dressed for dinner, is in the drawing room.
CARLISLE: So the fashion for cocktails before dinner hasn’t reached Yorkshire?*
MARY: I could get Carson to make you one, but I won’t guarantee the result.
CARSON: Mrs Crawley, Captain Crawley and Miss Swire.
Robert walks forward to Matthew where Mary joins them.
ROBERT: Ah! Isobel. [To Matthew] Well now, still in one piece, thank God.
MATTHEW: Touch wood.
ROBERT: I never stop touching it.
As Matthew shakes Robert’s hand, his eyes find Mary’s.
MARY: Do you know Sir Richard Carlisle? My cousin, Captain Crawley.
CARLISLE: How do you do?†
ROBERT: And his fiancée, Miss Swire.
CARLISLE: I know Miss Swire. Her uncle and I are old friends.
LAVINIA: Well, old acquaintances, anyway.
Rosamund is with Sybil.
SYBIL: What do you think Mary sees in him?
ROSAMUND: Besides the money, you mean?
SYBIL: It must be more than that.
ROSAMUND: For you. Not necessarily for her.
Matthew and Robert have drifted off.
ROBERT: What’s General Strutt like?
MATTHEW: You know. Rather important, but nice enough underneath. And brave. He got the DSO in South Africa.
ROBERT: Is there any chance it might be permanent, that we can count you out of danger? It would be such a relief.
MATTHEW: I wouldn’t want that, I’m afraid. He’s promised to get me back to France when he’s done with me… How’s your new appointment with the North Ridings working out?
ROBERT: Oh, that. It seems I won’t be going to the front after all. I made a mistake. It wasn’t serious. They only wanted a mascot.
Before Matthew can sympathise, Robert has turned away. Cora’s heard this, but she says nothing. Violet is with Carlisle.
VIOLET: Mary tells me you’re in newspapers?
CARLISLE: Well, I own a few.
VIOLET: Oh, that must be quite a responsibility at a time like this… You know, in a war. When it’s so important to keep people’s spirits up.
CARLISLE: Lady Grantham, my responsibility is to my investors. I need to keep my readership up. I leave the public’s spirits to government propaganda.*
Mary arrives to join them.
MARY: So, now you’ve met Granny. I warn you, she has very strong opinions.
VIOLET: You need have no fear where that’s concerned, my dear. We are more than evenly matched.
* London was beginning to move forward into what would eventually become the culture of the Twenties. Nightclubs and cocktails and jazz, and all sorts of other things, were happening, but of course these developments hadn’t reached the North Riding of Yorkshire. You often, in period shows, see people drinking before dinner, but it’s wrong. The practice was very twentieth century. They drank after dinner – in the eighteenth century, they drank enough to launch a battleship – but you didn’t drink before you went into the dining room.
† We were very fortunate to get Iain Glen to play Carlisle, a genuinely heavyweight actor, who did it extremely well. Here we start our references to the Marconi story with a frisson of discomfort between him and Lavinia, that’s all. We don’t give any more information until later.
* Carlisle is not based on a particular newspaper proprietor of the period. He is not Northcliffe, not Beaverbrook, not Camrose. Rather, he is one of a generic type that arrived in London society at that time, just as Cora is a surviving member of a social type that arrived in England in the 1880s and 1890s. As a general rule, the giant newspaper kings were still, like the newly rich at the end of the nineteenth century, keen to imitate the manners and the lifestyle of the old aristocracy. After the First World War, many of the new rich were rich in a different way. They would have enormous flats in London and, later still, apartments in New York, and helicopters and private planes, but they didn’t necessarily want 20,000 acres of Yorkshire any more. But the newspaper proprietors did. They wanted hereditary titles, too – and most of them acquired them – and great palaces, the difference being that they didn’t need the estates to be self-supportive, because they had huge external incomes. As a result, and paradoxically, their houses were run in a way that few genuine aristocrats could afford. Toffs were beginning to trim down a bit and adjust to the new financial realities, but the press kings went straight back into the age of the high Victorian. An immediate result of this was that they achieved prominence in society in record time, because if there’s one thing the British upper classes like, it is to be allowed to live as their forebears lived, even for a weekend or ten days on a yacht, with no cost to themselves.
31 INT. DINING ROOM/SERVERY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
Carson, in a frenzy, checks and loads a tray with Daisy and Anna. Lang is there, looking uncomfortable in livery.
CARSON: Where are the spoons for this?
DAISY: Just here.
CARSON: Oh, my God, I’ve forgotten the sauce!
ANNA: Mr Lang’s bringing the sauce. And the Melba toast.
CARSON: Right. Right. Good.
But he is red-faced and breathless as he sets off.
ANNA: Now, Mr Lang, are you ready?
LANG: I think so… It’s always the left? And not ladies first?
ANNA: No. Just follow Mr Carson. Start with old Lady Grantham, then his lordship, then just go on round. You must have done this before?
LANG: Not since the war started.
He takes a deep breath and hurries out. Anna looks at Daisy.
DAISY: I don’t think I ever knew that. Why isn’t it just ladies first? Wouldn’t it be more polite?
ANNA: That’s the way it’s done on the continent. And we don’t like foreign ways here.*
Carson comes to Violet. She is sitting one away from Lavinia, with Matthew between them. Violet is on Robert’s right.
VIOLET: I gather your footman, Thomas, has returned to the village.
ROBERT: Crikey. Where did you see him?
VIOLET: At the hospital. It seems he’s working there.
ROBERT: I wonder how he wangled that.
Violet helps herself
during this, from Carson’s mousse and Lang’s sauce. Carson has now progressed to Robert, but Lang has forgotten and leapfrogs him to Rosamund. Carson hisses.
CARSON: No, no, no. Get — get back behind me!
This slightly alarms Robert, who is next to Rosamund.
ROBERT: What do you make of our plutocrat?
ROSAMUND: He’s an opportunity. Mary needs a position and preferably a powerful one. He can provide it.
ROBERT: You don’t think she’d be happier with a more traditional set-up?
ROSAMUND: Will she have the option?†
During this, with Carson whispering and hissing, Lang panics and races back to offer the sauce to Rosamund…
ROSAMUND (CONT’D): Thank you, but I already have some.
CARSON: Give that to me!
Holding the mousse tray, he seizes the sauce with the other hand but tips it into Edith’s lap. She jumps up with a cry.
CARSON (CONT’D): I do apologise, m’lady! Mr Lang! Mr Lang! Get a clo—
Suddenly, he stops, clutching his chest. Both trays fall with a hideous clatter as he staggers back against the wall.
CORA: Carson. Carson! What’s the matter?
MARY: Now, Carson, it’s all right. Everything will be fine.
The party, except for Violet, is already standing as Matthew comes round to help. Sybil and Isobel approach.
ISOBEL: Edith, go with Branson and fetch Major Clarkson. I’ll telephone and explain what’s happened.
EDITH: Well, what about my dress?
CORA: Edith, we’ll get you a coat. Come.
MARY: Sybil will know what to do until the doctor comes.
Violet glances across to Carlisle.
VIOLET: You’ll find there’s never a dull moment in this house.
Cora returns to settle her remaining guests at the table. Anna, Mary, Sybil, Carson and Matthew are at the serving end of the dining room. Mrs Hughes comes through the door with Ethel. Daisy and O’Brien hover behind her.
MATTHEW: Lady Sybil and I will take him upstairs. If Mrs Hughes will show us the way, please…
MARY: I can help.
SYBIL: No, let me. I know what I’m doing.
CARSON: I’m sure that’s not necessary, m’lady.
SYBIL: It’s not ‘m’lady’ now, Carson. It’s Nurse Crawley.
The three pass through the door. The others follow gradually.
MRS HUGHES: Mr Lang. Mr Lang! Anna, Ethel, I must trust the dinner to you.
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