Downton Abbey

by Julian Fellowes

  This is her last throw.

  ISOBEL: Ah, now you’ve struck a chord.

  VIOLET: Have I, really? Oh, thank heaven.

  ISOBEL: What do you mean?

  VIOLET: Hmm? Nothing, only the thought of those poor men and women, flung across Europe, far from their homelands, and so much in need of your help.

  ISOBEL: My help? Why do you say that?

  VIOLET: Well, you know they’ve established a resettling bureau up here? No one could bring more to it than you.

  ISOBEL: But if I’m running Downton —

  VIOLET: When it comes to helping refugees, your experience in the Wounded and Missing Enquiry Department renders your value beyond price. One of the organisers said those words.

  ISOBEL: Which organiser?

  VIOLET: I forget.

  ISOBEL: But what about running Downton? I can’t do both.

  VIOLET: Well, I suppose you must decide what is more important: exercise classes and lectures on pottery, or helping men and women build a new life.

  Isobel stands.

  ISOBEL: I must go. But I will think about it. Are you coming to Cousin Robert’s dinner tonight?

  VIOLET: Are you?

  ISOBEL: I didn’t feel I could say no. He sent a note this morning and it was most insistent. What’s it about?

  VIOLET: I have no idea, but we’ll talk there. We’re onto something for you, and we mustn’t let the iron grow cold.

  ISOBEL: Thank you.*

  * In a sense, Isobel is a cause addict, as some people are, certainly today. They need to feel they’re doing good all the time, and they will become incredibly indignant about practically anything, at the drop of a hat. Isobel does suffer from that a bit.

  36 INT. ROBERT’S DRESSING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Bates has dressed Robert in white tie. Mary is there.

  ROBERT: You know there is nothing more ill-bred than to steal other people’s servants?

  MARY: But you’re not ‘other people’, and Carson brought me up.

  ROBERT: What does he say?

  MARY: That he won’t do anything without your permission.

  ROBERT: Which, of course, is so cunning. How can I refuse a man who says that?

  Bates helps him on with his tail coat.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): What do you say, Bates?

  BATES: I say Mr Carson must have the last word on where he lives and works.

  ROBERT: You’re ganging up on me.

  But of course he has given in. Mary kisses his cheek.

  MARY: You’re a darling and I love you. Now, what’s this dinner all about?

  Her question entirely alters the mood in the room. He sighs.

  ROBERT: I’d forgotten it for a moment.

  MARY: Won’t you tell me?

  ROBERT: You’ll find out.

  37 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  The servants are assembling to eat. Carson comes in.

  CARSON: Right. Can someone tell Mrs Patmore we’re ready?

  O’BRIEN: Aren’t you serving them coffee?

  CARSON: Not tonight.

  THOMAS: What’s different about tonight?

  CARSON: His lordship wishes to be alone with the family.

  MRS HUGHES: Why is that?

  CARSON: I am surprised at you, Mrs Hughes. Jane, when they’ve gone to bed, can you please check the boudoir?

  JANE: Of course, Mr Carson.

  She is at the other end with Anna and Bates.

  JANE (CONT’D): I thought they were in a funny mood at dinner, didn’t you?

  BATES: How ‘funny’?

  JANE: Difficult to say, only his lordship seemed very cast down.

  38 INT. SMALL LIBRARY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  They are crowded into the room – Violet, the Granthams, their daughters, Isobel, Matthew, Carlisle – all in evening dress.

  ROBERT: I’m sorry if it’s a bit of a crush; I didn’t want to be overheard.

  VIOLET: Are we talking financial ruin or criminal investigation?

  ROBERT: Neither. I’ll get straight to the point. We have a patient who has been badly burned who goes by the name of Patrick Gordon, but he claims to be Patrick Crawley.

  ISOBEL: But I thought he was dead. Didn’t he drown on the Titanic?

  ROBERT: Well, of course it is what we all thought. Until now.

  EDITH: They never found a body.

  MARY: They never found lots of bodies.

  CARLISLE: I’m so sorry, but I’m not quite on top of this. Who’s Patrick Crawley?

  MATTHEW: The man who would displace me as heir. If he’s alive, then I am no longer the future Earl of Grantham.

  This flattens the room. And enrages Mary.

  MARY: It’s ridiculous! How can it be true? Where’s he been hiding for the last six years?

  EDITH: In Canada, suffering from amnesia.

  ROBERT: He does have a story that would explain it. I’m not quite sure about how to test the facts.

  EDITH: He knows all sorts of things that only Patrick, or someone very close to him, would know.

  MARY: What a stupid thing to say! Any fortune teller at a fair comes up with a dozen details he couldn’t possibly know!

  CORA: There’s no need to be angry. This young man is either Patrick or he’s not. There must be a way to find out. Is he like Patrick to look at?

  MARY: He isn’t like anything to look at!

  SYBIL: How unkind.

  ROBERT: I’ve sent his account up to George Murray in London to ask for his advice.

  MARY: But what a waste of time and money!

  EDITH: What’s the matter? We were all so fond of Patrick. You were going to marry him, for heaven’s sake. Aren’t you glad if he’s survived?

  CARLISLE: Dear me. Should I be worried?

  MARY: Certainly not! This man is a fake and an impostor! And I think it’s a cruel trick to play, when Matthew’s been through so much!

  She is starting to cry, which has, of course, given her away.

  MATTHEW: My dear, don’t be too quick to decide. You never know. This might be a blessing in disguise.

  ISOBEL: What do you mean?

  MATTHEW: Well, he seems a nice enough chap. He’s not very pretty, of course, but he can walk round the estate on his own two legs, and sire a string of sons to continue the line. All in all, I’d say that’s a great improvement on the current situation… Sybil, could I prevail on you to take me back to my room?

  SYBIL: Of course.

  She goes to the chair and wheels him out. Carlisle opens and shuts the door, leaving the others in silence.*

  * I’m always interested by the way some people feel facts can be adjusted to suit their own prejudices or desires. Very often in my business you get a situation where people want someone to be very talented, because they’re the sort of person who ought to be talented, they fit in and they have the right opinions, and so on, while they may not want someone else to be talented, because they’re wrong for the industry. They’re wrong philosophically or politically, or whatever. But, unfortunately for them, the first of these is not talented, and the second is, and that’s just a fact. Similarly, here, Mary is not interested in the possibility that this man might really be Patrick, their cousin. This is because she doesn’t want to hear that Matthew is not the heir. He’s had so much to put up with that it’s unacceptable to her that he should now have his future taken away. She is unable to grasp that whatever Matthew’s been through is irrelevant – either Gordon is the real Patrick or he is not. Mary hides behind her own questions until Cora has to intervene. That’s what the scene is examining; how, if people dislike someone, then they can and will invent reasons for disliking them to justify their feelings. But the reason comes after the fact.

  END OF ACT THREE

  ACT FOUR

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

  Cora is with O’Brien when Mrs Hughes knocks and enters.

  CORA: Ah, Mrs Hughes, we’ve had a letter in the evening post which rather slipped my
mind. From Major Bryant’s father replying to my letter to his son. He must have found it hard to write for it seems the Major has been killed. In the Battle of Vittoria Veneto.

  MRS HUGHES: How sad. I’m sorry to hear it.

  CORA: I know. And right at the end. But there we are. I’m afraid it’s the end of our story, too.

  O’BRIEN: What story is that, m’lady?

  CORA: A friend of Mrs Hughes knew the Major. Can you relay the news?

  MRS HUGHES: Of course. Will that be all?

  CORA: Yes. Thank you.

  Mrs Hughes goes. O’Brien works on.

  O’BRIEN: Is that the Major Bryant that Ethel always thought so handsome?

  CORA: Too handsome for anyone’s good.

  40 INT. SMALL LIBRARY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  The room is in darkness when Jane opens the door. She turns on a light and there is Robert, sitting alone.

  JANE: I beg your pardon, your lordship. I thought everyone had gone up.

  ROBERT: Not yet.

  JANE: Is there anything I can fetch you?

  ROBERT: Nothing that would help… I must lose two people who are dear to me. I don’t relish the prospect.

  JANE: It’s always difficult when the first child marries.

  ROBERT: Correction. Three.

  He stands. He has no intention of explaining.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): Never mind me. Good night.

  41 INT. CARSON’S PANTRY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Mrs Hughes opens the door. Carson is reading. He looks up.

  CARSON: What was it?

  MRS HUGHES: She wanted to tell me that Major Bryant has been killed.

  CARSON: Well, well. So that’s that.

  MRS HUGHES: I suppose. Although it doesn’t make much sense. They send them here and we nurse them and nurse them and coax them back together. All so they can go back to the front and be blown into a million pieces.

  CARSON: That’s war, Mrs Hughes.

  MRS HUGHES: That’s waste, Mr Carson.

  42 EXT. GARDENS. DOWNTON. DAY.

  The next day. Major Gordon is walking with Edith.

  EDITH: Not a shock exactly, but obviously it was a tremendous surprise.

  GORDON: So what happens next?

  EDITH: Papa has sent your statement up to his solicitor. What is it?

  GORDON: I was only thinking how lovely it is to be here again.

  EDITH: Do you remember this place?

  GORDON: Of course I do.

  EDITH: How we used to hide over there?

  GORDON: I remember. Wasn’t there a governess none of you liked?*

  EDITH: Fräulein Kelder.

  GORDON: That’s it. Fräulein Kelder. What fun we used to make of her!

  EDITH: Do you know, I do recognise you now.

  GORDON: Do you? You haven’t changed at all. Not a jot… God knows I have.

  EDITH: That’s not important.

  GORDON: Edith, if you really mean it, do you think, once it’s all settled, we might talk again?

  He takes her hand. His own is scarred, but it grips hers.

  * The German governess comes from my own great-aunt, Isie. My great-grandmother was widowed in 1893, when her husband was killed in a carriage accident – something you don’t expect outside the pages of Tom Jones – and she was quite young, thirty-nine or forty, with six children. The girls were educated at home, which wasn’t unusual then, and every summer an extra governess would arrive, who spoke only French, or only German, or only Italian, to force these languages into their heads. Of all the women, the German governess was a complete failure; they all absolutely detested her. The French governess, however, was a tremendous success.

  There were two boys, Peregrine, who was my great-uncle, and Harry, my grandfather, and I remember Aunt Isie telling me that she and her sisters were all bewildered by Mademoiselle, because the brothers were always getting her to go off with them, and ‘We never knew what they were up to.’ History does not relate what they were up to, but the story is a reminder of that slightly odd tradition of home education, which is how pretty well all of these girls were taught – certainly the Crawley girls of Downton – at least before the First World War.

  Another story from Isie places them firmly in that period of the late nineteenth century, before the end of the Old World. There were four girls, Isie, Lorna, Phyllis and Ierne, and when they were fairly young they were made to follow their governess round the garden. When she stopped, they had to stop, too, and start a conversation with the tree or the bush they were standing next to, sometimes in English, sometimes in the foreign languages they had been drilled in. This was so that, in future, when they lived happy and benign lives in large houses at the end of long drives, they would always be at ease socially. And it didn’t matter if they were giving away prizes or opening a school or launching a ship; that was how they would do it… Another planet.

  43 INT. ETHEL’S COTTAGE. DAY.

  Ethel is weeping, as Mrs Hughes comforts the baby.

  ETHEL: But if they’ve read her ladyship’s letter, won’t his parents know?

  MRS HUGHES: I don’t think so. She only wrote to invite him to pay a visit. She thought the subject of the baby would come better face to face.

  ETHEL: Could I write to them?

  MRS HUGHES: You could try, but where’s your proof? With him dead, you’ve no evidence at all.*

  ETHEL: Then I’m ruined.

  MRS HUGHES: You were ruined already, my girl, so don’t let’s go overboard.

  ETHEL: How’s that new maid getting on? The widow with the little boy?

  MRS HUGHES: Very well, thank you. Why?

  ETHEL: Just thinking. Why everyone wants to help her, to feed her, to find her work, because her son’s father is dead. But so is the father of my son. Where’s the difference?

  MRS HUGHES: The difference is Jane is a respectable married woman that some man chose to be his wife.

  ETHEL: Is that enough?

  MRS HUGHES: It is in the real world.

  But she looks at this despairing soul and takes pity.

  MRS HUGHES (CONT’D): Maybe it’s a good thing. You can put him out of your mind. There’s no help coming from that quarter, you know it now, so you must build a new life for yourself and little Charlie.

  ETHEL: And that’s ‘good’?

  MRS HUGHES: It’s always good when you give up flogging a dead horse.

  * Now we get to the next act of the Ethel story, which is the death of the Major. I always have a special sympathy for people whose sons or husbands were killed towards the end of a war. I mean, it shouldn’t really make any difference, logically, when they died, but somehow it does, and the very end is even worse than their being killed right at the beginning. It breaks my heart. Anyway, that is Major Bryant’s fate, not that it’s the end of the story.

  44 INT. HALL. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Carson is ringing the gong, when Carlisle appears.

  CARLISLE: Carson, I wonder if I could be put on the London train at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

  CARSON: His lordship’s valet is catching that one. Would you object to his riding in the front with the chauffeur?

  CARLISLE: Not at all. Meanwhile, have you given my proposition any thought?

  CARSON: A great deal, Sir Richard.

  CARLISLE: I’ll be back on the night of the tenth. Perhaps you can let me have your answer then?

  MARY (V.O.): Answer to what?

  She is walking towards the staircase.

  CARLISLE: As to whether Carson will be Captain of our ship.

  Mary looks back at the butler as she starts up the stairs.

  MARY: With you at the helm, there’s much more chance of a smooth crossing.

  45 INT. ROBERT’S DRESSING ROOM. NIGHT.

  Bates is with Robert, who is dressing for dinner.

  BATES: Your lordship, I need to go to London tomorrow. I’ve spoken to Mr Carson and he has no objection.

  ROBERT: Please say this concerns property and not the former
Mrs Bates.

  BATES: I only wish she was ‘the former’, or better still, ‘the late’.

  ROBERT: Indeed. I hope you’re not planning anything foolish. We’ve seen enough of what she can do when she’s angry.

  BATES: I have to reason with her. I have no other choice. She’s found a reason to delay things again. No, not delay. She’s found a way to ruin things.

  ROBERT: Be sensible, Bates. Above all, do not lose your temper.

  45A INT. ETHEL’S COTTAGE. NIGHT.

  Ethel is alone, cradling her child and sobbing.

  46 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  The servants are having tea.

  CARSON: A German republic? Nah, I don’t think so, Mr Branson. The Kaiser will go, I grant you, and maybe the Crown Prince, too, but there’ll be a regency, mark my words. Monarchy is the lifeblood of Europe.

  BRANSON: Sorry, Mr Carson, but I think you’ll find the kings and emperors have had their day. If President Wilson has anything to say about it.*

  At the other end of the table, Bates is with Anna.

  BATES: I’ll have to go to London.

  ANNA: But what will you say to her that you haven’t said already?

  BATES: I don’t know, but I know that staying here won’t make any difference.

  O’BRIEN: You’re always going up and down to London these days, Mr Bates.

  BATES: I have business in London.

  O’BRIEN: Oh, yes? Well, judging by your expression, your business doesn’t seem to be prospering.

  ANNA: The trick of business is to mind your own.

  They are interrupted by the arrival of Robert. They stand.

  ROBERT: I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just heard news from the War Office and I thought you’d all like to know… that the war is over!

  There is a burst of spontaneous applause.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): The ceasefire will begin at eleven o’clock on the morning of the eleventh of November.

  MRS PATMORE: Why can’t it begin now?

  THOMAS: The eleventh of the eleventh seems pretty tidy to me.

  ROBERT: We will mark the moment in the Great Hall and I expect all of you, including the kitchen staff and hall boys, everyone, to be there. And Carson —

  He draws to one side with the butler. The staff rejoice and hug each other and pour drinks and propose a toast:

  ALL: To peace!