CORA: O’Brien says Rosamund’s maid speaks very highly of him and that seems a good reference to me —
But she interrupts herself with a gasp.
ROBERT: What is it?
CORA: Sybil’s pregnant!
ROBERT: I see. So that’s it, then. No return. She’s crossed the Rubicon.
CORA: She crossed it when she married him, Robert… She says we’re not to tell anyone. Not even the girls.
ROBERT: I wondered why she didn’t ask to come for Christmas.
CORA: Would you have allowed it?
He glances at her, without answering. Then he sighs.
ROBERT: Well, well. So, we’re to have a Fenian grandchild.
CORA: Cheer up. Come the revolution, it may be useful to have a contact on the other side.
ROBERT: Hmm.*
* Cora’s line came from an exchange when I married. One of my greatest friends, then or now, is the actor Oliver Cotton, who was extremely political and, particularly in his younger days, very much a leading light of the Left in our profession. Anyway, for my wedding he read one of the lessons and he had to get into a morning coat, which was not his native costume. Naturally, he was photographed during the day, and I said to him later: ‘Come the revolution, I will hold this picture over you, so you will get us out to safety.’
20 INT. KITCHEN PASSAGE. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S EVE. NIGHT.
Mrs Hughes speaks to Thomas as he comes downstairs.
MRS HUGHES: Thomas, has Lord Hepworth got everything he needs?
THOMAS: I think so. But why doesn’t he have his own valet?
MRS HUGHES: Perhaps his servant is ill… Anyway, he’s quite comfortable?
THOMAS: He certainly is. And very pleased to find he’s next door to Lady Rosamund Painswick.
Carson joins them. Thomas goes. Carson lifts his eyebrows.
MRS HUGHES: Don’t look at me. Lady Rosamund’s maid suggested it. I don’t approve, either. But you’ll say it’s not my place to have an opinion.
CARSON: Nor is it.*
* I was sorry that we had to lose the reference here to Hepworth being put into the bedroom next to Lady Rosamund’s, because one of the things that is shocking to our generation is that these hostesses, who were incredibly correct in their public life, were perfectly happy to put married men and women next door to their lovers. In many houses a husband and wife would be given two bedrooms, but on the other side of the wife’s bedroom would be her lover, and on the other side of the husband’s bedroom would be his mistress, so it was all worked out quite carefully. If you go to these houses, including Highclere, they frequently have intervening doors between the bedrooms that mean you wouldn’t have to go out into the passage.
21 INT. BEDROOM PASSAGE. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S EVE. NIGHT.
A door opens, held by Shore, and Rosamund comes out. As she does, the next door opens and Hepworth emerges. Both he and Rosamund are in evening dress.
HEPWORTH: Oh, I say. This is very cosy, isn’t it?
ROSAMUND: What is?
HEPWORTH: To find ourselves next door.
ROSAMUND: I’m not certain it’s quite proper to remark on such things.
Her door opens again and Shore emerges, carrying some discarded linen under a silk shawl.
ROSAMUND (CONT’D): You remember my maid, Shore?
HEPWORTH: Certainly, I do. I hope they’ve got a jolly party planned downstairs.
SHORE: Why would they have?
HEPWORTH: Because it’s New Year’s Eve, of course.
SHORE: Oh, that. I doubt it, m’lord, but I don’t mind. I make my own fun. If that’s everything, m’lady, I’ll go down now and see you after midnight.
HEPWORTH: Only wish I could say the same.
Rosamund ignores this sally and Shore leaves as the others start downstairs. Hepworth flashes a smile at Rosamund.
HEPWORTH (CONT’D): Only joking.
Below, Violet is coming in. Hepworth sees her.
HEPWORTH: I wonder if she’ll remember me…
ROSAMUND: Oh, she will.
HEPWORTH: Good evening, Lady Grantham. I don’t suppose you remember me.
VIOLET: Of course I do. Oh, how is dear Hatton? I have such happy memories of it from the old days.*
HEPWORTH: I’m not often there, not since my mother died.
ROSAMUND: Perhaps it needs a woman’s touch.
HEPWORTH: Don’t we all?
He smiles at Violet.
VIOLET: How very like your father you are. It’s almost as if he were standing here before me. I hope you’ll come to tea and then we can talk about him.
HEPWORTH: I should love it, Lady Grantham. If they’ll release me.
VIOLET: Oh, they’ll release you.
The three of them have reached the drawing-room door.
* Hatton is in fact a real house, Hatton Grange in Shropshire, the home of the Kenyon-Slaney family where I was very fortunate to be invited to stay and shoot for some years. Of all the houses I have visited in England, I think it is the one that I envied most, because it was built on a most perfect scale, incredibly pretty with two little pavilions, but without being colossal, and with miraculous plasterwork in the dining room. I absolutely love it, so I commemorate it here.
22 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S EVE. NIGHT.
The servants are gathered. Daisy carries a tray of glasses.
SHORE: What are those for?
DAISY: We always have a glass of wine at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
SHORE: Very civilised. In my last place we were expected to be upstairs and serving, New Year’s Eve or not.
DAISY: Were you not a lady’s maid, then?
Shore hesitates, but Mrs Patmore speaks instead.
MRS PATMORE: How long have you been with Lady Rosamund, Miss Shore?
SHORE: Two months.
MRS PATMORE: Oh, I see. You’re quite a new girl.
At the other end of the table, O’Brien is with Thomas.
THOMAS: I can read Mr Carson’s hint. His lordship doesn’t trust me.
O’BRIEN: Because of the stealing, you mean?*
THOMAS: So what should I do?
O’BRIEN: Get him to trust you.
THOMAS: That’s easy to say, but how?
O’BRIEN: Make him grateful. Do him a good turn. Hide something he loves, then find it and give it back.
CARSON: Miss O’Brien?
He is holding out a glass he has poured. She stands and goes to get it, at which moment Robert’s dog, Isis, comes into the room. She sees Thomas looking at her and wags her tail.
* Stealing was, as I’ve said before, the blackest mark for a servant. It was absolutely the worst thing that a servant could be accused of. Other things could be forgiven; stealing, never.
23 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S EVE. NIGHT.†
Robert is checking his fob watch against the clock.
ROBERT: Not long now. Does everyone have a glass?
Edith has a tray, with a couple left. She approaches.
EDITH: Anthony Strallan was at Granny’s for tea the other day, so I know why he wouldn’t shoot. He’s hurt his arm.
ROSAMUND: Shame. Well, we shall try again next year.
Edith drifts off as Violet steps in, speaking softly.
VIOLET: Oh, I am sorry I started that. Now, don’t encourage it. She’d spend her life as a nursemaid.
Mary is with Carlisle, who takes a glass from Edith’s tray.
CARLISLE: Once again, the servants are downstairs and we’re on our own.
MARY: In the whole year, we fend for ourselves at Christmas lunch and on New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t seem much to me.
CARLISLE: You haven’t had to fight for what you’ve got.
MARY: Oh, do try to get past that. It makes you sound so angry all the time.
She strolls off, towards Matthew.
MARY (CONT’D): I hope London wasn’t too grim.
MATTHEW: Well, I got down there in time, which is the main thing.
And I was with him when he died. So he wasn’t alone.
MARY: I’m so sorry, and so glad.
ROBERT: Here we go!
The clock strikes the first chime of twelve. They toast the Happy New Year (without clinking glasses).
ROBERT (CONT’D): Happy New Year!
ALL: Happy New Year!
MATTHEW: Happy New Year, Mama.
ROBERT: Happy New Year, Mama.
VIOLET: 1920. Is it to be believed? I feel as old as Methuselah.
ROBERT: But so much prettier.
VIOLET: When I think what the last ten years has brought, God knows what we’re in for now.*
† Now we have the same New Year’s Eve scene being played out with the family. All of the moments that play in parallel are quite deliberate, because I do believe that a good many elements of our life are common to every part of our society, and I don’t think it hurts to remind people of that. Our shared experience includes that slightly gauche moment on 31 December, Happy New Year. Personally, I have a horror of big New Year bashes, although I don’t mind a jolly dinner party. I think just two of you sitting there in the library with a glass of eggnog is a bit sad.
* This is the moment when the twentieth century really started, although I do understand that the 1910s completed the previous decade and the new one would begin in January 1921. We also have a little bit of passage acting in the following scene, with servants glimpsing various conjunctions – Shore talking to Hepworth, and so on. It is all to do with keeping several different stories going at once. In my experience, the audience always likes knowing things that the people on screen don’t know. So, here, they are encouraged to start thinking there’s something up.
24 INT. BEDROOM PASSAGE. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S EVE. NIGHT.
Anna is walking when she sees Hepworth talking to Shore. Hepworth goes back into the room. Shore joins Anna.
SHORE: He’s pushing his luck.
ANNA: How?
SHORE: He wants me to speak up for him. To Lady Rosamund.
ANNA: If I were you, I’d keep out of it.
25 EXT. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
There are eight men. Nearby, seven loaders carry guns, some pairs, some single guns. Matthew has his own. Robert holds out the case of numbered spills for them to choose. Mary, Rosamund and another wife are there, all in country clothes.†
ROBERT: We’ll walk to the first drive, then use the wagonette after that.
HEPWORTH: Splendid. I hope you’re going to stand by me.
ROSAMUND: I thought I’d chum my brother. Cora isn’t coming out until luncheon.
HEPWORTH: Well, the second drive then. You ladies will have to distribute your charms fairly as there are only three of you. Do you agree, Lady Mary?
Mary smiles and opens her mouth to speak, but:
CARLISLE: Lady Mary will stand by me.
MARY: Now, just —
MATTHEW: I thought you were going to stand with me for the first drive. Isn’t that what you said?
MARY: Did I? Yes, I think I did.
She half shrugs at Carlisle, as if her hand were forced.*
† Once again, Alastair Bruce, our wonderful master of everything, is here as one of the guns, to keep an eye on the detail. We have them pulling numbers for their places, which I put in because I prefer it to being placed at the pegs, as some hosts do. If you’ve chosen a number and then you get a bad peg for a particularly wonderful drive, it’s nobody’s fault, which, to me, seems to be a more satisfactory way of managing it.
In this episode, we tell the audience how a day’s shooting works. First, you often walk to the first drive, then, after the second or third drive, you will have a drink or some soup and, at the end of the morning, there’s lunch, and so on. All of this is quite useful dramatically, because it means you can bring characters together or push them apart, but also I like to think that we have explained some of the appeal of shooting to people who are unfamiliar with it.
I know shooting gets a bad press these days, and of course it’s unfashionable to say it, but we should perhaps remember that gamekeepers were the main ecologists for centuries. They were the ones who protected undergrowth, or the woodland, or the headland round a field. Far from destroying the countryside, they preserved it, but I know these things are complicated, and it is understandably hard for the urban population to understand that nobody enjoys the sight of fox cubs playing more than a huntsman, and nobody enjoys a pheasant on a wing more than a shot. Of course, after trying to put the country case, my reward was to be attacked in the papers by some fathead criticising the leggings they were wearing. He was, in fact, quite wrong, but more than that, I wanted to say: ‘Look, you silly man, I have given shooting to sympathetic characters. That in itself should merit your support, if they’d come in a clown’s outfit.’
* I thought the shooting scenes were incredibly well filmed, and the image of the guns walking down the hill was one of my favourites in the whole series. When it comes to the business of where Mary should stand, there are no hard and fast rules. Perhaps your wife stands with you for most of it, but she may be with someone else for a particular drive and his girlfriend may stand with you. That is perfectly ordinary at shoots in real life and is also useful for us dramatically, because we create a whole Matthew/Mary/Carlisle situation out of it.
26 INT. MRS HUGHES’S SITTING ROOM. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
Mrs Hughes is with Ethel, drinking lemonade.
ETHEL: But why? What’s to be gained?
MRS HUGHES: If you ask me, nothing. I wrote to them and I made it very clear you would not be changing your mind.
ETHEL: I suppose he wants to bully me.
MRS HUGHES: I think it highly likely. So, that’s settled. How’s Charlie?
ETHEL: Very well, thank you, Mrs Hughes. My neighbour’s looking after him.
MRS HUGHES: Good.
ETHEL: Of course, I wouldn’t like Mr Bryant to think I’m afraid of him.
MRS HUGHES: Why would he think that?
ETHEL: He mustn’t feel I’m scared to face him, ’cos I’m not… No. Tell them I’ll meet them if they want to hear ‘no’ in person. Tell them to come.
Mrs Hughes so wishes this wasn’t down to her.*
* When Amy Nuttall, who plays Ethel, was told that the whole of her story was going to be excised from the Special, her heart must have plunged. I’m sure they said that we would reshoot it for the next series, but in those situations you don’t usually believe that they will. Because, in a way, the story was finished. Once she had decided to keep the child, that was a conclusion, if we had chosen to see it as such. But actually she was quite safe, because we all felt it would have been such a false message to have sent out.
26A EXT. FARMLAND. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
The shooting party walk along together, chatting away as they go.
26B EXT. WOODLAND. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
Beaters make their way through the woods, striking at the ground to raise the pheasants into the air.
27 EXT. FARMLAND. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
Matthew is at his peg. He fires. Nothing comes down. He takes a cartridge out of his pocket. Mary is with him.
MARY: Why don’t you have a loader? Barnard would have found you one.
MATTHEW: I’m not very good at it. They saw double guns and I don’t want a witness.
MARY: I’m a witness.
MATTHEW: Then please don’t spread the word of my incompetence.
MARY: I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird, or the shame when you miss it.
He fires again. Nothing. She smiles.
MARY (CONT’D): Thank you for intervening back there before I said something rude.
MATTHEW: He does rather beg to be teased.
MARY: The awful truth is, he’s starting to get on my nerves. Still, you’re not the person to burden with that.
MATTHEW: You’re still going to marry him, though?
MARY: Of course. Why wouldn’t I?
<
br /> He glances at her, then fires again. Both barrels.
MATTHEW: I think I might have got that one.
The horn blows. Matthew breaks his gun and unloads it. They start to walk back to the other guns.
MATTHEW (CONT’D): You must promise faithfully to lie when they ask you how I did.
Mary is laughing at this when she sees Carlisle watching her.*
* Matthew has been brought up in Manchester and is not a particularly good shot. In this he represents me, because I am not a good shot, although I’ve been shooting since I was fourteen, so I have much less excuse. Happily, my son is very good, which pleases me no end. As for Matthew/Mary versus Mary/Carlisle, what Mary is hiding from is that she is naturally more relaxed with Matthew, because they are more compatible as personalities. So they can joke and chat and make each other laugh, but she doesn’t really have that with Carlisle. Which, of course, Carlisle is fully aware of. It makes him angry, because he knows this kind of easy, unforced compatibility is so important in marriage. When you’re in love, the romance and the sex are both much more important than anything else, but when you’re married, then the fact that you’re with someone with the same sense of humour is crucial. Carlisle does not suspect anything improper has taken place, but he sees the ease between them and that threatens him.
28 INT. KITCHEN. DOWNTON. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
Daisy works with the others, packing hampers.
MRS PATMORE: Daisy? You’ve got a visitor.
Daisy looks over and Mr Mason is standing there. He smiles.
MASON: I were visiting the grave. I thought to misself, why not go and see her now? Take William’s blessing with me… I want you to come to the farm. Just for the day.
MRS PATMORE: Why not go and sit for a moment in the servants’ hall? We’re sending out the shooting lunch. As soon as we’re finished, Daisy can bring you a cup of tea. I’m sure Mrs Hughes won’t mind, will you, Mrs Hughes?
MRS HUGHES: Indeed, I will not. This way.
She takes the older man away with her.
DAISY: Well, he’s here now, so I think I should make things clear.
MRS PATMORE: Don’t, Daisy, please. William wouldn’t thank you for it.
DAISY: He wouldn’t thank me for bamboozling his old dad, neither.
29 INT. STRALLAN’S LIBRARY. NEW YEAR’S DAY.
A butler announces Edith and in she comes. Strallan is working at his desk. He stands.
Downton Abbey Page 51
