Episode 6 The Village

It was snowing, the day the memorial came down.

They'd sent in a builder from Chesterfield to do the job

because they said it wasn't safe for untrained men.

I said what we all felt.

It's our memorial and our dead and we'll be taking it down.

Remember.

BABY CRIES IN DISTANCE

BABY CRIES

Mr Hankin, Mr Allingham!

What, are we women now, huh?

Are we to stay at home

and do t'washing up now we've seen t'Kaiser off?

Ey, Mr Hankin? Mr Allingham?

Bang!

METAL CLANKS

What good is a man with one arm in a boot factory?

Is this boot well made?

We've worked hard for five years

and we've made sacrifices for this factory.

You've made good money on the back of that.

All I ask in return, is that we keep our jobs,

Mr Hankin, Mr Allingham.

A man with one arm, or a woman with a very big mouth?

Hmm.

HAMMERING

FROM CLASSROOM: Of course, it is people like me,

who have fought for your freedom,

yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours, everybody.

And one day you may be called upon to fight for future generations

and their freedom.

Like the bible says...

Who are you?

I used to teach here.

What's your name?

Mary Middleton. What's your name?

I haven't spoken to anyone in a long time.

FOOTSTEPS APPROACH

He doesn't know his name.

Well, I can't help him with that.

BABIES CRY

This hasn't been easy for me.

Should they all be on the same side?

Or front and back, with 56 on each.

Or four 28s?

Whiskey.

I wanted you to be the first to see these

ahead of tomorrow's meeting at the Institute.

Have you got a room?

137 men went to fight from this village, 25 come back.

And you?

CLEARS HER THROAT

As I was saying..

RUSTLES PAPERS

No.

I've three brothers dead.

They were all in Pals wi' me. I won't have them separated now.

If I move your brother,

we'll have an even number on one side of the memorial

and an odd number on the other.

When men come, 100 years from now, to our village

and look upon our remembrance, what will they say?

That we didn't understand the rules of symmetry?

That we couldn't add up our dead?

Why don't you put them all on the front?

They don't fit!

Not without making the names far too small to read properly.

I said immediately I was given this task, uniformity would be better.

Every memorial to have the same design

then we wouldn't have this discord.

Lady Allingham will have the final say.

Is Joe Middleton on your list?

DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

# Land of hope and glory

# Mother of the free

ALL: # How shall we extol thee

# Who are born of thee

# Wider still and wider

# Shall thy bounds be set

# God who made thee mighty

# Make thee mightier yet

# God, who made thee mighty

# Make thee mightier yet...#

Mr Eyre?

Yes.

You don't remember me?

Mr Ingham won.

What?

You're right-handed.

Are you, erm...?

No, no, I was just...

Why don't you come up to the farm and see my mother and father?

Er, conchies now, is it?

What you looking at, son?

Give me that.

Just leave him alone.

GASPS IN PAIN

Give me the camera.

-Why?

-So I can smash it up.

I can't. It's got you in it and your baby.

BABY CRIES

BABIES CONTINUE TO CRY

Women under 30 can't vote, men over 21 can.

You don't need me to work out the mathematics.

Put the men back in work, they'll put you back in Parliament.

You need to tell the electorate you're a friend to demobbed man.

This was my father's study.

Is it a museum?

No.

Does Lady Allingham object?

Lady Allingham is in the room.

I'm going to change.

Hankin's looking at a cotton mill.

To buy? He's overstretching.

He's trying to prove his manhood outside the bedroom.

COCKS GUN

This needs putting away.

You were in The Lamb?

Outside, taking a photograph.

-Of what?

-Babies in prams.

There was a line of them outside The Lamb

and their fathers were inside with Norma Hankin.

They were, erm, talking about the names for the war memorial.

Or Norma was.

So I was able to ask about Joe.

What's he up to?

Joe's dead.

-But, I... I thought...

-He died.

November 11th, 1916.

-In the morning.

-How did they treat you in prison?

Um...

There was a rule of silence.

In case what you said infected others.

Must have been terrible.

Having to keep all those opinions of yours to yourself.

Where are you staying?

He doesn't know.

What are you doing?

In Joe's bed?

Grace?

You been using it?

Every day.

You'll be wanting a bath.

-Do I, er...?

-Oh, yes.

WATER SPLASHES AND TRICKLES

HE SNIFFS

HE SNEEZES

Bless you.

DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

People don't like it.

So I've tried to make myself invisible.

They don't want to give themselves away, they think that a photograph

might steal whatever they want to keep hidden.

No, it's not that. It's me. The photographer, not the photograph.

That's what they don't like.

Look.

How many died?

Too many.

There are no photographs of the dead.

Where are they?

FOOTSTEPS

I don't want him here.

He's not going to be on the memorial.

No.

They're ashamed of him.

You want to forget.

You don't want to remember.

What are you going to do? Are you going to fight everyone? Hmm?

"Shirkers, deserters, come live with me

"and I'll fight anyone who says no!"

Joe said to me, "Make it a better world."

I won't let him down.

And Bert wants him here.

But why?

Because he's halfway between an older brother and a...

And a what?

And a father, John.

RUBS HANDS BRISKLY

I'll go with you.

What do you want, Father?

Are you cold?

They get it wrong, the painters.

They've not got it right.

Now, if there were a photograph, then we'd know.

We needed you there, son.

A photograph of what?

The nails.

They didn't go through his palms...

..because the flesh of the hand can't support a body on the cross.

No, they nailed him through the wrists...and the feet.

And the rib cage is stretched, which makes it impossible to breathe

unless you pull your arm or push down on the nail with your feet.

The pain he took.

Our suffering is nothing.

Cold?

This is not cold.

I'm not cold.

Come on cold! Do your worst!

We have nothing!

Nothing!

We have our name.

CHRUCH BELL CHIMES

To the left, quick, march!

Halt!

Every morning?

FROM OUTSIDE: Left! Left!

I'm not sure it will ever be over.

FROM OUTSIDE: Attention! And to the right.

I don't know...

..if the village would want me teaching its children.

Martha.

Our Mary says that you're a good teacher. Why are you stopping?

You know why.

I watched you living a life and filling it up with conviction

and action and then you stopped.

Joe died and you stopped living.

This is none of your business.

He was my brother.

The village is in pain.

It's been in pain for years.

In the middle of it all...

..I lost my faith.

So, I'm not the right man

for a man of exacting principle as yourself to come to for help.

Well, I'll take the man I know, rather than the man of God.

For what?

My confession.

Everything that I say about the war and killing, I believe to be true.

But I know that the stand that I took was also motivated by fear.

I didn't want to kill anyone and I didn't want to be killed.

I saw the men of this village go off to fight.

I saw the courage it took for them to offer themselves up to suffering.

None had the courage to reject suffering apart from you.

What happened to Joe Middleton?

Shot.

At dawn.

She doesn't love you. She loved my brother.

-She still does.

-You mean you love her.

Cowardly thing to do, hiding behind your dead brother.

Sorry I'm late.

Now, the law says when Martha Lane becomes Mrs Allingham,

she's no longer permitted to teach.

So, there's a wedding coming and a job available.

You're invited to both.

SHEEP BLEAT

HE PANTS WITH EXERTION

I'd be your tenant?

Not much would change.

Only you wouldn't have to worry about losing your farm.

I'm offering you a secure job and lot of money.

But it'll be yours.

Yes.

And after that, it'll be his?

-Aye.

-Not Bert's?

No.

I'll need to know soon.

Know what?

Oh, he just wants a right of access.

Son?

Would you show me your photographs?

I'm going to be married.

And that means you're to have a new teacher. Here he is.

Your husband?

Your teacher.

DOORS CREAK

SCRAPING AND TAPPING

SCRAPING ON BOARD

HE BREATHES JAGGEDLY

DOOR SHUTS LOUDLY

What have we here?

A teacher

who can't write his own name.

Why not?

Shall we ask him?

Why can't you do it?

Is it shame?

Or is it guilt?

I'll tell you his name. His name is Coward.

His name...

..is Shirker!

They're all of the village.

And none of me.

LOUD KNOCKING

DOOR OPENS

A beard. That's a beard.

Moustache is when it's there, not there.

I want to make it special, Grace, when he comes home.

I want a funeral that my little ones will remember.

I'm not sure, Margaret.

What about?

A funeral, like that.

MARGARET SIGHS

He's slipping away, my Paul. I can't hear him any more.

What was it like, Grace? What were their lives like, over there?

They won't tell us.

They don't want us to know anything.

I don't want to fight any more.

I want to grieve for my boy.

I know how Paul died.

There's room for some words.

-Hmm?

-Here. Around the top.

What would they be, George?

-Sacrifice, honour, patriotism... Covers it.

-Hmm.

And what do the four helmets represent?

Pathos?

And what would you have instead?

Erm...

Intestines, maybe?

Or bluebottles. There were great swarms of them everywhere,

living off human flesh.

They used to get in your nose and in your uniform.

Used to wonder where they'd been.

You knew, of course you knew where they'd been.

A buzzing cloud of happy, busy bluebottles above every shithole.

In the summer, I'd put my best sniper on lav duty, we called it.

Sights on his rifle set just below

the most intensely buzzing cloud on the German trenches.

And when the cloud lifted for a moment...

IMITATES GUNSHOT

..you squeeze the trigger.

One in five times you'd bag a Hun having a careless evacuation.

You have to remember, this is about remembering.

That yes, we went to France to die for our country,

we also went to France to kill for our country.

CHILDREN CHATTER FAINTLY IN THE BACKGROUND

DOORBELL TINKLES SOFTLY

DOOR CLICKS SHUT

LEGS THUD HEAVILY

HE MOANS

KNIFE BEING SHARPENED

LOUDER SHARPENING

What? What is it you want?

Do you believe that Joe was a coward?

You say that again and I'll kill you.

You wouldn't be frightened of me

if you didn't believe that Joe was a coward.

Frightened?

Frightened of a shirker?

KNIFE CLINKS LOUDLY

You be gone when I get back.

RASPING BREATHING

RASPING INCREASES

HE STRUGGLES TO BREATHE

-What are we doing?

-We're embracing grief.

-Whose grief is it?

-It belongs to us all.

-Who were the dead?

-They're ours.

PEOPLE TALK QUIETLY

-Ladies and gentlemen...

-Sit down.

..friends. Our great project,

this testament in stone, our memorial to those we have lost,

has just taken on even greater significance.

The government, in consultation with the king

and with the most senior figures in our armed forces,

has decided that there will be no repatriation of the fallen.

Our glorious dead will remain together in France,

united as one in our memory.

No!

I want him home!

November the 11th will serve as a day of remembrance for us all.

That's wrong. Everyone's grief is different.

It's more meaningful if we join together.

It costs less.

And they can tell us what the history is going to be.

Do you want the politicians and the generals who took us

into this war to tell us how to mourn our dead after it?

We know why you're saying this, Grace.

Then come on, Norma. Say it!

Out with it!

It, it might help if we talked about the day itself, the plans.

The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month.

Men died at 10.30.

Men died at 10.50 so that the war's end would have

more of a ring to it in the history books.

My brother...

was shot dead on another 11th of November...

..two years before, at 4.00 in the morning.

Will you be awake at dawn?

Will you wake up and remember him?

This is not about individual loss.

This is common grief, shared bereavement.

They're bringing home the Unknown Warrior and giving him

a funeral fit for a king.

One of the pall bearers is Field Marshall Haig himself?

Yes, I believe so.

The man who signed my brother's death warrant!

We're all making big adjustments.

We all remember before the war as being another time.

A kind of...golden age.

You had more servants. That's what was golden about it.

It wasn't, it wasn't a golden age for me or for Margaret Boden

or for Agnes or for anyone else I've ever spoke to outside of your class.

Right, why don't we limit our argument to the memorial?

That's why we're here,

to establish the most fitting way to remember those...

Remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

I think we can at least agree all men are equal

when they confront their maker.

Then you can tell me.

Is my son in heaven...

..or is he in hell?

Where is he?

Where's he gone?

Whatever Rutter's offering you, I'll match it.

What?

But I don't want your farm.

I want to talk about Grace.

Now?

No, no. From time to time, you and me.

We have to work quietly, us men,

to return her to the home,

to soothe her rage.

You keep the farm and nobody need know about our arrangement.

You know, true acts of charity,

when men are pure with motive,

are always privately made and privately achieved, Mr Middleton.

FOOTSTEPS APPROACH

She's your wife. What kind of a man are you?

Hello, love. I just left me cap.

Hell. Of course. Someone should have just said it.

You didn't.

Why not? Were you wrong about Joe Middleton, Dr Wylie?

Is his death on your conscience?

He was a coward.

Oh, yes, of course - bad, not mad. Yes, beyond help. Not your field.

What do you think, Miss Lane?

Is there such a thing as a collective conscience?

Beyond rules and law and doctors?

We've killed a man.

We think about his death - we can't stop thinking about it -

but...but we have to resolve it or it'll destroy us.

Joe Middleton is our problem. His name is our conscience.

Well, where's the damn car?

Why don't we walk, hmm? Let's walk.

Do you love Caro?

Of course.

Stupid question.

Yes, you invented her, you made her into...whatever she is now.

So it would be surprising if you didn't love what you've made.

I understand your daughter better than you could possibly hope to.

You understand her? I asked you about love.

All you've got is feeling.

I have insight and that gives me the whole picture.

Then imagine how much of a fool you'd feel if you were wrong.

What have you said to him?

Nothing.

CAMERA CLICKS

Thank you.

Hello?

He's gone.

Mr Eyre?

HE PANTS, SHIVERS

What about the children?

What about...the children?

Sssh. Sssh.

You know what this is, don't you?

And he brings it here, to this village,

to this house, to his bed.

What have you done?!

Not at work?

No.

Strange pudding.

Can I have it on the tab, please?

Is this what I think it is?

Who is it?

Grace?

No. I'm not having you catching it.

-That's for me...

-No, it is not.

You'd risk catching it and passing it on to Mary? To Bert?

No, enough. He's on his own.

KNOCK ON DOOR

Sorry.

Margaret?

Some rhubarb and some treacle.

It's my girls.

All my girls.

THEY ALL COUGH

HE BREATHES ROUGHLY

Mr Hankin.

Doctor.

Ah, the stonemason's here, if you'll excuse me.

Er, how, how many are there?

I saw 40 cases this morning.

57 names down to Mellor T on the front

and the remaining 55 names on the back.

What can I get for you, Doctor?

Half a bottle of rum.

Is rum something that might, erm...?

Decent corpse reviver.

Best friend to influenza, Mrs Hankin.

-Is?

-Fear.

If you want to reduce your chances of catching it, don't be frightened.

And the poem on the side, same lettering.

Is that right, Norma?

Norma?

I think he's going to die.

I'm very sorry. Why are you here?

-It's all worked out.

-Keep away from her.

I had a little bird.

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window and... in flew Enza.

Is this a joke?

All over England, people are singing songs about it

because they think it's over.

And our village had escaped it, hadn't we?

Not many villages in England can say that.

Why don't you stop clearing your throat and say what you think?

We can't let it start again.

-It's here.

-And that's where it has to stay.

No. Quarantine the village? No.

Apart from anything else, I need to be at Westminster.

My bill is being debated on Tuesday.

You could return, live out the life of this parliament.

You might retain your seat at the next election, you might not.

Do this, you will be guaranteed a long life in politics.

High office is virtually assured and you'll have a place in history.

Bairstow, I just...

You're 36 years old. You've been promising quite a few years now.

This is your moment, brought to you on a plate by a farm boy.

It was his idea.

If you lead the village in this, people, newspapers, history,

will all say that it was yours.

The losses this village took in the war

will make it an even bigger story.

We'll go from plucky to heroic, overnight.

And you'll be the man taking us there.

This is our time.

And those are the first four words of your speech.

This is the last of it.

That's it.

There's nobody here.

We're alone. What is it?

I don't love you.

I can never win, can I?

Because he's dead.

You will always love him.

I should have died.

It's my fault.

What is?

If Joe had remained perfect to you, you might have found space for me.

I think when I told you about Joe and Caro...

..I tarnished him.

And I lost you.

23 years you were alive before we met.

It's hard to imagine.

You were waiting for me.

Yes!

Go ahead. Eat your soup.

You don't have to.

You can choose.

Just as you can choose whether to tell Dr Wylie about your baby.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

HE BREATHES SHAKILY

You know what you've done? Nothing goes out of t'village.

So I pour it all away.

A few days without our milk, dairy'll drop us,

they'll not take us back.

They're calling it t'plague. They want to stop the memorial ceremony.

They?

The village.

What did you say?

The village.

No. Before, in the field.

We have nothing?

But we have our name.

No milk, no income.

What will you do?

Slaughter them now for the meat?

Now be a man and shake hands with me.

You've nothing left, Middleton.

Hey, what do you want?

Is there a man here who has not lost a son, or a brother, or a father?

Hey, what do you want?!

I want us all to stand together tomorrow.

Every single one of us.

I want ALL the living to remember ALL the dead.

What can I do for you?

What day is it?

Thursday morning.

Date?

The 11th of November.

-But it...

-I'm not going.

There's a few more people to come. Well, it's a good turnout, really.

Yes, the whole village is here.

Yes, nearly.

Well, you could do, that...that's not a bad idea.

May some silence or something before, you know?

-You freezing cold, are you?

-I'll manage, thank you.

Yeah, I saw him.

CLOCK CHIMES

You have to come.

They don't want him.

Mellor, Mellor, Mellor, Mitchell, Mumford.

Where is he?

I can't be part of something that chooses to ignore my son's life

and his death whilst remembering everyone else's.

I understand.

How can you?

Joe had a child.

My daughter...

had a child.

A boy.

He's yours and he's mine.

Excuse me. Thank you.

PEOPLE MURMUR

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd