A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972) - full transcript
A couple uses extremely black comedy to survive taking care of a daughter who is nearly completely brain dead. They take turns doing the daughter's voice and stare into the eyes of death and emotional trauma with a humor that hides their pain.
That's enough!
I said that's enough!
Another word
and we'll all be here till five o'clock.
Well, it's nothing to me, is it?
I've got all the time in the world!
I got to the end of the corridor
and there was such a din...
All the other teachers opened their doors
wondering what the hell was going on!
- I can't stand...
- Somebody's talking now.
Somebody found it funny?
How many times have I told you?
Laughing always comes to crying.
Right, hands on heads.
Come on, that includes you.
Put that comb away.
Eyes front. Hands on heads.
Forward, down, side, together.
Forward, down, side, together...
Who said move?
Nobody said move.
Eyes front. Hands on head.
Next one to groan stands on his seat.
I know the bell's gone.
Glazebrook, put your watch away.
We are going to have one minute's
perfect silence before we go,
if we have to wait till midnight.
Now, that's nice. I like that.
We could have had this sooner.
Then we wouldn't be wasting time
but doing something we enjoyed.
Eyes front. Hands on breasts.
Who wants to start another minute?
Whatever it is that's tickled
your Stone-Age sense of humour,
when all my efforts have failed...
save it till you're outside.
I'm going to the staff room now
to get my coat.
And you will be as quiet as mice.
No, fish, till I get back.
Not a sound. Not a bubble.
Go on, then, push!
♪ Once in royal David's city
♪ Stood a lowly cattle shed
♪ Where a mother laid her baby
♪ In a manger for His bed
♪ Mary was... ♪
♪ And His shelter was a stable
♪ And His cradle... ♪
- Hurry up!
- Come on, sir. Let's move it to the side.
♪ With the poor and mean and lowly
♪ Lived on earth our Saviour holy ♪
No, you don't...
Tea is ready.
Here you are.
Here!
- What's that?
- What?
- On your face.
- Where?
- Near your eye.
- What?
- A great black thing.
- For Christ's sake!
- It's a spider. Knock it off.
- How?
Knock it off on the floor.
- I confiscated it from Terry Hodges.
- Vicious sod.
- He is, for 13.
- You, I mean.
- In religious instruction?
- It's not funny.
That's what I told Terry.
Get away.
Now, if you knew
how I've been thinking about you...
- Don't do that.
- What?
You're hands are cold.
- Let's go to bed.
- At quarter to five?
All day I've been imagining our bed
and your legs thrashing about.
- Keep that to yourself.
- My tongue halfway down your throat.
- I told you before I can't stand smut.
- Stallions rearing, milk boiling over.
More tea?
- Sugar?
- You want bromide.
Kitchener. Look.
I want you.
Did you have a bad day?
Bad day? You ought to have seen
the staff room.
Christmas spirit nearly at breaking point.
Fatty Brent, Terry Hodges, Glazebrook,
the shop steward - he's got a new watch.
And Scanland, of course,
the missing link.
Pithecanthropus Erectus.
Has he flashed it lately?
- Not at the teachers, anyway.
- Only that once?
- That was the only time it was reported.
- He must be a horrible yob.
I don't hate Scanland anymore.
I just look at him and wonder.
Is he only a monster of my own imagining?
Certainly nuts -
he strangled a little girl.
But that only means he's lonely.
We must make him...
a mate.
Never mind, you break up in two days.
I broke up years ago.
What's the point of starting now?
Jo's home any minute.
- Well?
- Well?
She's got to be fed, bathed, exercised.
You know that.
- She can wait, can't she?
- What?
- Can't she?
- Why should she?
Anyway, my rehearsal's at seven.
And I promised to paint some scenery
before that.
Yeah.
Your dinner is in the oven.
Ready anytime after eight.
I took those old clothes
to the Unmarried Mothers' today.
- They were only collecting moths.
- The unmarried mothers?
All the wildlife's fed,
the cats, the guinea pigs,
the goldfish, the stick insects.
And what else? Yeah,
today I did my Oxfam collection.
Then looked after Jenny's
children while she got her coil fitted.
Could we get our guinea pig fitted
with a coil? Guinea sow - whatever it is.
I've got one now.
Come with me. It would do you good
to get out and see some people.
What people?
Freddie?
Plenty of whiskey afterwards.
I'll need the whiskey first,
if I have to talk to Freddie.
If I have to watch you taper
about with muck on your face...
Shall I ring you mother
and see if she's free?
What a swinging prospect -
my mother and Freddie.
I remember...
I seem to remember
that YOU introduced me to Freddie.
But at least I don't wallow in self pity.
At least I do something about it.
You and Freddie together, yes.
Well, at least I try and make life work.
Honestly...
Get out of the way
and you won't get stepped on.
There you are, lovely. Home again.
Safe and sound.
Been a good girl?
I'm glad to hear it.
The lady in the bus
said you've been good.
What's that?
You sat by the driver, hey?
There's a clever girl.
Saw the Christmas trees?
And the shops lit up?
What was that?
You saw Jesus?
Where was he?
Poor softie.
I see.
My great, big, beautiful darling,
home again.
Got a great, big, beautiful kiss
for mummy?
"I'm lovely", she says.
"Mad", she says, "but lovely".
- She's been a good girl, Dad?
- Very good. Sat by the driver.
Did you sit by the driver, lovely?
- Saw all the Christmas trees.
- Saw the Christmas trees? Clever girl.
- And Jesus.
- Jesus?
- Bathed in light in the sky.
- She got a screw loose, Dad?
- Seeing Jesus?
- On the electricity building.
- I thought she was off her chump, Dad.
- No wonder. Seeing Jesus in this dump?
- The bus lady says she's doing well.
- Daddy's pleased you' re trying, love.
What with your 11 plus on the way.
"I want to go to a decent school",
she says.
Unlike that comprehensive slum
where daddy works.
- "Goes to business".
- "Goes to business" - sorry.
"Share a room with
council-house types and blackies."
"I've had enough of them
at the Spastics' Nursery".
She wants to go to the Training Centre
and make ball-point pens.
"I'm backing Britain", she says.
Here's a note from the nursery.
"School report", Mum.
"The physiotherapist lady came
and looked at us all"
"and said, 'Josephine's shoulders
show signs of improvement."
"Keep on with the exercises."'
Do your homework like a good girl.
Daddy, help.
Mummy can't help because
she's going out for a bit on the side.
Let me call your mother, please?
What's this? What's this?
She had a few fits today.
"But it must have been the excitement
of a birthday party we had."
Why is that?
I thought we got them under control.
How will you raise above the general
level if you keep having fits?
It's the first for weeks,
except an occasional petit mal.
Those council-house types
down there, what do they say?
She thinks she's lady muck
with her cut-glass voice.
- She only a moaning raver like all we.
- Poor blossom.
You spare the rod,
you spoil the child, Mum.
Hey, look.
Hello?
That's great. That explains it.
They've run out
of anticonvulsant suspension again.
"Party we had, or because
we used up all her yellow medicine".
How many times is this?
The amount they use down there,
you'd think they keep it on draft.
Drawn to the day centres and nurseries
in battles by a great fleet of dray horses.
And in the city of Bristol Pharmacy
you can stand as I am standing now
at the nerve centre of
this great operation of mercy,
and watch the myriad craftsmen
at their various chores.
Give her the phenos.
This great social service
brings new life to dying crafts.
I can catch the gleam of horse brasses.
I can smell the tang
of the cooper's apron.
I can hear the Enigma Variations.
♪ A-di-a-di-di...
There's a clever girl.
Now, tell mummy. Are you wet?
Soaked!
- Where's the bag?
- Here.
That one's dry? You've started leaving
the one I send in the bag?
Letting her sit like Joe Egg in the damp?
Her parts get spreezed.
Perhaps she was dry before the fit.
She could hardly have gone all day
without a wee. Poor flower.
Never mind.
Mummy's got a special treat for tea -
a favourite ice-cream.
I'm late.
Will you change her?
There's ointment in the cupboard.
- Put her on the kitchen table.
- I'm not the new nanny.
I know that.
I've done it before.
Once or twice, in the last ten years.
Change first, ice-cream after.
Your favourite flavour, cannabis resin.
You look pale, love.
Was a nasty fittie? Never mind.
Say "nasty".
"Nasty fit", say.
Very soft hands you've got...
like silk.
Lady's hands?
They've never done rough work.
God bless you.
Daddy, kiss it better?
Did you hear that?
It's your mother in the bedroom.
She must have dropped them at last.
When he gets into one of these moods,
he'll do anything to draw attention.
That spider on his face!
And all this stuff
about Freddie of all people! Christ!
She's a wonderful woman, my wife.
No, seriously.
She works as a whole, not in parts -
unlike me.
I'm Instant Man -
get one for Christmas, endless fun.
All made up from whole lengths of string,
fag ends, magazine cuttings, film clips...
all stuck together with wedges
of last week's school dinner.
Yes, well, you would call it showing off.
I'm only trying to call attention to myself.
Get more than my fair share.
Otherwise, I'd have to settle
for eyes front, hands on heads
and a therapeutic bash
once in a blue moon.
And I'm too young to die.
I tell you.
I thought I could smell cigarettes.
Isn't it nice to be able to rest afterwards,
without having to worry
about your mother coming in?
Yeah, we owe that lady.
- Your dowry is standing up to it well.
- What?
The bed.
Although, by all accounts
it's been through worse.
This must be a holiday
compared to what you've told me.
I'm beginning to wish I hadn't.
You're throwing it in my face all the time.
It was you who said
we ought to be honest with each other.
"We should know all about each other",
you said, before we got married.
- Anyway, you told me all yours first.
- All three. That took an hour.
And for the next few weeks
you made a shortlist.
I wasn't promiscuous by choice.
Once you get to a certain stage
with a man, it's hard to say no.
Most girls seemed to manage it with me
at any rate.
Three - out of God knows how many
tens of thousands I must have tried.
They didn't know what they were missing.
You were the only one,
who gave me real satisfaction.
You know, when you told me that,
I was knocked out.
For days I was thinking
I was some sort of phallic symbol.
She will stick with me, I thought,
because I've got a magic super zoom...
with added cold start.
Hey...
Those four Americans...
- Where did you get that?
- What?
- Four Americans?
- Wrong?
Two Americans. One Canadian.
Well...
They made you lie across a pillow?
It was something
they'd got out of Hemmingway.
And that Welshman, that stoker.
Policeman.
He was shocked because you used...
rude words in a posh accent.
When it came to getting off your frock,
he was so ravenous, he tore it off.
Shut up.
How shall I figure?
The biggest talker.
You know what? One good
thing about you being pregnant
is we don't have to worry about
you getting pregnant.
- Did you finish your ice cream?
- Yeah.
- I'm off, Bri.
- Right.
- Shall I ring your mother?
- No. Bloody hell, what for?
So we can go out.
It's Tuesday night. Nowhere much to go.
The zoo is shut.
- There's a western at the Gaumont.
- I'm in the rehearsal.
Can get drunk if you like,
but not too drunk to bring me home
and have me.
- Pas devant...
- What?
Pas devant I'enfant.
H, A, V, E me.
Seriously, shall I?
Hey, listen.
What's it like with Freddie?
You've told me about the others.
Not all, of course.
- Let go!
- A sampling, a cross-section?
- I shall bite.
- The ones that stand out from the crowd.
- They were before I met you.
- But Freddie is now.
- What's his speciality?
- Even if he wanted to, which he doesn't...
You must think I'm soft.
He would run a mile from a scandal.
Yes, well, I mean, what's his gimmick?
Come and ask him.
I mean, his forte.
For instance, does he keep his mac on?
Bri?
Bri?
- Bri!
- Fine.
OK. Fine. Yes, fine... Right.
What are you doing, love?
It's a bit late to practice, isn't it?
What's the time?
It's ten to three. Can't you sleep?
Can't we do that in the morning?
I can't sleep with that going on.
Ring the midwife, please.
The number is in an envelope
on the shelf of herb jars.
OK... Does it hurt much?
No, not much yet.
Pennies for the phone?
I left them in an envelope.
Sheila, thank heaven I'm not too late.
Brian's father was fussing about
like an old woman and I said to him,
"Percy, make up your mind what you want
for breakfast - bacon or tomatoes?"
I said, "You know how helpless Brian is
with anything practical -"
"worse than you with your hands."
Since he gave up the car, I've had to
rely absolutely, completely on the buses.
I didn't get to the arches till nine o'
clock. Do you want a cigarette, Bri?
No thank you, Mum. I gave it up
because the smell upsets Sheila.
I said to the lady in David Greaves',
"I want some nice fresh fruit"
"for my daughter-in-law,
who's having a baby."
And she said, "You don't look
old enough to be a grandma!"
Well, I said, "You're as old as you feel."
- Are you sure you don't want a cigarette?
- No, no, thanks.
Mrs Parry said, "There's nothing
so satisfying as a nice filter tip."
Mrs Parry, that walking sheath.
Sheath?
I never expected to hear Mrs Parry
quoted in connection with child birth.
Nurse, we have done it!
With this we can make
whole continent barren.
The deterrent they have all been
searching for... Mrs Parry!
You look worn out, love.
Would you like a nice cup of tea?
Shall I make a nice cup of tea, Sheila?
Nice cup of tea?
Sheila?
This youngster doesn't
seem to keen to join us.
- No.
- Yes...
Still when you look at the state
of the country, can you blame him?
- Two days now since the first sign.
- It's nothing unusual.
- No?
- She's got a narrow pelvic opening.
It just means her children
won't exactly fall out.
All this trouble getting out... Spend
the rest of his life trying to get back in.
Yes, you will excuse me, won't you?
I've been on call most of the night.
Use your gas and air
if there is too much pain.
- I've made you a cup of tea.
- Thank you, I really must be going.
What a shame.
Would anyone else like it? Sheila?
Sheila?
- Bri!
- It's a bit loud for Sheila, isn't it?
Turn it off. Nothing but sodding death -
don't we get enough of that in real life?
You all right, lovely?
Send her away, Bri. Please.
Just for tonight?
I think it's time we helped you along -
taking you to hospital to induce it.
- You'll be all right.
- Well, it was going on too long.
They mess about
with all this natural child birth.
Unnatural, I call it.
Bri, I'll make you a Welsh rabbit.
- Won't do for you to go and get poorly.
- Medium rare.
That's your daughter.
Your wife is in there.
Love. You look terrific.
- Have you seen her?
- Who?
- Josephine.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Isn't she gorgeous?
- Well, she's fat.
- Eight lbs six.
- She looks like Oliver Hardy.
- What are those scars on her face?
- Forceps scars, they'll soon go.
And her skin is that nasty yellow colour.
Jaundice, quite normal.
Well, a lot more seems to be normal
than I bargained for.
Five days labour isn't normal. They
should have taken it away days ago.
Yeah, but I wanted it naturally
like all my girlfriends.
Now I feel a bloody flop.
You had a narrow pelvic opening.
I was drugged up to here.
Hey...
Do you remember
that Amazonian woman on TV
giving birth behind the tree?
Some people will do anything
to get on the telly.
I'm serious!
So am I. Natural isn't always good.
You would probably have died
behind that tree.
Well, I would rather
have you unnaturally saved.
You got a cold?
It's not too bad.
Yes. Well, I'll be home soon,
and then I can look after both of you.
- You know, I've never told you this, love.
- What?
Well, you'll find this hard to credit, but...
That week, when she was banging her
head against your narrow pelvic opening,
I prayed.
- Did you, really?
- Yes.
No joke?
As you know, I'm not normally religious.
I make the usual genuflections
to Esso Petroleum and Julie Andrews.
But one day in the kitchen, I got down
on my knees and I prayed to God.
What did you say?
"God, I've only just found her. The only
woman who's not soppy or witless."
"The only woman who shares my belief"
"that you're a manic-depressive
rugby footballer."
I said, "The baby doesn't matter.
If it's a question of a swap..."
Did you hear that, lovely?
Then I was so drunk,
I couldn't get on my feet.
Bri.
She's making that funny face
I told you about.
He heard that prayer, Jo.
He said, "I'll fix that poof".
He thought they were jok es.
How I wish I had done it.
Don't you, lovely?
Saved us a lot of trouble.
But if I had thrown you into the sea,
we'd have never met that funny doctor,
who said it was only wind -
worst attack of wind I've ever seen.
Then you finally went into a coma,
and at last we phoned
the children's hospital in a panic.
There wasn't an ambulance available
and we had to go on the bus.
I've got a feeling,
we shan't bring her back.
But every cloud has a jet black lining.
And as you know,
you did come back, eventually.
You stayed in hospital for a few weeks.
And when they called us to collect you
we knew you weren't
going to amount to very much.
But we wanted to know the best
we could expect and the worst.
The paediatrician was German
or Viennese - I can't remember which.
This baby of yours
has now been thoroughly tested
and we need the bed rather badly,
so it's better if you take her home.
I promise she won't be any trouble.
Keep her well sedated
and you'll hardly know she is there.
- But, Doctor, may I know the results?
- Results?
- Of the tests.
- Which ones?
Electroencephalogram, three-dimensional
X-ray, blood, urine, stool analysis.
- But what can she do?
- Do?
She can't do nothing at all.
Will she, ever?
Madam, do you know what I mean by,
"Your daughter is a 'wegetable" '?
When people ask what kind of cripple
she is, must I say she's a "wegetable"?
- Vegetable.
- Vegetable.
You can say
she's a spastic multiplegic, epileptic,
but with no malformation of the brain.
- That's a long word.
- Which is why I prefer "wegetable"?
But if the brain is physically sound,
why doesn't it work?
Imagine a telephone switch board, ja?
Ja, I worked as an operator once.
Wunderbar,
imagine you are sitting there now.
Some lines are tied up, some are not.
Suddenly, brrr-brrr...
Incoming call?
- Universal Shafting.
- What?
- The firm I worked for.
- Never used that before.
- I thought I would today.
- Universal shafting - story of your life.
Suddenly another call, you panic
and you plug him into the first one.
Then you answer an extension
asking for the railway station,
but you give him cricket results.
And they all start buzzing and flashing
and you flip your lid and kaput!
And there's your epileptic fit -
grand or your petit mal,
according to the stress -
the number of the calls.
Doctor. Doctor!
- Doctor!
- Gott im Himmel.
- I'm very a busy man.
- You must be.
Yours isn't the only pikin
in the country.
I know that.
- There is one born every eight hours.
- Yes.
- Isn't there anything I can do?
- Ja voll.
You must feed her, wash her nappies,
just like any other mother.
- But for how long?
- Who can tell?
In theory, a whooping cough,
pneumonia, Colorado beetle.
Colorado beetle!
That's terrible!
Is that what you got, lovely?
The vicar was the best by far.
We met him on the Ban The Bomb,
and later Sheila
went to see him in his modern church.
Take a view!
So your husband doesn't believe in God?
His own kind of God -
a manic depressive rugby footballer.
Well, it's a start.
It provides a basis for argument.
- He doesn't like me praying.
- You've have been praying?
What else can I do?
I look at that flawless little body,
those glorious eyes,
and I pray for some miracle
to get her started.
If we could just find the key or the
combination we could get her moving.
Do you think The Sleeping Beauty
was about a spastic?
Who can tell, indeed?
Your child's sickness doesn't please God.
It completely brings Him down.
- Why does He allow it?
- How can we know?
- How do we know it doesn't please Him?
- We can't know, only guess.
It may well be that disease and infirmity
are due to our misuse
of the freedom He gave us.
Or it may be that they exist
to stimulate research.
- Research?
- Into infirmity and disease.
If He didn't permit disease,
we wouldn't need research.
But he does, so we do.
- How can I explain?
- I don't want explanations.
I've asked the people
who should've been able to explain.
What do you want?
Magic!
I was coming around to that.
We've had over the years, in this parish
one or two children like your daughter.
For these poor innocents,
I do the laying-on-of-hands bit.
A simple ceremony, few hymns,
a prayer or two, a blessing
and imposition of hands.
- Nothing flashy.
- Who'd be there?
You, your husband, anyone you chose.
My husband?
And he could do with a little instruction.
His prayers wouldn't help if addressed
to a manic-depressive, rugby footballer.
God might feel offended.
He's only human after all.
No, He's not - how silly of me.
Perhaps, you could have
a word with him over a pint.
With your husband. Yes.
Yes, not that there's
anything wrong with rugby.
Scrum half myself for years.
I just don't feel
one should make a religion out of it.
With the other children, did you have any
luck? I mean, did God... You know.
There was one boy, no better than Jo.
He made such rapid recovery after
I'd done the laying-on a few times,
the miracles confessed
themselves bewildered.
He's 12 now,
and this year he was runner-up
in the Southwest area
Tap Dancing Championships.
How fantastic!
Perhaps in a few years
we'll see little Jo...
♪ Animal crackers in my soup
♪ Lions and tigers loop the loop
♪ Gosh, gee, don't I have fun
♪ Swallowing animals one by one
♪ In every bowl of soup I see
♪ Lions and tigers watching me
♪ Make them jump right through a hoop
♪ Those animal crackers in my soup ♪
That vicar was a good man,
but Bri wouldn't let me do it.
I join in these jokes to please him.
He hasn't any faith she's ever going
to improve, whereas I have, you see.
I'm always hopeful.
Always on the lookout
for some sign of improvement.
One day...
when she was - what?
About 12 months old, I suppose.
She was lying on the floor kicking
her legs, while I was doing the flat.
I had made a little tower
of four coloured bricks, plastic bricks,
on the rug near her head.
When next I looked up from my dusting,
she'd knocked them down.
So I piled them up again.
And this time I watched her.
First her eyes,
usually moving in all directions,
glanced in passing at the bright tower.
Then her arm, this side...
began to show serious signs of
intention and her fists started clenching
and spreading with the effort.
It must have taken, I should think,
10 minutes strenuous labour
before her hand gave a spasmodic jerk
and she pulled down the tower.
The other arm was held rigid.
It didn't move.
You see the importance?
She was using for the first time,
one arm instead of both.
She had seen something, touched it
and found that when she touched it,
whatever it was, changed...
fell down.
She had a will, you see.
A mind of her own.
When Bri came home...
we tested her.
We put bricks all along
the circle of her reach,
and sometimes out of her reach
so that she had to stretch to touch them.
And sometimes the effort
brought on a fit or she'd fall asleep
or fire light would attract her.
But more often than not, she'd manage.
We became very absorbed
in the daily games.
Brought her coloured balls
and bells and a Kelly -
those clowns that won't lie down.
Visitors hadn't the patience
to watch for so long.
And it must have seemed
so little to wait for.
The independent moving of an arm.
But look what it meant.
She wasn't a vegetable.
Then she caught some bug
and was very sick.
Had fit after fit -
the grand mal, not the others -
what amounted to a complete relapse.
When she was over it,
we tried the bricks again,
but this time
she didn't even seem to see them.
Which was when Bri lost interest.
I still try.
Though, I don't bother telling him.
I'll tell him when something happens.
But it seems to be only common sense.
If she did it once, she'll do it again.
Bri's mother's always saying, "Wouldn't
it be lovely if she was running about?"
Which mak es him hoot with laughter.
But I suppose women can't help hoping.
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY ♪
Better now?
Better now?
Hello, Freddie.
I'm nearly ready.
Go.
Good girl.
Bye!
Good night.
I can't stand people giving way
to their feelings like that.
It's embarrassing for everyone.
You've been smoking
like a furnace all night.
And all day.
I always smoke when I'm bored.
If you're bored,
you needn't come in and see Bri.
Take the car, go home on your own.
I'm bored there too.
All day.
Why are you going to see him?
He can't stand you.
(Well, A) To tell him I'm not having
my end away with Sheila.
(B) To try and make him see
sense about that poor girl...
- All right?
- Thank you.
- Pam, sorry, I broke down like that.
- For God's sake.
Well, I'm a bit ashamed.
You won't tell Bri, will you?
- Well, please.
- All right, if you say so.
Sheila...
Sheila, you stupid bitch.
- Gorgeous room.
- Pam, no.
Absolutely gorgeous.
I love what you've done with it.
You've breathed on it.
Costs nothing.
Sit down, Pam. Do.
- Terribly PLU, isn't it, darling?
- What?
PLU. People Like Us.
Bri, I'm making coffee.
Clever as he is. Witty.
Done by Brian, you know.
Give me a light, darling.
Dum spiro spero.
- What?
- That's our school motto.
- Don't you remember?
- While I live, I hope?
Yes. That's right.
Hello, Pam.
It's nice having company, instead of
being stuck in every night like Joe Egg.
- Like who?
- Joe Egg.
My grandmother used to say
she was sitting like Joe Egg
when she meant she had nothing to do.
This is very good, darling.
Wild Bill Hickok. He posed for this
just before his last poker game.
Look at the pose? He fancied himself.
Smashing. Witty.
Good.
I prefer this one: The Thalidomide kid -
fastest gun in the west.
On the slightest impulse
from his rudimentary arm stumps,
the steel hands fly to the holsters
and he spins on solid rubber tyres.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- You've been painting?
- I wore me old clothes.
I want you to paint. That's the
only reason I take these parts.
I thought you'd get some painting done.
Aren't they marvelous?
Smashing. Witty.
I didn't get much done
by the time I'd finished Jo.
- You mean the usual?
- We've got some drink, haven't we?
- Brian.
- What?
- You mean the usual?
- A bit more than usual.
Spanish cognac or Cyprus sherry? Christ!
What do you mean, "more than usual"?
We had a row, she flounced up
and slammed the door.
Spanish cognac, Fred?
- Is she all right?
- Look, I didn't want to talk about it.
We're all set for a civilized conversation
and you go on about that poor crackpot.
Spanish cognac, Fred?
Thank you.
Sheila's parents brought
this back from Torremolinos.
- Are you sure you wouldn't have cider?
- No, why?
- I just remembered you're a socialist.
- I don't mind drinking fascist vino.
- Pam?
- No thanks. Honestly.
Spanish Cognac with instant coffee.
High life on teacher's pay.
How is teaching?
Well, keep them off the streets.
Eyes front, hands on heads.
- Still don't like it?
- It's not exactly Goodbye, Mr Chips.
All the same, I envy you.
Often wish I'd been a teacher.
Instead of a rich
and powerful industrialist?
- It must be lonely.
- Where did you get the idea we're rich?
We're not rich.
Comfortable?
Comfortable, yes.
Not rich.
Well...
How are things on the home front, Bri?
Stuck in like Joe Egg?
Yeah.
Look, I'd like to lay one
or two things on the line.
My God.
What don't you see
all the doctors that money can buy
and tell them that you want another baby.
Ask them why you've not had one.
Do you mean fertility counts?
Well... Yes.
- We've had them.
- Yes, she was A-, I was B+.
I must concentrate more.
That's pretty damned impressive. Most
people wouldn't fancy knowing for sure.
Our doctor had an ex-major
turn nasty when told he was sub-fertile.
Kept saying,
"But I was in the Normandy Landings!"
I demand a recount!
Poor fellow.
What about boosters? Fertility boosters.
I know a gynaecologist...
He did such a fabulous job on Georgina.
She's now applied to be sterilised.
If all else fails, I can get
the adoption machinery moving.
I can put some ginger under right people,
get it moved to the top of the in-tray.
You can always back out later
if you've found you've hit the spot.
- She won't like it, Mum.
- She likes to rule the roost, Dad.
But, my dear, you're only prepared
to give up your life to little Jo
because there's no one else.
Once you've got a normal healthy baby
looking up at you, smiling at you...
Does she smile?
She used to. Now and then.
Often, often.
A real baby will smile every time
you look at her and she'll cry too.
Keep you awake every night
and she'll crawl and walk and talk.
Yes, I've seen them... Then what?
Well...
then at least you'll
be in a position to decide.
Decide what?
Whether to let Jo go
into a residential school.
- We've tried that too.
- Putting her away, yes.
No, don't call it that.
What else is it?
I'm on the board of a wonderful place.
They're not prisons. Not these days.
They're run by loving
and dev oted teachers.
I don't care how good
the nurses are, I'm not putting her away.
This isn't a hospital.
It's a special school.
There was a fabulous article
in Nova about it.
- Do you remember?
- No.
If she improves,
she can join their activities.
- Activities?
- Mouth painting.
Wheel chair gardening, speech therapy.
Better not tell her that, Mum.
She thinks she's very nicely spok en.
That's one of the things
she prides herself on.
She wouldn't go to a special school.
We've seen the place she'd go.
No paladin asylum
with acres of graceful park land.
Not even Victorian Gothic.
- Army surplus, lik e a transit camp.
- Except they're going nowhere.
Some of them waited at the gates
with their suitcases.
They were there every Saturday waiting
for their relatives that never came.
At the end of the day, they'd go back to
their dormitories and unpack their cases.
This seems to me defeatism.
- It's quarter past ten, darling.
- What?
Quarter past ten.
Thanks for trying, Freddie,
but it's too late, honestly.
- I'll have to look after her till she dies.
- Or until you do.
Yeah. Which ever is first.
- Is that possible?
- What?
- That she could outlive you?
- We know one.
A man of 76 - just became a boy scout.
They said they wouldn't have
him any longer in the cubs.
These jokes. Could I say
my piece about these jokes?
They've obviously helped you
see it though. A useful anaesthetic. But...
I thought you were going to speak
to Brian about...
This first. A sick joke kills the pain
but leaves the situation just as it was.
When I see a young couple throwing
away their lives on a hopeless cause
it gives me the screaming habdabs.
As a socialist...
"The waste", I think to myself!
All right, I bloody well am
my brother's keeper.
Shoot me down, if I'm all acock.
I'm just trying to strip it down
to essentials. Thinking aloud.
Could you think more quietly?
Was I shouting? I'm sorry. I tend to
raise my voice when I'm helping people.
- Only my head is splitting.
- Yes, quite.
Look, Bri, I, just want to put you in
the picture about these special schools.
They're run by saints.
There's no other word for them.
They love the people they look after.
They'll spoil your little girl.
- She won't know she's born.
- Thanks, that's much quieter.
Another joke, another giggle.
Freddie, it's nearly half past ten.
I throw you a life line and you giggle.
The whole country
is giggling it's way to disaster.
She broke down tonight...
Pat! Pat! ...In a flood of tears.
No!
Because she can't cope any more
with your suspicions and your jealousies.
- I said I'd come and put you straight.
- Wasting your breath, darling.
- (A) We're not going to bed together.
- Scab!
(B) It's hardly likely because:
A) she loves you, b) I love Pam,
- (and c) We've got three smashing kids.
- Darling, I love you too.
I won't throw that away for a bit
on the side - however gorgeous a bit.
And although, I'm not a practicing
Christian, I think I know my duty.
Well...
I hardly know how to say this now.
The whole thing was
just another sick fantasy.
I know you've never touched her -
leave alone shafted her.
I just wanted to bring
back the magic to our marriage.
Stir it up.
A kind of emotional aphrodisiac.
If you ever tried that with me,
I'd leave you.
Well...
I maybe square, but I'm not sick.
- You're so roundabout.
- Look, you wouldn't let me near you.
All day I've been running blue movies
on the back of my retina,
us romping about together
shouting with satisfaction.
What do I get? "You're hands are cold."
This is too juvenile. Let's go.
No. No, no.
That's what he wants. I'm going
to help him whether he likes it or not.
Listen.
Aww...
♪ Where a mother laid her baby...
Christmas carols at this time of night?
The neighbours
won't be able to hear the telly.
She loves the carols, Dad.
- Shall I fetch her?
- No, no, no, no.
- We're just going.
- But you haven't seen her.
- Wouldn't you like to?
- Yes, I'd love to see her.
Your train in the morning, now, Freddie.
No, no. No train tomorrow, darling.
I thought it was tomorrow.
No.
Hah! Come on, let's see little Jo.
- Come along, Pam.
- No, don't.
- I forgot to tell you what happened?
- When?
- While you were out.
- Well, what?
First, I fed Joe.
She was constipated,
she hadn't been for a week.
So, I chose a nice tin of prunes.
What my grandmother used to call them
black-coated workers.
They have to be strained, of course,
because her teeth are a bit stumpy.
Anyway, when she got that lot down, she
kept on having little fits and whimpering.
I thought, perhaps the spasm's hurting.
So, I tried to loosen it with exercise.
The constipation hurts her.
The spasm's in the back
between the shoulder blades.
And you break it down
by wrapping her arms across her chest
and holding them... very tight.
And then ramming her head
down between her collar bones
as though you were rolling up a mattress.
Does it help?
- I don't know.
- Of course.
But I enjoy it.
I find myself laughing when she cries.
Well, at least it's a reaction.
Only this time, she wouldn't stop
even when I let go.
Those fits upset her.
I undressed her, applied a suppository
put a rubber sheet underneath,
I pressed her stomach, lifted her ankles
and at last, she managed number twos.
God! That was bothering her, poor mite.
No, no, wait a minute!
It was no sooner out, she started all that
gulping, lip-smacking, arm-stretching
and opening and closing
her poor blind eyes and...
I thought to myself that's it. The lot.
All you can do.
Pain and fits...
And not for the first time in ten years, I...
I thought, "Is it ever worth it"?
- Perhaps it isn't?
- Worth what?
- The effort.
- We've got no choice.
Of course you have. The special schools.
Anyway, when the fit was over,
I laid her on the bed...
and I placed a pillow
over her mouth and nose.
And I held it there while I counted 100.
There was no struggle or... anything.
It was so peaceful that I just wondered
why I hadn't done it years ago.
What?
God...
When it was over...
I lifted the pillow...
and I said...
Nurse... We are in this together!
You've seen nothing. I looked up
to see the nurse, threw off her cape,
revealing Sergeant Blake
of Scotland Yard.
I must warn you that anything
you say will be taken down...
- What?
- Bri, honestly!
I should've know by now.
Did you feel relieved when you thought
for one moment that I had done it?
- Don't be silly?
- No?
No.
Why not?
Because...
Whatever else she is,
whatever's wrong with her...
she's the miracle of life.
She's only just alive, but what use is
such a phrase? What's "only just dead"?
I mean...
She's the life we made.
You're blessed my son.
She's a holy innocent.
She'll never know evil.
Her life, what is it?
Asphyxiation delayed ten years by drugs.
She should be in hospital, you know?
Everybody says do something, but
when I suggest something, it's all wrong.
Well, if all you can suggest
is murder, yes.
Living with Sheila
you get to welcome death
with life burgeoning in every cranny.
Brian...
She embraces, all living things -
except Freddie
Brian...
Do you know how the solution
to the Jewish problem began?
No.
In the mental hospitals.
It's only a step from there
to Auschwitz, you know.
Darling, it is now exactly half past ten!
You're like a blasted speaking clock -
on the third stroke, peep, peep, peep!
It wasn't my idea coming
back here in the first place.
You know very well,
I can't stand anything NPA.
What?
Non-physically attractive.
I know it's awful,
but it's one of my things.
Well, none of us is perfect.
But old women in bathing costumes,
skin diseases and weirdies.
- It's no good. I can't look at them.
- Darling.
I know you're right about Hitler, Freddie,
and of course that's horrid,
but I can't help feeling a bit on Bri's side,
can you?
I don't mean the way he means.
Everyone doing away
with their unwanted mums and things.
No, I think it should be done
by the state. You see...
- Hitler was the state.
- I know you won't hear of it.
But then he loves a lame dog.
Every year, he buys so many tickets
for the spastic raffle he wins the TV set.
And every year,
he gives it to the old folk's home.
He used to try taking me on his visits
to the blind and the deaf
and the dumb, the halt and the lame.
Spina bifida and multiple scl...
Not for long.
One place we went, there were these
poor freaks with... you know...
enormous heads and...
- So, just put them out of their misery.
- This isn't the time or place for this.
They wouldn't have survived in nature.
It's only modern medicine.
Modern medicine should be
allowed to do away with them.
A committee of doctors and do-gooders
to make sure there's no funny business.
And then, well...
The gas chambers?
That makes it sound horrid.
But if one of our kids was dying
and they had a cure,
we knew had been discovered
in the Nazi laboratories...
would you refuse to let them use it?
That's hardly an excuse
for killing six million people.
I love my own immediate
family and that's the lot.
I can't manage anymore.
Then it's time you tried.
♪ The Angel of the Lord came down
♪ And glory shone around... ♪
We've come to see little Josephine.
Save you bringing her down.
Say hello to uncle Freddie.
Hello, Jo. What d'you know?
Not much, I'm afraid.
And Auntie Pamela.
She's got rather a pretty face,
hasn't she?
She's terribly PLU
when you get to know her.
Aren't you, angel?
My God!
Well, one thinks of a mongrel, athetoid
or monoplegic, but she is so torpid.
"You'd be torpid", she said, " if you
were fitting, crying and doing doops.
She's worse tonight.
She won't open her eyes.
"Who wants to open their eyes
in the middle of the night", she says.
"Well, an hour before
midnight worth two after", she says.
This is the imaginary
character you've given her?
Well, as soon as we joined
the Free Masonry of Spastic's Parents,
we saw she had even less personality
than the others.
- So you've made some up for her.
- Some never suited.
- The facial expression wasn't right.
- One that stuck was the coach tour lady.
Powder-pink felt hat, white gloves,
Cuban heel shoes and swagger coat.
Sea-sick pills in her bag
in case there's turning and twisting.
- She hates foreigners.
- And council houses.
And shafting - knows to
her cost what that can do.
- Loves the Queen.
- And Jesus.
Sees him as an eccentric English
gentleman. A sort of Laurence of Arabia.
- Very disapproving of pleasure.
- Not all pleasure.
- A Julie Andrews film with tea after.
- In the Odeon Cafe.
- Come on.
- What are you doing?
- I'm taking her to hear the carols.
- The carols have stopped.
No! Did you miss the carols, sweetheart?
"Christmas already", she says
"Comes around quicker every year".
♪ Away in a manger, no crib for a bed
♪ The little Lord Jesus
laid down his sweet head
♪ The stars in the bright sky
♪ Looked down where he lay
♪ The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay
♪ The cattle are lowing...
♪ La-la-la-di-di-da... ♪
What is it?
A fit.
- Anything we can do?
- No.
Next time you do that,
the wind will change and you stay like it.
But why are they still happening?
It's the carol singers.
I'll say we're Muslims.
Bri...
Give them a shilling from Jo.
Darling, we really must go now.
Bri, I gave
those carol singers a sixpence.
Knocking on all those doors,
making a nuisance of themselves.
I thought you wouldn't bother
with that so near Christmas.
Right, thanks.
Sixpence. Here.
What?
All right. Thank you.
- I won't say no.
- No.
- Every penny's got to be looked at.
- Right.
They do say, don't they?
The middle classes have suffered most
from inflation...
Now, look, Bri, I'm not stopping.
Mrs Parry and I went to the Odeon.
I thought, "Well, I'll go so far on a bus
and I'll drop in Josephine's new cardie."
"And if Brian's not too busy,
he can run me home."
Yes. Right.
So, I'm not stopping.
Would you like a drink, Mum?
I don't want you to worry. I don't want
anything. I want is to get me breath back.
- Sheila, I'm not stopping, but...
- Hello. How nice to see you.
- You never told me you got company.
- Sorry.
- My mother, Mr and Mrs Underwood.
- How do you do?
- How do you do?
- How do you do?
- Why did you bring her down?
- She wants a change of scene, Dad.
I thought I'd keep an eye on her.
Mrs Parry and I, go to the pictures
Tuesday afternoon.
When you've been with the dusters
nothing but sitting all day -
no one wants to sit around
like a blooming nun.
- I'm sorry, have you a light?
- I do, yeah.
She's very poorly.
- Did you give her her medicine?
- She's all right.
Well, and how's nana's
favourite girl tonight, then?
Look what nana's brought her.
- "I'm fast asleep", she says.
- Unconscious.
"Having forty winks", she says.
An hour before midnight
is worth two after.
Wouldn't she be lovely
if she was running about?
Beautiful. She's a beautiful child.
First time you've seen her?
Sheila, what do you think?
Are the sleeves too short?
- I could run couple of inches.
- Would you bother?
- No bother. We have to do what we can.
- Yes, exactly.
Poor Mrs Parry phoned to say
she couldn't meet me this afternoon.
Had to stay in waiting for the vacuum.
I did some last-minute shopping.
I met her later at the Odeon
to go see Julie Andrews.
But my God, the crowds!
I said to the lady
in Scotch Wool and Hosiery,
- "You'll be glad when Christmas is over."
- What did she say?!
"I certainly will."
I said to Mrs Parry, " It does look nice,
those toys and turkeys and toilet sets."
- See Jesus?
- Pardon?
Did you see Jesus?
- If I did, I didn't notice.
- On the electricity building.
That!
They'll drag religion
into anything, won't they?
- Even Christmas.
- No, that kind of thing spoils Christmas.
- What Jesus?
- It's a time for the kiddies.
We took Joe to Father Christmas one year.
- Little girl like a trip to space?
- Just Father Christmas.
- It's all in the one price.
- Bri, you got any money?
"All shoppers are reminded to visit
Santa's spaceship in the toy department.
"The next launching is in five minutes".
Sit straight now.
We'll sit near the back?
- You want to take her?
- Somebody else is here.
Morning.
- All all right, then?
- Yes, thanks.
- You've changed.
- Quite comfortable?
Stand by for blast-off.
♪ Fly me to the moon...
- Boosters away.
- ♪... And let me play among the stars
♪ Let me see what spring is lik e
- ♪... On Jupiter and Mars...
- Boosters away!
♪ In other words, hold my hand...
We are now free of earth's atmosphere.
Beware of weightlessness.
♪ Fill my heart with song
♪ And let me sing for ever more
♪ You are all I long for
♪ All I worship and adore
♪ In other words... ♪
Father Christmas stank of meths.
- Why do you say that?
- It's true.
It's not true. They're vetted.
Do you know...
I believe I've acquired a little visitor.
It's not something you'd expect
from the Odeon.
- It's off our cat. We're infested with them.
- From Sidney or Beatrice Webb.
We keep them in the kitchen.
When the kitten was born, Sheila wanted
to call him Dick. But I drew the line there.
Standing on the front steps
shouting, "Dick!"
I might have got killed in the rush.
Fleas, I don't believe we ever had.
Can you remember, Brian?
The occasional woodlouse, I think.
You're fond of animals, Sheila,
but it should be kept in proportion.
- It's the first time we've had a flea.
- There's a first time for everything.
Isn't that the loveliest girl
in all the wide, wide world?
- Look another fit.
- Bless her heart.
- She's worse. Look!
- They left her medicine at the centre.
What you gave her tonight
should have soothed her.
I'd have her destroyed... if it was me.
You what, mum?
I'd have her whatever you call it,
put to sleep.
The cat!
- Well, fleas bring disease.
- Bri!
- Yeah?
- Just a minute?
I can't find the anticonvulsant.
That's the bottle over there.
She knocked it over having a fit.
It's like treacle.
How did it get poured out?
I had to save her first.
She was falling about.
By the time I picked up
the bottle, it had all got spilt.
I saved enough to give her a dose
and then I washed it clean.
Where are the phenos?
Now...
Now where can they be?
- Where are you going?
- To get some more.
She's had enough sedation,
"I'm turned on", she says.
The fits upset her.
She needs her yellow medicine.
Whatever is the time? I mean, Pam?
- Quarter to eleven.
- I'll go to the all-night Boots.
Look, I'll go if you think
she really needs it.
You'll need the prescription.
- Yeah.
- Go on.
- She's cold.
- No luck?
- Not so far.
- Let me go, Bri.
- No.
- Really, it's no trouble.
No, no, no.
- I'll show you a shortcut.
- No.
I know one.
Anything to get away.
- Pam, just a minute.
- Yes.
The prescription.
25 quid this car cost me.
After only five years, just look at it.
It's going to be a wet Christmas after all.
- This is not the way.
- There's no other way.
Look, once start that
and you'll have anarchy.
You must have order.
"Thou shalt not kill".
Except when it shall come to pass
thy trade route shall be endangered
and then shall thou slay the enemies
of General Motors and ICI.
Listen, suppose euthanasia was legalised
and your daughter let die
and then in 20 years from now
a cure is found.
- Her brain starts working?
- Yes.
Six-week-old brain in a 30-year-old body?
I meant some kind of grafting.
Brain of a 30-year-old accident victim?
No.
What's funny-daddy been up to, my rose?
It's raining.
- Christ!
- Pam's gone for the medicine.
Thank God.
Don't let Brian touch her.
- Where are you going?
- To fetch a doctor. She's seriously ill.
I'll run my mother home.
I can ring from there.
No, do it now!
God!
- Sheila, I'll do it from a local box.
- Would you, Freddie?
- I'll dial Emergency.
- Yes, an ambulance. Say, it's urgent.
Wait. I'll show you where the box is.
If you get your things, mother,
I'll run you home.
There's gratitude for you.
I'm stuck up there day after day
like a blooming nun.
I thought I'd be offered
a nice cup of tea. Never mind.
We'll have one when we get home.
Wrap her warm, Brian. Put a scarf on.
I got some Garibaldis.
I know you like a Garibaldi.
Not too much at home now you've gone
and your father's passed on.
When we came out of the Odeon, it was
cutting down Union Street like a knife.
I said to Mrs Parry,
"My Lord, what a night".
She said, "Yes, they said we were in
for something of the kind",
"probably lasting until February."
So I said, " What a shame
for the old people".
She said, "Grace, I hate to remind you,
but we're the old people now."
Sheila, why don't you
keep yourself warm and wrap up too.
I was just telling Brian...
That old car, no heaters,
and drafts in all directions.
- Where's Jo?
- What?
- She's gone.
- Well, how can she have gone?
Up to bed, the poor mite.
She shouldn't be sitting up at all hours.
- Has he come in yet?
- No.
Mind those cats now.
No, no, you stay in there!
Sheila, whatever are you doing?
No!
You all right?
- Yes. Where have you been?
- I'd been to call an ambulance.
Well, I've got the meds.
- It's too late for that, I'm afraid.
- God!
I think it's all over.
- My poor blossom...
- What have you done?
I took her outside.
Little worm. Poor little worm.
I was going to leave her in the garden,
but I couldn't.
Can anyone do the kiss of life?
No, no, no, I can't.
- Can you feel a pulse?
- No, I can't!
My poor dove. She's freezing.
Where have you been with her?
In the car.
- Lend me a looking glass.
- My handbag.
Come on, my bird.
Bri! You shouldn't.
Poor little mite, however bad she was,
you shouldn't do a thing like that.
Come on, sunshine. Try it for mummy.
There, there. Everything will be all right.
There, there.
- Perhaps, the glass isn't cold enough.
- For the condensation. No.
- Look, a bit of fluff.
- What?
- Well, a feather.
- Yes, of course!
Here.
There.
- Never mind,
- Go on, go on. Close to her mouth.
That's how we knew poor dad was gone.
That will be the ambulance. No one say
anything. I'll answer all the questions.
There's no need
for unnecessary suffering.
Sheila...
- Come on, Sheila.
- No!
- Come on.
- No, no!
I'll take her. Come on. Let me take her.
That's it, come on.
Sheila's staying the night.
What happened?
- They pulled her through again.
- Bri, thank God!
Night, Freddie. Thanks.
- Bri?
- Yeah.
You simply must come to dinner sometime.
I'd love to.
There you are, lovely.
Home again.
Safe and sound.
I thought they were going
to keep her in for a few days.
Well, they wanted to,
but what's the point?
I've seen her through pneumonia,
flu and more colds than I can count.
Why bother busy nurses?
Anyway, she didn't fancy it.
Did you, lovely?
How are you, lovely?
Still a bit dopey.
But her pulse is stronger
and she's breathing well.
Tough as old boots, Dad.
She'll get the Queen's telegram,
you'll see.
I better go to school.
- You're not going.
- Yeah, I must.
- I'll phone the head, if you're frightened.
- It's not fair on the other staff.
I thought, I...
What are you doing?
"I'll get home and make him
bacon and eggs and fried apple rings..."
I've had some tea and toast.
"Then I'll take him up to bed
and climb in with him."
And what do I find?
So I just have to get these clothes off.
And we can stay there
all day up to our tricks.
Last night...
I thought about
what you tried to do to Joe.
I was rather twist, you know.
My mum and Freddie.
No.
It was my fault. I've been asking too
much of you. So, do you know what?
I'm going to look
for a residential hospital...
where I'm sure she'll be well
looked after and won't pine.
And when I've found it, do you know what?
You and I are going to leave her there...
for, I don't know, three weeks...
maybe a month every year.
Go abroad.
Do you realise...
we haven't been abroad for 11 years?
We can have a second honeymoon.
Starting now.
I'll go and ring the school, then.
Couldn't that wait till afterwards?
You dirty little animal.
Now look what you've done.
Daddy's given you breakfast.
What are you crying for?
Got some seed. What a daddy?
Aren't we lucky?
Single to London, please.
I said that's enough!
Another word
and we'll all be here till five o'clock.
Well, it's nothing to me, is it?
I've got all the time in the world!
I got to the end of the corridor
and there was such a din...
All the other teachers opened their doors
wondering what the hell was going on!
- I can't stand...
- Somebody's talking now.
Somebody found it funny?
How many times have I told you?
Laughing always comes to crying.
Right, hands on heads.
Come on, that includes you.
Put that comb away.
Eyes front. Hands on heads.
Forward, down, side, together.
Forward, down, side, together...
Who said move?
Nobody said move.
Eyes front. Hands on head.
Next one to groan stands on his seat.
I know the bell's gone.
Glazebrook, put your watch away.
We are going to have one minute's
perfect silence before we go,
if we have to wait till midnight.
Now, that's nice. I like that.
We could have had this sooner.
Then we wouldn't be wasting time
but doing something we enjoyed.
Eyes front. Hands on breasts.
Who wants to start another minute?
Whatever it is that's tickled
your Stone-Age sense of humour,
when all my efforts have failed...
save it till you're outside.
I'm going to the staff room now
to get my coat.
And you will be as quiet as mice.
No, fish, till I get back.
Not a sound. Not a bubble.
Go on, then, push!
♪ Once in royal David's city
♪ Stood a lowly cattle shed
♪ Where a mother laid her baby
♪ In a manger for His bed
♪ Mary was... ♪
♪ And His shelter was a stable
♪ And His cradle... ♪
- Hurry up!
- Come on, sir. Let's move it to the side.
♪ With the poor and mean and lowly
♪ Lived on earth our Saviour holy ♪
No, you don't...
Tea is ready.
Here you are.
Here!
- What's that?
- What?
- On your face.
- Where?
- Near your eye.
- What?
- A great black thing.
- For Christ's sake!
- It's a spider. Knock it off.
- How?
Knock it off on the floor.
- I confiscated it from Terry Hodges.
- Vicious sod.
- He is, for 13.
- You, I mean.
- In religious instruction?
- It's not funny.
That's what I told Terry.
Get away.
Now, if you knew
how I've been thinking about you...
- Don't do that.
- What?
You're hands are cold.
- Let's go to bed.
- At quarter to five?
All day I've been imagining our bed
and your legs thrashing about.
- Keep that to yourself.
- My tongue halfway down your throat.
- I told you before I can't stand smut.
- Stallions rearing, milk boiling over.
More tea?
- Sugar?
- You want bromide.
Kitchener. Look.
I want you.
Did you have a bad day?
Bad day? You ought to have seen
the staff room.
Christmas spirit nearly at breaking point.
Fatty Brent, Terry Hodges, Glazebrook,
the shop steward - he's got a new watch.
And Scanland, of course,
the missing link.
Pithecanthropus Erectus.
Has he flashed it lately?
- Not at the teachers, anyway.
- Only that once?
- That was the only time it was reported.
- He must be a horrible yob.
I don't hate Scanland anymore.
I just look at him and wonder.
Is he only a monster of my own imagining?
Certainly nuts -
he strangled a little girl.
But that only means he's lonely.
We must make him...
a mate.
Never mind, you break up in two days.
I broke up years ago.
What's the point of starting now?
Jo's home any minute.
- Well?
- Well?
She's got to be fed, bathed, exercised.
You know that.
- She can wait, can't she?
- What?
- Can't she?
- Why should she?
Anyway, my rehearsal's at seven.
And I promised to paint some scenery
before that.
Yeah.
Your dinner is in the oven.
Ready anytime after eight.
I took those old clothes
to the Unmarried Mothers' today.
- They were only collecting moths.
- The unmarried mothers?
All the wildlife's fed,
the cats, the guinea pigs,
the goldfish, the stick insects.
And what else? Yeah,
today I did my Oxfam collection.
Then looked after Jenny's
children while she got her coil fitted.
Could we get our guinea pig fitted
with a coil? Guinea sow - whatever it is.
I've got one now.
Come with me. It would do you good
to get out and see some people.
What people?
Freddie?
Plenty of whiskey afterwards.
I'll need the whiskey first,
if I have to talk to Freddie.
If I have to watch you taper
about with muck on your face...
Shall I ring you mother
and see if she's free?
What a swinging prospect -
my mother and Freddie.
I remember...
I seem to remember
that YOU introduced me to Freddie.
But at least I don't wallow in self pity.
At least I do something about it.
You and Freddie together, yes.
Well, at least I try and make life work.
Honestly...
Get out of the way
and you won't get stepped on.
There you are, lovely. Home again.
Safe and sound.
Been a good girl?
I'm glad to hear it.
The lady in the bus
said you've been good.
What's that?
You sat by the driver, hey?
There's a clever girl.
Saw the Christmas trees?
And the shops lit up?
What was that?
You saw Jesus?
Where was he?
Poor softie.
I see.
My great, big, beautiful darling,
home again.
Got a great, big, beautiful kiss
for mummy?
"I'm lovely", she says.
"Mad", she says, "but lovely".
- She's been a good girl, Dad?
- Very good. Sat by the driver.
Did you sit by the driver, lovely?
- Saw all the Christmas trees.
- Saw the Christmas trees? Clever girl.
- And Jesus.
- Jesus?
- Bathed in light in the sky.
- She got a screw loose, Dad?
- Seeing Jesus?
- On the electricity building.
- I thought she was off her chump, Dad.
- No wonder. Seeing Jesus in this dump?
- The bus lady says she's doing well.
- Daddy's pleased you' re trying, love.
What with your 11 plus on the way.
"I want to go to a decent school",
she says.
Unlike that comprehensive slum
where daddy works.
- "Goes to business".
- "Goes to business" - sorry.
"Share a room with
council-house types and blackies."
"I've had enough of them
at the Spastics' Nursery".
She wants to go to the Training Centre
and make ball-point pens.
"I'm backing Britain", she says.
Here's a note from the nursery.
"School report", Mum.
"The physiotherapist lady came
and looked at us all"
"and said, 'Josephine's shoulders
show signs of improvement."
"Keep on with the exercises."'
Do your homework like a good girl.
Daddy, help.
Mummy can't help because
she's going out for a bit on the side.
Let me call your mother, please?
What's this? What's this?
She had a few fits today.
"But it must have been the excitement
of a birthday party we had."
Why is that?
I thought we got them under control.
How will you raise above the general
level if you keep having fits?
It's the first for weeks,
except an occasional petit mal.
Those council-house types
down there, what do they say?
She thinks she's lady muck
with her cut-glass voice.
- She only a moaning raver like all we.
- Poor blossom.
You spare the rod,
you spoil the child, Mum.
Hey, look.
Hello?
That's great. That explains it.
They've run out
of anticonvulsant suspension again.
"Party we had, or because
we used up all her yellow medicine".
How many times is this?
The amount they use down there,
you'd think they keep it on draft.
Drawn to the day centres and nurseries
in battles by a great fleet of dray horses.
And in the city of Bristol Pharmacy
you can stand as I am standing now
at the nerve centre of
this great operation of mercy,
and watch the myriad craftsmen
at their various chores.
Give her the phenos.
This great social service
brings new life to dying crafts.
I can catch the gleam of horse brasses.
I can smell the tang
of the cooper's apron.
I can hear the Enigma Variations.
♪ A-di-a-di-di...
There's a clever girl.
Now, tell mummy. Are you wet?
Soaked!
- Where's the bag?
- Here.
That one's dry? You've started leaving
the one I send in the bag?
Letting her sit like Joe Egg in the damp?
Her parts get spreezed.
Perhaps she was dry before the fit.
She could hardly have gone all day
without a wee. Poor flower.
Never mind.
Mummy's got a special treat for tea -
a favourite ice-cream.
I'm late.
Will you change her?
There's ointment in the cupboard.
- Put her on the kitchen table.
- I'm not the new nanny.
I know that.
I've done it before.
Once or twice, in the last ten years.
Change first, ice-cream after.
Your favourite flavour, cannabis resin.
You look pale, love.
Was a nasty fittie? Never mind.
Say "nasty".
"Nasty fit", say.
Very soft hands you've got...
like silk.
Lady's hands?
They've never done rough work.
God bless you.
Daddy, kiss it better?
Did you hear that?
It's your mother in the bedroom.
She must have dropped them at last.
When he gets into one of these moods,
he'll do anything to draw attention.
That spider on his face!
And all this stuff
about Freddie of all people! Christ!
She's a wonderful woman, my wife.
No, seriously.
She works as a whole, not in parts -
unlike me.
I'm Instant Man -
get one for Christmas, endless fun.
All made up from whole lengths of string,
fag ends, magazine cuttings, film clips...
all stuck together with wedges
of last week's school dinner.
Yes, well, you would call it showing off.
I'm only trying to call attention to myself.
Get more than my fair share.
Otherwise, I'd have to settle
for eyes front, hands on heads
and a therapeutic bash
once in a blue moon.
And I'm too young to die.
I tell you.
I thought I could smell cigarettes.
Isn't it nice to be able to rest afterwards,
without having to worry
about your mother coming in?
Yeah, we owe that lady.
- Your dowry is standing up to it well.
- What?
The bed.
Although, by all accounts
it's been through worse.
This must be a holiday
compared to what you've told me.
I'm beginning to wish I hadn't.
You're throwing it in my face all the time.
It was you who said
we ought to be honest with each other.
"We should know all about each other",
you said, before we got married.
- Anyway, you told me all yours first.
- All three. That took an hour.
And for the next few weeks
you made a shortlist.
I wasn't promiscuous by choice.
Once you get to a certain stage
with a man, it's hard to say no.
Most girls seemed to manage it with me
at any rate.
Three - out of God knows how many
tens of thousands I must have tried.
They didn't know what they were missing.
You were the only one,
who gave me real satisfaction.
You know, when you told me that,
I was knocked out.
For days I was thinking
I was some sort of phallic symbol.
She will stick with me, I thought,
because I've got a magic super zoom...
with added cold start.
Hey...
Those four Americans...
- Where did you get that?
- What?
- Four Americans?
- Wrong?
Two Americans. One Canadian.
Well...
They made you lie across a pillow?
It was something
they'd got out of Hemmingway.
And that Welshman, that stoker.
Policeman.
He was shocked because you used...
rude words in a posh accent.
When it came to getting off your frock,
he was so ravenous, he tore it off.
Shut up.
How shall I figure?
The biggest talker.
You know what? One good
thing about you being pregnant
is we don't have to worry about
you getting pregnant.
- Did you finish your ice cream?
- Yeah.
- I'm off, Bri.
- Right.
- Shall I ring your mother?
- No. Bloody hell, what for?
So we can go out.
It's Tuesday night. Nowhere much to go.
The zoo is shut.
- There's a western at the Gaumont.
- I'm in the rehearsal.
Can get drunk if you like,
but not too drunk to bring me home
and have me.
- Pas devant...
- What?
Pas devant I'enfant.
H, A, V, E me.
Seriously, shall I?
Hey, listen.
What's it like with Freddie?
You've told me about the others.
Not all, of course.
- Let go!
- A sampling, a cross-section?
- I shall bite.
- The ones that stand out from the crowd.
- They were before I met you.
- But Freddie is now.
- What's his speciality?
- Even if he wanted to, which he doesn't...
You must think I'm soft.
He would run a mile from a scandal.
Yes, well, I mean, what's his gimmick?
Come and ask him.
I mean, his forte.
For instance, does he keep his mac on?
Bri?
Bri?
- Bri!
- Fine.
OK. Fine. Yes, fine... Right.
What are you doing, love?
It's a bit late to practice, isn't it?
What's the time?
It's ten to three. Can't you sleep?
Can't we do that in the morning?
I can't sleep with that going on.
Ring the midwife, please.
The number is in an envelope
on the shelf of herb jars.
OK... Does it hurt much?
No, not much yet.
Pennies for the phone?
I left them in an envelope.
Sheila, thank heaven I'm not too late.
Brian's father was fussing about
like an old woman and I said to him,
"Percy, make up your mind what you want
for breakfast - bacon or tomatoes?"
I said, "You know how helpless Brian is
with anything practical -"
"worse than you with your hands."
Since he gave up the car, I've had to
rely absolutely, completely on the buses.
I didn't get to the arches till nine o'
clock. Do you want a cigarette, Bri?
No thank you, Mum. I gave it up
because the smell upsets Sheila.
I said to the lady in David Greaves',
"I want some nice fresh fruit"
"for my daughter-in-law,
who's having a baby."
And she said, "You don't look
old enough to be a grandma!"
Well, I said, "You're as old as you feel."
- Are you sure you don't want a cigarette?
- No, no, thanks.
Mrs Parry said, "There's nothing
so satisfying as a nice filter tip."
Mrs Parry, that walking sheath.
Sheath?
I never expected to hear Mrs Parry
quoted in connection with child birth.
Nurse, we have done it!
With this we can make
whole continent barren.
The deterrent they have all been
searching for... Mrs Parry!
You look worn out, love.
Would you like a nice cup of tea?
Shall I make a nice cup of tea, Sheila?
Nice cup of tea?
Sheila?
This youngster doesn't
seem to keen to join us.
- No.
- Yes...
Still when you look at the state
of the country, can you blame him?
- Two days now since the first sign.
- It's nothing unusual.
- No?
- She's got a narrow pelvic opening.
It just means her children
won't exactly fall out.
All this trouble getting out... Spend
the rest of his life trying to get back in.
Yes, you will excuse me, won't you?
I've been on call most of the night.
Use your gas and air
if there is too much pain.
- I've made you a cup of tea.
- Thank you, I really must be going.
What a shame.
Would anyone else like it? Sheila?
Sheila?
- Bri!
- It's a bit loud for Sheila, isn't it?
Turn it off. Nothing but sodding death -
don't we get enough of that in real life?
You all right, lovely?
Send her away, Bri. Please.
Just for tonight?
I think it's time we helped you along -
taking you to hospital to induce it.
- You'll be all right.
- Well, it was going on too long.
They mess about
with all this natural child birth.
Unnatural, I call it.
Bri, I'll make you a Welsh rabbit.
- Won't do for you to go and get poorly.
- Medium rare.
That's your daughter.
Your wife is in there.
Love. You look terrific.
- Have you seen her?
- Who?
- Josephine.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Isn't she gorgeous?
- Well, she's fat.
- Eight lbs six.
- She looks like Oliver Hardy.
- What are those scars on her face?
- Forceps scars, they'll soon go.
And her skin is that nasty yellow colour.
Jaundice, quite normal.
Well, a lot more seems to be normal
than I bargained for.
Five days labour isn't normal. They
should have taken it away days ago.
Yeah, but I wanted it naturally
like all my girlfriends.
Now I feel a bloody flop.
You had a narrow pelvic opening.
I was drugged up to here.
Hey...
Do you remember
that Amazonian woman on TV
giving birth behind the tree?
Some people will do anything
to get on the telly.
I'm serious!
So am I. Natural isn't always good.
You would probably have died
behind that tree.
Well, I would rather
have you unnaturally saved.
You got a cold?
It's not too bad.
Yes. Well, I'll be home soon,
and then I can look after both of you.
- You know, I've never told you this, love.
- What?
Well, you'll find this hard to credit, but...
That week, when she was banging her
head against your narrow pelvic opening,
I prayed.
- Did you, really?
- Yes.
No joke?
As you know, I'm not normally religious.
I make the usual genuflections
to Esso Petroleum and Julie Andrews.
But one day in the kitchen, I got down
on my knees and I prayed to God.
What did you say?
"God, I've only just found her. The only
woman who's not soppy or witless."
"The only woman who shares my belief"
"that you're a manic-depressive
rugby footballer."
I said, "The baby doesn't matter.
If it's a question of a swap..."
Did you hear that, lovely?
Then I was so drunk,
I couldn't get on my feet.
Bri.
She's making that funny face
I told you about.
He heard that prayer, Jo.
He said, "I'll fix that poof".
He thought they were jok es.
How I wish I had done it.
Don't you, lovely?
Saved us a lot of trouble.
But if I had thrown you into the sea,
we'd have never met that funny doctor,
who said it was only wind -
worst attack of wind I've ever seen.
Then you finally went into a coma,
and at last we phoned
the children's hospital in a panic.
There wasn't an ambulance available
and we had to go on the bus.
I've got a feeling,
we shan't bring her back.
But every cloud has a jet black lining.
And as you know,
you did come back, eventually.
You stayed in hospital for a few weeks.
And when they called us to collect you
we knew you weren't
going to amount to very much.
But we wanted to know the best
we could expect and the worst.
The paediatrician was German
or Viennese - I can't remember which.
This baby of yours
has now been thoroughly tested
and we need the bed rather badly,
so it's better if you take her home.
I promise she won't be any trouble.
Keep her well sedated
and you'll hardly know she is there.
- But, Doctor, may I know the results?
- Results?
- Of the tests.
- Which ones?
Electroencephalogram, three-dimensional
X-ray, blood, urine, stool analysis.
- But what can she do?
- Do?
She can't do nothing at all.
Will she, ever?
Madam, do you know what I mean by,
"Your daughter is a 'wegetable" '?
When people ask what kind of cripple
she is, must I say she's a "wegetable"?
- Vegetable.
- Vegetable.
You can say
she's a spastic multiplegic, epileptic,
but with no malformation of the brain.
- That's a long word.
- Which is why I prefer "wegetable"?
But if the brain is physically sound,
why doesn't it work?
Imagine a telephone switch board, ja?
Ja, I worked as an operator once.
Wunderbar,
imagine you are sitting there now.
Some lines are tied up, some are not.
Suddenly, brrr-brrr...
Incoming call?
- Universal Shafting.
- What?
- The firm I worked for.
- Never used that before.
- I thought I would today.
- Universal shafting - story of your life.
Suddenly another call, you panic
and you plug him into the first one.
Then you answer an extension
asking for the railway station,
but you give him cricket results.
And they all start buzzing and flashing
and you flip your lid and kaput!
And there's your epileptic fit -
grand or your petit mal,
according to the stress -
the number of the calls.
Doctor. Doctor!
- Doctor!
- Gott im Himmel.
- I'm very a busy man.
- You must be.
Yours isn't the only pikin
in the country.
I know that.
- There is one born every eight hours.
- Yes.
- Isn't there anything I can do?
- Ja voll.
You must feed her, wash her nappies,
just like any other mother.
- But for how long?
- Who can tell?
In theory, a whooping cough,
pneumonia, Colorado beetle.
Colorado beetle!
That's terrible!
Is that what you got, lovely?
The vicar was the best by far.
We met him on the Ban The Bomb,
and later Sheila
went to see him in his modern church.
Take a view!
So your husband doesn't believe in God?
His own kind of God -
a manic depressive rugby footballer.
Well, it's a start.
It provides a basis for argument.
- He doesn't like me praying.
- You've have been praying?
What else can I do?
I look at that flawless little body,
those glorious eyes,
and I pray for some miracle
to get her started.
If we could just find the key or the
combination we could get her moving.
Do you think The Sleeping Beauty
was about a spastic?
Who can tell, indeed?
Your child's sickness doesn't please God.
It completely brings Him down.
- Why does He allow it?
- How can we know?
- How do we know it doesn't please Him?
- We can't know, only guess.
It may well be that disease and infirmity
are due to our misuse
of the freedom He gave us.
Or it may be that they exist
to stimulate research.
- Research?
- Into infirmity and disease.
If He didn't permit disease,
we wouldn't need research.
But he does, so we do.
- How can I explain?
- I don't want explanations.
I've asked the people
who should've been able to explain.
What do you want?
Magic!
I was coming around to that.
We've had over the years, in this parish
one or two children like your daughter.
For these poor innocents,
I do the laying-on-of-hands bit.
A simple ceremony, few hymns,
a prayer or two, a blessing
and imposition of hands.
- Nothing flashy.
- Who'd be there?
You, your husband, anyone you chose.
My husband?
And he could do with a little instruction.
His prayers wouldn't help if addressed
to a manic-depressive, rugby footballer.
God might feel offended.
He's only human after all.
No, He's not - how silly of me.
Perhaps, you could have
a word with him over a pint.
With your husband. Yes.
Yes, not that there's
anything wrong with rugby.
Scrum half myself for years.
I just don't feel
one should make a religion out of it.
With the other children, did you have any
luck? I mean, did God... You know.
There was one boy, no better than Jo.
He made such rapid recovery after
I'd done the laying-on a few times,
the miracles confessed
themselves bewildered.
He's 12 now,
and this year he was runner-up
in the Southwest area
Tap Dancing Championships.
How fantastic!
Perhaps in a few years
we'll see little Jo...
♪ Animal crackers in my soup
♪ Lions and tigers loop the loop
♪ Gosh, gee, don't I have fun
♪ Swallowing animals one by one
♪ In every bowl of soup I see
♪ Lions and tigers watching me
♪ Make them jump right through a hoop
♪ Those animal crackers in my soup ♪
That vicar was a good man,
but Bri wouldn't let me do it.
I join in these jokes to please him.
He hasn't any faith she's ever going
to improve, whereas I have, you see.
I'm always hopeful.
Always on the lookout
for some sign of improvement.
One day...
when she was - what?
About 12 months old, I suppose.
She was lying on the floor kicking
her legs, while I was doing the flat.
I had made a little tower
of four coloured bricks, plastic bricks,
on the rug near her head.
When next I looked up from my dusting,
she'd knocked them down.
So I piled them up again.
And this time I watched her.
First her eyes,
usually moving in all directions,
glanced in passing at the bright tower.
Then her arm, this side...
began to show serious signs of
intention and her fists started clenching
and spreading with the effort.
It must have taken, I should think,
10 minutes strenuous labour
before her hand gave a spasmodic jerk
and she pulled down the tower.
The other arm was held rigid.
It didn't move.
You see the importance?
She was using for the first time,
one arm instead of both.
She had seen something, touched it
and found that when she touched it,
whatever it was, changed...
fell down.
She had a will, you see.
A mind of her own.
When Bri came home...
we tested her.
We put bricks all along
the circle of her reach,
and sometimes out of her reach
so that she had to stretch to touch them.
And sometimes the effort
brought on a fit or she'd fall asleep
or fire light would attract her.
But more often than not, she'd manage.
We became very absorbed
in the daily games.
Brought her coloured balls
and bells and a Kelly -
those clowns that won't lie down.
Visitors hadn't the patience
to watch for so long.
And it must have seemed
so little to wait for.
The independent moving of an arm.
But look what it meant.
She wasn't a vegetable.
Then she caught some bug
and was very sick.
Had fit after fit -
the grand mal, not the others -
what amounted to a complete relapse.
When she was over it,
we tried the bricks again,
but this time
she didn't even seem to see them.
Which was when Bri lost interest.
I still try.
Though, I don't bother telling him.
I'll tell him when something happens.
But it seems to be only common sense.
If she did it once, she'll do it again.
Bri's mother's always saying, "Wouldn't
it be lovely if she was running about?"
Which mak es him hoot with laughter.
But I suppose women can't help hoping.
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY
♪ Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI
♪ Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY ♪
Better now?
Better now?
Hello, Freddie.
I'm nearly ready.
Go.
Good girl.
Bye!
Good night.
I can't stand people giving way
to their feelings like that.
It's embarrassing for everyone.
You've been smoking
like a furnace all night.
And all day.
I always smoke when I'm bored.
If you're bored,
you needn't come in and see Bri.
Take the car, go home on your own.
I'm bored there too.
All day.
Why are you going to see him?
He can't stand you.
(Well, A) To tell him I'm not having
my end away with Sheila.
(B) To try and make him see
sense about that poor girl...
- All right?
- Thank you.
- Pam, sorry, I broke down like that.
- For God's sake.
Well, I'm a bit ashamed.
You won't tell Bri, will you?
- Well, please.
- All right, if you say so.
Sheila...
Sheila, you stupid bitch.
- Gorgeous room.
- Pam, no.
Absolutely gorgeous.
I love what you've done with it.
You've breathed on it.
Costs nothing.
Sit down, Pam. Do.
- Terribly PLU, isn't it, darling?
- What?
PLU. People Like Us.
Bri, I'm making coffee.
Clever as he is. Witty.
Done by Brian, you know.
Give me a light, darling.
Dum spiro spero.
- What?
- That's our school motto.
- Don't you remember?
- While I live, I hope?
Yes. That's right.
Hello, Pam.
It's nice having company, instead of
being stuck in every night like Joe Egg.
- Like who?
- Joe Egg.
My grandmother used to say
she was sitting like Joe Egg
when she meant she had nothing to do.
This is very good, darling.
Wild Bill Hickok. He posed for this
just before his last poker game.
Look at the pose? He fancied himself.
Smashing. Witty.
Good.
I prefer this one: The Thalidomide kid -
fastest gun in the west.
On the slightest impulse
from his rudimentary arm stumps,
the steel hands fly to the holsters
and he spins on solid rubber tyres.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- You've been painting?
- I wore me old clothes.
I want you to paint. That's the
only reason I take these parts.
I thought you'd get some painting done.
Aren't they marvelous?
Smashing. Witty.
I didn't get much done
by the time I'd finished Jo.
- You mean the usual?
- We've got some drink, haven't we?
- Brian.
- What?
- You mean the usual?
- A bit more than usual.
Spanish cognac or Cyprus sherry? Christ!
What do you mean, "more than usual"?
We had a row, she flounced up
and slammed the door.
Spanish cognac, Fred?
- Is she all right?
- Look, I didn't want to talk about it.
We're all set for a civilized conversation
and you go on about that poor crackpot.
Spanish cognac, Fred?
Thank you.
Sheila's parents brought
this back from Torremolinos.
- Are you sure you wouldn't have cider?
- No, why?
- I just remembered you're a socialist.
- I don't mind drinking fascist vino.
- Pam?
- No thanks. Honestly.
Spanish Cognac with instant coffee.
High life on teacher's pay.
How is teaching?
Well, keep them off the streets.
Eyes front, hands on heads.
- Still don't like it?
- It's not exactly Goodbye, Mr Chips.
All the same, I envy you.
Often wish I'd been a teacher.
Instead of a rich
and powerful industrialist?
- It must be lonely.
- Where did you get the idea we're rich?
We're not rich.
Comfortable?
Comfortable, yes.
Not rich.
Well...
How are things on the home front, Bri?
Stuck in like Joe Egg?
Yeah.
Look, I'd like to lay one
or two things on the line.
My God.
What don't you see
all the doctors that money can buy
and tell them that you want another baby.
Ask them why you've not had one.
Do you mean fertility counts?
Well... Yes.
- We've had them.
- Yes, she was A-, I was B+.
I must concentrate more.
That's pretty damned impressive. Most
people wouldn't fancy knowing for sure.
Our doctor had an ex-major
turn nasty when told he was sub-fertile.
Kept saying,
"But I was in the Normandy Landings!"
I demand a recount!
Poor fellow.
What about boosters? Fertility boosters.
I know a gynaecologist...
He did such a fabulous job on Georgina.
She's now applied to be sterilised.
If all else fails, I can get
the adoption machinery moving.
I can put some ginger under right people,
get it moved to the top of the in-tray.
You can always back out later
if you've found you've hit the spot.
- She won't like it, Mum.
- She likes to rule the roost, Dad.
But, my dear, you're only prepared
to give up your life to little Jo
because there's no one else.
Once you've got a normal healthy baby
looking up at you, smiling at you...
Does she smile?
She used to. Now and then.
Often, often.
A real baby will smile every time
you look at her and she'll cry too.
Keep you awake every night
and she'll crawl and walk and talk.
Yes, I've seen them... Then what?
Well...
then at least you'll
be in a position to decide.
Decide what?
Whether to let Jo go
into a residential school.
- We've tried that too.
- Putting her away, yes.
No, don't call it that.
What else is it?
I'm on the board of a wonderful place.
They're not prisons. Not these days.
They're run by loving
and dev oted teachers.
I don't care how good
the nurses are, I'm not putting her away.
This isn't a hospital.
It's a special school.
There was a fabulous article
in Nova about it.
- Do you remember?
- No.
If she improves,
she can join their activities.
- Activities?
- Mouth painting.
Wheel chair gardening, speech therapy.
Better not tell her that, Mum.
She thinks she's very nicely spok en.
That's one of the things
she prides herself on.
She wouldn't go to a special school.
We've seen the place she'd go.
No paladin asylum
with acres of graceful park land.
Not even Victorian Gothic.
- Army surplus, lik e a transit camp.
- Except they're going nowhere.
Some of them waited at the gates
with their suitcases.
They were there every Saturday waiting
for their relatives that never came.
At the end of the day, they'd go back to
their dormitories and unpack their cases.
This seems to me defeatism.
- It's quarter past ten, darling.
- What?
Quarter past ten.
Thanks for trying, Freddie,
but it's too late, honestly.
- I'll have to look after her till she dies.
- Or until you do.
Yeah. Which ever is first.
- Is that possible?
- What?
- That she could outlive you?
- We know one.
A man of 76 - just became a boy scout.
They said they wouldn't have
him any longer in the cubs.
These jokes. Could I say
my piece about these jokes?
They've obviously helped you
see it though. A useful anaesthetic. But...
I thought you were going to speak
to Brian about...
This first. A sick joke kills the pain
but leaves the situation just as it was.
When I see a young couple throwing
away their lives on a hopeless cause
it gives me the screaming habdabs.
As a socialist...
"The waste", I think to myself!
All right, I bloody well am
my brother's keeper.
Shoot me down, if I'm all acock.
I'm just trying to strip it down
to essentials. Thinking aloud.
Could you think more quietly?
Was I shouting? I'm sorry. I tend to
raise my voice when I'm helping people.
- Only my head is splitting.
- Yes, quite.
Look, Bri, I, just want to put you in
the picture about these special schools.
They're run by saints.
There's no other word for them.
They love the people they look after.
They'll spoil your little girl.
- She won't know she's born.
- Thanks, that's much quieter.
Another joke, another giggle.
Freddie, it's nearly half past ten.
I throw you a life line and you giggle.
The whole country
is giggling it's way to disaster.
She broke down tonight...
Pat! Pat! ...In a flood of tears.
No!
Because she can't cope any more
with your suspicions and your jealousies.
- I said I'd come and put you straight.
- Wasting your breath, darling.
- (A) We're not going to bed together.
- Scab!
(B) It's hardly likely because:
A) she loves you, b) I love Pam,
- (and c) We've got three smashing kids.
- Darling, I love you too.
I won't throw that away for a bit
on the side - however gorgeous a bit.
And although, I'm not a practicing
Christian, I think I know my duty.
Well...
I hardly know how to say this now.
The whole thing was
just another sick fantasy.
I know you've never touched her -
leave alone shafted her.
I just wanted to bring
back the magic to our marriage.
Stir it up.
A kind of emotional aphrodisiac.
If you ever tried that with me,
I'd leave you.
Well...
I maybe square, but I'm not sick.
- You're so roundabout.
- Look, you wouldn't let me near you.
All day I've been running blue movies
on the back of my retina,
us romping about together
shouting with satisfaction.
What do I get? "You're hands are cold."
This is too juvenile. Let's go.
No. No, no.
That's what he wants. I'm going
to help him whether he likes it or not.
Listen.
Aww...
♪ Where a mother laid her baby...
Christmas carols at this time of night?
The neighbours
won't be able to hear the telly.
She loves the carols, Dad.
- Shall I fetch her?
- No, no, no, no.
- We're just going.
- But you haven't seen her.
- Wouldn't you like to?
- Yes, I'd love to see her.
Your train in the morning, now, Freddie.
No, no. No train tomorrow, darling.
I thought it was tomorrow.
No.
Hah! Come on, let's see little Jo.
- Come along, Pam.
- No, don't.
- I forgot to tell you what happened?
- When?
- While you were out.
- Well, what?
First, I fed Joe.
She was constipated,
she hadn't been for a week.
So, I chose a nice tin of prunes.
What my grandmother used to call them
black-coated workers.
They have to be strained, of course,
because her teeth are a bit stumpy.
Anyway, when she got that lot down, she
kept on having little fits and whimpering.
I thought, perhaps the spasm's hurting.
So, I tried to loosen it with exercise.
The constipation hurts her.
The spasm's in the back
between the shoulder blades.
And you break it down
by wrapping her arms across her chest
and holding them... very tight.
And then ramming her head
down between her collar bones
as though you were rolling up a mattress.
Does it help?
- I don't know.
- Of course.
But I enjoy it.
I find myself laughing when she cries.
Well, at least it's a reaction.
Only this time, she wouldn't stop
even when I let go.
Those fits upset her.
I undressed her, applied a suppository
put a rubber sheet underneath,
I pressed her stomach, lifted her ankles
and at last, she managed number twos.
God! That was bothering her, poor mite.
No, no, wait a minute!
It was no sooner out, she started all that
gulping, lip-smacking, arm-stretching
and opening and closing
her poor blind eyes and...
I thought to myself that's it. The lot.
All you can do.
Pain and fits...
And not for the first time in ten years, I...
I thought, "Is it ever worth it"?
- Perhaps it isn't?
- Worth what?
- The effort.
- We've got no choice.
Of course you have. The special schools.
Anyway, when the fit was over,
I laid her on the bed...
and I placed a pillow
over her mouth and nose.
And I held it there while I counted 100.
There was no struggle or... anything.
It was so peaceful that I just wondered
why I hadn't done it years ago.
What?
God...
When it was over...
I lifted the pillow...
and I said...
Nurse... We are in this together!
You've seen nothing. I looked up
to see the nurse, threw off her cape,
revealing Sergeant Blake
of Scotland Yard.
I must warn you that anything
you say will be taken down...
- What?
- Bri, honestly!
I should've know by now.
Did you feel relieved when you thought
for one moment that I had done it?
- Don't be silly?
- No?
No.
Why not?
Because...
Whatever else she is,
whatever's wrong with her...
she's the miracle of life.
She's only just alive, but what use is
such a phrase? What's "only just dead"?
I mean...
She's the life we made.
You're blessed my son.
She's a holy innocent.
She'll never know evil.
Her life, what is it?
Asphyxiation delayed ten years by drugs.
She should be in hospital, you know?
Everybody says do something, but
when I suggest something, it's all wrong.
Well, if all you can suggest
is murder, yes.
Living with Sheila
you get to welcome death
with life burgeoning in every cranny.
Brian...
She embraces, all living things -
except Freddie
Brian...
Do you know how the solution
to the Jewish problem began?
No.
In the mental hospitals.
It's only a step from there
to Auschwitz, you know.
Darling, it is now exactly half past ten!
You're like a blasted speaking clock -
on the third stroke, peep, peep, peep!
It wasn't my idea coming
back here in the first place.
You know very well,
I can't stand anything NPA.
What?
Non-physically attractive.
I know it's awful,
but it's one of my things.
Well, none of us is perfect.
But old women in bathing costumes,
skin diseases and weirdies.
- It's no good. I can't look at them.
- Darling.
I know you're right about Hitler, Freddie,
and of course that's horrid,
but I can't help feeling a bit on Bri's side,
can you?
I don't mean the way he means.
Everyone doing away
with their unwanted mums and things.
No, I think it should be done
by the state. You see...
- Hitler was the state.
- I know you won't hear of it.
But then he loves a lame dog.
Every year, he buys so many tickets
for the spastic raffle he wins the TV set.
And every year,
he gives it to the old folk's home.
He used to try taking me on his visits
to the blind and the deaf
and the dumb, the halt and the lame.
Spina bifida and multiple scl...
Not for long.
One place we went, there were these
poor freaks with... you know...
enormous heads and...
- So, just put them out of their misery.
- This isn't the time or place for this.
They wouldn't have survived in nature.
It's only modern medicine.
Modern medicine should be
allowed to do away with them.
A committee of doctors and do-gooders
to make sure there's no funny business.
And then, well...
The gas chambers?
That makes it sound horrid.
But if one of our kids was dying
and they had a cure,
we knew had been discovered
in the Nazi laboratories...
would you refuse to let them use it?
That's hardly an excuse
for killing six million people.
I love my own immediate
family and that's the lot.
I can't manage anymore.
Then it's time you tried.
♪ The Angel of the Lord came down
♪ And glory shone around... ♪
We've come to see little Josephine.
Save you bringing her down.
Say hello to uncle Freddie.
Hello, Jo. What d'you know?
Not much, I'm afraid.
And Auntie Pamela.
She's got rather a pretty face,
hasn't she?
She's terribly PLU
when you get to know her.
Aren't you, angel?
My God!
Well, one thinks of a mongrel, athetoid
or monoplegic, but she is so torpid.
"You'd be torpid", she said, " if you
were fitting, crying and doing doops.
She's worse tonight.
She won't open her eyes.
"Who wants to open their eyes
in the middle of the night", she says.
"Well, an hour before
midnight worth two after", she says.
This is the imaginary
character you've given her?
Well, as soon as we joined
the Free Masonry of Spastic's Parents,
we saw she had even less personality
than the others.
- So you've made some up for her.
- Some never suited.
- The facial expression wasn't right.
- One that stuck was the coach tour lady.
Powder-pink felt hat, white gloves,
Cuban heel shoes and swagger coat.
Sea-sick pills in her bag
in case there's turning and twisting.
- She hates foreigners.
- And council houses.
And shafting - knows to
her cost what that can do.
- Loves the Queen.
- And Jesus.
Sees him as an eccentric English
gentleman. A sort of Laurence of Arabia.
- Very disapproving of pleasure.
- Not all pleasure.
- A Julie Andrews film with tea after.
- In the Odeon Cafe.
- Come on.
- What are you doing?
- I'm taking her to hear the carols.
- The carols have stopped.
No! Did you miss the carols, sweetheart?
"Christmas already", she says
"Comes around quicker every year".
♪ Away in a manger, no crib for a bed
♪ The little Lord Jesus
laid down his sweet head
♪ The stars in the bright sky
♪ Looked down where he lay
♪ The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay
♪ The cattle are lowing...
♪ La-la-la-di-di-da... ♪
What is it?
A fit.
- Anything we can do?
- No.
Next time you do that,
the wind will change and you stay like it.
But why are they still happening?
It's the carol singers.
I'll say we're Muslims.
Bri...
Give them a shilling from Jo.
Darling, we really must go now.
Bri, I gave
those carol singers a sixpence.
Knocking on all those doors,
making a nuisance of themselves.
I thought you wouldn't bother
with that so near Christmas.
Right, thanks.
Sixpence. Here.
What?
All right. Thank you.
- I won't say no.
- No.
- Every penny's got to be looked at.
- Right.
They do say, don't they?
The middle classes have suffered most
from inflation...
Now, look, Bri, I'm not stopping.
Mrs Parry and I went to the Odeon.
I thought, "Well, I'll go so far on a bus
and I'll drop in Josephine's new cardie."
"And if Brian's not too busy,
he can run me home."
Yes. Right.
So, I'm not stopping.
Would you like a drink, Mum?
I don't want you to worry. I don't want
anything. I want is to get me breath back.
- Sheila, I'm not stopping, but...
- Hello. How nice to see you.
- You never told me you got company.
- Sorry.
- My mother, Mr and Mrs Underwood.
- How do you do?
- How do you do?
- How do you do?
- Why did you bring her down?
- She wants a change of scene, Dad.
I thought I'd keep an eye on her.
Mrs Parry and I, go to the pictures
Tuesday afternoon.
When you've been with the dusters
nothing but sitting all day -
no one wants to sit around
like a blooming nun.
- I'm sorry, have you a light?
- I do, yeah.
She's very poorly.
- Did you give her her medicine?
- She's all right.
Well, and how's nana's
favourite girl tonight, then?
Look what nana's brought her.
- "I'm fast asleep", she says.
- Unconscious.
"Having forty winks", she says.
An hour before midnight
is worth two after.
Wouldn't she be lovely
if she was running about?
Beautiful. She's a beautiful child.
First time you've seen her?
Sheila, what do you think?
Are the sleeves too short?
- I could run couple of inches.
- Would you bother?
- No bother. We have to do what we can.
- Yes, exactly.
Poor Mrs Parry phoned to say
she couldn't meet me this afternoon.
Had to stay in waiting for the vacuum.
I did some last-minute shopping.
I met her later at the Odeon
to go see Julie Andrews.
But my God, the crowds!
I said to the lady
in Scotch Wool and Hosiery,
- "You'll be glad when Christmas is over."
- What did she say?!
"I certainly will."
I said to Mrs Parry, " It does look nice,
those toys and turkeys and toilet sets."
- See Jesus?
- Pardon?
Did you see Jesus?
- If I did, I didn't notice.
- On the electricity building.
That!
They'll drag religion
into anything, won't they?
- Even Christmas.
- No, that kind of thing spoils Christmas.
- What Jesus?
- It's a time for the kiddies.
We took Joe to Father Christmas one year.
- Little girl like a trip to space?
- Just Father Christmas.
- It's all in the one price.
- Bri, you got any money?
"All shoppers are reminded to visit
Santa's spaceship in the toy department.
"The next launching is in five minutes".
Sit straight now.
We'll sit near the back?
- You want to take her?
- Somebody else is here.
Morning.
- All all right, then?
- Yes, thanks.
- You've changed.
- Quite comfortable?
Stand by for blast-off.
♪ Fly me to the moon...
- Boosters away.
- ♪... And let me play among the stars
♪ Let me see what spring is lik e
- ♪... On Jupiter and Mars...
- Boosters away!
♪ In other words, hold my hand...
We are now free of earth's atmosphere.
Beware of weightlessness.
♪ Fill my heart with song
♪ And let me sing for ever more
♪ You are all I long for
♪ All I worship and adore
♪ In other words... ♪
Father Christmas stank of meths.
- Why do you say that?
- It's true.
It's not true. They're vetted.
Do you know...
I believe I've acquired a little visitor.
It's not something you'd expect
from the Odeon.
- It's off our cat. We're infested with them.
- From Sidney or Beatrice Webb.
We keep them in the kitchen.
When the kitten was born, Sheila wanted
to call him Dick. But I drew the line there.
Standing on the front steps
shouting, "Dick!"
I might have got killed in the rush.
Fleas, I don't believe we ever had.
Can you remember, Brian?
The occasional woodlouse, I think.
You're fond of animals, Sheila,
but it should be kept in proportion.
- It's the first time we've had a flea.
- There's a first time for everything.
Isn't that the loveliest girl
in all the wide, wide world?
- Look another fit.
- Bless her heart.
- She's worse. Look!
- They left her medicine at the centre.
What you gave her tonight
should have soothed her.
I'd have her destroyed... if it was me.
You what, mum?
I'd have her whatever you call it,
put to sleep.
The cat!
- Well, fleas bring disease.
- Bri!
- Yeah?
- Just a minute?
I can't find the anticonvulsant.
That's the bottle over there.
She knocked it over having a fit.
It's like treacle.
How did it get poured out?
I had to save her first.
She was falling about.
By the time I picked up
the bottle, it had all got spilt.
I saved enough to give her a dose
and then I washed it clean.
Where are the phenos?
Now...
Now where can they be?
- Where are you going?
- To get some more.
She's had enough sedation,
"I'm turned on", she says.
The fits upset her.
She needs her yellow medicine.
Whatever is the time? I mean, Pam?
- Quarter to eleven.
- I'll go to the all-night Boots.
Look, I'll go if you think
she really needs it.
You'll need the prescription.
- Yeah.
- Go on.
- She's cold.
- No luck?
- Not so far.
- Let me go, Bri.
- No.
- Really, it's no trouble.
No, no, no.
- I'll show you a shortcut.
- No.
I know one.
Anything to get away.
- Pam, just a minute.
- Yes.
The prescription.
25 quid this car cost me.
After only five years, just look at it.
It's going to be a wet Christmas after all.
- This is not the way.
- There's no other way.
Look, once start that
and you'll have anarchy.
You must have order.
"Thou shalt not kill".
Except when it shall come to pass
thy trade route shall be endangered
and then shall thou slay the enemies
of General Motors and ICI.
Listen, suppose euthanasia was legalised
and your daughter let die
and then in 20 years from now
a cure is found.
- Her brain starts working?
- Yes.
Six-week-old brain in a 30-year-old body?
I meant some kind of grafting.
Brain of a 30-year-old accident victim?
No.
What's funny-daddy been up to, my rose?
It's raining.
- Christ!
- Pam's gone for the medicine.
Thank God.
Don't let Brian touch her.
- Where are you going?
- To fetch a doctor. She's seriously ill.
I'll run my mother home.
I can ring from there.
No, do it now!
God!
- Sheila, I'll do it from a local box.
- Would you, Freddie?
- I'll dial Emergency.
- Yes, an ambulance. Say, it's urgent.
Wait. I'll show you where the box is.
If you get your things, mother,
I'll run you home.
There's gratitude for you.
I'm stuck up there day after day
like a blooming nun.
I thought I'd be offered
a nice cup of tea. Never mind.
We'll have one when we get home.
Wrap her warm, Brian. Put a scarf on.
I got some Garibaldis.
I know you like a Garibaldi.
Not too much at home now you've gone
and your father's passed on.
When we came out of the Odeon, it was
cutting down Union Street like a knife.
I said to Mrs Parry,
"My Lord, what a night".
She said, "Yes, they said we were in
for something of the kind",
"probably lasting until February."
So I said, " What a shame
for the old people".
She said, "Grace, I hate to remind you,
but we're the old people now."
Sheila, why don't you
keep yourself warm and wrap up too.
I was just telling Brian...
That old car, no heaters,
and drafts in all directions.
- Where's Jo?
- What?
- She's gone.
- Well, how can she have gone?
Up to bed, the poor mite.
She shouldn't be sitting up at all hours.
- Has he come in yet?
- No.
Mind those cats now.
No, no, you stay in there!
Sheila, whatever are you doing?
No!
You all right?
- Yes. Where have you been?
- I'd been to call an ambulance.
Well, I've got the meds.
- It's too late for that, I'm afraid.
- God!
I think it's all over.
- My poor blossom...
- What have you done?
I took her outside.
Little worm. Poor little worm.
I was going to leave her in the garden,
but I couldn't.
Can anyone do the kiss of life?
No, no, no, I can't.
- Can you feel a pulse?
- No, I can't!
My poor dove. She's freezing.
Where have you been with her?
In the car.
- Lend me a looking glass.
- My handbag.
Come on, my bird.
Bri! You shouldn't.
Poor little mite, however bad she was,
you shouldn't do a thing like that.
Come on, sunshine. Try it for mummy.
There, there. Everything will be all right.
There, there.
- Perhaps, the glass isn't cold enough.
- For the condensation. No.
- Look, a bit of fluff.
- What?
- Well, a feather.
- Yes, of course!
Here.
There.
- Never mind,
- Go on, go on. Close to her mouth.
That's how we knew poor dad was gone.
That will be the ambulance. No one say
anything. I'll answer all the questions.
There's no need
for unnecessary suffering.
Sheila...
- Come on, Sheila.
- No!
- Come on.
- No, no!
I'll take her. Come on. Let me take her.
That's it, come on.
Sheila's staying the night.
What happened?
- They pulled her through again.
- Bri, thank God!
Night, Freddie. Thanks.
- Bri?
- Yeah.
You simply must come to dinner sometime.
I'd love to.
There you are, lovely.
Home again.
Safe and sound.
I thought they were going
to keep her in for a few days.
Well, they wanted to,
but what's the point?
I've seen her through pneumonia,
flu and more colds than I can count.
Why bother busy nurses?
Anyway, she didn't fancy it.
Did you, lovely?
How are you, lovely?
Still a bit dopey.
But her pulse is stronger
and she's breathing well.
Tough as old boots, Dad.
She'll get the Queen's telegram,
you'll see.
I better go to school.
- You're not going.
- Yeah, I must.
- I'll phone the head, if you're frightened.
- It's not fair on the other staff.
I thought, I...
What are you doing?
"I'll get home and make him
bacon and eggs and fried apple rings..."
I've had some tea and toast.
"Then I'll take him up to bed
and climb in with him."
And what do I find?
So I just have to get these clothes off.
And we can stay there
all day up to our tricks.
Last night...
I thought about
what you tried to do to Joe.
I was rather twist, you know.
My mum and Freddie.
No.
It was my fault. I've been asking too
much of you. So, do you know what?
I'm going to look
for a residential hospital...
where I'm sure she'll be well
looked after and won't pine.
And when I've found it, do you know what?
You and I are going to leave her there...
for, I don't know, three weeks...
maybe a month every year.
Go abroad.
Do you realise...
we haven't been abroad for 11 years?
We can have a second honeymoon.
Starting now.
I'll go and ring the school, then.
Couldn't that wait till afterwards?
You dirty little animal.
Now look what you've done.
Daddy's given you breakfast.
What are you crying for?
Got some seed. What a daddy?
Aren't we lucky?
Single to London, please.