Queers (2017): Season 1, Episode 1 - The Man on the Platform - full transcript

GENTLE PIANO MUSIC

This programme contains some
strong language.

BUZZ OF CHATTER

Douglas Fairbanks there
thinks he's in with a chance.

A bit of company on a wet Friday
night.

Except old Dougie doesn't have a
cast in his eye and a built-up shoe.

At least, not last time I was
at the flickers.

It's always the eyes.

That's how you know.

A glance held just that little bit
too long,

dragged off to one side, like the
trail of a Very light in the dark.



After the do, the, um, interview...

..the officer asks me, not unkindly,
I must say, "So how do you chaps,

"chaps like you and the captain,
know one another?"

So I told him.

Not my words, something somebody
said to me once.

"A certain liquidity of the eye."

That's how HE knew.

My eyes are bad, mind you.

Too bad for shooting Prussians
at any rate,

so I was shunted onto hospital work.

"Cushy", says Sam.

"That's a charabanc holiday, Perce.

"You always wanted to see France,
didn't you?"

I remember my first day in resus -
the resuscitation tent.



That's where they take the dying or
the nearly dying

and the shocked ones.

There's heated beds to put some life
back into them, and transfusions.

Our guns were going hell
for leather.

The sky was all lit up -
powdery, green.

Horrible green.

Like the air was sick.

Star shells, Verys, dumps going up.

And then the ambulances come in and
we have to ferry them in,

the ones that can't walk.

And they've got these labels on them

that tell you
what's wrong with them.

Like left luggage.

Have you ever carried a stretcher?

Bloody horrible.

You feel like your arms are going to
pop out of their sockets.

Some chaps can get very heavy.

Those that can walk into the
hospital...

..are covered in mud and salt sweat.

Caked in it.

All stiff and cracked,
like moving statues,

like those poor fuckers in Pompeii
what got covered in lava.

I've seen photographs of them
in the lending library.

And then, in the resus tent,
a thing you'd never expect.

Silence.

Not a moan or a groan.

They're beyond all that,
I suppose, most of them.

Smoking, breathing, just about.

Mind you,
I've seen what a transfusion can do

and it is a bloody miracle.

Lads with one foot in the grave and
their pulses all thready,

they have the transfusion,
they're up, they're joking,

they're having
a smoke in a couple of hours.

I said to Captain Leslie, I said,
"You wouldn't credit it, would you?

"It's like... It's like witchcraft."

"Sounds about right", he says,

"since we're in hell."

But he says it with a smile and when
he does that

there's these creases in
his cheeks like ripples in the sand.

"You're a credit to this unit,
Percy", he says to me.

"You've all the tenderness
of a woman."

And he shakes my hand.

"It's Terrence," he says and I says,
"What is?"

He says, "Me.

"My name. Terence Lesley.

"Do call me Terence.

"I can't bear all this formal rot."

But he's an officer
and it don't seem right, so,

"I'll stick to Captain Leslie,"
I say, "if it's all the same."

He just smiles again and shrugs.

And his eyelashes are long.

Long and blonde.

I can't see much of his hair
cos it's under his cap,

but then one day I'm bringing
in a stretcher...

..and he takes his hat off and, just
like that, his hair tumbles out.

Yellow as corn.

And I must have stared
because he grins at me

and pushes his hair out of his eyes
and says,

"Come along, Perce,
stir your stumps."

But I don't move.

And just for a bit...

Well, like I say, held just a...

just a moment too long.

Douglas Fairbanks over there will
give me a wink in a minute.

There you go.

HE SIGHS KNOWINGLY

I've always been a skinny bugger,
me.

Thin as a whip, Mother says.

Father was the same.

Mother always had a bit more beef on
her after she had Albert and me,

and there was one before us.

A boy.

But he died.

He was called Percy, an' all.

Poison berries. Never think a thing
like that can happen, but it does.

I can remember Mother showing me the
pictures in the medicine book,

all shiny and glossy pictures like
Jesus in the book at Sunday School.

And little Percy had grabbed
a handful of these berries and...

..that was that.

Box, I think, the berries.

Black, like little bullets.

Like liquorice sweeties.

Maybe that's what little Percy
thought they was.

Anyway, they done for him and then,
a year or so after that,

along comes I
and they call me Percy, too.

A bit odd, some might say,
a bit morbid,

but Mother always said
that she could see him in me.

And she looks so funny when she says
that to me...

..and she looks so sad.

But I don't think it's just because
of little Percy because there was

another time she looked at me
the same way.

It was freezing, I remember that.

We was waiting for a train.

Dad had some business in Reading,
I forget what it was.

We were to come with and make a day
of it.

I was 15, thereabouts.

Albert was 12. I'd been dispatched
in search of tea and buns.

They all sat in the waiting room,
steam coming off them like wet dogs.

Anyway,
I'm on my way to the refreshments

and there's a commotion, so I think,
"Oh, the train must be coming in,"

so I say to the girl
behind the tea stall,

pretty girl I remember with bows in
her hair,

I ask her to get a shift on.

She says, "What's the hurry? The
Reading train isn't in for another

"quarter of an hour." So I think,
"What's all the fuss about, then?"

And then I see it ahead of me
on the platform.

Policemen, at least I think
they're policemen,

but then I look properly and
they're not, they're from the jail.

Dark uniforms,
little hats with shiny brims.

And between them,

well, a...a prisoner...

..waiting to be taken away,
I suppose.

And it's not the first time
I've seen as such.

I used to see them a lot,
poor bastards,

shuffling along in their chains and
the arrows on their clothes.

And it's rough clobber, like to make
you itch, worse than this.

So, "Why are all these folk
whispering and pointing?" I wonder.

So I look at the chap in the chains
and he's a big chap,

sort of like a big bear of a fella.

With a big slack, pouchy face.

Fat-ish, except it's all sunk in
now,

and his hair, which was most likely
black as your hat

is now shot through with grey.

And he looks wretched.

As well he might.
There's rain dripping off his hair

and down the creases
in his big face.

And then I realise, it's not just
rain, he's bloody crying.

And then he looks at me.

And there it was.

In that moment...

..a certain liquidity of the eye.

And then he looks back down
at his boots...

and it's as if the whole world
has come tumbling down around him.

I stand there.

And I think,

"He knows me.

"He knows me for what I am.

"He can see it in me."

And I start to shake.

And it's not from the cold,
it's shame.

And fear and...

..terror.

And someone starts laughing.

And there's a little girl and she's
wandered close to the prisoner.

She's got a little wooden horse
on a dirty bit of string.

And then her mother goes up and
drags the girl away from the man

as if he were like to eat her up.

And then I hear it, a name.

Whispered behind fancy gloves

and November hands
what are stiff with cold.

"It's him, isn't it?"

And suddenly Dad's beside me and
he's gripping my arm and he says,

"You all right, Perce?"

And he's proper worried.

And there's a sort of ringing noise
in my ear and I feel for a moment

like I might faint,
but then this chap goes straight up

to the prisoner
on the platform and he...

He spits in his face.

And Dad looked shocked.

And just then, the train comes
puffing into the station,

steam everywhere.

And I look back to the prisoner,

but he's covered now
in a great big cloud of steam.

Dad picks up the tea and the buns
and he gets us into the carriage.

It smells of damp wool and musty,
like church,

and there's little beads of rain on
the window, the open window.

And Mum pulls down the leather strap
and the sound sort of...

..snaps me out of it.

"What was all that fuss about there,
Clem?"

And Dad sups at his tea and it hangs
in little drops from the ends of his

Kitchener 'tashe.
"You won't believe it," he says.

"Out there on the platform,
waiting to be taken to prison..."

"Who?" pipes up Albert.

And he looks at us and he shakes his
head in wonder.

"Oscar Wilde!" he says.

And then Mum looks at me.

Tender, like...

I've never had the nerve.

That's the thing, I suppose.

A notion of getting in trouble or
being a bother...

I could always imagine Mother's face

if she found out
I'd been up to things.

And I couldn't bear it,
I couldn't bear to disappoint, so

I didn't, I didn't do anything
about it.

Not even a tuppeny wank with Sam
or nothing.

I kept my own counsel, as they say.

Also, there was a girl who was sweet
on me.

Annie.

And that sort of stopped people
asking, I suppose.

We courted for a long while,

but she got fed up because I never
asked her to marry me.

I took on like Annie had broke my
heart and then,

what with one thing or another and
then the war, it sort of, somehow,

I got away with it.
A lot of questions, of course.

Especially when all us Tommies were
billeted together

for the first time.
"You married?" "No."

"You got a girl?" "Well, I used to."

And then one day, in Amiens,
there was a sort of lull.

Hot as hell it was.

Not what you think. People think of
all that mud and rain,

but we was there the live long year

and sometimes
it was hot and parched.

Fucking flies everywhere.

Blue and green bellies on them.
Fat.

Great clouds of them because of the
dead bodies.

And Captain Leslie comes up to me

and he slaps me on the shoulder
and he says,

"Come along, Perce,
we're going hunting."

And I say, "What?"
He says, "Butterflies",

because we're camped
on this sort of downland.

And there's marigolds and poppies
all over, little splashes of colour.

I can still taste the dust.

Chalky in your mouth and your hair
and...

..on the Dunlop tyres
like white paint,

because Terrence had only gone and
got us bicycles, the silly bugger.

And it was only for a few hours

but you could forget, you know,
for a bit,

everything that was going on.

And we came to this sort of lake.

It was a crater hole, I suppose,

and the water was glass green
and clear like a perfume bottle.

And Terence, he starts hollering and
rattling the bike down to the water

and he pulls off all his clothes
and in he goes.

I follows, and then we go splashing
about in our birthday suits.

And he's brick red from the
sunshine,

but not where his shirt's been,

so he's got this sort of red face
and arms, and the rest of him is...

He's like a ghost.

And after we've swum about,

we just lie in the grass
and fall asleep.

You can hear the buzz of the flies,
but they are way off

and some of the ones that are closer
are butterflies,

so that's all right, and I just...

..lie there and I watch Terence
sleeping and...

..his Adam's apple bobbing up
and down.

And his hair is golden.

And the line of his jaw
is just sort of...

..perfect.

Like a draughtsman's drawn it.

Like I'd drawn it.

And his lips are dark and full and
they're like bramble.

And all I want to do is bend down
and...

And he opens his eyes...

..and squints.

And he lifts his hand to cover them
so he can see better.

And he says,
"We'd best be getting back."

We all had on us the stench
of death.

The bread we ate,
the stagnant water,

everything we touched
had a rotten smell.

But that day, everything was OK.

It was bright.

And it was pure, you see?

And nobody had seen, had they?

I've done my bit.

The officer mentioned that.

Exemplary service.

When he took me aside
for a quiet word.

And of course, what had Terence
and me...

What had the Captain and me...

..got up to?

Sweet FA.

But someone had seen us and...

..they thought,
"Hello, what's going on here?"

And it's bad for morale and all of
that, so I was to be sent elsewhere.

And, of course, I didn't get to see
the Captain, did I?

Because he'd been transferred, too.

I was packed onto this carriage...

..sweat and tobacco smelling
and fellas pushing up against you

and shoving for room, and the train
gives a great big lurch

and then it starts off.

I just sit down on the floor
and pull me cap over me eyes

and drift off.

I don't know how much time has
passed, but...

I wake up and it's dark outside.

And the train's pulling
into a station

and in the carriage it's just these
little night lights on - bluey.

They make everyone look
three-parts dead.

And the train pulls into the station

and it's going slow, like, puffing,

like some of them boys
in the resus tent.

And then, I do see him.

Terence.

He's out the window,
on the platform.

Grey coat,
hair tucked under his cap, neat.

And he's talking to someone.

And they must have made him laugh

cos there's those little lines
in his cheeks again.

But he don't see me.

So I push through the carriage
past the other fellas

and it's not easy now cos most
have dropped off

and I trip over some poor bugger and
he curses me,

but I make it to the window
and I pull down the sash...

..and the air outside is warm.

And all I want to do is wave.

But, of course, what can I say?

Um...

"So long, Captain Leslie?"

"So long, Perce."

But then he does see me.

He glances over,

but he's still talking to his pal

and just then the train lurches
forward.

The brakes go on and the blue lights
go out

and just like that, pitch-black.

And all the other fellas
in the carriage start groaning

and someone says,
"Oh, here we fucking go,"

but all I can feel
is my heart beating and the air.

And the darkness pressing against
the window

and my hand gripping
the window ledge.

And then someone takes my hand.

Someone outside on the platform.

And it's Terence.

And he takes my hand and he just...

..lifts it to his lips
and he kisses it.

There's no train then,
there's no troops, there's no war.

There's just his bramble lips

pressed against the tips of my
fingers...

..and all the hair on my neck goes
up on end.

And then the train lurches forward

and he's let go of my hand and
all the blue lights go on, and...

Outside there's nothing but steam.

Steam and darkness.