Michael Powell Centenary Walk 2005
Playlet #3 On Wickhambreaux village green
Characters in order of appearance:
Alison Smith, played by Julie Ede
Mrs Colpeper, played by Wendy Fraser
Bob Johnson, played by Jan Gray
[Bob and Alison, still in the cart, ride past the green and look at the house]
Alison: Ooh, look at that house. What a perfect place. I wonder who lives in it? And what it's like at the back.
What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that
[A bell rings]
Mrs Colpeper: [Calls] Tom! Breakfast!
Alison: Last night I could have believed anything.
Bob: Yes, it don't add up. But you know Alison, things don't add up in life.
Alison: Look, Bob, are you positively off tonight?
Bob: Positively. But I'll see you before I go and tell you what I find out from old Jim Horton.
What I'll find to do the rest of the afternoon, I don't know.
Alison: Go to a movie. It's Saturday. They have a matinee.
Bob: What? Go to a single feature? Not me!
Alison: Write some postcards.
Bob: I'll have to do that for the folks from Canterbury.
Alison: Write to your girl.
Bob: I don't write to my girl any more.
Alison: How do you expect her to write to you, if you don't write to her?
Bob: You've got that in reverse English. She doesn't write to me any more, so I don't write to her.
Alison: So that's the way it is.
Bob: That's the way it is.
Alison: Perhaps she has written.
Bob: I haven't had a letter in seven weeks.
Alison: Perhaps some of the mail's lost by enemy action. A ship might have gone down.
Bob: Yes. A ship might have gone down.
The address might have been wrong.
There are a hell of a lot of Johnsons in the Army.
Maybe she was ill.
Maybe her mother was ill.
I've had all the maybe's. I cabled her. I haven't heard a thing.
She's a swell girl, Alison. We used to talk. She liked the woods. She learned some of the bird calls I taught her real well, for a girl.
She caught her first rainbow with my rod.
We'd been walking in the woods often, following the trail, we hadn't said a word for two hours, and then we both said the same thing together.
What do you think it means when that happens?
Alison: It means love.
Bob: It means no letter in seven weeks.
I don't believe this enemy action stuff.
All the other fellows get letters from their girls.
A ship goes down, it can't just be that particular part of the ship where my letters are dumped that goes down, can it?
Well, so-long, Alison. I hope you don't mind my calling you by your first name.
Alison: I shall miss being called "Ma'am".
Bob: Time marches on. Which way does your road go? Ma'am!
Alison: See there? I hope up that hill.
Bob: Why that hill?
Alison: That's where the pilgrims road runs.
Bob: Along that hill?
Alison: Yes, from the bend, from the eastern edge of the hill, the pilgrims saw Canterbury for the first time.
Bob: You've seen it?
Alison: Yes. With a friend of mine.
Bob: Boy, or girl?
Alison: Boy.
Bob: I hope he writes to you.
Alison: No he doesn't.
Bob: Maybe the mail was lost by enemy action.
Alison: No Bob. As it happens, he was lost by enemy action. He was a pilot.
Bob: Shot down?
Alison: Yes.
Bob: Sorry.
There must have been a strong wind blowing by the end of that scene because a lot of us seemed to have something making our eyes water. Thanks chaps, it was brilliantly done.
Jan is a Canadian but the accent was close enough for us.
See also Ian Court's video clips
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