Number 10 (1983) s01e03 Episode Script

Miss Frances Stevenson to see Mr Lloyd George, by appointment.
Oh, yes.
Please come in, miss.
Mr Asquith is upstairs in his drawing room, so Mr Lloyd George is using his study.
He prefers it to his own.
It's strange - two houses being connected.
- I had no idea.
- There's not many people as do, miss.
It's very convenient.
It makes government more like family, you see.
Well, that's the way Mr Lloyd George likes to think of it, anyway.
This way, please, miss.
Come in.
Miss Frances Stevenson, sir.
My dear girl.
How good of you to come.
I'd expected someone older.
- I am older, sir.
- Older than what? Well, than Well, I suppose I mean I'm older than you think.
And how old is that? All right.
Let me guess.
I'm a great judge of blossom on the bough.
Let me see.
Nineteen? Twenty? I'm 23.
All right, make a liar out of me for three years.
I don't mind.
Bonar Law, now he hates being called a liar, but I don't mind a bit.
You heard the latest rhyme about me? There are so many.
Lloyd George no doubt, When his life ebbs out, Will ride on a flaming chariot, Seated in state on a red-hot plate, Twixt Satan and Judas Iscariot.
Ananias that day to the devil will say, "My claim for precedence fails, "Move me up higher, away from the fire, "And make way for that liar from Wales.
" - What do you think of that? - I think it's very disrespectful.
Disrespectful.
Bless you, my dear girl.
If that's the worst a politician gets, he's a lucky man.
I've nearly had my head broken.
If it hadn't been disguised in a policeman's helmet at the time, it would have been.
I've told you how old you are, you tell me how old I am.
I know how old you are, sir.
It's easy with public men - you can look them up.
- You're 48.
- Yes.
- Poor old man broken by the cares of office.
- Oh, I didn't mean that.
What else have you looked up about me, Miss Frances Stevenson? Not really anything.
That I'm a Welsh wizard? This Merlin, this siren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to the planet, leaping out of some alien dimension to ensnare men's minds.
Aye.
And women's too.
That is the kind of thing people say.
And wonderful imaginations they have.
Well, are you disappointed by the reality: An underprivileged lad from Wales who had the brilliant thought of giving old folk five-bob-a-week pension? Oh, you've done much more than that.
Yes, well, that's as maybe.
But right now, Miss Stevenson, I'm a pathetic figure of a father who wants to see better things on his daughter's schooI reports than "Could apply herself harder.
" - Are you willing to try and remedy that? - Yes.
Megan! She's probably been drifting about like a ghost ever since you arrived.
Ah.
There you are.
Now, Megan, this is Miss Frances Stevenson.
She's coming with us to Criccieth for the summer and she's going to help you with your lessons.
- Say "How do you do?" to Miss Stevenson.
- How do you do? How do you do, Megan? I'm sure we're going to be great friends.
Yes.
She says you're much prettier than any of her other teachers, - and I quite agree with her.
- Thank you.
No, sweetheart, you're getting a bit tooold for that now, and I don't think Mr Asquith likes you jumping on the blotters on the Cabinet table.
Run along.
I've been looking all over the place for you.
Why can't you stay in your own house? I don't believe you've met Miss Stevenson, Megan's new tutor.
This is Sarah Jones, our cook-housekeeper.
Know the dragon on the Welsh flag? This is the original.
What's the crisis, you alarmist harpy? This Frenchie you got coming to tea Not Frenchie, Sarah, Frenchman.
He's the French minister of finance.
And how many times do I have to tell you it is dinner, not tea? Down here they call it dinner.
I don't care what they call it, or him for that matter, I can't have it ready before half past eight and that's final.
Half past eight will do admirably, Sarah.
Oh.
Thank you for taking the trouble to consult me Don't you try to soft-soap me.
I knew you in Llanystumdwy, when you ate tea like any other Christian.
She likes you.
I would never have guessed.
And if Sarah Jones is for you, it doesn't matter if the whole world is against you.
I trust that noone will be against me.
My appointment is domestic, not political.
I was talking as I usually do, so my enemies tell me.
Rhetorically.
David.
Mr Asquith says he would like his study back.
I'm so sorry, I didn't know you Margaret, may I present Miss Stevenson, Megan's tutor for the summer.
Miss Stevenson, my wife Margaret.
How do you do? How do you do, Miss Stevenson? Don't forget now - Mr Asquith is on his way down from the drawing room.
- I don't think she likes the idea.
- Of what? Of my coming to Wales.
Oh, nonsense.
She's just not very demonstrative, that's all.
We'll have a grand time at Criccieth.
I'll get down for weekends, mostly, we'll have picnics, swimming, lying in the sun.
And work.
My work with Megan.
Your work with Megan, of course.
I want her to be as bright as her dad.
Can you arrange that, Miss Stevenson? I shall do my best.
Good.
That's settled.
And now we'd better get out of Mr Asquith's way.
After all, he does still think he runs the country.
Right.
I'm going to go there and I've won the game.
Oh.
Oh, let's go down to the beach and paddle now, please, Frances? Miss Stevenson, if you please.
- Oh, I don't mind.
- Nevertheless.
Maggie! Come on.
Maggie! - A tape measure.
- A what? A tape measure.
Have you got one? What would I be doing with a tape measure? I've got one.
- Winnie and Max here - Trust her.
both claim to have a sturdier calf than mine.
You bet.
Measure us.
- Do what? - Measure us.
They tried to tell me two soggy London snails can compare with a Welshman who's been bounding up and down these hills ever since he was a lad.
I would remind you that I went for a soldier in my youth.
You were on horseback most of the time, that's when you weren't falling off.
I never fell off a horse in my life.
Come on, girl, don't dither! You want to put some money on this? I never gamble with colonials.
Ha! Sixteen.
Not too tightly, my dear.
Sixteen.
Sixteen and a half.
- We demand a recount.
- I don't believe it.
Weaklings.
Poltroons.
Well? Richard, Gwilym, Olwen, Megan? What do you think of your old man now, eh, Margaret? You've always had a fine leg on you.
- You'll stay for tea, of course? - Thank you, no.
It's been a a great weekend.
I want to get back and write the leader on your national health proposals myself.
Goodbye, Margaret.
We go back to town in good heart, knowing you are under the protection of your Herculean father.
I'll see you back to your shoes and socks.
- Summer's almost gone.
- Yes.
You'll be going back to your blackboard, I suppose.
Yes.
Chalky fingers.
Chalky fingers.
- Don't go.
Back to schooI, I mean.
- But I must.
I need a private secretary at Downing Street.
- It's not possible.
Your family - Nothing to do with my family.
But your wife, Margaret, I can't do that to her.
Besides, they already guess.
Well Well, that's very clever of them, isn't it? Since there's nothing for them to guess.
We've hardly been alone together five minutes all summer.
We know.
- They know.
- I need you.
A divorce would ruin you.
Didn't say anything about a divorce.
Oh.
I've shocked you.
What you're asking of me goes against everything I have been taught to believe.
Taught, yes, but do you believe it? We're, what, 11 years into the 20th century, happiness is what counts, not rules.
Do plants ask permission to push up through the ground, trees to reach, apples to swell? And what you're preaching is paganism.
So be it.
But you read the Bible every day.
Ah, that's only so I can count my enemies' quotations from it.
Fran, cariad, I need you.
My mind meshes with yours.
Margaret isn't interested in power and the levers that move men's lives, you are.
There's a terrible time coming.
Winnie can see it and so can I.
The Germans will have war.
I will be asked to smash them, Asquith will have to go.
I can do it but I must have the girl I love with me.
So you see, it's practically your duty to the country, my girl.
I will come as your secretary.
I make noother promises than that.
I ask none.
I feel like climbing to the top of a tree and shouting into all Wales.
I think helping me to fold this rug would be more constructive.
The Germans have two fearsome weapons: The submarine, and General Haig.
The one destroys our ships and our food, the other pours away our life's blood in the trenches.
Winston, I tell you, if we used our tanks on the Germans, we could roll 'em up like a carpet.
And General Haig's toffee-nosed cavalry would scream they're not going to be turned into chauffeurs.
Does anybody know what today is? - The anniversary of - My bloody birthday! That's what it is.
No "Happy birthday," not a present, not a card.
Here am I, Prime Minister of the greatest nation on earth, fighting a war to save mankind, dodging five German Destroyers in the Channel yesterday to get back home to my loved ones, and I'm not worth a piece of bloody cardboard to any one of them! Thank you.
Sorry.
Sorry, Dei, love.
I did remember, then I forgot.
We must staunch both haemorrhages.
Sorry, Father.
Sorry, Da.
Birthdays are for drummer boys, not warlords.
You must get rid of Haig.
Build more ships.
These tank things could overrun enemy positions.
They're impervious to rifle and machine-gun fire.
Another thing - somebody closed my bedroom window last night.
- I did that.
It was cold.
- You know I hate to sleep in a sealed box.
I've a head like a stuffed marrow this morning.
I'm not considered in this house! We'll be moaning next that someone has stolen our teddy bear.
If I had one, somebody undoubtedly would have done.
David, we're talking about strategies for winning the war.
Yes, I know, I know.
The factories are turning out tanks by the dozen.
Joe Maclay will have a million tons of new ships in the sea this year.
And I'm seeing Wully Robertson about Haig this morning.
I need hardly tell you all that normal breakfast rules apply.
Anything you hear in this house is utterly secret.
And that includes his birthday.
I can't get rid of General Haig.
Wully, you're Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
You can get rid of anyone you like.
He's well-thought of, highly connected.
The man is a personal friend of His Majesty's.
Wully, do you know your trouble? You're the only man in British history to have risen from private to general, but inside you're still a private.
Just because Haig's a gent, Sandhurst and all that twaddle, it's as much as you can do to stop yourself saluting the bugger.
Well, I'm a peasant, like you, and I'd just as soon kick him up his well-padded arse as look at him! - He's a damn good soldier.
- You're a liar and you know it, he couldn't command a girls hockey team.
He's left a million of our youth, the seed corn of this nation, hanging rotting on the wire out there, or sprawled in the cow shit of Flanders.
Wully, we're losing this war.
I want a unified allied command under the best supreme commander available regardless of nationality.
Don't take on the army, David, we've got the press and the Palace behind us.
And you've got me in front of you! And if the Germans can chop you into little pieces, what makes you think that I can't? Yes, indeed, Mr O'Connor, you may tell your readers that we eat exactly the same as the rest of the nation.
Sarah dear.
Sarah Jones.
She does wonders with our rations.
Well, you've plenty of pans to work your wonders with, Miss Jones.
Never use 'em.
Four's always been plenty for me, the rest are for show if you ask me.
They do come in handy when the garden suburbs have to be fed.
Garden suburbs? That's what we call all those little huts that my husband had built for his experts.
He does like to have them around him.
They've made a bit of a mess of the lawn.
Well, I suppose it's the first time anyone has ever fought a war from home.
Isn't it a strain sometimes, knowing that your husband carries the whole huge responsibility of the war on his back? Well, if you mean do I worry about him, yes, indeed I do.
Especially when he's in any physical danger like yesterday on the Channel.
But he carries the whole burden himself, he never lets me see it.
To me he's as carefree and loving and lighthearted as though we didn't have a worry in the world.
He's the best husband a woman could wish for.
Cariad, cariad, a week in France without you.
Oh, I've been so afraid for you, knowing they'd be attacking you on your crossing back.
Oh, it's good to have you home.
Happy birthday, darling.
God, I've missed you.
Didn't the French provide any consolations for you? They're supposed to be good at that.
- You should know, you're quarter French.
- Well, did they? Oh dear.
I do believe my pussycat's a little jealous.
Albert Stern asked me toone of his houses for dinner while you were away.
Sir Albert? Well, now, good for him.
And I hope he took the opportunity of showing you what it would be like to be Lady Stern, floating in luxury and dazzled with diamonds.
You really wouldn't mind, would you? Were I to marry him, I mean.
Not at all, as long as you didn't stop loving me in every sense of the word.
Now, with you respectably married You see, war has taught me the value of camouflage.
Are you really as beastly as you seem, or do you just pretend? Oh, that reminds me, you must stop riding around with me in my official motorcar, certain people, certain newspapers are beginning to take notice.
- Oh, that would never do, would it? - No, it wouldn't.
I've enough to do fighting the Germans without taking on British middle-class morality as well.
Don't worry, darling, I'd rather ride a bicycle than put you to any trouble.
Oh, Fran, don't take it like that.
We're doing the world despite its maliciousness.
There's a great deal of satisfaction in doing the world.
I've been at it for over 25 years and got away with it, spat on its tinsel robes.
If you pay homage to it in certain things, you can defy it in others as much as you like.
And one of the things we have to pay homage to is appearances.
Exactly.
Oh, I get so sick of all this discretion, this hypocrisy! I want to shout it across the top of Big Ben, I want the world to know.
Which says a great deal for your heart, my sweet, but very little for your head.
Oh, I'm sorry, darling.
The last thing I want to be is a bother to you.
Forget all my nonsense.
It's just that I get so moody when you're away, that's all.
Yes, good girl, don't get angry with your dear old Dai.
Now listen.
I've got a marvellous idea.
Margaret is going to stay in Wales for a few weeks next month, and that means that we Oh.
What are you doing, Joseph? Oh, er, I'm changing these here place cards, ma'am.
I'm putting Sir Henry next to Lord Curzon, and Sir William Robertson Who told you to do that? Oh.
Mr Lloyd George's secretary, ma'am.
Er she said it would make a better mix.
Just put them back where I had them before, will you, Joseph? Yes, ma'am.
The First Lord of the Admiralty and his party have just arrived, sir.
- Good.
Show them into the Cabinet Room.
- Very good, sir.
- Remember - I shan't forget.
Edward.
John.
Henry.
Please sit down.
- Who is this young man? - Peter Evans, sir.
He's an admiralty statistician.
Excellent.
Just the man we want.
Please sit down.
Tell me, Peter Evans, if the Hun submarines continue to sink our merchant ships at half a million tons a month as they did last month, how long before we all starve to death? - Well, sir - Never mind about that.
An educated guess.
Very soon, sir.
Down to subsistence level within three months.
Precisely.
And what, Edward, is the navy doing about it? The British Navy has whipped the German Navy off the seas, and now keeps it cowering in harbour.
Except the submarines.
The sharks that are eating us up alive.
The Royal Navy has 3,000 fighting vessels? Including major and minor ships, yes, sir.
And what are they doing, Admirals? What, I repeat, are they doing? - They represent a deterrent.
- I tell you what they're doing.
They're sitting on their backsides in port manicuring their decks whilst the German crocodiles drag our merchant men under.
Prime Minister, I hardly think that's fair.
We at the Admiralty have been giving the matter a great deal of thought.
I'm glad to hear it.
And what has emerged from your deliberations? We have a plan, sir.
Good.
Let's hear it.
Well, sir, suppose we established, as it were, channels at the mouths of the main British ports, the sides of the channels to consist of two phalanxes of fast warships.
Then the British merchant men could pass safely between them into harbour unmolested.
What about the 3,000 perilous miles they have to survive before they get to British ports? That's where you need your fortified channel.
I was talking of practical measures, sir, not fantasies.
Whoa-oh, dear John, the fantasies of dreamers have done more for mankind - than all you practical fellows.
- I beg leave to doubt that.
I'm not saying your plan is without a vital spark, but it doesn't go far enough.
Not by 3,000 miles.
A channel of warships, yes, but a mobile barricade, one that travels with the merchant ships way out into the Atlantic.
- It wouldn't work.
- Why not? For one, merchant seamen don't understand the navy's ways.
They don't know the techniques - they couldn't follow orders or read signals.
That's rubbish, Edward.
They're seamen, they've been out there all their lives.
I know master mariners who could sail a wicker basket through a force 9 gale.
You just put them together with your sailor boys and see who scores for seamanship.
It's a question of logistics.
The number of British merchant ships on the high seas at any one time is - Evans? - Roughly 2,500, sir.
There you are, you see? Multiply the navy ten times over and you could not adequately protect that number out at sea or anything like it.
I see.
Do give the Admiralty plan some thought, Prime Minister.
- It has its advantages.
- Yes, I'm sure it has.
Well, I know you're busy men.
Thank you for your time, gentlemen.
Evans.
- Sir? - A moment of your time.
Thank you, gentlemen, I needn't detain you any longer.
Come and sit down, Peter Evans.
Evans.
Let me guess Flintshire? Caernarfon, sir.
That's my part of the country.
I'm your Member of Parliament, did you know that? Yes, sir.
My father has voted for you ever since you were elected a Caernarfon county councillor in 1888.
Yes, those were the days.
- Ever go back to Wales, do you? - Quite often.
My people are still there.
Glad to hear it.
Hold on to your roots, boy.
They're the only real anchor any of us ever has.
Now, these damned statistics of yours, who asked you to compile them? - My superiors, sir.
- Specifically for this meeting? Yes, sir.
And this figure of 2,500 merchant ships on the high seas at any one time that you conjured out of the mysteries of your science, what does that include? - In what way, sir? - Are they great grain ships, cargo ships, ocean liners, 20,000-tonners, what? My instructions were to include everything that floated, sir, coastal traps, fishing smacks, coastguard cutters, lifeboats.
Even the ferry from Southampton to the Isle of Wight, no doubt.
Yes, sir.
Anything that would hold water.
Which is more than the arguments of your superiors do.
- I beg your pardon, sir? - Whoa, never mind.
Thank you, Peter Evans.
Evening News.
Extra.
- Cowley.
- Working late, miss? The French have just asked for a conference in Paris, we have to doour homework.
Always does well to be ready for them frogs, miss, allies or not.
- Good night, miss.
- Evening.
Evening, miss.
What do you want, my pretty maid? Please, sir.
I've come about the job, sir, if you please, sir.
Oh.
Well, you'd better come in and we'll have a little talk.
You fooI, you fool, you fool, you fool.
Oh, Fran.
I daren't have spoken about this before.
What? What is it, darling? You'll think me morbid.
I have a horror of going alone.
- Dying, you mean? - Yes.
You're still a young man.
Why talk about dying? I'm going to ask you a very terrible thing.
When I go and I will go first, our ages will see to that I want you to come with me.
Oh.
Don't be silly.
You don't even believe in anything afterwards.
Don't ask me to explain.
Yes, I am a pagan, I've always been a pagan, despite all the hymn singing, but I know if we go together there is something in the power of love.
And we have a rare love.
The power of love Oh, God Almighty, I'm supposed to be an orator! Sh, sh, sh.
Sh, darling.
I wouldn't want to stay if you had gone.
I swear we'll go together.
Nothing is going to separate us.
Please.
Don't talk about it any more.
Mm.
No.
No, I think, er, I think that one over there, Joseph.
Its tones match the curtains so well.
After all, he was a Salon artist.
Erm, over there.
Might I ask what you're doing, Miss Stevenson? Well, I thought these pictures would suit the decor so much better, Mrs Lloyd George.
That will be all, thank you, Joseph.
I do hope you didn't feel I was taking a liberty.
Oh, why should I think that? After all you do spend almost as much time almost as much time in this house as I do.
A body must feel at home.
Well, it's just that I feel That the house isn't really yours at all, that you just work here? Well, I can understand that.
You know, everyone who works with my husband becomes What do they call those things now that circle around the planets? Oh.
Yes, that's it.
A satellite.
We all become satellites and try to make life good for him.
Oh, he's had a lot of satellites in his time who have all tried to comfort him.
Well, I wasn't really thinking of that.
It's just the look of the place, a prime minister's house.
Oh, I don't think David is very conscious of indoors.
Streams and mountains, yes, but indoors he lives very much inside himself.
I'm not sure that's true.
Given a place to furnish, he shows great taste.
Oh? I didn't know that.
I should like to see that.
I mean I'm sure he would show great taste.
I'm sure you may well be right, my dear, but taken by and large, he likes things that he's used to.
And he is used to the pictures in this room, so I think we'll leave them as they are.
Besides, believe it or not, I like them too.
Well, that's probably because you chose them in the first place.
Quite right.
I did.
Oh.
By the way I found this.
I believe I have seen you wearing it.
It's very handsome.
It was on the landing outside the bedroom.
I found it when I got back from Wales this morning.
Well, thank you very much.
I wasn't even aware I'd lost it.
Well, I expect your mind was on other things.
Yes.
You have a very demanding position.
Private secretary to a prime minister.
People courting you in the hopes that you will influence him on their behalf, protecting him from nuisances that he doesn't really want to see.
Oh, and sharing his thinking on great matters of state.
Oh, I know that I'm just a country mouse, but I do understand more than you think.
Oh, you do yourself less than justice.
I know how active you are in local politics in Wales, how much time you spend there away from this house, away from your husband.
I think it's better sometimes simply to get out of his way and let him get on with it.
You know.
So put those pictures back where they were before, there's a good girl.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Henderson was saying he told HG Wells my theory about Oliver Cromwell being a Welshman, Wells replied, "And so, no doubt, was Williams the Conqueror.
" She knows.
Of course she knows.
The woman would have to be blind.
She knows that we have slept together here under this roof.
Well, she must have assumed, all those times she stayed down in Wales over the years.
Then the point is she assumed wrongly, it's never happened before, we've always used my flat.
Fran, what's the difference, your flat or here? To the great god Pan, none I suppose.
You were not, as I remember, an unwilling partner toour little game.
It's one of those games that sounded better than it turned out.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.
David.
You haven't got a conscience.
You never have had.
I know.
It's one of my great strengths as a politician.
I must have more men.
General Haig, you treat men like ants.
You use the bodies of the dead as a bridge for the living.
Do you know what your men call you? The Prince of Death.
- Hold on, sir.
- It's all right, Wully.
I'd expected nothing better.
Especially from someone who listens to amateur strategists like Churchill.
And how dazzling have the professionals been? You personally lost half a million men taking a patch of Flanders no bigger than Regents Park.
Sixty thousand men cut down on the Somme the first day.
Unfair criticism if I may say so, sir.
General Haig wasn't to know he was going to get bogged down by a cloudburst.
Wully, in Flanders it's rained like a Balayan monsoon in August for the past 8o years.
That is the sort of thing professional strategists are meant to know.
Ludendorff is preparing to strike at my centre.
He has 60 divisions to my 24.
Because your other 36 are lying face down dead in the mud where you led them.
You have an army of one and a half million men in this country doing nothing.
Give them to me.
To what purpose, General? Mathematics.
Now the Americans are coming in, the balance of numbers should be in our favour.
For every nine German soldiers there could be 12 Allied soldiers.
Say we each kill three as it were, that leaves six of them, nine of us.
Kill another three each.
Three of them left, six of us.
Kill another three each and they're wiped out, and we've still got three left.
End of game.
God in heaven.
To Clemenceau, Paris, current foreign office code I'm prepared to commit more British reserves on condition already agreed by Americans Marshal Foch takes over as Supreme Allied Commander.
Your answer required instantly.
Lloyd George.
Telegram to Winston Churchill.
Propose announce your appointment as Minister of Munitions in Commons this afternoon.
Lloyd George.
What will Haig do about Foch? Same as the Conservatives about Churchill - make a lot of noise and do nothing.
Lord Northcliffe called while you were in Cabinet.
He left a message.
He said he'd heard you'd been interfering in strategy, and that if you didn't stop he would destroy you.
That's me finished, then.
Did anything important happen? The usual succession of well-wishers strolled through, all saying I was the poison in your cup.
Your enemies would use me to ruin you.
Mm.
Discretion is all that's needed, cariad.
Oh, we've certainly used that.
Every Christmas, every Easter, every bank holiday, you playing Santa Claus with your family, me alone in my flat.
What's brought this on? The thought that you'll be away again this weekend.
Fran, you knew that from the beginning.
Yes, I know I chose it but I don't know how much longer I can goon.
A fire like ours does not goout.
I'll come round to your flat tonight and prove it to you.
Several times.
It's just the other large suitcase and the small green valise.
Yes, madam.
Margaret.
What's all this about? I'm going back to Wales.
We won't be seeing each other again very much.
Margaret, cariad, why? You're a great man, Dei, you're probably the only man who could have won this war for us, I could not interfere with that.
But you're also a greedy, selfish, blind self-indulgent pig and there is nothing to keep me here now.
Margaret, you're overwrought, it's all the excitement.
Oh, for God's sake, will you just shut up for once in your life and listen? This could be important to you.
For half our lifetime, you've treated me on the same level with our dogs.
Oh, now, that's not true.
I've respected you You've been sly if that's what you mean.
Yes, I'll give you that.
I mean, if that's what you mean by respected.
You've never actually thrown it in my face.
And people have cooperated with you, they've turned a blind eye, and treated me with deference and courtesy.
But everyone has known.
How do you think that makes a woman feel? What do you think it does to her inside? I married you for love, a little Welsh solicitor in Caernarfon.
- Yes, that's all you ever wanted me to be.
- Not true, Dei.
You underestimated me, you always have.
Maybe that was the most hurtful thing of all.
- You hated London.
- You made me hate London.
You made me feel there was nothing I could do for you here.
Yes, I did spend a lot of time in Wales.
Because there I did not have to see things.
And there I felt I could help you.
Meg, don't go.
Do you know what I've been doing in Caernarfon all these years? Nursing your constituency for you.
Do you have any idea just how thin your majority used to be? Do you know what they used to call you up there? The climber who pulled the ladder up behind him.
Well, I tried to keep the old Lloyd George alive.
The one they knew and loved, the young terrier who took on all the landowners and squires, and called the House of Lords 5ooof the country's unemployed.
- Not the sneaky friend of millionaires.
- Self-made millionaires.
Aye, you're not doing too badly in that direction yourself.
Any money I make is for the Liberal Party! Tell me did you ask her to die with you too? Oh, David.
What are we supposed to do? Sit on the funeral pyre holding hands? The funny thing is I'm the one who's protected you most.
I've kept your squalid little secret, I've given the jolly little interviews, I've produced the play.
- Play? - Yeah.
Surely you know the one I mean, Dei.
"Happy Families.
" I play the admiring wife, you play the devoted husband.
And the children play well, loving children, secure.
They are secure.
Megan and Gwilym almost hate you.
Olwen despises you.
And Richard is embarrassed by you.
The irony of this whole thing is that we have played our parts so well, you've actually come to believe in the play.
You believe that you have a right to fulfil your life, but at the expense of others.
Well, if you have the right to do what you want, then why shouldn't we have? Oh, there have been times when I have wanted to rip you and your fancy lady to pieces in public.
Oh, I've ached for it.
But I haven't.
Why? Because sometimes the cost of pleasing yourself, comes too high for others, so you deny yourself.
You don't know what that word means.
I know the meaning of denial! I've given my life for this country! You little liar! You've enjoyed every minute of it.
Do you know what's hurt most of all, David? Not being allowed to give when I had so much to give.
You didn't know what was in me, or what I could have done for you because you couldn't be bothered to find out.
To you I was just a dumpy, home-town girl, who turned into an even dumpier, middle-aged provincial woman.
Well, that's not what I'm like inside, David.
And it is not what I could have been if only you'd seen me.
For God's sake, Meg I made you wife of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom! Yes.
But you didn't make me yours.
I just saw Margaret You just saw a woman of style.
I love her.
I know.
And I love you.
Yes.