Original subtitles

I'll give you credit for somewhat else, I know.

You'll never leave this place, choose where you go.

It's grained in you, do you hear me?

In your blood, in your head, in your bloody attitude to life.

You'll grow up one day, and it'll still be there.

You'll know whose side you run, then.

You've no choice.

There's dead men and women in your head that'll never be still, my lad.

Part of you, till the day you die.

That's your credit.

See what you can draw from that.

I'm Cathy, Peter.

Jean?

David.

Sorry I'm late, I had a lecture.

I finished early at the hospital.

I've been looking round the exhibition.

Cathy, Peter.

Telling everybody to work harder, is it?

Is that possible?

Well, there are dockers in Hamburg volunteering

to work double shifts for a new Germany.

Let's hope they get it.

Hey, remind you of anything?

Skeleton.

How long since you were there last?

Twenty years or so.

I was in my teens when we moved to live in Manchester.

My grandad worked at Skeleton, Maine.

He chewed tobacco.

His whiskers were brown at the ends.

When's Sarah coming back?

When she can tear herself away from old Corby, I suppose.

To choose to stay in Skeleton.

My God.

After twenty years, I can still smell the stacks.

The slag in the streets.

The men coming out of the pit gates after work.

Too tired to live.

And those awful dead Sundays.

When we were all dressed up with nowhere to go.

What has Sarah here?

She's tied to one room with her baby.

She shares the same life as you.

My life's at university, most of it.

Well, you've your scholarship.

It'll take you to something better.

I feel so bloody useless sometimes.

I feel as if nothing I do is going to be a damn bit of use to anybody.

The bright, working-class lad who made it, eh?

Made what?

I wish to God I knew.

I'm only happy when the world's outside.

I'm living up here in me head.

Don't you ever wish you could wipe the slate clean and start all over again?

Germany didn't wish it.

The rest of the world did it for her.

Your enemy, your friend?

Perhaps.

Some people wished it.

Like Frederick, you mean?

Can happen to people, too.

Every German's a little Germany.

I'm a Canadian, aren't I?

That doesn't absolve you.

From what?

Guilt, if you like.

Are there no ghosts in your past?

Hello, Sparky.

You've been tied up in Hamburg for three days.

Nobody told you to come off watch.

Listen.

What are they trying to tell us here?

The past has been bloody awful, but the future can be bright and beautiful.

Do we need to be reminded of the past?

Not if we're honest.

Aren't we?

The best will in the world, not always.

Memory plays tricks, doesn't it?

Tricks?

Tells us we won the war because we were all good mates

together, making jokes about Hitler, smiling through.

I was in Canada in the war.

I only knew what I read.

It wasn't like that.

It was a long, mucky tunnel where the roof might come down at any moment.

Heartbreak, misery, desolation for thousands of people.

And a lot of poor sods died in their youth with nothing

brighter to remember than years of depression, no work.

Are things ever as black as that?

Not altogether.

If they were, memory would be a blank, because we bury the muck, forget it's there.

We remember the nice things, the good old days.

Poverty is something that ennobled us, not something we had to survive.

That's a kind of dishonesty that turns us back on the past.

Are you lecturing me?

Cap fits, wear it.

So that's why you asked me to meet you here?

No, that's a bonus.

What, then?

Does the name Sam Wilson mean anything to you?

Fag?

Yeah, tar, Sparky.

Signing on again when we get to Liverpool?

What, fourth engineer on this old tub?

Another trip?

Not bloody likely.

Only signed on to get back to the UK.

Three years in Aussie, weren't you?

Near enough.

Aussie to Durban, back against Aussie.

Like a bloody bus run.

Don't they like you at home?

Mind a lot of playing if I didn't turn up on leave now and then.

You single blokes get away with murder.

Doesn't your mother miss you?

She's dead.

Sorry for her.

And my dad's supposed to be.

Supposed to be?

There was a court order last year declaring him dead to get the will settled.

Things they do for money.

Right.

Where is he now?

In Hamburg.

His letter said he'd be coming to see me tomorrow.

How did he find me?

Same way I did, through Morris Naylor.

The man who asked you to come and see why didn't answer his letter?

The same.

So that court order was for Wilson then?

No, I don't think so.

Morris' old man was a solicitor for Wilson's granddad.

I think they wanted to settle an estate.

Why does he want to see me, Wilson?

The letter didn't say.

Did it say I was the woman his father left his mother for?

So now you know why your friend Morris wanted his letters answered.

What, you're curious?

We've all got skeletons of one kind or another hanging around in the past,

eh?

That old, old closet.

Be sure your sins will find you out.

An awful lot don't.

I've embarrassed you.

I'm very fond of the Brunings.

We're not the Brunings.

I use Frederick's name for the children's sake.

I'm still married to their father.

Remember asking me once why Leslie and Frederick didn't get on too well?

Well, now you know.

Fred's taken his father's place, you mean?

They don't see it as we do, do they?

Our failings.

Oh, yes.

Not our needs.

Going into Hamburg tonight, Thor?

I reckon.

Watch your wallet if you do.

There's a lifting campaign going on.

I could do with one of these.

Guide me through the dark.

Diese Jungen sind die Opfer der großen

Lebensmittelnot in Deutschland nach dem Kriege.

Es gab so viele weißen Kinder...

Over 70,000 bastards, the Allied troops have left in Germany.

Does an empty space in the past matter as long as they're cared for in the future?

You should ask them that, not me.

So, you're to be married next month.

Yes.

That court order made it possible.

You'll be there.

And Sarah?

I'll write to her.

There'll be no one else.

The children?

I think perhaps not.

Don't you think it could help them to accept that their father's dead?

Because of a piece of paper?

There are people all over Germany with pieces of paper saying, missing,

believed, killed.

Then silence.

What happens in that silence?

Life goes on.

It hurts you to believe that children suffer these things, doesn't it?

Is it because you're thinking of leaving, Sarah?

You believe in the sanctity of marriage.

I can't.

There comes a time when anything else is more bearable.

We've got to learn to stand on our own two feet.

Isn't that sometimes easier?

There were times when I was married when I longed to be on my own again.

Responsible to nobody but myself.

Standing on my own two feet.

Forget the past, Jean.

The kids will... Will they?

Has Fred?

You know why we came here?

When he fled Germany, he had to leave his mother and father behind.

So I came back to look for them.

Very proper.

Proper?

You're a very cold person sometimes, aren't you, David?

You should have been with him as I was.

Moving from clue to clue.

A chance here and then nothing.

The pictures on the boards.

Those sad old faces looking out at you.

Has anyone seen this person?

He'll be cooking for the kids now.

He loves it.

It's the part he likes about me working.

When he was living with us in Canada, when my first husband

left, in the room we let, he'd asked to be allowed to cook.

Harry used to laugh at him.

And, of course, he is proper, as you say.

Proper.

He's a very moral man.

It's been more than an act of love for him to live with me all these years unmarried.

There's no news of his mother and father.

I think perhaps they're lost to him now.

Sometimes I look at him and I want to ask, does it hurt?

Does it hurt still?

But, of course, I know the answer.

Paula feels it too.

We've no other relatives, you see.

There's just us.

I think she had a picture of them in her mind.

A gran and grandad.

Old and vulnerable.

To be cared for.

To be warmed with affection.

That's suffering, isn't it?

To care too much.

Now, Leslie was his father's boy.

He hits at Frederick with the stick you gave him.

Politics.

He listened to your arguments, borrowed your

books and started to whack him with them.

Isn't that normal?

Youth and politics?

I always thought politics was a tool, not a weapon.

Fred?

Yeah?

Why didn't the communists seize power instead of Hitler?

They never pulled more than 16% of the votes.

When they began to feel threatened, they tried to

form a united working class front to get the vote.

So it was your fault then, Fred?

You believe so?

You refuse to unite?

When a man borrows your coat because he wishes to look like

you, you think perhaps he may later want also your trousers?

Forget the past, Jean.

Let me send Wilson back to Hamburg.

I don't think I can do that.

Why not?

Perhaps he knows what we know.

But Harry isn't dead.

You're great.

Eh?

Come here.

Grandad?

Grandad!

My poor ma'am.

My poor, bloody ma'am.

Dressing up for a plank like Alan Dakin!

For all she could hope for in her life!

You're an insult to her.

You're a mould on the breath of her life!

I am a mould, aren't I, Grandad?

A chip off that bloody block that went to Canada, aren't I, Grandad?

A chip off that bloody block that went to Canada, aren't I, Grandad?

And the dad had a shop at Goodie, didn't he?

And so when does that?

And he went off to Canada with another woman, didn't he?

And I'll tell thee somewhere else.

I'll tell he saw the man with Alan Dakin.

Back at Gospel Hall at Longgrass.

Back at Gospel Hall at Longgrass!

Making little images of me dad and sticking pins in them.

Gran?

Yes, love?

Will I never see me dad again?

Will I be in Canada forever?

Good heavens, no.

It'll happen you'll go there yourself one day.

Now, that'll be a grand thing to look forward to, won't it?

And when you come to think of it...

Well, it'll be like having two dads in a way, won't it?

And there'll always be a place for you here.

Oh, Gran, you'd not tell me a lie, would you, Gran?

She spoils you, don't she, Gran?

Aye.

I don't spoil you, do I?

Do I spoil you then?

No, Grandad, you don't spoil me.

You threatened to break his jaw, didn't you?

If you ever showed his face again, me dad.

And Ethel told me that.

I've put it all together these last three years.

A bit here, and a bit there.

I know what your bloody purpose was.

Remember that book me dad sent me, Grandad?

And a letter I never saw.

I didn't know it then.

By God, I know it now.

Sam?

Sam?

Sam, do you want something to eat?

Yeah, yeah.

Take these.

All right.

So this is where Sarah lives, eh?

Aye.

We went home for Christmas.

She stayed on for a bit.

For God's sake, don't tell her what a mess I'm in.

What makes you think I'm going to see her?

You're going back to England, aren't you?

Back to Liverpool to pick up another ship.

If there's one waiting, I'll be straight off.

I take things as they come.

You worked in Cuddy Pit at one time, didn't you?

Aye.

Me dad worked there.

Aye, I know him.

Oh?

Lives in Pretoria Street.

Ah.

Pretoria Street.

I was brought up on Pretoria Street.

Old Mrs. Cranswick used to stand on the corner all

day long with her arms folded looking for trouble.

She died last summer.

Aye.

It's another world, eh?

You don't want to go back to it, I take it?

You?

I almost did at one time.

There was a job advertised for a graduate at the call board offices.

Dad railed at me.

We've not made sacrifices for you to come back to this mucky hole.

So, here I am, trying to see what the Germans make of the mess they're in.

The mess they got themselves into, you mean?

All of them?

They chose it, look, we didn't.

Did we choose the call owners?

No, we bloody didn't.

No.

They were just part of the system, weren't they?

Most of the people who suffered them would have voted the other way.

That happens in a democracy, what do you think happened here?

Innocents suffered with a guilty.

I was here before the end of the war, in the army.

In Cologne here, half the houses were gone.

They were living in cellars, shelters, anything.

They'd lost 30% of their industry, and we

were pinching the machinery for reparations.

A lot of the best leaders had vanished into concentration camps.

There were nearly 6 million dead.

How does Sarah get to it?

Well...

She works part-time at the hospital.

The boys are looked after by the daughter of a friend of ours.

The woman you've come to see, as a matter of fact.

The girl's your half-sister, I suppose.

There's a lad too in there, Maurice said.

Ah, Paula and Leslie.

Les?

Your half-brother.

Something wrong?

No.

No, it's fine.

Do you know...

I had another half-brother called Les, got killed three years back.

I was just remembering something my Aunt Ethel said.

She said, you're his half-brother, and he's yours.

And two halves make a whole.

Les.

We're going for a walk in the stock garden with Fred this afternoon.

Oh, who says?

Mum.

She says there might be somebody coming she wants to talk to.

Oh, who?

A friend of David and Sarah's, from England.

That'll be something to do with them getting married, then, won't it?

Will it?

Now that they've got them to say that Dad's dead.

Who?

Some court in England.

It's in a letter in Mum's drawer.

It's wrong, Les, to go through her things.

Well, they don't tell you anything, do they?

If they don't tell you, you've got to find out, don't you?

What difference does it make?

Mum says he's dead.

We know he's dead.

He'd have come to see us if he hadn't been.

He went to South Africa, didn't he?

Where we got that postcard from.

Yes, but he'd have written all the time, wouldn't he?

I mean, regularly.

Well, if we must go out, I'll go and see Kurt.

I hope he doesn't spend all the time with Mum, David's friend.

I'd like to talk about England.

What's so special about England?

I sometimes feel we belong there, really.

You know.

If we belong anywhere, it's in Canada.

It's certainly not here.

I guess we don't really belong anywhere.

Except in the world.

DOOR SLAMS

She said she'd meet us here at 12 o'clock.

You insist on seeing her, I suppose.

What do you think I've come for?

Think I shouldn't?

She feels obliged to see you.

Obliged?

Obliged.

Because of the past.

She'll tell you why.

But she's worried about the children.

They've adapted to the facts of their life.

She thinks I'll upset the apple cart.

Something like that, yes.

She'll tell them you're a friend of mine.

Do you think that's right?

I'd say let sleeping dogs lie.

Yes.

Your father sounds as if he was a bit of a bastard to me.

Is that what they've been told?

They've been told he died soon after they left them.

Why?

Look, they heard nothing from him.

Not since the day he left.

I suppose she wants them to remember him as whatever he

was to them rather than as somebody who didn't give a damn.

You're a communist, aren't you?

Did Sarah tell you that?

I?

I was a communist, yes.

Pleased that a man with souls so dead who wasn't in the thirties read.

Hey, I don't get your point.

Well, do you believe that the end justifies the means?

I used to believe that, yes.

Until they discovered it came into conflict far too often with something I respect.

Oh, what's that?

The truth.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Ah, I was speaking for Jean, not for meself.

Two coffees, please.

It's white coffee, bitter.

Things are best left.

If you say.

Oh, what good can it do them now?

Rubbish, me grandad called him.

And I was a chip off that block that went to Canada.

Whatever I was that didn't suit him, it was because it was in me blood.

I wasn't a Baratluff, I was a Wilson.

A slice of rubbish.

Now, what gives you the right to call me dad a bastard?

Ah, I said he sounded as if he was.

From what she's told you, you mean.

Look, I'm married, I have a child.

What are your qualifications?

For what?

For realising the consequences of your actions.

My qualifications?

No, no, no, no, in practice, not theory.

Need qualifications, do I?

You know I'd expect that from somebody with your background.

It's not so different from yours.

The bloody pit.

You envy me university, don't you?

No, wait a minute.

You know what I feel when me dad tells me to get out in the world and get on?

I feel disinherited.

As if there's nowhere I belong.

I shall go back to Canada.

On your own?

She'll stay with him, won't she?

It's her life now, Les.

They'll be married.

You used to like Fred.

Well, they've no right.

Don't, Les.

It's all she's got to marry Fred.

And stay in this dump.

It won't always be like this.

You've forgotten the life we had in Canada, haven't you?

It's a long way off.

The summer times down at the lake with Dad.

The way he'd come back from a trip loaded with presents.

It's the past.

It's gone.

We were going to have a farm when he'd made his pile.

Stayed on at the lake for good.

It was a game he played, that's all.

What about all those books he got?

All those up there?

That wasn't a game.

He had it all planned.

And then he went off on that trip and died.

It was a dream.

It was a dream he had.

We all have things we dream about.

I have things I dream about.

They're not real.

This is real.

Bricks from the ruins are used for the construction of the future.

With your hard work, we will build these urgently needed houses.

I'm...

I'm sorry I went on a bit.

Oh, it's all right.

Don't they get fed up being told to work all the time?

That's why there aren't many here.

They're all out working.

You know, they say we were a united people at home, you know, in the war.

Well, I suppose we were in a way.

But it's... it's over now.

And when I go back, I can feel the old days, you know, coming back.

As if it's all we wanted.

Dad talks about the bloody government and the bloody coal board, but he likes

talking about the old days best, you know?

Oh, aye.

The bad old days when men were men and down with bloody owners, you know?

Nothing new.

Not like here.

Aye, me grandad's a bit like that.

Except for this park he's got stuck in his head.

A park?

It's a bloody park.

It's a start.

Perhaps it's a bit of a dream he once had.

Oh, aye, he's good on dreams.

And organising other people's lives to fit in with his dreams.

My dad sent me a book once, and a letter.

My grandad opened it and hid it in here.

Why would he want to do that?

I saw him come in this morning.

Well, maybe he was looking for you.

He saw me!

He said no.

I don't care any more.

My dad's coming back.

Look.

It says here, see you soon, dad.

He never came back.

Why not?

Why didn't he?

And how many other letters were stopped?

You talk about the truth.

I know what the bloody truth is.

They tell us what they think we should know.

What they think is good for us.

For my sake.

I've told you a hundred times...

Violent.

Please.

I'm a German.

We had a historian, Hans Delbrück, who said... Just a second, just a second.

Who said...

The world demands and has right to demand that the pan-German spirit, the spirit of

arrogance, of violence, of hostility to culture,

of paganism, is not the true German spirit.

You know when that was written?

1918.

That was truth.

We turned our backs on that truth.

And you ask me to turn my back to the truth...

when you have seen what happens to Germany?

It's just us, Friedrich.

Just us?

Just a few little people, a few little truths.

Promise me.

Democracy is built of little truths or little lies.

All added make one big truth or one big lie.

Is a big truth more important than a small truth?

Perhaps.

Liebling.

What you call little white lie.

Is little white lie.

Oh, you woman.

Promise?

Little white lie I promise.

Perhaps two little white lies.

Aye, Aussie to Durban, back to Aussie again.

I had a letter me granddad Toby gave me.

It was the last me dad sent him, from Durban.

So I went there.

He sent me to another and another and another.

People who knew him?

Woman he lived with once.

Some of his old mates.

Did you find him?

No, no I didn't find him.

I could see him though, you know, in me mind from what people told me.

There was this chap I met in Pretoria that worked with him for two or three years.

You know what he said?

The salt of the earth your dad was, he said.

Rubbish me granddad called him.

And me with him.

Spawned off a mucky, rubbish, bread in the barn.

There are people who knew Hitler.

They say he had charm, taste.

They remember him with affection, respect.

That's what he tried to tell me.

We can be deceived, deceive ourselves, you know,

that some qualities count more than others.

Aye.

Well, when I get back to Liverpool I'm looking for a ship to Canada.

That's where he's gone.

Do you think he's still alive?

I know he is.

That court order Maurice got is rubbish.

I met a bloke that saw him off on a boat a year ago.

Jean.

It's a room we can't use.

It's cold, but it's the only place that's private.

You like him.

Your father.

Physically I mean.

It's been seventeen years or more.

Yes.

Maurice Naylor said he wrote to you.

He wanted a court order to settle my granddad's will.

Yes.

I didn't answer the letters at first.

David and Sarah were here in Cologne and he asked them to come and see me.

Didn't you want the court to declare him dead?

Did you?

It was nothing to me at the time.

And now?

Well, I was brought up to see him through my granddad's eyes.

I've met people that knew him since.

You don't remember him?

I remember the day he went off.

I was playing in the street alongside the shop.

He came out and saw me and picked me up.

Be a good lad for your mum, he said.

And give me a shilling.

What do you want me to tell you?

I want to know what I came from.

What's in me.

What I am.

You're like my son.

You're half-brother.

All me life I've been lied to.

Told what other people wanted me to think.

Little white lies and half-truths.

Dave Ellis says you're to marry.

Yes.

You want that court order to stand, don't you?

A piece of paper for a piece of paper.

But you know what I know?

He's not dead.

I heard from someone in Canada a year ago that he'd been seen.

Don't want to believe it, though, do you?

I want to believe that life still has something for me.

Aye, me mum wanted that.

She took another man for her comfort and died.

Still wed to me dad.

Well, you know how it is with me, then.

With me and the children.

They were born before your mother died.

Before Harry and I could marry.

You don't know.

If Fred and I can marry, it might be easier for them, perhaps.

Can you see why I don't want them to know who you are?

Daddy!

Daddy!

David brought the Yorkshire pudding and it's flat.

And Jackie stood there with a rabbit in his hand.

And Rob insisted, that's come fortune on me

land that me great-great-grandfather fought for.

Right enough, says Jackie.

Take the coat off and I'll fight thee for it.

David brought that?

I'll fight thee for his hangover.

There's this story about Cripps.

You know, he's a very moral, religious bloke.

Churchill's supposed to have said about him, there but for the grace of God,

goes God.

Was ist das?

Oh, Lord.

Oh, Fred.

Wie sagt man?

Wenn es nicht für Gott geht, Gott gehen.

So.

Und was denken Sie?

And what do you think about Germany, Herr Barclough?

It's only been here a few days, Fred.

Where you live is a village, yes?

It's the same village Dave comes from, isn't it?

Skeleton.

I live in Galwick now, next door.

My dad used to talk about Galwick.

He left me some photographs, they're in my room if you'd like to see them.

Miners living in bell tents after they've been evicted by the bosses.

Ah, down by the gasworks on the pitfields.

You know?

It's folklore.

It's like Wagstaff's horse bus that used to run to Cass.

First class, second class, third class.

When they got to the bottom of Kutzeikill, the driver used to shout out, first class,

stop where you are, second class, get out and walk, third class,

get out and push.

Your great-grandfather was in that strait you're

on about, and is before him, I wouldn't wonder.

I envy you.

Me?

Living in the same place your great-great-grandfather lived.

I've not been back for three years.

He means you belong there.

They haven't seen it, have they Sam?

No, it's what we call a mucky hole.

So Mum's always said.

She's right.

We used to have relatives there, but they're all dead now, aren't they Mum?

Yes love, they're all dead now.

Clear away.

You have worked in this place?

Aye, in a pit.

The miners here are going on strike next week, isn't it Fred?

I think not.

With a 94% referendum.

Their demand will be met.

By Adenauer.

By Adenauer.

Fred thinks we're heading for industrial

collapse if the strike comes off, don't you Fred?

Of course.

What are they striking for?

Co-management in the coal and steel industries.

Equal representation with the owners.

We'll get it.

Yes.

I think so, yes.

The TUC were over here to advise.

They had some sort of hand in it.

It's a compromise anyway.

Another sell-out to the old man.

It's our hope for the future.

They're buying you off, Fred.

We shall see.

The old order wants the old world back.

No revolution, reconstruction, not construction.

Schumacher said that.

Schumacher.

Schumacher has also said that he cannot conceive of socialism without democracy.

Just as the idea of the Germans being a chosen master race must vanish,

he says so the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat must disappear.

Do you call yourself a socialist, Fred?

A democratic socialist, yes.

You have lived in a state without democracy, without freedom,

where to open your mouth to object is to be silenced.

You have lived in such a place, yes?

You're oversimplifying things, Fred.

If we don't close the ranks, then God help the future.

And the future is all we've got to gain, you and me, that's without.

Not our future, oh no.

There's little enough of what we want for ourselves that we shall get in this life.

But we've had it better than what us fathers had, poor sods.

We shall die in the muck we've lived and worked in.

We shall die in a war that's been waged since before we was born.

It's others that shall reap what we sowed, that shall stand on our shoulders as we

stood on the shoulders of them that stood fast before us.

For are we not the men whose fathers we?

Fred had to leave Germany for what he believed in, Les.

You're a traitor to the working class too, aren't you, David?

Oh, don't talk bloody nonsense.

You were a boy, you read German very badly to understand all.

You must anyway think first and then believe.

Oh, I don't believe all I read, Fred.

Not everything I'm told.

Too much is said.

Everything is said.

We say everything and do nothing.

Now it is time to do to make you do not understand Germany.

Why should I?

I don't belong here, do I?

I have to tag along with you and Mum for the crumbs, don't I?

Thy people shall be my people and all that rubbish.

God, I wish I was back in Canada.

I wish Dad was alive.

He would have understood.

Understood what, Les?

Understood!

But what?

He let you come and live with us because you

had to leave Germany and he felt sorry for you.

Les, Fred came to live with us because we let a room.

Because there wasn't any money a lot of the time.

Dad worked, he worked.

He was a casual salesman.

He was good at it.

He always came back from his trips with money and things.

You didn't want him to come back, did you?

Why do you say that?

Oh, I thought that for a long time, I guess.

Oh, yeah, I've always thought that.

That postcard we had from South Africa.

If he'd written again, you wouldn't have told me, would you?

And if he was still alive?

Frederick!

No, it is in his mind, he thinks it's possible.

After all, there are people who still think that Hitler is alive, Bormann is alive.

To be alive is all, yes?

What is it we look for?

Resurrection?

He'd have written again.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

He'd have written again, he would have come.

So is he dead then, yes?

For to be alive and not to come is not to care.

To care nothing.

To go and not to care, is that the father?

I tell you, those who care in this world are those who do.

The hand that's reached out, the bread upon the

table, the hard word bitter in the mouth that speaks.

I had a mother and a father in this place.

I have looked for them as they would have looked for me.

As they would have looked for me.

I do not believe in resurrection.

Les!

Let them go.

The past is important to us.

We wish for something better than us there.

We wish all our ghosts to be happy once in a while.

Have you no hope for the future?

Les.

Sorry.

You will excuse us.

You want to talk to me?

Yes.

We will come soon.

Yeah.

You should go back home and tell them.

Tell them what?

To stop rooting about in the past and get on with the future.

Yeah, that's what my grandad wants in a way.

No wonder when you think about it.

He's had his face shoved in the muck more than most.

So have these people here.

But they'll show us a thing or two before they run out of steam.

That's what's happened to Labour back home.

They've done all they promised to do, they've

run out of steam and they're losing votes.

They've lost what votes are given for, that's why.

What counts most in the end anyway.

When we were further in the muck than we are now, we had it then.

But we've got bogged down in the means and we'll lose it.

Lose what?

Vision.

What my dad once said, the sight of the sun

up top when you're working in a two foot seam.

I'm going now.

Blast.

Aye.

Aye, got the wrong door.

It's a room we don't use.

A bomb fell on the other side of the wall.

They're going to pull it down soon.

It's been like this since the war.

Just as we found it.

Pictures and all, eh?

A girl who's at school lived here.

Her father was in the SS.

He was with her mother next door when the bomb fell.

I told her about the things, but she doesn't want them.

I'm sorry about Leslie.

She cares about what happens in the world.

What's to be sorry about?

He hits Fred all the time.

Well, life's raw when you're young.

You look for targets.

Are all your ghosts happy ones?

My dad left us when I was a lad.

How old were you?

I was...

ten.

I was nine.

I never talked to anyone else I happened to.

A lot of the girls' fathers were killed in the war, but it's different, isn't it?

Didn't leave from choice, you mean?

Yes, I suppose that's it.

They didn't turn their backs.

I'd have been rising twenty when yours left you.

What was he like?

Like Fred says he was.

It gets harder to remember.

Happen we shouldn't try, eh?

But you do, though, don't you?

Yes.

Yes, you do.

Even now?

You?

Not so much.

Now and then.

Live your life as it is.

No point sticking in the past.

No.

They said... they said he had charm.

People in Canada we knew.

He spoiled us a lot.

He'd buy us silly things when Mum hadn't any money.

There were always presents.

He were a Greek, sparing gifts.

He's a good chap, Fred.

Yes.

Yes, he is.

They leave such a mess behind them, don't they?

People who go.

Look under the carpets.

I wish you were staying.

I have a ship waiting for me.

Going home?

I reckon.

They haven't nobody to chivvy them up since I've been away.

Brothers and sisters?

No.

No.

Neither brothers nor sisters.

Mother?

She's dead.

Is your father still alive?

Not.

Nah.

He's been dead for years.