All language subtitles for Queers s01e06 Safest Spot in Town.eng

SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC

BOMBS OVERHEAD

_

I require a drink. That...
that is for certain.

I'll be seen here, though.
Someone'll bring up my name and say,

"Isn't that Andrew's boy
standing over there? "

Andrew's boy.

You'd think this was a bush village.

Bush village, that way.

Soho, Bloomsbury, Piccadilly
Circus... full of clowns.

Everything else is either slum
or pompous, and little in between.

I know what I'm saying.

I've run the length of this city,
so I know it all... all of it.

The East End too.

And I don't just mean cruising up
and down Whitechapel High Street

like those old queens do,
no. I mean down by the docks.

Workers from around the world
with big load-lifting arms.

Oh, my God...

If their overalls could speak,

they'd shame up the
whole of polite society.

There's the Chinese, and people
from the West Indies, and more.

And the locals, of course.

Mmm. Hands as rough as Empire.

But down over there you're
never far away from an alleyway,

and a "poof roaching".

Yes, that's what they call
them... "poof roachers".

The men who might just as well
leave you for dead afterwards.

That's after they've
taken their pleasure.

The beating come, and your money go.

Threats to involve the law

if they believe you've got a
reputation worth looking out for.

No, the East End is not for me, mm-mm.

What is for me is much harder to fathom.

This mess of dance halls,
theatres, smoke-filled bars

and endless gossip that draws me in,

holds me close.

This bush village.

Three years ago, almost to the
day when I first come here...

Southampton docks was where I first
arrived, all sea-legged and smiley.

I thought I knew it all. I thought
I knew all there was to know about

the motherland, and daffodils,
and the poets from the Great War.

I thought I knew what to expect.

My daddy told me about the way

cold here creeps into your fingers
and toes until your bones weep.

He talked me to death about
the English cricket teams.

He packed me a bat and some
kneepads and told me, "Off you go."

"If you can't be a sportsman like me,

best go get yourself a proper degree.

Come back with a profession.

Make yourself into a lawyer, or doctor,

and don't bring no shame on we."

And that was that.

I was free.

I was almost 22 and
unmarried, no profession,

but more than good enough
grades to get me into law school.

But I didn't want law school over there,

and I didn't really want it here either.

What I wanted, what I still want...

it's much harder to fathom.

But it doesn't look like a wife,

or a briefcase.

1938, yes, and what a time to arrive.

I had the spring and summer to myself.

I saw Cornwall, Wales,
Scotland, countryside,

all kinds of people I didn't understand.

I saw poor white people
for the first time.

A white man trundling along with
a broom sweeping the streets.

White men begging.

Old white men with sunken eyes,

still lost from a war they'd
fought two decades before.

I was confused.

My father never tell me about all that.

In Wales, I became a
valet for a gentleman.

Oh, his poor wife.

If she ever knew the things
we did behind her back.

My daddy's kneepads come
in handy, I tell you.

HE CHUCKLES

But Wales was not for long.

London was my calling.

When I come back here, I made a
few shillings as an artist's model.

Standing naked and still
while the city ran around me,

painting me all
different shades of wrong.

At some point, though, I stopped
looking at the finished work

when the artist called me round
to the other side of the easel.

Sometimes it's best to
keep your eyes closed

while keeping your eyes open.

I started moving with the
bohemians in Bloomsbury.

They were all painters and writers
and rabble-rousers and hangers-on,

and I was adopted into their group.

Their Freddie.

I don't remember all their names,

but their bedposts I can
describe in great detail.

Four-posters, some of them,

or sometimes a chaise longue
in the middle of a studio.

Tiny lickle rooms with
laughing floorboards.

We'd have late nights drinking at
the bottle parties, those places

- places like the Shim Sham -

where you had someone other
than your shadow to dance with.

You could press another
man to you, hold him close,

feel him stiffen against your hips,

and then... release.

You had to glide with
the music, you see.

That's unless someone at the
bar had called for the police,

in which case when you heard
the footsteps raining down,

you took the hand of the nearest lady.

It was a fluid movement.

Then there were the soir?es,

and what they called dalliances
between three - or more - of us.

And it was just then,

just as I was going to think about
my studies, in amongst all of them,

in the middle of the room, there he is.

Andrew.

As sweet and as dizzy-making as an
entire bottle of Wray & Nephew rum.

He's over twice my age on paper,

but there is that something in
my blood that draws the sweet

and complicated to me.

He has this wicked grin,

a posterior like one
of those marble statues

I used to go visit
at the British Museum.

Thighs you'd want to
hold on to for years.

He painted me into his life,

he carried me into his studio,

and we did not leave it for a month.

And then...

Oh, and then.

I remember seeing myself

in one of his watercolours on a
wall in a gallery in Belgravia,

and I couldn't help thinking to myself,

"Why he paint me so dark, eh?"

I remember standing there
with my hand up to the wall,

and my arm, and contrasting it.

He had me down just right.

He had me down so right he could
paint me without me being there,

and after a while I
was not there so much.

Some part of me will always
remain on that wall, I imagine.

In a gold leaf frame.

The other part of me needs to move on.

Could never really stick
itself to a white canvas.

I don't want to waste my youth
stuck to the wall of his imagination.

He, though, he'd rather keep me there.

We write to each other still,

making promises to meet
that are rarely kept.

I distract myself with as much
as I can, with the theatre.

I've been tending to the theatre.

My personal back garden, even
though it's one bum after another,

one bum after another.

Even though all the
places for inverts like me

are disappearing one by one

there is still so much
sweet for all that bitter.

Mm. This beer is far too weak for
my taste, but it will do the trick.

It's one for the road, and
it tastes like tarmac too.

Monday, things must change.

My free paper bun,

but I still have tomorrow to dance.

RUMBLING PLASTER FALLS

I have Dodging A Divorc?e in my
head and I can't shake it out.

I wish I could carry that
song with me everywhere I go.

Press it against my ears.

If only. It's a foxtrot.

No foxtrot now, but they're
playing ragtime in the ballrooms.

Ragtime.

All those West Indians giving
the crowd what they want.

Sweating, smiling,
shuffling Colonial boys.

It's all a part of the game of
belonging, and not belonging.

When I first come over here, the
landlady was full of questions.

"Why are your palms a lighter hue?"

She'd turn them over at the
table, frowning in puzzlement.

I let it wash over me
like the other questions.

"Where do you learn to speak
such good English then?"

And the like. Oh, she was full of them.

I used to think it was a
working-class obsession...

my hair, my skin, the
colour of my hands,

all those comments
from the East End boys.

But I'm under no illusions now.

No, the more refined have their ways.

I tell them I'm going to become
a lawyer, and their eyebrows arch.

I talk to them about music, and
the conversation moves to jiving,

swing and ragtime.

All that time I spent revelling the
attention of the Bloomsbury crowd,

the freedom I felt was an illusion.

I know that now.

Where I was born, you have to be
as light as cornmeal to succeed,

unless you knew how to entertain.

Over here it's more complicated.

And endless game of where
you're schooled and who you know.

Oh, they never slam the door in your
face, the upper classes here, no.

They make you hold
the handle of the door,

and convince you that you
don't want to come in after all.

But all of that is changing
with this blasted war.

Tonight I was good enough
for the Caf? de Paris

because there was
no-one else left in Soho.

The grand Caf? de Paris
is where you can dance now,

where I can dance now they're no
longer concerned with my appearance.

They started opening up their
client?le... that's what they said.

It's funny how some places
change their tune, eh?

They call it the safest spot in town.

Deep underground with a full swing
band, a West Indian band at that.

A whole heap of brass and brown
skins... who'd have thought that, eh?

I was going tonight,
to the Caf? de Paris.

To see Snakehips, the King of Swing,

the band leader at the helm of it all.

He has a twinkle in his eye, this
hypnotising movement at the loins

that make a boy like me salivate.

He was like that from
day one, Snakehips,

before he plucked himself
out from among the riff-raff

to make it into the big halls.

They all talk about him, "Snakehips."

Even the Thames seems to do a
little dancing dip like he does

once the river hits this side of town.

But all that he do isn't real
music... it's all showmanship.

And I'm not complaining. The one
entertains, the other sustains.

And it's not like I
don't like the swing,

the way it makes your body bend,
but that is the real difference

between the bottle parties
and the Caf? de Paris.

It's not just who gets past the
doors, but what's behind them.

I could've been hit
by that bomb tonight.

I should be dead.

I didn't go there tonight. I
went... I went to the theatre.

That's what I call it, the
lavatories around Piccadilly

where men who speak my language
like to entertain each other.

The real West End theatres
are all closed now.

Soon after the bombs started
coming, they were forced to,

but the Caf? de Paris
was open for business.

Too deep underground for
the Germans to hit it.

I was meant to go, but
I couldn't bring myself

to darken the doors of a place
that would have refused me entry

just a year ago. I'm too proud for that.

Nobody ever tell me in words, but I
feel it in the tailoring of my skin.

We're proud, or weak-hearted.
The result is the same.

I wasn't good enough to enter then

unless I was one of the entertainers.

I was on my way

and then this urge came
upon me like a river,

and my feet meandered away
from the entrance of the club

and straight into the theatre
inside the Regent Palace Hotel.

It was a fluid movement.

The porters often turn a blind eye

so long as we don't cause a disturbance.

I was stood at the
urinals in the semi dark,

with a middle-aged man's
hands inside my flies,

and he had a strong grip too.

Halfway through the sirens went off

and we had to run for
shelter right away.

All of us, except for
the chancers, as always.

The chance of a few minutes to
find a hand, or mouth, or more,

in the dark is too good to pass by.

I escaped into the streets

and I caught a glint
in the eye of a warden,

and I followed him down a side passage.

He tasted of the suburbs,
like he had a Hammersmith wife

waiting for him at
the back of his throat.

There's that something in my blood
that draws the married man to me

with all his sweetness
and complications.

It's not a bad thing.
I have a sweet tooth.

HE CHUCKLES

Oh, Snakehips is in my head
still. Boy, he could move.

I heard the whistle of it landing

and I could feel the
ground around me shake

as I pulled the warden's
thighs close against me.

I can see Snakehips dancing...

and I can hear him singing.

Right as the bomb lifted
him clean off the stage.

The bomb went down the
ventilation shaft, and then...

Pow!

The safest spot in London
gone, just like that.

It was an hour or two ago now,
but here we are drinking on.

Another one went off ten minutes later,

while I still had the taste
of the warden in my mouth.

And just as I'm arriving to
the shelter, there's all this

debris falling, and I don't
know where the blood came from...

if I hit my head or if I bit my lip
too hard, but all I see is blood.

I could've been there.

I promised myself I would finally
see inside of that blessed club.

Take my rightful place
with the cr?me de la cr?me.

But sometimes a broken promise is
what it takes to keep you alive.

Instead, I chose the path of the warden

who tasted of Hammersmith and gin.

I can't have been more than 200
yards away from where the bomb hit,

and I survived.

Monday.

Monday is the day I'm going
to join up for war service.

I'll join up before I'm forced
to, in my way, in the Fredrick way,

and I will survive the same
way, like I've always done.

Of course, I knew one
day I'd be called up.

I dreaded it, I never wanted it.

I'd rather dance away my days than
join in the bloodshed, but tonight...

tonight I finally realised
that the fight will come to me

if I don't come to it first. And
I will fight for this bush village.

For the bottle parties
that have come and gone,

for sweet and complicated
men that have come and gone.

And, yes, for Snakehips.

And, yes, for the Caf? de Paris.

But also for the theatres.

Most of all, I'm going
to fight for the theatres

and all the other places that never
closed their doors to men like me.

That's if they even
have doors to start with.

That is the only fight I can
take up with any conviction.

And I will be back sometime,

and I will sit down in a Soho pub
which will be better than here.

And maybe even better
than the Shim Sham.

And God help them if they haven't
learned to pour decent beer by then.

- Synced and corrected by chamallow -
- www.addic7ed.com -

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