Brideshead Revisited
written by Andrew Davies & Jeremy Brock, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh
Charles (Matthew Goode): If you asked me now, who I am the only answer I could give for certain would be my name, Charles Ryder. For the rest, my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thought, one emotion remains my own, alone among the borrowed and the second hand, as pure as that faith as which I am still in flight-guilt. Did I want too much? Did my own hunger blind me to the ties which bound them to their faith? Why only now shadowed by war. All warnings gone. Alone enough to see the light.
Julia (Hayley Atwell): It was just a shock. I’ve always known, ever since nursery. But I tried to be good. I married Rex. All through the backgammon and cigars I tried, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough. God had to punish me. So He took my little Sue, my child, my girl. With you I thought I could really and truly be free. But coming back here it’s like an invisible thread drawing me back inch by inch, when all of a sudden you’re a child again. And that voice inside your head that mummy planted all those years ago in the nursery, every night in the nursery fill your head with it. And the voice is telling you, whispering “wicked little Julia, bad little girl living in sin” and here I am living in sin with you.
Credit and many thanks to Sammi for these monologues, it is very much appreciated.