The Young in Heart Page #4

about it. I do myself.

Fine historic name.

Not a subject for jesting.

Allow me to introduce

my wife, ma'am, my daughter...

I know.

- My son.

- How do you do?

And your servant

Colonel Anthony Carleton,

late of the Bengal Lancers.

The Bengal Lancers!

How splendid!

And yet the wretched government

refuses him a pension

and lets his family starve.

If only he hadn't gone back to the War

after that dreadful wound.

Gas, Marmy. Gas.

Gas? Gas, too, of course.

Don't be absurd, George-Anne.

Did you think I had forgotten?

"If I have a breath left

to give my country," he used to say.

He's never been right since.

And then your operation

on top of everything.

Yes, and so expensive, too.

But they would

take me to the Riviera.

Now, Marmy, you know it isn't good

for you to talk so much.

Don't overdo it.

It meant selling our little house

and poor Richard

coming down from Oxford.

The most brilliant man

of his year, they said.

Didn't they, darling?

I don't care what they said.

I don't care that for Oxford,

just as long as

you're all right, Marmy.

If you could only force yourself

to eat something, Marmy.

In Little Women, the children

call their mother Marmy.

I think the name does suit me.

I don't know where

the absurd children got it.

"Sahib," of course,

means "genteel" in India.

The children were born there,

poor darlings,

somewhere in the Himalayas.

A dreadful place, what with

the ayahs and the whatnots

howling around in the...

whatever you call them.

Marmy, are you sure you couldn't

force yourself to eat something?

Oh, no. It would choke me,

I'm sure it would.

Oh.

Would it help if I

ate something with you?

It might. I'd do anything

to please you, dear boy.

I think we should all

make the effort.

If Marmy should see us all eating,

it might tempt her, hmm?

Of course,

you'll be our guest, ma'am.

Oh, no, no, please.

This is my compartment.

I insist...

you must be my guests.

So often I've tried

to imagine parties like this,

when I might be with friends...

celebrating with them

on birthdays...

My little girl's going to have

a birthday this year.

Let's say it's

her birthday now, tonight.

Just 20-odd years ago today,

somewhere in dear old Ireland...

If I had thought 20-odd years ago

that my little girl would come out

in a French railway carriage...

We're pretending it's her birthday.

If I had pretended

20-odd years ago

that my little girl would be born

in a French railway carriage...

Can I help you, darling?

If I had pretended

20-odd years ago

that I would give birth

to a little French railway carriage,

egad, I'd have shot myself!

You must forgive the Sahib.

He lives in a little world

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