Annie from Liverpool and Dwight from Daytona grow up and begin their respective careers in the arts and the military – Annie becoming an acclaimed documentary and fashion photographer and Dwight a casualty of the Vietnam war eventually selling oranges by the roadside in Portugal.  Their paths cross for the first time in Greece, when they are 27.  Their lives become inextricably linked, not least through 9/11, though they never actually meet again until they are 50.

You can download this full length screenplay as a pdf: ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE

Behind the lintel of the Lion Gate,

swallows had built their nest. Two Mirage jets,

burning Nato dollars, buzzed the valley.

A sweatstained, overweight American

squatted in the shade of the ashlar ramparts,

fanning himself with a bush hat. “Hey, which

pile of stones is this?” A veteran’s pension

kept him in exile. His mom and dad

had once stood arm-in-arm with that eager,

cropped marine recruit, who was altogether now

someone else. Thanksgiving and each birthday,

he would call collect. “This is the country

to screw up with your folks!”… He lies in the bunker,

smoking a joint. The black sergeant plays Hendrix

on his new Hitachi. From six miles

up the valley, NVA artillery

blow their minds… Parts of his skull were wired

like a broken vase. On the tourist bus,

his compatriots avoided him.

He smelt of despair, was a friend, a son,

brother missing in firefields of tattered

flags. Survivor’s guilt confounds. How he longed

to talk of Khe Sanh, how often spoke of

America! Swallows dipped above him,

under the gate. He did not look at them.