Synopsis

In the early 1900s Alfred Polly, still hankering after his dream girl Christabel, marries Miriam Larkins and they open a shop, but as the years go by, the marriage becomes stale and Polly feels trapped. He decides to stage his own death by burning down the shop but becomes an accidental hero when he saves a deaf old lady from the flames. He gives Miriam the insurance payout and decides to go walkabout. He gets a job at a country pub, the Potwell Inn, run by a kind landlady, but her violent nephew Jim is driving the customers away and Polly reluctantly faces up to him. Jim is drunk and falls into the river and drowns, wearing a pair of trousers stolen from Polly with Polly's name inside, so at last Polly has his perfect escape as he's assumed to be the corpse. After a visit to Miriam, who is now perfectly happy running a tea-shop, he returns to the Potwell Inn and the idyllic life he always craved.